OmnicromnXR: Keep that idea of a genetic breakdown in mind when you read this chapter.

Vigatus: Glad that you're enjoying it.

Taichi saw the familiar light shoot up from deeper in the park. "Someone's evolving!"

"It's gotta be Yuki Agumon," Agumon said, "Or else-"

Whatever else he said, if anything, was lost as the geyser of light turned from bright white into a horrific black. Dark evolution!

The duo went from running to being in a full marathon. They raced through the park, twisting around trees and jumping over benches until reaching the clearing. Taichi slid to a stop on the wet grass and his mouth dropped. Agumon raced up beside him and gasped. "Holy shit!"

Taichi could only nod. A SkullGreymon had what was left of a Metal Tyrannomon in its mouth. That boy, Taiki, was lying on the ground, unmoving, while a familiar girl was on her knees and staring up at the evening sky.

Taichi hissed under his breath, "Kimiko…"

Child of Courage

Chapter VIII

SkullGreymon smashed her teeth together, dissolving the remains of the Metal Tyrannomon into flecks of data. She whirled to face them, her neck snapping like a broken bone. She focused on them for only a moment before letting out a soul-crushing moan.

"Shit!" Taichi snapped. He whipped out his digivice, "Take her down but don't hurt her."

"Yeah, I'll try," Agumon said. He super evolved to MetalGreymon and rushed to meet the Undead digimon. "Now, just listen, I-"

He heaved as SkullGreymon punched him in the jaw. "Hey! Listen to me, you don't-"

"Death Nail!" SkullGreymon howled in an unearthly voice. MetalGreymon instinctively shielded his face with his metal arm. The undead dinosaur's claws ripped through with an acidic sizzle.

SkullGreymon stepped back before swinging his claws again. MetalGreymon swung his cyborg arm into the skeleton's chest, letting his metallic claws pierce the organic chunk hovering in the ribcage. SkullGreymon replied with a sharp head-butt into MetalGreymon's snout.

"Damn it!" he growled, "You're not making this easy!"

The undead digimon seemed to laugh before rushing at the cyborg again.

Taichi raced around the perimeter of the battlefield, his eyes focused on the preteen girl. "Kimiko!"

She didn't even twitch as he continually called to her. When he finally reached her, he dropped his hand onto her shoulder. "Kimiko!"

She slowly turned her head and he felt an arctic chill sweep through his stomach. Kimiko's dark eyes, once so intense, were now dull, almost empty. He shook her by the shoulders. "Kimiko!"

The girl blinked and color swirled back into her brown orbs. She screamed a deep scream that seemed to come from her soul. Her head rolled back and she became a ragdoll in Taichi's arms. He stole a glance at the battlefield and saw SkullGreymon devolve into a familiar pink Koromon before jerking his attention back to his daughter. He wasn't like this after his SkullGreymon, was he?

"Taichi?"

Agumon was at his side with an unconscious Koromon in his arms. "We'll get them to Jyou," Taichi said with a nod.

"What about him?"

Taichi looked over Agumon's shoulders to Taiki. He gently rested Kimiko on the ground and raced over to press his fingers against the boy's neck.

"Is he-?"

Taichi nodded in response to his partner's question, but he still answered, "Yeah. He's dead."

Taichi paced, or at least, he tried to; the hospital room was too small to do much more than take four or five steps before reaching a wall. Still, it was better than sitting in the only chair and staring at-

He raced to the side of the hospital bed as the moan filled the air. The tween girl was moving her head slightly. "Kimiko! It's-It's me. Hey, it's okay, you're in the hospital right now, all right?"

Her eyelids slowly opened. "D-dad?"

He took her hand in his. "Yeah, I'm here."

Her voice was almost a whisper. "What happened?"

Taichi chuckled. "I was hoping you could tell me."

Kimiko suddenly gasped and jerked upright. "Where's Yuki Agumon?"

Taichi had to push against her shoulders to keep her from jumping from the bed. "Dr. Kido's got her hooked up to some kind of energy machine or something. She's gonna be fine."

