Patamon watched T.K. cautiously. He sat leaning against a tree as he spoke to his brother over the phone, his eyes focused on the ground around the protruding tree roots. His tone of voice never once matching the look of remorse that darkened his expression. "The times where you didn't have a choice, don't count." T.K. closed his eyes, his tone shifted and Patamon could tell T.K. was trying to keep his voice from shaking. "You've always resented me, Matt. You've always known I was the reason our parents got divorced. I split our family apart."

Patamon's eyes widened and then he frowned, giving T.K. a look, knowing better than to interrupt him at that moment. He just silently watched as his best friend ripped a massive hole in his relationship with Matt—someone he had desperately tried to grow close to after the years they had been separated as kids.

After some more heated words, T.K. pulled the phone away from his face and stared at it for a few seconds, Matt's weak voice was barely audible when T.K. hit the end button.

Patamon hadn't realized he had been holding his breath, letting himself relax slightly he looked at T.K. wearily, watching him shut down his phone.

T.K.'s hand shook, his eyes not moving from the blank screen on his phone. It felt like he may shatter at the slightest disturbance.

Finally Patamon dared to ask. "Was that true?"

T.K. flinched, maybe forgetting Patamon was there or just the shock of the broken silence. Either way it made his eyes lift and meet with his little friends. "About my parents?"

Patamon gave an uncomfortable nod.

T.K. slowly pushed his phone back into his pocket, trying not to show the pain on his face from the movement his arm gave at the strain. "Yeah, it is."

Patamon looked at T.K. carefully, trying to gauge his expression. "When did you…?"

T.K. leaned forward a little, pushing his hair out of his face. "I found out before I even started high school. It was kind of an accident, but also not. I was prying into my mom's past a little. Part of it I justified as research, I wanted to focus more on my writing in high school, and mom was just so busy at the time, I took it upon myself to look into her old files in her office. I mean, it was innocent at first, but I found some papers from something my mom wrote a long time ago, maybe an apology letter she never gave my dad? It was kind of vague, but it said enough for me to put the pieces together. I confronted my mom a while later, and she admitted that I was correct in my assumptions." T.K. inhaled slowly. "When mom and dad were having a rough patch, my mom had an affair. They unexpectedly decided to try to make things work and found out a few weeks later that she was pregnant. She knew that it wasn't his, but she was scared to admit her unfaithfulness after they were finally working through all their problems. It wasn't until I was 3 that he found out. I'm still not sure how he found out, but that's when mom took me and left."

Patamon saw the guilt in T.K.'s eyes when he finally lifted his gaze back to him. "You don't really think Matt hates you and that it was your fault, do you?"

T.K. shifted again and gave Patamon a look. "Well, it was my fault. By extension, at least." He saw Patamon start to frown. "I know it's not directly my fault. And while it's true Matt has always known about the reasoning behind the divorce, I don't think he hated me—resented me? Of course, his family was ripped apart by his annoying baby brother. What 6-year-old wouldn't?"

Patamon huffed. "But it's Matt. He loves you T.K."

T.K. made a skeptical face at Patamon. "We hadn't hardly seen each other for 4 years after the divorce, and when we did finally get some quality time together, well, that's when we came here." T.K. chuckled a little. "I didn't realize then, how absolutely terrified Matt was, unexpectedly feeling this sudden big brother responsibility for someone he didn't even like, scared to death that if anything happened to me, mom would kill him."

Patamon sighed. "I'm not sure that's exactly how that went."

T.K. shrugged. "Things that didn't make sense to me as a kid just started clicking into place when I found out what happened, including how Matt treated me. Did we eventually grow closer and become friends? Of course, there's no denying that." There was a hint of sadness in his next words that made Patamon's eyes well with tears. "But, I don't think it's a secret that, even now, I'm more an, obligated burden, than anything." The sincerity in T.K.'s quiet voice was unwavering.

Patamon looked down at the ground. "It's not an obligation to Matt. And I'll say it again, he loves you T.K."

T.K.'s chest hurt. "Yeah but, isn't love itself a burden?"

"T.K.…" Patamon hated that hopeless look in his eyes.

Before either of them could say anything else on the topic, a voice from the shadows besides them startled them. T.K. leapt to his feet in such a panic he nearly fell back down, Patamon between him and the darkness faster than T.K. had ever seen him move.

#

Kari's mind was spinning. How could Tai say that? Did he really just suggest they leave T.K. alone? Despite everything he had just said, the facts staring them in the face—T.K. was in danger. It didn't make sense, especially not from Tai. Joe, Izzy, Sora and maybe even Matt, but never her brother.

Izzy was talking, but she couldn't focus on that. She stepped back and sat in the corner as everyone gathered around Izzy's computer.

She closed her eyes and tried to take slow, deliberate breaths, desperate to keep herself from screaming, from berating Tai for abandoning T.K. "No." she breathed through trembling lips.

Ken frowned, asking despondently. "What kind of Information, Izzy?"

Izzy responded, not looking up from his computer. "I got a strange request from T.K. quite some time ago, asking if I could find any information on a digimon, however, I wasn't able to. I even decided to message Gennai, just because I found the request from T.K. odd, considering the data base had no information."

