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Chapter Text

Within the legends of the Digital World, there are rumors of a Hall of Olympus from which the gods of the Digital World watch over everything with a stance of neutrality. However, while the Olympos XII have occasionally met with other Digimon who passed their trials, no Digimon outside of the Olympians have ever so much as located this sacred ground, let alone entered. The reason for this was simple: the Hall of Olympus was not located within the Digital World, but rather within a gap between dimensions. From here, the gods could watch over the entire history of the Digital World and its parallel universes with absolute impunity.

However, the very isolation that kept the Hall of Olympus safe allowed a new enemy to strike at the gods: boredom. With no chance of outside contact, many of the Olympians preferred to spend most of their time at their various temples or fortresses protected by their own powers. The only exceptions to this rule were Jupitermon and Junomon, who seemed content to stay in the Hall as the rulers of the Olympians, never falling prey to boredom when they were together. As such, the fact that all twelve members of the Olympos XII were currently gathered in the Hall of Olympus testified to the severity of the current situation of the Digital World.

Despite the victories in the Dark Ocean and later on the Folder Continent, the DigiDestined had still been unable to track down Lucemon, let alone stop him. For all of their efforts and new strength, the Demon Lord had only increased his power, to the point where he had now transcended the bounds of his own fate, rendering his future invisible to the Olympos XII. The only other beings that could claim such a distinction were Shakamon and GranDracmon, and if that level of power was held in the hands of a being who had already destroyed the world once in the past, they may already be too late to do anything to stop Lucemon’s threat.

However, despite the sense of urgency, the Olympos XII were unable to agree upon a future course of action. Marsmon was the most vocal in support of joining the fight themselves, as would be expected from the god of war. The vow of neutrality had always been an annoyance to him, but now he was taking it personally. After all, war was the only word that could accurately describe the current battle between light and darkness, yet he was held back while others could still be involved. Minervamon had essentially taken the DigiDestined of Knowledge as an apprentice, Vulcanusmon had created the weapons that went on to be used by both sides, and Venusmon had managed to make her presence felt in the new relationships among the DigiDestined, but the god of war had been forced to sit on the sidelines.

Whereas Marsmon was eager to join the battle, other members of the Olympos XII were not enjoying the idea. Ceresmon, Venusmon, Vulcanusmon, and Bacchusmon had all benefited from not getting involved in battles, and wished to remain neutral in accordance with their long-standing oath. Minervamon, who had been the most involved in the fight so far, surprisingly agreed with this group, stating their personal involvement would not provide a significant difference now that the DigiDestined had surpassed them both in numbers and firepower. The goddess of wisdom argued that their key role would be supporting the DigiDestined rather than fighting directly. Though this path offered a compromise between the strict neutrality of earlier and outright fighting alongside the DigiDestined, the insinuation that the Olympos XII were now weak caused Apollomon, Dianamon, Neptunemon, and Merukimon to lend their support to Marsmon’s cause.

Jupitermon and Junomon found themselves in an all too familiar situation: needing to cast the deciding votes between two factions of the other members. Though the Olympos XII were not nearly as dysfunctional as their counterparts in Earth mythology, they still had their fair share of squabbles. As the leader, Jupitermon’s vote could break any tie, though Junomon often followed her husband’s decisions so a tied vote was unlikely to happen in this situation. The ruler of the skies prepared to pass his decision when portal made of crackling black lightning appeared in the entryway and a badly wounded Plutomon collapsed into the Hall of Olympus.

The Olympos XII were taken aback by the sudden appearance of their brother, and felt a sense of dread upon seeing his condition. Though not a member of the Olympos XII, Plutomon had abilities that matched their own, and in terms of strength in battle he was among the most powerful of the Olympians. Whatever had reduced him to this condition was clearly a threat, even to the gods of the Digital World. Merukimon ran over to help the fallen Olympian, asking his brother what had happened. Plutomon let out a few coughs before he could speak.

“It’s… Lucemon…” As soon as Plutomon finished speaking, he jammed his armored hand through Merukimon’s chest, causing the messenger of the gods to cough in surprise as Plutomon’s form changed into that of a demon with red wings wearing bird like armor. Murmukusmon smirked as he continued his statement. “He has a message for you. Your time as gods is over!”

The Count of the Dark Area only laughed as Merukimon burst into data before turning to the other Olympians. Venusmon barely had time to curse her foolishness in taking off her blindfold—had she kept it on, she would have seen through Murmukusmon’s ruse—before she was blasted by a stream of hellfire and destroyed by the Demon Lord’s Gehenna Flame attack. The other members of the Olympos XII tried to respond to the surprise attack, but Murmukusmon hadn’t come alone. From the still open portal stepped Murmukusmon’s faithful steed Gryphonmon and another demon wearing a tattered robe and carrying a machine gun.

Unlike Murmukusmon, the new arrivals didn’t bother with talking to their opponents, instead going directly for the attack on the Olympians. Gryphonmon managed to destroy Ceresmon before she could reform the flying bird she used outside of the Hall of Olympus, while the other newcomer blasted away with a seemingly endless hail of bullets. Vulcanusmon recognized the demon by his weapon, though that brought no comfort to the God Man Digimon as he was blasted apart by a weapon he had created himself. Astamon only smirked as the maker of his prized Oro Salmón was destroyed. The Prince of the Dark Area only wished he had more time to rub the irony in the face of his opponent, but the other Olympians had now overcome their surprise and started fighting back.

Though the Ultimate level Astamon had strength beyond most Mega Digimon, he did not relish the thought of a direct fight with the remaining gods. He and Murmukusmon were undoubtedly strong, being some of the highest-ranking members of the Nightmare Soldiers. After the death of five Demon Lords and Lilithmon’s exile to Earth, they were behind only Lucemon and GranDracmon in terms of leadership of the Dark Area. However, the remaining Olympians were far stronger than their defeated brethren, and most likely could defeat their three attackers.

Though Astamon knew all of this, he couldn’t help but laugh cruelly in the faces of his foes. The surprise attack had succeeded in wiping out Bacchusmon, Ceresmon, Venusmon, Vulcanusmon, Minervamon, and Merukimon. Taking down half of the gods went well beyond the necessary conditions for this mission to be a success. With only six opponents left, the nobles of the Dark Area wouldn’t even need to lift a finger in the upcoming slaughter. Instead, they just had to sit back and watch as Lucemon flew in through the still-open portal.

The remaining six Olympians all turned to face the newest threat, but Lucemon only held out his hands and channeled the powers of the other fallen Demon Lords. Dianamon was incinerated with Leviamon’s Thunder Breath, Neptunemon was destroyed with the black flames of Belphemon’s Lampranthus, Apollomon fell to Beelzemon’s Double Impact, and Marsmon lost his life to Daemon’s Evil Inferno. The only survivors were Jupitermon and Junomon, who somehow managed to overcome the explosion of Barbamon’s Pandaemonium Lost. Lucemon only looked disappointed at the leaders of the Olympos XII before letting out a sigh.

“I suppose it was only to be expected that you two would survive if I split my attention into a five-way attack. Still, perhaps it’s better this way. After all, it would be an awful shame if the new god of the Digital World managed to defeat the old ones without using any of his own power.”

Jupitermon addressed the Demon Lord in a dispassionate voice. “I know not how you have come to enter this domain, Lucemon, but you have soiled sacred ground by killing my brethren.” Switching to an angry tone, Jupitermon materialized a giant sword before growling out, “For such crimes, the only punishment is death!”

Junomon smiled as her husband entered his Wrath Mode. For this fight, she knew she would need her Hysteric Mode but that was one thing she never wanted her husband to discover. Luckily, in Wrath Mode Jupitermon lost himself in a haze of anger. He gained immense strength and resistance to damage at the cost of fighting as a berserker without regard for self-preservation or the lives of his allies. In this form, Jupitermon would keep fighting until he died or all his enemies did. Only then would he regain his senses, which meant for now that Junomon could cut loose.

Lucemon knew he could have attacked the last Olympians while they were powering up, but the Demon Lord of Pride wanted them to use their full power only to see how outmatched they truly were. There was no need to rush his inevitable victory. Since he had a few seconds, he decided to respond to Jupitermon’s statements.

“Really, it was quite simple to get here. I just tracked down an old associate and absorbed his data. You aren’t the only Digimon that can travel between dimensions, but you do have a greater reach than Wisemon did. So, I really had to get your power in addition to his. As for punishing me with death, I’m afraid that won’t work. Even if I didn’t vastly outclass you in power, I’ve already absorbed the data of Plutomon. I am the ruler of death now, so you cannot give me what I’ve already mastered!”

The Olympians took this as their cue to attack, and Lucemon decided to let them have their fun. After all, he had great plans for what to do with the new power at his fingertips. Earlier, he had come to rule the Digital World. Then, he had destroyed the Digital World and set his sights on Earth. Now, he would have access to the entire history of not just those two worlds, but all parallel worlds. Just imagining the horrors he would unleash on all who opposed them was enough for Lucemon to ignore the minor wounds he was accumulating with his sloppy fighting style. Soon, he would have an entire multiverse at his feet!

Rei sighed as she prepared herself to leave her hiding place and throw herself back into the fray. In the past few months, she had been glad to lend a hand in the battles for the Digital World, though Hideto and Neo still tended to be overprotective of her on the battlefield. Her two partners had certainly grown from the bickering imps they had been, but they could still only go to the Champion level so some things were just beyond their power. Whenever threats like that came up, Neo and Hideto always tried to leave her behind for her own protection. Now that she had her own Digimon, Rei refused to just be a burden again, though she knew she had to catch up to the others fast. So, she was taking a leaf out of her brother’s book and training constantly with Pal and Pul. However, even with their new level of skill, the current situation wasn’t something her partners could help her with. Fights against invading Digimon they could handle. The rigors of campaign season, however, were a bit outside of their usual expertise.

As she wheeled herself out of the bathroom, Rei was struck with the irony of the situation. Half a year ago, she had been dead set on joining the political world and couldn’t care less about Digimon battles, which were just something her brother and their best friend did for fun. Then, after the Arkadimon incident and her father’s upcoming bid for re-election, Neo seemed to withdraw from events related to Digimon and she was the one wishing to battle instead of dealing with the realities of the campaign trail.

Normally, Rei would have been ecstatic to be an official campaign assistant for her father, as it would be a good starting point for her own future political career. However, she hadn’t counted on the constant mutterings from other politicians and their camps that her father was only using her as a publicity stunt to draw in some sympathy votes. She supposed she would only have to get used to such things, but she wished more people would see her as her own person, and not just someone in a wheelchair.

Though the mutterings made her start to doubt if politics was really the right career path for her, they only served to increase her resolve for another task. She really did want to do her best to help her father get re-elected, and not just as a source of pity, but she had another reason for going on the campaign trail. Even before she met Pal and Pul, she had been entrusted with a mission to help the Digital World, and now that she had her own partners it was even more important to her. Minister Shinobu Akiyama may have refused to listen to any petitions for Digimon to be accepted as anything other than monsters, but even a revered national hero needed to campaign for re-election to keep his job. His term just happened to coincide with her father’s, and since both members belonged to the same party there were bound to be events where both had to be present. If Akiyama wouldn’t respond to letters or requests for meetings, she would just have to corner him at one of these functions to finally get a chance to talk to him.

Unfortunately, while this plan was sound in theory, she hadn’t yet found an opportunity to put it into practice. Befitting a man of his position, Minister Akiyama always seemed to be the center of attention at these events, leaving little chance for a 20-year-old campaign assistant to get a word in edgewise. Tonight’s dinner was the fourth campaign event that both her father and Minister Akiyama were attending, yet Rei had barely managed to keep an eye on the experienced politician between the swarms of journalists and VIPs that congregated around him. In fact, today was even more crowded than previous outings, forcing her to stay well away from the podium set up for speeches after the dinner was over. Instead of being somewhere near her father, she was pretty far backstage, to the point where she was more sitting near the stairs that led to the exit than anywhere near the proceedings. She could easily hear the speeches, but when reporters started asking questions she had to really strain her ears just to make out the words.

As most of the questions involved the same generic responses she had heard at the previous campaign events, Rei started tuning out the whole interview process and started trying to come up with a new plan to get a meeting with the minister. However, when a blonde woman stood up and introduced herself as Natsuko Takaishi, Rei immediately snapped to attention. She may have been new at this whole Digimon thing, and she really wasn’t that close to too many of the DigiDestined, but she recognized that last name. After all, she had been friends with both Tai and Matt before she went to the Digital World, so she probably had heard more about TK and Kari—both separately and as a couple—than any of the DigiDestined who weren’t involved in the adventures of 1999 or 2002.

When Ms. Takaishi asked her question, Rei felt as if she could hear a pin drop. Minister Akiyama was known for his anti-Digimon stance, and the journalist had just effectively issued a challenge. “Minister Akiyama, in light of the continuing activities of Digimon working together with humans to repel the recent invasions, are you planning on continuing your persecution of the only allies we have that are strong enough to protect Japan?” Holding her breath, Rei wondered what was about to happen. She understood why the mother of two DigiDestined would be so proactive in helping the cause, but Ms. Takaishi had just backed a national hero into a corner with an obviously leading question.

