Note: Again, yes, I do have kale's permission to post his stories here. That permission is documented in his author's profile. This is the sixth book, continuing the saga begun in 'SoulBound', 'A Bond Unbreakable', 'The True Believers', 'Unite the Righteous Virtues', and 'The Faith of My Fathers' and occurs roughly around the 20th episode of canon season 02.

The tall, white-haired teen allowed himself a fleeting grimace of discomfort as he pulled his thin jacket tightly about his shoulders; the fierce, gale-driven gusts of snow stinging his eyes as they threatened to fling him from his perch astride the narrow crag of rock. In annoyance he glanced over his shoulder, scowling at nature's seeming dedication to hurry this all along. This was supposed to have been a private time for him, and he deeply resented the intrusion of the elements. With a contemptuous snort in return the boy peered downwards to the field of sharp boulders that awaited him a hundred feet beneath. A single step, scant moments of vertigo, and then this would all be ended.

Finally ended. After a year and a day of the galling humiliation that he was forced to suffer, he had finally decided to bring this maddening chapter of life to an end in the only manner that was left to him. The teen bit his lower lip once again in frustration. One year. Three-hundred and sixty five days of plotting, with his enormous intellect and fiendish instincts, and still he had yet to determine a mean of avenging that most humiliating of defeats. Or even to regain a smattering of the power that he'd lost.

It was all the time that he had allotted himself and now, it having expired, he was prepared to take what he had promised himself would be the final -- though certainly acceptable -- way out. Oblivion. If he could no longer enjoy the taste of another's pain or feel satisfaction at the ruination of another's life, then this would have to be the alternative that he would fall back upon.

He did not fear suicide. Roan allowed himself a half-hearted, yet still conceited smirk. Fear was not something that he was ordinarily sensitive to, not like those pathetic souls who shared the earth with him. No. There was only one time... just once, where he could remember having felt the chill grip of fear upon his heart, and what he had witnessed at that time had been enough to make even the most intrepid of souls cringe in horror.

He reached up and ran his fingers though the icy whiteness of his hair. Yes. That had been truly terrifying. As if Hell itself had revealed itself to him in all of its fury. Truly horrific. Yet also in a peculiar way, it had been quite... fascinating.

The teen's hand went to his pocket as he continued to forestall the inevitable, and he pulled out the three remaining thin, crimson-red shards that had once comprised his crest. With that, he had known true power. The supernatural ability to introduce the madness of hatred and loathing into the souls of others, even amongst the best of friends and lovers. He smiled. And hadn't he done so?

But now, that was all over. The three little shards now held no trace of their former power after his talisman had been crushed under the heel of the youngest of that group. The boy Takeru Takashi. Brother of Yamato Ishida... the same Yamato Ishida who had redeemed Rio's soul and saved her life in the process.

Roan reeled away from his perch high atop the mountain cliff angrily. He would have preferred not to die with that thought lodged in his mind. His sister, the one person that the dark teen both hated and loved more than anyone else in the world, she had finally found her happiness in the arms of another. She had called him 'Matt', and the look in her eyes and the sound of her voice had told him that she was convinced she had found in him a safe harbor from whatever pain that he himself had inflicted upon her. What a truly galling thought...

He turned back to the cliff. Better just to end it all now. Without his crest, without his... well, his associates (he had never really had any 'friends'), there was very little that he could do to take his revenge on either Matt or Rio. He had been twice trumped, and was now almost completely without power.

The boy smiled, his decision finally made, and turned and paced towards the cliff, as if he would keep walking until he simply tumbled off the side and into the pool of jagged rocks awaiting him far below. Finally... oblivion...

"That's not the answer, you know."

Roan whirled about at the grim voice, a ferocious gust of wind almost succeeding in bringing about his death where his own conscious efforts had failed him. Raising an arm to shield his eyes from the snow, Roan looked for the speaker. It had to have been his imagination. No one in their right mind would come up here, in the middle of winter, in such a hellacious storm. He almost felt ashamed with himself. Certainly he could not be so afraid of the taking of his own life that he would begin to hallucinate.

