Litanya: Hi again everyone, I hope you had a good Easter (if you celebrate it and if you don't I hope you had a good weekend). Just one thing: this fic isn't called "The Island Holiday" for nothing. You will soon find out why. Anyway, I don't own Digimon!

The Island Holiday

Chapter 7: Isolated

He almost winced in pain as he moved. Why had he fallen asleep in such an uncomfortable position? In fact, why had he fallen asleep at all? He wasn't even supposed to be lying down- the last he remembered he had been walking back to- his eyes snapped open. He was staring at sand. He closed his eyes, counted to ten and then opened them again. The coarse sand of a beach was all that stared back at him. He sat up slowly, aware of a sharp pain in his left shoulder and his leg. A short distance from where he lay, a small wave broke onto the sand. The water was grey, not sparkling blue, and the sky above him was overcast. The picture seemed to sway for a second before it righted itself. What had happened? He couldn't remember much. He had been going back to his seat on the plane when… his vision spun again. He forgot about finding out what had happened and tried to gingerly move his left arm to see what was wrong. He hissed in pain. There was a small wound near his shoulder joint, as if something had pierced right through his arm and gone out the other side. He grimaced as he saw that. He then looked at his leg. There was no blood that he could see; in fact his leg looked fine. He dismissed the pain he felt as a bad twist of a muscle or something. He ran his right hand through his hair and stopped when he felt a sticky substance there. He brought his hand back so that he could see it. The substance was blood. He must have hit his head somehow. That would probably explain why his vision had spun before. Something in the water caught his eye and pulled his attention away from his injuries. There was something floating in the water. When he realized what it was he almost vomited. The plane had crashed. He remembered now. He looked down and saw that he was wearing a life vest. How had he gotten that? He looked around the beach, trying vainly to find any trace of another survivor.

'If I survived then someone else must have too. Sora. Where is she? I know that I wasn't with her when the plane crashed but… she has to be alive. She has to be. I know that she is alive. She wouldn't abandon me,' he made sure that his eyes stayed away from the water. He didn't want to see anymore bodies. He just wanted to find Sora. Or any other survivors for that matter. He just didn't want to be alone.

She had been staring at the water for a while now. If she looked closely, she could just see the wing of the plane standing up straight in the water. For all she knew, Tai's body could be around there. She shook her head angrily. He wasn't dead. She knew that he wouldn't die without knowing whether she was okay or not. Tai was the leader of the digidestined- indestructible. He had faced Piedmon, Etemon and many other Digimon and he had survived. A plane crash was nothing compared to that. But still, it would be easier to believe if she could see him. She could sense that he was still alive- in a way- but she needed him to be there for her. She usually counted on him to come to her, but now she had to look for him.

'Come on Sora, pull yourself together. You won't accomplish anything just sitting here staring at a wing. You need to search for help,' she pulled her eyes away from the sinking plane, amazed at how much of her strength it took to do so. She had already checked herself for injuries- apart from a gash across her face and a sprained wrist she appeared to be fine. She set off down the beach, alternating between scanning the water and scanning the beach for survivors. After a few minutes however, she decided to just look on the beach. The water was full of floating bodies and wreckage from the plane. She couldn't stand looking at that. The beach was empty as far as she could see. She had no idea where she was. She remembered that the plane had been turning around a lot during the flight and so she didn't think that they had gotten as far as they were supposed to when the plane had crashed. In fact, she didn't think that they had even flown near China with the path that they had been flying. But then again, she didn't know anything about the flight path between Paris and Japan. She thought that she had experienced a lot in her life- she had seen her parents divorce, she had traveled to an entirely different world, she had faced the risk of losing her friends and family to various Digimon attacks and she had traveled around the world to stop a Digimon from destroying it. But throughout all of that she had never felt as helpless as she felt now. The plane had held hundreds of passengers. It was a big plane. And yet she couldn't see any survivors, only the dead, and she could do nothing to help anyone. At least before she had had her friends to help her. Now she was alone.

"When I get my hands on Matt…" she froze. The male voice continued to mutter on, but she couldn't hear what he was saying. She couldn't see him, but she could hear him. Her eyes desperately scanned the sand in front of her. Finally she spotted him. He had his back to the ocean and he seemed to be cradling his left arm. She sighed with relief. He really was alive. She made her way over to him, and his muttering seemed to grow louder, "… I never really wanted to come in the first place. But no… Matt had to persuade me and remind me that I was his best friend and so of course I had to do this favour for him. First Catherine and now this plane crash… Matt really does owe me one. He is so going to get it when we get back home…" She giggled. He was being so immature about the whole situation. It wasn't Matt's fault that the plane had crashed. Matt… it was funny. She hadn't thought about him ever since she had called him to let him know about the plane. Tai's head whipped around and he grinned weakly when he saw that she was really there.

"Oh my gosh… what happened to your arm?" all thoughts of Matt and her other friends at home disappeared when she looked at his wound. There seemed to be a lot of blood, but she didn't think that the wound was all that bad.

