From Time To Time
By Archangel Bloodraven

The blonde woman glanced around as the silver lightning closed the portal behind her. Satisfied that no one had witnessed her unorthodox arrival, she reached into her interior jacket pocket and produced a pair of wire frame glasses which she slipped on as her other hand drifted to a side pocket. Satisfied that her precious cargo was still safely ensconced in its prison of cloth and memories, she adjusted her glasses and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. Even though no one here would recognize her now, it never hurt to be careful.

She stepped out of the trees and looked around the park, a thousand questions reeling through her mind. Was she early? Had she missed her? Could she face her again?

"Meeko? Where are you Meeko?" The woman's heart stopped in her chest as she turned towards the young brunette's voice. "Oh hello. Can I help you?"

The woman felt her heart leap into her throat as it always did whenever they played out the fist scene of their little drama. The settings changed but the emotions were always the same. "Do you happen to have the time?"

"Yes. It's twenty-five minutes to four."

"Thank you. Can I help you?"

"No, I'm- Actually, have you seen my cat Meeko?" The girl asked. "I think I saw him run this way."

"Well I did see a cat headed in that direction. Maybe he's-"

"SHADOW CLAW!" A voice shouted. Reflex took over as the blonde shoved the little girl out of harms way as she had done countless times before. The black energy of the attack tore into her left arm leaving a deep gushing abyss of flesh.

"Take these and go, Kari!" The blonde said tossing the girl a small cloth wrapped bundle.

"What-" She began as a peculiar black cat leapt out of the trees. 

"Never mind that and never mind me! If you value your life, run!" The blonde roared. Kari didn't need to be told twice, and ran as fast as her legs could carry her.

"Oh but it's play time, Angel." The black cat pouted.

"What took you so long, Nega?" Angel said brushing a bang out her eyes as she warily circled the black cat.

"Oh, don't be such a clock watcher." Nega said. "I've got all the time in the world, but you and your little friend are out of time."

"One more time reference out of you and I'm gonna clean your clock."

"In that form? You can't beat me, so why don't you just punch out?" Nega snarled lunging toward Angel, who caught her with a high roundhouse kick and threw her into a tree.

"Some people never learn." She said crouching in an attack position. "Time's up Nega. This time Kari lives, and I destroy you once and for all."

Instead of responding, Nega lunged at Angel, claws slashing. The blonde barely had time to twist aside as the black cat's claws sliced open her jacket and the midsection of her white silk shirt. The black cat capitalized on her precarious balance and jumped onto her chest knocking Angel to her back. "It's high time I put an end to your transtemporal meddling. VENOM CLAW" She snarled sinking her claws deep into the blonde's chest. "Your time is up." She purred raising he claws for the final strike.

Without warning Angel raked her well filed nails across Nega's face, leaving five angry scars as the blonde threw her and attempted to recover her own footing. "That's going to leave a mark."

Nega was about to launch another attack when a new voice shouted, "CELESTIAL ARROW!"

"Argh!" She shouted narrowly dodging the arrow of light as Angel rolled to one side. "Angewomon! This doesn't concern you!"

"The child does." The angel digimon said. 

"Two against one, not my kind of odds." Nega snarled. She flicked her tail and a portion of the air behind her rippled into a spatial vortex. "But we will meet again. If my venom doesn't destroy you first, I want to see the look in your eyes as I destroy Kari Prime." Laughing madly, Nega stepped back into the portal with her disembodied laughter echoing behind her.

Angel narrowed her eyes and set out resolutely for Kari's house stopping only long enough to scoop up Meeko and nod her thanks to the angel digimon who had saved her so many times.

***

Twenty minutes later Angel stopped to rest outside a subway station just as Matt and TK were coming out.

"You don't look good, lady." TK said gently setting Patamon on his head.

"TK!" Matt said.

"It's all right." She said. "And who is this honest young man?"

"He's TK and he really needs to be going now." Matt growled.

"What about you?"

"Matt." He replied shortly.

"Well Matt, I'm Angelica Katerina, but all my friends call me Angel."

"What happened to you?" TK asked as Matt started to pull him down the street.

"TK! You shouldn't be asking her all these questions!"

"It's all right." She said. "Since you seem to be in a bit a rush, do you mind if I walk with you, as we are both heading in the same direction?"

"It's a public street." Matt snapped.

"To answer your question TK, I got in a catfight."

"What's a catfight?" TK asked.

"Something your brother will tell you about when he gets older."

"How did you know we were brothers?" Matt snapped suspiciously.

"Have you looked in a mirror lately Matt? He's a smaller version of you." Angel said. "That's a rather peculiar stuffed animal on your hat, TK."

