Disclaimer: Digimon is a franchise owned jointly by Toei Animation and Bandai, and conceptualized by Akiyoshi Hongo. Doctor Who is a property owned by the British Broadcasting Company created by Sydney Newman. The concept of The Tamer v1.3 - The Other Tamer is a fanfiction idea. Please support the official properties.
The Tamer v1.3 - The Other Tamer
Chapter 7 - Puzzling Out The Problem
Tamer and Agumon returned to the Digital World, into the safety of the Hollow Bastion. Agumon turned to his partner and tugged on his leg, "That could've gone better."
Tamer stepped away and slid the helmet off his head, dropping it to the side before sinking to the ground. "I don't know how to fix this Agumon. This is so far beyond my control."
"Do you have any idea on what to do next? It doesn't look like Homeostasis wants to talk to us," Agumon asked.
"No…nothing," Tamer shook his head. "All I can really think to do is just start exterminating everyone. The contagion has already taken over most of the Digital World at this point. Not to mention all the infected digimon who are showing up in the human world…I've got nothing, buddy."
"Well how about we talk about it over lunch? I'm kinda hungry and I've always wondered what Gatomon tasted like," Agumon said cheerily. Tamer shot him a wide eyed look and Agumon added to clarify. "Come on. After all the times we fought her when she was working for Myotismon, don't tell me you never once thought about eating Gatomon."
"Let me see your eyes, Agumon," Tamer said, producing a soft white light from his digivice. At least, it appeared soft until it shown in Agumon's eyes. Then it was the brightest thing ever and Agumon swatted it out of his partner's hands.
"Get that away from me. That's too bright!" Agumon hissed angrily, shielding his eyes from the light.
"Agumon…it's getting worse," Tamer said quietly.
"What do you mean?" his partner asked.
"Did you even hear what you'd just said?" Tamer asked.
"That I want to eat Gatomon. I don't see what the…oh," Agumon said, now realizing what he'd said. He'd wanted to eat the cat digimon. It had never crossed his mind until now - he would've preferred some tacos or barbecue, normally. But he'd actively thought about sinking his teeth into one of their friends like it were nothing. He looked down at his claws in horror, then back up at Tamer. "How much time do you suppose I have?"
"Not enough," Tamer said, grabbing his helmet and hurrying off. "Come on. We're going to try the Network. Maybe then we can figure out where Homeostasis is."
"Are you sure that's a good idea? I thought Arukenimon destroyed it," Agumon said.
"She did and I think it's time I fixed it. We can use the gates to start monitoring around the Digital World. Homeostasis will show themselves sooner or later. Then we can have some answers," Tamer said quietly.
Two days passed after the digimon arrived outside of Izzy's work place. After that, Izzy's company wasn't so keen to have the digidestined coming around the office again out of the risk of having another digimon attack corporate headquarters. About the only reason Izzy wasn't fired on the spot was because of the value his work presented to the company. Thankfully, he'd created a work around to protect their digimon by creating a remote connection that would allow them to stay in quarantine on his personal servers. However, the only remote way in was through Izzy's laptop. It was the only way to keep the connection secure, although how that worked involved more technobabble than Kari could reasonably understand.
In lieu of meeting at Izzy's corporate office, the digidestined plus Meiko were now meeting under a bridge near their schools. It also happened to be where Leomon had taken up residence since he was too inconspicuous to live anywhere else. The only one who wasn't able to make it was Joe who attended via phone call due to his busy school schedule.
"Still no luck getting back to the Digital World?" Mimi asked the lion digimon, offering him a sandwich from her basket of handmade lunches. He took it and swallowed the whole thing in one bite, watching enviously as Mimi passed the remaining sandwiches to the digimon inside of Izzy's laptop screen. Mimi must've noticed this and handed him an extra sandwich. "Here you go! I made plenty because I know how you digimon eat!"
"Thank you…and no. Whatever brought me here to this world seems to be keeping me from passing back to the Digital World," Leomon said after swallowing the second sandwich.
"It must've been the same thing that brought all the infected digimon to this world. The one that required all three of us to close the gate to the Digital World," Matt said. "It also freaked Tamer out when he showed up. That must be connected."
