I'm alive! I ALIIIIIIVVEEEE! Lol, Frankenstein reference XD (oh, how I wish I could've posted that closer to Halloween D: that would've been perfect *snifflesniffle*

Lol but the point is that I'm back! I'm not dead, I have not abandoned these stories, and I'm going to re-start my life on this site by giving you guys a BRAND NEW STORY I've been working on! Well, lately I've just been brainstorming and wasting time watching scary/funny stuff on Youtube (do you guys know who PewDiePie is? If you do, let me know in your review and we can bond :D), but I've been meaning to work on this stuff. And I will be, I promise. I promise...*awkward silence...cricket* XD Daw, I love crickets. They is bros of mine :3

Okay, okay, I know that Digimon Data Squad/Savers isn't a very popular season, but I will speak the truth right here right now: I LOVE THIS SEASON TO DEATH! I don't know why, but I just do. It's so amazing, and it makes me so happy and sad and AW~! that I could just about choke myself with joy. Seriously. Now, I'm perfectly okay with people not liking it, but please don't hate on it if you don't back it up with a reason why. I mean, that just hurts the people who do like it, and they don't go around saying that the stuff that you like is crap, so don't do it to them. Okie? Okie :D

Now that I've given you a lesson on morals lol, I would like to say that I'm sorry that I've been so slow on updating stuff (like, close to 3 months? I think? Oh, I so sorry! :') but I'm going to try my best to pick up the speed and work as hard as I can on my stuff.

With that said, please enjoy the first chapter of my newest story!

Chapter 1: At the Beginning

"All right, Masumi," I watched the principal of my school closely as he talked, incredibly entertained by the throbbing vein in his forehead and neck. He was so pissed at me; it was hilarious. "I've heard from a couple of students and a number of teachers today, and all of them have been talking about this little rumor flying around the school. I thought that I would be fair and get your side of the story as well, so…

"Why in the world would half the school think that you have a painted ostrich egg in your locker?" I lifted my hand to rub at my mouth, trying to hide the broad smile forming on my lips. Breathing was currently out of the question, seeing how if I did start again, I would burst out laughing as if someone invisible was tickling me. It could be pretty entertaining sometimes, how thousands upon thousands of people had no knowledge of Digimon even after all of the sightings and serious matters concerning them.

Yes. There was a Digi-Egg in my locker.

Why? Well, like any other fifteen-year-old would, I blamed accidental oversleeping—not to mention, my Digimon partner's inability to wake me up. Having been exhausted from my judo class the evening before, I was too scatter-brained to remember to set my alarm clock, and Dracomon (who was the strangest green dragon Digimon with horns to have ever lived) had slept even longer than I had, so I probably wouldn't have gotten up at all if the creature hadn't kicked me in his sleep and sent me tumbling onto the floor.

Having been awake at that point, I'd checked the clock and had to do a double-take to register that I was seriously going to be late for school when it was only about two miles from my home. Without bothering to wake Dracomon (it wasn't like I could take him to school with me anyway. Well, I could, but…), I threw on my school uniform, and started running my fingers through my dark brown hair to try and make it look somewhat presentable as I pretty much jumped down the stairs.

While I was running to school, my bag thumping against my side in the most aggravating way, my mind was scolding itself for not having been attentive the night before. If I had been, I wouldn't have forgotten about my clock, I wouldn't have gotten a new bruise thanks to my Digimon's dream-kicking. I'd been wondering what else I might've forgotten/screwed over when my clumsy nature took over and I ended up getting a good-morning-kiss from the sidewalk. Needless to say, I wasn't pleased by the unexpected reunion, having already said hello to my floor earlier.

About to jump to my feet and continue my dash to make the final bell, my gaze had wandered to the alleyway on the opposite side of the street—heaven knows why—and something odd caught my eye. There, sitting on someone's doorstep, was a silver and red Digi-Egg. Just…out in the open, as if someone had set it there so it could get some fresh air, or people watch.

After glancing around to make sure that no one was coming to claim the egg, I rushed over to the threshold, scooped up the egg, and continued on to my school. Not one thought about how weird this scene would look crossed my mind until I came through the front doors a few minutes before the last bell was supposed to ring. It was about then that my mind returned to being rational and I realized that I was carrying a giant egg, and no one but me would have any idea what it truly was.

Despite it being so close to the beginning of the first class, there were a fair number of people out wandering aimlessly around the hallways, talking and laughing in obnoxious tones. Almost everyone turned and stared completely dumbstruck as I walked past, but it was obvious that they were gawking at the egg I was carrying.

I got a lot more weird looks and noted a couple of whispered, 'What the hell does she have a freaking egg for, man'-type comments as I went to my locker and placed the hopefully-wouldn't-be-ready-to-hatch-anytime-soon egg on the bottom shelf. If it did hatch in my locker…well, I had never experienced what it was like to have one of those things hatch, so…hopefully it was somewhat…you know, quiet and unnoticeable.

A slight worry had popped into my head before I'd walked away, though, and that was that there was a small chance that someone's curiosity might get the better of them and they would come and steal the egg. Unable to go about my school day with that circling my brain like a buzzard on steroids, I did the smart thing and put the padlock that all of the students were issued on—

"Ms. Chano! Pay attention when I'm talking to you!" I jumped slightly when the principal's voice suddenly roared into my thoughts, tearing me from them like an overprotective father would his teenage daughter from her bad-boy boyfriend. "If you don't give me a good reason for all of this nonsense, so help me…" Judging by his gravelly tone and the way that I could not see each and every throb in the vein I'd been watching before, he was a little angry.

