Taichi heard the slight groan and he looked over his shoulder. "Morning."

Kimiko yawned as she climbed out of her cot and stretched her arms over her head. "Yeah, morning. Are you cooking?"

He turned back to the dark-colored eggs in the pan; not quite burnt but close enough. "Trying to. It'll be ready in a few minutes."

She yawned again and stumbled into the bathroom. Taichi poured a glass of green tea and set it on the table. His phone flashed from its place on the countertop with a text from Hikari. Good morning. I'll meet you at Koushiro's around ten. Mimi wanted to come too.

He thought of Mimi dragging Kimiko through the mall, stopping at every clothing and beauty store they passed. He pictured his daughter coming home that afternoon as a mini-Mimi and shivered.

The bathroom door opened and Kimiko walked out in her black and yellow striped pajamas. She plopped into one of the kitchen chairs and dug her brush through her tangled mop of hair, raining brown strands onto the table. She spied the glass of iced green tea. "Is this mine?"

Taichi nodded and watched her drink it down in one gulp. She then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and let out a burp that would make any teenage boy proud.

Maybe spending some time around Mimi wouldn't be so bad after all.

Child of Courage

Chapter V

Taichi turned to Kimiko as she shoveled scrambled eggs into her mouth. "I just thought of something."

"What?"

"I probably should have asked you this before but do you remember any of the other Chosen?"

The tween girl scrunched her nose and then glanced at Yuki Agumon. The dinosaur shook her head and Kimiko did the same. "I don't remember anyone besides Aunt Hikari. I met Dr. Kido and Mr. Izumi at the hospital, but that's all."

Taichi nodded and then glanced at the clock. "We'd better get going soon. Go and get dressed."

Kimiko grabbed the clothes they'd bought yesterday. Once the bathroom door was closed, Agumon asked, "So what are you thinking now?"

Yuki Agumon was sitting inches from the television with the speakers blasting. Taichi still leaned closer to his partner. "They don't remember the other Chosen except for Hikari. What if she is from the future? Did she come back to warn us about something that was going to wipe us out? Maybe that's why she was so happy to see me because…" He couldn't say the words, "...you know."

"Let's talk about it with Koshiro later," Agumon said.

Kimiko came out of the bathroom dressed in a pair of brown khaki shorts and a blue t-shirt with a pair of blue goggles like a hairband. She threw her pajamas onto the cot. "Okay, ready."

They walked out of the apartment and down the hall to the elevator. The metal doors opened and an elderly woman hobbled out on her cane. "Good morning Mr. Yagami."

Taichi bowed quickly. "Morning Mrs. Fujita."

Agumon and Yuki Agumon scuttled past the humans into the elevator while the elderly woman focused on Kimiko. "Um, this is my cousin. She'll be staying with me for a little while." He gave Kimiko a gentle push. "Go on."

"Oh, um, good morning."

Mrs. Fujita eyed the girl and then at Taichi. "Your cousin?"

"Yeah, her dad is my dad's younger sis-brother. She, um, my uncle, is-" He'd repeated the cover story a thousand times, why the hell was his mind blank?

"My dad's in the hospital," Kimiko said, with a shrug, "and my mom died when I was really little."

She said that it was no big deal. Taichi would have to watch her when she got older.

"And my parents are away on a cruise," Taichi added, "and my sister's at university, so…"

Mrs. Fujita's face softened. "Oh, you poor dear. Well, you two let me know if there's anything I can do to help."

Kimiko smiled. "We will. Have a nice day."

Taichi ushered her into the waiting elevator and Agumon hit the button for the ground floor. Taichi and Kimiko shared a smile and a high-five.

Taichi studied Kimiko as they walked through the city and wondered how she maneuvered through the crowd with his Nintendo 3DS shoved up to her face. It was like she had a sixth sense to avoid other people and twist around lamp posts. He was even about to tell her to stop at an intersection but she did so on her own and then started walking when the sign flashed to life; all without looking up once. It wasn't like she was examining the device like some kind of forgotten relic, she was using it like she'd had one her entire life. Did that mean she wasn't from the future? Damn it, this was making his head hurt!