The teen frowned. "Who said that?" he asked calmly, as if from the proximity of the voice he expected the speaker to be right at his back. After a few moments with no answer the frown on his lips became an ugly, hateful grimace. "Who said that?" he demanded, shouting his anger into the fury of the wintry storm.

"I... said that," the thin voice replied raspily, again sounding as if were coming from just in front of him.

The teen squinted into the wind, shielding his eyes from the snow and stroking his dark goatee as he often did when he was perturbed. There was nothing there... no one to be speaking, but still...

And then the boy could make out a faint outline, a dark, shrouded figure standing just before him. He opened his eyes wide and lost sight of the figure, then squinted again and caused it to reappear. The speaker appeared to be, oddly enough, mostly transparent unless he made a conscious effort to force his eyes to see it. "What?" he demanded.

"I said," the other replied calmly, "that what you are planning is not the answer which you seek. You think that with death you will be absolved of your need for revenge? That the joy of those that have beaten you will not be a constant reminder to you of your failure? Hah! The very idea is asinine."

Roan clinched a fist tightly, his lips curling into a threatening sneer. If there was one thing that he had never been able to endure, it was humiliation. "And that's something that you'd know all about, is that it?" he returned, unwilling to concede without an argument that anyone might know more about any given topic than he did.

The other gave a single, brief chuckle, as if he were above the other's petty anger and pride. "An endless, furious howling at those who will never hear you? Dreaming day and night again and again and again about those who have defeated you? Thinking over and over again, 'If I only had one more chance?' Oh, yes, Roan, these are things that I know all about."

The teen raised a single eyebrow. Not at the possibility that he was speaking with someone who had just all but professed to being dead, but the fact that it knew of him by name. "You know me?" he queried, somewhat proudly.

"We serve, as it were, the same master, human, and your name has already begun to collect quite a reputation in the halls of my home. As we have a common foe, I begged to our master that I be sent back to aid you in your revenge, that by seeing you successful I might have a measure of my own." The other paused for a moment, allowing his words to sink into the other's psyche. "Well? I have extended you my offer, human. Will you forestall your own death, and make just one more attempt to fulfill that which is your destiny?"

Roan stopped to ponder for a moment. Another chance. Could this... thing?... before him truly deliver on what he promised? If not, if he only stopped to listen, the teen figured that he would be little worse off than before, and another promise broken, even one to himself, mattered little to the boy. His eyes narrowed dangerously at the shrouded figure, as if seeking to determine the truth of the words by his intuition alone. "Agreed," he said after a short pause, a grim look on his face.

The other nodded. "Very well. Come then, and take hold of my shroud. We have a journey to make, back to what had been my homeland before my defeat, and there we will begin to gather the tools for our... rather, for your... vengeance."

Roan uncertainly looked at the transparent figure before him, then stepped forward and grabbed a fistful of the dark cloth on the other's sleeve.

A jolt of intense, icy pain shot through the veins on the boy's hand and up through his arm, past his shoulder and straight to his heart. The dark teen clenched his teeth against the agony, not giving one verbal indication to the other of the suffering that he was in. Any sign of weakness would put him at a disadvantage in their pending partnership... if indeed a partnership it was to be.

The ghostly figure, who after the bond had been formed between them seemed to be much more corporal to Roan, gave a grin. A pair of sharp fangs were evident on each side of his mouth as at least moderate satisfaction with his new partner inundated his existence. He has audacity, at least, to go along with his hatred.

As the being at his side concentrated, a black void appeared in front of the two of them. A dark, swirling vortex formed out of seemingly nothingness, just hanging there in the middle of the driving blizzard. "You may want to close your eyes," the creature, buried underneath his dark shroud, mentioned to the other. "There are things along this pathway which are not meant to be seen by mortals."

Roan frowned and, still keeping a grip on the other's sleeve, stepped into the void, eyes wide open.

*****

T.K.'s eyes were halfway closed in moderate contentment as he looked up at Kari's angelic face, the girl's lap serving as a most perfect pillow for his head. It had been a long, quite trying couple of weeks for the boy, and their time together served to renew his strength as much as anything. It had been only days since what he should have known since the beginning had become readily apparent to him. She was his strength. Even if everything else failed him, he would always have her.