Raising both of my hands before me in a sort of 'I'm unarmed' fashion, I allowed a calm grin to show on my face. Maybe it would portray confidence in my story. "Well, sir, I can explain," I lied, trying to keep my tone believable. "You know how watermelon farmers have been experimenting with making the fruit different shapes and everything? Well, what you think is an ostrich egg is actually one of the first watermelon to be grown that's an abnormal color by genetic…stuff.

"I know the guy who's been working on this, so he gave me one of the first of his harvest so I could show it around to people I know and spread the word. So," I crossed my arms before my red-blazer-clad chest in a defiant manner and sat back in the chair situated before the mahogany-shaded wood desk. My tone and grin were slightly mocking, drawing out what little luck I had to insult the man under the radar. "Does that answer your question, sir?"

For a moment, there was complete silence except for the humming of his computer and the ticking of the clock on the wall. The balding mad stared at me like he had just witnessed me shove a knife up my nose and pull it out through my tear duct without so much as a scrape or a hesitation. He obviously hadn't been expecting such a response. Maybe the part about how it wasn't an egg, but definitely not the main part of the explanation.

After the stillness went on for a minute or so, the man shook his head in shock and waved his hand at me as a dismissal. "Just…take whatever it is out of your locker, and don't bring it back." While the man rubbed at his exasperated face with his hands and tried to get a grip on what had just occurred, I gave a small 'okie' noise before standing, shouldering my bag, and leaving his office to go collect my things. Namely, that 'oddly colored watermelon'.

I doubt that there was another person in the world who was as pleased with themselves as I was right about now.

I trekked back to my locker, which was, ironically, only a twenty-or-so-meter-long straightaway from the very office that I'd left moments before. It was almost like the man making up all of the schedules and whatnot had this intuitive notion that I was going to be heading in that general direction pretty often, so why not make it a simple walk to and from my locker? I feel like I should be insulted. But I don't care enough to be.

Knowing that the school day had been over for a little while now, I wasn't surprised when I glanced around and saw that the hallways were pretty desolate except for a few stragglers waiting for rides. Most were either gone (the lucky suckers), in some sort of club/group-gathering thingy, or at one of the spring athletics practices. But, people or no people, it was about time I took that egg back to my house to figure out what the hell to do with the thing.

I struggled with the padlock that I had once thought was a good idea, but was no beginning to wonder if it would end up being one of the worst mistakes I ever made. Nevertheless, I was eventually able to open the darn thing and get the other-worldly, eventual-hatchling out of the small metal space. Sometimes, I couldn't help but wonder why lockers looked the way they did; they always reminded me of miniature prisons. Not sure why…

Holding the vividly colored youngling close to me to keep it somewhat warm, I shifted the strap of my bag so I wouldn't have to steady it, and headed for the closest exit. I kicked the push-open door open since my hands were busy with the egg, shuddering slightly when a light sheet of freezing rain blasted into my face, the precipitation carried to and fro by a soft breeze. I paused briefly to wrap my jacket around the egg a bit tighter before pacing out into the wet, wet world.

My feet were soaked about three seconds following the point that I left the warm, dry high school where I was a first year student. I wasn't sure how, but I always found a way to step in every single puddle that formed on the sidewalk, no matter how hard I tried to avoid them. It was as if I had magnets in my shoes that were attracted to water instead of metal. And knowing my teachers, they would do that to us students just for giggles.

I mean, it's not like they have any reason not to.

It was pretty easy to imagine my Science and Mathematics teachers teaming up to do something like that. They were both pretty good teachers, sure, but there was something…devious and evil about them…something that you didn't really see, but you sort of felt it when you walked into the classroom. Granted, the Science guy might seem that way because there was a human skeleton in his room, not to mention a bunch of other dead things in rubbing alcohol in the cabinets, but still. The Math teacher…well, he's a Math teacher. It's a given that they're plotting something mischievous.

The sound of car tires behind me snapped me out of my reverie of malevolent high school staff just in time for me to quickly turn away from the road as the passing car sprayed up all kinds of mud and rain from the street and onto me. The ordeal certainly got me all wet and had turned my uniform into a polka-dot pattern of mud, but I'd kept the egg dry and safe. Speaking of which…

I still had no idea what the heck I was going to do with the thing. It wasn't like I could hatch it on my own—what would I do with the little Digimon until it grew up? What would I do with it when it did grow up? I had enough on my plate just taking care of Dracomon, not to mention the difficult time I'd had when trying to convince Mrs. Sasaki that he was safe to be around. I don't think that she would be able to handle having two Digimon roaming around her house, no matter how cute it might end up being.

If there was one thing I knew about Digimon, it was this: The cuter is, the more trouble it brings. For whatever reason, that's how things seemed to work. Of course, that was after having met only a handful of Digimon—okay, so, maybe it's closer to like…one Digimon—but one could only assume that it was true. There were a few exceptions I knew of, like how most people wouldn't consider Dracomon to be all that cute and yet he was worse than a classroom full of five-year-olds with ADD and sugar highs.