However, all his years of political service seemed to have granted Minister Akiyama with the ability to shrug off even the most persistent of journalists. Even with such a hot-button issue, he managed to keep his voice calm as he responded. “Ah, I see your trademark aggressive journalism is just as strong as ever, Ms. Takaishi. I would have thought the numerous times you had to be escorted from the Ministry would have cooled your head a bit, but I guess not. But if you insist on asking, my answer is not changed. Yes, there have been reports of Digimon working together with people to repel the invading forces. Invading forces which, I’m sure you are aware, have been composed entirely of Digimon as well. Judging by the sheer numbers of the invading forces and the damage they have repeatedly caused, I believe it is safe to say most Digimon are not our allies. These Digital Monsters carry enough power to be counted as living weapons of mass destruction, most of them have expressed hostile intent, and even those that you claim are helping us seem to end up dragging our children into the middle of a warzone. So, I do not see any reason to view these creatures as allies.”

Despite her apparent failure, Rei had to give Ms. Takaishi credit. She may not have lead Akiyama into the response she wanted, but she had brought all attention squarely onto the Digital issue. If nothing else, she inspired all the other journalists to follow up on her line of inquiry, forcing all other politicians to reveal their stances. Akiyama soon found himself dealing with allegations of being a stubborn bigot and warmonger from some of the less professional journalists trying to make a name for themselves with a more sensational story. Eventually, he snapped, which for Akiyama merely sounded like a polite dismissal.

“Thank you all for your questions, but I’m afraid I have important work to take care of for the Diet tomorrow morning. I fear I will not be able to give any more responses. Ms. Takaishi, I thank you for at least tempering your personal beliefs with the appropriate decorum for a professional journalist like yourself. If only more people were so good at controlling themselves, we would live in a much better world. I at least understand why you champion your cause so strongly, so I hold no ill will towards you. You are only trying to do what you feel is best for your family. The same cause drives me, though the only family I have left is the people of Japan. Say hello to your sons for me.”

With that, Akiyama began to leave, ignoring the flurry of reporters all trying to ask questions at the same time. Not deterred by his obvious dismissal, they began pushing their way past the podium and started following him down the exit hallway. Not wanting to get trampled by a stampede of reporters, Rei immediately called for the next elevator and wheeled herself inside before Akiyama and his followers could get too close. Before the doors even started to close, however, Rei started to make a plan. After all, Akiyama would be trying to escape the media as well, and this hallway only had two options: the stairs or the elevator. If he took the stairs, there wouldn’t be much she could do to talk to him without the slew of reporters listening in, but if he took the elevator she just might get a chance. She started fiddling with one of her Digivice 01s, and let out a breath of relief as the minister hopped into the elevator just before the doors closed.

Tonight’s dinner was held on the third floor, which normally wouldn’t allow time for any detailed conversation on an elevator ride down to the exit. However, Rei had a few tools to make sure she could get a few minutes to finally talk with the minister. After all, she may not have expressed the traits nearly as much as her brother did, but she had the same level of determination as all Saibas did, and the same ability to work a little bit outside of the rules. Having a couple of Digital partners who liked to pull pranks and could easily transfer into and shut down electrical systems certainly didn’t hurt, either. Pal and Pul managed to stop the elevator before it had even descended half a floor, giving Minister Akiyama nowhere to run from his next interview.

Still, while Rei could be just as good at making plans as her brother, she lacked the disposition needed to achieve his level of ruthless efficiency. Having stopped the elevator, she had a hard time overcoming her nerves and actually talking to the man she had practically taken hostage. For his part, Akiyama just sighed, remaining as calm as if the elevator were continuing to work. Turning to his companion, he started talking in a disinterested voice. “You’re Saiba’s daughter, aren’t you? I’ve seen you tagging along before now, and you’ve always looked like you wanted to talk to me. Now seems like the perfect opportunity to finally accomplish that.”

Rei gulped—it almost sounded like he knew this was a setup. “Well, I have wanted to talk to you, sir. You see, I’ve been wanting to go into politics for a long time now, and you’ve had such a distinguished career that I just wanted a chance to talk to you, but there were always reporters and other people in the way…”

Akiyama held up his hand to cut off Rei’s babbling. “First bit of advice—never let people see when you’re nervous. If you can’t suppress your own heart or get rid of it entirely, you’ll be eaten alive in politics. It’s why I’ve gotten so good at the job—reporters can’t attack what isn’t there.”

Rei took a second to gather herself, but figured she could use this as a springboard to get to her real questions. “Speaking of reporters, you seemed like you almost knew that Ms. Takaishi from earlier. From what you said, she’s been a big Digimon advocate, which I guess goes against your personal beliefs, but you even knew about her kids. Why was that?”

“Oh, so you know her kids too, do you? I suppose that makes sense. After all, you’d be around the same age. And I don’t really know her children, but I know of them. The fact that you know too leads me to believe that why we’re really here is you wanted to convince me to change my stance, and just like her kids you’ve got a Digital pet that would be perfect for stopping an elevator to get a chance to talk with me.”

Rei couldn’t hide the guilty look on her face, so she knew she shouldn’t bother trying to deny his claim. This brilliant plan turned out about as well as Hideto’s attempts at art. Still, she had already come this far, so she wasn’t about to stop now. She was still a Saiba, and they weren’t exactly easy to stop once they set their minds to a task. “Okay, sir, you’re right about just about everything. I didn’t exactly plan to trap you in an elevator to talk to you, but I’ve been trying to find some way to do it for a while now and then you were walking this way so I kind of just did it. Though, I wasn’t planning on trying to make you change your stance. I just wanted to know why you feel that way. I’ve been to the Digital World, and I’ve seen Digimon and humans do some terrible things together while others banded together to stop them. I know the world is complex, and I thought an experienced politician yourself would know that too. What happened to you to cause you to see them all as monsters?”

Akiyama let out a small noise of disdain. “Normally, I’d just ignore that request, but normally I’m not being held hostage in an elevator. Now, I don’t like telling this story, and you won’t like what I could do to your father’s career if I set my mind to it. So, we’re going to compromise here. I’ll be extremely brief, you will restart this elevator, and this conversation will never be mentioned again.”

Without waiting for Rei to acknowledge his decision, he began his story. “This goes back almost ten years now. I was new on the political scene, and I had a happy family life. Until one day, where my son seemed to grow up overnight. And I don’t mean that in the typical, they grow up so fast sense. He went from being a carefree boy to something that most closely resembled a veteran soldier. A few months later, the same thing happened, except he suddenly became best friends with a boy he never met overnight as well. I finally confronted him about everything, and he explained his situation with the Digital World to me. He mentioned a Matt Ishida and TK Takaishi, which is how I know of those two. A few weeks later, my son disappeared. The only clue was an email from the rulers of the Digital World asking him to come back and help. So, to me, the Digital World is a place populated with evil monsters, and the so-called good monsters that are willing to tear apart families without explanation. If you must know more, ask your friends about Ryo Akiyama.”

Lucemon sighed as he sat on his recently acquired throne in the Hall of Olympus. He had thought overthrowing the gods of the Digital World would have felt a bit more rewarding than this. He hadn’t exactly been expecting a power increase considering he had been well beyond their level of power after absorbing four other Code Keys, let alone Daemon’s, but he thought he would be able to have a little fun with some of their more unique abilities. However, he hadn’t accounted for a few drawbacks. First, somebody among the Olympos XII—most likely Minervamon—seemed to have predicted that something like this could happen. As such, they had somehow blocked certain humans from view and tampering. So, Lucemon couldn’t even study the previous battles the Legendary Warriors or Crest-bearing DigiDestined had participated in, let alone adjust their timeline so he could kill them before they even interacted with the Digital world.

On its own, this problem wouldn’t have been too difficult to overcome. Lucemon had seen the Legendary Warriors at their best first hand, and between the recent war in the Dark Ocean and Daemon’s memories that stuck to his Code Key from Folder, he knew what the DigiDestined were capable of. However, any other aspect of temporal power was proving to be tedious to control. He had tried pulling an army of Digimon to the present time as a test of power, only to lose his grip and drop them somewhere within the history of the Digital World or its various parallel dimensions. And with no way to find these Digimon other than meticulously scanning every moment of history from each of the worlds, Lucemon was quick to deem this a lost cause. The Olympos XII probably had a system that allowed them to easily search through history, but they had taken whatever temporal search system they had used with them to their digital graves. Perhaps he should have left a few of them alive, if only to explain how his new toy really worked. So far, all it had been good for was spying on the Saiba girl as she dealt with some troublesome politician in her world, but that conversation hadn’t exactly provided any useful information about the movement of the enemy.

Astamon and Murmukusmon merely observed silently as their leader sulked on his throne. As nobility of the Dark Area, they were completely unsurprised by Lucemon’s actions. The Demon Lord of Pride had always behaved a bit like a spoiled brat, so his reaction on getting a new toy and then not having it work was far from unexpected. Still, there was no telling what the Demon Lord would do next. Lucemon’s sanity had, if anything, deteriorated once he started reading the history of the world. He had gone from fits of destructive rage to bouts of laughter, with no clear indication of what had set him off. Still, for his insanity, Lucemon was highly competent—his mind could sometimes jump randomly from utter nonsense into a brilliant plan that would leave the rest of the world bowing at his feet.

Sure enough, Lucemon’s face suddenly broke into a smirk. Now, as the Demon Lord of Pride, smirks were far from uncommon on Lucemon’s face, but this particular smirk indicated he was hatching another plan. The last time he had smirked like this, he had orchestrated the transfer of the Demon Lords from the Dark Area into the Dark Ocean, superficially to open the Gate of the Seven Deadly Sins but with the actual intent of absorbing the other six Code Keys and finally overthrowing GranDracmon as the ultimate ruler of darkness. A plan that had nearly come to fruition, with Lucemon fully determined to complete it. In this way, Lucemon’s insanity proved to be a great benefit to his success—his impulsive nature would normally have him give up on plans that took months to years to complete, but he could just as easily wait decades for the perfect moment to strike. This was the only reason he hadn’t gone out and challenged the DigiDestined directly for Lilithmon’s Code Key—he decided to treat the DigiDestined with the same caution he usually extended only to GranDracmon as a credible threat.

Turning to his two underlings, Lucemon decided to share his recent stroke of genius. “You know, spying on that Saiba girl actually proved to be useful. Turns out there’s a DigiDestined brat who hopped a dimension. Such a move is bound to have left a bit of contamination between the two. And I may not be able to spy on the kids in this dimension, but I can in that one!” Astamon and Murmukusmon merely bowed their heads in silence. They knew better than to interrupt Lucemon by asking him to explain what he meant. Asking for context from an insane Demon Lord was more likely to result in death than understanding.

Lucemon didn’t seem to care about his servants’ lack of response and engrossed himself into observing this other dimension. “Oh, we definitely have something interesting going on here. After all, why would Digimon exist as a card game before that universe’s Digimon started appearing in the real world? Hmm… it appears they also turned it into an anime. This ought to be enjoyable. Wait a minute—this anime seems to cover the lives of the DigiDestined from this world! Well, looks like I have three anime seasons and three movies to watch. It might not be fully accurate, but I should be able to check accuracy against what I know to have happened in their little adventures.”

Lucemon went silent for a while, most likely as he examined whatever anime he had mentioned. However, after around a minute he burst out laughing. “Well, from what I’ve seen so far I think this universe deserves a little reward. I think I’ll bring something from there over to here and let it loose. A pestilence should be exactly what I need to get those pests out of my way.”

Murmukusmon and Astamon were about to laugh at Lucemon’s lame pun—the jokes of a Demon Lord were always either funny or fatal to their minions—but when their master suddenly switched to a frown they quickly stopped themselves. “Well, I suppose it can’t be helped, then. I just have to practice pulling things through time. And who knows what changes this thing will undergo when it crosses dimensions. Luckily, I have a backup plan if this won’t work. After all, one pestilence is as good as another. How does that human myth about the end of the world go—four horsemen bringing pestilence, war, famine, and death? Seems like a nice setup for what I’m about to do.” With this, Lucemon returned to his evil laughter as he plotted how to finally bring the DigiDestined to their end.

Chapter Text

Andromon sighed as the factory beneath Full Metal City suddenly sprang to a halt. It was times like these he missed Factorial Town back before the whole Dark Masters incident. Sure, being the only living creature within a fully automated factory sometimes got boring, but at least nobody was around to halt production. Here, the legions of Guardromon tried their best, but sometimes they just made mistakes. Combine them with some mischievous Hagurumon that most likely had been members of Machinedramon’s army—not that there would ever be any proof of that—and factory shutdowns were now embarrassingly common.

Knowing he would have to solve the problem himself, Andromon quickly ran a scan of the entire factory, noticing some strange readings coming from the bottom level of the factory. Not too many Digimon from the factory went down there if they could help it—its proximity to the sewers meant the smell of Numemon and Geremon was so overwhelming even mechanical Digimon could notice it—but perhaps the Mollusk Digimon had gummed up the works again when the one worker down there wandered off. Resigning himself to some unpleasant custodial work, Andromon descended to source of the problem.

When he arrived in the deepest basement of the factory, Andromon quickly realized the shutdown was due to more than a combination of negligence and a Numemon infestation. In fact, the Guardromon stationed here had never actually left, but was instead buried waist deep in some form of red ooze. This same blob-like substance had latched on to the machinery here, explaining the shutdown. However, this didn’t really explain what this red stuff was. It had an unreal quality to it, though it was difficult to describe exactly how. It looked as out of place in the Digital World as a tree would in the middle of this factory. It didn’t even seem to abide by the laws of physics, constantly releasing small bubbles upward that shifted shape between generic blobs and geometric solids before hitting the ceiling. It would have been fascinating to watch, but Andromon was more worried about Guardromon’s lack of response to being half buried than anything else at the moment.