The brown-haired girl glanced down, her eyes locking with his. With a kind smile on her lips her free hand started to idly play with the blond strands of hair resting on his forehead, and the boy gave a sigh. There definitely needed to be more times like this. "What's on your mind?" she asked softly, continuing to lovingly smooth the hair out of his eyes.

The boy closed his eyes entirely, another contented murmur escaping his lips. "Just... happy, Kari. I'm glad that it's finally like this. Just you and me and some peace and quiet."

Kari smiled as she took his hand in her own, glad to hear the 'old' T.K. back in the boy's voice. The week prior to this one had been hard for the girl, seeing him as he had been. Drained. Dejected. Almost devoid of the quiet, honest strength that she had always attributed to him. Yet just in time to save his life he had rediscovered that strength after hearing her call to him, and for that the girl was profoundly glad.

A knock sounded at the front door, a quiet knock, almost courteous in its infliction. Only one person had a knock like that. T.K. smiled, then reluctantly sat up on the couch as Kari's hands left his golden hair. "Come in, Cody!" the slender boy called.

The younger child opened the door slightly, peeking his head in. "How did you know it was me?" he asked, his green eyes peering at the two of them questioningly.

T.K. smiled, glancing over at Kari. "You're the only one that still knocks. Everybody else just throws open the door and stampedes in like a herd of wild buffalo."

Cody did not return the other's smile, a somber moment of silence falling over the room like a veil as he looked seriously at the older boy. The humorless grimace which was on his lips made him appear even more serious that he usually looked, and right away the older pair suspected that something was wrong. With more than a bit of trepidation hanging in the air the two peered at their younger counterpart, anxiously awaiting his words.

The younger boy paused for a moment, carefully measuring the question that he was about to put to the others. It was probably nothing, but somehow...

"Did either of you see Davis or Yolei today?"

The question initially seemed innocuous, and as a feeling of relief washed over him T.K. opened his mouth to respond that yes, of course he had. But then, without speaking, he shut it again. Actually, the truth was, he hadn't. Davis hadn't been in school today, and the boy had just assumed that he had stayed home while sick or something. And though he had no classes with Yolei, the older girl had not joined he and Cody on their walk to and from school. "Well, now that you mention it..." he began, then slowly trailed off and glanced towards Kari.

The brown-haired girl shook her head. "Don't look at me. It wasn't my turn to watch them."

T.K. seemed to ponder for a bit, then looked back down at the younger boy. "I'm sure it's nothing. They've been spending a little bit of time together lately, so one of them probably got sick and just gave whatever it was to the other."

Kari, however, looked a bit more concerned. "Wait a minute. You wouldn't be asking for no reason. What's happened?"

The younger boy nodded gravely. "I just came over here from Davis' house. I also thought that he might have been sick, and wanted to give him an old family recipe for a hot herbal tea mix..."

T.K. nodded quickly and waved his hand, urging the boy to get to the important part.

Cody looked up, the ever-present frown in his eyes was now on his lips as well. "The police were over there."

Kari and T.K. glanced at one another as Cody continued. "I didn't hear what everyone was talking about, but since he wasn't at school today, and I hadn't seen him since we came back from your game last night... and then I remembered that Yolei didn't show up to walk to school with us today either..." he trailed off, looking at T.K.

The older boy caught his breath, evidently concerned. It was probably nothing, he was sure, but... "Have you been over to Yolei's store yet?"

Cody shook his head. "I wanted to stop over here first to find out if the two of you had heard from them and it was just my imagination."

T.K. frowned, looking from Kari to Cody and back again. "Let's... just go over to Davis' place. Just to be sure," he said slowly, drawing a hesitant nod from the girl. He turned back to Cody. "Can you go over to Yolei's store and see if she's there? We can meet back here in an hour."

The dark-haired boy nodded as seriously as was his manner, and T.K. reached for his coat, having noticed the frost-rimmed sleeve of Cody's thick jacket. "Is it snowing again?"