I wasn't sure how he would react to me bringing home another Digimon either. He wasn't the jealous type at all, but he tended to be a bit…oblivious at times. For example, I was forced to introduce him to Mrs. Sasaki because he forgot that we lived with another person and had walked downstairs to raid the refrigerator. He'd also found eating my homework to be a fun pastime (it was a pain in the butt to explain that one to my teacher), and I didn't want him teaching that, or any of his other bad habits, to the new Digimon once it finally hatched.

But Dracomon was my best friend in the entire world, and had been for quite a while now. Other humans and me…well, we really didn't see eye-to-eye on most things. However, Dracomon and I…it was like we were made from the same mold. We were obviously two completely different beings with two variously different personalities (that often clashed, for the record), but there were some things…Nobody understood like he did.

Despite how warm my memories and fond thoughts had made me inside, that heat wasn't enough to keep me from starting to shiver against the chilly breeze that cast more needle-sharp rain into my face. It was at times like these that I wished that I could be more organized like a handful of other kids and actually check what the weather was going to be like before leaving the house so I could be semi-prepared for whatever the day planned to throw at me. Because another coat sounded pretty nice right about now.

The last time that I'd been out in the rain like this…well, I couldn't remember anything all that recent since we'd been getting a fair amount of rain lately, but the last time that I could really picture was a couple of days after having come to live here in Yokohama with Mrs. Sasaki. It had been about a year and a half or so now, but it would be pretty hard to forget a scene like what happened then.

I'd been walking to school like I always did, rain or shine, snow or hail, tornado or otherwise, when a frenzy of noise and shouting came bellowing at me through on of the alleys. I thought at first that there was just some sort of dog fight going on nearby, but when I happened to glance over, I saw something would definitely not be allowed in a normal fight: a Digimon. A huge, blue and white-furred, wolf-like Digimon with a red scarf around its neck.

A bright light had flashed somewhere in front of him, though the source of the sudden brightness had been kept from my eyes by the corner of one of the buildings. However, only a moment or so later, the padding of feet came to my ears in the silence of the steadily falling rain. I then saw the face of a boy that even a blind man with the attention span of a dandelion would be unable to forget.

Golden hair framed a pale face that seemed to glow despite the overcast skies and pouring rain. He was soaked, like someone had taken a couple hundred gallons of water and just drenched the crap out of the guy, but it didn't seem to bother him. His light cerulean eyes, a color far fairer than any other in existence, were fixed upon the extraterrestrial object in his arms: a Digi-Egg, though it was different than the one that I'd found.

There was something about him that was…different. And it wasn't because he was wearing a dark blue Spandex jumpsuit with a jacket to match. It was there in his face, in the ice-blue eyes that gazed up at his Digimon partner with such precision and know-how that I couldn't help but wonder who he was, what he was doing. Maybe it was the fact that he had a Digimon that caught my attention. It wasn't something that one saw every day, that was for sure.

But, somehow, that wasn't quite it either. It wasn't because he was absolutely beautiful, even though he was by far the most gorgeous teen that I'd seen in a long time. This wasn't one of those 'love at first sight' things, which I had always believed was pretty stupid. This was more like one of those 'who-the-hell-is-that-and-why-does-he-have-that-Digi-Egg at first sight' kinda moments.

Those were far more believable, and made a hell of a lot more sense, too.

Either way, I never found out who that guy was or how he got that egg. I hadn't seen him or his Digimon since then, so it didn't really matter all that much. But still, sometimes at night when I could hear the patter-patter of falling rain drops racing each other to see who could drip off of the roof first (or when I was immensely bored during World History), my mind tended to wander back to that day, and I would wonder what exactly kept me from simply walking over and confronting the boy.

Perhaps it was that whole holy-goodness-he-so-pretty thing. That could've messed with my mental processes and by the time I got everything back under control, it was too late and he was already gone. Or it could've been the fact that I subconsciously knew that if I got into a conversation with the guy, then I would most definitely be late for school. Even though that had really never meant all that much to me in the first place.

No matter what the problem had been, it had still ended up being that I was without his name, not to mention any other information about him. But it was an interesting thing, knowing that I wasn't the only person in Yokohama who knew a thing or two about Digimon. And from the looks of it, that blonde teen knew a fair amount, seeing how his Digimon had apparently digivolved, something that Dracomon had never been able to do. Or, at least, had never expressed an interest in being able to do.

I'd thought about the process during Language Arts class a number of times, and brought it up in conversation with the dragon Digimon as well, but neither scene ever came to a true close. Dracomon tended to change the subject rather quickly for a reason I was unsure of but never pried for, and I didn't know enough about the odd enigma to be able to really ponder it. The fact that I had no one to go to if I wanted to ask a question about it didn't help to get it figured out, either.

Nevertheless, it wasn't really necessary for me to know every little thing about the mysterious Digimon-changing process. There were next to no Digimon popping up in the human world, unlike before when I'd hear something about some monster in this town or the other one almost every single day on the news. So, really, there was no reason to need Dracomon to be able to change to and from a bigger, faster, or stronger form.

Besides, if I had a hard time figuring out all this crap about digivolution, I could only imagine how confused Mrs. Sasaki would be when she couldn't find Dracomon but discovered some other gigantic Digimon in his place.

