Disclaimer: Advantage is only taken of the characters while a slurry of lawyers are not looking this way. I don't own them.

Miyako help up the notepad to her face. Next to her, Takeru was calling instructions to Patamon, a good ten feet below.

"That's it, fill it with water!"

Patamon rolled his eyes as he dunked the beaker in the murky saltwater below him for the sixth time. He flew back to his partner and handed him the water, which Takeru took with a gloved hand.

"What are you doing this for anyway?" Poromon asked

He hovered over the girl's shoulders, looking at Miyako's notes. He couldn't understand anything of it, but he did not despair in learning to read this human stuff one day.

"It's for a science project, whatever that's supposed to be," Patamon answered.

Takeru was deeply focused on dividing the newly collected samples between several smaller test-tubes. Miyako, in the meantime, was still scribbling furiously away at the notepad.

"Science? Oh... That can't be good..." Poromon commented.

To the spherical ball of feathers, "science" typically involved Miyako destroying something in the most unexpected way. Her hair still had not completely recovered from her last chemistry homework. Takeru looked over to her.

"Thank again, Miyako. I don't know how If I could manage this without your help," he said.

Takeru was working on a project for the Intercollegiate Science Fair and had requested the older girl's help in organizing his data report.

"No problem," she answered dreamily. "Besides, Ken will be participating too, right?"

Takeru sweatdropped at that comment. Miyako was still as infatuated as ever with the boy genius who would undoubtedly be participating. She had, of course, latched onto the occasion to try and catch his attention.

"He's probably going to win, as usual," Poromon added. "He seems to win everything he chooses to get involved into."

"Hey! I can still hope, can't I?" Takeru protested weakly.

"Sure, you can. We wouldn't want you any other way!" Miyako cheered him up.

Takeru hadn't even expected his project to be selected in the first place. Japanese was his best subject, not chemistry! He shook his head. Unfortunately, the movement caused his hands to shake and a quantity of water to spill to the ground. He cursed under is breath.

"Why are we taking water here, anyway?" Patamon asked.

"Yeah," Poromon added, "wouldn't it be much easier to just turn the tap and take water from there?"

"I told you already, Patamon. That wouldn't really make for interesting results since we do know what's in tap water," Takeru sighed.

"So what's down there that wouldn't be in tap water?"

Patamon had never quite grasped why, in the Real World, some water was supposed to be drinkable (a totally new concept for him), and some not.

"Well, that, to begin with," Takeru retorted, pointing to a huge sewer opening into the dock's side.

Patamon stared at the sewage slowly dripping into the bay, then began to fly around in circle, panicking.

"Yuck! Yuck! Yuck! I touched that! I touched it! Give me soap, water, a wet towelette ,something!"

Takeru, Poromon and Miyako stared at the flying digimon. Patamon eventually stopped long enough to glare at them.

"What?"

"You..."

"Of course I can recognize a sewer when I see one!" Patamon protested loudly. "These things are full of Numemon! Don't you remember?"

Takeru's memory was wrenched back to his first adventure in the Digital World and Factory Town. Andromon had showed them a way out through sewers that did, indeed, turn out to be inhabited by dozens of Numemon. He chuckled.

"Sorry. Sometimes I forget there are things that actually are alike between our worlds."

At this point, Miyako turned toward an alley.

"Guys? I think someone is coming that way..."

The sound of very rapid footsteps was rapidly compounded by a dust cloud as a silhouette swooshed past them. The turn of event left Miyako blinking as her beret, which had been carried away in the sudden burst of wind, toppled to the ground. Takeru cursed loudly as the runner toppled the test-tube holders and the beaker, sending his carefully measured samples on the cold concrete. Patamon pressed his nub arms against his ears to avoid hearing the words both the boy and his mothers had forbidden him to use.

"Was that... Daisuke?" Miyako asked.

"If you ask me, the blue giggling Digimon on the shoulder is a dead giveaway," Poromon answered.

"He didn't even notice us," Miyako observed.

She bent down and collected her hat.

"Could have told you that myself..." Takeru said between his teeth as he collected the fallen glassware.

"What is he doing here?" Patamon asked.

"No idea..." Miyako answered.

She looked at the way the boy was headed (or in this case, headed and full-bodied) and her eyes widened. Daisuke was resolutely climbing down a maintenance ladder to the sewer opening.

"Takeru, quick! We have to follow him! Whatever he wants to do, it can't end well!"

She grabbed his arm and pulled the protesting boy up.

"Miyako! And my project? It's not like Daisuke is going to cause much trouble down there."

She looked back at him with a raised eyebrows.

"Takeru, it's Daisuke we're talking about," Poromon voiced his partner's concerns.

Takeru sweatdropped.

"Maybe you're right..."

Miyako was already resolutely walking away from him. He shook his head, shoved the material in his bag and went after her, reaching the girl just as she started climbing down ladder steps embedded in the concrete.

"And my project?" he asked tentatively.

She made a thumbs up at him.

"I promise you we'll get down to it as soon as we're done sorting whatever Daisuke's got himself into."

They eventually got down into the sewer's entrance. It was a large and damp storm drain that could easily have held Ikkakumon inside. The darkness was only mitigated by the occasional light let down through street drains. There was no apparent trace of Daisuke save for footsteps in the slime covering the ground.

"I wish I'd taken my D-Terminal..." Miyako commented as she advanced in the darkness.