The other nodded, and Kari quickly left the couch to join the two of them. "I think Cody's probably right and this is nothing to get excited about. But just to be sure..." he repeated even as Kari, who knew the boy better than he knew himself, could hear in his voice the truth: that he was anything but sure, and was in fact more than a little concerned.

"You don't think that they went back without us, do you?"

T.K. chewed on his bottom lip for a moment. "I don't know what to think. It's tough to say with Davis. Still... the police..." He shook his head. "I'm gonna bring Pata along with us. Cody? Come back here as soon as you find anything, okay?"

The younger boy gave a short nod, then opened the door and headed back out into the storm. T.K. watched him go, a forlorn sigh escaping his lips. "Just when things were getting back to normal," he murmured sourly.

Kari refrained from mentioning the fact that, for them, things like this were normal.

*****

"Hey!"

A loud, metallic clanging sound echoed in Davis' ears to go along with the shrill feminine voice which was assailing his brain. The boy winced, draping an arm over his head in an attempt to stifle the noise as he resisted the urge to regain consciousness.

"Hey! Somebody! Where are we? Is anybody out there?"

Davis cringed in anguish at the loud voice, curling up even more tightly into a fetal form. "Shut up and get outta my room, Yolei," the dark-haired boy muttered vaguely in the direction of the girl's voice, still anxious to get back to the most wonderful dream that the girl's shouts had interrupted.

The room fell silent, and Davis gave a brief smile as he rolled over and closed his eyes. Finally.

"D... Davis?" the girl's voice questioned cautiously, now buffered by a more reserved, hopeful tone.

The boy groaned a complaint. "Yolei, go away. Whatever it is, it can wait for me to finish sleeping."

"Finish slee--? Davis! Get up and open your eyes!" the other snapped in return.

Davis, irritated that the girl evidently was not going to allow him any more rest, sat up quickly. Too quickly, as it turned out. "Oww!" he cried, reaching a hand up to his throbbing temples and covering his eyes. Even the dim light in the room seemed to be inordinately bright to the boy, and seemed to shoot right through his pupils to his brain. After a moment of licking his lips to try to clear away a sticky, gummy feeling in his mouth, he finally came wide-awake and glanced about himself. "Hey... where am I?"

Far from being in his own bed in his own house, Davis was resting on the rough stone floor of a tiny room, a room completely devoid of... well, of anything. And more disturbingly, one side of the room was lined with thick, black metallic bars. "Jail? Hey! What'd I do to get put in jail?" the boy protested, perplexed.

"We're not in jail, you idiot," Yolei snapped back at him, doing her best to sound angry with his ignorance but failing miserably as relief at not being alone flooded the words.

"Then where--? Wait a minute!" the boy muttered as his memories slowly came back to him. "Somebody... somebody stuck me with something." And with that he craned his head awkwardly over his shoulder and rolled up his sleeve, finding the angry red needle-prick on his upper arm.

The awkward motion made the boy somewhat dizzy, and another wave of vertigo crashed over him. "Ohh, my head," he complained, reaching a hand up to his temples.

"Davis, come over here," Yolei said insistently, her voice coming from somewhere outside his cell.

The boy frowned at the demand, but then rolled onto his knees and crawled in the direction of the girl's voice. After a few moments a wall, evidently made of the same rough material as the floor stopped him. "Where are you?" he queried, his words still heavy with exhaustion as he glanced along the wall.

"Out here," Yolei replied, and in the faint light of the place the boy could make out the outline of the girl's fingers waving at him from just outside the bars of his cell. "I'm just on the other side of this wall," she continued, giving it a slap with her other hand.

Davis moaned, his head still throbbing in protest at his consciousness. "What happened? Where are we?"

"I... I don't know," Yolei responded, the fingers outside his cell starting to fidget wildly. "I guess I don't remember anything more than you do. The last thing that I can recall, we were on our way out of the school and I was telling you that I'd see you tomorrow, and then--"

"We've been... kidnapped?" the boy asked incredulously.