That seemed to calm her and she lay back in the bed. "I guess you remember something?" he asked.

Kimiko bit her lip. "Y-yeah…"

He waited but no more information was forthcoming. He lay a hand on her shoulder. "Kimiko, what happened?"

She breathed in, almost like over-inflating a balloon. "Taiki just…he just really pissed me off and it felt like…like this darkness came from here." She tapped her abdomen. "I knew it was wrong but I-I…"

"Didn't stop it?"

"Yeah, like it felt too good. I just let it come out and then Allomon evolved into that zombie digimon. I still knew it was wrong but I didn't want to stop. I told SkullGreymon to attack and she just…just tore into MetalTyrannomon. Then Taiki started clutching at his chest and he fell over and…" She breathed in again and stared at Taichi. "He's dead, isn't he?"

Taichi felt his face twitch. "Y-yeah."

He felt Kimiko's shoulders shake. He pulled her into his chest and wrapped his arms around her. "It couldn't have been you. Chosen have lost their digimon partners before and none of them have died."

"But we're connected, right?" Kimiko sobbed, "When me and Yuki Agumon deleted his partner…"

Taichi wanted to say something, anything, but he could only hold her as tight as he could.

The door swung open. "Taichi?"

He slowly pulled out of Kimiko's embrace, trying to hold her as long as he could before turning to his sister. "Hey."

Hikari dropped her bag near the floor and pushed strands of hair from Kimiko's face. "Are you okay, sweetie?"

The tween girl rubbed her eyes. "I-I guess."

Hikari chuckled and rubbed the girl's shoulder. "Trying to be strong, just like your father."

Taichi headed for the door. "Can you hang out here for a little while? I've gotta find Jyou."

"Yeah, sure…"

Taichi headed for the main desk on the floor to have Jyou paged but found the man in question was already there. "Ah, Taichi, I was just coming to see you and Kimiko."

"To talk or arrest us?"

Jyou chuckled. "I'm not a police officer, Taichi, you know that." He gestured to an empty room and Taichi followed him inside. "My friend at the coroner is doing her best to keep things under wraps for now, but the police are going to need to be called soon."

"What do you think? Did Kimiko and Yuki Agumon kill him somehow?"

Jyou crossed his arms and sighed. "Unfortunately, I can't say either way. My friend didn't mention any obvious signs of injury, like burn marks or extreme lacerations."

"Could deleting his partner have given him a…I don't know, a heart attack or something like that?" He hoped the reassurance he'd just given Kimiko wouldn't turn out to be a lie.

"Probably not," Jyou said, "But we'll have to wait for the report."

"And then what? Get a lawyer?" Taichi rubbed his forehead and muttered. "Get a lawyer for a kid that shouldn't exist."

Jyou cleared his throat. "Actually…"

Taichi felt a familiar prickling of goosebumps along his skin. "What?"

"Koushiro wants to talk to us."

Hikari pulled the chair closer to the bed before sitting down. "Are you okay? Do you want something to eat?"

Kimiko shook her head. "I'm not really hungry."

That was worrying; Hikari had watched her devour a burger and then want dessert. "Okay, but I can get something from the cafe downstairs if you want anything."

The tween gave a weak nod. "You should be around me."

Hikari blinked. "What?"

"You shouldn't be around me. I'm dangerous."

Her brother had told her over the phone what happened but Hikari didn't believe it. Yet now, seeing the expression on Kimiko's face, she wasn't as sure. "Honey, your father said they don't know what happened yet, right? Let's just wait and see, okay?"

Again, Kimiko only responded with a slight nod before turning to look out the window.

Taichi tried to keep his mind blank as he followed Jyou; tried and failed. His thoughts kept wandering upstairs, (or maybe it was downstairs; the hospital halls were like a maze), to the preteen girl in the hospital bed. That led those same thoughts to SkullGreymon, which led to Taiki, which also led to those boys, which brought him back to Kimiko. It felt like running a marathon in a circle!

Jyou led Taichi into a conference room where Koushiro and their partners waited at a table with his laptop. "How's Kimiko?" Agumon asked.

