Author's Note: Hello and thanks for dropping by my latest project, Kari's New Friend. It has been a long time since I last posted anything on this site, and there are a multitude of reasons for that. I won't bore you with the details, but please cut me some slack if you think this is substandard. I might be a little rusty. Neverytheless, this is my attempt to get back into writing again, so hopefully the quality will increase with time. If you've never read anything by me before, then welcome and nice to meet ya!

Now about the story itself. The Invasion of Odaiba is one of my favourite arcs in all of Digimon, period. This story will cover that arc, with a focus on Kari and Davis, going by the premise that they didn't know each other before the start of the invasion. Currently, I haven't planned for it to stretch past the Invasion, but I'm not ruling it out either.

Also, as a quick side note, I will be using the english names for the characters, as well as the official ages for the characters in the english translation. Since a majority of the original 8 main characters all have english names that are derived from their original names, like Kari being derived from Hikari and Izzy being derived from his surname, Izumi, most characters will still have their japanese names as their given names, with their english name as a nickname. The exception to this rule is Davis. I just don't see how "Daisuke" could possibly generate the nickname "Davis", so for him his english name will be his given name.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's get on with the story!

Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon.

"When two people meet, something will be born."

Prologue: The one she trusted

"Bye Kari!"

As her brother let go of her hand, Kari had to fight the urge to keep her hold. She didn't want him to go, didn't want him to disappear again. To see him let go of her hand and just float into the air, further and further away from her made her heart sink in her chest and she had to fight back the tears that threatened to spill from her soft brown eyes.

It had been hard enough to wake up this morning and know that he had already left for Summer Camp. When he had shown up at their doorstep a few hours later again, she had felt so happy that he had come back. While Tai could be annoying sometimes, Kari really did love her older brother above anything else and she knew that on some level, Tai returned those feelings. Whenever she was sick, he had always taken the time to make sure she felt as comfortable as she could in her bed and could stay with her for hours on end and whenever she was scared or sad, he would comfort her like only a big brother could.

She didn't know how long she stood there, just staring straight into the sky where her brother eventually disappeared from view, but it was until way after the Dimensional Rift had closed itself up. Eventually though, the stress from the battle between Agumon and Ogremon, and from losing her brother again, caught up with her and she began to feel ill again. Despite feeling better, she wasn't really in any condition to move around and shouldn't have left the house. Seeing Tai again had energized her for a time, but now that he was gone she could feel her illness returning.

Slowly, she began making her way back towards the apartment building where the Kamiya Residence was located, but barely had she taken a few steps before she began to feel dizzy. Her head was spinning and she felt the familiar heat of a fever begin to creep up on her again. She quickly stopped and steadied herself for a second, leaning against a nearby lamppost to not lose balance.

"Hikari?"

As someone nearby spoke her given name, Kari raised her head weakly and scanned the crowd for whoever had addressed her. Eventually, her eyes settled on a familiar mass of messy auburn hair that belonged to one of her classmates, Davis Motomiya. While most of the boys in her class were immature and cocky, especially towards girls, Davis was one of the few boys aside from Tai whom Kari could stand in general. They hadn't really talked a lot over the 3 years they had shared classes, but on the other hand he had never given her a reason to dislike him either. He had always kind of just been there.

Currently, the boy was approaching her with a worried look etched across his tanned face. Kari could imagine that she probably looked pretty frail and pathetic as she was leaning against the lamppost to keep steady, but she had hoped that no one would recognize her. She didn't like it when people saw her sick, it made her feel weak and vulnerable.

In an attempt to appear normal, Kari straightened herself up and stepped away from the pole she had been leaning against when Davis spotted her. This proved to be a mistake, as the moment her entire weight once against rested on her own two feet, her head began spinning again and her vision got blurry from the dizziness. As she lost her balance however, she felt small but steady hands grab her shoulders and carefully guidning her down into a sitting position.

"Hey, easy there. You're not looking very good." she heard Davis say, worry evident in his voice.

As her vision cleared again, she found the auburn haired boy kneeling in front of her, with his left hand still resting on her right shoulder to keep her steady. As soon as their eyes met, Kari looked away in embarassment.

"I'm fine!" she insisted, attempting to once again to stand up and support herself.

However, her legs just wouldn't support her weight and a second later, she found herself leaning against Davis for support again. It would appear that the battle from earlier, as well as the sprint to catch up with her much more athletic brother had tired her out more than she thought.