"It looks like it," the girl replied glumly. After a moment she continued hesitantly. "Davis? Here, g...give me your hand." And again her fingers searched clumsily around outside the bars of the boy's cell.

"What? Why?" the other returned, perplexed for a moment before doing as she asked and thrusting his hand through the cold metal bars, grasping her warm hand tightly.

Yolei shook the proffered hand, squeezing the boy's fingers with a thankful fervency. "I thought that I was all alone in here," she said, relief evident in her voice.

"It's just us?" Davis asked, in danger of having the blood cut off from his fingers so tight was the girl's grip. Yet somehow, it was also strangely... reassuring.

"I think so," she responded anxiously.

After a silent moment or two the pair could hear a soft, padding sound, not unlike footsteps echo from somewhere outside their respective cells. Davis turned his head, listening carefully to the sound. He thought he could almost make out voices...

But after another moment each of the children felt an agonizing jolt of searing pain as whoever it was on the outside delivered a vicious kick to their clasped hands, breaking the heartening bond between the two.

Stepping from the shadows, Roan's lips curled into a cruel grin as both gave a yelp of sharp pain and then, seeing that Yolei had failed to draw her hand back into her cell, the teen brought his foot down heavily upon it and sadistically began to grind it into the rough floor.

"A... Owww!" Yolei cried in pain, trying to pull her hand back inside. The older teen, however, snarled as he continued to crush her fingers with his foot for another moment or two, leaning forward heavily and chuckling at the girl's continued cries of pain.

"Hey! Get off her!" Davis snapped angrily, leaping forward and thrusting a hand through the bars at the older teen's leg. Roan complied with the demand, but it was only so that he could lean on the foot as he delivered a nasty kick to Davis' chin through the bars, then smirked as he watched the younger boy reel backwards, falling to the ground and clutching at his jaw.

The older teen looked disdainfully at the two for a moment, then turned his head to his side. "I thought you said that there were three of them."

Yolei cradled her injured hand, rocking back and forth as she stared at the tall boy. She was careful to stay far enough inside the cell so that he could not kick her as well. It seemed as though he were speaking to someone beside him, but she could clearly see that there was no one there to be spoken to.

"Well tell them to hurry up. I want to get this started quickly," he said, continuing his conversation with his unseen confidant.

"Who are you? What do you want with us?" Yolei demanded, wiping the tears of pain away from her eyes with the back of her uninjured hand.

The other didn't respond for a moment, only eyeing the girl derisively. Then he turned his head to the side and gave a short chuckle... one that was so clearly evil in its inflection that Yolei felt a cold shiver go down her spine. "Who am I? Well, little bitch, if it makes you feel any better, just consider me your host for the nightmare which you have entered and from which you will not wake. My name," he said, the words almost a growl, "is Roan Kuroda. You may have heard of me."

The teen's deep voice was saturated with malice, as though he despised anything or anyone who was not him. The look that he was giving the pair was so utterly conceited, wholly convinced of his superiority over every other living thing that it was hard for the pair not to cringe as it fell upon them.

Davis glanced up as he heard the name, his brown eyes flashing in the dim light. Oh no! the boy thought with alarm. For T.K. had, at one point, briefly told him of his encounters with the truly evil person now standing before him. Roan. The former leader of the dark Digidestined, holder of the Crest of Hatred. The utterly white hair atop the teen's head should have been a dead giveaway.

As the realization dawned on Davis and a hint of anxiety entered his being, a small, reddish light began to exude from a crystal dangling from Roan's neck. As the younger boy's eyes focused he could see that there were in fact three separate crystals, all of the same reddish hue, but that only the one in the center now shimmered with a more angry, crimson glow. "Ah, so you have heard of me, boy," the teen hissed at Davis, as he also took note of the crystal's aura.

Davis frowned but did not respond, not wanting to further antagonize the other.

"And you fear me..."

"Not me!" the younger boy snapped defiantly as he stepped forward to the prison bars. "T.K. and the others beat you. I will too!"

