Chapter Three
Of Friends, Milk, and Soccer

Do not flame the work of fan fiction writers, for they are not very subtle and write nasty things when provoked.
Paraphrase of a tagline seen on alt.music.filk, itself a paraphrase from The Lord of the Rings.

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Sunday morning, and the Daisuke sleeping over at Takeru's was awake first. He had not slept very well at all, what with being in a strange apartment and all.

He tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes, but sleep was hiding in an area of his brain rather removed from his eyes, so rubbing them did no good at all. He lay back on the bed and dozed fitfully.

"Wake up, sleepyhead!"

Daisuke opened his eyes to see Takeru grinning at him, looking quite awake. Daisuke smiled back at him.

"Morning, TK."

"How'd you sleep?"

"Not all that well."

"Sorry to hear that."

"I think I'll be all right, though." Daisuke streched, yawned widely, and sat up on the bed. Then he started rummaging among the sheets for his shirt.

"You sleep without a shirt?" asked Takeru.

"Not usually," Daisuke replied. "But your place is a lot warmer than mine, so I took it off hoping it would help me sleep better. Oh, here it is."

"I'll go and let you get dressed."

"It's all right--you can stay," said Daisuke. "You don't have to leave. Really."

Takeru stayed in the room. Daisuke extracted his shirt from a tangle of topsheet and blankets, then set it aside. Throwing off the sheets, he sat on the bed in his underwear while finding and putting on his socks. He stood up, pulled on his shirt, then found his pants and put them on as well. Last of all he picked up his goggles from the side table and placed them on his head.

Takeru watched this performance with some surprise, and mild embarrassment. He wondered if Daisuke was actually making a show of his body: like most eleven year olds, both were usually mortified at the thought of being seen less than fully clothed.

They ate a breakfast prepared by Takeru's mother, then headed back to the living room and the videogame console. Takeru liked challenging RPGs like Lufia 2, but he knew Daisuke perferred first person shoot-em-ups. So he asked Daisuke what he felt like playing.

"Whatever you want," was his friend's response.

Takeru shrugged, searched through his collection of game cartridges, and put Super Smash Brothers into the machine.

The action was fast and furious, the boys smashing both computer generated targets and each other off the screen. They squeaked and squealed with excitement as young boys do when occupied with a fast paced game. Yet after only half an hour of this, Daisuke made an unusual request.

"Can you switch the game into co-operative mode?" he asked.

Takeru's controller slipped from his fingers and landed in his lap.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"I just wondered if you could switch the game into co-operative mode," said Daisuke.

"Why?"

"I don't really feel like running around the game attacking you."

Takeru forgot about his controller and turned to look at Daisuke, confused. "What are you talking about? You've never had a problem with that before--in fact, the more frags you could get on me, the happier you were!"

"It just feels like I'm attacking a friend, that's all," Daisuke replied.

"Like I said, it's never bothered you before now. Why the concern all of a sudden?"

"It's like, well ... it's like for the first time I've actually seen you as a real friend--not just someone I hang around with, play games with, or go into the Digital World and blow apart control spires with. So it doesn't feel right for me to go beating you up in the game."

"Makes sense, sort of," said Takeru.

Picking up his controller, he called up the settings and made a quick modification.

Now they were playing together, each one looking out only for Mario and Luigi instead of each other. Daisuke was in a chatty mood, and kept the conversation going while pointing, clicking, and fighting characters on the TV screen.

"I mean, I was really surprised when XV-mon and Stingmon jogressed. I really don't know why it wasn't Angemon and XV-mon."

Blam! Yoshi toppled over, victim of a pistol shot from Daisuke.

"That one's easy to answer," said Takeru. "You were the first to accept Ken as one of us, instead of always seeing him as the Digimon Kaizer."

Donkey Kong vanished in a puff of smoke, being on the receiving end of Takeru's laser gun.

"Yeah, that's right. But it be a lot better if XV-mon could jogress with Angemon. That would be a really neat jogress shinka!"

He threw a Bob-omb at Pikachu and blasted him into oblivion.

"But why would they jogress?" asked Takeru. For some reason he was starting to feel uncomfortable. He noticed, for the first time, that ever since they had sat down on the floor to play, Daisuke had been so close they were always touching each other.

"Because of the friendship we have, and Chibimon's friendship with Patamon." He looked away from the TV set and at Takeru. "And I mean really friends, not some mushy thing like Hikari."