Kari nodded in agreement but kept quiet about the part where someone who wasn't Davis pulled her away from the others to separate them. But why? It seriously felt like someone was pulling their strings with everything going and she didn't qlike it. Kari turned her attention towards Izzy's laptop monitor. Gatomon stretched and curled up into a ball on her fluffy bed, staring out at the others curiously as her tail wagged back and forth.
The cat must've noticed Kari staring at her and spoke, "So are we finally going to talk about the fact that Kari and Sora don't remember things the way any of us do?"
"Yes, I'm curious about this as well. Anything that'll help solve the crisis in the Digital World," Leomon said in agreement.
"We should probably start with all the things you remember differently and go from there," Cody said quietly, producing a pen and notebook to start jotting notes. "You said before that you don't remember Tamer surviving New Year's Eve. What else do you two remember different?"
Kari felt awkward being placed on the spot like this and hesitated to answer. She looked over at Sora who rubbed her forehead, pinching the bridge of her nose together as she tried to think of an adequate answer to the question.
Sora finally shrugged and answered, "I'm not really sure how to answer. I don't know why, but thinking about it now makes my head hurt."
Ken put a hand to his chin and supposed, "It could be a side effect from your other memories. I recall it being mentioned a few times in the Ancient's texts. Reality was altered in some capacity, and your connection to the way things were before is why you were able to retain some memories. It makes sense for Kari since she and Tai were siblings. And Sora and Tai were best friends a long time ago so that could also be why you retain some memories. But this is only a guess and we have no way to actually test whether or not it's true."
"So then why don't we remember it?" Joe asked over the phone. "Is it because our relationship with him was either nonexistent or hostile?"
"That's one idea," Ken shrugged quietly. "I'm just working off something that I read once a long time ago."
Kari knew what she wanted to start with but didn't want to hurt Davis. He'd been nothing but kind and attentive to her. But if they were going to fix this, they had to get start with piecing things together.
"It's okay, Kari. You can tell us," Davis said to her, putting a hand on hers. Kari hesitated for a moment longer before finally answering.
"You and I weren't dating," Kari finally said.
Davis sputtered, "What?"
Kari continued on, trying to explain it to Davis quickly, "I'm sorry Davis but I don't remember you ever asking me out. Or us ever going on a date. What I remember is waking up one day, finding you waiting for me, and getting ready to walk me to school. Everyone said we'd always been dating but the truth is I don't remember this…us…ever happening."
Davis' mouth was on the floor, his eyes glazing over. This was exactly what she was afraid of - hurting him for doing absolutely nothing wrong. Kari wanted to apologize to Davis, but what did she have to apologize for? Telling the truth? The two of them were never a couple no matter what anyone said. Yet she couldn't help but feel a painful ache in her chest when she saw Davis's face. The last thing she'd wanted was to say or do anything that would hurt him. She turned her hand and gave his a comforting squeeze. But all that did was make Davis' hand retreat from hers as he fell back in his seat.
"And how far back do you remember this?" Cody asked, looking up from his notepad as he finished scribbling his notes.
"What?" Kari blinked.
"I mean…for you, when exactly did your memories not line up with everyone else's? When exactly did you wake up to a world where Davis was your boyfriend?" Cody asked. Every time that exact phrase was used, Kari couldn't help but notice that Davis appeared more and more hurt.
"A few…days…weeks ago?" Kari said, not really sure of the answer. The harder she tried to think on it, the harder it was for her to remember when exactly it happened. It wasn't that long ago, she was sure of that. Yet it felt like a dream she'd just woken up from. Which was ironic since she had literally woken up to this strange world. It was like trying to put a definite date on it wasn't possible her. "I remember waking up in my bed to Tai dropping a pillow on me."
"That's literally every day though," Gatomon said with a tired yawn. "Sorry to say this to you Kari, but you do sleep in through your alarms a lot. If he didn't, you'd probably never wake up."
"For me, it was a few weeks ago when Tai first showed up. It was when he kicked that soccer ball into the door of the auditorium after your band practice, Matt," Sora answered quietly. "Actually, it was the same day Meiko joined our class."
"Which was the same day Sora started talking about how Tai was never around and that Tamer died," Matt added grimly, nodding towards Kari. "Assuming the timing lines up, that means they both happened on the same day."
