AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Welcome back! Hooray for anything less than a ten-month break between chapters.

I have no idea what my posting schedule is going to be like for the new few months while things continue to settle. I'm hoping to get back in to a regular routine eventually, but for now it's going to be more of an 'as and when' kind of strategy.

Thank you all so much for all the love on the last chapter, and I hope you enjoy today's update!

TRIED AND TESTED

Koushiro stifled a yawn in to his fist as he blinked against the burning in his dry eyes. He reached absently for his drink only to pick up the empty glass, just as he had every time for the last hour. Hydration was important, but so was this.

When Taichi had told them that Hikari was missing, the room had descended in to a sort of calm chaos. The rage and despair from the events of the afternoon quickly turned in to a single-minded determination to just do something to try and get her back, with everyone talking over each other in an attempt to say something useful, and after Daisuke had suggested breaking in to the school to use the lab in the computer, Iori had quietly pointed out that without knowing where in the Digital World to even start looking they could be putting themselves at a disadvantage. All eyes had turned to Koushiro then; he still hadn't cracked the code of the Digital Gate, but he had a map.

He'd quickly claimed the kitchen table, unpacking his laptop and his power supply and setting to work. He'd started with a high-level scan, skimming the surface of the Digital World in the hopes of a quick result, and when that hadn't worked he'd been forced to enhance the search. If Hikari had been kidnapped by the Kaiser, and if the Kaiser hadn't yet sent any kind of ransom or invited them in to some kind of trap, then he likely didn't want her to be found.

The problem with enhancing the search, however, was that he had to start searching from scratch. Each square of the map was examined in detail before the search moved on to the next. Progress was slow – much slower than he would have liked – but it had given him time to work on other things. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose before bringing up another screen, and his fingers resumed their furious tapping.

"How's it going?" Taichi's voice was thick and tense as he leant against the counter that divided the kitchen from the lounge. The early hours of the morning did not suit him, and already Koushiro could see red rings around his eyes. Hiroaki and Natsuko had set out bedding for them to crash in Yamato and Takeru's room, using every ounce of available space, but Taichi had refused to be anywhere but near Koushiro, and Koushiro refused to be anywhere but near his laptop (which was not allowed in the bedroom so that Takeru could get some much-needed rest). Some of the pillows and blankets had been dragged on to the couch, but Taichi had done little more than sit on them for several hours, lost in thought.

The others had gradually left in ones and twos. Iori was the first to leave after receiving an anxious call from his mother. He had made several humble apologies for Taichi and had slipped from the apartment with Miyako who promised to return after she was done helping Iori with his alibi. Jou left shortly afterwards, apologising profusely to Taichi.

"I have tutoring early tomorrow morning, and I still haven't finished the class work from last week." Taichi had forced a smile and nodded his understanding. Jou had pulled Yamato and his parents to one side on his way out, handing them a small box of medication for Takeru and a slip of paper with his brother's phone number on it in case there were any complications. Natsuko and Hiroaki had bid them all a quiet goodnight soon after – they both had work in the morning, and neither could afford to take the day off. Taichi had caught Yamato hovering between the lounge and the bedroom sometime later, and he'd told Yamato to go watch over his brother – an order that was gratefully received.

Sora had been the next to leave. It was a little after midnight when she finally pried herself from Mimi's tearful clutches to join them in the kitchen. She bustled around for several minutes, making one last round of tea and serving up one last plate of biscuits before gathering her things.

"I'm going to take Mimi back to her hotel and stay with her tonight," she said in a low voice. "She shouldn't be here, but I don't want her to be by herself." Taichi had nodded in understanding.

"The last train's gone," he said absently. Sora allowed herself a little smile, and her trembling hand lingered on Taichi's elbow just long enough. He gave a smile of his own, though it was paper thin, and he placed his hand on top of hers. "Are you gonna be okay?" He wasn't asking about them getting to the hotel, and Sora knew it. She gave a paper-thin smile and took a deep breath.

"Mimi's paying for a taxi."

