Chapter 25:
Loose Ends
Subject: Shu, T.
Date: 7/27/2067
Time: 2:05 PM
Location: Odaiba, Japan
Begin transmission…
…
“So… ready to start?” Tian’s voice rang out through the empty lab.
“No.” Akira said flatly, setting her bag down. She put on a pair of lab goggles and pulled out several beakers.
Tian stared back at her, looking critically. “You know… you should put on some gloves. The stuff you’re working with is dangerous.”
“Uh-huh…”
“And goggles go over your eyes, not over your forehead!”
“I know that!” Akira glared and slapped her lab goggles over her eyes.
Tian raised an eyebrow. “You’re not taking this very seriously.”
“If you’re so strict about lab procedure, why don’t you do the experiment instead?”
“Hey, it’s your detention, not mine. I’m only here to supervise.”
“Geez…” Akira moaned, “This is such a waste of time. What kind of crazy teacher do we have, giving students ridiculous detentions like this?” She raged on, violently washing out beakers. “I could be working problems, or writing essays, or even scratching out lines on the chalkboard… but no – I have to spend three hours making hydrochloric acid!”
Tian sighed. “You wouldn’t be doing this at all if you didn’t explode your lab bench and destroy all the stock solution she made herself.” She was silent for a moment as she scanned the lab procedure the teacher gave them. “Now that I think about it, no wonder she told us we weren’t going to make this stuff ourselves. The procedure’s super-long!”
Akira laughed out loud. “Thank you,” she said sarcastically, “That makes me feel so much better!”
“Just be glad you blew up your lab station after you finished your experiment,” Tian shot back, “If you didn’t, you’d be doing that over as well!”
Akira let out a huff, and set out a newly-cleaned beaker full of pure HCl. “Whatever…” she murmured, picking up a beaker of water and intending to pour it into the acid-filled beaker.
Tian’s eyes widened, and she let out a shout. “HOLD IT!”
Akira blinked. “What?”
“Put… the water… down.” Tian said slowly.
“Huh?”
“PUT IT DOWN!!”
Akira gaped at her, but she put the beaker of water down.
Tian sighed. “Acid… to water…” she said tiredly, “Never, ever add water to acid. Do that, and you will absolutely blow something up!”
Akira let out a breath. “Tian…” she said shakily, “how do you know all this stuff?! No wonder you’re the top student in chemistry class!”
Tian shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess it just comes from having a mom who works at a chemical plant all day and night,” she said with a twinge of bitterness. “I only know what we study in chem class – my mom practically lives and breathes it!”
Akira didn’t comment on that. Instead, she flopped down onto a chair, taking off her lab goggles.
“I will be so glad when this year is over,” she said wistfully, “I never want to do this stuff again.”
Tian laughed. “That would be a good thing. At the rate you’re going, you’ll kill yourself in an explosion in no time!”
Akira shot a glare at her, then laughed along with her.
…
…End transmission.
The laptop screen dimmed, and both Akira and Tian sighed as everyone else around them laughed.
“Hey…” Akira said faintly, “That’s not funny – it’s embarrassing!”
“Well…” Kei said cheerfully, “now we know not to let you near any chemicals!” She and Terriermon looked at each other and giggled.
Akira smiled. It seemed that the two of them had recovered quickly from their traumatic experience in the old, crumbling castle in the snow.
“After watching that, I remember that day,” Seita said, smiling evilly. “Two years ago, in the eighth grade. We had this evil chemistry teacher who would hand out experiments to do as punishment for anyone who acted up in her class. Akira used to get them all the time!”
“And I would always end up staying back with her, to make sure she came out in one piece,” Tian said, shaking her head. “And then,” she continued, “Seita would be coming home from practice at exactly the same time we would, so I’d have to listen to the two of them scream at each other all the way home!”
The others laughed, and Tian sighed.
“Y-yeah… That’s true…” Akira replied hastily.
“So I guess that’s why something like this was in your memory disc, Tian,” Jun stated, nodding over to his laptop, which was currently running one of the small discs Tian had found earlier, the one with her name written on it. “Akira would have probably forgotten about it, if she could!”
There was more laughter, and Jun went on looking at the screen.
“Hmm…” he murmured, studying the list of memory files. “What about these?” he asked, pointing to the ones at the very top. “They look different from all the others!”