"What digimon?" Matt's face filling with even more concern.

"Wisemon." Izzy finished typing quickly, bringing up the digital monster data log. "This was all there was when I first looked it up." He leaned back to allow the others to see the screen unobscured.

Everyone leaned to get a better look at the screen. The image space was blank, the text field full of random symbols, zeros and ones and a lot of randomly placed question marks.

Yolie stepped forward, Ken and Davis right behind her. "It just says the name, nothing else?"

Izzy nodded. "The data on it has been corrupted. And between Gennai never responding and T.K. never following up, I decided it must not have been that important."

Matt's chest hurt at the thought of T.K. facing a new enemy all alone. "But now you think it has something to do with what's happening today?"

"Well," Izzy moved his mouse and typed quickly on the keyboard. "Last night when we got back, I couldn't do much else besides run the program to check for digivice signals. So I started digging some more and trying to see if I could decipher any of the random text left over in the log. It took a lot of failed attempts, but I was able to hack into the core of his data entry and find this." He leaned back, revealing some broken text.

Between the random question marks, several of the symbols turned into fragmented words.

"It still looks the same." Davis said blankly.

Ken's eyes scanned over the data entry. "Demon? Something about maybe a book?

"There's no making any sense of that." Davis wrinkled his nose.

Tai hovered close by, looking at Izzy. "You already have some speculations, don't you?"

Izzy gave a single nod. "From what I can gather, he may have had some type of time altering abilities? And possibly that he was in the same type classification as Piedmon."

Matt, Sora and Tai all looked at Izzy with a similar panic on each of their faces.

Sora asked weakly. "The Dark Masters?"

Izzy raised his hands to calm the instinctive panic. "There's really nothing to be panicked about. First, it doesn't necessarily mean there's any direct connections. There are a lot of digimon that share type classifications that aren't anything alike. It's just another typing, like virus, data and vaccine."

Matt let out an exhausted sigh. "What does it mean then?"

Izzy shrugged. "It would mean a lot more if Wisemon still existed."

"It doesn't exist?" Ken raised an eyebrow at Izzy. "Is it possible for a digimon to do that?"

Izzy turned to everyone. "The reason that there's no data on Wisemon and the data entry is corrupt in the first place is because Wisemon, and there's only one of it, went crazy centuries ago. He went mad and corrupted his own data in order to, basically, perform digital suicide, but he wanted to die without the chance of being reborn like most digimon."

"But, if he doesn't exist anymore, why would T.K. be asking about it?" Ken frowned. "When exactly did he mention it?"

Izzy frowned. "I think it was a week after moving home?"

Ken interrupted. "That long ago?"

Izzy nodded. "Well, yeah."

Ken ran his hands through his hair. "So this whole time, it could have been that and not…" he shot a glance Kari's direction, hoping no one noticed—grimacing when both Tai and Davis noticed and followed his gaze to her in the corner.

#

Kari had been lost in her mind, abruptly looking up to see Tai kneeling in front of her. "Hey." He spoke softly, a painfully guilty look on his face as he stared off to the side, instead of making eye contact with her. "I know you're mad."

Seeing her brother looking so broken made her anger toward him falter, staring wide eyed before inhaling slowly, dropping her gaze. "I am." She felt her whole body begin to tremble, seeing him looking at her so miserably.

He sighed and reached up and touched her hand. "I think that you know what the right thing to do is, don't you, Kari?"

She looked up and gave Tai a confused frown. "The right thing?" she repeated.

He met her eyes with his own and gave a single nod, his voice quiet. "T.K. still has feelings for you, right?"

Kari's mouth fell open slightly, unable to answer—he had said as much, more than once since he had returned.

Tai pursed his lips. "If you chase after him, you in particularly, if he's going to these lengths to stop Davis, Ken and Matt. I can't imagine what he might do or say to you to keep you safe. And I know that it'll probably hurt him terribly to have to hurt you too."

"What are you trying to say?" Kari's anger rising steadily.

"I'm saying," Tai paused at the growing scowl on his sister's face. "I'm saying that, if you go after T.K., he'll say things to hurt you, too. And if I know anything about that boy, it'll kill him to do that."

Kari shook her head. "What'll kill him is leaving him alone. I'm not going to let him hide behind mean words. I'm going to find him and I'm going to help him."

Ken scoffed from behind them. Kari and Tai looking over to see Izzy had stopped talking, and they were now listening in on them. "You want to help him?"

Kari's frustrated expression deepened at Ken. "That's not fair."

"You want to talk about fair?" Ken hissed. "I don't know where you get off thinking you're the only one here that cares about him. You aren't the only one here so desperate to lift this burden off his shoulders you can barely breathe."

Davis stepped in front of Ken. "Enough!"

Ken didn't take his scolding eyes off of Kari. "Yeah, I've had enough all right." He turned, brushing past Yolie as he made his way to the door.

Yolie grabbed Ken's arm, stopping him. She shook her head. "How is this helping anything?"

