It was a bright day in one particular Japanese corner of the human realm.

Standing within the kitchen of the Makino household after having worked tirelessly was the oldest member of the family, Seiko Hata. Arms crossed she waited for the two youngest members of her family to hurry into the kitchen and start the food she made for them while it was still usual Rumiko, the mother of the house and Seiko's own daughter, was nowhere to be had the typical packed schedule one would expect a successful model to have her growing age was still far from changing this. So she, as usual, wouldn't be home for some time.

Though she missed her daughter at times Seiko was more than used to this. 'More for us!' She thought most days like this and being the loving grandmother she was Seiko would never allow a granddaughter of hers to leave the house until stuffed. With two maturing young women among the house it meant nothing she cooked ever went to waste.

She expected Renamon, the digimon of the two, to be the first to the kitchen as per was not the case when the door to their kitchen was hastily slip open to reveal the grumpy-looking face of Ruki, her granddaughter. Still waking up the teenage girl with a dreadful case of bedhead lazily pushed in and plopped down to start eating. A few minutes passed and Seiko became more curious of Renamon's absence. "That's strange. Renamon is usually up bright and early."

Ruki having finally gained some additional consciousness took notice as well.

"Huh, yeah. Where is she?"

"I figured you knew."

"I just woke up and barely know anything."

When Seiko called Renamon again Ruki groaned and decided to lift up to find her lost partner. However before she could even get on her knees her grandmother was gone.

Seiko moved into to knock on the door Renamon's room.

"Renamon?"

With no response to her name called Seiko started to open her door slowly. She then forced it open with more swiftness and aggression after she heard a loud thud from the wall of Renamon's room. The gold and white fox digimon rose from her resting place at the sound of her name being called.

"Grand... mother?"

Rubbing her eyes she looked at her surroundings to find she was not in her room at all. She had apparently fallen asleep on one of the dark corners in the outer part of their home not far from their pond. She looked around to see where Seiko's voice was coming from but was confused to find her nowhere in sight. She was certain she was calling her from within the same room but this was not the case. She followed the direction she believed Seiko's voice to have come from. It was the kitchen and to the fox's delight her nose was treated with the scent of fresh food that she would likely soon partake in enjoying

Though her every movement tended to be handled with care, precision and grace, this particular morning it seemed a tad bit sluggish, for Renamon, anyway. On her path to the Makino kitchen she bumped into a nearby dresser causing several papers to fall over. The ever-so-polite fox digimon immediately stopped in her tracks to retrieve every individual paper and put them back in the precise order they had been in before her disturbance of them. With that out of the way she intended to make her way back to the now very close kitchen but was stopped by a most curious sight. She saw strange distorted text she could not for the life of her identify. Renamon had a more than basic understanding of some forms human writing compared to most digimon.

Speaking was easy but in her early days in the human world transitioning from Digicode to human forms of writing such as the Roman Alphabet or the variants of Japanese writing essential to her daily life had not been easy. However she was highly intelligent and quick to adapt. With a few years time these new characters of writing became as second nature to her as any native human.

Yet this very moment she could not read a single thing the paper said.

A brief thought tossed the idea that perhaps they had been characters of a foreign human language written by one of Rumiko's foreign clients. This theory died quick when upon focusing she saw that the figures were too blurry for any eye to make out.

She was not normally one to pry into the business of other but her curiosity got the best of her and flipping through the other papers she found herself unable to identify anything on them either.

Strange...

Place the papers back in the proper place again she noticed one of Seiko's books near.

The Diving Pool, a book she was fond of and read again every so often.

Renamon grew concerned when she realised that she could only identify the book by the memories of when her adoptive grandmother mentioned it and the image on its cover.

It too had blurry black text that could not be identified by her.

Something was a miss.

Was she losing her eyesight? Couldn't be. She saw everything but words as clear as she ever could. Something was wrong. The lamp on the same table as the books and paper's suddenly made a burst as its light bulb popped. It did not merely go out but broke entirely sending small piece of glace on the table an near floor.

