Chapter Four
Together Again At Last

Don't confuse things that need action with those that take care of themselves.

Daisuke awoke, dazed and confused. He felt worse this morning than he had since things started going nuts back on Saturday. Looking around, he tried to piece together where he was, and how he got there.

The room was bright. Close by he could hear the sound of a shower running. The fog in his mind lifted just a little, and he finally recognised this place as his living room. He was laying on the couch, fully dressed save for his shoes and goggles. Last night's events started trickling into his consciousness ...

There was that crazy conversation outside the theatre, where the older digidestined had trid to convince him he had seen the movie the day before. Then Yamato had told him something he had never expected to hear ... what was that again?

His mind look another loop as he remembered Yamato's words. No wonder he had started crying and running. Taichi had caught up with him after only a couple of blocks, then with Sora's help had spent nearly half an hour calming him down again. Somewhere along the line Yamato had disappeared completely.

He didn't even remember Mary Sue Allibeth being there.

Then Taichi and Sora had gone out of their way to accompany him home, making sure he made it up to his apartment before heading home themselves. Daisuke recalled walking toward his bedroom, only to have his mind take another one of those maddening lurches. He had found himself short of breath and felt a little woozy; his legs seemed for a moment to turn to jelly, and his brain felt like it had turned upside-down. He had staggered back to the futon couch in the living room and pretty much collapsed on to it.

He must have slept there all night. It was morning now, and his family was getting up.

He heard the shower turn off, then a bedroom door close. He assumed Jun was out of the bathroom. A shower would be nice, and hopefully help clear the lingering whatever it was that was wobbling about his head.

The bathroom door was closed. Daisuke silently thanked Jun for doing so and keeping all the heat in. He looked in and saw no one else, so he entered and locked the door behind him. He was, of course, at an awkward age, and had no desire to have someone burst in on him and catch him with no clothes on. Quicky he undressed, went to the shower, and pulled the curtain back to enter.

It was only the sheer shock of seeing someone else there that prevented him from screaming.

The other person's back was to him, but Daisuke immediately realised it could not be another member of his family: the person was too short. But hearing the shower curtain open, the person jerked his head around in shock.

Shock turned to horror in three-quarters of a second it took for each Daisuke to realise he was looking at himself. Naked. Then they both leaped from the shower and grabbed at the same towel to cover himself with.

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"Keep your voice down already!" said Daisuke urgently to the other boy sitting on his bed.

[At this point it really is necessary to deviate slightly from the story line to make a point about names. Normally, with both Daisukes together in the same room, it would be awfully difficult trying to keep the two of them apart: we would be constantly referring to "the Daisuke that got into a fight with Cyan" and "the Daisuke who had Miyako over at his place on Saturday to help him with his homework," and so on and so forth.

Fortunately for us, the North American dub version of Digimon 02 offers a ready made solution: in that version, Daiskue is referred to as Davis. So from this point on, the one who can never seem to say TK's name properly--the one who had Miyako over at his place on Saturday--will be Davis, while the one who got into the fight with Cyan will be referred to as Daisuke.]

"Hey!" said Davis, "I'm Daisuke! I don't want to be called Davis."

[Sorry, but I've made up my mind, and that's the way it's going to be.]

"Oh, all right." Turning to Daisuke, he said, "So I guess we've been split up ever since we failed to make that jump out of the Digital Word on Friday."

"I made the jump OK," said Daisuke. "You must've been stuck back in the Digital World with Ken."

"Yeah. It took us an hour to get out. I went back to Ken's place, where we watched a couple of movies, like we had planned to. And I slept over."

"I didn't. When Ken didn't make it back out, I came home and slept here."

"So I guess the next night you were over at TM's."

"TK's," Daisuke corrected. "Yes, I was. So I guess that's how we managed not to meet up on Saturday."

"Right," said Davis. "What's this about a fight you got into with Cyan?"