"Oh this old thing? It's like my security blanket. I really ought to throw it away. I'm getting to big to be carrying a stuffed animal around with me." He babbled.

"May I see it?" Angel said suppressing a grin.

Unable to produce a suitable argument, TK reluctantly handed Patamon over to Angel who looked at him closely then whispered, "It's been too long Angemon."  Before the startled digimon could react she handed him back to TK. "Well this is where we part ways." She said opening the door of the apartment building.

"Will you be all right from here?" Matt asked. Angel nodded and disappeared inside.

"Matt! TK! She knows who I am!" Patamon squeaked as quietly as he could and still be heard.

"What do you mean, Patamon?" TK asked.

"She said, 'It's been too long Angemon.' How could she have known that?"

"Do you think she could be an evil digimon?" Mat asked.

"Actually, she looks kinda like you." 

"Huh? What are you talking about TK?"

"Picture Angemon as a human female. Take away the glasses and let down the hair and she would look just like him." TK said matter of factly.

"Well we better find out what she's up to." Tsunomon said from the crook of Matt's arm.

"But we don't know which apartment she went to."

"The Kamiya's." TK said. "That was Kari's cat Meeko with her."

"Let's go!"

Meanwhile, Angel and Meeko had just reached the Kamiya's apartment as Gatomon was padding out.

That woman seems so familiar, The tiny cat like digimon thought. almost like looking into a mirror, but why?

Angel barely noticed Gatomon's passing before she knocked on the open door.

"Oh hello." Kari said clearly nonplussed despite Angel's worse for wear appearance. 

"I found Meeko." The older woman managed  before collapsing in the doorway. Kari nimbly caught her head before it could hit the floor and managed to drag Angel first to the bathroom then to the bedroom she shared with Tai, once her wounds had been cleaned and wrapped. She had just closed the door when she turned and ran right into Matt.

"Oh hello. You must be Tai's friend Matt and you're TK right?"

"Uhn huh." TK nodded.

"Are you all right Kari? Did angel hurt you?"

"So that's what she calls herself." Kari mused heading for the kitchen. "Please don't step in the blood. Angel passed out in the doorway. Would you be so kind as to close that?" Matt did as she produced a bucket and some pine cleaner. "I'm all right, but she keeps muttering 'gather the digidestined' and 'must protect the eighth.'" Kari said nonchalantly wiping up the blood. 

"Well," Matt said awkwardly. "if you're all right, then we'd better go."

"I'm afraid not, Matt. This angel of yours went through a great deal of trouble to track me down rather than seeking medical attention. I think she wants a little more than a thank you for finding Meeko." She said pouring the bloody water down the drain and handing her two guests sodas. 

"Thank you, but what does that have to do with us?" Matt asked.

"Well, you two are digidestined aren't you?"

"What gave you that idea?" TK asked.

"Your Patamon and Tsunomon. That you both have digivices like my brother. Besides, if you leave now I'll just have to find you again for whatever Angel wants us for."

"You can't argue with that logic." Tai said as he closed the door. "But who's Angel?"

Matt, TK, and Kari told of their strange encounters with the woman in white. All in all Tai took the news well.

"YOU PUT HER WHERE?"

"In our room Tai." Kari repeated calmly.

"If she's as bad off as you say she is, she needs to be in a hospital."

"Tai, we can't send her to a hospital."

"Give me three good reasons why not." Tai demanded.

"One, she'd never make it. She's lost a lot of blood and her fever's too high. Two, she has no identification, and three, she risked her life for me and I want to know why."

"Do you think Kari could be the eighth child?" Matt asked sipping on his cola.

"I don't know." Tai said opening his own. "I mean she doesn't have a crest or a digivice or..."

"Yes I do." She said opening the cloth bundle Angel had given her. "Angel gave these to me right before she fought with a peculiar looking cat."

Inside the bundle was a digivice, crest and tag.

"Wow, I guess that means you are the eighth child." TK said.

"All right. Angel had this hanging around her neck." She opened her other hand as a whistle dropped and dangled from her fingers. "How can we both have the exact same whistle?"

"Th-that's impossible!" Tai stammered. 

"We better get Izzy and the others down here." Matt said. "Something tells me this is only going to get more interesting from here."

***

Two hours later the 'destined and their digimon began to answer the call. It was still two hours after that before they were all gathered in Tai's room around Angel's prone form. Kari had a minor bit of difficulty explaining to her parents about harboring a good Samaritan, and she had finally persuaded them not to call the police and joined the others as Angel began to stir.

"Are you all right?" Kari asked.

"Seeing you alive is always good for me. How long was I asleep?"