"Pretty freaked out."

Koshiro nodded. "I guess that's understandable. I'll admit I'm in the dark about this. You and Agumon are the only ones that have undergone a Dark Evolution."

"There's Hikari and Tailmon," Tentomon added.

Taichi flinched slightly; he'd wanted to forget about that. Then he gave a short laugh. "Me and Hikari. Seems like Kimiko's following the family tradition."

"We still don't know what happened," Jyou stressed, "Wait for the coroner."

He nodded. "Right, yeah." He turned back to Koshiro, "So?"

The redheaded man began typing on his laptop. "I searched for the names of those boys that you gave me. Now, if you remembered them correctly-"

Taichi scowled slightly.

"-then we might have undercovered a major clue."

Taichi felt those goosebumps again. "Like what?"

Koshiro read from his laptop's screen. " All but seven children were saved: Masaru Daimon, Takuya Kanbara, Takato Masada, Taiki Kudo, Tagiru Akashi, Toshiko Fujita, and Ami Kitajima. They are now considered deceased. The fire was reportedly caused by a phenomenon called a digimon, but despite widespread reports, these creatures have never been verified."

Taichi could only stare as his mind began to swirl.

Taichi ducked on instinct as the Dark Tyrannomon swung his tail through the air like a whip. Taichi's partner, however, wasn't as agile and took the full force of the attack. Greymon grunted and then exhaled a blast of flame into the enemy dinosaur.

"You okay?" Taichi shouted.

Greymon snorted out a puff of smoke. "Yeah, just got sloppy there."

Taichi flinched as a small explosion blasted behind him. He spun and watched the firefighters trying to tame the raging flames that enveloped the building. Police officers were keeping the spectators back but not far enough.

He turned back to his partner. "Get him away from here."

"I'm trying!" Greymon snarled as he rammed the Dark Tyrannomon in the gut. Taichi could see him grunt as he tried to push the viral digimon back. The dark dinosaur remained in place as he pushed back against the assault. He growled but almost with a laugh.

Greymon snickered and shifted his head so that Dark Tyrannomon's body was now wedged between Greymon's three horns. The orange dinosaur screamed as he hoisted up Dark Tyrannomon before throwing him into the ground. He then filled his lungs and exhaled a wave of flames that ripped across the Dark Tyrannomon. It gave a final shriek before vanishing in a burst of data.

Taichi had to steady himself against the wall as the memory faded. "The orphanage fire? W-what does that mean? What the hell's going on?"

Koshiro paused before answering. "As to your second question, I can't even wager a guess. As for your first, well, my theories right now are either someone gave those names to those boys as a message of some kind or those boys are the missing children."

"But they all look like me!" he snapped, "Those boys were just sitting in an orphanage, all looking the same, and with digimon partners? And what about Kimiko?"

"Her name wasn't on that list," Koshiro clarified, "That's why I'm more inclined to my first theory."

"That someone gave those boys those names? Why? What kind of message? Just a reminder to get at me somehow because I wasn't able to save everyone?"

"I…I really can't say."

Taichi stared at his feet until Jyou's voice broke through the silence. "I, uh, know this is a lot, but there's something else. I spoke to my friend at the lab, you know, just to double-check the results-"

Taichi whipped his head up to stare at him. "You told me, like, a thousand times they were accurate."

Jyou shifted slightly. "Y-yeah, well, that was before…" He gestured to Koshiro.

The brown-haired man turned to him. "You test your theories out on Jyou before you talk to me?"

Now Koshiro shifted uncomfortably. "Well, you were out with Kimiko and-"

He cut him off with a wave of his hand. "Go on, Jyou."

"Anyway, my friend reiterated that the tests were accurate."

"So, then, since Kimiko's name wasn't on that list and the tests were accurate, that means she's still my daughter, right?"

"I would say so, yes."

Koshiro nodded in agreement.

Taichi felt a smile start to break out on his face. How could she have become such a part of his life in only a few days? It didn't seem possible.

"There's more."

