"Can you get us access to the outside

"Can you get us access to the outside?" asked Tai urgently.

Feona guessed what Tai was thinking and looked at the digimon. "You're joking!"

"Please," pleaded Sora. "We can help. These are our enemies."

Leia considered for a moment then grabbed her commlink. "Follow me." She led the group to a private elevator and punched in a security code. Mimi gasped as the lift shot up.

The doors opened and they all piled out. Above them a giant green bug swept down.

"Everyone down," yelled Leia. They all ducked, the blades on the end of the bug's claws whistling past them.

"Izzy?" asked Tai.

Izzy already had his laptop out and pointed at the bug. "Snimon. A bug digimon. Closely related to the Earth's praying Mantis." He scanned the skies and pointed at a far away shape. "Metalmeramon. A fiery digimon. His attack is Metal fireball."

Tai looked around. "Looks like it's you and Izzy on this one Sora."

"Right," agreed Sora. She held out her digivice. "Let's do it Biyo."

Leia, Doyle and Feona watched as the device whistled and began to glow white.

"Biyomon digivolve to…." The pink bird was surrounded by a white glow that grew and changed shape. "Birdramon."

Leia gasped as the glow faded revealing a red firebird. Birdramon flexed her wings and took flight.

"Tentomon?" Patamon looked at the bug digimon.

Tentomon shook his head. "I can't." He settled to the ground. "I can't get Izzy to help me."

Tai looked at the shaking red head. "I understand. Joe, can you do something for him?" The blue haired boy nodded and moved to Izzy's side. "Looks like we're on Agumon."

The lizard digimon nodded. "Agumon digivolve to Greymon." Again the device that Tai held out whistled and the Digimon glowed, changing shape. The adults barely had time to register the huge lizard with an armour plate covering his head before the digivice in Tai's hand began to glow with a fierce orange light. Under Tai's shirt a small trapezium over his breastbone glowed in sympathy.

"Greymon digivolve to Metalgreymon." The huge digimon was again glowing and reforming, this time into an even larger lizard, with a metal arm. "Let's rumble!" Metalgreymon launched himself on the building, supported by four wings.

Leia watched as Tai clenched the glowing digivice in his hand. "Go on, I know you can take him!" yelled the youth.

Leia turned to the others. "Why don't you help?"

Palmon looked sad. "We can't fly. All we could do is try to blast them, but at this range we could just as easily hit our friends."

Leia nodded. "We can help, I hope." She thumbed on her commlink. "This is Councillor Organa-Solo. Is any air support heading to the palace?"

"Leia?" A voice crackled over the commlink.

"Wedge! How did you manage to swing this?" Leia smiled to hear her old friend's voice.

"Oh, I'm desperate for any cockpit time."

Leia nodded. "Watch out. The fire-bird and giant lizard are on our side."

Even over the comm distortion Wedge's disbelief could be heard. "Did I hear you right? Some of those things are on our side?"

"Affirmative."

"Okay. I hope you know what you're doing Councillor." Wedge signed off.

Leia moved to face Tai. She squeezed his shoulder. "Your friends should get some help soon. Wedge and his pilots are some of the best in the Republic." She looked up as a squadron deck out in red flew overhead.

"Demi-dart!"

Leia looked down, over Tai's shoulder, in time to see a huge missile flying towards her. She knew she could never stop it before it hit. I'm so sorry Han. You and the children will have to cope without me. She closed her eyes in anticipation of the impact.

When no impact came she opened her eyes again. The missile had stopped millimetres from her face.

"Why did you close your eyes?" asked Tai. He followed her gaze to where the missile hung. It was kept in place by his hand gripping it. From the angle it was clear to Leia that Tai had caught it as it had been approaching him from an angle he could not see. "Wow." Tai's expression spoke volumes. He had not even known that he had moved his arm to stop it.

Izzy looked up. "It's Demidevimon!" He shakily got to his feet. "Get away from us you corrupter." One of Izzy's gloved hands started to glow purple. He moved his hand out in a throwing motion and a bolt of purple energy leapt from his fingers to strike the bat digimon. Demidevimon dodged and flapped away as fast as he could.

"Tentomon!" called Izzy.

The bug digimon nodded in agreement. "Tentomon digivolve to Kabuterimon." Again a glow surrounded the digimon, replacing the small red beetle with a large blue one.

Izzy watched intently as Kabuterimon flew into battle. "Kabuterimon, watch out!" Behind the blue beetle a ghostlike figure appeared. "That's Phantomon," called out Izzy, laptop back in hand. "Watch out for his…"

"Shadow Scythe!" interrupted the ghost digimon.