"So if we assume it was around the same time, we'd have to ask ourselves what happened in the last few days to weeks that could've caused this change? Does anyone remember anything weird happening?" Joe asked over the phone.
"Well Leomon showed up even though he's supposed to be dead. Does that count?" Matt asked, thumbing towards the lion digimon. Leomon raised an eyebrow at him, seemingly offended but not saying a word in response to the digimon.
Kari couldn't say she remembered anything in particular that stood out to her. But so much happened in such a short amount of time that it was hard to say if anything weird stood out. Then again, a part of Kari wasn't entirely sure that was the correct question to be asking.
"Obviously not including that! No offense, Leomon," Yolei said. The lion didn't actually seem to be put at ease but still listened attentively as Yolei went on. "Leomon is just the latest in a long line of weird occurrences that've been happening. Trying to find something more weird than anything else that's happened is like trying to find a needle in a needle stack."
Joe murmured his agreement over the phone but it didn't really put anyone at ease. "Okay, that's fair. Maybe we should give this some time because there's a lot of weird things to think about."
"Let's come back to this later, then," Izzy said, turning to Cody and asking him to circle that part in his notes.
"You're so cute when you're being smart," Mimi said, tussling the red head's hair. Izzy's face went bright red from Mimi's compliment and Kari had to stifle a laugh. It was common knowledge at this point that both Izzy and Mimi had some kind of thing for each other. Unfortunately, Izzy was too bashful to do anything about it and Mimi's was so forward and open that all it did was fluster Izzy.
Except that couldn't be right. When did Mimi and Izzy start having feelings for each other? In fact, when did Mimi get back to Japan. Mimi should've been in America with her dad! Kari shook her head as she recounted, "That's right! I also remember Izzy didn't have an office job and Mimi still lived in New York City. She shouldn't be here."
"Uh…Kari, I moved back," Mimi said flatly, raising an eyebrow at her. Of course Mimi would say that.
Thankfully, Sora was quick to add, "No, I remember that too. You wanted to move back but your dad was against ever coming back to Japan because of work and to keep you safe from digimon."
"Well he changed his mind," Mimi said defensively.
"When?" Kari asked Mimi. Mimi shot Kari an annoyed look as Kari went on. "Let's be honest, your dad is stubborn and more than a little over protective. When did he change his mind and why?"
Mimi opened her mouth to answer but said nothing, and Kari could see plainly on Mimi's face that she had no answer. Mimi herself could not remember moving back to Japan. She started massaging her head, "I don't remember. I just got the weirdest headache too. Why don't I remember? I know we talked about it. We packed our stuff up and got on a plane…but it also doesn't feel like it actually happened."
"About a month ago..I think? I remember you came over…to hang out at my office…one time? Weird, it's like…I remember it happened but now that I'm thinking about specifics, I can't actually remember when or where this happened," Izzy said, pausing through his story as if it would help to conjure memories from thin air. "Wait…no, I haven't been working in the office for that long…actually, when did I start working for them?"
"See!" Kari pointed out.
"So we're not the only ones who remember things differently," Sora said with a breath of relief. Kari nodded in agreement, glad that they had two more people who noticed things were off with how the world was supposed to be. Cody was quick to begin scribbling this all down on his note pad, looking up attentively as he listened to see if anyone else noticed anything suspicious.
"What about you Leomon?" Mimi asked the lion digimon. "Do you remember…when you came back?"
"Not really? I remember fighting…Puppetmon? No, that's not right…it was MetalEtemon? Hmmm," Leomon paused, putting a hand to his chin. It seemed even he was affected by whatever force was altering their memories.
"So we can all agree that there are things in our memories that aren't matching up. What about the stuff you can remember?" Cody asked Sora and Kari. Kari didn't really have anything that stood out to her and looked to Sora.
"There was that one digimon we met with while we were on a date," Sora said.
"And what he said to us…what was that digimon's name again?" Matt said, trying to recall.
"Hackmon!" Sora said with a snap of her fingers.
Matt nodded in agreement, "Yeah, that guy. He gave us a warning about the infection which was definitely too late."
