Hiya people! I'm glad everyone likes this. To answer some of your questions…I have no idea who Sora married. I just threw that in 'cause we all know she married ONE of them. And the fact that Carie didn't recognize Mimi…My goof. I added Mimi in after I finished writing the whole chapter, mainly because I thought she'd be more of the type to shriek about 'T.K. and Kari's daughter' than Sora or Yolei. And yes, I base quite a few of my fics on the Manga version of 'Sailor Moon'. Note that I say 'Manga' because I happen to prefer it. And I just realized…Carie does act like Suzie, doesn't she? I didn't mean to do that, but that's how the cookie crumbles.

However, the comment on 'The Tenchi Movie' went right over my head, 'cause as much as I like Tenchi Muyo, we have zippo in the anime department here in Middle-O-Nowhere, Texas. Someone wanna explain this?

Disclaimer: Who does own Digimon? Nobody I know.

Mysterious Child

Chapter 2: A Midsummer's Night Dream

"Uh…Mom, we're home!" Tai called.

"Oh hi kids!" Mrs. Kamiya said from the couch. "How was the picnic?"

"F-fine." Tai and Kari laughed nervously. Agumon and Gatomon smiled in front of them. Kari kept her hand clamped tightly around Carie's mouth, hiding the little girl behind her.

"That's nice." their mother laughed. "Was everyone there?"

"Yeah." Kari laughed. "Everyone was there." She began nervously edging towards her room, pushing Carie in front of her.

"Wait." the mom said. "Don't you wanna sit and talk about it?"

"N-No thanks, mom." Tai stuttered.

"We're beat." put in Kari nervously.

"Y-Yeah! Really tired…" Tai pretended to stifle a yawn.

"I think we'll just go to bed right now." Kari was almost to their rooms.

"See you in the morning!" With the slam of a door, they were all gone.

Kari sighed with relief. "This could be harder than I thought." she huffed as Carie ran forward, leapt onto her bed and started bouncing up and down.

"No kidding." Tai gasped, swallowing nervously. "She's so hyper, this could be harder than when we had to hide the Digimon."

Kari went to the bed. "Hey now, stop that." she said, catching Carie in mid-air. "You'll break it."

She put Carie back on the bed, and the girl immediately rolled over on her back like a cat and laughed. "Dat was fun." she giggled in her childish, five-year-old way. "Let's do it again."

"Oh no." Kari warned. "We had to sneak you in. If mom finds you here, we are in deep, deep trouble."

The girl made a bit of a pouting face, but said "Okay."

The phone rang in the hall. "I'll get it!" Tai shouted, then whispered. "Make sure mom doesn't see her through the door."

Kari nodded and tried to get Carie interested in a set of building blocks. Tai ran out into the hall and grabbed the phone on its third ring. "Hello, this is Tai." he said, quickly and out of breath, glancing nervously towards the room his parents were in.

"Tai, it's Sora."

"Sora! Oh good…" he dropped his voice down to an under-tone. "Was there anything in the police reports?"

"No. Nothing." Sora sighed. "I looked through every missing persons article twice. Nothing reporting a five-year-old at all, let alone a girl with brown hair and blue eyes."

Tai groaned. "Great. Just perfect."

"Maybe she just got lost this morning, Tai, and her parents don't know to look yet. How about we check tomorrow? There should be something then."

"And what do we do until that particular time?" Tai asked. "No wait, don't tell me. I know."

He knew Sora would be grinning on the other end of the phone. "Hope the kid can stomach your mom's meatloaf."

~ * ~ * ~

Kari awoke late at night to an unfamiliar tugging at her wrist. She opened one eye to find Carie crouching over her, a scared, teary look on her face.

"What's the matter?" Kari asked, leaning up on her elbow. "Is something wrong?"

"I had a bad dream." Carie sniffed.

Kari sighed slightly, then lifted the edge of he covers. "You wanna crawl in and tell me about it?"

Carie slid in under the blankets and curled up next to her. Kari let the blankets fall around the child's body. "What was it about?" she asked. "Your dream, I mean."

Carie sniffed and looked up at her. "It was about two years ago, mamma." she whispered.

"What happened?" Kari asked, growing both curious and worried. "What happened two years ago?"

Carie closed her eyes. "Dat not important, mommy. I don't wanna talk about it…You know I hate talking about things like dat." She yawned and snuggled down into the sheets. "Night night, mommy." she muttered, and instantly dropped off.

Kari wrapped her arms around the little girl and pulled her close. "What is it about her?" she thought longingly, looking at the child. "What if Izzy's 'crazy idea' is right? What if she is…my daughter…?" she smiled slightly, suppressing a giggle and beginning to drop off. "My daughter…My…baby…That's like a…dream…"

She fell asleep, Carie's head resting gently on her chest, her dreams no longer troubled by memories. But Kari, however, was a slightly different story.

