Chapter 8- Rise and Not-So-Shine

Davis woke up groggily . Someone was shaking him all over- No, wait, someone was jumping on him. "DemiVeemon, get off! I woke up just yesterday!" He grumbled.

"Huh?" An unfamiliar voice asked above him.

"He's just too sleepy to make any sense, Tsunomon." He heard Cody say.

"Davis never makes sense." Upamon said.

"Good point." Matt agreed.

Davis groaned. "How's a guy supposed to sleep if you're all here chatting?" He complained, finally opening his eyes.

Matt bent down so that he was almost touching Davis' face. "Well, if it makes you feel any better, TK and Kari are missing. Without Gatomon or Patamon."

Davis jumped out of his sleeping bag, knocking Matt out of the tent and sending DemiVeemon flying. "What do you mean, they're missing alone?!" He screamed. "How could they be missing?! They were here last night!"

Suddenly Yolei popped her head in the door. "Found them Matt! They were out getting more firewood. I see that they had a lot of fun getting it too." She added with a sly glance at Davis. Davis bounced out of the door to say Good Morning to Kari.

Kari looked across the camp and groaned. "Hide me!" she moaned. "Here comes the creature!" The two had awoken just before dawn and hastily created a reason for their not being at camp.

TK looked at her and laughed. "He seems happy enough." Kari looked at him and groaned again.

"Right, to be able to bug me again."

"So it seems."

"You're awful cruel, Mister."

"I'm not the only one."

Kari punched him playfully and then laughed. "What do you mean?"

"Well, some confusing people, for example-"

Kari cut him of with an unenthusiastic "Hello Davis."

Davis looked at her. "Well, aren't you delighted to see me? Are you glad? Are you?" He said impatiently.

"Yes Davis. Good morning." She said pointedly before dropping her load of wood into the pile already there. "Now, We'll just finish off that pie for breakfast and then we'll be on our way, all right?"

Sora looked at the gloomy sky and then at the approaching dark clouds. "It looks like rain. Do you think that we should stay here for the day?"

Kari looked up briefly. "No. It's just that dark stuff I was talking about. We'll be fine as long as we don't starve." She continued packing her sleeping bag and her pack. "Come on, hurry up, we don't have all day." Everyone went about their business.

By the time they were ready to go on their way, the sky was almost as dark as night and they needed a flashlight to navigate properly.

TK could see Kari in the dim light of the flashlight they were sharing, and she didn't look too pleased. Kari was muttering quietly under her breath.

Suddenly she spoke out loud. "That isn't right." She said, startling everyone. "Does anyone have a piece of paper and a pencil?" She asked, and when it was given to her she took the flashlight, shone it on the paper, and started to work some complicated calculations. Looking over her shoulder, TK could see some things that he recognized, but most of them he didn't, and they were all arranged in such a complicated way that, by his guess, even Izzy wouldn't have been able to understand it. After a while she put the paper down and sighed. "This isn't right." She muttered again.

Worried now, TK placed his hand on her shoulder and asked, "Is it what I think it is?" She nodded.

"We'll just have to take it now." She said.

Davis, seeing the two touching, fell down an imaginary hole, crying "TJ and Kari are touching!"

 Yolei looked at Kari with a confused look on her face. "What is it Kari?" She asked.

"Oh, just something I had to double-check." Kari said, before slinging her pack on her shoulder again and heading towards the right.

Davis frowned. "Hey, Kari, the crest said to go to the left!" He cried to her. "Did you forget?"

Kari looked back at the small group of people behind her, about to be thrust into something they didn't understand, but would still fight gamely against. She felt a strong wave of admiration for them. "No." She said wearily. "I didn't forget, Davis." After this, she turned back to the direction she was headed in and continued. TK was the first to follow, but then everyone went too.

After a long while of walking, they finally came upon a grassy meadow, dotted with tiny flowers, at the foot of a mountain with a path that snaked up the structure like, well, a snake. If it weren't for the darkness, the children would have seen the soft, silent portals floating peacefully among the gentle rolling hills. For they had reached the Meadow of Beginnings, and this was where everything had begun. All the worlds, Earth, the Digital World, the Phase World, and many others like the world where people have dæmons, Citàgazze: the city of magpies, where soul-eating things stalked the streets, even a world that was living Earth's history, and one that was living it's future. This was where everything was born, and that was why there were portals to every world from here. They had reached their destination.

"You have arrived. I see you've taken your time." A voice said.

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A/N Who's the mysterious voice? Is it the Evil Unnamed Digimon Threatening the Worlds? Am I asking too many questions?