The ceiling light joined it. It was only then had Renamon realised how they had been the only sources of light in the room.

'Wasn't it morning?' She thought while her heart began to race while looking to see that the previously bright outside had turned dark as night.

She could see in the dark just fine, it never bothered her. It was the sudden darkness and destruction of the bulbs that sent her into worry and eventually into a combat high. She sensed something had come threaten her home. The oddities were unlike any digimon she had faced before. Still regardless of how strange and difficult these things were to grasp she knew only one thing; she had to protect her family at all costs and as long as she lived no harm would befall them.

The closer she had been to the kitchen the more she noticed Ruki's scent nearby even while still not finding the whiff of Seiko's. She rushed in to find Ruki sitting down with her food blissfully unaware of what was happening.

"Ruki, we are in danger!"

There she was. Her human partner sat before her fine and this eased her vulpine partner. Though the matter of the missing Seiko kept her tension high still.

"Renamon."

There was Seiko's voice again but she could not see or smell her.

She was uneasy but disturbed more by the fact that Ruki had ignored her.

"Ruki? This is serious!"

Her paw was on Ruki shoulder lightly shaking her but she got not response.

"Ruki?"

Her partner dropped her eating utensils on the floor and faced the digimon.

Her face was blank and her eyes looked empty.

"Ren... a..."

"Ren.. a..."

"Ren.. R.." The next word that rolled off Ruki's tongue was one that struck Renamon in her heart. It was a name, a forbidden name that she knew better than anyone else.

A now panicking Renamon cover Ruki's mouth with her paw.

'How could she?' She can't possibly have learned of that dreaded word she almost said on her own!'

"Ruki what or who has gotten into you!? I am here to protect you know and..!"

"Don't leave me..."

Those simple words pulled and gripped the digimon's heart.

"Don...'t leave..."

"DON'T LEAVE ME!"

Ruki's sudden yell brought unexpected fear into her partner's heart.

Her voice had changed and her skin became pale.

Ruki's eyes sunk into black pits with only a faint but familiar tinge of blue appearing in each socket.

A rush of bad memories overtook Renamon making her heart race and her head feel immense levels of spinning, splitting pain.

A weaker being would have collapsed and started to scream, but she was stronger than that.

She was shaking and barely able to stand but the fox would not be defeated so long as people she loved were at risk.

Naively she shook the thing that once looked like Ruki and had still carried a face like her trying to get her to speak.

"Ruki, Ruki!"

Her vision went black. She felt warm and familiar voices enter her ears and a soft hand touch her side.

Soon she would open her eyes to see Seiko and no far from her Ruki.

"Renamon."

"Uh, uhhh. Ow."

Rising from her resting place Renamon felt a great pain in her head.

At least now she confirm her horrible visions to be a mere nightmare. Still her heart raced like lighting even after she had risen to meet the soothing company of family.

Ruki came closer and kneeled down to her partner who was still in her mess of a bed.

"Hey, what happened?"

"Ruki... I..."

She looked at both women with confusion.

"Is something wrong?"

"Yes. I made breakfast and you never showed. So I came to your room to see you bumping into the wall from your bed and rolling around. You must have had a really bad nightmare."

Renamon could give no response at first. Though Seiko's story would explain her headache.

She felt Ruki's hand take her own paw.

"I don't really know what the hell you were dreaming about, but it worries me now. We can, uh... you know, talk about it over breakfast if you want?"

Renamon turned away to think of her hellish dreams. The memory was still clear but the mere thought of them made her head suddenly hurt violently and the other two noticed.

"Maybe an icepack on that head over breakfast is a better idea for right now."

"I can't disagree and I am sorry for not coming sooner."

Seiko smiled. "Its okay, Renamon. You two can be such deep sleepers sometimes."

With that Renamon lifted herself up to join them in their continued breakfast hoping that Seiko's unmatched cooking would surely put her mind off her pain among other things.

Her eyes happened upon their calendar and she moved into the kitchen

"Of course." She groaned with quiet venom.

The calender date was 2009/2/25

To her it was the most dreadful day of all the days in the year, every year.