“Like how?” Tian asked.
“Different location, for one thing,” he replied, pointing to the entries, “The dates are vague, and there’s no time listed.”
Shu, T. – 6/2058 – Nanjing, China
Shu, T. – 6/2058 – Nanjing, China
Shu, T. – 7/2058 – Shanghai, China ***njngchntmlndstspot2057-12prmlckpassphrs***
Shu, T. – 7/2058 – Sea of Japan
“The dates are from eleven years ago,” Jun continued, “Maybe those are your memories from when you were a kid?”
Mana turned to Tian. “Your family is from China, right?”
Tian did nothing but nod. Her face was pale.
Immediately, Akira and Renamon looked up in alarm. They shot glances at Tian and at each other.
Jun raised an eyebrow, looking confused, then turned back to the laptop. “There’s a weird code embedded into one of these,” he murmured, “I wonder if it’s important…” He moved the mouse cursor over the entry marked “Shanghai, China.”
“Don’t click that!” Tian said sharply. Everyone looked at her, surprised.
“Why?” Jun asked suspiciously.
“Uh…” Tian said nervously. “I… There’s nothing important in those,” she said hastily, “Looking through them all would just be a waste of time. Just like the one with the chemistry lab, remember?” She laughed, and shot a pleading glance at Akira.
“Yeah,” Akira joined in, immediately catching on. “It’ll be better if we looked through my memory disc. That way I can remember more stuff, and we’ll find out something important too. Right, Kodamon?”
“Yeah!” Kodamon nodded energetically.
Jun just stared at all three of them in confusion. “Uh… okay then…” He popped out Tian’s disc, and inserted Akira’s instead.
Immediately, a window popped up, showing a long list of entries, and a large world map on the right side of the screen. Bright blue dots highlighted areas in Japan and the United States.
“So… where do we start?” Jun asked.
Akira thought a moment, taking occasional glances at Kodamon, Seita, and Tian. “I’d say… the entire time I was in America, last year. From…” She thought again, calculating the dates. “From last April to this May. There are some things around then that have been just a great big blank.”
“Okay… so from April 2068 to May 2069…” Jun murmured, filtering the list. After a moment, he gave a low whistle.
“Wow…” he said, surprised, “I can probably see when those blanks happened.” He pointed to the screen. “Look at these.”
...
Mitsuishi, A. – 12/23/2068 – 8:20 PM – Washington, D.C, USA
Mitsuishi, A. – 12/23/2068 – 8:25 PM – Washington, D.C, USA
Mitsuishi, A. – 12/23/2068 – 8:26:01 PM – Washington, D.C, USA
Mitsuishi, A. – 12/23/2068 – 8:26:02 PM – Location Unknown
Mitsuishi, A. – 12/23/2068 – 8:26:02 PM – Location Unknown
Mitsuishi, A. – 12/23/2068 – 8:26:02 PM – Location Unknown
Mitsuishi, A. – 12/23/2068 – 8:26:02 PM – Location Unknown
...
The list continued on, repeating, until a few small changes occurred near the end:
...
Mitsuishi, A. – 12/23/2068 – 8:26:02 PM – Location Unknown
Mitsuishi, A. – 12/24/2068 – 8:26:03 PM – Washington, D.C., USA
Mitsuishi, A. – 1/17/2069 – 10:00 AM – Washington, D.C., USA
...
“What do they mean by, ‘Location Unknown’?” Seita asked.
No one could give an answer.
“Do you remember anything during these dates?” Jun asked.
Akira thought a moment, and snippets of fuzzy memories came to mind… of her with Kodamon and Rion and Guilmon… of an unexplained battle… of a massive explosion… pain…
“No,” she answered, “Not much. Nothing I can completely explain.”
“I remember something…” Kei said slowly.
“You do?” Akira asked, surprised.
“Those dates on the computer…” Kei continued softly.
“What about them?” Akira prodded.
“They were on the day school ended for winter break,” Kei started again, “And you…”
“I what? What was I doing?”
“You and Daddy had a big argument. I wasn’t sure why at the time, but I remember that when you came home, your wrist was wrapped up and you had Band-Aids on your face – I thought maybe you had a fight or something at school. But whatever it was, Daddy was mad about it. I could hear you two argue about it for the longest time, and then you came upstairs and told me to go out for a while, and shut yourself up in the bedroom.”