"About five hours." Kari said. "Why are you so interested in me?"

"It's been a long time since I've seen all of you together. Let me savor the moment and then I'll explain everything." She was silent for a moment as she looked around the group, her eyes drinking in TK and Kari. "Ah this feels right."

"Who are you Angel?" Sora asked calmly.

"And how do you know me?" Patamon squeaked.

"You don't know me because we haven't met yet. I'm Angewomon, more commonly called Gatomon."

"But she's evil!" Joe exclaimed.

"No. She just works for evil, because she's confused. Nega's evil, but only because she hurts so badly."

"Who's Nega?" Mimi asked.

"The black cat." Kari said. "The one that attacked us."

"Right. I need your help to protect Kari."

"We have so many questions."

"And my story will answer them all. I'm not actually the Gatomon you think I am, and neither is Nega, which is short for Negatomon. Like me, she comes the future of an alternate time line. Think of me as a Temporal Alternate Gatomon, or TAG for short. In Nega's reality, Kari is killed by Piedmon, the last Dark Master. She survived and grew bitter and obsessed. Eventually the darkness inside her manifested on the outside."

"And she turned black." TK said.

Angel nodded. "And where this black cat goes, bad luck always follows. She was wandering the digiworld mourning Kari and looking for a fight when she discovered The Vortex, a stable spatial temporal rift. She launched an attack inside The Vortex and destabilized the core energy matrix enough to allow her to escape her reality and jump into another, but the Vortex threw her back in time as well."

Angel paused for a moment and took a painful breath. "Seeing Kari alive again would have overjoyed anyone else, but it drove Nega over the edge. She immediately killed Kari and jumped back into the rift. She did this Gennai only knows how many times, leaving a trail of dead Kari's in her wake."

"So how'd you get pulled into this madness?" Tai asked softly.

"Once Nega found that she could open portals on her own, she became more artistic with Kari's demise. Mine was the first. She tortured her in ways to unthinkable to utter aloud, then when she was sure she was beyond help, Nega jumped through a portal and left her to die. I was the first to reach Kari and she made me swear an oath to protect other Kari's and stop Nega. I gave her my word and she gave me her whistle. The whistle! Where is it?" She asked grasping frantically at her neck.

"It's right here." Kari said as she pressed it into her hand unshed tears glistening in her eyes. Blue eyes met red in a silent understanding as Angel resumed her story.

"You all took it hard, especially TK. Another timeshifter told me he only lasted about a month before he and Angemon took a suicide plunge. But it  hurt me the most. I took her crest and digivice, and jumped through the portal before her body was even cold. And I can never return."

"Why not?" Sora asked.

"Nega and I have both spent so much time outside of time that we have the power to create stable portals at will, but once we leave a timeline we're locked out to prevent contamination. That's how I know so much about Nega's origins. I stumbled across her timeline and tried to stop her from reaching The Vortex, but she was so crazy with pain, she wouldn't listen. But there's another problem. Primes and antitime."

"Primes?" Izzy repeated.

Angel nodded. "Primes exist in every reality. If you destroy a prime a certain way, a temporal erasure wave ripples through the space time continuum and obliterates that from every timeline. Nega thinks that you are Kari prime, and if she has her way, Tai becomes an only child real quick."

"And antitime?"

"A byproduct of timeshifting. All time shifters accumulate antitachyon particles, commonly called antitime. Nega has more than me obviously, but my share is also sizeable."

"So why are you being so up front with us?" Matt asked.

"Because I need your help. I have enough antitime to destroy Nega once and for all and undo all the harm she's done, but I need two groups. One will keep Kari safe once I leave with the others who will keep Nega occupied while I destroy her."

"Why not simply wait until Nega comes for me?" Kari asked.

"Because I may not have that much time." Angel said. "Nega poisoned me, as you may have guessed. Also she can't find you, because of my proximity to you, but even if I don't go after her, her patience is going to run out sooner or later. But for now Kari, you need to be out on the balcony because company's coming. "

Sure enough as a puzzled Kari exited onto the balcony, this timelines Gatomon landed on the balcony accompanied by Wizardmon.

"Aren't you afraid your foreknowledge of the future could have an adverse affect on our timeline?" Izzy asked.

"Not if my plan succeeds. If I can destroy Nega with my antitime, she'll be obliterated from the space time continuum. If she doesn't exist, she can't kill my Kari and this conversation never happens. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm on." She said slipping out the door.

"We'll need to get her real crest from Myotismon." Wizardmon was saying.

"She'll have to use mine." Angel said causing them all to jump. "There's no time." As if to prove what she said, the human female glowed briefly before reverting into a familiar cat like digimon.

