I don't own digimon

No Matter How Humble

888

Kevin walked slowly up the steps to the red door to his home. He put his hand slowly around the golden doorknob. The doorknob turned cautiously and then with a click the door slid slowly forward.

Kevin pushed and walked into the house. The entry way had a false wooden linoleum tile and Kevin gently took off his shoes putting them on a cream colored rug. Koromon hopped behind him as he closed the door and Kevin slowly walked up the soft, blue carpeted stairs to the top half of the split level.

"Hey, did you notice I'm Koromon again?" asked the little pink ball of fur.

"Yeah, you must have taken quite a blow when we passed through that…." Kevin stopped and furrowed his brow, "if Brendan was here he'd know what to call it…"

"Hey, maybe the others came back too!" cheered Koromon waving his ear ribbons.

"Yeah!" Kevin immediately ran over to a desk where a phone was. He pulled open the top drawer of the desk and took out a phone book. He quickly dialed the first number he found. The little speaker in the phone purred quietly. "Come on, come on…"

"Hello?" a woman asked over the phone.

"Uh…Mrs. Hardcastle?" asked Kevin.

"Yes?" replied the woman quietly.

"This is Kevin, is Janet home or maybe outside?" Kevin queried innocently.

"Oh, I thought you and her, and the others were going to stay after school today, and play soccer, or something," replied Mrs. Hardcastle.

Kevin blinked. He looked at Koromon and then at the calendar. "Umm, Mrs. Hardcastle, what's today's date?"

"September the seventh…why?" The woman's voice was starting to get perturbed and frantic, "Is something the matter with Janet? Is she hurt!"

Kevin swayed backward and slowly put the phone on its receiver with a loud click. Kevin staggered to a soft, rose couch and plopped down. Koromon was at his side.

"Janet's not home…and it's the same date that we left…" whispered Kevin quietly. He looked at the pink ball. He looked up at the clock, "in fact it's only been a minute or so since we were eaten by that meteor storm…"

"Maybe she got taken somewhere else, maybe you should try the others…" said Koromon innocently.

"Maybe later…" replied Kevin as he fell to his right laying his head on the armrest of the sofa. His hand wandered slowly up to a coffee table beside his head and his fingers searched out and grasped a small back remote. Kevin lifted it up and turned on a black box with a screen that sat on the opposite side of the room from the sofa.

A man was standing on the in front of a wall on the screen. "Yes siree, this has been one wacky week. First a September record…snow in Miami, that's right you heard right, snow in Miami, here's a picture of Miami Beach under a foot of snow." The screen flicked over to the picture. Kevin dropped his remote. A large, round creature was standing on the beach with its arms in the air. Red dots ran up its tummy. People seemed to be walking around the creature, oblivious to its existence. The screen flickered again. "And in Ottawa flash fires have started all around as the heat shoots up over the century mark!" A flaming man was standing on top of building.

"What are Frigimon and Meramon doing here?" asked Koromon as he looked to Kevin.

The boy shook his head. "No idea, but no one seems to be…."

"In other news a spike in hallucinations have happened across the world; reports of monsters and other hallucinations started to rise as an unexplained shift in the earth's magnetic field decreased the magnetism of the barrier earlier this week. Physiopsychologists think that the slight increase in cosmic ray emission is causing the hallucinations but no conclusive results have been made…"

888

"My lord!" the female staggered back as the grey harlequin walked forward. "I-I was not expecting you!"

The harlequin lifted his hand quietly, "Yes, I am aware of my sudden stop." He looked around. The plush cushioning of the female's quarters were quite luxurious. "I see that you have made yourself at home…"

"Yes," The female was on her knees and her head was bowed. The large, orange lynx-like ears nearly touched the floor. "I have always believed in luxury…"

"Such a wonderful little protégé," smiled the harlequin he walked forward and knelt down patting the woman softly on the head with his gloved hand, "but unfortunately I am not here to critique your decorating style."

The woman looked up in surprise. "I'm sorry, we've been trying to pull in more data but…there is some sort of…"

The harlequin lifted its hand and the female stopped, "I am not here about that either, my jewel. No, I have come here to instruct you. You are to go to the Human World; there is a human that I must have. It is a very important human, but we shan't have the mess we had the last time we got involved in the Human World, no, we do not want them to know of us yet…so…you are to use this spell to hide your identities…" The harlequin flicked his wrist forward and a scroll slid out from his sleeve and handed the scroll to the woman. He lifted his other hand and put it behind the female's ear. "And these…" He drew cards out from behind. "Use these to access the emergency portal." The harlequin looked around and then lifted and eyebrow, "And where is your cohort?"

"He is busy with the data weaver, hoping to increase its production," replied the feline as she looked at the floor.

"Well, you will need his help, supposedly he holds an artifact that will help you find this human," said the harlequin and the clown stood and disappeared in a flash of smoke.

