In addition to Digimon, I don't own Hot Pockets, but how cool would that be? I mean, you would have a lifetime supply of Hot Pockets... and a lot of money.

I know nothing about Japan's school system, and I'm not going to pretend I do, so everything is based off of the USA's school system.

Enter Mori's family and a deeper understanding of the last four years...

Tuesday

Mori woke up suddenly to his sore shoulder welcoming a new wave of pain. 'Ugh, I've got to get that checked out.'

He opened each eye one at a time to find a small child, no older than seven, jumping up and down on his bed.

"Daddy, you're awake!" He cheered.

His mood and tone instantly brightened. He smirked at his son's antics. "Shouldn't you be at school?"

The child stood on the bed pouting dramatically with big, chocolate brown eyes that could captivate anyone. "But I don't wanna go!"

"You have to, Mikey. We've all got responsibilities."

Mikey crossed his arms with a loud 'Humph!' "You're not goin' to work! I'm not goin' to school!"

Mori's smirk grew into a grimace. How had his son known? He hadn't even told his wife! "Now where'd you hear a thing like that?"

"Mr. Rainy called, but Mommy wasn't here." Mikey had taken to referring to Mori's boss as "Mr. Rainy" since he's always putting Mori in a "rainy" mood.

'Why would he tell my kid I got fired? That guy really is out to get me.' "No, no, I still have to work today" 'just not at a job.'

Mikey looked utterly confused for a moment before deciding his dad must be right, like always. Then, if it was possible, the child's eyes grew wider with fear. "I still have to go to school today." It was a statement, not a question.

Mori nodded slowly. "Yes, yes you do. Let's go." And with that, he swooped his son's legs out from under him causing him to squeal as he fell into his father's arms.

Mikey mock protested as he was carried out of the bedroom bridal style into the kitchen. His father plopped him down onto a chair and went to his wife, Miya, by the sink to give her a good morning kiss.

His wife was a beautiful girl, a couple years younger than Mori. She had long, flowing brown hair with natural auburn highlights, and she stood a little under a foot shorter than her husband.

"How are you today?" He asked while going for the coffee pot.

She smiled lightly. "Better, I've been sleeping we-" She was cut short by a round of rough, hacking coughs that had her leaning over and clutching onto the sink for support.

Mori cringed. That cough, the constant reminder of what condition his love was in, yanked on his heart strings. Miya had been sick for awhile now with Tuberculosis, yet another reason he needed his job and the money that came with it. "It's good to know you've been doing better but still take it easy, alright?"

She sighed. Miya never liked feeling like the victim or a burden, but her illness had been holding her back more and more lately. None the less, she put on a reassuring smile. "I know. I'll be careful."

Knowing his wife wouldn't want him hovering over her, he turned to search through the cupboard for a cup. "That's good to hear."

"Hun?"

"Hmm?"

"Other cupboard."

Mori opened the cupboard to the left of the one he'd been searching in. He grinned slightly and took out a small coffee cup. "What would I do without you?"

She brightened at that, always glad to be appreciated. Miya caught a glimpse of the time the stove read: 8:34. "Oh! You better get going to work!"

He looked at the clock but refused to meet her eyes, knowing if he did, she'd be sure to catch onto his guilty demeanor. "Right, I'll go get dressed and be off!"

He went back into his bedroom not only to get ready but to retrieve from his suitcase the delicately folded newspaper article. 'Today, I'll need to do a lot of research.'

"Tai, get your ass out of bed! You have to be across campus in ten minutes!"

And with that, a pillow flew across the room and whammed right into the mess of brown hair that was Tai Kamiya.

He sat up with a start, alert, expecting it to have been a threat or some sort of digimon. Instead he saw the very amused Matt standing by the doorway to their shared college dorm room.

"Oh gee thanks," Tai said bitterly. He was definitely not a morning person.

The blonde shrugged. "I do it because I care."

Tai rubbed the back of his head. For a pillow it caused a good amount of damage. "Could you care a little less?"