"But remember what else he said? No one knows where the infection came from," Sora pointed out. "He said the last time it happened, the Ancients had to seal the infected digimon away in the space between worlds. Hackmon even suggested that one of those digimon might've found their way back to our world. But that just leaves a question wide open: how and when did that happen?"
"Well, there was that time we fought Myotismon. Remember, we got stuck between our world and the Digital World?" Davis said, finally finding his voice. Kari couldn't help but notice that he was looking away from her and seemed to be avoiding direct eye contact. But the hurt was still plain on his eyes despite the neutral expression he was trying to keep.
It did make sense though. Myotismon was always one for manipulation and playing the long game to achieve his goals. There was only one problem-
"That was years ago! Why would any of this start happening now? If an infected Digimon got through then, wouldn't all of this have started much sooner?" Ken reasoned to Davis. It was the big wrench in the whole thing. Assuming Myotismon had brought an infected digimon to the Human World, how would he have been able to contain it?
"We still don't even know when all of this started happening," Davis said. "We know Kari and Sora's memories not matching is a more recent thing. But apparently the changes in their memories go back to then. So maybe the two are connected?"
"There's Davis with the insightful observation," Ken remarked with a blank face.
"I can still never tell if you're making fun of me or not when you say that," Davis said with a small frown.
"Ken ish jusht shaying you're that good, Davish!" Veemon said ecstatically, raising his fist up against the screen.
"Hell yeah!" Davis said, bumping his fist lightly against Izzy's laptop screen but even that was enough to tilt the screen back slightly. Izzy pulled his laptop back from Davis, cradling it like a child who broke into tears after falling over.
"Not so hard, Davis!" Izzy said.
"I didn't!" Davis protested. "All I did was give it a little love tap."
"Davis does make a good point," Joe said over the phone. "The fact that's where Sora and Kari's memories diverge from the rest of us means they could be related."
"But what about the fact that it only seems to have been causing problems now?" Mimi asked, once again raising the question of the changes.
"Well…the only thing that wasn't a memory change for either Kari or Sora was Meiko and Meicoomon. You guys literally showed up a few days ago," Davis pointed at the dark haired girl who's eyes widened in surprise.
"Me? Why would I have anything to do with this?" Meiko said defensively. All the pride Davis felt from his earlier observations vanished under the intense gaze of everyone staring at him. Even Kari felt second hand embarrassment for Meiko being put on the spot so suddenly like that. She would've smacked Davis if he wasn't already trying to clarify his comments.
"Sorry, I didn't meant to imply that you specifically had something to do with it," Davis explained his reasoning carefully, trying his best not to make an already precarious situation worse. "Just pointing out the fact that you showed up around the same time everything started going weird. So maybe it's connected? Like the computers all glitching out when Meicoomon hopped into the computer screen."
"Hackmon did say he was looking for the source of the infection," Matt said in solemn agreement.
Kari could see Meiko shying away from Davis and Matt's words. Thankfully, Kari and Sora had the same idea and smacked their boyfriends on the back of the head simultaneously. Both boys winced, massaging their heads in pain. Sora huffed and placed her hands on her hips, "Don't try and say this is her fault! There's no way she or Meicoomon could've known."
"Yeah, stop trying to gang up on Meiko," Kari added, looking to her. "Sorry about them. Davis can be dense and Matt can be blunt."
"Really making me feel like crap today Kari," Davis said under his breath. Kari tried to avoid looking at him because she didn't intend to add more to the sting of hurt he'd taken today.
Meiko frowned and hung her head quietly, refusing to look at anyone other than her partner, "But neither of them were wrong, were they? Meicoomon and I haven't even been here that long but everything started going wrong for you, didn't it?"
"Mei!" Meicoomon said from her window on the screen, placing a paw against it to reach out to her partner.
A long pause followed as everyone tried to think of what to say next. But it was hard to change the topic when all any of them could think about now was the timing of Meiko's arrival and all the strangeness that happened in the last few days. Kari tried to assure herself that Meiko couldn't be involved but even they couldn't be sure of that.
"Meiko, when exactly did you and Meicoomon get together? I don't recall ever seeing you two back when Oikawa was recruiting children to open the gate between worlds," Cody asked calmly, trying to phrase his question without any antagonism.