Kabuterimon took a direct hit. Black stuff spurted from the wound on one of his arms. Izzy looked distraught. Under his shirt a purple trapezium began to glow and his digivice began to whistle again. "Kabuterimon digivolve to MegaKabuterimon."

Joe moved to Izzy's side. "Feeling better?"

Izzy winced as one of the X-wings narrowly missed shooting his digimon. "Princess Leia, tell them MegaKabuterimon is on our side before they hurt him!" Princess Leia nodded and pulled out her commlink. Izzy turned to Joe. "I feel fine. Better that fine really, like a huge weight has been removed."

Feona took her eyes off the sky. "I know why. It all makes sense now."

"Excuse me," interrupted Doyle. "But this is neither the time, nor the place to discuss this." He ducked as a laser bolt from one of the X-wings passed overhead. Standing back up, he shaded his eyes and watched as in the distance Birdramon and Metalmeramon faced off. The bird digimon shrieked as the flaming giant struck a direct hit.

Sora's digivice lit up the same way as the others and a red trapezium glowed under her shirt. In the distance Birdramon was replaced by a bird-woman. Together she and MegaKabuterimon advanced on the fire digimon. The two separate attacks from the digimon caused Metalmeramon to dissolve into fine black dust. Instantly the other digimon fighting against the children's digimon retreated and left.

"Well," said Leia, pushing loose strands of her hair back over her ears. "It appears we have a lot to discuss." She watched as the digimon returned to their partners, shrinking back to smaller forms. She moved back to the lift, followed by a subdued Tai, Sora and Izzy all clutching small pink digimon.

Leia sighed as she sank into the chairs of her private apartment. She had decided that now was not the right time to discuss this. The children had all been shaken by what had happened. She had got palace staff to give them and the two traders a suite in the palace. She had then had an exhausting discussion with Wedge to discover that the X-wing's lasers had been mere annoyances to the other digimon. The only positive result had been Wedge's hit with a proton torpedo at point blank range, which had been more luck than anything else as the sensor package of the targeting system could not classify the digimon as targets. She sighed and set the computer on a search through the pre-Clone War records for a mention of seven jedi-children in myth and legend. She then stretched and moved into the bathroom to try to unwind a little before dealing with the children again.

Tai walked in the door. "This is too cool!" He spun slowly on his heel surveying the room.

"Hey Tai, we'd love to agree with you, but some big-haired idiot is blocking the door!" joked Matt. Tai blushed and moved to one side. The other Digidestined filed in and looked around.

Feona whistled appreciatively. "Leia must like us a lot. This is a top class apartment."

"But it's so small," protested T.K.

Doyle smiled. "Coruscant is like Tokyo in that respect. It's so overcrowded that space is at a premium." He sat down in one of the comfy chairs and stretched like a cat.

Sora climbed the stairs at the back of the suite. "Hey, there's three rooms up here. Two bedrooms and a bathroom." She moved further into one of the bedrooms. "Hey, this one has six beds and a lot of men's clothes in." She moved to the other, smaller bedroom. "This must be ours. It only has three beds and there's lots of girls clothes in the closet."

"Oooo, new clothes!" Mimi was up the stairs like a shot.

Doyle put his hands up in surrender. "I'll go out to the ship and get our stuff."

Feona smiled appreciatively. "Thanks Doyle."

"Oh don't thank me." Doyle smiled wanly. "You get the pleasure of working out what to feed this lot."

"Food?" piped up Gomamon. "You've got food here?"

Feona sighed and moved into the kitchenette that ran down the side of the apartment.

Later that evening things reached a head. After much discussion all the children had changed their clothes to something more appropriate. Tai now wore a wrap around robe in light blue over dark blue trousers. Sora had opted for red leggings and a pink shirt, which she wore with the collar unbuttoned. Mimi had found a pink dress, but one that followed the robes of a senator's formal garb than the more practical outfits the others had chosen. Matt now looked stunning in black trousers, knee boots and jacket slung over a deep green shirt. T.K. had opted for green as well, but he has chosen a smock like robe, tied with a yellow strip of material and yellow undertrousers. Joe wore the same that a businessman might, blue pants and jacket over a white shirt. Izzy was wearing a green shirt over which he wore his old orange shirt as a jacket, and long blue trousers.

Tai sat with his knees under his chin, thinking. The others watched both him and Izzy nervously as the magnitude of what they had done during the fight had sunk in.