He heard the familiar sound of Mario dying, followed by a grunt from Kimiko. "Arg!"

Taichi chuckled. "You seem to know what you're doing."

She blinked. "Y-yeah, I guess I do." She stared at the device. "I must have played it before."

She was quiet and Taichi asked. "Do you remember something?"

"No, well, kinda." She sighed and her shoulders drooped, "I've been getting weird flashes, like feelings or something. I'm trying to remember but it's like I just can't. I mean, I want to but…"

"Something's blocking you?"

"Yeah, maybe. I don't know."

"Um, the other day you said something about the ice cream in the super-"

She stopped and her eyes opened. "What?" he asked.

She opened her mouth but only strange noises emerged. "Kimiko?" Yuki Agumon asked, "What's wrong?"

Kimiko blinked again and then rubbed her forehead. Taichi reached for her but she shook her head. "I'm okay. I'm alright."

"What is it?" Taichi asked, "Did you remember something?"

She nodded. "Yeah, I think so. I was at a table eating strawberry ice cream. I was just shoveling into my mouth."

He chuckled. "That sounds like you."

She smiled slightly. "Yeah, well, I was happy. I mean, really happy. There were other people at the table too."

"Were they eating?" asked Agumon.

"I don't know."

Taichi rested his hands on her shoulders. "Was I there? Was your mother?"

"I…I don't think so." She rubbed her eyes and filled her lungs a few times. "Do I have amnesia or something?"

"I don't know," Taichi answered. Under his breath, he muttered, "I have no idea."

Taichi introduced Kimiko to Mimi once they walked into Koshiro's office. "And you already know Dr. Kido and Mr. Izumi. And Hikari, of course."

Mimi was fawning over the preteen before he even finished. "Oh my gosh, Taichi, she looks just like you."

Kimiko blushed and Taichi was sure he was doing the same. Kimiko had combed her hair back but still had the spiked bangs. "She doesn't look that much like me."

"Yeah, she does," Agumon said. Yuki Agumon nodded as well.

That only made father and daughter blush even more.

"Are you doing okay?" Hikari asked, "Taichi told me about what happened yesterday."

Kimiko nodded. "Yeah. I'm okay. Me and Dad won, so…"

Hikari raised an eyebrow at Taichi. He sighed and nodded. Hikari turned back to Kimiko. "Well, that's good to hear, but don't worry. Mimi and I will be with you."

"Yeah!" Palmon cried, "We've got plenty of firepower."

Koshiro jumped up from his desk chair holding a large camera. "Before you go, I just want to get a few pictures."

"Why?"

"Something I want to try to help us figure out what's going on. Just stand still and, no, you don't need to smile. Yes, that should work." He snapped a few pictures. "That should work."

"Great," Mimi said. She guided Kimiko and Yuki Agumon to the door. "We'll hit the clothing stores and then the salon. Oh! I've got the perfect style for you!"

Kimiko gave Taichi a worried look before Mimi pushed her out the door. Hikari rested a hand on Taichi's shoulder. "I'll make sure she's safe."

"From enemy digimon or from Mimi?"

Hikari only smiled as she and Tailmon closed the door behind them.

Taichi turned to Koshiro, who had already attached his camera to his laptop. "What's with the pictures?"

He waved the others closer and they peered over his shoulder. Kimiko's picture was displayed on the left side of the monitor while the right side contained a blank square of the same size. "It's a photo searching program. It will use an algorithm to search images of the internet and find people that resemble Kimiko."

"People close enough to be her mother?" Jyou asked. He eyed Taichi, "Are you sure that will work? She, um, greatly resembles him."

Gomamon hopped onto the desk. "Yeah, put twelve-year-old Taichi in a wig and put them side-by-side and you'd never tell the difference."

Taichi frowned at the digimon. "Koshiro, are you talking about facial recognition software?"

"It's…not as effective as that." He typed a few commands into the keyboard and then hit Enter. A blue bar appeared beneath the blank square and slowly moved to the right. "I think this will take some time."

"Yeah, speaking about that, could Kimiko be a time traveler? It's the only thing I can think of that really makes sense."

"I checked her digivice's time stamp. It's not from the future."