With her look of absolute shock and horror now branded into my brain, I subconsciously turned onto my street and bounded up the steps that led to the threshold. The sound of two women laughing snapped me into attention as I came through the unlocked front door. Mrs. Sasaki usually didn't have company over, and the fact that she would so suddenly and unexpected took me off guard. Whenever one of her friends actually did come over, she normally gave me some kind of warning beforehand, so…this was kinda…weird.

A bit more caution than what I'd exhibited before now laced every movement and thought that my brain sent off. I knew that nothing really bad was going to happen (like the house collapsing in on itself just because we had someone new inside it), but it didn't hurt to be a bit on the careful side when it came to old women. If you walked in at the wrong time, they'd drag you into whatever conversation they were having and force you to sit through it until you were the same age as them. Or older.

Slipping off my shoes and quietly resting the Digi-Egg and my heavy school bag down on the floor, I slid over the polished wood in my socks, heading for the kitchen/dining room where Mrs. Sasaki and her company often sat to chat. I came to a stop beside the open doorway, knowing that my presence hadn't yet been noted, so that meant that I would be able to sneak upstairs to my room now if I tried. However, Mrs. Sasaki was like my mother in only one way: She always made me socialize with the guests for at least thirty seconds before letting me go hide in my room.

It was less embarrassing if I came to greet them myself instead of being called for. Or dragged.

So, with that to embolden me, I slipped quietly around the doorway as another round of high-pitched laughter echoed from the silver-haired woman sitting at the head of the table, Mrs. Amori Sasaki. She'd done her hair up as she always did, in a proper bun; not one single hair ever fell out of place throughout the course of the day with the way that she did it. Her dark green eyes giggled along with her lips while her guest smiled politely at whatever had been said.

The both of them had pearly white tea cups sitting in front of them, though from the looks of it their drinks had already grown cold despite being a quarter of the way full. However, the beverages only held my attention for a moment; the woman residing in the chair Dracomon had claimed as his was far more interest-worthy than the tea. And that was saying something since Mrs. Sasaki had made some pretty funky tea in her day.

I'd never seen anyone quite like her before. She had skin paler than the skin of a man frozen to the bone at the peak of Mount Everest, and hair that was similar except for a slight blue twinge to its shade. A witch-like red and lavender hat ornamented with a gold scarab, along with a pair of sunglasses, hid a good portion of her head and face. Her hands were also hidden by a pair of purple gloves with a spider-web-like design on them. The hat was paired with a deep scarlet dress that had a mini-cape sewn onto the shoulders, a light purple belt accentuating the thinness of her waist.

She snapped to face me within milliseconds of me walking into to doorway, as if she'd been expecting me for some time now. An anxious chill crept up my spine at the hard silence of her eyeless stare, but thankfully it was cut short by Mrs. Sasaki's almost compulsive need to exhibit proper etiquette. "Oh, Masumi, you're home a little later than I expected," The sixty-something-year-old woman gestured to her guest as she lightly scolded me, "but where are your manners? Come over here and introduce yourself.

"This here is Ms. Inekura, a new neighbor of ours as well as my newest employee down at the pharmacy!" Still being a little creeped out by the unexpectedness of this lady's appearance, I didn't move to greet her (or move at all) right away. I was urged by a quick glare from my 'land lord' to do something, though, so I reluctantly shuffled forward and offered the strange woman a polite bow. Much to Mrs. Sasaki's delight, might I add.

While Mrs. Sasaki's beam projected her pride in having been able to teach me how to be 'proper' (for three seconds at the max.), Ms…Inekura, apparently, cast me an almost distracted smile. It was coy and stiff, but could still be read as kind if one looked for it there in her face. "I've heard so much about you already, Masumi, but I didn't expect such a lovely young lady. Now, please don't think that I'm being nosy, but…" She gestured toward the rather large golden bracelet that hung around my still-wet-from-the-rain wrist. "Did someone special give you that? A boy, perhaps?"

I noticeably recoiled at her words, but she didn't take the question back, and Mrs. Sasaki seemed to find my reaction humorous so she didn't tell the woman off. Not that she would've done such a 'rude and vulgar' thing in the first place, but still. I felt a rather embarrassed blush show on my face as I mumbled, "No…I don't have a boyfriend…" My left hand curled up enough to stroke at the cold metal with the tips of my fingers, feeling a bit of comfort at the metallic touch.

The silverette continued to smile sweetly at me as she made a small 'hmm'ing noise. "What a pity. You're far too pretty a girl for it to be wasted like that," A soft sigh fell from her purple-lipsticked mouth as she dropped her chin into her palm and rested her elbow on the tabletop. Her face was clouded by a daydreaming haze as she mumbled wistfully, "Ah, to be young and beautiful…I miss those days, when love was so rich and tender…"

"I know what you mean," Mrs. Sasaki sipped at her chilly tea without flinching at the taste, apparently not noticing due to the depth of her attention in the conversation. Sometimes I wondered about that woman, but I knew that she thought the same of me pretty often, so I didn't feel as bad about it. "My hubby's been gone for a few years now, and I don't plan to ever re-marry—no one could ever replace him, you know?—but I have heard of a lot of dating sites on the Internet especially for seniors, can you believe that?" Her voice took on a high-pitched, squeaky tone as her surprise was conveyed through her jade eyes.