What did I do? wondered Tai. I didn't even know I had moved to catch that damned needle. Sora moved closer to him and put a hand on his knee. Tai smiled at her gratefully. "I don't know why you'd want to touch a freak like me."

"We freaks have to stick together." Sora smiled a sad smile. "Besides Izzy's too busy denying to accept what happened."

Izzy landed a hard whack on the side of the room's computer terminal. "Dumb machine."

Doyle sitting next to him laughed. "You're just typing gibberish, that's all." He reached over and typed the correct command.

Izzy blushed. "Thanks." He bent back over the keyboard typing furiously.

Sora turned back to Tai. "You think he could fry us?"

"Not a chance" blustered Tai. But he still looked worried.

Feona leaned forwards. "We really should talk about this all together."

Joe huffed. "How do we know he won't fry us all?"

"He can't," consoled Feona. None of the others looked convinced.

"Prodigious!" exclaimed Izzy. All the others turned to face him. "Sorry." His face turned bright red. "I just finished a program to translate written Basic into Japanese." He waved his hand at his laptop, which was currently festooned with wires. "I realised that there must be a technological reason for the translation so I looked for something we all share." Izzy pointed at his laptop. "Our digivices." Sure enough, on top of the mess of wires lay his digivice, also carefully festooned with wires. "Our digivices are the reason that everything has been translated for us. With some careful work I have created a translation program on my computer."

Matt leant back and stared at the ceiling. "That's great Izzy. Of course the fact that we have two people living with us that can already read it makes your program totally redundant."

"I was only trying to help," muttered Izzy.

Matt wasn't finished however. "That is possibly the most useless thing you have ever done. No, wait. You searching after Genai instead of helping us look for Tai, that was your lowest moment." Matt chuckled. "You're so absorbed looking for scientific answers that you forget the rest of us. That's low Izzy, even for you."

Izzy clenched his fists. "At least I tried. And when was the last time you saved us with your quick wits Matt?" Izzy made great show of thinking. "Oh, wait I know. NEVER!"

"At least I'm not a freak!"

T.K. pulled at Matt's sleeve. "Please don't yell at Izzy, Matt."

"Don't you see? He could kill us all!" Matt was now on his feet, glaring at the smaller boy.

Tai got up and stood between them. "Back down Matt." Tai tried to keep his voice level.

Izzy was really getting annoyed. "Do you know how hard it is for me? DO YOU? I don't know what happened or why. And even if I did you lot are probably too dumb to understand."

"Hey!" Matt launched himself past Tai, at Izzy. He knocked the smaller boy over and pinned him down. "You think you're so smart!" He grabbed Izzy's collar and started to bang Izzy's head against the floor repeatedly. "You know nothing! You hear me? NOTHING! All you care about is that dumb box!"

The rest of the group watched in horror. Izzy's eyes rolled back, but still Matt continued.

Eventually Sora found her voice. "Matt, stop. Please."

Matt suddenly stopped, as if his rational mind had just started to work again. He still had Izzy's collar in his hands. "But he's dangerous. A freak."

Sora shook her head sadly. But so am I Matt, rang gently in his head.

Matt dropped Izzy in shock. "No," he whispered. He grabbed his jacket and ran out the door. Gabumon trailed after him.

Doyle and Feona shared a meaningful glance, then Doyle grabbed his jacket and followed them out. Feona sighed and carefully picked up Izzy.

"Will he be alright?" asked Motimon.

Feona silently took him upstairs followed by Tai and Sora. She took him to the boy's room and carefully laid him on a bed. "Sora, could you…?"

Sora nodded and sat by Izzy, placing one hand on his forehead.

"I can't believe he did that," exclaimed Tai. "I never though Matt could snap like that."

Sora stood up. "I've been noticing him building up to something like that for quite some time." She looked back at Izzy. "He's not badly hurt. He'll just have a headache when he wakes up I think."

Tai turned to Sora. "How did you know that?"

Sora blushed. "I can read minds Tai. I have been able to for quite a while."

Now it was Tai's turn to blush. "You haven't read my mind have you?"

Sora laughed lightly. "Don't worry. I don't read any of your minds very deeply, just surface impressions mostly." She turned to Feona. "But how did you know?"

"I heard you talk to Matt." She saw Sora's confusion. "Jedi, remember? It's not my forte, but considering you were practically shouting it was very hard to miss." She led them back downstairs.

The rest of the children had all found something about their shoes intensely fascinating.

Tai turned to Feona. "It's about time someone explained all this freaky stuff to us." Feona nodded in agreement and began.