888

Kevin had been watching the news for an entire hour. He was picking out digimon in almost every frame now, but no one seemed to be noticing. He grumbled slightly and was prepared to shut off the TV when the screen started to go funny. He blinked once and then twice as the faded image of Brendan appeared in front of him. He was in front of a backdrop of books and was looking around nervously.

"Hello…mayday…Trapped…..World…" the voice of the boy was choppy and faded back and forth between static and usable sound. "…Powerful….Danger…Need….Evil….Overpowered us….separated…."

Kevin ran to the screen. "How do I get back?"

"Is….there?" Brendan looked blankly from the screen.

"Brendan I'm here, what's wrong, what is happening; where are you guys?" shouted the boy at the television. His hands flashed to his digivice and he held it up to the screen. "Please, I'm here, tell me!"

"Invasion, eminent….digimon….Digital….are…." the picture started to fade.

"Come back! I need to know how to get back!" shouted Kevin as the picture faded to black. He looked indignantly at the digivice in his hand. Its grey face looked up at him with nary a twinkle. Whatever power it had was not going to be used here. He turned at a strange sound. He found Koromon shivering. "Koromon? Is something the matter?"

"Digi-digimon…." the little pink ball whispered.

"Close by?" Kevin watched as the ball nodded and leapt down from the sofa.

"We have to go…it will hurt your people!" yelped the ball as it moved towards the stairs to go to the door.

Kevin ran after it. He opened the door and stepped out and stopped dead in his tracks. A white and blue demon in green chest armor and tattered beige cargo pants was standing in the street in front of his house. Down the block the business district was humming but here, the silence seemed to only make the creature's presence that much more creepy. Two long wooden swords were being held in its hands. It was looking longingly, not at Kevin and Koromon but across the fence.

"Say!" shouted Kevin loudly to the Japanese man standing outside. The man looked from Kevin to the digimon and then back. The digimon's long, llama-like ears twitched in Kevin's direction and slowly the digimon turned. It lifted its swords and rushed forward.

"Kevin!" yelped Koromon as he bounced up knocking the boy out of the way. The digimon snarled in annoyance and swatted the pink ball away with its sword and then leapt after Kevin. Koromon bounced after it. "BUBBLE BLOW!" a stream of bubbles swarmed around the creature's head. A wooden blade slammed down into the ground inches to the right of Kevin's body. The boy scrambled out of his yard and onto the street. Kevin's neighbor was soon at his side.

"Come on boy, we have to get out of here!" growled the man. Kevin looked up at the man and then back at the yard. Koromon was bouncing around belching bubbles into the face of the digimon. The man narrowed his eyes, "Call your partner, Yashamon will make mince meat out of him…"

"Wha…?" Kevin looked up in surprise. There was a small explosion and Koromon went flying into the air and tumbled down bouncing hard on the sidewalk pavement. Kevin ran to the digimon. "Are you ok?"

"Yeah…leave it to me…" whispered Koromon.

"I can't, in your state you couldn't fight him! If only I could get this stupid thing to work!" growled Kevin as he fumbled around with the different buttons on the digivice. The digimon with the swords was rushing towards them.

Kevin scooped up Koromon and ran. He turned around to see his neighbor shoulder block the digimon into a fence. The creature growled and tossed the Japanese man aside and continued its pursuit.

"Kevin we can't keep running!" moaned Koromon as the boy ran down the street He ran into the business district. People were walking up and down, cars were whirring by and Yashamon was charging toward them.

Kevin's eyes grew huge as the reflection of Yashamon in their corneas increased. The wooden blades shimmered with a golden energy.

Kevin's hands closed around the small digivice. "Oh please work, oh please work, oh please work…" He closed his eyes. A warm feeling started to build in the palm of his hand.

"Koromon, digivolve to Snow Agumon!" Kevin fell backward due to the expulsion of energy. The white dinosaur leapt forward. "Little Blizzard!"

Yashamon face hit the burst of frozen water and ice. The shock of the attack caused the beast to stumbled and fall. Kevin scrambled backward on his hands and feet. Snow Agumon opened its mouth again, but Yashamon leapt backwards and then into the air. It landed down on a flag pole that jutted out of the wall of a building and then leapt to the sky. Snow Agumon looked up opened his mouth and blast a frozen collection of water upwards as Yashamon dove downward. The blast struck his chest and the demon jerked upwards slightly. Suddenly a flash of strange lightning crashed down, struck Yashamon and then the digimon disappeared in a swirl of a bluish white bar code.

Kevin looked up. The sky was filled with streamers of electrical energy. When two of the streamers pulled in close to each other he could make out a small scene of the Digital World in the sky. Another river of electrons flashed to the ground, this time it jogged across the Earth's surface as if searching for something and then all of a sudden a small, In Training digimon appeared out of an alley and the lightning immediately pounced, sucking the digimon up.