Miyako returned moments after their silent departure, her arms shaking beneath bursting carrier bags. She struggled in to the apartment and shrugged the bags to the ground in an uproar of rustling and crinkling that thundered through the silent apartment. Koushiro winced as Miyako glanced around the room. "What happened to everyone?"

Koushiro quickly brought her up to speed on who had ended up where while Taichi rifled through the bags. He pulled out a pack of chewy energy candy and collapsed back on to the couch, filling the lounge with the smell of saccharine-sweet citrus as he unwrapped several of the candies and popped them in his mouth together. Koushiro tabbed back to the map and tried not to sigh; his progress was barely visible. He stood and stretched, rolling his shoulders and shivering as his spine popped in several places.

"Are you sure there isn't anything else that might help?" Koushiro asked as he made his way towards the i-Mart bags, hobbled by pins and needles in his feet. He leant on the back of the couch and swiped a yellow candy from Taichi's hand. "Anything at all? Even something small…" Taichi shifted, picking another piece of candy from the pile. He turned it over in his fingers, scowling at it for several moments before looking up at Koushiro almost apprehensively.

"I'm going to say something," he began slowly, "and we're all going to agree that I'm not a crazy person." He eyed Miyako who nodded vigorously around her strawberry juice pouch. Taichi curled his fingers around the candy. "Hikari flickered."

Miyako choked, dribbling juice down her chin and onto her pale shirt, and Taichi shot her a fierce glare. She quickly set her drink down on the table and threw up her hands.

"You're not crazy!" she spluttered, coughing and wiping her chin on the back of her sleeve. "I saw it too!" Taichi's eyes narrowed.

"You weren't there-"

"Not today. Yesterday, when Mimi took us all shopping, I saw it. I thought I was just overtired or maybe I'd imagined it."

"You say she flickered, what did it look like exactly?" Koushiro asked. Taichi and Miyako shared a long look, as though each were waiting for the other to speak first. Miyako was the first to look away, turning back to Koushiro with a deep frown.

"Like… Like a bad TV signal," she offered, glancing back at Taichi who looked – if anything – relieved. He nodded slightly and Miyako turned back to Koushiro. "She kinda… lost her colour? She looked kinda like my grandma's old TV, her black and white one, and then she got all fuzzy like… well she flickered."

"Like static," Taichi added quietly. Koushiro helped himself to a protein bar and a bottle of Oolong tea before sitting down beside Taichi. Flickering wasn't something he'd come across before, at least not that he could remember, and yet… He drummed his fingers against his knee, wishing he could figure out whatever was nagging at the back of his mind. Miyako sat up a little taller.

"Does that mean something?" she asked.

"Almost definitely," he answered, "but I can't figure out what." Miyako's shoulders slumped, Koushiro's computer whirred, and Taichi clenched his jaw to stifle a yawn. Koushiro stood and patted Taichi's shoulder. "You should sleep."

"So should you."

"I'm used to staying up all night with my computer." It earned a half-smile in response and Koushiro nodded to Miyako before returning to his chair. Taichi popped the last candy in to his mouth and slumped against the arm of the couch, his head leaning heavily against his hand. Koushiro checked the map again and stifled a sigh; a handful of squares had been searched in his absence, but the progress was barely visible.

"Can I help?" Miyako asked quietly. She was standing by the counter, glancing at the screen, and Koushiro motioned for her to join him. If anyone understood computers enough for him to talk to, it was Miyako. Though they'd never really gotten to know each other particularly well through the school's Computer Club, Koushiro had seen enough of her work to know that she certainly understood a lot more than her peers.

"There's not really much we can do but wait right now," he said as she pulled up a chair beside him. She offered him her packet of pocky but he politely waved them away. "I've managed to isolate the signature of the digivices and D-3s – and the code for the terminals too – but it meant I had to restart the search in order to include those variables." He turned his laptop towards her, allowing her to lean in towards the screen, and he saw her eyes glance down to the progress bar.

"How long has it been running?"

"Since just after you left." She let out a low sigh and rocked back in her chair with a frown.

"Is there anything we can do to make it go faster?" she asked. Koushiro shook his head.

