Things are going to start picking up a little bit now.

I really hope you enjoy this, it should give some understanding of the new characters, and the setting.

Pleeeeeeease review?

-N

--

"There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief."

- Aeschylus

--

Takato's friend laughed. "Hell, I'd judge them for not being normal if we didn't happen to be so goddamn weird ourselves."

Takato smiled weakly, but he could tell that his friend noticed his discomfort.

"I strike a nerve?" the friend asked, evidently afraid of his potential guilt.

"No, it's just something else."

"Alright, so're you going to tell me what this girl was talking about?"

"It's Mala. And yes. But it's a whole lot easier to tell if you stop interrupting me."

--

"What do you mean they're not normal?" The brown-haired boy asked, his confusion obvious.

Mala sighed. She didn't even know how to describe her confusion for this place. She realized that she just stopped thinking about it after she knew she wasn't going to get out. She'd been alone for so very long, and couldn't talk to anyone about life back in the real world. Mala did believe that she was in the digital world then, and wanted more than anything to get home. Her mother would be worried sick.

More likely idea is that they all think you're dead.

She frowned inwardly at her pessimism. She didn't need it.

--

"Mala, no!"

The fifteen year old gritted her teeth.

"Mom, I have to. They're counting on me." She dropped the anger in her tone down for a moment, realizing that it wasn't helping the persuasion. "There's a lot more at stake here than just me."

Mala thought she had actually managed to persuade her mother. But when she was halfway out the door, she knew she hadn't.

"If you don't come back her now, don't you come back ever!"

The girl ignored her. She didn't have much of a choice. She was sad, sure; she loved her mother. But she had to go.

--

Mala suddenly snapped back to reality when she realized she needed to answer Takato's question. When she looked at his face, he looked impatient. "Did you notice anything odd about Cronus?"

"No, not really."

"He was with us a week before you came. Or rather, he found you. We have no idea how long you've been there. He's been with us for a month."

"Okay." Takato seemed annoyed. In truth, Mala was a little frustrated with him. She was trying to explain things to him—admittedly, she wasn't doing a good job, but he wasn't helping her out much. "So are you going to tell me why these people aren't normal?"

Fine.

"Well, most of them wanted to leave you to die out there. And the ones that didn't want that wanted to kill you themselves."

Takato's eyes widened, and Mala was suddenly stricken with guilt. She really should have softened the blow a bit.

"Why didn't they?" he asked curiously.

"Let me explain from the beginning, okay? It'll all make sense. Well, most of it."

--

Mala ran down the streets of Shinjuku towards what everyone had been fearing. Hell, she herself was terrified, but found comfort in the object she held tightly in her right hand: an obscurely shaped object—black and white—that fit perfectly in her hand. Her D-Arc.

She took her attention from her running and looked at the screen. What she saw was approaching made her smile, and feel much less scared.

As if on cue, Tigremon lept to her side from what must have been from a nearby rooftop. She nodded to him, and he nodded to her, and they both ran to do their part. The D-Reaper had to be destroyed.

--

"Okay." Takato sounded prepared to accept the offer, for which Mala was grateful. She silently prayed that he wouldn't think she was crazy.

"Well, you've seen our village. On all sides of it, there's fields, for maybe two miles. Whatever the distance, it's pretty close to exact on all sides. A perfect circle, I mean. Anyways, beyond the fields is a ring of trees. And beyond the trees are the mountains. We don't know what's past those."

Takato nodded, which was comforting to Mala, who was expecting him to sarcastically thank her for a geography lesson he didn't care about.

"Well, about eight months ago, one of the villagers was killed in the forests. His body was completely mutilated. A lot of people were pretty hesitant to go into the forest from then on. A few just called them stories, and went in to prove that nothing bad was in there. There were six of them, and they never came back, either. From then 'til now, the people here have said they've been seeing monsters in the forests. The descriptions mostly match up; people who've seen them at different times describe them as being the same. There were at least four of them out there."

"Were they digitmon?"

Mala ignored the legitimate question, and went on. "Well, a month ago, a boy came in this world, he found himself in the woods. He didn't remember how he'd gotten there, but he was attacked by one of the monsters."

"So eight people have died in there." Takato said as he registered everything.

Well, at least he's trying.

"No, the boy was Cronus, and he killed it. When he found his way to the village, the people here thought that he was one of the things killing people out there. But he showed them the body, and they believed him. A week later, Cronus goes marching off into the forest for no reason at all, and finds you. He brings you here, and again, the people think that it was you who'd been doing it. But they owed Cronus for killing the monster, or at least they trusted him because of it."

"Could it have been digimon that attacked?" the teenager asked her.

She suddenly frowned.

--

Mala blocked out the fear as she fought. On the way there, she'd seen an abandoned car with what she recognized as a bag for hockey equipment in the backseat. Pushing her guilt aside, she ordered Tigremon to break into the car so that she could get at it. She wasn't trained to fight, but the D-Reaper's agents were numerous enough that she had to try.

She swung the hockey stick clumsily but powerfully, and did manage to take down several of the agents. Tigremon was doing a much better job, obviously, and his TigerFire attack was dispatching them quite efficiently.

The fight had been going for almost an hour, and she was getting tired. She ignored the pains in every muscle of her body, because she knew she had to fight.