Akira nodded absently, looking down and listening. Everyone was quiet.
“Then, that night, Mom came home. She and Daddy were talking really seriously about something, and she sounded worried. Then she called you to come down. She asked you a couple of questions, and you got really upset, and… you just ran out the door.”
Akira let in a quick breath. “And…?”
Kei looked down. “And… we couldn’t find you. You just disappeared. You didn’t show up again until a few weeks after New Year’s.”
Jun’s eyes widened. “That explains the three-week gap in the memory list!”
“Was there anything else?” Akira asked, her pulse quickening.
“Well…” Kei hesitated. “When we finally found you, you were in the hospital, and you were really hurt… Mom didn’t let me see you at first, and she was crying so hard…” Kei’s voice trembled and her hands shook. Akira took them in hers and Terriermon cuddled against her.
“Why was Akira in the hospital?” Tian asked gently.
“Because… because the day after Akira disappeared, there was a huge explosion, somewhere near where we were living. It was late at night, and it woke up half the neighborhood. There was a giant fireball, high enough so that everyone could see it, and a couple of the neighbors were freaking out, yelling that we were being bombed…”
Mana gasped. “The D.C. Bomb…” she said faintly.
“What?” Jun asked blankly.
“The D.C. Bomb!” Mana repeated fearfully, “Don’t you remember – it was all over the news last winter! Someone set off a bomb in D.C. on Christmas Eve, right at the edge of a residential area! They never did figure out who did it, aside from the fact that it could have been terrorists.”
“Oh… right,” Jun said softly, and looked to Kei. “You saw it happen?”
Kei nodded, turning back to Akira with a stricken look. “We were so worried… We thought you’d died… The doctors said you’d been slipping in and out of a coma for weeks, and then when you finally woke up, you couldn’t remember anything! Well… you knew your name and who we were, but you couldn’t remember what happened to you when you disappeared, or what happened weeks before that.”
Akira’s thoughts flashed back to the hospital, with her, and Touma… and Rion.
“Partial amnesia…” Jun said softly.
“So this was the accident everyone was talking about, ever since you came back, Akira,” Tian stated, shaking her head.
“Mom never told you about it, even after you got better,” Kei added, “and she made me swear not to tell you either, but…”
Akira hugged her. “I understand. But I’m glad you told me anyway.”
“But this still doesn’t explain the ‘Unknown’ files,” Seita interjected, “If Akira was hurt in that explosion and was in the hospital for the entire time, the location should have shown up!”
Jun stared at the file list again, thinking deeply, “Only one explanation,” he finally said, in a serious tone, “Akira went to the Digital World.”
“What?” Seita blurted out incredulously. When no one answered him, he spoke up again. “Look, we all know that Akira went to the Digital World before, at some point or another, but how can you be so sure it was then?”
Jun frowned at him. “It’s obvious,” he replied, “That whole chunk of entries has the time listed down to the exact second, and since the Digital World is digital, working with microseconds and milliseconds, time must pass more slowly, which would explain why the time didn’t change.”
“Also,” he went on, “since the D.C. Bomb happened just a day after Akira could have gone to the Digital World, Akira must have spent just enough time in the Digital World to get caught in the explosion while coming back.”
“Uh… come again?” Seita asked, confused.
Jun sighed, and was about to explain again.
“No, never mind – don’t bother,” Akira interjected, “Anyway, so you’re saying that this was the time I got to the Digital World the first time?”
Jun nodded.
“…I see,” Akira replied, looking a little troubled.
“Do you remember much?” Kei asked.
Akira shook her head. “No. Just a couple of bits of things here and there, and a little bit of how I got back, but nothing about how I got there or why.”
Everyone was silent for a moment.
“Maybe…” Mana began, “if you saw some of those ‘Unknown’ files, it’ll help jog your memory.”
Akira nodded silently, looking determined.
Mana smiled, and turned to the computer. “Jun?”
He smiled back. “Let’s get started!” He clicked on one of the files marked “Location Unknown” and the file began to play.
Subject: Mitsuishi, A.
Date: 12/23/2068
Time: 8:26:02 PM
Location: Unknown
Begin transmission…
…
“I’m not leaving! You can’t make me!”
Akira sighed. “Rion, we’ve gone over this a hundred times – it’s for your own good!”