Takeru's blue eyes went wide open and his jaw dropped. "What do you mean, some mushy thing like Hikari? I thought you and me were kinda in competition for her."

"Me in competition with you for Hikari?" asked Daisuke. He sounded incredulous, as though he had never heard of such a thing before. "It's more like Hikari's in competition with me for your time and attention."

Takeru was starting to freak out. He jumped up from floor, his game controller landing with a soft thud on the carpet.

"Are you all right, Daisuke?" he sweatdropped. "You've been acting strange ever since we got back from the Digital World on Friday."

"Sure I'm all right," Daisuke replied. "OK, I've had a couple of those light headed things happen to me, but, yeah I'm all right. Or at least I would be if it wasn't for you and Cyan trying to confuse the heck out of me all the time."

"What? You're talking about yesterday?"

"Yes, yesterday, when you insisted you had talked to me on the phone, but I had been at Ken's almost all day."

"Whoa, Daisuke ... slow down a bit there. I did call you at home, and your mom answered, and she gave the phone to you. You sounded tired."

Daisuke scratched his head. "I have no memory of that at all," he said. He sounded a little worried. "Maybe I'm not really all here. Or I'm too tired. Maybe I should go home and get some sleep."

"Yeah, maybe you should. You had a pretty hectic day yesterday, what with the soccer match and the movie and all."

"You're right, I did. Getting a bit more sleep sounds like a good idea. Uh, before I go, can I get something to drink? I'm thisty."

"Sure," said Takeru. "Do you want water, milk, or some fruit juice?"

"Milk. The coach says I should drink it."

"All right. I'll get you some."

They headed into the kitchen. Takeru pulled a fresh carton of milk out of the fridge, opened it, and poured out a small glass for Daisuke. He was just about to pour one himself when he stopped.

"Oh! This is skim milk," he said. "I don't really like it. Do you want it?"

"The whole carton?" asked Daisuke.

"Sure." Takeru checked the refrigerator. "I see Mom's got two other cartons of the stuff I like here, so I have no problem giving that one to you."

"Gee, thanks, TK," said Daisuke.

They went to the door, where Daisuke put on his shoes and jacket, then bundled Chibimon into his backpack and headed for home. Iori was nowhere to be found, so no one realised Daisuke had said Takeru's name correctly twice that morning.

In the same manner that a butterfly flapping its wings in China can cause a storm in North America a week later, so it was that Takeru's seemingly innocuous act of giving a carton of milk to Daisuke saved Tokyo. For in that carton was a most unusual bacterial culture, which, had the carton been returned to the fridge, would have developed a mutation introduced via a mould spore from a potato decomposing unnoticed in the lower rack. The culture would have grown and flourished as the milk sat undrank in the fridge, and a week later when Takeru's mother poured it down the drain, the culture would have reacted with some cyclosporidium parasites in Tokyo bay, and that in turn would have caused an irritable bowel problem in the gojira monster sleeping at the bottom of the bay. Thus awakened, and in a more foul mood than normal from a bad case of the runs, the monster would have levelled a good part of Tokyo before collapsing from dehydration.

In fact, the world's major cities suffer from near disasters like this all the time, and the only reason they don't happen more often is because overall humans are a pretty darned lucky lot. And the rare time it does happen, it is hushed up by the government because it is very difficult formulating public policy to deal with ravaging monsters, and they find it much easier simply to placate the populace by insisting they don't exst.

Daisuke had the misfortune to get the same bus driver the other one had the misfortune to get the day before. The ride was noisy and jarring, shaking and rattling both Daisuke and Chibimon. After getting off, he walked unsteadily toward the apartment block he lived in, on the way passing by the store run by Miyako's parents.

You can probably guess what happened next.

His mind gave a sudden lurch. He felt a little woozy, as if his brain had turned upside-down; his legs seemed for a moment to turn to jelly, and he found himself short of breath. He clutched his head and staggered like a drunk for several feet before stopping and leaning back against a wall. There came a muffled squeak from his backpack, and Daisuke realised he was inadvertantly compressing Chibimon. Carefully he pulled away, and made his way home.

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The other Daisuke, of course, was at home, missing his little blue digimon. He had not seen Chibimon since leaving him playing hide-and-seek with Leafmon at Ken's the day before. Figuring he could kill a couple of hours travelling across town and back to get him, he picked up the telephone and called Ken.