"Yeah, sure you are." Davis said, obviously not impressed in the slightest by her display. "Come on, we'd better get you home as quickly as possible. Where do you live?"

As he said this, he drapped Kari's arm over his shoulder to better be able to support her weight and slowly pulled her to her feet. Despite her desire to pretend like she was fine in front of her classmate, Kari begrudgingly accepted that she was in no condition to make her way home on her own, and with her parents out of town they wouldn't be able to help her either. Left with little choice in the matter, she told Davis which apartment complex she lived in, which thankfully wasn't that far away from where he lived so he knew how to get there without needing directions.

As the two of them left the scene, Kari chanced a glance over her shoulder towards where Agumon and Ogremon had battled it out earlier that afternoon. Her heart skipped a beat when she found that all the destruction the two digimon had caused was gone. The hole in the street that had been left after Ogremon's club and all the rubble that had fallen from the apartment buildings surrounding them... it had all vanished, as if it had never happened.

-:-:-:-

The trek back towards the Kamiya Residence was a quiet one. Neither of the two children said a word to the other, but the tension between them was almost tangible. Kari still wasn't too happy about being found by one of the boys in her class in such a weak state, not to mention she still felt embarassed about the fact that she actually needed him to support her to even stand up straight. If this ever got out, she would never hear the end of it from the rest of their class.

Davis was trying to come up with something he could say to make Kari feel better, but had so far come up with a big blank. Judging by the way she had reacted to him earlier, she wasn't very happy with him for some reason but he couldn't for the life of him figure out what he had done to earn her ire. To be honest, he didn't think he had actually interacted with her at all during the 3 years they had shared classes. Kari was the kind of girl who preferred to stay quiet during class and actually listen to what the teacher had to say and during breaks, Davis always played Soccer, in which Kari never participated. With their minimal amount of interractions, it seemed almost impossible that Davis could've done anything to offend or upset her, so how come she was acting as if he had?

However, he was spared this confusion once they entered the apartment building where Kari's family lived, as he needed to check the list of family names to know where he was going. Kari could probably have steered him right, but she appeared to be half asleep by this point and just barely aware of her surroundings. Why she had been outside on her own in this condition was beyond him.

"There we go, Hikari. We're almost there." Davis spoke up as they reached the floor where the Kamiya Residence was located.

The girl in question mumbled something incoherrable, but Davis recognized that she felt relieved that she was almost home again. As they approached the door, Davis found to his relief that Kari had left it unlocked when she had left the apartment earlier.

"Hello? Is anybody home?" he asked as the door closed behind him.

When no one answered, he looked around the entrance hall and found that it was pretty much empty, leading him to the conclussion that no one else was home at the moment. Not bothering to take off their shoes, Davis proceeded to practically carry Kari around the apartment until he eventually found a bedroom where one of the corners was occupied by a bunkbed. Davis knew that Kari had an older brother but he doubted that said brother would mind if Davis misplaced his sister in the wrong bed, at least not when she was in this condition.

With one last grunt of effort, he managed to flip Kari into the lower part of the bunk bed. After removing her shoes and leaving them back in the entrance hall, he returned back to the bedroom to tuck Kari in properly. When he was done, he let out a sigh of relief and stood back. While Kari was far from heavy and Davis was pretty strong for a boy his age, he had been steadying her for quite some time now and the climb up the stairs of the apartment building had been particularly streinous. It was just his luck that her family would live on the second highest floor in the building.

As Kari appeared to have already fallen asleep, Davis turned around to leave and figured that he could come back tomorrow to check on how she was doing. He may not always look like it, but Davis was a very caring and kind person who wanted his friends to be happy. While he would be hard pressed to call Kari a friend since they had hardly talked to each other at all over the 3 years they had shared classes, she at the very least counted as an acquintance, and that in his eyes was enough for him to care about her well-being. Just as he was about to close the door behind him however, a soft groan from over by the bed made him stop dead in his tracks.

"Davis?"

Looking back over his shoulder, Davis found that Kari had rolled over so that she was facing the door and was eyeing him curiously. While she was undoubtly still worn out from the afternoon's ordeal, getting inside and laying down for a few moments appeared to have cooled her down somewhat.

"Why did you help me today?" she asked, a hint of hesistance in her voice. "It's not like we're friends, right?"