Matt smirked. "I wish. Seriously, you should've been up forever ago. I just stopped here to grab a textbook." He made his way across their cluttered room that consisted of two single beds, a large mahogany desk, a small laptop, a rolly chair, piles of unwashed clothes, various pieces of paper, and other much more useless items that would fall under the category of junk. He moved aside a few boxes of Hot Pockets to find his book wedged against the wall by a soccer ball.

Tai rubbed his eyes and groggily sat up. He knew he would be late for his next class; it was really only a matter of how late. This meant that he could spend a few minutes questioning Matt. Since discovering an uneaten pill, he'd been wracking his brain to figure out which of his friends would betray the others after all they'd been through. He had faith in all of them so decided it only fair to consider everyone a suspect.

"So," Tai started as casually as he could, "what do you think of this whole pill business?"

Matt sat his bag on the desk and attempted to shove his textbook into it. "I get where Izzy's coming from. Maybe, we don't need the Digital World anymore. It's been getting in the way."

The brunette raised an eyebrow. "In the way of what?"

Matt shot Tai an incredulous look while swinging his bag over his shoulder. "In the way of everything. We're always running off, disappearing without any explanation, getting hurt without being able to get help because then we'd have to explain what happened. The Digital World has always come first which is what it deserves because it's done so much for us," Matt paused, clearly doubting his last words, "but maybe it's done all it can and so have we.

"I need to get going, See ya."

"Bye," Tai called after Matt had already begun making his way down the hall. He sat up in bed a few more moments, taking in what he'd just heard. 'He sounds like he's ready to move on… but he didn't sound that sure about. No, Matt's my best friend. It couldn't be him… It could be anyone.'

The investigator sat at a computer at the local library, disgruntled. Being unable to go home and having no job to go to, his research had to be done at the only place where he could freely access the internet.

He had read over the article several times and each time grew more and more frustrated. This reporter kept rambling on about different sightings but none of them matched up. One was a giant parrot in Columbia, the next an army of green slugs in Canada, and then living dinosaurs in Japan! None of the creatures or places was connected. The only thing they had in common was the time frame, and the time was the strangest thing about this article; it was only four years old! He was around, so why hadn't he heard of the giant dinosaur that was lurking in his backyard? The article alone gave him next to nothing to work with, but if something like this really happened, there had to be more information.

This leads to Mori desperately searching around the web and the news for anything else about giant monsters besides folklore. He had hit several dead ends. Many newspapers and news stations didn't have anything useful, the occasional Big Foot story, but he knew in his gut it was something bigger than that. After all, Big Foot never made it into the Unsolvable Pile.

Mori closed out of the internet for a moment to look back at the article. If the words weren't working, it was time to study the picture. It was a pretty convincing action shot. It had some giant, red dinosaur being held back by what resembled a ten-foot werewolf. If he didn't know better he would've said it was a screenshot from a movie. Looking further back into the picture, the bystanders were swarming around them. Many were panicking and looked to be in mid-run except for one boy that had caught his eye.

This boy stood tall, watching the fight with a look of…annoyance? How was he not terrified? The child looked no older than 15! 'He must know something.'

Kari put her tray down on the table in the most menacing way someone of her gentle nature could. The tray made a light "thump!" causing TK to look up from the math homework he had been trying to comprehend.

"Hey," He greeted casually. "Are you alright?"

She gave him an incredulous look before silently opening her water.

TK blinked confusedly. "If you're mad at me for some reason, why would you sit here for lunch?"

She never looked up, now beginning to unwrap the plastic covering around her sandwich. "I always sit here."

"Right…" He turned his attention back to problem number seven. 'So if x=23 and-'

"How could you be so ready to take that pill?"

TK sighed audibly. He should've expected she wanted to talk.

"Won't you miss Patamon?" Her voice sounded pained as she was probably thinking of her own partner.

"Of course but…" He trailed off not knowing how to explain himself.

"But what?"

He set his pencil down knowing his homework would have to wait. "You know things haven't been the same."

There was that disbelieving look of denial again. "No, I don't know that."