"Moshi-moshi," he said when the line was picked up at the other end.

"Moshi-moshi," came Ken's voice from the other end.

"Hey, Ken. I don't have that much to do today, so I was wondering if I could come over to get Chibimon."

There was a distinct pause at the other end of the line, then Ken said, "Uh, you did that yesterday, Daisuke."

Oh, no, not Ken too! thought Daisuke. TD and Cyan playing this game was confusing enough!

"What?" asked Daisuke into the reciever. "I couldn't have! I came home, crashed for the rest of the morning, and spent the afternoon with Miyako who helped me with my homework."

"You must have been busy," said Ken. "You found enough time to come and see my soccer game, then come with us to a movie. Last I heard you were sleeping over at Takeru's."

"No way I could have done that!" Daisuke exclaimed. "I was with Miyako pretty much the whole time, and after she left I went to bed. At home."

"But you were with me, and Takeru, and Cyan and Hikari and Iori at the movie theatre. Don't you remember the fight you had with Cyan?"

"Cyan? Fight?"

Daisuke was feeling both bewildered and a little ill. What was happening to him? Why did everyone around him see him doing things he had no memory of?

"How could I have gotten into a fight with Cyan?" he asked Ken. "I haven't seen him since Friday!"

"Well," said Ken, ignoring Daisuke's comment about not seeing Cyan at all on Saturday, "you said something to him he didn't like outside the movie theatre last night, and he got so mad he almost punched you out. Then he stormed off, yelling at Takeru that you could sleep in his bed at Takeru's place."

"But I wasn't at TG's last night!" Daisuke was almost shouting by now. "I remember talking to him on the phone about going to a movie, but I wasn't interested because I was so tired. And now you're telling me I actually went to the movie?"

"Of course you did. You came to my soccer game, went with us for ice cream at the Mount Fuji Cone Factory, and after that we all went to see Daughters of the Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles."

"Hold it! Hold it! I'm planning on going to Daughters of the TMNT, but I haven't yet! And, yeah, I was at the Mount Fuji Cone Factory yesterday, but I went with Miyako, not you guys!"

"With Miyako?" asked Ken. "Miyako wasn't with us."

"Of course she wasn't--she was with me!" Daisuke cried.

"You were with us, Daisuke. I remember it was while you were eating your bannana split at the Cone Factory that you asked Takeru if you could sleep over at his place. He said --"

Daisuke interrupted again, desparate to make some sense out of this insane conversation. "Why would I want to sleep over at Takeru's? He's a nice guy and all, but I can't stand the way he and Cyan always get on my case whenever I want to do something to help the Digital World!"

"That much we can agree on," said Ken. "Daisuke, none of this is making much sense. Are you sure you're all right? Remember those dizzy spells you had yesterday?"

"Do I? Yeah, sure I do. They really loop me out. It's almost like my brain turns upside down--I feel woozy and short of breath--and my legs feel like they turn to jelly!"

Up to now Ken was well on track to figuring out the whole crazy scenario. But hearing Daisuke was having dizzy spells convinced him he was dealing with only one instance of his friend. Of course, he could not have suspected, even if he knew there were two Daisukes, that despite their different experiences he just happened to ask about the one thing that was common to them both.

"It appears it's affecting your memory, too," said Ken. "It's starting to sound pretty serious. Daisuke, I can't force you to, but I think you should go see a doctor about it."

"Oh, man!" groaned Daisuke. "I'm only eleven! I'm too young to die!"

"I didn't say it was life threatening. But it's something you really should get checked out."

"Yeah, maybe you're right. If this goes on much longer I won't know if I'm coming or going. Speaking of which, should I be coming over to get Chibimon?"

"No need to--he isn't here. Listen, why don't you call Takeru and ask him if Chibimon's over there. Maybe he went home with Patamon for some reason."

"Yeah, maybe. But I'm kinda afraid to call TB right now. Who knows what he'll say about what I was doing last night!"

"Same as I am, actually," said Ken. "He was with us."

"Whatever. All right, Ken, I guess I won't bother coming over today. Hopefully Chibimon will show up when we go to school tomorrow. See you later."

"Bye, Daisuke. Stay well."

"Thanks. Bye."

Daisuke put down the receiver, feeling not at all well. He was debating whether or not to call TK when his mother called from the kitchen.

