In the digital world, a red-haired teenager and her Digimon partner looked over a strange scene. A few days ago, there had just been a small set of young trees in this area. But now, there were thick ancient oaks, towering high.

"What happened here, Biyomon?" Sora wondered as she stared at the trees.

The girl in her late teens wore a pleated blue denim skirt over black cycling shorts, plus knee length white socks as well as white tennis shoes. She had a pink t-shirt on her upper half that left part of her midriff exposed, along with her vibrant ginger hair held up in a ponytail.

"I'm not sure. Something made these trees grow really fast, but it doesn't add up. If they just got bigger the ground would have been torn up as their roots grew, but it all looks natural. There's even layers of fallen leaves, like all this happened over years."

"So, the plants didn't grow fast, it's more like time sped up around here?"

"It doesn't seem to still be happening at least, but maybe we should stay away from those trees for now," Biyomon nodded.

"But having a spot that's advanced in time like that, won't that cause imbalance in the digital world?"

Biyomon realised her human friend was right.

"Yeah. We should take a look around to see what might cause it, then go get the others. If it's what I think it is, we might be able to talk with him and see what's going on."

"Oh, you think it might be a digimon?"

"Yeah, but they're not usually dangerous, if they are behind it they'll have a good reason."

Sora shrugged.

"Well, let's look for them. Uh, what type of Digimon are they?"

"Oh, well, I think it might be Clockmon, a machine digimon with control over time," Biyomon replied.

"Does it look like a hooded person with a hammer riding a clock robot?" Sora asked.

"Yeah, how'd you guess?"

The human pointed into the trees, where the Clockmon was emerging. It looked irritated.

"You there, human and Biyomon! You're out of sync with this area!" It yelled.

"Um... Sorry? We'll just leave in a minute, but, did you age these trees up?" Biyomon asked

"I corrected them! It's 2088, they were trapped in 2022!"

Sora and Biyomon blinked in confusion.

"Um... It is 2022," Sora blurted out.

The Clockmon groaned.

"Great, more glitched time. I need to correct this..."

Biyomon realised the threat.

"Sora! We need to run!"

The human needed no other urging, turning on her heels. But she barely got an inch before the Digimon behind her let loose a bolt of energy, and she found herself locked in place.

"Ah! I can't move my feet!" She cried, as Biyomon puffed in anger.

"Look, Clockmon, you're glitched, the year is 2022, not 2088! Let Sora go, please!" She begged.

Clockmon shook his head.

"I cannot. She's out of sync. I cannot be glitched, if I am out of sync, I would know. You are both out of sync."

And with another bolt, Biyomon found herself frozen in place too, her wings held aloft in the air in halted time.

"Just look at the rest of the digital world! How could it all be out of sync? It's 2022 there too!" Sora tried, as the Clockmon's hands began spinning....

And Sora felt herself slowly changing. At first, not much happened, but she saw the watch on her wrist start spinning wildly too. As her time was advanced, her looks did not change much from late teens to mid twenties, but as she neared her early thirties, her toned stomach developed a few stretch marks. She felt some aches in her joints, especially her back and knees.

She looked over at Biyomon, the small pink bird-digimon not showing any real change... except that the tips of her feathers seemed to be getting duller.

"Agh... My back is killing me," Sora groaned as she kept aging.

Biyomon looked at her human partner, seeing that a few worry lines and crows feet were emerging on Sora's face as she seemed to be nearing her mid forties. Time flowed forward more, and she saw some of Sora's red hair lose luster and then, the first signs of white began appearing, grey hairs emerging as Sora reached her fifties. Her face began to droop slightly, and to the human's dismay, she began getting some weight around her hips and rear as it seemed she would not age entirely gracefully.

And for Biyomon, her dulled feathers too began to grey. Even as a Digimon, aging occurred, of a sort, and she felt aches and pains in her digital bones too.

Sora groaned as she felt pain in her joints, and blinked as her vision became clouded. Her face by now was developing many wrinkles, and her socks were starting to slide down as she lost weight in her legs now, the once tight shorts now loose too, and her skirt also hanging off a little loosely. Her red hair had shifted completely grey, still in the ponytail, as she was now in her late sixties.

From 2022 to 2088, sixty-six years on top of eighteen. She had nearly twenty more to go, and gave a raspy cry of pain as her spine compressed, and she became shorter. Her once smooth arms had become wrinkled, veins prominent, and her legs too, the socks now fallen totally, had thick hairs growing in patches of the wrinkly limbs. Her face developed a few age spots and moles, alongside the wrinkles as her cloudy aged eyes squinted to try and make sense of the blurry world as she reached her late seventies.

And then it was over. Clockmon's hands stopped, and with an aged voice, she cried out and almost stumbled, her aching bones barely holding her up.

Biyomon was no better off, the Digimon now grey feathered all over, and trembling as she fell softly to the floor, a few of her grey feathers falling out as she groaned.

"Sora..." she rasped, trying to get her aching talons to move, as the aged human tried to keep herself stable.

"Ah... I have false teeth," Sora said in her harshly aged voice, having just realised that somewhere along the way dentures had appeared.

"There we are, back in sync!" Clockmon said, and began to walk away.

"W-wait, please... We're not meant to be old yet... Clockmon, please listen...." Biyomon said, but Clockmon ignored her.

Sora, for her part, tried to sit down, the now octogenarian human tired and her bones aching all over.

"I... I'm so tired, Biyomon, just let him go for now..." She groaned.

Eventually, she would contact the others, and ask for help. But for now, she sat there, decades ahead of her true age, thanks to a glitching Digimon, that was no doubt going to find that other places were 'out of sync'.

Only time would tell if he could be stopped, and if his actions could be corrected. But given it was under his control, time was perhaps more on his side, as mistaken as he was...