Andromon initially tried talking to Guardromon, but the Champion level’s continued lack of reaction forced the Ultimate level to view this strange phenomenon as something hostile. He launched his Lightning Blade attack at the goo holding Guardromon captive, which caused it to split into tiny bubbles that dissolved into nothing. However, as soon as the substance stopped holding Guardromon up, he collapsed to the ground like dead weight. Thinking Guardromon had perhaps been deactivated and needed to be reprogrammed, Andromon extended cables from his arms to interface with the Champion only to recoil with shock. Guardromon hadn’t simply frozen; it was like he was only a lifeless hunk of metal! His DigiCore and everything were perfectly intact, but Guardromon had somehow just died without being destroyed. What could possibly cause this to happen to a Digimon?

Unfortunately for Andromon, he never got the chance to ponder the last question, as the red substance had expanded while he had been trying to reprogram the Guardromon and a few bubbles rose up to pop on his arm. Even though the bubbles had only touched his armor, Andromon collapsed to the ground, all life leaving his body. As the Ultimate level Digimon lay dead on the floor, the red mass paid no heed, and continued its slow expansion in the factory.

Davis couldn’t help but tap his foot as he eagerly awaited the end of this ordeal. He wasn’t sure how this was possible: he could get directly threatened or even injured by some of the evilest Digimon out there, but his own school system still was far better at torturing him. He could swear all the school clocks had inherited the same time difference the digital world had. Currently, one day passed in the Digital World for every hour that went by on Earth. Davis knew other seniors felt days dragging on until graduation two weeks from now, but he at least had a very good reason to think he was spending far too long in each class.

After what may have been the longest few seconds of Davis’s life, the bell finally rang, and the DigiDestined of Miracles practically sprinted out of class. After stopping at his locker to grab all the work he would have to do this weekend, he started sprinting towards the old computer lab. The school had long since upgraded to the point where a whole room dedicated to computer access was a thing of the past, but it still made a convenient location for secret access to the Digital World. Davis doubted anybody other than the DigiDestined knew those old computers still worked, let alone that Izzy had upgraded one to serve as the main terminal for trips to the Digital World from school.

In his rush to get back to the Digital World and provide whatever help he could, Davis wasn’t exactly paying attention to where he was going, and turned the corner only to crash into someone and fall to the floor. Grumbling as he picked himself up, it took Davis a second to recognize just who he had crashed into.

“Whoops, sorry TK. You’d think I’d have learned to look where I’m going by now. Anyway, I was just heading to the usual spot. You got time to join me, or does Coach Aida have you practicing all day today?”

Tetsuya Aida was the basketball coach for Odaiba High School, and he was known for ratcheting up intensity of practice in the weeks leading up to any major game. And since tomorrow was the regional basketball championship, he was being especially hard on his players. As the captain of the team, TK was dealing with most his coach’s focus, especially since he hadn’t been the best about making it to every practice recently. Normally, TK would be just as diligent practicing as the coach expected—he had sprained his ankle last year to miss the regional championship and been forced to watch as Odaiba got blown out and wanted to make up for letting his team down—but no amount of motivation to win a basketball game overrode the war in the Digital World. TK didn’t want to let his teammates down, but when it came down to it his role as the DigiDestined of Hope would always take precedence over his role as basketball captain.

TK just shook his head. “Well, if Coach had his way I would be practicing all day. In fact, if he saw me now he’d probably drag me to the gym himself so I can’t ‘run off and make out with my girlfriend in an abandoned computer lab’… what?” TK had slipped into a passable imitation of his high-strung coach, but he didn’t think it was good enough to warrant Davis bursting into laughter. It took around 30 seconds for Davis to calm down enough to explain himself, but to the DigiDestined 30 seconds was now a pretty long time with the time differences.

“Sorry about that. It’s just I’ve heard that line about you and Kari from a bunch of the other students here, and I can’t believe it’s gotten all the way up to the teachers.” TK didn’t look amused, but Davis wasn’t about to stop there. “I mean, it’s not like you can blame them. Sure, they might be missing some details, but you can’t tell me you haven’t thought about going off to your own little world for a romantic evening or three.” A look of surprise crossed TK’s face, letting Davis know he hadn’t been very far off with his guess. Still, TK managed to compose himself and shot Davis a nasty glare.

“Very funny, Davis. Keep it up and you might find your secret French lessons coming to an end. Or, if you would prefer, I can call Catherine and tell her about that one time freshman year…” Davis quickly shook his head. “Hey, sorry. Just trying to lighten things up. So, you heading straight to practice, or do you have time to say hi to Gennai for a bit?”

TK glanced around to make sure nobody was listening to him before lowering his voice. “I am going to be heading to the Digital World, but I won’t be heading to the sanctuary. The Sovereigns have been keeping me and Kari busy lately. A bunch of dark hotspots have been sort of flaring up recently, and they need to use our power to purge the darkness. We’ve already purged a few extensions of Etemon’s old Dark Network, and Myotismon’s old castle was a real piece of work. They’ve got us on File Island today. I think the Sovereign are looking for something, but they haven’t really given us a lot of details. Still, stopping the darkness can’t really hurt our cause at this point.” Raising his voice back to normal, TK finished talking. “Well, I’ve got to go to my locker and then I’ll be heading out. See you later!”

As TK left, Davis turned and resumed his trip to the computer lab. If TK and Kari were off helping the Sovereign, it looked like he’d be the only one heading to the Sanctuary since Cody was off helping to set up for the regional tournament. Cody had initially been reluctant to leave the Digital World just to set up for a sporting event, but Davis had practically insisted he go. As a regional event, people from other high schools were also helping set up, including a few of the Dark Spore kids who were around that age. With a few DigiDestined in the same area, the stadium was more likely to attract Digimon through a few of the randomly opening portals, and it would be best to have someone capable of reaching the Mega level on site just in case. Since Cody was better friends with the Dark Spore kids than any of the other Crest bearers or Legendary Warriors, he seemed like the best choice. At least he could have more fun hanging around the stadium with friends than Davis was going to have hanging around the Sanctuary with nothing to do but be ready if Lucemon made a move.

The Digital World is full of many wonders, some beautiful and some bizarre. On the Folder Continent, one such wonder may be found in the northern mountains. Here, a colony of Scorpiomon and SandYanmamon have hollowed out an entire mountain and turned it into a nest where they may raise the younger Digimon of their species. Known as Anthill Mountain to the Digimon from the neighboring areas, this monument has been inhabited since the Digital World reformatted after Lucemon’s defeat at the hands of six human children. Evidence of this would be found by any explorer with the right combination of daring, strength, and luck who managed to reach the deepest tunnels of the mountain. Here, almost as if the data of previous generations of Scorpiomon had returned to life, SkullScorpiomon wandered increasingly erratic tunnels.

However, any explorer who managed to work their way through the skeletal Insect Digimon would find something truly unusual. Past a certain point, the tunnels stopped looking like naturally occurring formations and changed into a rectangular hallway. At the end of this hallway, any wanderer would be surprised to find a simple wooden door so far underground. Such a door could not hope to keep out any of the insects from the above colony, yet no native Digimon had ever tried going through the door in recent memory. The young Dokunemon grew up believing there was a terrible monster living on the other side of the door, and even the SkullScorpiomon who barely had any intelligence avoided the door as if whatever it hid could easily kill them.

These local legends worked to the benefit of Gaiomon, the reclusive Dragon Man Digimon living behind the door. A warrior who appeared to be as ancient as the land itself, Gaiomon had long since withdrawn from the rest of the world. After a long life of strife, the Mega level seemed to crave solitude above all else, and had earned his reputation as a battler so fierce that even the mindless SkullScorpiomon had come to respect his boundaries. Gaiomon had once been a warrior who reveled in battle, but it seemed he now wanted nothing more than to quietly fade away from the world.

Having grown used to such an arrangement, Gaiomon was surprised when his door suddenly crashed inward due to the claws of a SkullScorpiomon. Acting completely out of force of habit, Gaiomon responded by slicing the Insect Digimon to bits with his Rinkazan attack. However, the SkullScorpiomon had not been alone in this trespass. He had merely been the leader of what appeared to be a sizeable portion of the insect colony. Gaiomon had long ago trained under the Royal Knights, and that had imparted upon him the virtue of not attacking the weak and innocent. Unfortunately for the Dokunemon and SandYanmamon in the colony, that lesson had long since worked its way out of Gaiomon’s mind. Calling out “Rinkageki,” he combined his two swords and the tracks of light left behind from his Rinkazan attack all converged inside the swarm of insects, quickly deleting many of them.

When the insect horde continued charging towards Gaiomon, the briefest sparks of memory began returning to the Dragon Man Digimon. Far off memories of fighting against great odds beside his master Alphamon started rising in his mind as he continued to hack his way through the swarming Digimon. He couldn’t quite recall why he had ever ended up in this place: he knew he had left to go in search of some great purpose Alphamon had entrusted to him, but he had long since forgotten what that purpose was. Whatever it had been, the gods of the Digital World must have thought it was important, as he had been refused the embrace of death for eons within the Digital World. He briefly remembered spending years in a berserk rage throwing himself into battles with the hope of ending his suffering, but that must not have come to pass. As the last Scorpiomon burst into data, Gaiomon found himself shaking his head. Why would scattered dreams of his past come to him now? He had given up even thinking as not worth the effort by this point, yet now something as inconsequential as an attack had shaken him from his stupor.

Perhaps because of his unusual thoughtfulness, Gaiomon did not turn immediately back to his home, which allowed him to see something approaching from the same tunnel the insects had used. Originally it was too far away to make out any details, but as it got closer Gaiomon only got more questions than answers. Even with his corrupted memory, he was certain he had never seen something quite like this in the history of the Digital World. It could only be described as a pulsating red blob that was steadily encroaching on his domain. Gaiomon had no idea what this was, but he had long since gotten to the point where he could battle completely without thought. Launching his Rinkageki, he once again had the phosphorescent trails from his sword converge on the intruder and was rewarded when the front of the red mass split into tiny bubbles before disappearing.

However, the encroaching enemy didn’t seem to respond to the damage, and the goo-like substance advanced unhindered. Letting out a low growl of annoyance, Gaiomon charged directly into the opponent and shoved his hands into the pulsating mass, ready to blow it all away with his Gaio Reactor. However, as soon as he touched the mass, Gaiomon suddenly felt woozy and noticed his energy starting to fade. Eyes widening in recognition, he wasted no time in firing his attack, causing an explosion that cleared the entire tunnel of the red slime. In fact, Gaiomon may have put a bit too much energy into the attack, as the tunnel started to collapse. Quickly running to grab his swords, Gaiomon managed to blast his way through the wall in a bid to escape the mountain.

Blinking his eyes in the sunlight he hadn’t seen in what may have been years, Gaiomon quickly assessed his situation. He found his mind suddenly much clearer, as the recent encounter had caused him to finally remember his purpose. Against that ancient pestilence, modern Digimon could only hope to survive by running; much like the insect colony had tried. However, he had faced a version of this before. He was not sure why the pestilence had stronger effects than when Yggdrasil had released it long ago or why it had taken such an unusual physical form, but none of those things mattered. It was time for him to protect the world from the ancient threat just as Alphamon wished, and then he would finally be able to move on from this cursed eternal existence…

Kari nervously sat in the Digital World, waiting for TK to show up. She couldn’t have been more than a few minutes ahead of him getting to the Digital World, but now that she was here the time difference was just serving to give her more time to worry about his reaction. The war had been rough on all the DigiDestined, but Kari noticed its effects on TK the most. Much like he had during the fight against BlackWarGreymon, he was back to having nightmares about Angemon’s death. It was getting to the point where it was affecting his personality. About the only time Kari ever saw TK really smile and go back to his usual self was when he was with her. Still, Kari supposed she couldn’t really blame him. Even though she was the DigiDestined of Light, she was struggling to look on the bright side. Which is why it worked out perfectly that she and TK had such an enjoyable way of distracting themselves from all their problems…

Kari started blushing as Gatomon interrupted her thoughts. “Would you please stop doing that? Seriously, I’m happy for you, but all this fantasizing about TK has to stop. I get enough emotional feedback as your partner, but ever since I unlocked my Lilithmon form I’ve been getting flashes of everything you’ve so much as thought about doing with him…” Gatomon didn’t need her emotional link to Kari to know she had effectively gotten her to stop worrying about the current situation with that interruption. However, she had been going more for cheering her partner up than outright mortification, so the Champion Digimon quickly backtracked.

“Relax, I’m only kidding. Well, mostly. I still can get flashes of what you’re thinking, but all that time in the mountains with Lilithmon gave me much better control over my abilities. It can still sneak up on me, but I can usually turn the whole lust-sensing thing off.” Kari let out a sigh of relief—as much as she loved Gatomon, there were some things she really wanted to keep private—but the relief quickly faded away as the cat-like Digimon continued. “But still, that took a while, so I have seen pretty much all your fantasies, as well as what you’ve actually done with him. So honestly, you may as well stop dragging your feet. I mean, both of you want to get to that point, so I don’t see why you haven’t.”

Gatomon quickly realized she had said the wrong thing when Kari suddenly fell off the rock she had been sitting on and blushed to the point where a Chaosdramon might have been jealous of her red coloring. Well, that was a bit of an exaggeration, but Gatomon didn’t really care—everybody had their own ways of coping with such a long fight against the Demon Lords. Besides, she wasn’t sure why Kari was acting like this. She couldn’t understand why humans made such a big deal about sexual activity. Having been a Demon Lord of Lust, she had more of an understanding of this aspect of human life, but that just gave her more questions. If something was a natural need to reproduce and apparently enjoyable, why did humans place a stigma on it?