"Daisuke, dear, we're all out of milk. Can I get you to go down to Inoue's store to get some?"

"Sure, Mom." Anything to get out of this place for a bit and clear my head, he thought.

Of course, his head would not clear up any time soon. His mother gave him some money. He left the apartment, rode the elevator down to street level, crossed, and entered the store. No sooner was he through the door than a young boy with a backpack came around the corner and jauntily walked past him.

If you haven't figured out the pattern by now, you really have not been paying attention to this story.

Suddenly, Daisuke's mind gave a lurch. His legs seemed for a moment to turn to jelly. He found himself short of breath and felt a little woozy, as if his brain had turned upside-down.

It was bad enough that his mind was alreay spinning from his conversation with Ken. Now it was going round and round like a frog in tumble dryer. He stumbled. His arms went wide, grasping for something solid to catch on to. His hands grabbed hold of a shelving unit, but the shelf was loose and disassembled as he put his weight on it. With a horrendous crash, shelf, boy, and tinned pineapple collapsed to the floor.

"Wow, Daisuke!" came a voice. "What's got into you?"

Daisuke looked up from amongst the pinenapple tins into Taichi's face.

"Oh--heh--fancy meeting you here!" he said, putting on a ragged grin.

Miyako's mother came around the corner of the aisle.

"What happened?"

"Uh, well, I just was walking down here and I kinda bumped into this shelf and the next thing I knew everything was on the floor!"

"Oh, those silly shelves!" exclaimed Mrs. Inoue. "I keep asking for stronger ones, especially for the tinned goods because these ones simply aren't strong enough!"

"Look on the bright side," said Taichi. "At least you didn't bump into the pickles on the other side!"

Daisuke looked at the shelf opposite the fallen one. As Taichi had said, it was filled with pickles in glass jars.

Indeed, Daisuke was most fortunate: the pickles carried a positive ionic charge, while the tinned pineapple carried a negative charge. Since Daisuke was positively charged, the charge in the pickles repelled him ever so slightly while the pineapple attracted him ever so slightly, and between the two of them they prevented a very large mess indeed.

"If you don't mind, Mrs. Inoue," said Taichi, "I can put this back for you."

"Would you?" asked the shopkeeper. "It would be most appreciated."

"No problem."

Daisuke got up from amid the pineapple, and he and Taichi spent the next few minutes replacing the shelf and restocking the tins.

When they were done, Taichi asked Daisuke, "So, you got any plans for the day?"

"No," Daisuke replied. "Why?"

"Well, me and some friends are having a pick-up soccer game in the park. It'd be great having you on my team. Wanna join us?"

Daisuke had to think about the offer. Ordinarily he was crazy about soccer, but all the strange things that had been happening to him over the weekend were beginning to take a toll. But his homework was finished, thanks to Miyako's help yesterday, and it came down to a choice either to play soccer with Taichi, or to stay at home all day playing videogames and listening to Jun natter incessently about Yamato.

That was enough to convince him to go with Taichi and play soccer.

He forgot all about the milk.

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It was really a nice afternoon: bright sunny skies with a light sea-breeze from the southeast. Perfect for hanging laundry to dry on the balcony. Which was what Daisuke's mother was doing.

[At this point it is necessary once again to depart slightly from our main story to make a quick note about Japanese culture. With electricity and gas rates much higher in Japan than in North America, it is common for Japanese housewives to hang laundry on lines run from one end of the apartment balcony to the other, so to save on the cost of running a dryer. In fact, in many places, weather forecasts use icons resembling ladies hanging up their washing, wearing ever bigger grins as the forecasted temperatures increase.]

She wondered where the narration was coming from, but since it was over so quickly, she assumed she had simply overheard a TV set.

She had just finished hanging up Daisuke's underwear--carefully hidden behind a pillow-case so it could not be seen from outside the balcony--when the telephone rang. She walked to the other side of the balcony where the wireless handset lay on the table. Deftly she plucked it from the tabletop, expertly pressed TALK, and put it to her ear.

"Moshi-moshi," came her son's voice.

Mrs. Motomiya broke into a broad smile. "Moshi-moshi!" she said merrily. "Where are you?"

"Over at Yagami Taichi's."

"Where?"

"You remember Hikari, right?"

"Of course I do. Such a nice girl."