As they began to talk about the horrors of old-people-love, I quietly slipped back out of the room and into the kitchen. Dracomon would be upstairs like he always was whenever there was company (who obviously couldn't know that my best friend was a talking dragon), but I had no way of knowing how long that woman had been here, so I thought it would probably be a good idea to take some food up to my insane little friend. Before he ate the Digi-Egg.

With that horrible image in my mind, I hurried to gather up a platter-full of food, hearing but ignoring a comment from the table about how I kept my figure if I ate all that. A remark that ended up exploding into a huge debate over teens and their never-ending hunger/high metabolism. Which I was overjoyed about not having to sit through, though their current topic wasn't quite as bad as the senior-dating thing. I would choose boredom over therapy any day.

Juggling the food, my recently-retrieved backpack, and the mystery Egg, I dashed upstairs as best I could without spilling/dropping anything (Ms. Inekura made me kinda nervous. I get really clumsy really fast when I get nervous). The second floor of the home was pretty ordinary, with my room, Mrs. Sasaki's room, a bathroom, a small closet, and another bedroom that acted as a guestroom on occasion. My bedroom was the furthest one down the hallway.

The door was partially open when I neared it, and I used my foot to tap it open, the hinges creaking slightly as it swung in. Tossing my backpack in the general direction of my already-made bed and setting the plate of food on my desk along with the Digi-Egg, I called out only loud enough so that I would be heard upstairs but not downstairs, "Dracomon? Where are you?" Dracomon had a tendency to hide whenever human company came around; he was very friendly, but I'd impressed in his mind to stay out of sight, so…he obeyed, but just took it a bit too far.

Meaning my finding skills weren't good enough to be able to figure out where he went half the time.

I was three seconds away from dropping down to look under my bed (that was his favorite spot to go because there were always dust bunnies to play with under there) when a small tapping noise drew my attention to the closet on the other side of the room. Now, I'd see a lot of horror movies in my day, and one rule in those movies is that you never go to investigate weird sounds. But when you have a Digimon who can beat the crap out of pretty much any murderer, ghost, monster, or lunatic, you tend to get a little bolder.

Without hesitating for a moment, I strode over to the smallest of the doors in my room and opened it to find Dracomon sitting there quietly as if he'd been playing hide-and-go-seek with an imaginary friend. And, knowing my Digimon, he would be doing that. "Hello, Sumi-chan!" The teal dragon-like creature chirped rather cheerfully, his tail thumping against the wood floor as he grinned toothily up at me. "You're getting a lot better at finding me, you know. I should make you a gold star!"

I smiled back down at the red-horned Digimon and made a guffawing sound. "I only found you because you were tapping on the door, Dracomon," Removing a yellow sweater from his head, I continued as I tickled his nose, making him sneeze and laugh at the same time. "Most times when you're trying not to be noticed, you don't make a lot of noise. It, what's it called? Oh, yeah. Gives you away." I started to move away from the closet, expecting Dracomon to realize there was food and follow me out.

He stood, but there was an indignant look on his face as he stated innocently, "I wasn't doing anything, Sumi-chan. I had my claws folded the whole—" The dragon-Digimon's attention was drawn away from me in a rush when a smell in the room captured his mind. He turned in the direction of my desk, scarlet eyes locking on the Digi-Egg immediately. "…Sumi-chan? Why do you have a Digi-Egg? You didn't go to—"

"I was walking to school and found it, Dracomon," I interrupted him quickly, not knowing what place he thought that I may've gone to obtain an egg, and not wanting to know. I knew my Digimon, and his mind could be just as strange and terrifying as a psycho's at times, but he was still a good little dragon and wouldn't try to kill me in my sleep like a good handful of psychos would.

Nevertheless, curiosity soon got the better of me like it often does to the best of us humans and I had to ask as I gestured to the food that I'd brought up with me, which Dracomon eagerly began devouring, "Where, exactly, did you think that I went? To get the egg, I mean?" I gazed with surprising patience at the slobbery way that Dracomon ate, spilling crumbs all over himself and the floor. He's gonna need a bath tonight for sure. Gee, won't that be fun…bathing a dragon who absolutely loathes water…Yay…

After a moment of silence (well, if you didn't count the nom-nom-nom-ing coming from the over-sized lizard), Dracomon finally swallowed and picked up another bread roll as he answered without the concern he had before, "Where I'm from, Sumi-chan: The Digital World. I was afraid that you went back there without me; I know how you're afraid of it, and I—"

"One bad experience that I can't even remember doesn't mean that I'm afraid, Dracomon." I interrupted hurriedly, clenching my hands into tight fists as we went through a conversation that we'd been through many times in the past. It always ended in the same way, though: With one of us refusing to talk and leaving the other with unanswered—and possibly unanswerable—questions and wonderings. Usually, that person was me.

Dracomon was convinced that I'd been to the Digital World before—and with my luck, I probably had gone there by accident—and that something bad had happened. He said that I mumbled in my sleep, odd words and phrases that he didn't understand the meanings behind, and that I always did it in a voice that was much deeper than my own. Like I was saying what someone else was in one of my dreams.

However, I could never recall these dreams when I woke, I had no recollection of being in the Digital World, and I didn't see how something awful could've happened to me while there if I had no idea that I'd been there in the first place. That feeling of fear came when I thought about the strange, unknown place, though, that feeling of cold, the increased beating of my heart, my muscles tensed and ready to flee at a moment's notice.