Gatomon snapped out of her musings when an angry screech and increase in temperature announced the return of the Sovereign who was taking the oh-so-necessary role of babysitter on this trip. On all their ‘purify this area of dark remnants’ missions, at least one Sovereign had supervised, apparently to keep the powers of Light and Hope safe. However, since Gatomon was pretty sure she and Patamon could handle evil Digimon better than any of the Sovereign, the Champion Digimon was sure there had to be something more the Sovereign were hoping to accomplish. Gatomon didn’t like being kept out of the loop, but she decided to trust in the Sovereign without expressing her thoughts to anybody. TK and Kari were dealing with enough as it was without having to wonder what their allies were doing behind their backs.

As a giant phoenix landed on a large open space in front of Kari and Gatomon, the cat-like Digimon couldn’t help but roll her eyes. It was bad enough the Sovereign were keeping secrets from them, but did they have to choose Zhuqiaomon for this mission? Sure, it had supposedly been in the interest of keeping TK and Kari more comfortable, but Zhuqiaomon had always been the least trusting of humans out of the Sovereign. Having a heat source on top of Infinity Mountain was a good idea, but with the bad memories here Gatomon would have rather dealt with a chilly climate than a chilly attitude. Just being here would be bad enough for TK and Patamon, and they didn’t need Zhuqiaomon making everything worse.

Sure enough, the first words out of Zhuqiaomon’s mouth proved he wasn’t in the most accommodating of moods. “What is taking him so long? I would have thought the most experienced of the DigiDestined would put a little more emphasis on keeping this world safe. I don’t know why Azulongmon speaks so highly of him. What a shame that something as vital as the power of Hope was embodied in something as untrustworthy as a human…”

The Sovereign didn’t seem to notice the effect his rant had on his audience. Kari seemed to recover from her embarrassment and had a determined glare cross her face, ready to argue with the phoenix that humans in general and TK in specific could hardly be called untrustworthy if they had already personally saved the world twice after the Sovereigns had been locked away. Gatomon, meanwhile, found herself longing to do to Zhuqiaomon what an earth cat would do to an injured canary. Only a pragmatic voice in her head warning her killing an ally wasn’t a good idea stopped her from seeing how a Sovereign would fare in a fight with a Celestial Digimon. Luckily, she didn’t have to hold herself back for long, as the opening of a Digital Gate caught everyone’s attention.

TK walked through the Digital Gate with his eyes closed and a smile on his face. “Sorry I’m a little late. I physically bumped into Davis on my way here, so I lost a few seconds and with the time difference…” TK trailed off as he opened his eyes and saw the same mountain that had frequented most of his nightmares for the past ten years. Kari immediately noticed the dark look that crossed TK’s face and went over to try and comfort him, but Zhuqiaomon acted first.

“There is no time for your pitiful excuses, boy. Every second wasted brings Lucemon that much closer to victory. His darkness is spreading throughout the world, and I should hope I don’t need to remind you that he has twice succeeded in bringing this world under his power. Now, it is time for us to complete this mission and purge the dark influence from Devimon’s palace.”

Hearing he would have to return to Devimon’s palace itself and not just the mountain in general was enough to make TK clench his fists and start shaking. Recognizing the warning signs and not wanting TK to just blow his top at a Sovereign, Gatomon quickly Digivolved to Angewomon and flew to the Sovereign’s face.

“Listen, I get that you are in a hurry, but this might be a case where it’s good to take things a little bit slower. You need me and Patamon to do this, and that won’t happen if you try to force TK up that mountain right now. All I’m asking is you give us a minute to talk this over.”

Zhuqiaomon merely snorted with disdain. “Enough with the waiting. These humans have been coddled enough. I will not tolerate…” The phoenix suddenly got cut off as he found himself unable to move his beak. Angewomon had had enough of his attitude, and responded with her Heaven’s Charge attack to temporarily immobilize the Sovereign. Against something as strong as Zhuqiaomon that wasn’t inherently evil, the immobilization wouldn’t last long, but Angewomon had plenty of time to fire a shot of her own. She had reached the point where she was tired of trying to act diplomatic.

“Oh, right. You’ve done such a wonderful job of coddling the DigiDestined. It’s not like they were thrown into battles you weren’t able to fight. Why was that again? Oh yes, now I remember. Somebody got sealed away by the Dark Masters. And then again by the Digimon Emperor. And who saved you both times?” Zhuqiaomon broke free of his containment and let out a furious screech and Angewomon noticed a dangerous increase in temperature, but she had saved her best shot for last. “Right, sorry. You are a Sovereign, after all, and you deserve the respect and dignity such a position allows. It would be a shame if anybody were to think less of you. Like, say, if the other Sovereign found out exactly why you spend so much time in the Southern Quadrant of the Digital World. Sure, you have to defend your domain, but as a part-time Demon Lord of Lust I know the real reason you run back there…”

If it were possible for a divine phoenix to look sheepish, Zhuqiaomon would have instantly pulled it off. He awkwardly shuffled his feet for a few seconds before flying off, presumably to get some distance between himself and Angewomon. The Angel Digimon couldn’t help but shake her head—it seemed Zhuqiaomon was just as easy to blackmail as anybody else. Still, Angewomon knew the Sovereign would be back soon, so she flew over to the others to make the most use of the small amount of time she had bought.

TK and Kari barely registered Angewomon’s presence when she landed, as TK seemed too busy struggling with himself while Kari was focused on trying to comfort her boyfriend. The Angel Digimon was about to announce herself when TK seemed to snap. He buried his head in his hands, and even then Angewomon could hear the self-loathing in his voice.

“Why can’t I ever just get over this place? I mean, Patamon is obviously fine, and it’s not like I’m the only one who’s lost a partner. Davis and Veemon are just the same as always, and Ken, Neo, Mari, and Sigma always seem to put more emphasis on their other actions rather than their partners’ deaths.  Koichi even died himself, and he managed to adjust. So why can’t I get over this one mountain? It’s been ten fucking years, and—”

Angewomon interrupted with a little beam of pink light, much like she had used to deter the Scubamon on the first trip to the Dark Ocean. “Hey, this is no time for a pity party, TK. So, you’ve got some deep-seated trauma that keeps coming back to you. Honestly, it’s probably healthier that you at least admit it instead of just burying it until it eats away at you even more.” Angewomon paused a bit as she looked to her own partner, but thankfully her helmet covered her eyes so it wasn’t obvious who she was referring to. Acting as if she had just paused for breath, the Ultimate level continued.

“We all have scars, TK, and I’m not just talking about the ones Myotismon gave me on my hands. Years from now, I think it would be best if we all went to therapy or got some psychological help. Ideally, we’d be able to do that now, but I don’t know if any Earth psychiatrist would understand your issue or support you with the whole anti-Digimon thing going on. And the Digital World has next to no healers and even fewer therapists. Until this whole war thing blows over and our two worlds can coexist in peace, all we can do is help each other cope with the issues as best as we can.”

Knowing Angewomon was trying to do what was best for his partner, Patamon continued where she had left off. “See, TK, I’m not the only one who’s telling you this. Tell you what—why don’t you and Kari sit this mission out? I mean, Zhuqiaomon only needs the powers of Hope and Light here, and Angewomon and I have absorbed enough of those to fill in just this once. I might not be able to hold my Ultimate form forever like she can, but I can still become MagnaAngemon for days at a time. Between the two of us, we’ll take care of any black gears foolish enough to get in our way.”

Kari nodded along with Patamon’s suggestion, and since TK knew all three had his best interests at heart he decided to go along with them. “Yeah, it might be good to take a little break and unwind before the game tomorrow. But wait—you can go to Ultimate on your own now? When did that happen?”

Patamon gave a smug smile. “What, you didn’t think I would just sit around doing nothing while you were busy with your own things, did you? All of us have gotten a lot stronger, you know. We are pretty much all naturally-Digivolved Champions now, and the first eight of us can all reach Ultimate on our own. Well, except Angewomon. Since she started a level higher than us, she’s naturally an Ultimate now and can even become Ophanimon without Kari around. But the rest of us are catching up—any day now I feel like I’ll be able to go Mega on my own as well!”

Kari shook her head at the Mammal Digimon’s enthusiasm. “I don’t know how I should feel that you are so competitive with my partner, Patamon. Though, if everybody is naturally a Champion and can even reach Ultimate, why do you all stay at the Rookie level? I mean, I know Gatomon prefers to stay at the Champion level because it’s a lot easier to blend in on Earth as a small cat than a giant angel, but what about Agumon and the others that live here full time?”

Angewomon suddenly entered the conversation. “I can think of a couple of reasons. One, it’s easier to travel between worlds at lower levels, so when we know we’ll be together with you we revert down in case we are going to travel. Second, we have sentimental reasons. We’ve made so many memories with you in our lower forms that it feels weird interacting with you in higher forms without an emergency going on, so we go with what feels the most comfortable. Now, Zhuqiaomon should be back at any moment, so you really should get going.”

Sure enough, the presence of a giant phoenix on the horizon was hard to ignore, so Patamon quickly Digivolved twice to show he was more than capable of doing so without TK’s help. Between the two Ultimate level angels and the Sovereign, TK was finally convinced enough that Patamon would be safe that he allowed Kari to pull him through another Digital Gate. As the humans returned to Earth, MagnaAngemon turned towards his counterpart.

“Thanks for the help, Angewomon. I keep trying to tell TK he doesn’t have to worry about me so much, but he never really listens. And having to go back to Devimon’s castle would be far worse for him. Well, psychologically speaking, not physically speaking. But I can’t keep him safe from everything.” Angewomon shot the Archangel Digimon a questioning look, causing him to clarify. “I notice TK gets these strange bruises on his neck sometimes when he’s left alone with Kari. But even though he tries to cover them up, he never complains, and he always wants to spend time alone with her.”

Angewomon started nervously twirling her hair. “Ah, yeah, you don’t really need to worry about that…” Receiving a questioning look of her own, Angewomon tried to figure out exactly how to phrase this. For being an accomplished warrior and occasional Demon Lord of Wrath, Patamon in all his forms was still too innocent for his own good sometimes. Seeing MagnaAngemon still wanting answers, she turned away as she started talking. “Well, you see, one of the ways humans show affection to each other is—”

Luckily, Angewomon was spared the need to go into any detail when Zhuqiaomon landed in front of them. Taking the incoming mission as an excuse to not finish the previous conversation, she informed the Sovereign about TK and Kari heading home while they would carry on without them. The phoenix seemed on the verge of another anti-human tirade, but MagnaAngemon cut him off.

“Forgive me for interrupting, Zhuqiaomon, but I think you are being a bit harsh on humans in general. We have battle coded into our very data, but they do not. They are naturally drawn to competition and that does lead them into their fair share of conflict, but wars like this are beyond what they can be expected to enjoy. They have been fighting for our world since they were merely children, regardless of how much they each personally hate fighting. You should be glad they haven’t realized you are openly keeping the true purpose of these missions from them, because they would probably be less forgiving than Angewomon and I are of being kept in the dark.”

The Archangel Digimon’s comments drew surprise from both of his listeners. Angewomon was surprised that MagnaAngemon had figured this all out on his own, as she had decided to keep her suspicions to herself so as not to sow even more distrust between the Sovereign and the DigiDestined when powerful allies were hard to come by in this war. Zhuqiaomon, however, who wasn’t used to having those he viewed as underlings ever question him, was shocked that someone could be so brazen confronting him. However, since everything about this mission so far had seemingly resulted in failure and he really couldn’t afford to attack either of the two angels, he decided to put aside his pride and address his companions honestly.

“You claim that humans are unsuited for this task, yet you are aware that they are the only ones capable of winning this battle. In just about every conceivable category, humans are objectively inferior to us. However, they are handed the destiny of saving us from ourselves. Because your hearts are connected to those of your partners, you see them in a positive light, but try to imagine how all of us who don’t have partners feel. We have all fought hard to earn immense power, only to know the world will never let us prevail because destiny favors outsiders. My attitude is only a representation of what many other Digimon feel.”

Angewomon rolled her eyes. “Right, we get it. But did you ever think that maybe we aren’t objectively better than humans? I mean, we have abilities humans can never hope to match, but just because you can blow up a city doesn’t mean you are better than someone who can’t. And maybe if you started treating humans better, they wouldn’t be so reluctant to follow your orders.”

Zhuqiaomon gave an angry screech before he remembered his earlier decision. “I am trying to remain civil, but I assure you that it goes against MY nature to even show that amount of respect to those beneath my station as a Sovereign. You would be wise not to test my patience any further, Angewomon. As for treating the humans with more respect, I was not the one who decided to keep them in the dark on the true purpose of this mission. In fact, the other three Sovereign voted against me on this matter, deciding that keeping your partners ignorant would prevent them from further disappointment in the likely case that we would fail. They cared too much about your partners’ feelings to the point where they wanted to avoid giving a false sense of hope.”

MagnaAngemon shook his head. “Do they really view Hope as their enemy? Perhaps we have been a bit unfair towards you, Zhuqiaomon. At least you are not so foolish as to try and rely on the powers of Light and Hope while simultaneously trying to suppress any form of hope. You need not explain yourself further if you so choose, but if I may be so bold as to ask, what is the true purpose of these missions?”

Perhaps because MagnaAngemon had a more regal quality to his voice and always remained calm, Zhuqiaomon found himself more willing to go along with his request than he would have if Angewomon had made it. “Very well, though I warn you that this story should be kept secret, as it is a personal embarrassment to all of the Sovereign and could easily demoralize our allies. I don’t know how well you know the ancient history of our world, but this is not the first time Lucemon has tried to take over. Back on his original attempt, we Sovereign tried to stop him. To us, he was just an upstart Rookie, so we were confident that we would be able to defeat him.”