The expression on Jyou's face twisted Taichi's smile back down. "What?"

"My friend mentioned that someone came to the lab earlier asking about information on a specific test. He told her all records were private but she was so pushy that he left to get his supervisor. When he came back, she was gone and it looked like she tried to use his computer terminal."

"It was locked, right?" Koshiro asked.

"Yeah, staff are required to log out whenever they step away."

"So what does this have to do with us?" Taichi asked, "Maybe she was a tabloid reporter or something."

"Maybe it's just a coincidence, but I thought I'd mention it. Plus, my friend said she was a young woman with dark hair and glasses."

Taichi hissed and felt his heart go cold.

"Meiko?"

Masaru finished delivering his report and then leaned back against the wall to watch the other three preteens in the darkened room.

"So, Taiki's dead, huh?" Takuya asked, "Can't say I'm gonna miss him."

"How horrible," Takato replied, "Every life is precious."

The other boy snorted. "He was an arrogant prick." Takuya crossed his arms. "He got what he deserved."

"You shouldn't celebrate a death," said Takato.

The last person in the room sighed. "I would have liked to examine his body to see what was the cause of death. If it was the degeneration…"

That statement made even Takuya frown. Masaru shrugged. "Well, too late for that, Ami, the Chosen have him now."

"Is there any chance they can gain any information from him?" asked Takato.

"I don't know," Ami answered, "Maybe but I doubt without any context they'll be scratching their heads."

"Good enough for now," Marcus said and then nodded at Takato, "You're up next. Get that girl back here."

"Hey," Takuya protested, "I wanted to-"

"Forget it! You and Ami have your own jobs, so get to it. You know who's not happy this happened so we'd better be on our toes."

"Yeah, yeah," Takuya muttered.

The lights faded and the room was cast into darkness once more.

Taichi stared out the window of the train and watched the world rush past. He was the only one in the cab so he allowed himself a quick chuckle; he certainly felt like life was moving past him, fast and furious. When he was a kid in the Digital World, everything seemed so fast too but it was like a video game come to life. Everything was new and exciting. Now…well, everything was still new and exciting, just not in a good way, more in a high blood pressure kind of way.

Jyou said a woman with dark hair and glasses wearing a suit went to the paternity lab while they were running his and Kimiko's samples. There was something about the tween girl Taichi recognized in her eyes. He later thought it was because Kimiko looked like him, or that it was because Kimiko looked like him and he looked, a little, like Hikari. Now though, the more he thought about it, the more those eyes reminded him of Meiko.

He studied his phone again; no messages. He'd called her, twice, but she either wasn't checking her voicemails or she was ignoring him. Not surprising considering how their break up went.

His phone buzzed and he answered. "Meiko?"

"No, it's me, Hikari. Where are you?"

"On my way to Osaka. Didn't Jyou tell you?"

"Yeah, but he didn't think you'd leave right away. Taichi, Jyou's here with the coroner's report."

A slight shiver went through his stomach. "We'll talk about it when I get back."

"Um, okay, sure, but do you think we should tell Kimiko now? Do you think she can handle it?"

How the hell would he know? He glanced out the window again. "I'm heading for a tunnel. Just do what you think is best."

He hung up and watched the shadow of the tunnel pass over the car. Only another hour to Osaka.

Kimiko's eyes shot open and she sat up with a gasp.

"Hey, it's okay. You're in the hospital, remember?"

She swallowed and inhaled slowly. "Yeah," she answered Yuki Agumon, "I remember."

Her partner was sitting in a chair next to her, along with her father's Agumon. "You're okay?"

She grinned. "You betcha. I guess humans don't recover as fast as digimon."

"I think Jyou'll let you go home today," Agumon said. He paused and then added, "Taichi had to run to Osaka quickly."

"Quickly?" Kimiko asked, "Isn't Osaka, like four hours away or something?"

The orange dinosaur shifted. "Yeah, but he'll come back later."

Kimiko studied the digimon and then frowned. "Is it because of me?" She eyed Yuki Agumon, "Because of what we did?"