But I had no idea why.

Not wanting this topic to stay longer than necessary, I changed the subject quickly, gesturing to the egg that I'd sat next to me on my bed. "So, what should we do with it, anyway? I mean," I lay back on the soft blankets and lifted the Digital Egg up above my head, staring at its silhouette against the ceiling light. "If it hatches…what are we supposed to do? We can't take care of a baby Digimon—I had a have a hard enough time trying to take care of you…" I trailed off gloomily, remembering how my mother had reacted so poorly to Dracomon. How fearful and unsure of him Mrs. Sasaki had been.

What if that happened again? One could only assume that a Digimon that small would grow up pretty quickly, so it wouldn't be small, and cute, and easy to hide for very long. If it grew up to be something big as a Rookie, something bigger and more fearsome than Dracomon…I doubted that Mrs. Sasaki, as accepting and friendly as she was, would be able to handle the new presence.

But if it couldn't stay here, then where would it stay? It wasn't like a bird or a fish where I could simply release the creature into the wild to fend for itself; no, then the government or something would find it and there'd be even more trouble than what we'd started out with. Regular people didn't know what to do when they saw Digimon because they were mentally blind, they didn't understand how to judge by personality and not by appearance. The poor creature would be destroyed before a single person even tried to get to know him, let alone get close enough to do so.

"Well, Sumi-chan," Dracomon started to climb up gracefully onto the bed, but his attempt at grace failed and I had to snatch him and drag him up onto the bed beside me before he thumped back onto the ground and made someone come up to check on me. After giving me a 'thank you, but you know I could've done that myself, I just didn't want to' sort of grin, he continued, "There is one place where—"

"If you say anything about the Digital World…" The growl tickled the fear coiled up in my throat and gut, a snake that was sleeping in my stomach until the unfortunate time finally came that it was to awaken and devour me from the inside. I felt a twinge of warmth spread across my face, and, knowing that it would make my ears light up all Christmas-y red, I instinctively took a hand from the Digi-Egg and covered one of them.

It felt weird—almost wrong—to be…afraid of something that I barely even believed was truly real. Especially after all of the talks that Dracomon and I had had about it. But, then again, it was sort of like how children believed that there was a monster under their bed, a man with a knife behind the shower curtain, a creature with razor-sharp teeth and a hungry belly holed up in the basement, a demon sent by Satan himself to steal their souls as they slept. It didn't matter what anyone else said, not when the child himself could still see the shadow standing in the doorway.

It was like that, in a way. A childish fear of the unknown, the inner workings of an overactive imagination. The product of watching a few too many scary movies. The result of going to ask a teacher about some assignment and seeing him dancing erotically on his desk with no shirt on as he listened to some music that seeped into the hallway from under the classroom door. No matter what the cause, it was stupid to fear such things. To fear things that probably aren't even there, but refused to let you be at peace once they entered your memories.

But the Digital World…Dracomon talked about it now and then. What it was like. Who he'd known while there. Who his friends had been. What he'd done for fun. The good times he'd had before coming to the human world and meeting me. However, he'd also spoken of who he'd had to run from, who had tried to harm him. Who the bad guys were, what they did to so many of his friends. Evil, rotten, no-good, despicable, horrible, wretched things that I dared to call 'humans'. He told me so many things…good and bad…

Including that I'd been there before.

But I didn't remember that, and he refused to tell me anything about it, saying that it was necessary that I remember on my own. Saying every time that it had more meaning than what I realized, that it would 'help me' to figure it out without him telling me. I didn't understand what he was getting at, of course, but I let him pretend that he knew what he was talking about. I always did; he liked to talk, and I liked to listen to him.

"No, Sumi-chan, I wasn't going to say anything about that," Dracomon mumbled quietly, seeming a big put-out that I was in a bad mood because of that again. Feeling the cold finger of guilt poke at my heart upon seeing his downcast face, I relinquished the stranglehold I had on my self-consciousness and removed my hand from my ear. I wrapped it around the lazy greenish dragon and pulled him close to me and the Digi-Egg as he continued, his voice perking up slightly, "I was going to say we could take it to a charity or something, someplace where it can grow up safe with people who'll love it. Have it make friends with someone who could really use a friend."

I thought about his suggestion for a moment, mulling it over in my imagination. It was pretty easy to see, me taking the newly hatched Digimon into crowd of little children, all of them cooing over the cute little creature. But then I notice someone who seems to be excluded from the main group; I go over to the child and offer him the Digimon as his new, life-long friend. The image of the smile on the child's face as he hugs the Digimon brought a smile to my own face.

But I knew that was all that it would ever be: A nice little thought. "I like that idea a lot, Dracomon. We could make someone's life a lot better by doing that. But…I don't think that that's how most charities work, and I doubt that any parent is going to let their kid have something like a Digimon. I wish it was different but…" I trailed off, hearing soft footfalls coming up the stairs, down the hallway, stopping in front of my door.

Not wanting to cause a huge commotion by attempting to hide the egg and/or Dracomon, I hid neither and, instead, stared at the door motionlessly as it swung open rather slowly. There were three short knocks that preceded Mrs. Sasaki's head poking in to see what I was doing, asking permission to come in the rest of the way. Since I didn't make any sign of objection, she took that as a 'come on in' and entered.