"I've tried, but nothing's working. Although – see here?" He pointed to the south of the island where a cluster of terminals had found each other and were sharing their power to enhance the search. "When they join together they can search faster, but it's still slow going." Miyako leant forwards again, holding her chin thoughtfully.

"What if we re-route the search through this terminal here so that it can spread out and pull on these ones. Wouldn't that be faster?"

"In that area, yes. If Hikari was up here-" He pointed further up the map. "It would take longer to find her. Without having any kind of starting point, it was too great of a risk. I had to run the search across the map all at once. By the time it's collated all of the available gates, the search will be a lot faster, but I'm sure we're going to find Hikari before then." Miyako nodded, and Koushiro stole a glance at Taichi. His head had lolled forwards, and he was snoring lightly against his wrist. Koushiro sighed; some rest was better than none.

"Can we search for the Digimentals using this?" she asked. Koushiro nodded.

"I managed to take some readings from the Digimental of Friendship, but I'm not sure if they're unique to the crest or not. It's hard to tell when I only have one point of reference. I added the data in to the search parameters, but the only way we'll know for sure is if we find another one."

"Didn't Yamato mention something about another one in the east somewhere?" Koushiro nodded, glancing over his shoulder to the hallway.

"He did," he answered, "but without knowing where he got the information, I don't know how much I trust it. It could be a trap." Miyako hummed and nodded, still staring at the map. After a moment she frowned and reached forwards to point at the screen, her finger hovering over a portion of the old map where a crisp black square kept shifting from black to grey and white, its signal distorted and bleeding in to the squares around it.

"What's that?" she asked.

"If only I knew…" he answered. "That's data from the old map. Sometimes I'd get squares like this, but there was no way to tell exactly what the search was picking up, and no way to tell where they would appear next. There are a few of them, see? Here and here. But there's nothing out of the ordinary there."

"How do you know?"

"We've been through areas like this," Koushiro answered. "Not these sites specifically, but areas of the map that looked just like this when we were there, and I couldn't find anything unusual. It might just be a natural fluctuation of the Digital World." Miyako turned to him with a confused frown and Koushiro nodded. "Ah, well, the Digital World is a sentient entity, just like the digimon who inhabit it. It's quite possible that these areas are… thoughts. That the Digital World is just processing the data in some way." The answer didn't seem to satisfy Miyako who sat back with a thoughtful frown, folding her arms and staring at the screen. "Why do you ask?"

"Because they're flickering just like Hikari did." Koushiro frowned and drummed his fingers lightly against the table. Perhaps he had missed something… He was limited to running searches against known variables, and whilst he was certain he understood a fair part of the Digital World he would never assume that he knew everything about it. But how did you find something when you weren't even sure what you were looking for?

"There's not much we can do from this side," he relented. "Maybe we'll find something in the search results that could help, but otherwise I don't know what else we can do without being inside the Digital World." Miyako let out a quiet huff.

"Reckon anyone would notice if we stole a computer from the lab?" There was an exhaustion in her eyes that suggested she was only half-joking. He offered her a tired half-smile in return and she finished her juice pack with a loud slurp. Taichi murmured in his sleep. Miyako rose from her chair and picked up the assorted candy wrappers and empty bottles, taking them in to the kitchen, and Koushiro leant back in his chair. He pulled his laptop closer and gave the patch of static one last hard look before sighing in defeat and switching windows again.

"What's that?" Miyako's voice made him jump (for someone so loud, she really could sneak around when she wanted to). She leant in closer, eyes scanning the code, and after a moment her face lit up with a gasp. "Is this what I think it is?" Koushiro nodded.

"It's so close to being completed, but I just can't figure out what I'm missing. Here, look." Because if anyone could help him, it was probably Miyako. With several keystrokes he closed the statement and ran the programme. Miyako sucked in a breath as the Digital Gate unfurled before them, only to sigh as the connection fizzled and flickered before flashing a single word across the screen: ERROR

"It's better than nothing?" she offered meekly. She gestured towards the laptop. "May I?" It was a struggle to say yes, but he grit his teeth and relinquished control, tilting the laptop towards her. She handed him a fresh bottle of oolong tea before settling back in to the chair and bringing the laptop closer. She closed the gate and opened the code, her eyes skimming across the screen as she flicked through the long strings of data.