Meiko blinked as she tried to think about her answer. "We met when we were kids. I was only nine when Meicoomon appeared in the field outside our house in Tottori. She just showed up one day. Now that I think about it, it was around the time that world appeared in the sky."
"You mean the Digital World," Kari said more than asked.
"That would've been back when the Dark Masters and Apocalymon tried to blow up reality," Sora added grimly. Just saying it sent chills down Kari's spine as she's tried not to think about that for a long time.
"Ugh. I thought we were done with that already! I didn't like having to fight the evil world killing digimon the first time! I don't want to do it a second time!" Joe groaned over the phone, sharing the same sentiment as a lot of the older digidestined.
"Would it be better if it was Myotismon? That guy really just doesn't want to die," TK added angrily, his hands curling into fists that trembled with every word. Rage dripped from his voice as he added. "And playing mind games and manipulating people has always been his game."
"I dunno. He seemed pretty dead after last time," Davis said confidently. "Mimi blew him up with fireworks! There's no way he survived that!"
"That's what we all thought the first time. And he ended up being alive and biding his time. Besides, he's a Digimon. Fireworks would literally be the least of his issues. If this is Myotismon, then this could be the another phase of whatever plan he has," TK's tone grew darker with every word and Kari couldn't help but notice that his hands were curling up into fists.
"TK!" Patamon called out his partner to calm him down. It was hard to forget how TK could go to very dark places whenever he was reminded of things he'd rather not think about. "It's alright! He's gone."
"We can't know for sure," TK growled.
"Guys! You're interrupting Meiko!" Cody said with raised voice, pointing his pencil at them to silence them. "Sorry about that, Meiko. Please continue. So if Meicoomon has been with you all this time, what exactly have you been doing? It's weird that we haven't seen you until now."
Meiko nodded and continued telling her story, "We were mostly staying isolated out in Tottori. Dad was a professor for a university and Meicoomon's arrival peeked his interest. He started studying her and eventually his research attracted some government people. That's when we moved out here to Tokyo. So that dad could continue his research with government funding and tools. It was that weird government agency - The Data Processing Bureau or something like that?"
"So you knew that Daigo guy?" Davis asked.
"No, I'd never met him before. It was always a lady with short brown hair," Meiko answered, turning her head towards Kari. "It's weird. She kinda looks like an older you, but a little more…hmm, not angry. But definitely bitter."
"How come you never said anything?" Cody asked. "It would've been nice to know."
"Because they scare me. That wasn't the first time they showed up with guns," Meiko said. "I wouldn't be surprised if they're somewhere nearby listening to us or pointing a gun at us."
"You really know how to bring up comforting thoughts, you know that?" Matt chided.
"Well now we know which means we can be more careful later," Gabumon said to his partner, trying to remind him to see the positive side of the situation. That did little to stop Matt from grumbling under his breath out the whole thing. His mood only seemed to improve when Sora pulled his head onto her shoulder, although his face didn't get any less red.
Kari suddenly became very self conscious watching the two of them act that way and averted her attention back to Meiko. The other girl's attention was squarely on Meicoomon who continued to stare out at her from within the computer screen.
"I'm not sick, Mei," Meicoomon said meekly, sounding unconvinced herself of the fact that she wasn't infected.
Meiko nodded, "I believe you, Meimei."
"I believe you as well," Leomon added, finally speaking up to voice his own comments. "I refuse to believe that such a small and innocent digimon could be responsible for such a crisis in either the Digital World or the Human World."
"Thank you," Meicoomon said happily. Kari could see the relief on the digimon's face and was more than surprised to see how cute her face could be. But Kari shook her head of those thoughts - she wanted to trust Meicoomon but the timing of everything was more than a little perfect.
Someone had to ask the question, and it may as well be Kari. "Meicoomon. How did you end up in the human world? What exactly were you doing before you came to be with Meiko?"
Meicoomon gave Kari a quizzical look, glancing sideways at Meiko nervously. Meiko nodded at her partner reassuringly. "It's okay, Meicoomon. I'll be on your side no matter what."
Meicoomon pushed her pointer fingers together nervously. She didn't look anyone in the eye as she answered quietly, "I don't remember anything before waking up next to Mei."
"That's convenient," TK said, earning him a slap from Matt and Kari.