“Alas, we gravely underestimated Lucemon’s strength, and as such were taken by surprise in the ensuing battle. Lucemon used this advantage to grievously wound Azulongmon, me, Baihumon, and then Ebonwumon. However, at this time the leader of the Sovereign, Fanglongmon, entered the battle. Whereas each of the Sovereign represents a quadrant of the world, Fanglongmon represents the center and rules the entire world. He was by far the strongest among us, and his armor prevented him from taking any wounds. He fought the angel so that the four of us may escape, but even with his strength he eventually fell. Since Lucemon was unable to kill Fanglongmon, he sealed the dragon underground in a dark prison.”

“We had always hoped to free Fanglongmon, but unfortunately Lucemon’s seal was beyond our power to break. Then, the entire Digital World was reformatted twice, and we even lost the location of Fanglongmon’s prison. The purpose of these missions is to hopefully find the seal, and then break it with the powers of Hope and Light to cut through the darkness. We know Fanglongmon is not strong enough to beat Lucemon, but he is far stronger than we are and we need any advantage we can get…”

Both angels nodded at this. Now that they knew the true reason for their missions, they felt a renewed sense of urgency. Even if this Fanglongmon was no match for Lucemon, he could still play an important role. After all, evil Digimon like Lucemon tended to gather followers to stand between themselves and the DigiDestined, so adding a strong Mega on their side would make cutting their way through Lucemon’s army that much easier. And even if they failed to locate the trapped Sovereign, purging the darkness from the land deprived Lucemon of potential weapons. With the clock ticking until Lucemon made his next move, they had to act quickly.

Chapter Text

Elecmon continued his rounds of Primary Village, noting the eerie silence surrounding the usually lively area. Normally, times of war like this were busy for the village—with all the Digimon fighting, more and more would die and be reborn here. However, as the war waged on, fewer and fewer eggs were appearing. In fact, it had been about a week since there were any eggs at all in Primary Village, something that deeply troubled the Mammal Digimon. Even during times of peace, fighting was still part of a Digimon’s nature, so there would always be a steady stream of eggs appearing. During chaotic times, the village was normally even busier. Elecmon knew that any Digimon unfortunate enough to be killed by Lucemon directly wouldn’t be reborn, but the Demon Lord hadn’t involved himself personally yet. Which left two options: either no Digimon had died in the past week, or something on the level of Spiral Mountain was messing with the world so much that Digimon couldn’t be reborn.

Shuddering at the memory, Elecmon quickly resumed his patrol. He had seen his charges threatened by the forces of evil far too many times, and he was sick of standing by and doing nothing. When Piedmon had shown up to personally blight the village, Elecmon had been forced to run away. After three years of peace, a rogue Thundermon had caused trouble that only the DigiDestined had been able to handle. Now, Lucemon could strike at any minute, and Elecmon felt just as powerless as he had back then. He had always meant to be the protector of this village, but caring for a constantly resupplying population of baby Digimon left him very little time to become stronger. Now, even if he were to Digivolve three times, he knew he would be of little use in a fight. The whole situation just sucked, but Elecmon knew he would have to resign himself to another round of uselessness the next time darkness struck against the village.

Suddenly, a dark portal opened by the gates of the village. Cursing whatever aspect of the Digital World decided to create a dark portal right as he was thinking about it happening, Elecmon quickly ran to the source. If Lucemon decided to attack here, Elecmon was through running away. He might have no chance of surviving, but at the very least he would have the knowledge that he didn’t run from his problems. Deciding to take advantage of any few seconds he might have left, he launched his Super Thunder Strike attack as soon as he discerned a shape emerging from the portal.

When a large Digimon collapsed out of the portal, Elecmon stopped his attack out of sheer surprise. While he had enough confidence in his strength to know he was a fairly powerful Rookie, he hadn’t expected to be able to do any damage to something this big. Looking closer, the Mammal Digimon managed to identify the creature, but this only brought more questions than answers. Even if Elecmon believed he could inflict any damage on a Cerberumon, he wouldn’t be able to hurt the Ultimate level this much. The Watchdog of Hell was missing one of the head-shaped pieces of armor on its shoulder, the last foot or so of its tail, and everything below the knee on its right foreleg. Clearly, this wasn’t due to an electrical shock, but that only made things worse. What could have possibly done this to a Digimon without reducing it to data, and why had Cerberumon come here?

Knowing the only one that could answer his questions was Cerberumon, Elecmon quickly set about trying to help the Demon Beast Digimon at least regain consciousness. Normally he’d be a bit wary of such a powerful Digimon so close to the newborns, but Elecmon felt he could trust the Ultimate level. After all, something like this was more likely the work of Lucemon’s forces than those of the Sovereign, which meant Cerberumon most likely was Lucemon’s enemy and therefore a friend. However, even free of any doubt, nursing Cerberumon back to any semblance of health was a tall task. Elecmon didn’t exactly have any healing powers, and Cerberumon was in rough shape. Fortunately, after about an hour of Elecmon using all of his first-aid knowledge, the Demon Beast finally started stirring.

Cerberumon opened his eyes and found himself in a multicolored landscape, which told him he had at least managed to create a portal out of the Darkness Area, even if he had missed his intended destination. Still, getting to the Sovereign would presumably be easier from here, so he at least wouldn’t have to expend as much power just to travel anymore. It would be a bit difficult without one of his legs, but if he were to live up to his master’s expectations, he couldn’t let something like that stop him. He started getting to his feet to search for someone that could at least give him directions when a nearby voice stopped him.

“Hey, you really shouldn’t be moving. You might not know it, but you’re in really rough shape. I don’t have any healing powers, but all this time watching after the newborns at least taught me some basic first aid. You need to rest.”

Turning to the source of the voice, Cerberumon let out a pained chuckle at Elecmon’s words. “Right, because I have no idea how bad of shape I’m in. My armor is self-repairing, and I’ve been working in an area where I return to full health instantly from any severe wounds. And yet, I still find myself without a leg or tail, and my armor is staying damaged. I’m sure I lost a couple of days while I was unconscious as well. Believe me, I am intimately familiar with exactly how bad my situation is. But I can’t let something like that stop me!”

Cerberumon’s boast was cut short when he collapsed back to the ground, unable to even rise to his feet. Elecmon merely rolled his eyes at this. “You know, a long time ago a friend told me that trying to act all grown up is actually a sign of immaturity. I think that kind of thinking applies here—trying to act all tough is just showing how hurt you are. Since you can’t exactly walk out of here and that portal thing you just came through knocked you out, I think you don’t really have a choice. If you still have some mission or something you need to accomplish, you can always ask for help, but you aren’t going anywhere.”

Cerberumon let out a growl and dearly wished he could punish Elecmon for his attitude, but unfortunately the Mammal Digimon was right. Hating to be put in such a position of helplessness but left with no other choice, the proud servant of Plutomon decided to entrust his mission to this common Rookie. “I need to get into contact with the Digimon Sovereign or the DigiDestined. The war with Lucemon has taken a cataclysmic turn, and they need to be prepared as they are the only ones with a chance of stopping it.”

When Elecmon agreed to convey the message, Cerberumon began telling his story. He had been serving under Plutomon as always, when Lucemon had invaded the Darkness Area through some strange portal. The fallen angel seemed to enjoy torturing the watchdog, inflicting all the damage while ensuring the much weaker Ultimate stayed alive. At this point, Plutomon himself had stepped in, while Cerberumon struggled to remain conscious. However, even the ruler of the underworld ultimately fell to the might of the Demon Lord, and the god had only managed to transmit a small amount of power and a message to his underling before he ultimately was destroyed and absorbed into Lucemon’s essence. At this point, Cerberumon had passed out, and only awoke shortly before opening the portal that brought him here.

Elecmon shook his head sadly. “I’m really sorry for your loss, but I’m not sure the Sovereign or the DigiDestined would benefit from this information. They know the Olympos XII wouldn’t have been able to interfere in this fight anyway, and they also know how powerful Lucemon is. I’ll still let them know, but it doesn’t really change anything.”

Cerberumon snapped at the much smaller Digimon. “Do not dare speak lightly of my masters! If you know the true impact of these events, you would not dare utter such blasphemies. My master was the judge of the afterlife. He was responsible for deciding if Digimon would be reborn as DigiEggs or not. Now that Lucemon has absorbed him, that demon oversees the cycle of reincarnation. No Digimon can be reborn unless he wills it!”

Elecmon gasped in shock. No wonder no new DigiEggs had been appearing recently—Lucemon wouldn’t exactly be the type to care about reviving Digimon when they died. Trying to calm himself down, Elecmon remembered that something like this had happened before. “Wait, not to make light of the sudden mortality facing all Digimon, but we made it through the Dark Masters corrupting the world. So, if Lucemon is defeated, shouldn’t all the data be allowed to reformat on its own?”

Cerberumon let out a small smirk. “Normally, no. When Primary Village was corrupted, Plutomon kept all the stray data on hold until the world was ready to receive DigiEggs again. But this time, Plutomon is dead. If Lucemon died, all the data would still be lost, and no Digimon could be reborn until something restored order to the afterlife. But this isn’t a normal situation. I received a trace of my master’s power. Now, when I reach my Mega form, I will be able to take his place upon Lucemon’s defeat and restore the remaining data to DigiEggs once again.”

Elecmon let out a sigh of relief. “Did you really have to start off with that depressing scenario if you could fix it that easily? You had me worried for a second there.”

Cerberumon shook his head sadly. “Did I say this was an easy fix? Even looking beyond the trial of defeating Lucemon, I’m afraid I will not be able to save all those who have been lost. When my master fought Lucemon, the Demon Lord revealed a bit of his plans. He sought to overthrow all the Olympians and gain their power over time. And with that power, he could unleash things from the past designed to delete Digimon permanently. Those who fall to something like that shall never be reborn.”

Elecmon merely gulped. If the situation was really this bad, it looked like he would once again be unable to carry out his duty of watching over the newborns. Still, he couldn’t exactly abandon Cerberumon at the village if the Ultimate level needed to Digivolve for some of Lucemon’s victims to be saved. Coming to a decision he only hoped would minimize the damage to his world, Elecmon hardened his gaze and addressed the Demon Beast.

“Okay, here’s what we are going to do. We’ll warn the Sovereign and the DigiDestined about this, but I’m not just going to leave you here and lose our only shot at returning the afterlife to its rightful order. Leomon, the guardian of this island, often comes by here to check in. He’ll know how to contact the Sovereign, so we’ll wait for him to alert the DigiDestined. I only hope they can end this quickly…”

Cody sighed as he moved what seemed to be his thousandth box throughout the stadium. You’d think for something that happened every year like this, the event wouldn’t come by surprise and require so much work the day before. Admittedly, it probably wasn’t that bad, but when you are only working just in case a Digimon attack happens in an area, you aren’t likely to look on the bright side. Deciding he needed a bit of a break, he went over to the nearest concession stand, where he had stashed Armadillomon behind the counter. Since that particular stand was being handled by Keiko Kurata, a former Dark Spore Child and a DigiDestined herself, it seemed like the best place for Armadillomon not to cause a panic.

As he ducked into the concession stand, Cody saw he hadn’t been the only one to realize this was a good place to hide a Digimon. Armadillomon was busy sharing some of the pretzel dough with Hiroshi Shibata’s Kunemon, Noriko Kawada’s Psychemon, and Takashi Yosizawa’s Tsukaimon. Only at this point did Cody realize why leaving a bunch of Digimon not exactly known for self-control when it came to food in a concession stand was a bad idea. Especially when Psychemon had something close enough to hands that he could open the freezer. He was about to confront the Digimon when the sound of approaching footsteps caused him to turn around, and the ridiculousness of the source pushed all thoughts of the Digimon out of his head.

Keiko was seemingly busy pushing a box toward the concession stand, which wouldn’t have been too suspicious if the box wasn’t as tall as she was. Admittedly, the brunette was a bit on the shorter side, but if a box that size was actually full, it would normally be a two-person job just to move it around. And yet Keiko didn’t seem to be having any trouble with it. Immediately recognizing the most likely solution, Cody merely shook his head at the fourteen-year old girl.

Keiko had a bit of a smile on her face as she saw her senior DigiDestined. “You know, Cody, the gentlemanly thing to do when you see a lady like me struggling with a box full of baking supplies is to help her out…” 

Used to her teasing, Cody simply smiled back. “Well, I would have offered, but something tells me Huckmon had it taken care of from inside the box.”

Keiko blinked in shock. “How did you…”

Cody merely cut her off. “It honestly wasn’t that difficult. I mean, that box is ridiculously huge. It would almost be less suspicious if you just let him walk around normally and passed him off as a really good cosplay. Either that, or come up with a good explanation for why your ‘baking supplies’ can move themselves.”

Keiko blushed a little bit. “Well, I technically wasn’t lying when I said it had baking supplies. Huckmon has been practicing to the point where he can use his Baby Flame attack to bake all the dough I make. It even comes out better than it would from most ovens. I was hoping we could use our pretzels here to drum up more publicity for our products and get to the point where I’d be guaranteed customers by the time I open my own bakery.”