It was slow going at first. Every few lines of code, Miyako was forced to ask Koushiro to explain a particular phrase or statement, which inevitably led to a discussion about the difficulties of trying to create code that connected to a sentient data source. Koushiro tried his best to explain in simple terms, but when it became clear that even the early hours of the morning would not stop Miyako from understanding the complex nature of the Digital World he quickly allowed himself to get more technical, finding a strange sense of pride when Miyako was able to keep up.

Eventually she started working. At first she started by testing a few ideas to make sure she had understood, deliberately breaking and fixing lines of code to make sure they behaved like she expected them to. Then she started experimenting; tackling some of the parts Koushiro was less certain of. Koushiro sat back, awed and unnerved by the relentless fury that gleamed in her eyes as she picked up steam, her thoughts spilling on to the screen in stark black and white. She was logical, but also impulsive. Where Koushiro might have paused to consider consequences, detailing every potential outcome and its ramifications, Miyako seemed to code with her gut, latching on to her first thought and running with whatever emerged from her fingertips. When Miyako finally came to a grinding halt, coding and re-coding the same condition over and over again, Koushiro gently took back control and carried them through the block until it was her turn to do the same for him.

Three o'clock found Miyako snoozing against her hand, glasses askew, while Koushiro tried to isolate the conditions required by the gate for a successful connection. Four o'clock found them both rustling through the remaining iMart snacks with one eye on Taichi who had fallen in to a fitful sleep. Five o'clock saw Koushiro snapped from his waking dreams by a bright flash of light and the scraping of the chair over the kitchen tiles. He sat up and blinked sleep from his eyes to find Miyako sitting haphazardly in the chair some distance away from the table, her hair wild and her glasses askew and her exhaustion lost behind a victorious grin.

"Wha' happened?" he slurred. He grimaced and cleared his throat as Miyako gave a breathless giggle.

"It works!" The words banished any trace of sleep from Koushiro's veins and replaced them with a frantic electricity that jolted his heart.

"Wh-what? You tried it?! We didn't know it was safe! What if something had happened to you?"

"But it didn't!" she countered with a beaming grin. Somewhere down the hall an alarm began to chirp and Miyako laughed again. "We did it!"

They looked through the code one last time, though before they were halfway through Koushiro found the numbers blurring together. It was hard to concentrate. Koushiro was dimly aware of movement down the hall – doors opening and closing – and soon gentle footsteps approaching.

"Have you two slept at all?" Koushiro slowly turned away to find Natsuko staring at them both, her face coloured with motherly disapproval. Koushiro tried to look sheepish, only to end up stifling a yawn in to his fist. Natsuko sighed. "I thought not. Go and lie down for an hour. Hiroaki and I will keep an eye on your search for now, and we'll wake you up before we go to work. Just tell me what we should look out for." Koushiro wanted to object, but it wasn't as though he was leaving the search entirely unmanned. And he did need sleep. So did Miyako, judging by the way her head kept lolling forwards as she carefully scooped Poromon in to her arms. And so he conceded and switched back to the map. More of the terminals were connected now and the search was sweeping through squares faster than before, but still no sign of Hikari.

After telling Natusko what would happen if Hikari was found (and after she'd carefully repeated it all back to him), Koushiro followed Miyako down the hall to Yamato and Takeru's bedroom where they found two small camping beds waiting for them. Miyako collapsed heavily at the foot of Takeru's bed, asleep before she could remove her glasses. Koushiro sat down on the other, rubbing at his temples with a deep sigh. Blankets rustled nearby.

"Did you find anything?" Yamato asked quietly. Koushiro glanced at him from the corner of his eye.

"Yes and no," he murmured. "The good news is that the Digital Gate seems to be functioning now, although I'd like to run a few more tests before I trust it entirely."

"But still no sign of Hikari." It wasn't a question. Koushiro shook his head.

"Your parents are keeping an eye on the search for now, and then we'll take back over when they go to work. Your mum said she would wake us if it finds anything." Yamato nodded.

"And Taichi?"