Soon though, something had caught her attention from the corner of her eye. A beautiful, white-haired woman dressed in black armor was floating up towards the D-Reaper. A Sakuyamon, Mala recognized her as. She was relieved to see such a powerful ally, even if she didn't notice her back—

—but she was only relieved for a second, because there were two agents closing in on her from behind, and fast.

"Look out!" Mala screamed to her. But the noise was too great, and Sakuyamon didn't hear her.

She looked to Tigremon, who only looked back at her for a second to hang his head down apologetically before he leapt up to protect the Mega. He destroyed the first agent with ease, but he must have not notice the second, because it tore through him, and in an instant, he disappeared as data.

--

"Could it have been a digimon?" she heard Takato repeat.

"No." Mala answered flatly. "It wasn't a digimon."

"How do you know?" The tone Takato spoke to her in wasn't filled with the attitude she'd come to expect.

"Because digimon don't die the way that one did."

Takato didn't push her for how exactly she knew that. She missed Tigremon, of course, but she'd moved on. But still, she really didn't like talking about him to people she didn't know.

The moments that followed were awkward, expectedly, but Mala took the time to think. Takato knew more than she expected him to. He remembered his home, in the real world. Mala had, until then, been a little hateful to herself that she remembered her own home, and the fight that she'd had with her mother the last time she saw her. But something about Takato's presence was influencing how she was thinking.

She was hopeful.

She had very little reason to be, but she was. She felt that somehow, Takato would manage to save her from this place. She trusted him, even though she knew she shouldn't. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he reminded her of—

"I'm sorry." Takato said sincerely, interrupting her thoughts.

"It's alright." She replied to him. "I just wasn't expecting to think of it."

"Can you tell me anything about this place? You said before that it plays with your memory. What did you mean?" He asked her.

Mala suddenly felt relieved, and she couldn't quite understand why. It took her a moment, but she suddenly felt very comfortable around the boy she'd just met.

"Okay." She answered. "Well, like I said, the people here don't remember anything before coming here."

Takato nodded, and let her continue.

"I've asked everyone here about home, in the real world." She smiled, a little embarrassed. "They all thought I was crazy. They didn't believe in there being another world."

"I'm sorry. It must have been hard for you."

It really was.

She shrugged, pretending it wasn't. "For a while, I started to doubt myself. But then Cronus came, and he believed me, because he's not like the others. He has memories from home, too. From what I can tell, he's been suffering from a different kind of memory loss than the others. He gets flashes here and there, but he hasn't been able to put much together, and I'm afraid I haven't been able to help him much either."

Takato frowned, looking towards the floor.

"He's a good person, though," Mala began, honestly. "A lot of the others don't trust him, but I do. I suppose you should decide for yourself, though."

"Probably." Takato said, with a weak smile. "I owe him a chance, anyways. For saving me, I mean."

"I'm sure he'd appreciate that." She smiled, looking at the teenager. He looked extremely exhausted, and his eyes had some dark marks under them that she hoped were because of his being tired, and not bruises. "I'll show you where your room is."

"I get a room?" Takato asked, a little impressed.

"The village has a few extras." Mala said, hoping he wouldn't catch the grim reality behind why they were empty. She'd personally cleaned them and changed the sheets, even dusted them regularly, though, so they were perfectly livable arrangements, as long as the tenant was alright knowing that the home's previous owner died in the woods.

She picked up her jean-jacket—one of the pieces of clothing from home that she still had—and slipped it on, then headed outside with Takato behind her.

They spoke of little things along the way—friends, school—it turned out Takato was sixteen, as Mala was, but he was a few months older.

When they got to the place, a short walk from Mala's own place, she told him that it was it. He thanked her, and seemed sincerely grateful. She was glad that he was nicer to her than he was when he first met her. The attitude was getting a little annoying.

"There's some extra sheets under the bed if you get cold." She told him. "Come find me tomorrow when you're up."

"Right, thanks. I will." He said with a smile.

"Good night."

"Night Mala."

She'd turned around and had started walking when she heard him speak again.

"Mala?"

She turned to him. "Yes?"

"Why're you helping me?"

Because it's the right thing to do.

She smirked at him. "Someone's got to." With that, she headed home.

He didn't call her back, then. His question had caught her off-guard, but she did know why she was helping him. He just wouldn't understand.

--

"No!" she screamed as her beloved partner was taken from her life forever. Tigremon had managed to slow the agent down enough for Sakuyamon to destroy the agent before continuing her flight to the D-Reaper. Mala dropped the stick without realizing it, and as it hit the ground she realized that she was surrounded.

By the time Mala got the courage to fight, she'd been backed up far enough away from the hockey stick that she wouldn't be able to get to it before the agents got to her. She jumped as she felt her back hit the firm wall of a brick building.

She closed her eyes, and huddled to the ground as she waited for the darkness to take her.

"Justice Kick!"

Mala looked up with a gasp as a Justimon completely destroyed the agents surrounding her.

She stood up as he, to her surprise, separated into two beings—a black dragon-looking digimon that in truth scared Mala a bit—and a boy, a teenage boy, with brown hair, and the bluest eyes she thought possible. He looked maybe a year or two older than she was.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

Tigremon…

"I'm okay." She lied. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. I was only doing what's right."

With a smirk and a little salute, the boy and his partner ran off. She'd met him for maybe forty seconds, but he had inspired her for the rest of her life.

--

Thanks for reading, please review, and I'll have the next chapter up as soon as it's ready!

-N