Turning back to face her again, Davis thought about why he had decided to help Kari that afternoon. Kari was right, they weren't friends in any way, but any decent human being who had seen the state she had been in would've wanted to help her. The mere fact that no one else in that street had thought to at least stop for a few moments and check up on her baffled him.

"Well, not really." he said. "But you looked like you could use a hand. That was a good enough reason for me to help out."

A few moments passed as Kari just stared at him with disbelieving eyes. This was a side she had never seen of her classmate before, and it didn't match with the image she had of him at all from the 3 years they had known each other. After a few seconds of tense silence though, she sighed contently and fell back against the soft pillows.

"Thank you." she whispered softly, as she closed her eyes.

Detecting none of the ire he had heard when she had tried to deny his help earlier that afternoon, Davis relaxed and grinned sheepishly towards her.

"You're welcome." he said, glad that she appeared to be feeling a bit better now that she was back home and laying down.

Silence engulfed the two 9 year olds, but unlike the one that had hung over them during their trek back towards the Kamiya Residence, this one was much more comfortable. However, thinking about that silence sparked a question in Davis, one he had been pondering since he had first run into Kari that afternoon in the street.

"Hey, Hikari?" he asked hesistantly. "Why were you even outside on your own to begin with?"

"Please, just call me Kari. That's what everyone else calls me." Kari said with a smile, though it soon faded as she came around to answering the actual question. It may have been an innocent question, but being reminded of why she had been outside made Kari's mood turn solemn.

The memory of her brother letting go of her hand and floating away into the sky returned and with it, the worry for his well-being. What was he doing right now? Had he found his friends once he made it to the other side? Being away from Taichi was hard enough on its own, but knowing that he was in the Digital World, a place which she knew to be potentially dangerous, made it all the harder to bear.

And what should she tell Davis? If she told him the truth, he'd just think that she was crazy. However, she had never been good at lying either, and she didn't want Davis to get upset if he noticed that she was hiding something. They may not know each other very good, but so far he had proven to be nothing but helpful toward her. Somehow, he had managed to make her feel like she was in safe hands, something that only Taichi and her parents had managed before him. She didn't want that to change.

"Davis... have you noticed something strange on the news reports recently?" she asked, trying to buy herself some time. "They said that people have been claiming to see strange creatures on the news, that aren't really there."

The question caught Davis off guard, but as soon as he processed what it was Kari had asked, he felt his heart skip a beat. He knew exactly what she was talking about. Over the last week, there had been reports about people seeing strange silhouettes in the background of the news reports. Just last night, Davis' older sister Jun had left the living room in a panic, claiming to have seen a giant red insect during the news report. He himself hadn't been watching the television as he had no interest in the news, but he knew that Jun had a great fear of bugs, so he had just played it off as her vivid imagination and so had their parents, who had been watching it along with her.

"Y-yeah, funny thing huh?" he said evasively.

Kari blinked in surprise, having picked up on Davis' evasive answer. She hadn't expected to get a serious answer from the question, it had just been the first thing that popped into her head while she was trying to stall for time to decide if she should tell Davis the truth about why she had been outside or attempt a lie.

"Wait, you've seen them too?" she gasped, her heart skipping a beat as a glimmer of hope was lit in her chest.

Davis scratched the back of his head awkwardly and suddenly found something outside the window to be very interesting. It wasn't really his place to tell anyone about what happened inside the Motomiya Residence, especially not when it concerned his sister. However, Kari didn't strike him as the kind of person who would go around and tell everyone about such personal things either, so what harm could it do? It wasn't like his sister was the only one who claimed to have seen something strange on the news.

"Not really. I don't watch television." he began, but eventually just decided that no harm could come of it. "However, my sister said that she saw a giant insect or something last night while she was watching the news with our parents. I was in my room reading a book so I didn't see anything, but my parents said afterwards that there had been nothing there."

This really threw Kari for a loop. For so long, she had thought that she was the only one who could see the Digimon on the news. When she had asked her parents if they could see the monsters on the television, they had just told her that she had been watching too many scary movies lately. But within a day, she had now come across 2 people who claimed to also have seen these creatures: her own brother Taichi who had been able to see them after returning briefly from the Digital World, and now Davis claimed that his sister could also see them.

"A-and, do you believe her?" she asked, feeling her energy return with the anticipation.