"Asleep on the sofa. Finally gave in around three… maybe closer to four." Yamato grimaced a little. He glanced over to Takeru, still sound asleep, and then down to Miyako, drooling in to Poromon's fur. Yamato pulled back his blankets and sat on the edge of his bed.

"I'll go watch the search and keep an eye on Taichi," he said. "You should get some sleep. If we haven't found her signal by the time everyone's awake, we should spread out and search."

"The Digital World is so big, we could easily miss her-"

"It's better than doing nothing," Yamato snapped, though he quickly grimaced. "Sorry." They fell in a heavy silence. Yamato balled his fists in to his bedsheets and glared at the carpet, his shoulders shaking. Koushiro stifled another yawn.

"Sometimes doing nothing is the hardest thing," he said quietly. "Sitting and waiting… it's awful." Yamato reached out to take his digivice from beside Takeru's D-3, curling his fingers around it and staring down at it.

"It makes me feel so useless. So… powerless," Yamato murmured. Koushiro nodded, all-too-familiar with the feeling. Yamato picked up Takeru's D-3, holding it beside his digivice and glancing between the two. He turned the D-3 over in his hand, rubbing his thumb over the smooth green casing with a deep frown. "Sometimes…" He trailed off, still turning the D-3 over and over. The ticking of the clock beside the lamp echoed through the silence.

"Sometimes?" Koushiro asked. Yamato lifted his head, staring at Koushiro with a strange expression. After a moment he set Takeru's D-3 back on the nightstand and stood.

"I'll go check on the search," he said. "You should sleep." Koushiro wanted to ask, but he also wanted to sleep, and so he allowed Yamato to keep his silence. He gave Yamato a nod before collapsing heavily on to the pillows behind him and sinking in to sleep.

It had been almost ten by the time everyone had regrouped at the apartment. Taichi had woken up somewhere around nine, and his restless night had left him tired and impatient. Koushiro had spent the morning with Miyako at his laptop, analysing the coding to make sure it was safe enough for them to use. Miyako said it was, loudly and often, and it was a struggle to keep Taichi on this side of it. As it was, the gate on Koushiro's laptop could only be opened by D-3s – much like the gate in the computer lab – leaving Taichi unable to take himself through it.

(And Yamato knew that he would if he could. Partner or no partner. Kaiser or no Kaiser. Yamato would do the same if it were Takeru missing.)

Sora and Mimi were the last to arrive, as Sora diverted past the Yagami apartment to take care of Taichi's mother before taking a cab. Taichi was a mess when they arrived, and Yamato pretended not to notice how tightly he clung to Sora's hand. They crowded around the kitchen table, staring hopefully at Koushiro who checked the search again and shook his head.

"Still no signal," he said softly.

"Then we go in and search for ourselves," Taichi said firmly. Yamato saw Koushiro bite back an objection, instead choosing to busy himself with running final checks on the Digital Gate. "We should split up. We'll cover more ground."

The groups were thrown together quickly. Miyako was quick to point out that they would need at least one D-3 per group to get them through the gates, which would limit the number of groups they could make – especially when Taichi took one look at Takeru with his arm still strapped in a sling and told him to stay behind.

"I'm coming with you," Takeru argued firmly.

"No, you're not," Taichi argued tersely. "You're already hurt, Takeru. You need to rest."

"Besides," Sora added, placing a gentle hand on Taichi's elbow and offering Takeru a motherly smile, "someone should probably stay here and keep an eye on the search. If we're using Koushiro's laptop to go through the gate, then we won't be able to take it with us. If Hikari's signal appears while we're all in the Digital World, then we won't know about it unless someone is here to send a message."

"And you have a D-Terminal," Miyako added. "If we're all splitting up, then you can e-mail us to make sure we all get the message." It seemed to convince him a little, though it took Taichi firmly squeezing his uninjured shoulder before Takeru offered a silent nod of acceptance.

"I'll stay too," Yamato said firmly. At Taichi's hard stare, he added: "Someone's gotta make sure that Takeru actually stays here and doesn't come through after you." Taichi's expression was torn, and he glanced between Yamato and Takeru several times before smothering it with a nod. Only then did Yamato let out the breath he'd been holding.

