Cody pulled his backpack on over a shoulder, and slipped his shoes on. He waved good-bye to his mother and grandfather who were still eating breakfast in the kitchen, and headed out.

It was the day after their trip to the Digital World. After their run-in with Dayanara, they had realized that the TV that she had zapped was pretty much useless, and they hiked to the next portal, which was at another part of the forest. Ken, whose foot had turned out to just be sprained, albeit pretty badly, had hitched a ride on Gaurdromon, after Kazu insisted, "Dude! Just jump on! He's the one who squashed your foot!" Naturally, the Tamer had left out the fact that Gaurdromon was his digimon, and the accident was mainly his fault.

Cody waited in the elevator, watching the lights above the door light up one by one. When he reached the last floor he stepped off, heading towards his school. He walked by himself now, since TK and Yolei went to high school and, therefore, left much earlier and in a different direction.

He felt a slight rustle in his backpack, and heard some muffled sound. He smiled slightly, and unclasped the top flap. Instantly, Upamon burst out, panting and complaining in his squeaky pitch about suffocating, and that it apparently smelled like eggs in there. Cody had brought Upamon with him, since he didn't really trust his digimon in his apartment. Frankly, the little digimon was a huge klutz.

"Where are we goin', Cody?" The light yellow digimon demanded, almost jumping out of the backpack in excitement. "Are we goin' back to the Digital World? I wanna go and give that lady what she deserves," he squeaked, his ears waving around and making punching motions, if that was even possible.

Cody sighed. "To school, Upamon. You're going to have to stay up on the roof, since the computer lab will probably be in use. And don't expect to be going back to the Digital World too soon, either. You know what Izzy said. He needs to find out more about this Dayanara, so we can't just go rushing in."

Upamon pouted considerably, but quieted down when Cody reached the school. After a brief (and noisy, since Upamon was attacked by first graders) good-bye, Cody dropped his digimon up in the roof and headed downstairs to his class room.

Last night, when they had returned from the Digital World and their fight with Dayanara, they had held another impromptu meeting in Izzy's living room. Everybody except Ken and Ryo, who turned out to live in nearby apartments and had left to get Ken's foot tended to, had voiced their opinion on the Dayanara factor. In Kazu, Davis, and Tai's case, it was a very loud opinion.

What Davis had basically come up with in the short amount of time was that Dayanara was simply a power-hungry, human-like digimon similar to Arukenimon. Of course, Cody thought now, nothing in the Digital World ever turned out to be simple.

And they never did figure out what was up with the gorillas.

-

Tapping her pencil on her desk, Yolei sighed dramatically and let her head drop down onto her other arm. She faintly heard giggles from the seat next to her, and looked up. Her friend, Miyu, was attempting to muffle her laughs with her fingers, and wasn't doing a very good job of it if their teacher walking up to them was any indication.

As he ranted at Miyu, who was holding the edge of her desk tightly and looking like she wanted to shrink down into her seat, Yolei instead flipped her pencil around and took the break in the lecture to sketch a quick heart on the margin of her paper. Well, it really looked like a wobbly mitten, but she was no artist. She wrote in her initials, Y I, and was about to write in two more when her pencil was jarred out of her hand as the girl behind her poked her, hard, in the arm.

She raised her eyebrows at Yolei and pointed to the front of the room, where her teacher was waiting, tapping his foot impatiently. Wait- When did he get back up there? She thought, distracted.

"Ready to join us, Miss Inoue?" He said sharply, turning back to the chalkboard. She sighed again, less dramatically this time, and bent to pick her pencil back up from where it had dropped on the ground under her desk. Whatever, she thought sarcastically, erasing the doodle on the side of her paper. What was I going to write, anyways?

She dismissed the thought, choosing to, instead of paying attention to what her teacher was saying (yeah, right), prop her chin up on her fist and stare out of the window a few rows across from her desk.

Don't get her wrong, she was an excellent student. A tad too excellent, she thought, at times like this. This was probably the third time her teacher had gone over this subject. After all, how much could someone learn about something like the Silk Road? And that had been in China, for Pete's sake! Not that exciting.

I wonder what everybody else is doing. No, scratch that, they're all in school too, except for Mimi. I don't know what time it is over in America. She's probably asleep. I wonder what Poromon's up to, though. Hope he hasn't broken into the store yet. I told Mom to make sure he stayed away from it; he's a bottomless pit when he's bored. Especially when he's around all that food…Uh oh. This might not be so good. Note to self: Steer clear of the store when I get home. I don't want Mom making me clean everything up.

Yolei shook her head slightly. She would cross that bridge when she came to it. Right now she should probably concentrate on looking like she was paying attention. She turned her attention back to the front of the room, letting her eyes glaze over behind her glasses. She still wore the same huge glasses, but she had gotten the lenses replaced as her vision got steadily worse. Now she couldn't even walk around without the glasses on and not run into something.

