War Diaries - Adventures Zero-Three Entry 4: Welcome to the Team By Lord Archive Digimon belongs to Toei Animation Inc., Saban Entertainment, Fox Kids and others. They are used without consent. And since Toei doesn't want them anymore, I'm not giving them back. ---------------------- Sayuri peeked around the corner. "You know, there has to be an easier way to do this." "Do I have to hide myself?" Psychemon asked. "Of course you do," Sayuri retorted. "Seeing a digimon would likely scare some people. Especially considering how many times Odaiba has been attacked." "I guess I should get a disguise like them." Psychemon pointed down the street. Hawkmon and Armadimon both were wearing trench-coats as they walked with Miyako, Iori, and Takeru. Patamon was being held by Takeru as if he was a stuff toy. Sayuri sweat-dropped. "Hopefully we can find you something better. Who are they trying to fool?" "Well, no one seems to notice them," Psychemon commented. "Come on. Let's rush to the door." Sayuri dashed with Psychemon following closely behind. Sayuri screeched to a halt when she ran into a couple who apparently just came from a carnival considering the big stuffed bird the guy was holding. The guy looked over Sayuri's shoulder. "Huh? That looks like Gabumon, but the colors are all wrong." "Actually, Taichi, I believe that's Psychemon. Which means you're Sayuri, right?" Sora asked. "Ah, yes. Hi." Sayuri nodded sheepishly. Sora smiled. "Hello. I'm Takenouchi Sora, and this is Yagami Taichi." "Wataru Sayuri. Um, is that Birdramon?" Sayuri sweat-dropped as she pointed at the bird Taichi was holding. Piyomon laughed. "Not exactly. At this level, I'm Piyomon. I evolve into Birdramon." "Um, can we get inside?" Taichi asked. "We don't want to attract attention." Sayuri blushed in embarrassment. "Right." She ran into the Condominium Complex. ---------------------- Sayuri felt very uncomfortable surrounded by several of the older Chosen. She didn't really know any of them besides Iori, and wasn't sure how to start talking to any of them. So she just listened in while she waited for Yume to arrive. "Is Hikari going to be here?" Daisuke asked. Takeru shook his head. "Nope. She's been sicker today than normal." "So, how are the wedding plans going?" Daisuke asked. Takeru scratched the back of his neck nervously. "Well, okay... I guess. It's tentatively set for next month. We're still waiting for word from Sora's Dad to see if he got it approved." "Will it be a double wedding?" Iori questioned. "Nope," Takeru replied. "Yagami-kaasan would rather Taichi and Sora didn't get married just yet. And Taichi doesn't want to do that either. From what I understand, Mr. Takenouchi isn't happy about that." "Don't blame him." Daisuke shrugged. Takeru noticed a faint bruise on Daisuke's cheek. He motioned toward it. "What happened to you?" "A bit of fatherly advice from Miyako's dad, about how to properly treat his little girl," Daisuke replied bitterly. "So, what's going on between you two now?" Takeru asked. "We're still seeing each other, but it hasn't been nearly as often since before that scare," Daisuke answered. "I wish it had just been another scare with Hikari." Takeru leaned against the wall. "I'm too young to be dealing with this." Iori crossed his arms. "You shouldn't have been doing that if you can't properly take responsibility for it." He then looked at Daisuke. "And you should stop before you repeat their mistake." "Iori, don't call Hikari's pregnancy a mistake. The mistake was for us not being prepared for this," Takeru said flatly. Sayuri blinked a few times. No wonder Takeru and Hikari were off active duty. She shook her head and decided that she should probably not listen in on that. "And just why can't I port over to America and teach Hank a lesson?" Taichi asked Koushiro. Koushiro took a bite out of a brownie. "For one, it would be a bad idea if you got arrested in America. You'd be in the country illegally." "Who said they'd catch me?" Taichi asked. "You shouldn't take the chance. We can't afford any bad press about how we use our powers either. The US government already has several LARGE files on you alone." Koushiro grinned. "Besides, a more appropriate revenge has already happened to him." Taichi's eyebrow raised. "What do you mean by that?" Koushiro motioned toward his computer. "Haven't