"Oh, that!" Daisuke sweatdropped. "Uh, well, I just said something to him about Perilousmon, and the next thing I know he's getting ready to punch my lights out!"

"Idiot!" said Davis. "Such a hot-head."

Daisuke agreed. "He sure doesn't know how to take a joke. Me ... on Saturday I had Miyako over to help me with my homework, and--"

"Homework? Saturday?" asked Davis. "Please don't tell me you worked on math and language arts!"

"Yeah: what else would we work on? Are you telling me you did the homeork too?"

"Of course! I was too busy Saturday going to Ken's soccer game and the Cone Factory and the movie to do my homework. Yesterday was the first chance I got. And now you're telling me I could have saved myself all that work?"

"Probably," said Daisuke. He had a sudden burst of inspiration. "Let's check the math notebook."

Davis pulled the notebook from his school pack and they quickly went through it. Sure enough, the work was there twice, but a lot of the answers in the second set did not agree with the first.

"Trust you to screw it up," said Davis. "You couldn't do math if your life depended on it."

"Hey!" Daisuke rejoined. "I'll bet you're no better at math than me. You just had some help with the homework. And Miyako probably helped you with the language arts essay, too."

"Yep," said Davis. He was struck with a sudden thought. "Augh! I knew I forgot something! We need to make a printout of it!"

"Don't worry, I did that yesterday."

"Yesterday?" Davis sat and thought. He knew something in Dasuke's statement was not adding up quite right, but he had a hard time putting a finger on it. It took him a full thirty seconds to figure it out.

"No," he said at last, "you printed yours yesterday. If Miyako didn't help you with it, it'll stink! We need to print mine!"

He jumped over to the computer and called up the essay he and Miyako had put so much effort into. Then he groaned. Turning to Daisuke, he said, "Idiot! You saved your bad essay over my good one!"

"Well, excuse me for breathing!" said Daisuke. "I didn't know I had worked on it the day before." He heavily emphasized the second "I".

Then they heard their mother calling. "Daisuke? Hurry up, dear, or you'll be late for school."

Daisuke went white. "Oh no. Oh no! We can't! We can't both go to school! How in the hell will we explain this to anyone else other than our Digidestined friends?"

"Maybe we should just go and see what happens. It could be fun."

"Yeah, just like this whole weekend--one great big barrel of monkeys!" said Daisuke. He did not sound amused. "You don't know how confusing it's been for me. Saturday at the soccer game TK said he had talked to me on the phone, when all along I had actually been at Ken's to get Chibimon. I thought it was a joke TK and Cyan had cooked up."

"Meh!" Davis exclaimed. "That's why Ken sounded so confused yesterday when I called him to ask if I could come over and pick up Chibimon! I guess you had already done it."

"Yeah ... Saturday morning." Daisuke was rapidly piecing things together. "We must have crossed paths ... you were probably coming back home from Ken's at the same time I was heading over there to get Chibimon. When I got there, Ken started talking to me about having slept over at his place. Of course, I hadn't. I was wondering why Ken would make a joke like that. It's just not his style. Of course, now I know it was you over at Ken's."

Davis pointed an accusing finger at Daisuke. "So you thought everyone was just playing jokes on you? What about me? Do you have any idea how much trouble you've gotten me into? Everybody was saying I got into a fight with Cyan!" His eyes narrowed. "And what's this I hear about you making a pass at TX yesterday morning?" he hissed.

Daisuke raised his eyebrows. "Huh? I just told TK I saw him as a good friend."

"Yeah, right!" said Davis. "You scared the jeezlies out of him! He even called up his brother Yamato to talk about it. Just for the record, we much prefer Hikari to TF!"

"It's TK," said Daisuke. "Can't you ever get it right?"

"Not as far as this fic is concerned," shot back Davis. "Besides, it's one of the few cues the readers have to know which one of us they're dealing with."