"I should have known. No one else is quiet enough to sneak up on me. How were you to become human?"

"He taught me." TAG said nodding towards Wizardmon. She was about to say something more when a swirling electrical vortex appeared over the city causing both Gatomons to double over in pain. To their surprise Kari was unaffected and quickly moved to aid TAG as Wizardmon pulled Gatomon to her feet.

"What's happening to me?" She groaned as the storm settled into a passive period.

"Nega, you baka!" TAG moaned. "You're the prime, not Kari." TAG laughed as she explained the situation to Gatomon as the storm began to increase in power again causing the two cat like creatures to double  over in pain again.

"What's going on?" Tai shouted over the winds.

"I don't know but I think Nega's gotten tired of waiting for me to show up!" Kari shouted.

"Antitime storm." TAG gasped as the storm sank into a lull for the time being. "Every time that thing surges, it gets bigger until it destroys the city and Kari with it."

"But that's madness! Nega will be destroyed as well."

"You don't understand Sora. Nega's not playing with a full digivice, if you know what I mean. In her mind, her life is a small price to pay to obliterate Kari from existence. But Kari isn't a prime. Gatomon is." TAG explained as the storm began to grow in power again.

"What happens if I go into that thing?" Gatomon said pointing towards the storm.

"You'll destroy every Gatomon in existence. Me, yourself, Nega, and countless others. Are you sure you're willing to do that?" TAG asked.

"I have to." Gatomon shouted fighting the knot of pain in her belly. "A few hours ago I planned to kill this little girl."

"And I've saved her more times than I can count."

"Then so can I." Gatomon said. "Kari, you've got to make us digivolve."

Kari nodded and looped the crest over her head where it began glow. In a tear choked voice she whispered, "Digivolve."

"GATOMON DIGIVOLVE TO... ANGEWOMON!" They cried in unison. Seconds later two angels hovered over the balcony.

"Goodbye Angemon." Future Angewomon said. "I love you and will miss you."

"Goodbye Angewomon." Patamon sniffed. "I wish we could have flown together."

Present Angewomon gazed at Wizardmon a moment, an unspoken agreement passing between them, then the two angels flew towards the eye of the storm.

***

"SHADOW CLAW!" Nega shouted trying to bring down the two angels.

"CELESTIAL ARROW!" Future Angewomon cried nullifying the attack.

"You're insane!" Nega cried.

"Funny." Future Angewomon said. "I've often said the same about you."

"If she enters that storm we'll both be destroyed."

"I have nothing left to lose! You saw to that! Let's embrace oblivion together!" With those words she swooped down and grabbed Nega and raced for the eye of the storm. The three figures entered the rift simultaneously as it exploded in a multicolored rainbow of light.

***

"Well done, Gatomon." A familiar voice said.

"What is this place?" Gatomon asked.

"The temporal afterlife. All those who's lives are touched by time end up here." Another Kari scooping Gatomon into her arms. "I'm the Kari that Negatomon killed, and this is the Kari that I grew up to be." She said.

"But how-" Gatomon shook her head. "Never mind. I've had enough time problems to last me a life time." She chuckled slightly as both Kari's groaned, then scanned the group there were thousands of different faces but one in particular caught her eye. "Poor Nega. I know she didn't want to hurt any of those other Kari's. She was just hurt and angry and confused with no one to set her straight."

"That's all about to change." Kari said as another Kari, this one with waist length wavy brown hair crept up behind Nega.

"Guess who?" She asked covering her digimon's eyes.

"K-k-kari?"

"Bingo." She said squeezing Nega in her arms. "Why?"

"I failed you. I should have done... something."

"And what if I were to tell you that there was nothing to be done?" Kari said.

"Huh?" Nega asked as her fur faded to a dark gray.

"You remember how I was always getting sick?"

"Yeah."

"Progressive malignant cancer. I knew I'd die eventually once I realized we were trapped in the digiworld. Without my treatments I'd have been dead in a month or two."

"But I never got to say goodbye." Nega said her fur paling even more.

"Why say good bye when you can say hello? We're together forever here Negato."

"Please," The small cat said as the last of the dark tint left her fur. "Just Gato."

"One thing bothers me. If I never existed, then who-"

***

Kari sat up as quietly as she could, but both TK and Wizardmon were light sleepers. "Something wrong Hika-chan?"

"Do you ever have the feeling that things should be different?"

"From time to time little one." Wizardmon replied. "From time to time."

***

A.B.: My muse Hikari is sick so my back up muse Iori will be doing the disclaimer.

Iori: He doesn't own them. Good day.

A.B.: Sweet and simple. Drop a review on your way out.