“I don’t care!” Rion glared back at her, his brown eyes flashing. “I’m not about to leave you and Kodamon and Guilmon to fight all by yourselves!”
“I don’t want you any more involved in this than you already are!” Akira shot back, “What we’re going to do now is much too dangerous – I don’t want you getting hurt!”
“But I have to stay!” Rion countered, “Guilmon needs me here! We have to fight together!”
“Rion-”
“NO!”
“Rion!!” Akira shouted, immediately silencing him. “Go home. It’s easier for all of us this way. If something happens to you here, what am I going to say to your brother or your dad, or your mom, once we get back?”
Rion glared at the ground for a while, and then, thinking it over, he sighed. “Okay. I’ll go home. But only if you come too!”
“Rion, you know I can’t-”
“Then I’m staying.”
“No, you can’t!”
Rion looked at her pleadingly. “You’re so worried about me – what about you? What if something happens to you after I leave, a-and you never come back…” His voice faltered, and he rushed over to her and hugged her.
Akira sighed. “Rion…” she said gently, “Don’t worry about me. Once all of us are done here, I’ll come back.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Rion wiped his eyes and smiled, sadly.
The moment was interrupted by slight footsteps. They both turned around to see Kodamon and Guilmon.
“It’s time,” Kodamon murmured.
Akira nodded, and turned to Rion. “You ready?”
Rion stared at the ground, not answering.
“It’ll be okay,” Akira said brightly, “Remember what I said about doubts-”
“Just kick ‘em away!” Rion finished, smiling.
Akira smiled back. “Come on, let’s get you home.”
…
…End transmission.
Everyone was silent for a minute after the screen dimmed.
“Well…” Gazimon spoke up, “…that was helpful.”
“Rion again,” Seita said darkly.
“But he didn’t seem evil that time,” Mana spoke up, and turned to Akira. “He cared a lot about you…”
“Of course he does,” Kei said forcefully, “He and his big brother are almost like family to us, and Akira’s like a big sister to him too!”
“Then the next question would be why and how he got so bad,” Terriermon stated. “Akira, if Rion was good before, when you two got here the first time, then what were all of you fighting? Who was your enemy?”
At this point, Akira noticed Kodamon get up suddenly and start walking away from the large huddle everyone seemed to be making around Jun’s laptop.
“Akira?”
Akira turned back to Terriermon, and shook her head. “I don’t remember.”
“Well, we already know someone or something evil is controlling Rion and Guilmon now,” Jun confirmed. He turned to Yuka. “Yuka, are you sure you don’t remember who it was?”
Yuka thought a moment. “I don’t remember the name,” she said softly, “It was something weird and long, and started with an ‘M’…” Her face scrunched up in thought. “‘Mata’-something.” She looked down. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jun reassured her, “We’ll probably find out soon enough.”
“Whoever it is, he’s probably still around, working behind the scenes,” Renamon replied, “Those other dark Digimon… Devimon, Alchemon, Fenrimon and Lupimon…”
“Black Tailmon and the Midnight Army…” Salamon added, scowling.
“They all had to work under someone, not just Rion,” Renamon finished.
“And whoever this enemy is,” Tian added, “they’ve got a pretty sick operation.”
“I’ll say,” Mana said angrily, “Not only are they trying to scare us out of our wits and blow us off the face of the earth, they’re doing it by all these freaky methods… messing with Akira’s mind, separating all of us and making Jun and me create an apocalypse just so we could move, using Yuka and Kei as guinea pigs for some stupid experimental disease…” She looked at Tian seriously. “And not to mention kidnapping you and making you a human GPS!”
At that, Tian glanced at the laptop screen, at the sparsely-dotted world map.
“About that,” she murmured, “We’ve already concluded that our enemy is somehow going to try to invade the Real World, using memories as a ‘map’, right?”
“Yeah,” Jun answered.
“Well, you’ve seen the maps on both discs – Akira and I have only lived and traveled in two countries for our entire lives – Japan and China for me, and Japan and America for Akira.” She and Akira exchanged looks, and nodded. “And even then, it’s only in a small area.”
Jun looked back at her, and nodded thoughtfully.
“Yeah…” Tian continued, “So in the end, it was useless – they went through so much trouble to get these memories, and they don’t even contain half the information they’d need for a global assault!”
“Maybe they didn’t know that…” Mana countered faintly.