"I think that should have been my line," said Daisuke. "I'm the one figuring all this out. Now, as far as school goes, one of us is going to have to stay here while the other goes to school. So which one of us is going to go, and which one of us is going stay in my--our--bedroom and be really really quiet until he can sneak out and meet the other one at school with our friends and get this whole mess sorted out?"

Davis was quiet for a few seconds, then he asked, "What was that again?"

"That settles it," said Daisuke. "You stay here. And be quiet, otherwise mom's gonna look into the bedroom and freak out. At some point you have to sneak out of the apartment and come to school. We'll meet in the computer lab with the others after classes."

He paused, then grinned for the first time in quite a while.

"They are going to get one big surpise!"

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And a big surprise it was. It was Taichi's idea, really, once he gleaned the truth from Hikari (who had heard it from Daisuke himself) to put Daisuke and Davis sitting side by side together in the computer lab. There they could all watch the expressions on the faces of everyone who came into the room in response to Koushiro's urgent email saying they absolutely had to meet today to discuss an issue that simply could not wait.

In the end, every Digidestined except Jyou and Mimi made it, and every one of them had reason to doubt their eyes when they came into the room. For there were two Daisukes there, dressed identically, but only one Chibimon.

It also required a lot of explanation on both their parts. They got frustrated having to go over it again and again for everyone who came into the room, until finally Miyako started telling the newcomers to wait until everyone had arrived, and that way they could all go over the whole story.

So when everyone (except Jyou, who was at another school, and Mimi, who was not in Japan) had gathered together, they spent nearly an hour going over the entire weekend from everyone's point of view. Koushiro pulled out his laptop and fired up a flowcharting program, and as the others talked he put together a work of flowcharting art that showed the two separate but distinct streams of Daisuke's life from the unceremonious exit from the Digital World on Friday evening to the shower stall incident on Monday morning. The flowchart was so impressive that it went on to become the stuff of legend among the flowcharting community on the internet--all 42 of them.

Indeed it was quite the tale. There was the Daisukes crossing paths in separate elevators on Saturday morning: one headed over to Ken's to get Chibimon just as the other was coming back from there. There was the second cross-over that day on the bus, when one was heading to the Mount Fuji Cone Factory with Miyako while the other one was on his way to the movie theatre with the gang, having just finished his bannana split with extra chocolate instead of pineapple. The fight with Cyan after the movie that Daisuke knew nothing about; and the conversation with TK Sunday morning that Davis knew nothing about. The near miss the two had had on Sunday about noon when the one coming home from Takeru's, a carton of milk in his hand, had walked within ten feet of the other going into Inoue's store to buy some.

Yamato saw an opportunity to get something cleared up. "Just what were you thinking when you were talking to my brother yesterday morning?" he asked the two Daisukes, referring to the conversation Takeru had related to him the day before.

Davis jumped in ahead of Daisuke to answer. "From the sounds of it, he"--here he pointed to Daisuke sitting beside him--"was trying to tell TV he saw him as a b-b-boyfriend!"

Daisuke punched Davis on the shoulder. "Not quite like that!" he retorted.

"But you apparently you told him you preferred him to Hikari!" Davis snapped. "I sure hope when we get put back together that part of you isn't still around!"

Daisuke grinned. "Maybe after I'm back together I can take both Hikari and TK out on a date!"

Now Davis punched Daisuke on the shoulder, hard. Daisuke held his other hand to his hurting shoulder for a minute until the pain subsided.

"This entire situation is most interesting," said Koushiro. "I've never heard of someone getting split up while leaving the Digital World before."

"In a world where there are six billion people doing things every day," Ken replied, "it's little wonder strange things happen every once in a while. But we're only fourteen Digidestined, and we don't make the jump back and forth from our world to the Digital every day. The fact it happened at all is a cause for wonder."

"Uh, yeah," said Davis. He was having trouble following Koushiro's and Ken's conversation, still feeling as he was woozy from the weekend. Knowing he was split into two was little comfort. "So, how are we going to get me back together?"

"I don't even know if we should try," said Koushiro. "After all, you two are separate individuals now."

