Chapter 2

Jun watched with careful analytic eyes as Daisuke and Ken poured over a piece of paper. She caught fragments of their conversation but it wasn't enough to determine exactly what they were talking about. Ken talked softly to Daisuke, and Daisuke was close enough to make it look like he was about to kiss the other. Or maybe that was just her strange imagination.

            They were completely and utterly absorbed in their conversation; the perfect time to strike. Grasping the water pistol in one hand she slowly crept closer to the door, so unsuspecting, so innocent. She grinned to herself relishing the moment, the time was ripe. In one swift movement she leapt from her position in front of Daisuke's slightly ajar door into his room screaming at the top of her lungs.

            Daisuke, who had already been teetering on the edge of his chair, jerked forward causing his and Ken's heads to collide and them both to fall tumbling to the ground. Jun took this opportunity to start firing.

            "Gah! Jun, what the hell are you doing?" Daisuke yelled, untangling himself from Ken, she just smiled and continued squirting them

            "And what the hell is this?" He rubbed his finger across his cheek where a large portion of the goop had landed

            "Why, I thought you'd never ask!" She cried happily, "But I think you know better than me what it is Dai."

            His brought his finger up to his nose and took a big whiff of the goo, his face instantly scrunched up distastefully

            "Is this Hair Gel?" Jun smiled and nodded, squirting him once again in the face. Daisuke replied with a growl as he jumped up from his position on Ken and lunged at her. She easily darted out of the way and squirted him again

            "You are so going to pay for this Jun!" He raged, chasing her out of his room and into the hall.

            She stopped in the living room and turned around, obviously not gauging just how pissed Daisuke was or how fast he could run. She was instantly tackled onto the couch and Daisuke started tickling her furiously. She squealed in protest, squirming as best she could between fits of laughter to get out from under him.

            She may have been striving to breathe in-between uncontrollable laughter but it was worth it. Seeing the look on both of their faces as she burst into the room was simply priceless. How she wished she had had a camera.

            She probably would have undergone a lot more torture, in a variety of forms, had they not been interrupted by a slight clear of Ken's throat.

            "Daisuke?" Daisuke stopped and turned to face his friend. His face was still red and covered with hair gel but once he met Ken's eyes his whole demeanor turned serious. He spared Jun a glare before climbing off her and returning to Ken's side. In a tone so unlike Daisuke he began to speak to his blue haired comrade

            "We should probably go to your place, I don't know what else she's going to do and we can't afford too many distractions." Ken nodded once, turning his eyes toward Jun. His eyes scared her somewhat; they were as cold and calculating as if he had never laughed in his life. Osamu had told her about Ken, not much, but enough for her to know he hadn't always been like this.

            Something iffy was going on here and she was certain it could only end in pain.

            "Jun, tell mum and dad I'm going over to Ken's tonight and I'll be back tomorrow." Jun nodded solemnly at her brothers alien tone, something very iffy was up here. Daisuke had changed lately, but this was drastic, "And don't think I wont get you back for that." He finished, a small remnant of his usual smile touching his lips.

            He disappeared into his room leaving her alone with Ken. He made her uncomfortable, very uncomfortable. Striving not to meet his gaze she stood up and left the room. Once she was in the safety of the kitchen she let a small shiver course through her body.

There was something unnatural about that Ken, and today it was so blatantly obvious. It was true when Daisuke had first brought him over he had made her a tad antsy but as they days went by and Daisuke became more like him, she started to get genuinely freaked. If he hadn't been Osamu's little brother she would have ruled his humanity completely out.

A moment later Daisuke called to her that he was leaving and the door slammed shut. She nodded in reply to his departure but didn't move from her place in the kitchen. The house eventually fell silent and she idly noticed her feet were becoming increasingly cold. For no apparent reason she began to feel scared, of what she didn't know, but the silence of the house unnerved her. She needed to talk to someone, needed to talk to Osamu. About Ken.

She made her way over to the phone but just as she was about to pick it up it began to ring. She let a small scream escape her lips as she jumped away from it. For a long few moments and several rings she just stared in shock at the inanimate object, her heart laboring in her chest. With shaking hands she eventually reached out and took hold of it.

"Hello?"

"Hi, this is Miyako, is Daisuke there?" It took a while for Jun to gather her thoughts together enough for the question to register

"No,"

"No? Where the hell is he?" Miyako sounded both frustrated and worried at the same time. This only increased Jun's sense of foreboding.

"He went to stay at Ken's house for the night, he should be back tomorrow."

"What? Oh no, this is bad." Jun cringed at the statement, it was? "Do you have a number I can reach him at?"