At the bold declaration the crystal about the other's neck abruptly stopped glowing. Roan frowned, then pulled the three separate shards up to his eyes, as if comparing the difference in sizes. Even from where he stood, Davis could see that the center gem, the one that had been glimmering for a short time, was a small bit larger than the others. A dark look was in Roan's eyes. "It does work," he murmured fiercely, a triumphant smile on his lips as he turned on his heel to leave.

"Wait a minute!" Yolei cried anxiously at the other's back. "What do you want from us?"

The teen stopped but did not turn, a single, sinister laugh escaping his lips. "Want? What do I want? Let us just say that, in time... from you I will take everything that makes you who you are," he answered enigmatically, then trod forward into the darkness, disappearing from view.

Yolei shuddered, her lips quivering as she stared into the shadows that the older teen had vanished into. Never, ever in her life had she imagined that there could be a human being so evil, so utterly devoid of everything that makes man better than a savage animal. "D... Davis?" she asked, stuttering nervously. Stuttering. I haven't done that in years.

The boy didn't answer, and simply continued to stare into the darkness as the other's final words echoed in his ears. He was without his D3, without Veemon and with no way to contact him or the others. We're in big, big trouble now, he thought to himself.

"Davis!" Yolei repeated insistently, terror in her voice at the other's silence.

"Yeah, Yolei," the boy returned quietly, trying to keep the sound of fear that he had heard in her words out of his voice as well. "I'm still here."

"Who... who is he?"

Davis didn't answer for the longest time. Oh, man! What have we gotten ourselves into now? After swallowing hard to try to get the gummy feeling out of his mouth he spoke, but the words were evidently not in response to hers and as such only served to frighten the girl further. "Come on. Let's see if we can't find some way out of here..."

*****

Cody hurried his steps along as he returned quickly to his apartment building from Yolei's store, and the news that he had for the older pair awaiting him there was not good. The store was closed up, with a hurriedly scribbled note left on the door saying that it had been closed 'Due to unforeseen circumstances'. That, in and of itself would not normally have alarmed the younger boy, but added together with everything that he already knew... it was not good.

He had to get back to T.K. and Kari. Davis had evidently vanished, and if Yolei had as well it almost certainly involved the three of them. Children across the world disappeared every day, but there was a special connection between Davis and Yolei, a connection that he, Kari and T.K. shared as well. If the disappearances happened to be somehow linked to the digital world...

"Keitaro!"

Cody looked up at the sound of the shouted voice so close in front of him, the cry breaking his deep concentration and drawing his attention off of the sidewalk for the moment.

"Keitaro?"

A young girl of perhaps his own age was standing on the sidewalk in front of him, looking forlorn... indeed almost on the edge of tears as she stood and stared into a small, park-like area just off the walkway. She had long, straight blond hair which hung down in tendrils, obscuring the right side of her face, while on the opposite side it was braided and pulled back behind her ear. Hesitantly she made as if to step forward into the small grove of trees in the little park, but then stopped and pulled back, evidently nervous about entering for some reason.

Cody walked right behind her, dead-set on completing his mission and returning to T.K. and Kari, but something, the young boy wasn't certain just what, slowed him as he passed behind the girl's back.

"Keitaro!" she screamed into the grove, panic in her voice.

"Uhm, e...excuse me?" Cody began hesitantly, lifting a hand to tap her on the shoulder.

"Ah!" the little girl started, giving an involuntary step backwards after having been surprised by the boy's touch. Cody stepped back as well, surprised at the other's reaction. The girl was breathing heavily, but, as she came to recognize that the one who had interrupted her was a boy her own age, she appeared to calm down somewhat.

"Are you, ah, okay?" he asked quietly, respectfully, as he had been taught by his grandfather.

The girl blinked. Her eyes had a bluish cast to them, the boy thought, and then changed his mind, thinking that they were more green. As he had noticed before, the long, blond hair on one side of her face fell down about it, obscuring almost that entire half. Her features were fine, but still had the childish cast of youth to them. "Oh, hello," she said quietly, quickly regaining her composure.