"No! No, of course not, he had to talk with Meiko and-" He hissed and then muttered. "Damn it."

"You mean that woman he thought was my…my mom?"

Agumon groaned. "All right, but don't tell him I told you. A woman was asking questions about your paternity test, or something like that, and Taichi thinks it was Meiko. That's all."

Kimiko felt a strange flutter in his chest. Why would that woman be asking questions like that? Unless…

There was a knock on the door, followed by Aunt Hikari stepping inside with Dr. Kido. "Hi, sweetie. Are you feeling okay?"

She shrugged.

Her aunt continued. "Well, Dr. Kido has something to tell you."

He nodded. "Okay, so, I was able to look over the coroner's report. That boy, Taiki, well, was sick, to put it mildly. He was suffering from several different problems, usually caused by genetic abnormalities. His organs didn't seem to be working properly."

Kimiko held her breath. "So what are you saying?"

"Well, as for the immediate cause of death, it seems like his body just, well, shut down."

Aunt Hikari placed a hand on her shoulder. "You didn't kill him, Kimiko."

Yuki Agumon smiled at her partner. "That's great news, isn't it?"

The girl released her breath in a sigh. "I guess, but we still…you know."

This put a damper on Yuki Agumon's mood, and she slouched similarly to her partner. Aunt Hikari gave Dr. Kido a weak smile. "Well, thanks for the news."

"Yeah, sure. Um, I'll see about getting you out of here soon, okay?"

"Yeah," Kimiko said, her voice sounding distant, "Yeah…"

She watched them leave and close the door. She turned to Yuki Agumon. "You must hate me."

Her partner blinked. "What? Why?"

"Because I forced you to dark evolve." Where had she heard that term before?

"I don't hate you," the dinosaur said with a shake of her head, "Yeah, I felt a little weird but I felt worst."

"Really? How?"

"Remember when you stole that ramen from the shop and ate the whole thing before you realized it was super spicy?"

Kimiko winced slightly at the memory; she spent that night puking in an alley and while Yuki Agumon hadn't eaten any of the tainted ramen, she'd been sick all the same. "Yeah, I remember. I also remember why you didn't eat any of it. You were too busy scarfing down the sweet buns we'd taken from the bakery."

Yuki Agumon's white skin darkened slightly. "Oh, yeah, heh."

Once outside of Kimiko's room, Hikari turned to Jyou. "What does all of that mean?"

Jyou hesitated and then shrugged. "I don't know."

Hikari ran a hand through her hair and leaned back against the wall. "Oh, I wish Taichi was here." She pulled out her phone but hesitated. Did she want to bother him? "Just hurry back."

She signed the papers for Kimiko's discharge and returned to the girl's room. "Okay, just get dressed and we're ready to go."

The tween climbed out of the bed but hesitated. "A-are we going to your apartment?"

"Of course," Hikari noted the expression on Kimiko's face. Why did she ask that? "What's wrong? Talk to me, please."

"I-I was just afraid you were going to dump us off somewhere."

"What? Why would I do that?"

Kimiko's eyes were starting to shimmer. "What if Dad left because-"

Hikari pulled her closed and hugged her as tight as she could. "Your father's trying to help you, understand? And neither he nor I will ever abandon you, you know that, right?"

Hikari felt Kimiko's head move in her chest. "Now get dressed and maybe we'll stop at a cafe on the way home."

The tween girl's face brightened a little. "Really?"

"Sure."

Kimiko shed her hospital gown and Hikari turned to look out the window. Where was Taichi?

Taichi stared out the window of the train and watched the sun start to dip below the horizon. He allowed himself another chuckle, he'd spent a day on the train and had nothing to show for it besides an injured face.

He tapped his cheek and winced, partly from the pain and partly from the memory that came flooding into his mind.

The door swung open after he pounded on it to reveal Meiko, a bewildering expression on her face. "T-taichi? W-what are you doing here?"

His voice was level."I know about you at that paternity lab."

"What?"

He tried to stay level, flat, and unemotional. He failed. "Drop the act! Kimiko's with me, but you probably knew that, right?"