Hearing her mention the pretzels, Cody started stuttering. “Yeah—sounds great. Listen, I have to go…” However, despite his attempts at a quick exit, Cody hadn’t made it out of the stand when Keiko noticed the Digimon eating her pretzel dough. Knowing he had no way of escaping now, Cody resigned himself to weathering the upcoming storm. Keiko was normally a sweet girl, but she had a bit of a temper. Do something to provoke her—like, say, eat her baked goods before they are ready to sell—and you could expect a very thorough lecture…

Astamon sneered with disgust as he watched the latest failed experiment repeatedly attack the walls of its holding cell. He believed the feeling this sight invoked was called pity, and the Prince of the Dark Area did not like the new sensation. The Ultimate level was feeling a familiar itch in his trigger finger, but knew he could not give in to the urge to put his former ally out of his misery. Such an action would be treason against Lucemon. And any Digimon who became nobility within the Dark Area knew you did not betray your superiors until you were sure of their impending demise. Lucemon’s latest tactics were reprehensible even by the standards of the Dark Area, but he was far too powerful to betray at the moment.

Astamon continued to stare impassively as the imprisoned Digimon turned a few of its guns in his direction. It would take more than the fire of a berserk Mega Digimon to break the holding cells Lucemon designed for his failed experiments. Well, at least it would now after the last ones had escaped and tried to eat the Demon Lord’s DigiCore. While Lucemon had easily disposed of the threat, he seemed to find the escapees annoying enough that he increased security. And having absorbed the gods of the Digital World, it was easy for him to create dimensional anomalies to serve as prisons.

Confident in the power of his master, the Prince of the Dark Area was taken completely by surprise when a bullet slammed into his back, knocking away his Oro Salmón. However, the hit only managed to knock the wind out of the Demon Man for a second, and he quickly recovered and spun around to locate his attacker. He drew his knife and began charging his qi for his Maverick attack, but instead of seeing his perpetrator he only saw four giant bullets wearing what seemed to be Beelzemon masks speeding towards him. Recognizing the attack, Astamon smiled and put away his knife. He let the bullets get within inches of him before unleashing his qi in a surge of dark energy that eliminated the projectiles. Not even bothering to move, he addressed the room around him.

“You may as well come out now, Freeshooter. You may claim your attacks punish all without distinction, but did you really think I would fall victim to something as simple as your homing bullets?” When the only response was another salvo of four bullets coming from different directions, Astamon sighed. “At least put some more effort in to this. As one Musketeer to another, I’d like more of a challenge!” Sure enough, Astamon didn’t even bother using an attack against the bullets, instead rolling out of the way just before they would hit him. He knew the bullets would adjust trajectory, but they were slower than the shots from his own Oro Salmón. He could afford to just dodge out of the way until he recovered his own weapon.

However, this plan of action didn’t account for the sudden presence that pinned him to the ground mid-dodge. Ignoring the two oversized pistols shoved into his face, Astamon merely smiled at the Mega Digimon currently straddling him. “It’s been far too long, BeelStarrmon. To what do I owe the pleasure of another round?”

The demoness snarled back. “I’m sorry, I thought you gave up the title of Musketeer a long time ago. But I guess I can play along. So, Gunslinger, WHY DO YOU THINK I’M HERE?”

Astamon rolled his eyes. “I’m hurt that you’ve forgotten already. I didn’t give up the title of Musketeer; I just needed to return to the Dark Area. Besides, I would have thought you would enjoy not being known as the fourth member of the Three Musketeers.” When BeelStarrmon only responded by cocking both of her pistols, Astamon sighed. “Fine, I suppose I deserved that response, considering the situation. Still, you attacked me first instead of simply talking to me, so…”

The Demon Man unleashed a small burst of qi to get BeelStarrmon off of him, and before she could do anything more than gasp in shock Astamon had sprung to his feet and pinned her to the wall. He quickly drew his knife and held it to her chest at the bottom of her jacket. “Okay, now I’m actually hurt. I trained you better than this. All it would take is a twitch of my wrist and this knife goes right into your DigiCore. If you insist on flaunting your weak points like this, perhaps it is you who is underserving of your title, Freeshooter.”

This time BeelStarrmon took her turn to smile at her captor. “Wow, haven’t heard that much emotion in my title in a while. I guess I really hurt you when I questioned your membership. So, I’m sorry for that. As for the other issue…” BeelStarrmon stomped on Astamon’s foot. As her high heeled boots had blades for the actual heels, this did enough damage that Astamon recoiled, allowing BeelStarrmon to free herself, grab her former captor, and pin him to the wall.

“See, that’s the thing. You were always about trying to cover our vulnerabilities when training us. But I found a different way that works better for me. If you flaunt those instead of hiding them, opponents get fixated on the obvious areas. And that distraction gives exactly the opening you need to hit them where it hurts.” Gathering some white energy into her free hand, she smiled. “Honestly, it’s been fun catching up with you. It’s been far too long since we’ve had this dance. So, I’m willing to let you go and talk. Or I could hit you with my Rizoma de Loto if you’d like. You know, for old times’ sake.”

Astamon laughed. “There’s the Freeshooter I remember. Though I’m afraid I’ll have to pass. I don’t know if I’d be able to survive the energy drain that follows the euphoria, with Lucemon in his current state of mind.” When BeelStarrmon let him go, Astamon continued with a more somber tone. “Honestly, I’m beginning to wonder if Lucemon is trying to kill off all of his followers. When he attained godhood, he had all sorts of crazy plans to bring all the worlds to their knees. Most of these involved bringing various disasters throughout history to the present, but they never quite worked. Of course, we only know that because he tested them out on his own army.”

BeelStarrmon grit her teeth in disgust. “I don’t know why you even associate with someone like that. We Musketeers are supposed to keep to a code. We fight for fun, spraying bullets and shedding blood, until we reap what we sow and add our blood to the list. But we always face our opponents with the knowledge either one of us could die. Forcing death on your underlings for nothing goes against everything we stood for.”

“I didn’t choose to be born as nobility in the Dark Area,” Astamon responded. “There are inherent systems I must follow that state the strongest will rule. Lucemon is the strongest—at least, the strongest being who is currently awake—and as such his whim is the law. But between his own actions and the help of the DigiDestined, I am now second in line. When Lucemon falls, I will be able to establish a new order, where cruelty is only shown towards enemies.”

BeelStarrmon chuckled. “With talk like that, I’m surprised the DigiDestined haven’t been recruiting you like they did Lilithmon. You can keep that noblesse oblige stuff to yourself—I’m just out looking for a good time.”

Astamon shook his head. “Lucemon had a similar response when I suggested he should at least make the effort to immunize his army against his latest plague. He eventually agreed with the suggestion, but I wonder if he purposely made sure the process would have a 99 percent mortality rate. The only one with any real power who survived was the Ravager, but I’m afraid he lost himself in the transition.”

Both Musketeers cast a sad glance at the imprisoned Gundramon who had once been their comrade in arms. BeelStarrmon clenched her fists. “At least Outlaw got an honorable death. Dying to the Legendary Warrior of Darkness? Sounds like a good way to go. Ravager deserves a better end than this. I thought I got stuck with the icky job when I had to go watch that castle. If this keeps up, I’m just going to call it quits. There’s got to be a better gig somewhere out there.”

“Be careful,” Astamon warned. “Lucemon doesn’t exactly accept resignations. Especially from one of his last competent soldiers. With Ravager in his current state and everybody else dead, we’ve only got you, me, Murmukusmon, and Gryphonmon that have any real power. Sometimes I wonder if Lucemon is purposely trying to get rid of his generals to prove he doesn’t need them. If you need time away, I suggest you make it look like you are examining a new lead that could help our cause. With the nature of GranDracmon’s castle, I’m sure you will be able to pass off anything as legitimate.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. After all, I want to be there when you become ruler just so I can express my disgust at your whole ‘entitlement comes with responsibilities’ thing. And I guess you’re a good friend, so I should do you the favor of having someone on your side until that happens. But I’m going to need a favor—well, it’s more for Ravager, but still.”

Astamon cut her off. “Don’t worry, I already have a plan. I don’t know if Ravager will ever go back to his old self, but I can at least give him a death worthy of a Musketeer. Lucemon’s launching another small attack against the DigiDestined, even with his big plan already in motion. I’ll get Ravager to join that force. He either beats the DigiDestined or dies in glorious combat—I’m sure he’d like that.”

Chapter Text

Cody found himself withering under Keiko’s continued tirade. When she had started yelling at the Digimon, he had decided to quick step between the two so, at least to an outside observer, it would look like she was yelling at him instead of an empty stand. And sure enough, Keiko had drawn a crowd. Luckily, that crowd included Hiroshi, Takashi, and Noriko, who managed to push their way to the front of the crowd as an added barrier between other onlookers and the Digimon. Even though the crowd consisted only of students helping set up the event and the chaperones for the younger grade levels, they viewed secrecy as the best policy. You never knew who could panic or start a riot when Digimon suddenly appeared.

Still, while he knew hiding the Digimon was for the best, Cody found himself almost wishing for something drastic to happen to cut Keiko off. He honestly wasn’t sure where all this anger came from—she was usually such a sweet girl, but he guessed she must have bottled up a lot of anger and was now letting it all go. He wasn’t even the target of her rant, and even he was only managing to avoid feeling like the worst person ever by viewing it as training for withstanding a particularly thorough opening statement by the prosecution when he became a lawyer.

However, Keiko’s tirade was suddenly cut short by the surprise appearance of a red devil flying overhead with a small pitchfork in his hand. In the time it took Cody to pull out his Digivice and identify the Champion-level Boogiemon, the Demon Man laughed and threw his pitchfork into the crowd, hitting a man with purple hair in the shoulder. However, any chance Boogiemon had to gloat was cut off by a blinding light from the concession stand.

“Kunemon, Digivolve to… Flymon!”

“Psychemon, Digivolve to… Fangmon!”

"Tsukaimon, Digivolve to… Devidramon!”

"Huckmon, Digivolve to… BaoHuckmon!”

Unfortunately for the DigiDestined, the sudden appearance of their four champion levels didn’t exactly calm down the already panicking crowd. Cody supposed it couldn’t be helped—a giant wasp, a demonic dragon, and the closest thing to the Big Bad Wolf from the fairy tales probably looked more like enemies than allies. At least BaoHuckmon looked kind of like a knight in shining armor, but he was still a dinosaur. And the mob of people was the least of their worries at the moment, as Boogiemon apparently had backup. Not anything the partner Digimon couldn’t handle—it was a motley assortment of Boogiemon, Vilemon, Bakemon, and even some DemiDevimon—but with around a hundred enemies protecting all the people in the building from attacks would prove to be difficult.

Glad he had prepared for a scenario like this, Cody pulled out his D-Terminal and called out “Digi-Armor Energize!” He knew Armadillomon’s usual forms would be less than helpful in this situation—their attacks would either harm the civilians directly or collapse the building itself—so he had swapped out the Digimental of Knowledge with Yolei to take on a form more suitable for fighting here. At least this wouldn’t be Armadillomon’s first time Digivolving using the Digimental of Love.

“Armadillomon, Armor Digivolve to… Pteramon, the Storm of Love!”

Admittedly, Pteramon still wasn’t a perfect fit for the situation—the concourses of the stadium were just barely wide enough for his wingspan, so he couldn’t use much of his aerial agility—but he could manage the flight. Between his wings and beak, he was able to knock out any enemy Digimon that got in his path, and he was harder to avoid since he took up most of the space near the ceiling of the concourse. He also had his missile storm attack for emergency use, but was holding back on using it just in case the missiles would damage the building itself.

With Pteramon circling near the ceiling, Devidramon and Flymon were handling any Digimon that tried to stay below the Dinosaur Digimon. Between Devidramon’s Red Eyes attack paralyzing enemies and Flymon’s Deadly Sting poisoning them, Fangmon and BaoHuckmon had to deal more with protecting people on the ground from falling Digimon than protecting them from actual attacks. Seeing this, Cody immediately pulled out his laptop and opened a Digital Gate. It had been so long since he had fought a Digimon without having to destroy it that it was nice being able to just send them back to the Digital World again. Of course, they were still enemies, but the Sovereign had set up a prison to hold any of Lucemon’s minions they managed to capture. The odds of getting any valuable information from such low-ranking soldiers were slim, but Cody was glad to take any option that didn’t involve him having to kill anything while still working towards Lucemon’s defeat.

Unfortunately for Cody, with someone like Lucemon serving as a deity, such thoughts were equivalent to tempting fate. Just when the swarm of enemy Digimon seemed to be thinning out at last, a new Digimon made his presence known by crashing through the wall. Just by looking at it, Cody could tell it was bad news. It bore a vague resemblance to Machinedramon, but instead of combining the parts of other mechanical Digimon this one went for a more coherent theme—just about every part of its body was either made from or contained a gun of some kind. Still, the worst sign was the reaction to the new arrival. Now, Cody expected the panicking crowd to start panicking in another direction when something like this burst into the stadium. What he hadn’t expected was the absolute terror on the faces of the Boogiemon that seemed to be leading this swarm as they all started running for their lives. If Lucemon’s army was afraid of this guy, he had to be a serious threat.

A quick scan of his Digimon Analyzer pretty much confirmed Cody’s fears. The newcomer was the appropriately-named Gundramon, a Mega level Digimon with Der Blitz and Gewalt Schwärmer attacks. While he wasn’t sure on the translation for that last one, he knew enough German to know a mobile artillery platform executing anything called a Blitz wasn’t something to be taken lightly. Gundramon emphasized the point by silently aiming all his weapons around the room and firing seemingly at random. Cody quickly dropped to the floor and managed to avoid being hit, but Devidramon and Flymon were not so lucky. They didn’t seem to take more than a glancing blow, but the damage was catastrophic. Cody could clearly see a four-foot hole in one of Devidramon’s wings before he reverted to Tokomon, while Flymon lost two legs and then reverted to Yokomon.