They made contact with Gabumon and the others, finding them at a gate not far from where the Digimental of Friendship had been found. Taichi, Daisuke and Veemon would head East, making their way towards a gate towards the coast, and Yamato didn't object when Gabumon volunteered to go with them. Iori, Armadimon, Jou, Gomamon, Koushiro and Tentomon would head West towards a stretch of the map without Dark Towers where Tentomon and Gomamon would be able to evolve and cover more ground. With no partners to meet up with, Sora and Mimi suggested that they go with Miyako and Hawkmon to one of the gates in the opposite corner of the map and start the search from there. Koushiro gave Takeru and Yamato an overview of map, showing them how to connect to a specific terminal and describing what to look out for, and then everyone was gone.

Takeru took the seat infront of the computer, focusing intently at the map. He didn't even look away when Patamon burrowed slowly into his lap, though he did spare a hand to scratch his partner absently behind his ear. Yamato leant against the counter, watching his brother closely.

Shuu had been vague on the details of Takeru's injury, saying little more than that it wasn't as bad as it looked. He had sat Takeru on the edge of their pristine bathtub to sterilise and stitch the wound with a pale Jou hovering nervously over his shoulder ("You should probably learn this at some point," Shuu had said, motioning his brother closer to explain the basics of suturing a wound). It left no room for Yamato who had lingered in the doorway, his eyes fixed on Takeru's hand – the only visible part of his brother – which was clenching his shorts in a white-knuckled grip. Eventually Shuu had stepped back, and the ugly gash had been hidden beneath a pristine white dressing. Shuu had popped two pills out of a large box and handed them to Takeru with a glass of water before handing the rest to Yamato.

"No more than two every four hours," Shuu had said firmly while Jou fixed Takeru's arm in place with a sling, "and no more than three times a day."

Yamato fingered the box in his pocket. It would be another couple of hours until Takeru could take his next dose, and already he was beginning to look pale. Yamato was grateful now that Taichi had ordered Takeru to stay behind; there was a fine film of sweat forming over his brow, and a twitch in his neck from where he'd been clenching his jaw against the pain. The dressing had come away from his neck slightly, allowing the smallest sliver of crimson to peek over the top, and Yamato felt his blood boil at the sight of it. He curled his fingers in to fists, trying to stay calm for Takeru's sake. His knuckles still smarted from where they'd landed on Daisuke's jaw, and if it hadn't been for Hikari's disappearance hanging over them he couldn't have been certain he wouldn't have punched the boy again if given half a chance.

"You should get some rest," Yamato said. "I'll take over here if you want to go lie down-"

"I'm all right." His tone was gentle but firm, and his eyes never left the screen. Yamato was about to press the issue when the computer let out a series of shrill beeping. Takeru sat up taller. "Yamato, look." Yamato was by his side in an instant, eyes following Takeru's finger as he pointed to the screen. In the far right corner of the screen a network of terminals had connected together, and in their centre – faint but undeniably there – was a blinking pink dot.

"That's gotta be her," Takeru said firmly. Patamon perked up, resting his chin on the table as Yamato took control of the laptop. Takeru had been asleep during Koushiro's rapid-fire briefing, and whilst Yamato couldn't say he'd understood all of it, he'd made sure to memorise how to open the gate and set a destination. Click on the sector to zoom in. Select the nearest terminal. Open the gate.

It unfurled in a series of windows and blocks that looked out of place on their kitchen table. It took a moment for the gate to load the area preview, and Yamato waited with baited breath, terrified of what they might find. To his surprise (and simultaneous relief and disappointment) the area appeared normal – or, as normal as things could be in the Digital World. An ocean of emerald grass dancing in the wind beneath an azure sky, with a line of distant weatherworn cliffs to separate the two.

"We should let the others know," Yamato murmured. To his surprise, Takeru shook his head.

"They're too far away. Look." And Takeru quickly pointed out just how spread out the others had become. It would take some time for them to make their way to Hikari's location. Takeru unclipped his D-3 from his belt. "Let's g- Yamato!" Yamato snatched Takeru's hand, veering it firmly away from the screen.