She smiled at the two of us—well, I guess it's three if you count the egg—as she stated in a slightly tired-yet-cheery tone, "Ms. Inekura is gone now, Masumi, and she told me to tell you she was very happy to meet you. We had to have been talking about you for a good hour before you actually got home," Mrs. Sasaki brushed a stray gray hair from her face and steadied it behind her ear before continuing unsurely. "I know I probably should've called to warn you, but I didn't want to be rude to Ms. Inekura."

I pulled smile out of my pocket and slapped it onto my face. Normally it wasn't this hard to talk to Mrs. Sasaki, but something just…wasn't right today. "Yeah, it's fine, Mrs. Sasaki," I replied in a halfway-mumbling voice, sitting up from my reclined position. Crossing my legs Indian-style and resting the egg on my legs, I crouched over the egg slightly, resting my elbows on my knees. It made me feel as if my body was acting as some kind of fortress to the un-hatched Digimon. I was only half-surprised that she hadn't brought up the fact that it was there.

"Oh, and speaking of phone calls," A grim shadow of knowing passed over her face like a shadow passing over the bright full moon, but it was gone just as quickly as it had come. I knew exactly what she was going to say before she even said it. There was only one topic that would cause her to make that face. "Your mother called this morning around ten. She wanted to see if you would consider—"

"I found a Digimon egg," I cut in quickly, holding up the kinda-sorta-not-really heavy egg so that she could see it even if she were blind. It was easy to tell that Mrs. Sasaki was a little disappointed in me for changing the subject just because I was afraid to talk about my family, but she humored me and smiled as she did all the other times. "I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it now, but…"

I glanced away from Mrs. Sasaki for a moment and looked down at the egg in my slightly outstretched hands, and saw something that I hadn't noticed before. A small crack. But not like it had been dropped; it was more like…like how it looks when a chick is breaking out of its shell. The pieces of shell were sticking out a bit instead of it being just a simple break. I wasn't sure how long it had been there, and that bothered the hell out of me.

If it had just happened, then that meant a couple of things. First off, I was more oblivious to my surroundings that I'd once thought. Second, the egg might be hatching soon. Third, building off the second, if the egg was going to be hatching soon, then I had a lot less time to figure out what to do with the Digimon than I had anticipated.

If it had happened before, then that also meant a number of things. One, I was still really freaking oblivious to stuff. Two, I might've gone through all of this trouble for absolutely nothing because the egg might've been dead and rotten this whole time and it was never going to hatch at all. And third, there was a chance that I'd been too rough with the egg at one point or another during the day and I'd been the one to make the stupid crack in it. Hopefully…well, none of the outcomes were all that good, so I wasn't entirely sure what I was supposed to be hoping for.

"…But I'm not sure what to do with it now…" Lowing the egg very slowly back into the safety of my lap and embracing it gently, I looked back at Mrs. Sasaki with an unsure and sheepish grin accompanied by a shrug. "So…heh…" I looked down at the egg again, feeling the same anxiety that had been plaguing me all day long for no reason at all. It was that sense that you were being watched by something that meant to harm you, either by words or actions, and the being refused to let you have a moment's rest until it sent you to a place where you could rest eternally.

Mrs. Sasaki nodded absentmindedly, understanding the few words that I'd spoken, finding their full meaning within my vague expression of what was occupying my mind. She graced me once more with her smile before adding in a soft voice, "Well, let me know if it hatches. I'll make sure to make some extra food," She began to duck out the door to go and find something more entertaining to do than talk to me, but the woman paused and looked back at me. "And, Masumi? If you're ever finding that you want someone to talk to…you know you can talk to me about anything, right?"

My heart shuddered within me at her words, knowing what she meant. An index finger stroking the egg in my arms absentmindedly, I kept my face toward the sheets as I nodded solemnly. I sniffed once before putting on a brave face, grinning up at the old woman as if I thought she was talking about something that could actually be spoken about. "Yeah, I know," Nodding back at me, Mrs. Sasaki then left the room. But a touch of pain tugged at the corner of my heart, and as her steps receded down the hallway, I called after her, "Thank you…!" Her steps paused, and I could almost feel her smile sadly through the wall before continuing on down the stairs.

Sighing heavily and flopping back against my pillow next to Dracomon, I stared up at the ceiling blankly. A thick sadness had come to join his friend anxiety within me, and the two were now laughing and frolicking within my heart and soul, having the time of their lives making my life a pain. It was like I was at the funeral of someone that I had never known. I felt the grief over someone else who had fallen into that eternal slumber of the damned, but I had never known the man. Yet I craved to have known him, to know him now. To have had the chance to see the kind of person that he'd been made to be before death stole him away from this judgmental world.

I could see the faces of the people who had also come to the unknown man's funeral. Some were women, others children, and still others were men. They were all different ages, heights, shapes, sizes. But there was something about them that was the same, something so obvious that I knew that I would never be able to find out what it was on my own. It's wasn't something that could be found on their faces, or on their physical bodies, that I knew. But…but it was something on the inside.

Moving closer to one of them—a man a good couple of inches taller than me—I tried to get around him to see his face, but the coffin of the unnamed man was in my way a bit, so it was harder than it should've been. When I finally did get into a position where I could see his face, I sucked in a breath and shot back a few steps. It was my step-father, Kiyoshi Nemoto, looking down into the coffin with a blank, bored face.