"Yes." They both fell silent as Jun flipped through the phone book, "0559 87 4579, but he only just left so you might want to leave it for a while."

"Okay, thank you so much, bye." Miyako hung up the phone

There was certainly no doubt about it in her mind, she was now officially freaked. For a long while after she had hung up the phone she stared at the number labeled Osamu. Should she call him? But what if Miyako couldn't get through? If there was something up and Miyako knew, it would probably be best if she talked to Daisuke about it. Jun didn't want to be holding up the phone if something so obviously important was happening.

            Shutting the phone book carefully she removed herself from beside the phone and settled down, instead, on the couch and eventually fell asleep.

            When she awoke the next morning she was still on the couch, only she had a blanket over her. Her mother was clattering away in the kitchen and her father had turned the television on at some point. As soon as she moved her neck flared with pain and she noticed her arm had gone dead.

            Her father greeted her with a smile, she forced one back. With a groan she stood up and stumbled out to the kitchen. She must have slept at least twelve hours last night and she hadn't eaten anything either. While rummaging thorough the fridge her mother addressed her

            "Jun, where did Daisuke go last night?" She only sounded slightly worried, "He didn't leave a note."

            A slight shiver ran down her spine at the memory of where Daisuke had gone. Then another at the thought of what Miyako had been so distraught over. Shaking the thoughts out of her head she answered.

            "He went to Ken's house, I was supposed to tell you but I fell asleep."

            "Oh, that's okay then." She continued preparing food.

            After drinking almost half the milk out of the carton she retreated to her room. Her neck still hurt and her arm felt weird but that was nothing compared to that ever irritating feeling of doom. She needed to talk to Osamu; he probably knew more about this situation than she did. He sounded like he was a lot closer to Ken than she was to Daisuke. Or if he didn't, he could at least give her some comfort.

            Jun grinned at the thought and proceeded to change into her uniform.

            School was boring. In fact, boring was a very gracious understatement; it was beyond boring. Her friends were getting more irritating by the day (today being 'bombard Jun with questions about her date' day.) The classes… Jun didn't even want to go into detail about the classes. There was only one conclusion that could be drawn from them: Every teacher was given a special class on how to bore students into a stupor. And fawning over Yamato had simply lost its luster, which he was probably very happy about. If it weren't for the fact that Osamu now went to her school she would have simply up and left.

            But he did go to her school, and that couldn't have been a better reason to go and wile away her life at that horrid place. He wasn't in any of her classes, which she sorely regretted, but she could get past that. It was the fact that she couldn't find him at lunch that annoyed her. She needed to talk to him, but every place she searched was void of Osamu. In fact, she hadn't seen him at school at all that day

            The plot thickens.

            She couldn't concentrate in class the whole day, which wasn't really that different from any other day; but today she was so frustrated at the lack of Osamu she could barely keep still in her seat. If she didn't find out what was going on soon she would either explode or feint because she knew something unnatural was going down and she knew it had something to do with Daisuke. 

            When the bell rang that afternoon to release them from class she almost knocked her desk over in the rush to get out of the classroom. Several times her friends tried to stop her but each time she just knocked them out of the way, hastily making up excuses as to why she couldn't stay.

            The last time she knocked someone out of the way she instantly stopped and turned on her heel.

            "Jun what's the hurry?" Osamu asked, laughter filling his great blue eyes

            "Osamu!" She squealed in reply, barely refraining herself from hugging him, "Oh my god I've been looking for you everywhere."

            "You have?" The laughter moved from his eyes to his mouth as a smile spread across his lips

            "Yes, I need to ask you something." She took him by the arm and began dragging him to the one place she knew would be deserted at this time of day.

            "Jun where are you taking me?" He asked, wrenching his arm out of her grip

            Jun didn't answer, only continued to lead him towards the roof of the school. Once they were up there she turned to him. His eyes had lost their laughter and were now as serious as she was.

            "Osamu," She started, breathing deeply, "There's something weird going on between our brothers; I know it because ever since he started hanging around Ken he's been acting different. Last night I got a call from one of his friends and when I told her he was staying at your house she sounded really worried. Do you know what's going on?"

            Osamu didn't answer but his face gradually became paler and paler until he looked almost ill. At his side his hands were shaking slightly. It took a while for his eyes to come back in to focus and for him to answer

            "I- I don't know everything, but I think I have an idea." He glanced around the roof of the school building in a paranoid fashion before continuing to tell Jun of his finding in Ken's files yesterday afternoon.

            "I don't know what he wants to do with them, but it can't be good. And I know for a fact that Daisuke has something to do with it."