"Oh," said Ken, "are you going to start talking about cloning now?"

"Yes," Koushiro replied. Of late the ethical issues surrounding human cloning had become his favourite topic of discussion. Even if no one else but Ken had any sort of grasp on the topic.

"It's exactly that. Just because we have what amounts to a clone of Daisuke running around, doesn't mean that either the original or his clone have lost any rights to existance."

"Uh, Koushiro ..." said Daisuke. He believed the redhead's perception of the situation was wrong, and wanted to correct him.

But now Ken chimed in, eager to continue a discussion that to now he had carried on with Koushiro only in an internet chat room. "The issue of cloning today is usually over its usefulness in medical research. It doesn't really cover the situation we have here."

"Maybe, maybe not," Koushiro said. "We can't exactly argue that what we have here is one Daisuke and a walking, talking set of spare parts for him."

"Except for the brain," said Cyan dryly. Sora glared at him.

"Well," Ken responded, "if our Daisuke loses an arm, we can't go cutting off the other one's arm to give it back to him."

Now Davis tried to get their attention. "Hey you two, if I could ..." But by now both Koushiro and Ken were thoroughly sidetacked in their little discussion, and talked all over Davis's attempts to steer the conversation.

"The cloning debate," said Koushiro, "is also about designer babies and whether or not we wanted to genetically manipulate our offspring to get the one perfect kid."

"Iori's parents seemed to have done all right on their own," said Miyako. "He's about as perfect a little boy as I've ever met."

Iori blushed.

Trying to score a debating point, Koushiro forged bravely ahead, completely ignoring the two Daisukes' entreaties to become part of the discussion. "But genetic manipulation or not, my point is that once the child is conceived and born, he or she is a human being, and entitled to all the rights and responsibilities our society has to offer."

[At this point Jyou would have made a trenchent point, but since he was attending another high school, he could not make the meeting.]

Daisuke gritted his teeth and grumbled. He was still trying to get the debaters' attention so he could make his point, and the interruption from the narrator had not helped matters.

"All right," said Ken, "I'll grant that clones have rights. I think that much is a given. But we are dealing with Daisuke here. He's our friend, and the fact there's two of him seems to have messed him up a bit."

"You can tell?" asked Cyan.

"Cyan!" said Taichi sharply. "If you can't be part of the solution, at least don't be part of the problem."

"The problem here," said Koushiro, "is that I don't know if it's ethically or morally right to deny existence to the other Daisuke, even if it is causing distress and, up to now, no small amount of confusion."

"Well," Ken added, "we can't deny they both exist. What you're saying is that they both have a right to continue to exist, now that they do."

"Exactly!" said Koushiro. "Cognito, erg sum. `I think, therefore I am.' --"

"And no comments from the peanut gallery," said Taichi, looking directly at Cyan.

Cyan put on an innocent face. "What made you think I was going to say anything?"

Koushiro was really on a roll now. He seemed to have lost track of the fact he wasn't debating an abstract point: what he was talking about was very real, and sitting in two chairs in the same room. "Anyway, what we have here are two Daisukes, each corpeal, respirating, and cognizant, and as such I don't know if we as a group have the right to even debate the issue of whether or not it is correct to deny either one of them --"

"Shut up already!" yelled both Daisuke and Davis in unison.

That stopped Koushiro right there.

"Now, if you fancy-pants high school debaters will listen to us for a moment," said Daisuke, talking for them both, "neither of us really feels like a whole kid. It's as if we've been split into two like an apple. Half my personality is in me. The other half's in him. We want to be put back together!"

"That presents a bit of a problem," said Ken. "We pretty much know how you got split up. But it may take a similar sort of freak accident to get you back together again."

"We could try something with the computers," said Koushiro. "I could work with Ken on a program that would re-integrate you. Of course, it would be difficult to test, and take a while to write."

"How long?" asked Daisuke.

"Probably a month."