What Izzy had said about Dayanara last night was still ringing through her head. Who was she, and what did she want? Apparently, from what the Tamers had told the others, the digimon who she had kidnapped, Guilmon, was a unique digimon that one of them, Takato, had actually drawn and created. If I could have done that with Poromon, she thought dreamily, he would have a lot cooler armor digivolved form from the Digiegg of Love. Something pink with bows. Of course, he's a boy, so he might not like that very much…

According to them, Guilmon was one of their most powerful digimon, next to Terriermon and Renamon. Dayanara was probably after the power, and wanted to go around destroying stuff, not that it hadn't already been done before. Pretty much all villains liked destroying things. Part of the job description, probably.

-

Suzie swung her lunchbox happily, hunting out a spot to sit in the crowded cafeteria in her school. She grinned, seeing one of her friends, Kaylie, waving her over to a table. She bounced over, barely able to keep her excitement in check. Well, about as 'in check' as an eight year old could manage.

She was going to go back to see Lopmon later, and they would have a play date! Well, she thought to herself, pouting a bit as she took her seat next to Kaylie, who was already chatting to the other girls at the table. Henry never really said we would go back, but we gotta! I wanna see Lopmon again! I don't care about that purple lady. But her necklaces were really pretty, she remembered, her mouth turning up again at the thought. She would have to get Daddy to get her one like that for her birthday. Or two. Or four…

"Suzie!" She looked up to see Kaylie looking at her lunch with a greedy glint in her eyes. "Are you gonna eat that pudding cup?"

She giggled and sheltered said dessert from her friend. "Uh-huh! You're not getting any!"

Kaylie let out a fake growl and tugged on the girl to her left's sleeve. "Hey! Suzie's not letting me have her pudding!"

The girl, a tall redhead named Allison, turned and mock glared at Suzie. "Really? Well we'll just have to…TAKE IT!" And with that she stuck a foot out from under the table, hooking it around Suzie's legs and pulling. With a squeak of protest Suzie slipped off the bench and under the table, landing with a hard thud.

"No fair, that's cheating!"

"Is not! Now gimme!"

"No!"

"Hey, stop it-OW!"

"Stay away from my pudding!"

"Never! Surrender or else!"

"Or else what? You'll smack me on the head with your lunchbox again?"

"...Sorry, Allison. I was aiming for Suzie, really!"

"Uh-huh."

Suzie grinned toothily and ripped open her pudding. Kaylie stared longingly at it as she ate, which only made her grin more. Even though they fought, they were really close friends. Kaylie was kind of like Henry's sometimes friend, Kazu; they both jumped to conclusions and looked like they were wired 24/7. As for Allison…She was like a sarcastic version of her older brother. She was really smart, the smartest in her class, and had a sense of humor dryer than the Sahara.

-

The image on the screen flickered briefly, and the woman's gold reptilian-like eyes narrowed. She drew a hand out of the long sleeves of the yellow kimono she was wearing and tapped the keyboard with long fingernails, biting her lip. Sighing and leaning back in her chair, she drew her hands back into the sleeves of her dress and shook her head, blond locks of hair flying around her shoulders.

She still couldn't believe Sumayah hadn't been able to wipe those kids off the face of the earth. Well, she thought, anyone could tell that she was holding back. I mean, she didn't even call in Harva or me, for that matter. I still don't quite know why she didn't just Atomic Blaze them.

The woman blinked as light flooded the room suddenly, and she glanced over her shoulder, one eyebrow rising. "Oh, Harva. What's up?" She bit the inside of her cheek to suppress a laugh at the tall woman standing in the doorway, covered in scratches and burn marks. "Is the prisoner acting up?"

Harva glared at the woman, sitting down in a chair next to her in a huff. "As if, Avaritia. Sumayah's still making me keep him sedated. What good he'll be when he's unconscious I don't know." She pulled her crimson hair back with her hands, pinning it up in a quick bun. "I just want to implant the stupid virus in him as soon as possible. Then we can get rid of Dayanara as soon as possible."

The woman known as Avaritia smirked and glanced back at the screen in front of her. "You're getting tired of impersonating her already? I'm surprised, Harva." She ran a hand through her hair, combing it with her fingernails. "I believe it was your idea in the first place, you realize."

Harva rolled her eyes, leaning forward on her chair. "Whatever, you know you hate it too. I don't think the others are even doing anything!" She frowned at the picture on the computer. "Why do you get to keep tabs on the kids instead of fighting?"

Avaritia laughed wryly, glancing at the screen. One of the children, a boy with brown hair that was tinted with enough red for it to look almost maroon, was talking to a girl, waving his arms around widely. "Sumayah thinks that she can take care of destroying them herself. When I tried to tell her otherwise she assigned me 'computer duty'. More like 'stalking duty', if you ask me."

The red-head grinned menacingly, staring at the computer. "Still, can you believe that they think they know what we want? I doubt even the Digimon Sovereigns know everything, and they're the ones who tried to get rid of us in the first place."

Avaritia smiled too, her pale skin turned an eerie blue in the glow of the many computers in front of her. "You'd think that they'd have learned by now that viruses can never be completely deleted."

-

"Aargh!" TK glanced up at the shout to see Yolei hopping around on one foot, holding the other one in her hands. Davis was standing to her left, apologizing profusely, and Kari was on her right, offering to go get an icepack. They were standing in Yolei's kitchen, and Davis had, apparently, just managed to drop a blender on Yolei's foot.