"Yes, you do. It's not like when we were younger and the digimon were our best friends. We only ever see them to fight and because of all the trouble we'd get into if someone found them, they aren't even allowed to travel to our world anymore, and we only go to the Digital World when there's some mission or digimon wreaking havoc. It's more like a business relationship than a friendship."

It hurt TK to admit it out loud, but everything he said was true, and Kari knew it. She still felt the need to keep arguing. This was her and TK's childhood, and she couldn't accept that he was all for giving it up. "We go to the Digital World more than that. Last month we spent a whole week there rounding up all of the Numamon that had wandered off."

TK countered, "And our partners were only with us part of the time. They had other things to do."

She placed her fists on her hips under the table. "So there's nothing in the Digital World you're going to miss?"

He ran a hand through his hair not wanting to answer the question. He really didn't want to have to think about something as depressing as his childhood slipping away during his only free period. "I'll miss everything about it, Patamon, helping Digimon, being part of something bigger, but good things don't last. We have to keep moving forward."

"You won't miss it," Kari muttered sadly while focusing on something past TK. "We won't even have the memories."

The blonde's eyes widened slightly. "Please tell me you're not looking at who I think you're looking at." She didn't respond, so he twisted his neck to see Davis Motomiya sitting a few tables away with a majority of the school's soccer team.

She had a wistful look to her as she drew her eyes away from him the spiky-haired brunette and back to TK. "He was our best friend."

"He doesn't know that." TK frowned. No conversation about their old team ever ended well. After the memory-wipe, TK and Kari had attempted to reconnect with them, but without the bond implemented by the Digital World, the relationships would never be the same. Davis was merely their peer; Yolei and Cody were only TK's neighbors, and Ken didn't even know the rest of them existed.

"I miss them," Kari whispered barely above a whisper staring into her still uneaten sandwich.

TK bit his lip, concerned for a minute she might get more emotional over the 02 team like he had seen her do in the past. He was thinking of ways to cheer her up, but before he had a chance to do anything, she spoke up again. Her voice came out as a child asking an innocent question.

"Are we all going to forget each other like they did?"

TK stopped and took in the question. He had never actually thought about that. It made sense considering what happened with their old team, but it wasn't like they were losing their memories all at once. It didn't make sense to forget a person slowly, but then again when did any of this ever make sense? He put on his best reassuring smile. "Come on, Kari, Izzy's pill isn't going to be like the memory wipe. We'll forget the digimon, but we'll always have each other."

Izzy slouched in his chair while lazily checking his email and waiting for his computer to finish scanning for viruses. He had taken to doing this at least weekly, paranoid that if there was a virus, it could be something from the Digital World.

As a college freshman, he still lived at home and even took many of his classes online. He just found the whole "college experience" a waste of time and money.

Per usual, there was nothing of interest in his e-mail, a message or two from his friends, a few reminders from his college's computer club about an upcoming meeting, and tons of spam.

A new email appeared on his screen, and he dragged the mouse over to click on it.

Koushiro Izumi,

This is a message from Investigator Benjamin Mori.

We think that you along with Yamato Ishida, Joe Kido, Hikari and Taichi Kamiya, Mimi Tachikawa, Takeru Takaishi, and Sora Takenouchi will be of great assistance to us in a new investigation.

We request your attendance at the Odaiba Police Station on Thursday and Friday for questioning at 3:00 PM. The police are involved, so force will be used if any of you refuse to come.

-Benjamin Mori

Izzy sat up straighter, now more alert with panic. What investigation? Why would an investigator and the police be contacting them? This couldn't be something to do with the Digital World. No one knew about it; they had done everything they could to keep it a secret.

More scenarios ran through his head, each worse than the last. They could be arrested for some reason or thrown in the loony bin for talking of a world in their computer or the one he feared the most, everyone could find out about the Digital World.

Izzy opened a new message and began typing furiously.

Everyone,

We need to talk ASAP.

Thanks so much for reading!

Any new guesses for who didn't take the pill? Any opinions or comments? Any questions or concerns? Feel free to review!