Meiko stared. "Taichi, have you lost your mind?"

"Kimiko! The girl that ran away from you. The one you're trying to hide, remember her?"

She opened her mouth but he kept going. "You know Kimiko, right? Our daughter."

He heard the slap before he felt the sting. "How dare you!" Meiko screamed. Tears were starting to form in her eyes. "What are you saying? That some girl showed up at your apartment claiming to be our daughter? Do you think I lied about my miscarriage? You think I lied about the pain, the tears, I had? You think that was all a lie?"

Taichi was too in shock to speak. That shock grew when he saw a young man appear behind Meiko. "What's going on?"

Meiko turned to him. "This is Taichi. He was just leaving."

Taichi could only nod before turning and walking away. He glanced over his shoulder but Meiko was already closing the door.

Back in the present, Taichi chuckled once more. What did he really think? That Meiko turned into some sort of supervillain? That she'd been so oppressed with revenge that she found some way to create a person? Meiko was right about one thing, he had lost his mind.

So who was the woman at the paternity lab? Why did she ask about his test specifically? The logical conclusion was she was Kimiko's mother but was it that simple?

His phone buzzed again. "Hey, Hikari. Yeah, I saw Meiko. We had a..." He rubbed his cheek, "...constructive discussion. No, she's not involved."

"Okay," his sister said, "Kimiko and Yuki Agumon are at my apartment but Jyou needs to talk to you. Give him a call."

"Yeah, okay."

He hung up and waited a moment before dialing Jyou. "Hey Taichi, how did it go?"

Taichi rubbed his cheek again. "We'll talk later. Hikari said you had something to tell me?"

Jyou cleared his throat. "Yes. I have the coroner's report on that boy, Taiki. You probably have already guessed that they weren't able to properly identify him."

Taichi snorted. "Yeah, big shocker."

"Right. Well, the main thing is that he was suffering from several genetic disorders, including advanced forms of lung and pancreatic cancer."

"So, he died from that?"

"Yes. Even though the coroner couldn't name a clear cause of death, she did conclude that it was like his body was breaking down."

Taichi leaned forward and rubbed his eyes. "So what caused that?" His fingers twitched slightly. "Whatever made them like…like me?"

"Maybe. There's a lot of things that can cause those kinds of genetic mutations, but Kimiko and Yuki Agumon did not kill this boy."

"Well, she'll be happy to hear that. Did you tell her?"

Jyou paused. "Yes."

"How did she take it?"

There was silence for a moment before Jyou said. "You should talk to Hikari about that."

Taichi used his key to open the door to his parent's apartment. Past the dining area, he saw Hikari jumping up from the couch, still wrapped in a thick blanket. "Hey," he said, almost in a whisper, "Did I wake you up?"

His sister yawned slightly. "I was starting to doze off. Kimiko's asleep in your old room. Your Agumons are in mine."

"Should I wake her up or-?"

Hikari opened her mouth but then closed it. "Taichi," she sighed, "You need to start making those decisions yourself."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm her aunt, not her mother. You need to decide whether to let her sleep or not." She then added, in one breath, "Even though it's late and it's a long train ride back to your apartment."

Before he could speak, she took a breath and continued. "Taichi, Kimiko's scared and confused and doesn't know what to think about what happened-what's happening to her. You should have been with her before…you should have been with her all day!"

"I'm trying to find out what's going on. I need to-"

"You need to be here!" Hikari snapped, "Right now, Kimiko doesn't need answers, she needs you!"

He stared and his sister blushed slightly. "Um, I, uh." She took a breath, "H-have you eaten?"

He shook his head.

Hikari shed the blanket and headed into the kitchen. Taichi studied the door to his old room and then slowly opened it. Kimiko was lying in the bed, curled up beneath the sheets and snoring loudly, just like he did (though he always thought Hikari was exaggerating his snoring).

He knelt beside her and studied her for a long time. His daughter…his daughter…

He rested a hand on her arm. He held that position until Hikari told him dinner was ready.

To be continued…