Cody glanced at the clock on a nearby building. He still had almost half an hour to get back to the others, so he had time to stop and at least find out what was the matter with the child before moving on to his rendezvous. He recalled the girl's anxious cries into the wooded area. "Are you looking for someone?"

The little girl looked ready to respond as she gave a halting nod, then her lips began to quiver and her face scrunched up as she held in a fresh set of tears. "M... my cat! He ran into the trees just a few minutes ago and now he won't come out when I call him!" And then the tears that she had been holding in came flooding forth in a torrent from her eyes, and she turned her head away.

Cody remembered what he had seen T.K. do whenever he had been forced to comfort a hysterical Kari, and placed a hesitant hand upon the girl's shoulder. Of course, when it was T.K. and Kari, that gesture had almost always been followed up with a warm kiss... and that was something that Cody was just not prepared to do. "Do you want to go look for him?"

The girl sniffled. "I can't!" she wailed, choking on a sob. "That place is just so... so scary. I can't go in there!"

Cody glanced at the innocuous-looking gathering of trees. Well, he supposed that to an ordinary eight-year-old that the grove could look somewhat nerve-wracking. Of course, Cody himself was no ordinary child. To one who had faced down monstrous and titanic creatures that children his age only dreamed of in their worst nightmares, the little forested area seemed quite docile. "Would it help if I came with you?" he volunteered, the young boy's manners kicking in like instinct.

The girl sniffled. She was, he thought idly, somewhat attractive. Of course, such things were rather unimportant to one of his age. "Would you?" she asked hopefully, her tears ceasing to fall.

The boy smiled. "I'd be glad to. After all, I'm sure he can't have gone far."

Cody stepped off the sidewalk and into the grove of tree with the little blond-haired girl at his back, a trembling hand on his shoulder as she quietly continued to call for the cat. Within moments they were out of sight of the sidewalk, and the trees surrounding them seemed to edge closer together. "Keitaro?" the girl whispered again, but this time there was something in the girl's voice that had not been there before. The boy was almost certain that in that quiet word he thought that he had heard... what? Guilt?

And then, just as Cody was ready to turn and question the girl about it, he felt himself thrown violently forward and off of his feet, landing awkwardly in a pile of dead leaves. "Wha-- ?" the boy started, then winced as he felt an unbelievably sharp and stabbing pain in his upper arm, and he rolled quickly to his back.

A tall woman was standing over him, one who looked so like the young girl that Cody had been assisting that it was no great stretch to assume that they were related... and the difference in ages made him automatically assume that they were mother and daughter. "Who--?" the boy started, then stopped as a wave of vertigo assailed him. He licked his lips, his mouth suddenly feeling quite dry and gummy. For some reason it required a great deal of effort even to attempt to speak at that moment. "Who--?" he murmured again, his head spinning. But at that point consciousness abandoned him entirely, and the boy collapsed limply onto a soft cushion of dead leaves.

*****

T.K. pursed his lips as he watched Gatomon question, in her own way, a more mundane member of the feline species as both he and Kari stood off to the side. The brown-haired girl stood very close to the boy, wrapping her arm tightly about his waist as though she were afraid that he too would just vanish into seemingly thin air as their three friends had already done.

It had only taken seconds to confirm the fact that Davis, indeed, had been missing since the night before. So as to not intrude on the conversations between the Motomiya family and the police (and possibly become subject to certain questions that they were not really prepared to answer), the pair had sent Patamon in through a window which led to Davis' bedroom, where the little flying mammal had discovered a very forlorn Demiveemon. Yes, the little creature had confirmed, Davis was missing. He had neither been seen nor heard from since the prior day. And no, he had not contacted his partner or given him any indication as to where he might have gone.

At that point the trio had left, first purchasing a large quantity of hot dogs from a nearby street vendor and having Patamon fly the food up to the hungry creature in Davis' room. T.K. didn't really know what to think. Davis, and perhaps Yolei disappearing was one thing, but without taking Veemon with him? That almost entirely ruled out the digital world.