Even Davis was able to pick up on the subtle excitement in Kari's voice, and it confused him somewhat. Did she know something about these strange creatures? It wasn't that he thought Jun was lying or anything, she rarely did that. But giant red bugs the size of a small building? One could forgive him for question the existance of such a creature.

"Well, I don't know. I guess I got no reason to doubt that she actually saw what she claims to have seen, but I'm not sure if I want to believe that it was actually there." he tried to explain what he thought about it.

It took a moment for Kari's mind to process what Davis had said. That was a surprisngly insightful way of looking at the situation, yet another trait she had never associated with Davis before today. There was a lot more to him than what met the eye. However, that was the last thing on her mind at the moment. She hadn't forgotten Davis' original question, but this recent revealation made her really want to actually tell him the truth. If Davis was willing to believe that his sister saw a giant red bug on the evening news that nobody else had seen, then maybe he would be willing to believe her if she told him the truth?

"Davis... can you keep a secret?"

-:-:-:-

It would be a few more hours before the door to the Kamiya Residence closed behind Davis. While him and Kari had been talking, her parents had gotten home from visiting Kari's grandmother on the outskirts of town. After they had come up with a good excuse as to what one of Kari's classmates was doing in their apartment, Davis had been invited to stay with the Kamiyas for dinner. However, not even the admitedly excellent cooking of Yuuko Kamiya had been able to stop Davis' thoughts from spinning like a windmill inside his head after what Kari had told him that afternoon.

A parallell world inhabited by strange creatures known as "Digimon", and these were the monsters that people had claimed to have seen on television screen during the recent news reports? Kari's older brother having gone to this strange world that same afternoon and that was why Kari had been left alone in the street like that?

Just as he passed under the balcony that belonged to the Kamiya Residence, he came to a stop and looked up towards the apartment where Kari was now getting some much needed rest. While the girl had seemed honest as she talked about what she knew about this whole Digimon-business, Davis wasn't sure if he was ready to believe it just yet. It just sounded too unreal to be true, like something out a science fiction movie or something.

Sighing, he was just about turn and walk away when he noticed something glint in the light from the lamppost. He squinted with his eyes and was able to make out a small metallic object that was falling towards him from one of the balconies, though he couldn't tell which one. With reflexes honed by hours of soccer practice, he snatched the object out of the air as soon as it was within reach, feeling the touch of cold metal in his palm as his hand closed around the object.

'Huh? What's this?' he wondered as he looked down at the unfamiliar object.

In his hand rested what appeared to be some kind of portable digital device, with strange symbols surrounding the screen and 3 buttons. It was a bluish cyan in color and reminded Davis loosely of those digital pets that some of the kids at his school played with these days, where you had to feed and take care of the pet if you wanted it to survive. However, those were commonly made out of plastic while this thing appeared to be made out of some kind of strange metal, if the cold sensaion in his palm was anything to go by.

Davis frowned as he looked away from the device in his hand and looked back up towards the balconies. Had someone dropped this thing by accident? It had come from somewhere around the area where the Kamiyas balcony was located... maybe it belonged to them?

Letting out another sigh, he clipped the device to his belt and continued on his way home. He could ask Kari tomorrow if she recognized it from somewhere. Right now, he was too tired to turn around and go back up there. Besides, Kari was probably already asleep by now and he had promised to drop by tomorrow anyway to check if she felt better. With that thought in mind, Davis returned home, unaware of to what extent his actions today would impact his future.

Author's Note: And there you have it. I know this was a little short, but I felt like that was a good spot to end the prologue off. I really hope it wasn't too bad, but chances are that you found it at least acceptable if you made it this far. Regardless if you did or not, I would appreciate any feedback in the form of a review! It literally takes 5 minutes of your time, but it means so much to a writer to hear what their readers think of their work.

There is one thing I want to take the time to talk to you guys about however, something that tends to be at the forefront of many readers thoughts when they find a fic that focuses on these two particular characters. No! This story will not show any romance between Davis and Kari! While I admit to being a Daikari supporter, this story will only portray them as friends. My main goal is to portray them in a new light (no pun intended) while still retaining their main characterists. I'm sorry if this disappoints you, but keep in mind that they are both 9 years old in this fic. If I decide to write a sequel when they are older, then I'm not ruling it out.

Thanks for taking the time out of your day to read the words of a fellow Digimon fan, and I hope you all have a really good day! Don't forget to review! ;)