checked the message board today, have you?" "No. Why?" Taichi asked. Koushiro accessed his computer. "Seems he's been doing more than dating Jessica." Taichi grimaced at whatever he read. "Owe. She's pissed. Good thing she dumped that hypocritical creep. But what did she see in him in the first place?" Koushiro shrugged. "With the Medal of Duty, he would be very protective and loyal to her." He glanced at the computer screen. "Apparently TOO protective, for her liking at least." Taichi paged down to see what other people had to say. "There's some very bad comments being made about him in the replies. I'd have thought you'd close it down before it got that bad." Koushiro grinned evilly. "Oh, sorry. I'm in a meeting. I'll close it when the meeting ends." Sayuri blinked. She made a mental note to never get Koushiro upset. "So what's it like living with Taichi?" Miyako asked. Sora shifted uncomfortably. "Well, it's not like he's really LIVING with me." "He just sleeps with you most nights of the week," Miyako commented. Sora sagged a little. "Okay, so he is kind of living with me. But don't say that around his mother. Between this and Hikari, she's getting empty nest syndrome." Miyako blinked. "Empty nest syndrome?" Sora scratched the back of her neck. "Since Taichi has more or less moved out now, and Hikari will be moving in with Takeru next month-- Yagami-okaasan won't have any kids in her apartment. She's already starting to feel lonely. She feels she's losing her children." "At least it's too love, and not getting killed in some adventure," Miyako said. Sora sighed. "True, but you've got to admit that Yagami-okaasan hasn't had any time to prepare for this. She shouldn't have had to say good-bye to both of her kids for another five years." Sayuri shut her eyes. These conversations were too adult for her liking. She noticed V-mon walk over to Patamon. Digimon couldn't have conversations like that. "So, how's Tailmon?" V-mon asked. Patamon fidgeted. "She's doing fine. Won't move away from the egg, but otherwise fine." "You better take good care of her," V-mon warned. "I try to, but she hates it when I try to help her out." Patamon sighed. "I just don't know what to do for her or our baby." Sayuri clamped her eyes shut and tried to tune out all the conversations around her. They were all beyond her. All she knew at the moment was that she had a LOT to learn about being a Chosen. What scared her the most was some of them were only a couple years older than her. She found herself agreeing with Iori's statements of being too young. She prayed that in two or three years, she would NOT be holding a similar conversation. Sayuri thanked all the kami when Yume was wheeled in by Bakumon, who was wearing a trench-coat. When Yume wheeled up next to where Sayuri was sitting, the meeting began with the older Chosen introducing themselves. "The only ones from our group that are missing is...." Koushiro typed on his computer and brought up a pictures of the missing Chosen. "Tachikawa Mimi, who lives in New York but will be in town Sunday. Kido Jyou, who's taking spring courses to help him to become a doctor. Ichijouji Ken, who's also currently taking classes to make up for some problems he's had. Yagami Hikari, who's dealing morning sickness. And Ishida Yamato, who's...." "Just finished rehearsals. Couldn't wait for me, huh?" Yamato walked in. "Is there any of the brownies left?" Yume clasped her hands. "Yama-sama?!" Yamato jumped back. "Ah, hi." "You still have that girl magnet charm." Taichi smirked. Sayuri blinked. "I thought you liked Iori?" Yume looked at Sayuri strangely. "Don't you know who he is?" "He's a Chosen," Sayuri replied. Yume's eyes widened. "You mean you've never heard of Ishida Yamato of the Teenaged Wolves? They're only the hottest band to come from Odaiba." Sayuri shrugged. "Oh, right. Not my type of music." Taichi burst out laughing. "At least ONE girl doesn't want you." Yamato rolled his eyes. "Could you cut that out?" Sora gripped Taichi's shoulder and told Yamato, "Don't mind him, he's kind of stressed out between Hikari and the fact Dad is trying to get us married soon." "Oh, I think I can relieve some of that stress." Yamato grinned. "I suggest Lasar Assault down by the arcade. It's really helped me relieve some stress," Daisuke commented. "Maybe we should make