“Probably not,” Tian replied, scowling. “They must have already gotten Akira’s memories at some point, since we have that disc, and Rion and whoever his boss is probably chose me at random just because Renamon and I happened to be there, and gave them another mind they could harvest…”
“Please don’t say it like that,” Mana pleaded, “It creeps me out!”
“Sorry.”
“So what now?” Seita spoke up, “All we know is that this enemy of ours is a sick and twisted person that likes to mess with our minds, break us up from the inside out, and use creepy kids as puppets!”
Kei kicked him.
“OW!”
“Rion’s not creepy!” she answered, “Or wasn’t, to start with.”
“Anyway,” Seita continued, “we know all about how this enemy works, but nothing about who it actually is!”
Everyone was silent again, until Patamon spoke up.
“We could check the database,” he suggested, turning to Jun. “There’s a Digimon Analyzer on it, right?”
Jun’s eyes widened. “Yes. There is.” He turned to his laptop, started up the database, and pulled out a computer wire. “Let me see your Digivice, Akira.”
Akira handed it over, and Jun plugged it in.
Immediately, images and data for various Digimon popped up on the screen, at a rapid pace.
Jun breathed in sharply. “Whoa…” He tried clicking on them, to slow them down, but it didn’t work. “There’s so many…” he murmured, “it’s insane!”
“The dates are crazy too…” Akira added, staring in shock. “1988… 1995… 1999… 2019…”
“Naoko’s data, maybe?” Tian asked.
Jun shrugged. “Maybe. But in any case, there’s no way we can look through all of this. It’s too much!”
“Wait!” Akira blurted out, pointing at the screen, “Look at these.” Images of familiar-looking Digimon flashed across the screen.
“Your data,” Jun confirmed. “They’re listed under ‘2068.’ Once we’ve reached the end of this, we’ll find out exactly who our enemy is. After filtering out the Digimon we’ve seen now, anyway.”
They waited, as the previous year’s data flooded the laptop. However, as the data neared the end of 2068, the screen flashed, and the laptop bleeped. An error message promptly showed up.
Overflow Error. Please Abort.
The disk is full or too many files are open.
Jun let out a frustrated breath. “I was hoping that wouldn’t happen. It’s too much data. The computer can’t take it!”
“Can you fix it?” Mana asked.
“Yeah, just give me a minute…” He restarted the laptop, unplugged Akira’s Digivice, and handed it back to her.
“Terrific…” Seita said sarcastically, “We have data on our unknown enemy, but we can’t get to it because the computer can’t handle it!”
“What about the rest of the memories?” Akira asked.
“We’ll try them,” Jun answered as the laptop’s OS finished loading up. He accessed Akira’s memory disc again, and clicked on the very last ‘Unknown’ listing.
There was nothing but static.
“Wha-?” Jun blurted out, confused. He clicked on many of the others, and the same thing happened. Static.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me…” Akira said with a frown, “Let me see them.”
She clicked on a few more, and aside from the memory they had already seen, they were all full of static. Critically damaged. She glared at the screen, pulsing gray and black with static snow. Then, her eyes wandered over to the CD drive. She pushed it, ejecting the disc, and glanced at the underside. After squinting a little, she gasped, and her annoyed expression turned murderous.
“Of all the ridiculous-”
“What?” Seita and Jun both asked, nervously.
“Look!” she shouted, shoving the disc into their faces. The underside was severely scratched up in many places, leaving only one small area unscathed.
“How ironic…” Seita muttered, “Everything just has to break down, and at the exact time we need them!”
“Dead end,” Jun concluded, sighing.
“What now?” Mana asked.
“We wait until Naoko appears again,” Yuka spoke up, “and she’ll tell us everything. She said so herself.”
“We all know the things she can do,” Lopmon added, “She can manipulate data to do anything she wants, and she always seems to show up at the right times, whenever we’re in trouble.”
“They’re right,” Jun added, “We find her, and everything will make sense.”
“But we’ll have to find her again soon,” Akira stated, “The enemy’s speeding things up, just like those holograms – Taichi and the others – said. Things are getting worse and worse here.” She glared and clenched her fists. “It burns me up, just thinking about all the stuff they’re doing to us, and to everyone and everything around us!”
“And even as we speak,” Jun added, “they could already be trying to get to the Real World!”