"So no digiegg? No digivolution? No portals that took you to the Human World? You just woke up in the human world?" Gatomon asked. Kari couldn't tell if her tone was bitter or sympathetic - especially given Gatomon's own personal history when it came to waking up alone.
Meicoomon shook her head quietly. "No…sorry."
"You don't have anything to apologize for Meimei!" Meiko said defensively for her partner. "Stop picking on Meicoomon!"
"I wasn't trying to. I was just trying to make sense of what she's saying," Gatomon said plainly as though she hadn't just tried to insult Meicoomon to her face. Meicoomon made no attempt to defend herself though and just hung her head quietly.
"I see what you're getting at Gatomon, but Meicoomon not being able to remember doesn't mean anything," Kari said to her partner. Gatomon didn't answer but did keep her attention focused on Meicoomon with an intense gaze. Meicoomon continued to shrink away under Gatomon's intense gaze but didn't say anything in her defense.
"I'm just trying to avoid another Myotismon reveal," Gatomon said angrily. And there it was. Meicoomon's ears sloped backwards and she turned away from the screen.
"Meimei!" Meiko called for her partner but the little cat digimon retreated behind a box and disappeared from view. Meiko called for her partner a few more times but the little cat digimon refused to come out.
"You should apologize Gatomon," Kari said to her partner but the white cat turned her head away at the idea.
"If you ask me, she's just being too sensitive," Gatomon answered, her tone becoming more aggressive. "We really don't have time for that if we've all been infected by the virus. In fact, if we assume Meicoomon is the cause of this whole thing, then it'd be better if we rip her throat out so that no one else gets it!"
Kari's eyes widened in surprise upon hearing Gatomon said that and notice the fact that Gatomon's eyes were constricted. A silence fell over everyone present as Gatomon carried on, only occasionally pausing to catch her breath. But her breathing became shaky and more rapid until she was breathing heavily between each word. A few times, her screen even glitched slightly and a series of zeroes, ones, and two would flash across her window. Gatomon snarled as she went on. "Then I say we eat her! We shouldn't let all that meat go to waste after all! I'm hungry and we should all feed! I know some of you agree with me!"
"What the hell, Gatomon?" Davis said, finally breaking the silence of the others.
Gatomon blinked and her eyes went back to normal. "What?"
"You were jusht talking about ripping Meicoomon'sh throat out!" Veemon said to the white cat.
"I was?" Gatomon blinked. "Huh…weird."
"Are you…okay?" Kari asked her partner wearily, already suspecting what the answer would be.
"I'm fine…just dizzy," Gatomon said, putting her head down on her pillow. Nobody was believing that for a moment and they all knew what it meant. The infection was in Gatomon and it would only get worse from here. Kari felt a pit in her chest as she looked at her partner sadly.
"I think Gatomon makes a good point. We should eat the digimon we beat," Patamon said. "It's just a waste of meat if we're being honest."
"Good heavens," Hawkmon gasped, almost falling over backwards in his den. The other Digimon jumped away and retreated to safety behind whatever was in their isolated units.
"It's a good thing I set this up ahead of time," Izzy said quietly, with just the slightest hint of pride in his voice. But that was a small comfort for Kari as she dreaded what would happen to her partner. While all eyes were on Patamon, Kari noticed Gatomon close her eyes and her head beginning to twitch on the pillow.
"Gatomon?" Kari asked her partner quietly. Gatomon's ears twitched at the sound of her name, so Kari called her partner again. "Gatomon?"
Gatomon's head perked up and she hissed at Kari, making the girl squeak in terror. Kari had never felt afraid of Gatomon, even when the cat first came to kill her. But now, she felt truly afraid of Gatomon. The cat bore her fangs and charged straight for the screen, leaping out of Izzy's laptop towards Kari.
Author's Notes: Has Gatomon lost her mind to the infection? What will happen to Kari? Are Meicoomon and Meiko the cause of all the problems? Find out all this and more in six weeks on the next chapter of The Tamer v1.3 - The Other Tamer, due out in six weeks on June 16th at 8 PM CDT! Don't forget to leave a review with your thoughts! And hey, remember to favorite the story to show support and follow to keep up with all the latest updates! That's all I have for now, until next time this is leonardo1123581321 signing out!