"Well, she has an older brother called Taichi, and I'm over at his place now. We were playing soccer in the park, then he asked me if I wanted to come along with him to see a movie. Problem is, the next showing isn't until 7:30."

"No problem! If the Yagamis are willing to feed you, you can stay with them, then go to the movie. I won't be home for dinner, anyway ... I'll be off to painting class, so your Dad and sister will have to make do with something out of the microwave. What time do you think you'll be home?"

"About 10:00."

"Well, have fun then, and enjoy the movie! Bye!"

"Thanks, mom! Bye!"

Mrs. Motomiya expertly pressed the disconnect button, and with a flourish set the handset back down upon the table. Then she went back to hanging her laundry, singing to the bluebirds in the sky.

All along she had no idea her son was actually in his bedroom, muddling through his math homework.

Daisuke was not having an easy time of it. He struggled with the math, fighting off sleep and wishing Takeru was there to help him. He was so tired he did not notice the previous three pages of his notebook already contained all the answers.

Halfway through he gave up and took a nap.

An hour later he got up, finished the math, then went to his computer to work on the language arts essay. That occupied an hour. Satisfied he had a decent essay together, he clicked the SAVE icon and typed in a file name when it asked him for one.

The computer responded with: File already exists. Replace? [Yes] [No].

Daisuke clicked on [Yes], and wrote over the much better version his other half and Miyako had put together the day before.

Just then his father knocked on the door and looked into his room.

"Your mom's off to an art class," he said. "Do you want to join me and Jun for sushi at a restaurant somewhere?"

"Sure," said Daisuke.

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Oh, no, not AGAIN! thought Daisuke.

He just asked Taichi's sister Hikari if she wanted to go to Daughters of the Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles with him and Taichi and Sora, and she had looked at him funny and said he had been to see it yesterday with her and TK and all the others and didn't he remember doing that and besides he had spent the whole movie talking to Takeru and didn't he think now that he had been pretty stupid saying the things he had to Cyan?

This time Daisuke didn't bother even trying to tell her he had spent yesterday with Miyako, and he had not yet seen the movie. He was disappointed, too, that Hikari had not decided to go with him to see the movie a second time. And she sounded so cross, too. Perhaps she was more interested in Takeru after all. No matter. It was only a matter of time before he won her over. They were all still young: it would be a few years yet before they could even consider getting married.

On the way to the theatre, Daisuke asked Taichi, "So, if you're taking Sora out on a date to see this movie, why'd you ask me along?"

"This isn't really a date," said Taichi. "If it was, I'd've left before now to take her somewhere to eat before the movie, and we'd be catching the 10:00 PM showing and not the 7:30. Oh--Yamato's going to be there, too. He wants to see the movie as much as I do, and since Sora was also interested, we just decided to team up and see it together."

"Oh. So Yamato doesn't have a date?"

Taichi laughed. "Like I said, this isn't a date. Last I heard Yamato was coming alone."

But when they arrived at the theatre, Yamato was with a girl none of them recognised. She was tall and lanky, light-skinned, with long brown wavy hair--quite a contrast to the shorter, black haired Japanese girls. Yamato had an uneasy grin on his face.

"Hey, Yama, looks like you got a date!" said Taichi.

Yamato's grin went a little shaggier. "Meh! Sort of! This is Marie, an exchange student at school, and a major Turtles fan."

"Marie?" asked Sora. "You're French?"

"Actually, I'm American." Her Japanese was a bit broken, and she elongated the vowels strangely, but her speech was easy enough to follow. "My full name's Mary Sue Allibeth, but whenever I say it, I get strange looks and a lot of giggles. So I just changed it to Marie. Makes life a bit simpler."

They made introductions all around. When Daisuke's name was mentioned, Marie reached over and rubbed his hair.

"Aww, such a nice name for a sweet little boy!" she said.

Daisuke went red. What had he done to deserve this?

After getting tickets and refresments, they entered the theatre itself and found seats. The movie was as entertaining as ever, and nothing bad happened, despite the enormous amount of yin energy in the building.

It was a happy group that left the theatre some two hours later. To get to the nearest subway stop, they crossed the street and started walking down the long road that ran up to the front of the theatre.

"Wow! What a cool movie!" said Daisuke.

"Yeah!" said Sora. "I liked the part where they saved their boyfriends from the street gang."

Taichi laughed. "The part I really liked was where Maria was being controlled by the bad guy and she actually turned around and started wailing on Briti and Isabella!"