"A month?" groaned Davis. "Three days have been bad enough!"

Iori made a suggestion. "How about we put one Daisuke in front of a computer, the other one in front of another computer, and send them both through at the same time?"

But Koushiro saw a fatal flaw in the idea. "That wouldn't work. If we got the timing wrong, all we'd end up doing is sending both Daisukes into the Digital World. If we got it exactly right, they might end up colliding during the transfer and annihilating each other. And just how would you explain that to their parents?"

"So, how about we just send both of you back to the Digital World through the same computer terminal?" asked Hikari.

Everyone in the room turned to look at her. Her simple suggestion sounded common-sense enough to work.

"Wouldn't that have the same effect as if we sent them both back to the Digital World through different terminals?" Miyako asked.

"Maybe not," said Koushiro. "I get the impression the Digiport, getting information from both the Daisukes simultaneously, would as a matter of course reintegrate the pair into a single entity at the other end."

"Put me back together, you mean?" asked Davis.

"I believe that's what I said," Koushiro responded.

In the end, putting Daisuke back together was as simple as that. Miyako started the Digiport program, and as a group they all stood before the computer, the two Daisukes side by side in front. As one they pulled out their D-3s and aimed them at the screen. There came the familiar flash of light. Daisuke and Davis were pulled through, and the others followed.

Once in the Digital World, the kids quickly looked around to count noses. Everyone was there, child and Digimon, and much to everybody's relief, only one Daisuke. Takeru immediately went up to him.

"So, are you going to ask Hikari out for ice cream some time this week?" he asked.

"You bet I will," Daisuke replied. "And you're not invited!"

For the only time in his life, Takeru was happy to hear that answer.

"We'd better be getting back," said Iori. "Look at those clouds."

They all looked up to see great, dark, and ominous clouds rushing in from all directions to a point closely overhead.

"Not again!" said Daisuke. "Let's go!"

So once more they aimed their D-3s and digivices at the TV set, and made the trip back to the real world. The older digidestined arrived all standing in a semicircle around the the younger ones entangled in a heap on the floor. It took a minute for them to untangle.

"Still only one Daisuke," said Koushiro.

"Enough for me," said Cyan.

"Cool it with quips, already," Takeru admonished. "He's all right in my books."

"Yeah!" said Chibimon. "Daisuke, you're the greatest!"

"Sure is!" said the second Chibimon, the one that to now no one had noticed.

Narrator: Will the second Chibimon be as annoying as the first? Will -- GAHHH!

Cyan (extracting sword from narrator's chest): The story's over, so we don't need you any more!

Daisuke: Thanks, Cyan.

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Author's notes. Finished at last! This chapter was probably the easiest of the lot to write, because I had a good idea of what to include for most of it. And the story ended up being longer than Rift!

Miyako-Miyako-Izumi: Sorry about making your little Dai-ai cry, but he is only eleven years old, and boys at that age still cry if something upsets them enough.

Amayako: Sorry, Mimi's not in Japan, and Daikens were not really part of the plot. It was hard enough keeping the friendships straight between the two Daisukes without the added burden of having one of them going after Ken (or the other way round). Not to mention that would have extended the word count beyond what it already was...

Skywolf: Thanks for your kind words, especially about the educated use of language. I take my English quite seriously, even if I am writing humour. (In fact, writing clearly may be more important in humour than any other genre: if the audience does not get the jokes, the writer has failed completely.)

Cherry: Thank you for your kind words, too. I'm a pretty poor replacement for Adams, though: that man had such a talent for perposterousity (I think I just invented a new word there) that I could only hope to hold a candle to it. Foty-two, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the Total Perspective Vortex, Eddie the Computer, Slartibardfast's award for his coastine of Scandinavia, the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, the Babel Fish, and of course the Guide itself ... what a breadth of imagination! Aside from this work, I've come up with only one other idea that I thought was up to the Douglas Adams level of strangeness (something along the lines of requiring self-destruct devices in photocopiers.)