"I don't really know… I remember I was on my way back to my seat and then everything gets a little blurry, literally. All I really remember is that I couldn't get back to my seat for some reason; it was as if something was blocking my way. But I must have been conscious when we hit the water because I ended up on the beach and I have this life-vest thingy. What happened to your face?" she didn't answer right away. She ripped the sleeve of her jumper off and wrapped it around Tai's shoulder. He was lucky that whatever had pierced his arm had missed his bone; otherwise he would have been in a lot more pain than he seemed to be in.

"Oh… I dimly remember some shrapnel hitting me when I was in the water. Too many people inflated their life vests whilst they were waiting to hit the water. Some people near me… whilst I managed to swim away they were being pulled to the top of the water by their life vests and they were trapped by the roof of the plane. But I somehow managed to swim away from the wreckage, getting only a few cuts along the way," now that she thought about it, it wasn't very fair. She had just been lucky- her seat had been near the emergency door and the crew of the ship had just managed to open it before the crash. And from what she had heard from Tai, he was extremely lucky too- he didn't even know how he had escaped from the plane at all. Or so he said anyway. The point was that neither of them should have escaped if no one else had. What were the odds that the two digidestined on the plane, who had been sitting in completely different seats, survived whilst everyone else didn't?

"We were lucky. But we also have gotten used to thinking under stressful conditions. In the Digital World we faced death many times- more than we probably should have, but it's not my fault that I was too headstrong back then- and so we instinctively acted in a way which would save us. I remember Izzy telling me once that we had developed something like a sixth sense about danger, and that this sense could possibly save us in a life or death situation. He showed me some equations that supposedly proved it, but I never really believed him until today. That reminds me… why is it so light?" she frowned. Their flight had left in the evening from Paris. When it had crashed, the sky had been dark. She remembered coming to shore, and she knew that she had fallen unconscious for a while, but it could not have taken this long. The answer was flashing at her, but she couldn't form it into words.

"We're not on our flight path. We must be further East than we're supposed to be, somehow," she finally managed to say, "I thought the sky was dark when we crashed but… it was just clouds. We're to the East of Japan and not to the West like we're supposed to be." He just stared at her, looking very confused. "Paris is to the West of Japan, right? Well, we technically should have flown over China to get back to Japan, meaning that we would come from the West. But now, for some reason I don't understand, we are further east. As you know, the Sun rises in the East and therefore the countries which are further to the east are ahead in time. As it is probably around noon here now, I'm guessing that we are a considerable distance further east than we are supposed to be." Now Tai understood.

"But if we're not on our flight path, how are they going to find us?" she had no idea. She continued to wrap his wound in silence, praying for a miracle.

Everyone had now heard the news and they had gathered at Matt's apartment to watch the news for any more developments.

"…and now for the latest update into the 747 plane crash. It has been found that the plane did not indeed crash on the coast of China. It has been released by the airline that they lost the position of the plane shortly after it took-off from Paris airport. They were still in touch with the pilots of the plane, and so the airline thought that the plane was still on its original flight path. However, there seems to be no trace of the missing plane. The airline admits that they made a huge mistake by allowing the plane to bypass one of the beacons on the flight path, but other than that they have no comments…" Mimi reached over and turned the television off. She couldn't handle watching it anymore, and from what she could see, no one else could handle it either.

"I can't believe this. It was only supposed to be a week's holiday in Paris and now it has turned into a huge mess. This is all my fault… I should have cancelled my band meeting or tried harder to reschedule it or something," Matt had been blaming himself for what had happened too much and Mimi was sick of it. It was ten o'clock in the morning, one and a half hours after Matt had found out about the crash, and every chance he had gotten to blame himself, he had taken.

"Matt if you blame yourself one more time I will throw something at you! You could not do anything about this. Trust me- if this had been your fault I would have told you by now. But it isn't. Believe it or not, these things do happen. All you did was try to give your two best friends a fun week in Paris. If you want to blame anyone for this, then blame those stupid highjackers for bringing a gun onto the plane," her outburst didn't seem to have any effect on her friend. He just bowed his head and looked even guiltier, if that was possible. T.K was watching his brother worriedly. Kari was next to T.K, staring at the ground. She was extremely pale at the moment, and that made her puffy red eyes obvious. Mimi shook her head, angry at herself for thinking of appearances at a time like this.

"It's not your fault Matt. I knew that something bad was going to happen on this holiday when you first mentioned it to Tai. And Tai knew too… remember? He came home from soccer early that day with a bad feeling. We just assumed that it was because of the Digital World but… we couldn't have known at the time that this would happen," Mimi hated seeing Kari so depressed. The little girl- although she was not all that little anymore- was supposed to be happy and filled with light all of the time. With depression came darkness and it just did not suit the girl at all.