He was standing with a comforting hand on the shoulder of my mother, Yori Chano-Nemoto. Tears were streaming down her face, and she clung to a charm around her neck as if it were the only thing keeping her in this life, keeping her from moving on to another place that was much worse than this. Her breath hitched in a strangled way, as if she were trying to control herself but was too distraught to know where to even begin trying.

Her reason for trying to regain her composure was weakly holding onto her hand on her left, as far away from Kiyoshi as she could be. Me. Six—and a three quarters—year old me. I was staring at the frilly white cloth that dressed the table that the coffin lay upon. The thought that the fabric looked too happy and joyous to be at a funeral crossed my mind; there shouldn't be white at the death of someone you loved. There should only be black, so that they, like the light and heat of the sun, might be drawn back to you and stay forever this time.

Finally, telling myself over and over again to be brave and look at who was really in the coffin, I came back over at a pace slower than a crawl, fearing the worst. I had this horrible vision that there was going to be some kind of disgusting and foul and butt-ugly monster with a hunger for human flesh in there and he was going to pop out of there and be all, 'Hello. My name is Ashsihdja. You looked at me. I'm going to eat you now NOM!' and kill me in some awful way.

But when I convinced myself that there wouldn't be a monster in the death-box, I glanced in. And it was worse than any beast, any ghoul, any demon, any devil, and anything other evil, wretched thing that the world or anything else could throw at me. An invisible bullet shot through my chest, right through my heart and through my back, ricocheting off the wall and back into me a million times, but I never died. The pain was unbearable, unbelievable, as I stared into the black box with eyes that were gradually filling with tears.

My father. Isamu Chano. Dead.

"Masu-chan? What's wrong? Are you all right?"

I shook my head violently, snapping around to stare at the place where the new voice had come from. My eyes were met with the image of a terrified and extremely concerned Dracomon, who was holding a gnawed on lamp of mine. For whatever reason, he liked shiny things. He liked to eat them. So, that was why I couldn't have shiny things. Shiny things like polished coffins. Like the one my father had been lying in.

Pulling myself out of that horrible night/day-mare again, I started to stroke the egg again to try and keep my mind in the present. "Y-yeah, I'm fine, Dracomon…just…I was thinking too hard about…things…" I pushed my mouth against the top of the egg, signaling to my Digital friend that I didn't want to talk anymore about what I'd seen. Honestly, I wasn't sure if I could muster up the courage to even walk out of my room anymore tonight for fear that my mind would be plagued with yet another haunting vision.

Understanding, Dracomon remained silent with me, something that he rarely was, but dared to be for me. He scooted over and cuddled up to me, leaning his back up against my side to make sure that I knew he was there. I heard him begin to gnaw on the lamp again, a crackling of electricity accompanying it. If anything else had been chewing on that thing, I would've unplugged it, but Dracomon seemed to like the challenge and fought me whenever I tried to, so I left it be.

Soon, the flickering bulb in Dracomon's lamp gave out and he choked it down, leaving the faint glow of the ceiling's light to make the room somewhat visible on its own. I watched at the little shadows of the tree branches outside cast down onto my floor through the window danced on the softly glowing wood floor, giving the entire room a romantic, peaceful feeling. I only wished that that sensation could be passed from the room and into me.

It was…a bad feeling, to say the least. There wasn't really a way to describe what was going on inside me, probably because I wasn't sure what was causing me to feel that way. I was used to the solidarity that I had at school; I actually kinda liked it, not having to deal with so much of the drama that you got from all your friends. Mrs. Sasaki brought weird people to her house all the time, so that was pretty normal. My mother didn't try to talk to me all that often, but then again, I couldn't really be positive about that because I tended to avoid the woman. I thought about the Digital World a lot, and sure, it confused the hell out of me doing so, but…

But I didn't think that any of that was causing the problem. Nothing that I thought of was; I could think of a reason why it wouldn't be every time. Then again, how could I make a reason why it wouldn't be if I didn't know what I was saying that it wasn't? For all I knew, it actually was and I'd just never realized it before.

My train of thought paused. It wasn't sure where it was going anymore. Nothing that I was thinking about was making any sense anymore, none of it was connecting with reality.

I sighed through my nose, beginning to wonder. About what, I wasn't sure, but the feeling of wondering came upon me like a calm storm came upon the coast, not with the gusts and hate of a hurricane, but with a light, smooth rain that coated everything it touched in a slippery wetness. It was the sort of weather that was told of in love stories, when people ran out of their homes to find the ones they loved, and finally kiss them as it rained.

But currently, my rain was the kind that poured down upon the downcast and befuddled, the kind that hid the tears that the brave shed. The sort of rain that always came at the beginning of something big, something important, something that was about to change the entire world.

Not in love with the ending, but it's the best that I could do at the moment since I wasn't sure how to wrap it up lol. I hope you guys enjoyed it even though it was mainly just introducing a bunch of crap that'll come up later in the plot (anybody get who the lady is? Didya see what I did with her name? XD If not, don't worry, I'll point it out later) and all that jizz. I really hope you liked it anyway, and please let me know by hitting that little review button that's somewhere on the screen here :) I'd really appreciate that, and have a godo rest of your day/night/whatever it is by you when you read this.