It was as if Carie's nightmare was now her own. Kari saw herself, about fifteen years older, holding the tiny three-year-old Carie. They were running though alleys and streets, with loud explosions and attack blasts. The girl was shaking in the woman's arms.

They ran, Gatomon following with a strange little ball of orange fur clamped in her mouth. They seamed to be dodging around through back allies to avoid…something…

They came to the edge of the silver, metallic area they had been in. A man stood there, weary, with kinda-short, spiky hair, by a line of pods. As Kari reached him, the house they had been in seconds before exploded.

Kari stopped and looked at the horrible mushroom cloud. "No, T.K.!" she shouted, tears pricking in the back of her eyes.

The man touched her shoulder. "Kari…"

The woman turned and shoved the girl she'd been carrying into the man's arms. "Take her, Tai." she gasped. "Take her and get as far out of the city as possible. T.K. and I will meet up with you…someday."

She turned and began to run back in the direction of the fading cloud. Gatomon dropped the orange ball next to Tai's feet and ran after her. "Kari, don't!" Tai cried to his sister.

"Take her away from here!" Kari shouted, then disappeared into the smoke.

Tai stared after her for a moment, then loaded Carie into one of the pods. The girl looked up at him fearfully, with big, blue eyes. "Uncue Tai, what going on?"

"Sh." Tai soothed, handing her the little orange ball and climbing in after her. "It'll be okay."

He closed the lid and strapped Carie into the seat behind him. He pressed a few buttons and muttered to himself. "Coordinates set for Base Epsilon Zeta. Launch in five… four…three…two…one…"

The pod blasted out over the barren landscape and curved away wildly. Carie pulled herself up in her chair and looked out the back window as the place that had been her home slowly faded away…

Kari's eyes flew open with a gasp. After breathing hard for a moment, she gazed down at the girl lying asleep next to her, smiling in her dreams. "Did she really live through that?" she thought. "How? And…what happened to us?"

~ * ~ * ~

They had another DigiDestined meeting the next day. This one was in T.K.'s room, because his mom would be out all day.

The minute T.K. opened the door to let Kari and Tai in, he was greeted by Carie's smiling face. "Hi daddy!" she laughed, then hugged him around the legs.

T.K. looked down at her, then up at Kari helplessly. "Pick her up." Kari prompted in a giggling whisper.

T.K. reached down and picked the girl up. Trying to remember home ec, he switched her over onto one arm and supported her with the other. Carie laughed. "Daddy silly." she giggled, then stood on his arm and hugged T.K. around the neck.

T.K. turned red as Kari giggled and Tai hid snickers behind his hand. "Um…come on." he muttered. "The others are already here."

No matter how hard T.K. tried, Carie did not release from his neck. He turned a deeper shade of red as he walked in with the little girl still clamped around him to a furry of giggles from Yolei, Mimi and Sora, and a small group of snickers-behind-hands from most of the guys, save Izzy and Joe. "You're not helping…" he murmured in embarrassment, then sat down on his bed.

Carie finally detached from him and slid down to the floor, giggling her head off and absolutely fascinated by the soft, squishy Poromon. "Funny birdie ball." she giggled as he wandered off into the air, then came crashing playfully back into her.

Yolei laughed. "You're good with kids, Poromon."

"When you're as small as I am, you have to be." he groaned, starting to see stars.

Matt looked up. "So, what do we do now?"

"I say we call the police again." Izzy said, leaning back in his chair. "And see if anyone's reported her missing."

"There won't be." Kari whispered. "There will never be."

Everyone stared at her. "Kari, are you…" Tai began, but Kari interrupted.

"No. I know it's true." Kari muttered. "I feel it…Izzy's theory was right. She's not from our time. She's from the future…"

"No way." Davis objected, standing. "It's impossible."

"In our time, yes." Kari muttered. "But it might not be in hers…"

There was a silence. Sora looked at Carie, then at Kari. "You're dead serious about this, aren't you?" she asked quietly.

Kari nodded, looking down at Carie. "She…we…had a dream last night…"

"What'd you mean…we?" Matt asked.

Kari looked up. "First…First she woke up with a nightmare. She wouldn't tell me about it, nothing, save that it was about 'two years ago'. Then she fell back asleep… and I had the dream." Kari looked at the small child and shivered with the remembrance of the night before. "It was too real to be…just a dream…"

Izzy looked at her a nodded slowly. He turned to his computer. "I think I'll go to the Digital World." he muttered, bringing up the DigiPort. "I have something I need to refer to with Gennai."

He turned back. Davis held up the blue D3. "I'll go too." he said.

"Us too." Yolei said, and almost everyone stood up, raising their Digivices.

Suddenly, Carie started screaming her head off.

If any of you folks have intrest in finding out what I'm planning for this and my other stories, I got some nice little summeries in my profile. Go look, okay?