            Jun covered her mouth with her hands. So they were planning world domination? That sounded exactly like something Daisuke would think of, but never carry out. Now that he had the means, was he really going to do it? He may have an active imagination but he wasn't sadistic. But if, for instance, someone pushed him to do it; there was no doubt in Jun's mind he had the potential.

            So her brother was a sadistic megalomaniac, what else?

            "You can't possibly tell me they're actually considering pulling something like that off. They're just children. Why on earth would they want to do something like that?"

            Osamu only shook his head in reply. The both stood in silence for a long while when suddenly Osamu clutched his hands over his mouth.

            "Oh my god." He muttered from behind his hands. An icy cold hand like dread grabbed hold of Jun's heart, this couldn't be good.

"Oh my god, that device. That's what it's for."

"What device, what's it for?" She asked, trying desperately to suppress the foreboding building up in her stomach.

"A few years ago a device came out of our computer; that must be the link to the digital world." Their eyes met for a moment and in silence they reached an agreement. Together they left the roof and made their way through the nearly empty halls to the Ichijouji residence.

"Do you think they could have…?" Jun asked once they had reached the front door of the apartment. Osamu glanced at her, hope shining in his eyes.

He, like her, knew that the possibility of them being in there once the door was open was slim to none. But he, like her, hoped they were wrong. So, hand shaking, Osamu proceeded to open the door. Jun's heart was beating a mile a minuet in her chest and she could feel her hands slicked with sweat. For a moment she got an image of blood splattered all over the walls of the apartment and a great dirty digimon sitting there waiting for them.

She was quickly gaining a very morbid imagination; it scared the life out of her.

Vigorously shaking the thoughts out of her head she concentrated on Osamu's shaking hand. Desperately, she tried to convince herself nothing had happened to them.

His parents surely would have noticed. That is, if they were even there. Even so, there really wasn't any reason to get jumpy. If Ken and Daisuke weren't home than everything was okay; there would be no digimon waiting for them to walk into its jaws. If they were home then, again, there was nothing to worry about, they surely wouldn't allow some hunger ravaged beast to eat their siblings would they? Of course not, this was Daisuke.

These thoughts were getting to her. Not only did she not trust Daisuke to keep his evil monster away from her, she was worried that the monster would eat him. Biting furiously down on her bottom lip she grabbed Osamu's hand and turned the door for him. She couldn't stand the suspense; it was eating at her nerves like acid.

Osamu turned to her, his jaw set and his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. She didn't know weather this was because he was mad or simply because he didn't want to let her see how they shook. Either way she could see past his determination to the fear that shone so obviously in his eyes. He was just as worried for his little brother as she was.

"Let's go," He said as if they were walking into certain doom. She nodded and followed him in.

The house was submerged in a silence that covered everything like a disease. His parents weren't home and neither were Daisuke and Ken

"Tadaima," Osamu's voice sounded small and wan against the mass of silence. There was no answer.

Osamu met her eyes. He was chewing nervously on his bottom lip and his hands were still shaking slightly. Breathing deeply, Jun reached out and took his hand in her own. He blushed, despite his obvious worry, but the shaking of his hands slowly dissipated. With a small nod of his head he continued to lead her toward the room he shared with Ken.

The door was wide open, the room bare and the computer on. There was a message on this screen, but the writing was too small to be seen from where they stood. Somehow, Jun got the feeling she already knew what it said.

Osamu released her hand and was instantly beside the computer. When he read the note his voice shook noticeably.

"If you get this message we've probably already gone. Search is futile you will not find us here. Ken and Daisuke."

            Osamu's voice trailed off into the silence of the house and for a moment Jun's mind was blank. Did this mean they had left for the digital world? Run away? From what? Her thoughts came now at an amazing speed.

            That idiot, that selfish, pig headed idiot. Who did he think he was playing? Running away to some god forsaken digital world where anything could happen to him; and with no reason. He had a loving family, friends; it wasn't as if their father beat them and their mother was alcoholic. Did he think this was just some stupid game? Did he think their parents weren't going to call the police and order a search? Did he think of anyone but himself?

            Knowing Daisuke, probably not.

            "Where do you suppose they went?" Jun asked at length, already knowing full well the answer.

            "Oh I don't suppose they've gone anywhere," Osamu replied after reading and re-reading the text on the screen, "I know for a fact they've gone to the digital world."

            Just as she had expected, but there was still doubt in her mind. There were only a few children who could get into the digital world. Daisuke of all people certainly wasn't special enough to go there, why would they want a brain dead child like him? Then again, there was always Ken. Osamu had mentioned a device that had come out of their computer; it was a definite possibility Ken had used that device to get them into the digital world.