After that the three had returned to T.K.'s apartment to rejoin Gatomon and await Cody's arrival. And after half again the hour that they had allotted one another for their rendezvous had passed, they became increasingly concerned for the youngest member of their group as well. After yet another half-hour had passed, T.K., Kari and Gatomon had left the apartment again to retrace the path that Cody would have taken to Yolei's store, leaving Patamon behind in case he should, in time, return.

There they had found the same note that the younger boy had seen, and deduced much the same thing: that Yolei, too was missing. But now there was also no sign of where Cody had gone to. No sign, that is, until fate had apparently finally found favor with them. For just as they were about to give up hope and return back to the apartment, Gatomon had spotted the little orange-striped cat just off the pathway, playing with one of the gloves that Cody had been wearing a short time ago.

Gatomon turned to the humans with a sigh, her tail becoming a bit more bushy due to her irritation with the smaller cat. "She keeps just repeating the same thing when I get to the part about Cody. She says that the one who owned this object before she did left with the other people-things."

"You can't get anything else out of her?" T.K. insisted. "That's awfully vague."

Gatomon frowned. "Someday I'm going to have to explain to the two of you about the serious vacuity of the feline language. I can't even get out of her how many other 'people-things' there were. Cats don't think in numbers, outside of singular and plural. And for some reason, she can't tell me which way they went. That should be something that she'd know, at least. But she insists that one minute they were here and the next they weren't. Like they just vanished into thin air."

Kari looked glum. "Then we're no better off than before," she sighed dejectedly.

T.K. pulled her closer. "Actually, we are. We know that, wherever they are, they didn't go willingly. The others wouldn't have left their Digimon behind with no explanation of where they were going otherwise, and Cody didn't just take off his glove and leave it behind in a storm like this. We know that it was people, not Digimon, who took Cody, and that, whoever they were, they aren't normal people since they just vanished. And since we haven't heard anything about any 'normal' kids missing from around town, we can probably assume that it has to have something to do with the digital world."

The feel of his arms around her apparently had the desired affect as Kari grinned, suddenly very proud of the boy despite the frustrating situation. "Elementary, Dr. Watson."

T.K. turned back to the girl's feline companion. "Thank her for us, Gatomon, then let's get back to the apartment. I think that we should probably call the others, just to make sure that they're all safe."

Gatomon nodded and gave the other a curt, feline kind of 'thank you', and then turned to hurry along behind the others as they fought to keep their footing on the icy walkway.

It was almost dark when they finally made it back, and Patamon met them at the door with a somewhat perturbed look in his eyes. T.K. instantly picked up on his little friend's agitation. "What's wrong, Pata?" he asked, head askew.

"We've got... company..." the other returned.

T.K. opened the door all the way, and smiled as his eyes met those of his older brother. "Matt!" the boy cried gleefully, running to embrace the older boy. It was very rare that Matt made his way over to their mother's house, spending his time almost exclusively with their father, and T.K. treasured the time that they spent together. "Matt," the younger boy said, suddenly quite serious. "Something's happened."

The older boy nodded. "Davis, Yolei and Cody are all missing."

T.K.'s brow furrowed. "How... oh, of course. Pata told you."

Matt shook his head and moved to the side, allowing the younger boy to see just what his partner had meant by 'company'.

Standing behind the older boy were two individuals that T.K. had never thought to see again, and he blinked rapidly at seeing them standing... well, as it were, in his own apartment.

Matt backed away from his younger brother's embrace and placed his arm around the slender, dark-haired girl's waist. A brief, shuddering sigh of gratitude escaped her lips at his touch, and T.K. felt his knees start to go weak at the almost tangible exchange of feeling that was in that simple gesture between the two. The happiness that he felt for his brother almost made his heart want to explode in his chest. All that time of waiting had not, after all, been in vain. He was right. She did come back to him.

And the other... the three all caught their respective breaths at once. His return now was perhaps less of a shock than it had been the first time, but still...

It was Gatomon who spoke, and in her single word of welcome was carried so much emotion that a dozen, or perhaps even a thousand words could not have said it better. Unshed tears pooled in her feline eyes and T.K. was astonished that so much of his past was coming together now...

"Wizardmon?"