With the new arrival, Cody knew he couldn’t afford to avoid collateral damage. Luckily, Gundramon’s newly-created entrance would serve as a convenient exit to force the fight outdoors where the damage would at least be minimized compared to a building full of people. Cody quickly came up with a plan, and luckily his last adventure had provided him with more than just a Crest. Reaching in to his backpack, he pulled out a Digivice 01. Neo’s habit of deleting monsters that failed to live up to expectations had at least provided enough of these for the whole group to use them, which made communicating with their partners without being overheard a great deal easier. Nobody had quite mastered typing commands to the level of Neo and the Alias III, but Cody trusted Armadillomon enough to understand the plan even if it was given in short bursts as Cody worked on typing the rest. Not the best way to communicate, but they didn’t have enough time to communicate the whole plan at once.

Missiles- upon receiving this command, Pteramon launched his Missile Storm at Gundramon. The attack didn’t accomplish much, but the Armor level knew it wouldn’t against a Mega. Hopefully, it would at least manage to draw Gundramon’s attention to him instead of the humans below.

Dive- this one wasn’t too difficult to figure out either. Now that Gundramon was focusing on him, he couldn’t exactly afford to stay still. Plus, he was probably going to have to draw Gundramon outside to fight him, which would be much easier if he was close enough to physically push him outside. So, Pteramon dove towards the Mega level, just as the ceiling where he had been exploded under another salvo.

Revert- at this point, Pteramon pretty much pieced together Cody’s plan. Basically, he was pulling the same stunt he had against Kimeramon when they were trying to meet with Minervamon, only on his own instead of with Aquilamon’s help. And he’d also be hitting a lot harder than Ankylomon when he landed this time around. As an added bonus, when he reverted his smaller size only made it that much harder for Gundramon to shoot him out of the sky.

Sure enough, just as Armadillomon predicted, the next command didn’t come from Cody’s Digivice 01, but rather from his Crest of Tenacity. Armadillomon smiled at the influx of energy, but he didn’t have time to call out his transformation. As it was, Vikemon had barely finished Digivolving when he used his maces to break his fall—and the two large revolvers on Gundramon’s back. However, the Machine Digimon didn’t react to the sudden injury in the slightest, and even without the two largest guns he still managed to turn a veritable armory on the Beast Man Digimon. Luckily, Vikemon managed to overcome his shock at his opponent’s reaction just in time to use his Viking Flare attack to knock Gundramon out of the building, where he would be able to fight without holding back. If his opponent didn’t care about losing pieces of his body, this wouldn’t be an easy fight to win…

Murmukusmon took a deep breath as he prepared to enter Lucemon’s newly acquired throne room. Throughout much of his life, he had dreamed of a time like this—where he could exist above all other lifeforms in the realm of a god. He had no illusions about his own power—while strong in his own right, he was nowhere near powerful enough to conquer the world. However, he had long since learned to adapt to his lack of power with cunning, and as such had risen to Lucemon’s top advisor. And with the Demon Lord’s mental instability, he was often the one who truly had command over the ruler of the world.

Unfortunately, such influence could be a double-edged sword. After all, Lucemon didn’t exactly like to hear bad news, and the current situation called for exactly that. Telling a Demon Lord who has nearly limitless access to all the horrors throughout the world’s history that he has to stop entertaining himself was not exactly the safest proposition. Still, Murmukusmon did not survive as long as he had by accident. He had a better understanding than most of how the Demon Lord’s mind worked, and the most likely path to success was through Lucemon’s own ego. It sometimes took a little bit of convincing, but luckily the Demon Lord of Pride would agree to follow the wiser course of action just to make himself look even better.

Murmukusmon knew he couldn’t afford to delay any longer, so he strode into the throne room without betraying any of his fear. The Demon Lord had the unfocused look on his face that indicated he was currently observing something far away, either temporally or dimensionally. Best case scenario, he was preparing for the upcoming fight with the DigiDestined. Worst case scenario, he was watching the current fight in the human world, and enjoying it. If that was the case, he’d have to slowly work towards calling the retreat.

“Lord Lucemon, how go the preparations?” The Demon Lord’s eyes returned to focus, and turned an irritated glare on his advisor. “I highly doubt I need preparation, considering my brilliant plan for the DigiDestined. And even without that, I am so far beyond any Digimon they can throw at me. As you are fully aware of both of these things, I can’t help but wonder if you are here to deliberately waste my time, or if you came to tell me some bad news?”

Murmukusmon bowed his head. “You are as observant as always, sir. I come bearing a simple request, one which I’m sure you will see the wisdom of. Considering the current shortage of our troops and our future need for them, I request you call off the attack on the convention center. When your trap draws all the Crest-bearers to the Digital World, you shall need others to draw the Legendary Warriors to the appointed place.”

Lucemon chuckled. “Ah, yes, I thought you would ask for something like that. You always were the cautious one, trying to spare as many soldiers as possible for the future. However, what is most interesting is some conflicting advice I’ve gotten recently. Usually, you and Astamon are on the same page, and yet he suggested I send MORE firepower against the DigiDestined. And though Gundramon was in many ways a failed experiment, I still feel like he was more useful than any of the lower-class servants you are trying to save. So, I guess this means one of you is knowingly working against my goals…”

With this and an almost nonchalant flick of his hand, Lucemon conjured up one of his strange dimensional rifts, and within a few seconds Astamon appeared within, chained up with bands of what appeared to be solidified darkness. Only Murmukusmon’s long devotion to self-discipline stopped him from wincing—Lucemon’s attempts at moving living things through time or space resulted in death more often than not, and those that were strong or lucky enough to survive still had to deal with the pain of being completely deconstructed and then reconstructed where Lucemon wanted them. Not a fate he would wish on anybody, particularly a friend like Astamon.

Lucemon almost seemed disappointed at Murmukusmon’s lack of reaction. With a dramatic sigh, he shook his head. “You interrupt me when I’m watching a few DigiDestined squirm, and then you won’t even give me something entertaining to work with here. Between Astamon’s betrayal and your boredom, I’m beginning to think you’ve both outlived your usefulness. Any last words?”

Murmukusmon locked eyes with Astamon, and in that one glance Murmukusmon almost burst out laughing. As a few of the only sane members of the ruling class of the Dark Area, they had gotten good at communicating in ways their superiors couldn’t hear and use as an excuse to execute them. And in this one glance, Astamon was expressing worry, not for his own safety, but for Murmukusmon’s. It seemed the Prince cared so much about changing life in the Dark Area that he would give his life to save the Count to rule in his stead. Never mind that Murmukusmon was not fit to rule and he would probably find a way to make things even worse than Lucemon had. Sometimes, Astamon was too noble for his own good.

However, for better or worse, some of that nobility must have rubbed off on him as well over time. He couldn’t just let Astamon die, even if it would be so easy. Then again, he wanted to enjoy a nice comfy life behind the scenes of the throne of the Dark Area, and with a madman like Lucemon in power that wouldn’t be possible. Since the only options for rulers were Lucemon, Astamon, and himself, it really was in his best interest to save Astamon’s life. Though doing so would mean convincing Lucemon to change his mind, Murmukusmon easily came up with a strategy that should work.

“Forgive us, Lucemon, for not being able to see the whole picture like you can. However, now that I understand his position, I think it may be possible to turn both of our plans to your favor. He wished to send Gundramon to join the battle, doubtless for his own reasons. However, you cannot deny that a fight between Gundramon and Vikemon would be much more entertaining than a fight between Vikemon and a Boogiemon. I wished to recall the Boogiemon to keep forces available for your brilliant trap—after all, bait works so much better when it can be controlled.”

Murmukusmon had to put severe effort into not matching Lucemon’s grin. The Demon Lord had once again proven vulnerable to this approach—equal parts flattery and wisdom to convince Lucemon that the best approach was actually his idea. At the very least, it would turn Lucemon’s attention away from Astamon as he sought out his entertainment. However, when Lucemon turned back to Murmukusmon, his next words chilled the weaker Digimon to the core.

“Well done, Murmukusmon. Looks like you haven’t slipped up quite yet. I am looking forward to when you CAN’T convince me to follow your plans. Still, I enjoy testing my wits against you. Keeps me sharp and all that to have someone trying to manipulate me hanging around. But enough about that. I’ve found a way to improve on your little suggestion. After all, we have more failed experiments than Gundramon, and Astamon is going to need an empty cell to move into until the next phase of the plan…”

Keiko took a few deep breaths trying to calm herself down. As soon as Gundramon broke in, the situation had gotten out of control. Now Cody was stuck outside, Takashi and Hiroshi were trying to recover their partners, and she was forced to work together with Noriko against the remaining Boogiemon. Which would have worked fine, if she and Noriko were friends. As it was, they had a mutual understanding that they would tolerate each other, but that was as far as it went. Unsurprisingly, Noriko took the first opportunity to split off, with the justification that they couldn’t have their only two Digimon in the same spot when there were people and Boogiemon throughout the building.

Even though Keiko agreed with this reasoning, she almost wished Fangmon would turn around and come back. She didn’t feel like she even belonged in a fight like this, let alone having to fight alone. She was a baker at heart, not a fighter. She only got involved in battles like these for two reasons: she felt she had a duty as a DigiDestined to help others, and Huckmon really enjoyed training and fighting. She didn’t belong on a battlefield like this.

Almost like the universe had somehow heard her complaining, one of the Boogiemon broke off from its group of ten and threw its pitchfork at her. Time seemed to slow down as the weapon flew at her, but Keiko found herself unable to move or even take her eyes off the projectile. Fortunately, a familiar voice snapped her back to her senses with a cry of “Teen Slash!”

BaoHuckmon leapt into view, using his tail as a blade to cut the pitchfork in half and reduce it to data before it could hit anybody. Turning to his partner, all the ferocity drained from BaoHuckmon’s eyes. “Keiko, don’t worry. It’s okay to be scared—fighting isn’t for everybody.”

Almost immediately, the glare returned to his face as he spun around and shouted out “Fif Cross!” The claws on both of his front legs suddenly lit on fire as he turned and slashed Boogiemon, who had flown in with his Death Clash in an effort to get revenge for the loss of his pitchfork. Still, BaoHuckmon was far too powerful for the Demon Man Digimon, who burst into data at the contact of the holy flames.

With that enemy defeated, BaoHuckmon smiled back at Keiko. “See, told you that you didn’t have to worry. I got this.” Chuckling a little bit, he added, “These guys barely even count as training. I’ll stay close to you, but I’m going to take out as many as I can.” Keiko shook her head, but couldn’t keep a smile from coming to her lips. How is it that she, someone who hated violence in general, got partnered with someone who was practically obsessed with battle? Still, if BaoHuckmon said he could handle this, she knew she would be fine. He wouldn’t let anybody get even close to her—

Keiko’s thought was cut off as something grabbed onto her shoulder. Hearing Keiko’s screams, BaoHuckmon turned around and ran back to his partner. He was slightly taken aback that her attacker was a serious-looking human with purple hair almost completely shaven off, but even if the attacker was a human he had sworn to protect his partner from anything. However, as he got closer he saw the man wasn’t trying to hurt Keiko, but was trying to calm her down. Paying closer attention, BaoHuckmon saw the man had a wounded shoulder on one side and had his other arm protectively draped over a young girl who looked like his daughter. As he was now apologizing for startling Keiko, he seemed like he wasn’t a threat—though BaoHuckmon decided to stay close enough that he would be able to hear whatever he was saying and jump in if necessary.

Since Keiko seemed to have calmed down enough, the man started talking. “Sorry again for startling you, miss, but is that your Digimon over there?” Keiko started stammering—keeping her identity as a DigiDestined a secret had been a habit born of necessity, and since she was currently in the middle of a Digimon attack it probably wasn’t the best idea to draw more attention to herself. However, the man seemed to take her hesitance as a yes, and continued talking.

“You don’t have to worry about keeping it a secret from me. My name is Shisamaru Katsuragi, and I’m a captain in Japan Ground Self-Defense Force. And I know you probably have a good reason to distrust any authority figures here, but I’m on your side. I’m part of a special task force under the command of Colonel Fuyutsuki created to respond to situations like these. We even have a Digimon in our unit—PFC Sealsdramon is the first Digimon enlisted in the JSDF. Obviously, he isn’t enough to win battles like this on our own, but our role is more evacuating people safely than fighting the battles ourselves. Sealsdramon fights, but the rest of our unit has to leave it to heroes like you.”

Keiko blushed slightly, but turned her eyes to the ground. “I’m not a hero. I can’t actually save the world like Cody and everybody else. I’m just going to be a baker…”

Captain Katsuragi cut her off by forcibly grabbing her shoulder and speaking in a tone that left absolutely no room for argument. “I’ve worked with a lot of national heroes, and each and every one of them says they were just doing their jobs. Now, I need you to do me a favor so I can do my job. I have to get in contact with the colonel to report this situation, but all wireless communication has been jammed. There should be some old emergency payphones here, but I can’t take my daughter with me through an open battle zone. So, watch after her, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

Adopting a much warmer tone, he then turned to his daughter. “Listen, Misato, I know this was supposed to be our weekend, but Daddy has to go back to work now. This girl and her Digimon will look after you. I know the Digimon looks scary, but so does Sealsdramon. I’m sure if you asked really nicely, he’d enjoy your tea parties just as much as Commandramon does. So, be a good girl, and I’ll be back in a few minutes. I love you.” With that, he left the relative safety of the concession stand, quickly navigating his way through the battlefield and leaving Keiko with a confused girl who looked to be about eight and on the verge of tears.