            The question was: How on earth were they going to get them out?

            As if in answer to her mental question Osamu turned from the computer and said:

            "If you're willing it is possible, in theory, to get to the digital world. I've been, well I guess you could call it researching it ever since that incident a few years ago." He paused and waited for an answer she wasn't ready to give before continuing, "Of course, I don't know half as much as one of the children who actually went there. Do you know any of them?"

            The question surprised and intrigued Jun. He was asking her to go to the digital world with him. Was she willing? For Osamu, probably.

            "I know Yamato did, and his little brother," She answered at length, "And Taichi and Sora, but I don't know anyone else."

            "Perhaps you could ask one of them?" He asked, his eyes slightly pleading

            "I suppose I could call Taichi, I don't think Yamato would appreciate my calling, even if it was to save our brothers." She smiled wanly and he forced one in return. "I don't suppose I could use your phone?"

            "Go for it." This time his smile was real and she couldn't suppress one in return. As soon as she began heading towards the door he sat down in front of the computer and began typing furiously on the keyboard.

            As much as she tried to quell the thought, she got the feeling traveling to the digital world was inevitable. Though it was true, if Osamu had asked her she wouldn't have hesitated going, but the likelihood of him asking was very slim. She knew he would go; he would do anything for Ken. Her on the other hand…

The things she did for Daisuke, traveling into another dimension to save his sorry behind from trouble. Did she ever get thanked? Not likely. But she couldn't help wondering to herself weather she was going for Daisuke or Osamu.

            Smiling guiltily she picked up the phone and began dialing the number for the Yagami's house

            "Hello this is Jun Motomiya, I was wondering if I could speak with Taichi."

            "Jun? Yeah it's me."

            "Oh, hi Taichi,"

            "Hello,"

            "This is probably going to sound really strange but… what do you know about the digital world?"

            "… Why do you want to know?"

            "It's a long story."

            "I have a long time,"

            "Look Yagami, let's just leave it at this; if you don't tell me people will get hurt. Okay."

            "What are you playing at Jun?"

            "Fine, my idiot brother is there with Ken and I need to know how to get them back."

            "Daisuke?"

            "Not my other idiot brother; of course it's Daisuke."

            "How did he get there?"

            "How the hell should I know, that's why I'm asking you."

            "… Look, I'll give you Koushiro's number; he knows a lot more about this kind of thing than I do."

            "Right, now we're getting somewhere."

            She remembered now why she disliked Taichi so much, he reminded her too much of Daisuke. She hastily jotted down Koushiro's number and hung up before Taichi could ask any questions. For a moment she just stared at the receiver, forming questions in her head.

When she dialed his number a woman answered the phone

            "Hello, this is Jun Motomiya, I was wondering if I could speak with Koushiro."

            "Yes, hold on I'll just get him," She heard the woman call out and a moment later Koushiro was on the phone,

            "Koushiro speaking,"

"Hi, this is Jun Motomiya; I need you to tell me a few things about the digital world. Namely, how to get there."

"Woah, slow down. You want to know about the digital world? Who did you say this was again?"

"Jun Motomiya, Taichi told me to call you."

"He did, did he?"

"Yes, he did."

"And what did you want to know about the digital world?"

"How to get there," He fell silent, "Well, what do you know?"

"I know you can't get there without a digivice."

"A what?"

"A digivice. They're given to the chosen children, or digidestined, and can be utilized to open a portal to the digital world. But the portal hasn't been activated in years; the only time it is reactivated is when the digital world is in dire need of the digidestined."

"…I think you should talk to Osamu about this, you lost me at the start."

Holding her hand over the phone she took it into Osamu's room. When she entered he spun around on his seat and instantly asked

"What did you find?"

"I have a Koushiro on the phone, I have no idea what he's talking about but I think you might."

Osamu blinked dumbly up at her as she handed him the phone. She had to gesture with her hands for him to talk before he tentatively answered the phone. He obviously wasn't as well acquainted with it as she was. However, after a few hesitant moments he was absorbed in a conversation Jun could neither follow nor even begin to understand. Moments later, she tuned out.

When Osamu turned to her after hanging up the phone she was slightly startled as to what he said

"Jun, we're going to the digital world."

And she didn't hesitate.

**

AN: wow, lookey here it didn't take me all that long to finish it after all ^_^ Oh but the story isn't finished, finished; just this chapter. I have no idea where this is going or how long it's going to be, all I know is it's helluva lot of fun to write. Stay tuned for more, I can't make any promises that it'll be as quick as this one because I'm back at school but I'll get it done one day.