Davis glanced at Ken and Yolie before looking at Kari, who was now staring at the floor, her messy bun starting to come loose, her hair cascading around her porcelain face. Whatever happened between Kari and T.K. didn't seem to be as much a secret as he originally thought. At least not based on everyone's, except maybe Izzy's, reaction to Ken and Kari's exchange.

Ken grabbed Yolie's arm gently. "I need some air, you stay. I'll be alright." She slowly lowered her hand and allowed him to leave the apartment without saying anything.

Yolie stole a quick glance at Davis, maybe with a hint of curiosity, before walking up to Kari, who was silently fighting back tears. "Hey, it's going to be alright. We just need to take a minute to catch our breath and think things through clearly. We can't do that until we calm down and stop fighting each other." It was Yolie after all, so even though she was talking to Kari, her loud affirming voice was purposely aimed at everyone in the room, and they knew it.

Kari nodded lightly, trying to find the strength to look up at her friend without crying. She was surprised when Davis grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her into a strong embrace—so was everyone else, but none of them said a word, because they all knew it was exactly what she needed.

#

T.K. relaxed, Patamon tilted his head, confused.

"I see you've made your decision." Gennai spoke softly.

T.K.'s chest still felt tight, all the 'decisions' he'd made in the last 24 hours crushing him slowly. "Yeah."

"You're committed?" he asked lightly, making sure to gauge T.K.'s body language and expression carefully.

"I am." T.K.'s voice didn't waver. "I'm going to keep them all safe, no matter what."

Gennai looked impressed and disappointed. "It's brave of you, understand that I see that. But, doing this alone may put the digital world at risk, without your friends to keep you safe."

T.K.'s heart jumped. "You found something out, didn't you?"

Gennai hesitated before giving a short nod. "It's only a hypnosis, but it's the only one that hits all the check marks so far."

"The gate?" T.K. asked eagerly. That question alone had been weighing on him for months.

Gennai looked concerned. "Partially."

Patamon saw the level of anxiety in T.K.'s demeanor almost immediately. "Calm down, T.K."

"What is it?" T.K. begged.

Gennai looked at them wearily, before looking T.K. in the eyes. "Your injury needs tending to."

"Never mind that!" T.K. hissed.

Gennai shook his head. "Not here. It's too dangerous."

T.K. closed his eyes, his jaw clenching tightly. "Seriously?"

Patamon flew up and touched T.K.'s arm softly. "T.K., he's right. You're weak from the blood loss and not eating. If Gennai says it's dangerous, then this isn't the time to talk about such important things."

Gennai turned, a portal appearing before him. "I will have you come with me."

T.K. shook his head. "I don't trust you."

Patamon frowned. "You have to accept help from someone!"

T.K. looked up at Gennai, a skeptical frown wrinkling his face. "Whatever you found out, has you scared."

Gennai gave T.K. a thoughtful look before nodding. "It is concerning. And I think you'll agree once you come with me and I explain what I have found."

T.K. shook his head slowly, taking a step back. "So, afraid that you may be trying to trick me into going with you, so that you can lock me away and hide me from Wisemon and his companions?"

Patamon looked surprised by T.K.'s accusations. "Gennai wouldn't do that!" Patamon turned to see a disappointed look on his face.

"I do not believe I could hold you against your will." He paused. "For long." He finished slowly.

T.K. felt it, the desperation in Gennai's gaze. "I do that and my friends suffer for it."

"I was hoping that once you heard, you would agree that hiding is the best course of action. Until we know more." He motioned for T.K. to come with him.

"Tell me what the hell this gate is and why they're after me." T.K. was done playing games.

Gennai sighed. "If the primeval texts are correct, it suggests that the Crest of Hope, accompanied by the ancient runes, can be used in a ritual to open a 'Gate'—at the cost of an attuned soul."

T.K.'s hands shook subtly. "Where does it go?"

Patamon glared up at T.K. "Did you hear what he said? Why does that matter?"

Gennai sighed. "I can't be sure."

"Tell me!" T.K. screamed.

"There are too many references to the powers of darkness surrounding these same texts that speak of the ritual. We can only be certain that it would bring a colossal darkness over the digital world, if successful."

"An attuned soul? Meaning T.K.'s? Attuned to the crest?" Patamon's voice shook with both anger and fear.

Gennai nodded. "It would not be a stretch to say that they intended T.K. to become the crest's catalyst from the beginning. Whether they planned it the way it came about or not, it seems likely they would have ensured it before long."

T.K. was suddenly lost in thought, realizing that the light he followed in the ruins that lead him to find the crest, may have been Wisemon guiding him right where he wanted him. And the runes that lit up the walls inside, couldn't have possibly been a coincidence. Hope and darkness again playing a game of cat and mouse with him. And just like that, every memory of his past with darkness flooded into his mind like a poison. Making him feel as if it were only yesterday that Devimon targeted him and Patamon because a prophecy foretold they would be his undoing.

T.K. opened his eyes, he was lying on his back with both Gennai and Patamon looking down at him anxiously. "Mmm…" he tried to speak, but nothing coherent would form, blinking heavily he felt himself fading into unconsciousness.