“Or thinking up new ways to get rid of us,” Seita remarked.
Akira nodded. “Or both.”
“And if they are trying to break through to the Real World soon, we’ll have to stop them here,” Tian added seriously, “Because if they do make it through…” She looked down. “Well, you know what would happen. No military in the world could stop them. We’re the only ones with a decent shot at it, and there’s only seven of us. Fourteen, counting the Digimon.”
“Man, this sucks,” Seita muttered, “I don’t like this. At all.”
“Neither do the rest of us,” Akira answered. She sighed. “I wish I could remember more, so we wouldn’t be jumping into this blind, but…” She put a hand to her forehead, and faint flashes of Touma and the hospital came to mind. “But that accident blocked up everything too well. I think my memory’s gone as far as it can go, understandably.” She glanced at Kodamon, sitting away from them and staring off into space. “And Kodamon’s the same, I guess.”
She was interrupted by a loud growl.
“Heh-heh…” Kei laughed hastily, putting a hand over her stomach.
Everyone laughed.
“All right, that settles it!” Mana sang out, “We’re stopping all this serious conversation and getting some dinner!” She got up, and looked up at the darkening sky. “We’ve been talking so much, we completely forgot how late it’s gotten!”
“Yay!” Kei exclaimed, “Dinner! What are we having? Candy? Chocolate bars?”
Mana laughed. “No… you and Yuka ate all the chocolate bars when we were still in the desert, to make sure they wouldn’t melt!” She looked through her backpack. “We have… wild berries, some crackers, and a lot of dried bread. And water bottles.”
“That’s it?” Seita asked skeptically.
“Uh…” Mana dragged Jun’s backpack over and started looking through it. “We can eat that, or…” She pulled out several sealed packages, and stared at them blankly. “…Or we can have ramen.”
Tian looked up suddenly, raising an eyebrow. “Ramen?”
“Yeah…” Mana said faintly. Then she scowled. “Jun!”
“Yeah?” Jun answered dully, staring at the laptop screen.
“Where did you get all these?” she demanded.
He took a split-second glance at the ramen packs she was holding, then returned his gaze to the screen. “Those? I packed them before we went to camp…”
“You…” Mana glared at him. “And all this time, we’ve been living on berries and bread and chocolate bars…” She let out a frustrated sigh. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?!”
Jun didn’t answer. He continued to stare at the screen.
“I think you’ve lost him,” Tian said, laughing.
“Oh, whatever!” Mana snatched up a couple of ramen packs and a small pot. “So are all of you just going to stand there, or are you going to help me cook these?”
Tian laughed. “Okay, I’ll tag along.”
“Come on, Yuka, let’s go!” Kei said happily, tugging Yuka by the hand. “Terriermon, Lopmon, we’ll need you too!”
“Good luck,” Seita said, sitting back and smirking.
“Oh, no – you’re helping too!” Mana called back.
“EH!?” Seita blurted out, “But-”
“No choice! We’re drafting you!”
“Crap.” He got up, and looked down at Akira. “You coming?”
Akira looked up at him, slightly distracted. “Um…” She hesitated a moment. “Maybe later.”
“Okay.” Seita smiled, and walked over to where everyone else was attempting to build a fire.
Akira sighed, and sat back, looking around at everything. Jun was being his usual self – staring at the computer and muttering to himself. Renamon and Gazimon were off to the side, talking in low voices, and Patamon and Salamon were listening in. Kodamon was sitting apart from everyone, strangely quiet.
“Akira.”
Akira jumped at the sound of Jun’s voice. “Yeah?”
“Come look at this.”
Akira moved closer to him and glanced at the screen of his laptop. The screen showed a familiar page of the database – the list and pictures of the Crests.
“Why are you showing me this-”
“Look near the bottom.”
Akira looked near the bottom of the page, and blinked. “Wha-?”
The nine shadowed spaces for the unknown Crests were shown. Eight of the Crests were still shadowed, but one Crest…
“Darkness…” Akira read off the screen, looking at a crest with a black, curved keyhole.
“The database has been unlocking stuff since that first time we all looked through it,” Jun mentioned seriously. “I’ve found data on the Black Gears, and a little bit on the Dark Seeds that Yuka told us about, and other things.” He nodded toward the computer screen. “This data appeared not long after we all found each other again. I guess that could be Rion’s crest… It seems to fit.”
