Sometime last week I was out and about with my mom and spent the time explaining Fullmetal Alchemist, one of my original stories, and this story. She doesn't know anything about Digimon, so my explanation of this story sounded pretty lame: "So Izzy, he's like the smart guy, he makes this pill to save the others because there are like these Digi-gods who are gods of the Digital World which I didn't create. Those are already part of the show… but not the pill; that's my story!"

Anyway, onward...

Week Three

Monday

Things weren't going so well.

"Sorry we're late!" Tai apologized as he and Matt entered the Izumi's apartment. "We barely made the subway!"

"It's alright," Kari assured from her seat on the couch, "It's alright, Mimi's going to be a little late too."

TK piped, "Why didn't Joe take you guys?"

"He's being difficult," Matt replied simply not wanting to lodge his mind back into their ealier unsuccessful visit to the elder's dorm room.

Izzy sprang from his seat drawing everyone's attention. "Of course, the laptop's cord is in the other room!"

He promptly walked out of the room to retrieve his cord. Sora rolled her eyes as he left. "Joe's not the only one being difficult…"

Matt frowned. "Come on, Izzy's doing his best."

"Lying and keeping secrets is his best?" She snorted. "I'd hate to see him at his worst."

Matt narrowed his eyes as he finished taking off his jacket. "You know, Mimi's the one who slapped him the other day."

"She had all the reason to," Sora said defensively. In fact she had reprimanded Mimi herself for that, but she was going to defend her best friend's actions.

"You think letting your emotions take over and resorting to violence is justified?" Matt countered.

"I recall it working for you before," Sora retorted, and if it hadn't been highly inappropriate for the time, Tai would've accompanied it with an 'Ooooooooooh snap.'

Matt's narrow eyes leaned more towards a glare. What was with everyone picking a fight? Even Sora?

Just then Izzy reentered the room completely oblivious to the close to fuming couple. He muttered computer babble to himself as he took his seat on the far side of the couch back.

Sora's glare had turned from Matt to Izzy as he entered the room. Matt took notice.

"Can I talk to you in the hallway for a second?" Matt asked with an eery calmness.

"Of course," Sora replied bluntly. They both went into the Izumi's hallway and out of earshot of the others.

"We're here for two minutes, and someone is already fighting!" Tai complained as he flopped down onto the couch between his sister and Izzy.

Unaware that he was the cause of the dispute , Izzy typed away on his computer for a few moments. The others, Tai, Kari, and TK, sat in silence waiting for him to be ready to start the questioning. When Izzy finally did speak, it wasn't what anyone was expecting.

"Trepidatious!" He yelled with his eyes wide and glued to the screen.

Tai leaned over his shoulder to see what had happened. On the screen was an email from Joe that he quickly skimmed. "What the hell?" Tai screeched much in the same fashion as Izzy.

Curious, TK rose from his seat on the ottoman and read the email from behind the couch. His eyes nearly popped out of his head. "What! He's joking, right?"

Kari blinked as she looked over at the three crowded around the laptop. "What's going on?"

Kari was shocked to find her brother's reply slightly shaky with fear. "Joe told that investigator about us… about everything."

She felt herself stiffen. "B-but, but what does that mean for us?"

"Nothing good." Izzy didn't move. For once, he wasn't multitasking on his laptop. He was frozen as all the possible outcomes and results rushed through his head. One thing was for sure: things kept getting worse.

"Why would he do that?" TK asked in a small voice. Joe must have a good reason for doing something like this; he has been acting odd lately.

"I don't know," Tai answered through gritted teeth as his fist tightened. Instant anger had come flooding into him. No matter how Joe was feeling, it couldn't have driven him to giving away their greatest secret, to revealing the Digital World. If Joe were here right now, Tai didn't know what he'd do.

"I'm here," a resentful voice announced.

All heads snapped in the direction of the door as it slowly creaked open and in came none other than the blue-haired man himself.

Things were looking up.

Benjamin Mori had a confession, pictures as proof, and a story that would surely get him his job back. No more sneaking behind his family's back, no more dread for his last paycheck. That was all behind him. He was back.

Mori proudly and surely strode into his old workplace through the familiar swinging front doors, past the forgetful secretary, around the busy employees, past the Unsolvable Pile that has saved his carreer. To think, this would all be his again.

Finally, he made it to his boss Mr. Raincheck's office where he found him hunched over some story looking fairly riled up.

Without looking up, he growled, "Crowson, this is the worst shit I've ever seen. You better rewrite this whole article. Ugh, now what am I going to do? I have a deadline, you know!"