"Hey they could still be alive you know. If the airline doesn't know where the plane crashed, then they are looking for survivors in the wrong place. Tai and Sora might still be alive!" naturally it was T.K who brought this point up. But none of the others really thought it was possible. The plane had crashed hours ago. The likelihood of the two of them surviving in the water for that long was very slim. Both Tai and Sora were very athletic, but the water would have been freezing. It was winter in the northern hemisphere after all, and that meant cold weather and cold water. Izzy didn't have the heart to tell that to T.K though.

"If they don't know where the plane is though, then they don't know where it crashed and so therefore they won't know where to search for survivors," he felt that that was a nicer way to say it. At least then he wasn't completely crushing T.K's hope.

"Oh… I guess you're right. But I still won't give up on them completely," he desperately needed to hold onto his hope. It was a part of who he was. He held the crest of Hope- he was supposed to be hopeful whilst everyone else despaired. He felt that it was his duty. It also helped that there was a voice in the back of his head that told him that everything was going to be alright someday. It was the 'someday' part that worried him.

"Okay, so the plane was high jacked at about 4:30 this morning, right? And there was a gunshot. But if the high jackers had only just revealed themselves, then why did the plane crash at the moment it did?" Ken didn't want to think too deeply about the deaths of his friends, so he decided to focus on details instead. Details were cold, hard facts- there was no time to be emotional when dealing with details. Joe and Yolie seemed to be trying the same tactic.

"Maybe the pilots heard the shot and thought that it would be better to crash into the ocean than into a building or something like that?" Joe suggested, but the in-training doctor didn't really sound convinced about that. In truth, he was struggling to even think. Images of his two friends kept on popping into his head. He deeply regretted not being there when they left now. He should have gotten the day off work. His boss had told him that he worked too much, and had even offered him a day off, but he hadn't taken it because he had thought that he needed the money. He should have taken the day off.

"Why didn't Tai want to go Kari?" Matt asked suddenly, looking up for the first time in a while, "He had always wanted to go to Paris and yet it took a lot of persuasion to get him to go. I know that you know the reason why." Kari didn't know what to say. She wasn't eager to betray her brother's trust, even though she knew that he was probably dead. She thought back to the morning he had left.

"He told me the morning that they left… He told me to tell you not to feel guilty," Matt looked surprised.

"He said that?" he whispered. Kari nodded.

"He thought that it was just his imagination. But he said that if anything went wrong on the trip, you weren't allowed to feel guilty. I don't think that this was quite what my brother was thinking of, but it fits one of his reasons I guess. He had many reasons for not wanting to go, but he wanted to go anyway, if you know what I mean. And he was having a great time the last time I spoke to him. I'm sorry… maybe I'll be able to answer your question properly when I have gotten used to it," there was no need to ask what she meant. She needed to get used to the fact that her brother was probably dead before she could betray him. Matt understood. He felt a lot better. Tai at least, didn't blame him for what had happened. It was such a relief. But at the same time, he realized that Tai would never be around to forgive him ever again, or to pull a trick on him, or do anything. It was so frustrating. He just wanted them back…

"What do we do?" his quiet question surprised her. She was so used to him taking control that questions like that almost seemed impossible, "We have to set up some kind of a camp, but how do we go about it? We need wood for a fire, some sort of food and fresh water and possibly something that we can make into a shelter." She was relieved when she figured out that he was talking to himself. She guessed that it was because he always organized things like this. She herself didn't really know where to start.

"What do you need me to do? I mean… with your shoulder injury you can't carry anything around. Do you want me to search for firewood?" he glanced down at his injured shoulder and scowled at it.

"Yes, you'll probably need to get the firewood until my shoulder is fixed. But once it's fixed I can do that. Our main problem is food. This island only seems to have grass and strange plants," she almost laughed. Almost. As her mother ran a flower shop, Sora had studied various flowers over her lifetime. Her mother had recently found an interest in plants which could also double as food. And Sora had recognized some of the plants on the island to be sources of food.

"I think that I can get us some food, but these 'strange plants' will be the source of it. Besides, we know how to fish, right? We are next to the ocean, so we can catch fish for food as well."

"Well, what about water then? We don't have any fresh water," he looked determined to prove that he was right. This time she did laugh. He could be so cute when he was stubbornly trying to prove a point. He was confused by her laughter.

"Why don't you go looking for a spring further inland whilst I gather some firewood and some food? We've been lucky this far- I think it's time to see how far our luck holds. I bet that you find some water," he didn't say anything- he just stood and limped away into the bush. She frowned. He hadn't told her that he had a leg injury as well. She just sighed however and stood herself. She had to concentrate to get the right mix of plants otherwise they would starve on this little island before they could be rescued…

To be continued…

Litanya: I hope you enjoyed the chapter… sorry if it a little confusing. I kind of dug myself into a hole in the previous chapter as I forgot that the distance between China and Japan is relatively small. And as for how the plane got to the East of Japan… well… go figure. The plane took a straighter path than it was supposed to because it missed the position beacon. Therefore it flew straight over Japan without realizing it and ended up to the east. And please don't tell me that that isn't possible- I watch a show that investigates plane crashes and this kind of thing happened in 1994 or 1995. Anyway, please review!