Akira said nothing.
“In that memory,” Jun spoke up again, “when you talked about Rion ‘going home’, that probably meant sending him back to the Real World, huh?”
“Yeah…” Akira answered, “Why do you ask?”
“Nothing really,” Jun replied, “Just something I was thinking about.”
“Oh.” Akira was silent for a moment, her brow furrowing in thought. “You know… the first time I met Rion again, right before all of us got separated, I remembered a couple of things.
“We did send him back first, right before some huge battle we were going to fight. I don’t remember how it happened or who we were fighting. I went back to the Real World later on, while that battle was still going on. And on the way back, something happened, and I was hurting so much that I passed out…”
Jun blinked. “So I was right, then. The bomb went off just as you were coming back.”
“Maybe…” Akira replied.
“Hey…”
Kodamon looked up, and saw Gazimon and Renamon standing over her. Patamon and Salamon followed them.
“What is it?” Kodamon asked, getting up.
“Just wondering what was bothering you,” Salamon said, “You haven’t said a word since we saw Akira’s memory.”
Kodamon frowned a little. “It’s nothing… I was just thinking about stuff. About what happened to Akira in the real world. That… bomb and all. I never knew it happened.”
Salamon nodded understandingly. “Oh.”
“About that-” Renamon began.
“What?”
“When Kei described the bomb, it was a ‘giant fireball’,” Renamon continued.
“A fireball,” Gazimon added, “The shape of a sphere.”
“A sphere…” Patamon murmured. Then he blinked, and gave Salamon a significant look.
“Wait a minute…” Salamon said suspiciously, “You don’t think…” She turned to Kodamon.
“What?” Kodamon said nervously.
“Kodamon,” Gazimon spoke up, “What did you do at that point?”
“What are you talking about?”
“In that memory,” Renamon spoke, “you and Guilmon were about to fight someone or something. You two must have evolved up to at least Perfect level.”
“Yeah? So?”
“You idiot,” Gazimon blurted out, “How many of us here have a gigantic flaming fireball as a Perfect-level attack, besides you?!”
“Huh?” Kodamon asked. Then her eyes widened. “Wait… you’re not saying that I might have had something to do with that bomb, are you?”
Gazimon simply stared at her. “You mean you don’t remember anything?”
“Not that!”
A few of the other Digimon exchanged looks.
“Is it because something erased your memory too, or because you’re just forgetful?” Gazimon asked, smirking.
Kodamon growled and shot him an icy stare. “That’s not funny!” she snapped, “I really don’t remember! In fact,” she continued, “that whole memory we just saw… I never knew that even happened!”
“Then what do you remember?”
“Some things,” she answered, “More than Akira, but not everything. I can remember up to a certain point, and then it all goes blank. And all those memories are fuzzy.”
Gazimon sighed. “I don’t believe this…” he murmured, “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
Kodamon’s eyes narrowed, and she looked down. “I-I never really thought about it until now…” she said nervously. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me…”
Salamon stepped closer to her. “Kodamon…”
“Leave me alone,” Kodamon whispered, “Everyone just leave me alone. I don’t feel like talking right now.” She turned away from them, and walked off.
From the corner of her eye, Akira saw Kodamon walk away with a troubled expression on her face. She wondered what could be bothering her, and made a mental note to ask her about it in the morning.
Her thoughts then went back to her conversation with Jun, and then to Rion’s angry explanations, the last time they’d met…
You sent me back first, but I stuck around long enough to find out what happened to you!
I saw everything. You came back, 24 hours after me, and boy, did you come back with a bang!
Kaboom! Half the street in flames! Some of the neighbors thought it was some sort of terrorist attack and that a bomb went off, but I knew it wasn’t that. The explosion was in the shape of a sphere…
Akira blinked. A sphere… A flaming sphere… She looked over to Kodamon, sitting near the edge of their little encampment, alone and facing away from everyone.
She thought of her other memories… with her, running into the transport chamber, trying to get home, worrying about Helamon and MegaloGrowmon and how the battle was going…
… And feeling that painful blast of heat before transferring out.
A chilling possibility ran through her mind. She continued looking at Kodamon, and remembered Jun’s words.
“The bomb went off just as you were coming back.”
Akira shuddered.
Somehow… I don’t think that’s how it went…