that a group outing sometime in the next two weeks while Mimi is in town," Miyako suggested. "Make it mid-afternoon, and Hikari should be able to make it," Takeru added. Taichi shrugged. "Sounds like an idea. We can see how good the new girls are." Koushiro nodded. "Why don't you handle the arrangements, Miyako. But for now, we should start this meeting. And I guess we should begin by asking the girls if they have any questions." The older Chosen turned to Sayuri and Yume, who suddenly felt even more uncomfortable. Yume fidgeted. "Um, Koushiro, I was checking over the disk last night and it listed only three types of evolution, but there are other Chosen who have done it differently." "Not really," Koushiro replied. "The evolution process breaks into three basic categories with quite a few sub-categories. There's pure natural evolution, which is basically a digimon growing up and evolving due to age. Empowered evolution which requires an outside power source to cause the evolution to occur. And Jogress evolution where two or more digimon merge together to make a stronger digimon. "While we'd like to say when we evolve a digimon without an additional power source that it's a natural evolution, but it's not. Natural evolution occurs only due to aging of the digimon. When your digimon evolve to adult stage, you are the source of the empowered evolution." "But what about crest, digimental, medal, or sword evolutions?" Yume questioned. "Those all fall under empowered evolution as well. Digimentals offer alternative evolutions, while crest, medal and sword allow for higher evolution states to occur," Koushiro explained. "With the crest of knowledge, I was able to make Tentomon evolve to Altur Kabuterimon. I still have a small portion of that power and the power of Quinglongmon gave us, but only in the most dire of circumstances would I be able to pull off enough energy to get Tentomon evolve to that level." "Fortunately, there's only been one time that any of us got into that much trouble. When Hikari was trapped in Dagomon's dimension and needed Tailmon evolve to Angewomon." Takeru sighed. "And if any of us has the power to attain Perfection level without an additional power source, it's her." "Who's Dagomon?" Sayuri asked. The older Chosen looked between each other. "The truth is, we're not sure. We've never seen him, just his ocean," Miyako answered. "As far as we can tell, he rules an entire dimension that overlaps with the Digital World more closely than the Digital World overlaps with ours. The last we've heard of anything of that dimension or Dagomon was when we sent an Ultimate digimon, Demon, to that dimension and sealed it." "What concerns me is that both of them are still alive and active." Iori rubbed his chin. "We might be expected to take care of them." "You've got a long way to go before you can deal with someone the likes of Demon," Taichi commented. "Without Takeru, you three are stuck with only three adult digimon. You'll need some way to increase your power." "Sayuri and Yume could attempt to Jogress evolve," Daisuke commented. "Then you'd have at least one Perfection level digimon." Iori shook his head. "That still wouldn't be enough though. We had a stage seven digimon and two Perfection level digimon and all we did was trap him in another dimension. We'll need to get more power than that." "I don't think we should worry about that. At least not yet," Yamato commented. "All the Chosen and Digi-destined of the world have been given small initial missions for them to train on. Our group had one of the worst with Devimon." "The Kaiser being a close second, and that's only because Ken didn't come as close to killing all of us," Takeru added. "Ken?" Sayuri questioned. "Ken was the Kaiser, but we've learned that was mostly the Dark Seed's fault," Daisuke replied. "It infected him, making him a lot smarter and more athletic, but at the price screwing over his personality and making him evil. He doesn't have the seed anymore, so he's not as smart as he used to be. However, he's one of the good guys and helps me obtain the higher evolutions for V-mon through Jogress evolution." Koushiro nodded. "He also has the crest of kindness, which has yet to shine for him. He's forgotten what it means to be kind and gentle because the Dark Seed had turned him into an intelligent