Mori smirked as he took a seat on the other side of the desk. "You could always use my story for your deadline, sir."

Mr. Raincheck looked up bewildered and matter-of-factly reminded, "You were fired, Mori."

"True but not after this." He slapped his findings down on his boss's desk, but he didn't so much as glance at them.

"You shouldn't be here. Go find a new job! That's what I gave you this time to do! Not go lollygagging around for dumb stories!"

Mori firmly explained as he pushed the papers towards Mr. Raincheck, "Trust me, this isn't dumb; it's good."

"Trust you? I don't trust you! I fired you!" He was standing now and looking down upon his old employee.

"You can't do this! This story! I spent so much time… It was supposed to…"

Mori wouldn't meet his eyes. All this work, all this time, and his boss still saw him as nothing. But then again, without his boss he was nothing. With one last pathetic plea Mori said, "You can't do this to me! I'm an investigator!"

Mr. Raincheck shook his head pityingly. "No, you're not, Mori. You're just an obsessive man who needs to move on."

As always, Joe's news brought to the group mixed reactions. Both Matt and TK felt pure pity for the guy, and after initially shouting at him and demanding a reason for betraying his friends, Matt defeatedly dropped his hostility and grumbled, "I can't even be mad at you because you have no idea what you did." Sora, being stubbornly angry with Izzy, did the same to Joe. Tai was also furious at first but knew he couldn't react that way; it would only turn the others against Joe when he was trying to keep everyone together. Kari was simply confused; having lost little memory herself, she didn't know how to relate to Joe or even whether or not his actions were justified. Upon arriving, Mimi was more than mad, and Tai was bracing himself in case she decided to slap someone again. Different than all of them though was Izzy who decided to take the logical approach which leads us to here and now after the tests:

"It appears too dangerous to keep people around once they've lost so much memory."

A few looked up at Izzy in mild surprise, but the majority had already had the thought themselves.

"Besides the obvious," Izzy started with an unintentional glance at Joe, "I believe it's why everyone's fighting. They're forgetting things about each other, big or small, that brought them closer together, information and events that shaped our opinions and thoughts on each other and built up our friendships. Most of those times were spent in the Digital World which means…"

He didn't have to finish, and no one really wanted him to. After a few moments of silence where reality sunk in, he continued.

"Joe, Mimi, Matt, Sora, TK, Tai, and Kari," Izzy rattled off from his clipboard as he paced around the kitchen. "That's the order of whose memories are receding the quickest."

The eight let that sink in for a second… only a second.

"That explains a lot," Matt said bluntly as he leaned back in the Izumi's recliner.

"Huh?" Tai prompted.

"Just that Mimi's been freaking out, and Joe was freaking out before that… They're overreacting to the memory loss and compensating by pushing everyone away."

Mimi screeched from her spot on the ottoman for the chair Sora was on, "Overreacting? I'm losing my friends and precious memories, and you think I'm overreacting?"

He mused, "…Maybe that's not the right word but-" He shrugged- "close enough."

Mimi's eyes narrowed dangerously, but he hardly noticed. "I could say the same thing about you. You're right after me on that list."

"And I'm not freaking out," Matt added in his defense. "It's not like I'm forgetting the important things, just stupid stuff like birthdays and middle names."

"Stupid?" Sora piped from her spot on the edge of the chair (the farthest seat away from Matt). "You think that stuff is stupid?"

"Don't start," He begged already halfway into an eye roll. If it weren't for Izzy, this might have turned into part two of their spat.

"Prodigious! You're on to something, Matt!" The computer nerd typed furiously on his laptop leaving the others to watch in curiosity and confusion while he pulled up the records of the digidestined's answers to his weekly tests. He explained, "Everyone's forgetting different areas. Matt has forgotten little about events and creatures in the Digital World but a lot about the rest of us; Sora and Tai have forgotten most of their time with 02; on the contrary, TK is forgetting our first trip a lot easier than 02."

TK blinked. Perhaps that's why he kept aching more and more for the 02 team. In the past, true he had missed them, but Kari had been the one that hadn't moved on while he had. Yet lately he's been thinking about them more and more.

A few people leaned in to better see Izzy's laptop. Tai looked to the others and said, "See? This is why we all need to chill out and act like a team. So that we don't lose out friendships just because we're losing the Digital World."

TK took another look at Izzy's test results. 'You're wrong, Tai. I don't have my team anymore.'

Thanks for reading and to those who have been reviewing!

And may I just say that I'm more excited about the next chapter than any other, so you have something... special to look forward to.