"We need to wait for the others," he said firmly. Takeru frowned.

"You're only saying that because of my shoulder," he said, twisting his arm free.

"We don't know why Hikari went there or what's waiting for us-"

"Really, Yamato, I'm fine-"

"-it's too dangerous to run in with only one digimon-"

"Digi-Port Open!"

Takeru's good arm had snaked around Yamato's, and the kitchen disappeared around them. The bright light of the digital gate gave way to bright sunlight and Yamato's skin was aflame. He swore and threw his arm up – the biting wind was tossing sand and grit from the grass and hurtling it through the air. From the corner of his eye he saw Takeru snatch Patamon out of an updraft that threatened to toss him in to the sky.

"Takeru!" he scolded. Takeru only grinned at him from behind his elbow.

"You would have done the same for me!" he called back. Yamato ground his teeth, unable to deny it.

"Takeru!" Patamon squeaked. "I can get you above the storm so we can fly closer to HIkari's signal!" Takeru glanced at his D-3 before giving his partner a firm nod. With a grimace he released Patamon, lifting his good arm high in to the air as Patamon was torn upwards by the wind.

"Digimental up!"

With several pounding strokes of his powerful wings, Pegasmon battled the storm to carry his passengers higher in to the air. They were buffeted from all sides, tossed and turned until Yamato felt what little breakfast he'd eaten threatening to rise again. He swallowed it a second time and pressed his face in to his brother's back, closing his eyes and bracing himself against the turbulence.

The storm stopped so suddenly that Yamato almost fell from Pegasmon's saddle. He risked a glance down at the storm below; the sand and dirt made it clear to see where the storm ended and the calmer updrafts began. Pegasmon paused for a moment while Takeru gathered his bearings and then gave directions to his partner. The golden wings pounded a slow, steady rhythm as they sped through the sky, and Yamato peered occasionally over Takeru's shoulder to watch them draw ever-closer to Hikari's flashing dot.

They touched down several miles from the terminal where the flat plains of grass were broken by hillocks and clumps of bushes before giving way to the forest beyond. The winds were weaker here, but not entirely gone, and Yamato pulled up his collar as he watched Takeru frown at his D-3.

"She should be here." He turned slowly one way and then the other, his frown deepening. Yamato glanced down at his digivice. Two dots – both white – practically on top of each other.

"She can't be far. Maybe she went in to the forest?" Takeru frowned and shook his head.

"My D-3 says that she's right here," he said, lifting his head to look around. He stopped suddenly, shifting his weight backwards, then forwards, then backwards again. "Yamato… look."

At first he didn't see what he was supposed to be looking at. After a moment's confusion Takeru gently pulled him closer, until he was standing exactly where Takeru had been. He saw it then – a strange shimmer in the air, visible only from just the right angle. It floated like a crack in a mirror, distorting the world into tiny glimmering rainbows. Yamato's eyes travelled down; the tall grass below was broken, forming a ravine in the greenery. The path led from beneath the glimmer to a nearby bush, where Yamato's eyes caught sight of something yellow. Takeru had seen it too, and together they sprinted towards it, pulling the brambles aside.

Hikari was grey and trembling as they pulled her from her hiding place, bringing with her a smell of something rotten. Yamato held his breath as he took her in to his arms, trying to ignore how she hung limp in his grasp.

"Yamato, look." Takeru had taken hold of Hikari's hand, lifting her arm and turning it over. Mottled red lines wrapped around her wrist, snaking around her forearm. Her other arm, draped across her stomach, had the same marks, as did her legs, while her cheeks were pink and blotchy. Despite the heat, patches of her clothes were cold and damp, and every breeze made her shiver.

"Let's get out of here," Yamato said, his voice sounding stronger than he felt. "We'll tell the others once we've got her back safely." Takeru nodded and turned to his partner.

"Can you carry all of us?" Pegasmon looked at them for a moment before nodding slowly.

"I won't be fast, but it will be quicker than walking," he answered. He took a step forwards and pressed his nose against Hikari's brow. "Will she be okay?" Takeru looked to Yamato who found his throat suddenly tight.

"We need to get her to Jou."