Daisuke reacted strangely to Taichi's comment. Instead of laughing, he stopped in his tracks and looked around, as if someone had tapped him on the shoulder.

"Hey, Daisuke," said Taichi, "is everything all right?"

"I don't know," Daisuke replied. "Just for a second there it felt like ... like I was watching a program for the second time."

"The whole movie should have felt like that. After all, you saw it yesterday."

"No I didn't!" Daisuke yelled. Everybody stopped in their tracks.

"Whoa! Settle down, man!" said Yamato. "What's bugging you all of a sudden?"

Mary Sue Allibeth put a hand on Daisuke's shoulder to reassure him, but he jumped away at the touch. He looked from one friend to another, a strange, helpless expression on his face.

"What is it with you guys? You keep telling me I saw the movie yesterday, when I didn't, that I went to a soccer game yesterday, when I was getting help with my homework from Miyako ... even that I slept over at TT's last night!"

"But that's what Takeru told me," said Yamato.

"And Hikari told me the same thing," Taichi added.

"Is that why Hikari didn't want to come with me to the movie tonight?" Daisuke asked.

"Partly," said Taichi. "It's more what you did to Cyan that got her upset."

Daisuke groaned. "Oh, no ... Ken said that too. Are still telling me I got into a fight with Cyan last night?

"Are you denying you did?" asked Taichi.

"Of course! I spent last night working on my homework with Miyako!"

"That's not what Hikari says."

Marie stepped into the conversation. "Guys, stop picking on Daisuke!"

If Daiskue heard her at all, he gave no indication of it. "What did she say about last night?" he asked.

"Basically that you and Cyan had an argument about something outside the theatre, and he got so mad he nearly decked you."

Yamato finished the story. "Takeru says he ran off, shouting that you could sleep in his bedroom. Which you did, apparently."

"No I didn't!" said Daisuke defensively. "When were you talking to TC?"

"I called him this afternoon to ask him if he wanted to come to the movie," Yamato said. "He told me about last night." He paused. "And about this morning."

Marie tried to intervene again. "Will you two lay off on my friend already? It's not nice confusing a little kid like that!"

But her comment got lost amid Daisuke's growing agitation. He seemed on the verge of tears. "What did he say I did this morning?"

Yamato looked around, apparently uncomfortable about what he had heard from his younger brother. He bent down to try to deliver the message to Daisuke as privately as he could.

"He said you told him you liked him better than you like Hikari."

Daisuke practically exploded. "Gahh! No way would I ever say that! What's your brother trying to do? Make me look like ... like ... Augh!"

It was too much. He burst into tears and ran off down the long street, sobbing.

"Hey, Daisuke! come back!" called Taichi. He shot a scorching glare at Yamato. "Just what the hell did you say to him, anyway?" Then he took off down the street after Daisuke.

Sora ran off after Taichi.

"It wasn't all that bad!" shouted Yamato after them, and he, too ran off down the street.

Mary Sue Allibeth was left standing there all alone, her head spinning, and wondering why everyone had gone running off like that.

Narrator: Will Daisuke have another run-in with a tin of pineapple? Will the Gojira monster in Tokyo Bay wake up? Will Alli-Beth review this chapter? Find out in the next chapter of Dual Daisuke!

Cyan: I am really starting to get tired of you ...

Hikari: Look, both Miyako and Iori have said it already: even reading the next chapter won't give you the answers!

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Author's notes. Well, this chapter was a little easier to write, partly because I had the two Daisukes cross each other's paths only once.

The quote at the start of this chapter started out in The Lord of the Rings:

Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.

Later it appeared in the usenet group alt.music.filk as:

Do not meddle in the affairs of filkers, for they are not at all subtle and people do not forget funny songs.

("Filking" refers to songs based on fantasy and science fiction. For more information on filk singing, visit www.filk.com -- link will open in a new browser window.)

Ishida316, keeping the two Daisukes separate required at lot of planning: I spent nearly as much time just thinking about the chapter and planning out the major events as I did writing it, and had to plan out the whole chapter before I wrote anything.

And yes, the real Cyan does have a major thing for Ruki. But I'm not going to try writing in a paradox here: this story's complicated enough as it is!

Alli-beth, consider yourself lucky. There were a lot of things we considered writing in this chapter, but didn't ... Cyan can get downright nasty sometimes! ^.^