"Yeah, but what does that really mean?" asked Agumon, "Maybe they're just sitting in storage somewhere?"

"You mean like some kind of digital bank that gets withdrawn?" asked Tentomon, "Why Agumon, that's pretty clever."

"Yeah, maybe," Koshiro replied, "But I think it's still likely we need to look to the past, not the future, for answers."

"You think she was really born twelve years ago? Koshiro, I would have been twelve, remember? Plus the fact that, aside from the girls in my class, the only other girls I hung around with at that time were Mimi and Sora. Even if I slept with either one of them, I'm sure we'd all have noticed their giant stomachs! Kimiko couldn't have been born twelve years ago!"

Koshiro sighed. "Yes, I realize that. I was going to suggest something else."

"Cloning?" Jyou asked. The redhead nodded and the doctor chuckled. "I thought we'd get to that eventually. Yes, the famous Dolly was a success for the University of Edinburgh but cloning humans still seems to be fiction. Besides, Dolly still needed to grow in the womb of a normal sheep. So if you think that Kimiko was cloned by Taichi, we still need to look for the woman who gave birth to her."

"Plus she's a girl," Tentomon added.

"I was getting to that. A clone is a true genetic copy. If someone did clone Taichi, why would they go through the extra trouble of altering her chromosomes?"

"Maybe her cells were damaged," Koshiro suggested, "I was watching that American cartoon based on the X-men and Wolverine's clone turned out female because-"

Jyou rolled his eyes. "If we're going to use comic book logic then maybe someone just built her genetically like Dr. Gero and Cell?"

"Guys, can we get back on track?" Taichi snapped, "Look, we're Chosen, right? Kimiko's clearly a Chosen too. Could someone have, I don't know, copied my DNA or something? I mean, literally? Datamon did it with Sora."

Koshiro was silent for a moment. "I honestly don't know. Maybe, I suppose, but we still have to answer the question of why Kimiko is female."

"Plus," Jyou added, "I said this before. If her DNA was too similar to yours, I mean, literally the same except for being female, the lab would have flagged it. Since they didn't, I can only assume that nothing was abnormal about it. That is, there were markers for you and her mother." He paused and then said, "We can't do a reverse DNA test like we can with fingerprints but maybe we can get a breakdown of her mother's genetic markers."

"What'll that tell us?"

"It might narrow it down a little."

Taichi rubbed his eyes. "All right, do it. What do you know about amnesia?"

"Um, honestly, not a lot. You're talking about Kimiko's memory problems, right? I'll see what I can find."

"Thanks."

Koshiro's computer chimed and he grinned. "All right, let's see what we've got." His face dropped. The blank square remained blank.

"What does that mean?" Taichi asked.

His friend sighed. "Inconclusive."

"How can it be inconclusive? I thought you said it searched the entire internet."

"Well, no, I didn't say that, but it could have been millions of photos. How could there not be any results? Unless…"

"What?"

"Unless images of her mother were removed." He rubbed his chin and muttered. "A government agency could have done that."

Taichi frowned. "Well, so much for that idea."

"I'll see if I can get in touch with my friend at the blood lab," Jyou offered.

Koshiro stared at his monitor for another moment before his fingers danced across the keyboard. "Well, do you want to see the game I'm programming?"

Taiki paced the concrete floor as he listened to the voice on his cellphone. "Yeah, I know she won't be happy but she'll be even more not happy if that girl gets away, right?"

"Yeah, maybe," the voice answered, "but that's your problem. I've already stuck my neck out for you twice now."

Taiki felt the phone bend as he squeezed his hand. "Yeah, well, just remember. If that girl spills her guts to the Chosen, that'll be the end of us."

There was silence on the other end. Taiki continued, "Do you really think they'll just let us walk around without sticking their noses in our business?"

"Fine," came the reply, "I'll send you more Tyrannomon, but that's it, got it?"

"Yeah, sure," Taiki said. He hung up and dropped his phone into his pocket, "Thanks for the help."

Shoutmon yawned from where he'd been sleeping on a thick blanket in the corner of the room. "What's up?"

"We're getting more Tyrannomon but this is our last chance." He narrowed his eyes, "That girl is ours."

To be continued…