TK grinned slightly at the sight, before bending down to pick the blender up, checking it to make sure it wasn't broken. It wasn't, thankfully, and he placed it back down on the counter, far away from Davis.

Their digimon were sitting on the table, scarfing down food. Even though their parents knew about the digimon now and gave them food while they were at school the little things were still bottomless pits with fur and feathers.

They had been planning on it being a meeting for the second generation of Digidestined, but Cody and Ken hadn't been able to make it. Cody had practice with his grandfather, and Ken had to stay off of his foot for awhile, thanks to Gaurdromon, so he couldn't really take the subway over.

"Hey, TK?" He glanced up at his name, seeing Kari looking at him. "Yeah? What is it?"

Kari frowned slightly as she pressed a bag of ice to Yolei's foot, even while the older girl was ranting to Davis. "What do you think Dayanara really wants from us? I mean, she has Guilmon, but why would she be attacking us?"

TK shrugged. "I really don't know. I mean, there's a lot that we need explained. Like why we and the Tamers have never met before, even though we were both fighting at the same time." He paused, thinking. "I wonder if Gennai could explain anything about this to us…"

Kari brightened. "Oh, that's right! I bet we could get Izzy to ask him. He's still in contact with Gennai, right?"

He nodded, leaning against the counter and folding his arms. "I bet he knows something about this whole thing. He should at least have heard about the D-Reaper when it was around from the Sovereigns. I wonder why he never mentioned it to us, though."

"He probably would just go into this whole 'It wasn't your battle' spiel," Yolei piped up, swinging her feet dangerously close to Kari's head, who ducked instinctively. "You know how he is. Always with the mysterious explanations that don't explain anything."

Davis nodded, still hiding behind the trash can from when Yolei had started chucking stuff at him in the middle of her rant. TK frowned, looking back at Kari, who shrugged, adding, "Still, he should be able to tell us something. It's not going to be very helpful if we get crushed by Dayanara."

TK nodded absent-mindedly. "I wonder exactly who Dayanara is. I mean, she looks and acts like a human, but that whole 'Black Lightening' thing was a digimon attack."

Davis pouted, looking slightly hurt. "Hey, it's the same thing as with Arukenimon. I thought I said that already."

Kari smiled slightly, glancing at him. "It's not always that simple, Davis. I wouldn't be surprised if she was something else entirely, like Gennai. He said before that he wasn't human, but he wasn't a digimon because he didn't have any attacks and wasn't born from a Digiegg. Maybe Dayanara is the opposite of that, not a digimon but not a human, since she has attacks."

Yolei glanced from Kari to TK to Davis, biting her lip. "I don't know…But hey!" she added, sitting up straighter. "Who wants any snacks? I don't know about you guys, but I want to get some food before our digimon eat it all."

-

The sound of two wooden staffs banging against each other reverberated through the house. A scuffling could be heard, which the violet-haired woman noted distantly, as well as a voice saying, "I…love you…so…much!" The sticks hit again, and Sumayah rolled her eyes from her perch in the rafters of the small hut-like dwelling. Outside, wind was blowing fiercely against the house.

The two digimon underneath her were sparring. Again. Like they did every single day since she had begun to watch them. And to think that some people think that married couples are always happy. She hadn't wanted to watch them at first, but then Avaritia had mentioned that they might know something about the three Tamers, Rika, Kazu, and Kenta that they had met a few years earlier in the copy of the Digital World. Jijimon and Babamon, two pretty much worthless digimon who seemed to like fighting each other more than anything else.

Sumayah shook her head as they separated underneath her, Babamon muttering something about starting dinner. Really, why those two Tamers had thought that they would make good partners she would never know.

Her frown deepened as she fingered the mirrors that were hanging around her neck. How was she going to get these strange digimon to tell her anything? All of the Digital World had already heard of the supposed Dayanara, and these two would probably recognize her as well. Still, she mused, the mirrors clinking against each other and sparkling as they caught the light, if they won't talk to me, they might talk to somebody else… And with that thought still lingering in her mind Sumayah grinned and brought both of her hands in front of her, laying them lightly on her temples.

Shifting slightly to allow almost all of her mirrors to catch the light and send rainbows of color dancing along the roof, she concentrated on the face of a certain girl she had seen before, when she wasn't attempting to keep bugs out of her hair. "Mirror Transformation," she muttered under her breath. At first nothing happened, but gradually she felt everything about her change slowly. Her hair shortened and faded out of its violet color, her clothes melting into her skin before reforming, her dark purple eyes lightening into a shade of lavender.

She smirked slightly as the change ended and withdrew her hands, glanced at her new body. Well, she's certainly not as beautiful as me, but it'll have to do. Sumayah ran her fingers through her now red hair that was pulled up into a ponytail. Rika Nonaka. Hmph. It's going to be hard, considering that I don't know what she acts like all too well, but I'm going to have to make Jijimon and Babamon believe that I'm her for now. And if they don't… The thought trailed off as Sumayah-turned-Tamer cracked her knuckles before leaping off of the rafters and landing on the dirt floor.