Another burst of lightning shot down, this time it grabbed Snow Agumon. Kevin rushed forward trying to snag the remnants of the swirling bar code. "No…no….not…please…." He looked down at his digivice. The stupid little machine chirped at him happily. He growled at the machine and closed a fist around it and punched the sky, "STUPID THING, I WANT TO GO BACK TO MY FRIENDS!" The sky flashed bright red. Kevin gulped. All the streamers of lightning converged in one spot. The clouds darkened and swirled angrily around the ball of pure energy that now existed in the sky. Kevin looked around. Everyone was walking around oblivious to the change in weather; in fact they seemed oblivious to an eleven and a half year old boy screaming at nothing in particular.

"Do you really want to go back?" asked a voice behind Kevin. The boy turned slowly to see a man standing behind him. He was a tall man with long dark hair. "After all you are home."

"What's home if you have lost your friends and family, they were the reason I was brave, without them I'm just a coward fighting pointless fights," replied Kevin. The man raised an eyebrow in surprise. "They need me, something bad is happening, Brendan said something was going wrong! I have to get back to help!"

"I was not expecting such a thoughtful answer," said the man quietly. "You seem to understand more than we had thought you would…"

"We?" Kevin looked up at the man, "Who the heck are you?"

"Who I am is not important, all you must know is the barrier between this world and the others are weak, some one is playing cards with the barriers, and so far have been pretty successful in weakening them," said the man quietly, "Not completely successful though."

"That's why no one is paying attention to the digimon," whispered Kevin quietly.

"Some are, but most have lost the connection," replied the man. He looked at Kevin quietly. "I best get you back then…" The man flashed his arm out and revealed a slip of paper, then after messing around with the paper making more and more elaborate hand movements without any sign of stopping.

Kevin coughed slightly and looked at the man with a little glare, "Should I sit down or you going to get this done today?"

The man looked at Kevin, shrugged his shoulders and said, "If you're that impatient then just lift your digivice up…"

"Then what was all that hand waving?" yelped the boy.

"Show…I don't get to see people often," the man smiled softly as Kevin growled.

Kevin looked at the man and put his hand with his digivice up to the sky. The man walked up and laid the paper over the device and then the sky dropped on top of Kevin. Two bluish rings of barcode whirled around Kevin like quarters rolling on their faces. One attached to Kevin and the other flung into the sky.

An unnerving feeling came over the boy as his feet became unwound. Slowly his legs and torso were being unstitched like he was some large sweater being undone by its creator by pulling out the woven work. Small particles of what Kevin termed, digi-dust, lifted up into the sky.

"Kevin!" The Japanese man was running forward. He could see Kevin being undone. He could see the long haired man standing next to him. He skidded to a stop as the boy looked up at him and then disappeared into dust and data stream. The Japanese man looked accusingly at the long haired visitor. "What did you do!"

"He wanted to go back, just like you did at one time, don't worry, Kevin will be fine, they all will be fine," said the man. He lifted a hand and a slip of paper appeared between his middle finger and his index finger. He swept it in a circle in front of him and disappeared in a flash of light and digi-particles.

The sky cleared. The shadows returned to normal. The lightning faded to nothing and the man looked around to the people that were oblivious to the true universe. "I hope you are all ready for what is coming, because…I don't think it will be pleasant."

888

Kevin blinked a little and looked around him. He was on the edge of a forest. Snow Agumon was standing next to him.

"You got back!" the dinosaur immediately leapt forward tackling the boy and driving him to the ground with a hug.

Kevin threw his arms around the dinosaur and hugged him tight, "I'm so glad you're ok!"

"I'm glad you're ok!" returned Snow Agumon.

"I'm gladder that you're ok!" called Kevin.

"No way, I'm more gladder that you're ok!" announced the white digimon.

"Impossible! I'm the gladdest that you're ok!" yelped Kevin.

"Nuh uh!" returned Snow Agumon.

"Uh huh!" Kevin shot back.

"Nuh Uh!"

"Uh Huh!"

Snow Agumon shivered slightly and Kevin looked at him, "What's wrong?"

"Something very nasty just went by, something really cold and evil," whispered the dinosaur. The digimon turned and looked into the forest.

Kevin's digivice chirped loudly and the boy snatched it up from his side. Two dots were visible and were blinking slowly. One was blue and one was red. The blue dot was in the middle of the screen and the red dot was at the top of the screen. Kevin turned and the red dot turned to stay in the same direction.

"I think…maybe…" Kevin turned so that the dot was at the top of the screen. "We should go this way…" Kevin started to walk forward.

"Ok…" Snow Agumon walked beside him.

888

AN: This is a short chapter, basically I ran as far as I wanted with this chapter and decided this would be a nice place to stop.

Dark Qiviut: I'm sorry if I offended you. It wasn't my intent.