evil overlord." "He certainly didn't fight us like an anime villain would, sending one opponent after another. He sent an army after us," Miyako commented. "Or took control and used Greymon for his own purposes," Taichi remarked bitterly. "Fortunately all we've had to do recently is peace keeping," Iori said. "Hopefully we won't have to find out what Psychemon and Bakumon's Perfection levels are." "Because if you do, you'll go through hell first," Daisuke warned. "That much is certain. We haven't heard of a time when anyone obtained that level without being in a life or death situation where if evolution didn't occur, someone would've died." "What was the worst?" Yume questioned. The older kids looked at each other. "Hikari," Taichi answered. "Tailmon didn't evolve to Angewomon until Vamdemon nearly succeeded in killing both of them. He killed Wizarmon though, who was a close friend of Tailmon." Patamon fidgeted, but didn't comment. "Vamdemon became Hikari's first kill, and then she had to help kill him again since he resurrected himself shortly after he died." Takeru sighed. "She was only eight at the time." "Not that being a few months older helped you deal with killing Devimon," Yamato commented. "Who's the easiest?" Sayuri asked dreadfully. "That would probably be me." Daisuke folded his arms. "While Ken and I were being attacked by Ookuwamon, the real fight was trying to convince Ken not to try to suicidally charge into battle while redeeming himself for being the Kaiser. He was going to take on the fake Perfection level digimon by himself." "Definitely one of Stingmon and Ken's less than brighter moments," V-mon added. Miyako chuckled. "You call it easy when no one else was willing to trust him at the time. If it wasn't for you, he would've gotten himself killed." Sayuri closed her eyes. "Has anyone every died because they were Chosen?" Koushiro nodded gravely. "There's been two confirmed deaths. One from London's group and another from Brazil's. The London group is one of the few teams that have comparable levels to us. Even the New York group hasn't reached significant levels. Their last threat only required Michael to achieve Perfection evolution with an assist from Mimi and Lillymon." "There's no guarantee that we'll live though this?" Yume squeaked. The older Chosen shook their heads. "Being a Chosen is a dangerous line of work," Koushiro states. "It's amazing that less than a half-percent of the known Chosen have died considering some of us have faced threats that endangered both the Digital World and our world. It's unfortunate to note that over three hundred deaths can be attributed to digimon. Most of them during the two invasions." Sayuri's watch started to beep while Koushiro was talking. She shut it off and sighed. "Sorry, but I've got to go home for dinner." "Don't worry about it." Taichi stepped forward. "If you have any questions, feel free to ask any of us." "Well try to help in any way we can," Daisuke added. "Welcome to the team, hope you survive." ---------------------- Koushiro's Files: Hida Iori Age 11 Digimental of Chishiki Digimental of Seijitsu Jogress partner Takaishi Takeru Second Odaiba Group Third Odaiba Group Tsubomon, Upamon, *Armadimon*, Ankylomon/Digmon/Submarimon, Shakkoumon Family: Mother, Grandfather Iori is the son of Hida Hiroki, one of the first researchers of the Digital World along with Oikawa. Hiroki became a police officer and was killed in the line of duty. Because of his father's death, Iori has matured beyond his years before even becoming a Chosen. Iori seems to live in the shadow of his father, by trying to be someone his father would be proud of. I had never seen Iori happier when his grandfather told him that simply by being a Chosen, his father would be proud. Iori's role in the Second Odaiba group is overlooked by many of the other members of the first and second groups. However, with the formation of the third group, his importance can not be denied since he has become the leader. He's still the youngest Chosen of the group, by a few months, but he is the one with the most experience. Looks like Iori will have more of a challenge than Taichi and Daisuke had with the first group. While his team is currently the smallest with only two other members at this time, both of them are girls who apparently have a crush on him.