Trying to at least make things more comfortable for Misato, Keiko thought to introduce herself. “Hi, my name’s Keiko. Your name is Misato, isn’t it? I heard your dad say—” However, this mention of her father caused Misato to start sobbing. Keiko could only make out about half of what she was saying, but apparently Captain Katsuragi never had time to spend with his daughter since he was always at work, this was one of the only times she got to see him in ‘forever’, and something about her mommy trying to replace daddy with someone else. Keiko understood this last part pretty well—her parents had gotten divorced three years ago, and if she had been eight years old she probably would have acted the same way Misato was—but that wasn’t exactly the right thing to say to comfort a distraught little girl.

Luckily, while Keiko wasn’t exactly sure what to say, BaoHuckmon provided a nice distraction just by being a talking dinosaur. He simply walked up to the crying Misato and asked, “So, what’s this I hear about tea parties? I mean, I probably shouldn’t drink any actual tea since caffeine makes me go all twitchy, but I love all the cakes and stuff. I can even help bake them if you want!”

The whole situation seemed to surprise Misato enough that she stopped crying and only managed a confused nod, leaving Keiko extremely grateful to her partner for pulling her out of that situation. Still, since the current situation of ‘in the middle of a battle’ would always be more worrisome than the situation of ‘dealing with a crying child,’ Keiko felt the need to bring her partner’s attention away from tea parties.

Before she could even say anything, though, BaoHuckmon cut her off. “Don’t worry, I’m keeping an eye on things. It’s weird, though. The Boogiemon have just been staying up at the ceiling doing nothing for the past minute. It’s like they are getting new orders or something…” As soon as he said this, all the Boogiemon suddenly winked out of existence, meaning Lucemon must have pulled them back to the Digital World. Still, this wasn’t exactly the most comforting of news. Lucemon had never been the type to just give up halfway into an attack like this. If he was withdrawing his forces, something else had to be going on.

In addition to his general unease at Lucemon’s latest tactic, something else was gnawing at BaoHuckmon. He wasn’t sure if it was a smell, or maybe just a general feeling about the air, but something in this calm felt almost familiar. He didn’t have any memories of a life before he became Keiko’s partner, but retaining memories after dying and being reborn was often a random process. Something in this moment was telling him he had experienced it before, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. He wasn’t sure whether to call it instinct, intuition, or paranoia, but SOMETHING was telling him he needed to get Keiko out of here, and do so now.

Unfortunately for BaoHuckmon, while his instinct kicked in before the actual threat appeared, he was too late to act on it. Before he could even take a single step, the air was suddenly filled with horrible shrieks coming from a swarm of new arrivals that managed to block off his entire view of the ceiling. In what was perhaps another flash of memory, he saw the image of large black dragons with red fur before he snapped back to the present. This current swarm was composed of smaller members, but they still looked dangerous—they were dark blue, about his size, and seemed to have undergone a very poor mechanization, with metallic limbs and live wires sparking from their tails. This was all the time BaoHuckmon had for observation before around fifty of the dragons dove towards him, shrieking in a predatory fashion…

Chapter Text

Vikemon snarled as Gundramon’s broken main guns suddenly snapped back together in perfect working order. He wasn’t sure what exactly gave Gundramon such a great healing factor, but it had rendered most of his attacks relatively useless. It was like fighting Cerberumon on the way to meet Minervamon, but that at least had an explanation. This time around, they weren’t fighting somebody empowered by the Lord of the Underworld in his own territory.

Now, Vikemon knew what he’d have to do to get around such a healing factor, but knowing what to do and being able to execute it were two different things. Technically, he had two plans, but the second was only an emergency temporary measure until somebody would come and help him. Still, both plans relied on his Arctic Blizzard attack. Either Gundramon would be unable to pull himself together from the tiny fragments of data left after he shattered, or Vikemon could just leave him frozen until a more permanent solution would be found. Problem was, between the current warm weather and Gundramon generating a lot of heat with his attacks, generating enough cold air to deep freeze the Machine Digimon was proving to take a little bit of time. Of course, time was something that was difficult to come by when facing a berserk Mega level Digimon.

Luckily, while Gundramon’s attacks were effective at keeping himself from freezing, they weren’t doing that much damage to Vikemon. Most of the smaller guns weren’t capable of penetrating Vikemon’s fur, which was almost as durable as Chrome Digizoid. That isn’t to say the attacks didn’t hurt, but they weren’t anything he couldn’t handle for a few minutes. The main cannons were a different story, as the hole blasted through one of his morning stars could attest. The Chrome Digizoid weapon had deflected the shot, but it hadn’t withstood it. All of which made Vikemon incredibly nervous to suddenly be staring down the barrels of the reformatted cannons. With no other options, Vikemon resorted to something he knew was colossally stupid- he jammed his morning stars down each barrel just as Gundramon fired.

Vikemon was thrown backward by the resultant explosion. Normally, he would chalk that up as a success, as Gundramon was in much worse shape. With any other opponent, Vikemon would have called the battle over at this point, but he had a sneaking suspicion Gundramon would be able to reformat himself. Even if at the moment, all that was left of Gundramon was a set of legs. Vikemon just hoped that even if Gundramon could pull himself back together, it would take a little bit of time.

Sure enough, the upper half of Gundramon’s body started reformatting. However, Vikemon hadn’t sacrificed his weapons for nothing. Gundramon returned to full working order just as Vikemon finished charging up his Arctic Blizzard. Without Mjolnir, Vikemon wouldn’t be able to implement the second phase of the attack, but he could still immobilize his opponent. Unleashing the burst of supercooled air, Vikemon finally let out a sigh of relief as his opponent flash froze.

However, Vikemon’s celebration was quickly cut short at the sound of shattering ice. However, Gundramon didn’t seem to be the cause, as the sound came from behind Vikemon, between him and Cody who had taken shelter a fair distance away to avoid freezing to death. Quickly spinning around, Vikemon saw he and Gundramon were no longer the only Digimon out here. The sky was filled with smaller dragon-like Digimon, the lowest of which must have gotten caught in the Arctic Blizzard, frozen, and then crashed to the ground. Vikemon hadn’t meant to do such a large-scale freezing, but he guessed he might have put a little too much into that last attack. Which wasn’t good for him, because he wouldn’t be able to launch another Arctic Blizzard for a while, he lost Mjolnir fighting Gundramon, and now the dragon swarm was heading right for him.

Keiko’s heart stopped as BaoHuckmon disappeared behind a swarm of enemies. He had always claimed he could handle himself, but this seemed beyond what any one Digimon could handle. She wasn’t even sure what was attacking him—her Digimon analyzer didn’t even register any Digimon other than BaoHuckmon—but whether they were a Digimon or just an unknown monster, she knew she couldn’t let her partner face this alone. BaoHuckmon had always been willing to throw himself into danger to protect her, and now it was time for her to return the favor.

Throwing caution to the wind, she ran out from the concession stand and grabbed one of the dragons, physically throwing it off the massive pile on top of where BaoHuckmon had been. Only when she had completed this action did Keiko stop to think how strange, and stupid, that action had been. For the strange part, she was far from the strongest person in the world, yet she had just managed to throw a monster that was bigger than she was. It was like the dragon didn’t fully exist, or was part ghost. A ghost with very solid jaws, and a stare that reminded her of a velociraptor from Jurassic Park. While she was an unarmed fourteen-year-old girl. Not exactly the best decision she had ever made.

However, her fear quickly switched to a mixture of relief and disappointment when the monster ignored her completely and just jumped on the pile. In fact, the new attackers seemed to be ignoring every human present, only jumping on BaoHuckmon. This was in some ways a benefit—ignoring the humans meant fewer casualties—but it meant all the attention was on the one Digimon present. And Keiko had just proven she wasn’t able to even distract them from her partner for more than a few seconds. There was no way she would be able to move more than one attacker off the pile in the time it took one to jump back on, but she had to do something to try and help.

Just as Keiko was about to throw herself back at the pile, Misato grabbed her arm. “What are you doing? It isn’t safe. We have to wait for Daddy to get back!”

With BaoHuckmon still under the pile, however, Keiko wasn’t about to let the objections of an eight-year-old stop her. “I know it isn’t safe. But BaoHuckmon needs help, and I’m going to do everything I can to try and give it!” Breaking free of the little girl’s grip, she dashed to the pile, grabbed another creature, and started to throw it away. However, it did not go as well as last time, as Misato practically tackled her mid throw.

“Why won’t anybody listen to me? You are just like Daddy—he says I’m important to him, but then he runs off for other people every time. Why is everybody else more important than me?” Keiko really wished she wasn’t dealing with a spoiled brat, but wasn’t going to waste any breath arguing. Only a strange sound somewhat like a purr caused her to turn her attention away from the pile. Turning to the source, she was surprised to see the monster she had thrown off the pile nuzzling its snout into Misato’s hand. To make things stranger, Misato’s hand seemed to be glowing a bluish-purple color thanks to the contact.

Keiko tried to figure out what all of this meant. Now, as a DigiDestined, she wasn’t that unused to seeing people glow a little bit. After all, their Digivices lit up and made their hands seem to glow every time their partners Digivolved, and whenever the older DigiDestined with Crests needed their partners to go beyond the Champion level it almost looked like their whole bodies were emitting the light instead of just the Crests. However, since Misato didn’t have a Digivice or a Crest, Keiko wasn’t sure what would cause this sudden glow. Besides, whatever these creatures were had to this point only paid attention to Digimon while ignoring humans. And this purring sound was a lot different than the shrieks they usually made.

However, before Keiko could wonder what exactly it was about Misato that was causing such a different reaction, she heard a male voice shout out “MISATO!” Turning to the source, she wasn’t exactly surprised to see Captain Katsuragi charging towards his daughter. After all, these monsters had proven themselves to be threatening at least to the friendly Digimon, and if anything like that was in contact with her family members Keiko wouldn’t exactly stop to ask questions. She doubted the captain would listen to her even if she did try to say anything, as he was singularly focused on getting his daughter to safety. He didn’t even seem to be thinking clearly, as his attack plan ended up with him running up to the creature and punching it in the side.

Keiko thought the sight of a military officer punching a dragon would probably be one of the stranger things she ever saw, but she found herself out of words to describe what happened next. Since she herself had managed to throw these creatures, she had expected it to be pushed away by the captain’s punch. What she hadn’t expected was for the captain to suddenly be engulfed in a deep purple glow, and for the dragon to burst into data. Somehow, a human had just killed a Digimon-like creature with one punch.

Even Captain Katsuragi seemed surprised at the newest turn of events, but he quickly composed himself and went to his daughter. “Misato, please be more careful! I don’t know how I’d live with myself if you ever got hurt. These things are dangerous, and I don’t want you anywhere near a fight without proper training or a Digimon backing you up.”

Misato seemed too happy to see her dad again to give a response other than a hug, but Keiko had a lot of questions about this whole scenario. Unfortunately, before she could ask anything a flurry of movement and shrieks from the mass of creatures drew everyone’s attention. As the creatures all flew into the air and turned towards Captain Katsuragi, Keiko saw a horribly battered BaoHuckmon collapse to the ground and revert down to his In-Training form of Gigimon.

Keiko was just relieved to see her partner alive, but that feeling quickly died away when she saw what the creatures were doing. Instead of dogpiling on BaoHuckmon, they seemed to have decided to finally use an attack. Every single one of them launched what looked like a cannonball from their mouths. However, their target wasn’t something nearly as resilient as BaoHuckmon. Captain Katsuragi only had time to push his daughter away from him before he was bombarded with hundreds of iron spheres.

Keiko’s world suddenly went completely blank. Every sound and sight may have disappeared, and the only sensation she was aware of was something of a full-body tingling. However, the sensation was fleeting, only in the sense that it quickly moved from tingling to a burning sensation. At the same time, she shifted from being unable to see to having her vision consumed by a fiery glow…

Vikemon allowed himself a few moments to catch his breath before continuing to swat off his attackers. When the swarm had first appeared, he had been a bit worried about protecting Cody and fighting off all his new attackers. However, when the dragons’ plan of attack involved nothing more than biting him, he was glad to have caught a break. They may have had metal jaws, but they were less effective than Gundramon’s canons had been. And compared to this animalistic attack plan, Gundramon’s berserk rage seemed like a stroke of tactical genius. Still, even with these benefits, Vikemon knew the fight wouldn’t be easy. The attackers may only be as threatening as a bee, but a swarm of them could still take him out through attrition. They were also proving surprisingly difficult to crush, and time was not on his side. While he was busy fighting off about half of the swarm, the rest were currently biting through the ice encasing Gundramon. And he really wasn’t looking forward to having to fight against a regenerating Mega in addition to the current swarm.

Luckily, the small break had proven to be just what Vikemon needed. His last Arctic Blizzard attack had drained him to the point where he wasn’t able to do anything other than melee attacks, which were far less effective without Mjolnir. It would still take him a while before he would be able to call on his ice again, but the short break to catch his breath had been all he needed to start using another attack. There was only one step left: warning Cody to cover his ears.

Once Cody was ready, Vikemon unleashed his Berserk Howl attack. The roar itself managed to destroy two of the attackers, but the most fearsome part of the attack was the second stage. Berserk Howl also called up all of Vikemon’s berserker tendencies for a short time, vastly increasing his speed and strength. Whereas before Vikemon had struggled to destroy attackers without any weapons, he was now crushing them with ease. When the attack’s effects wore off, Vikemon regained his senses to see the data of all opponents he had crushed drift off into the sky. However, Vikemon instantly realized something was wrong. Usually, when a Digimon was destroyed on Earth, its data completely dissipated. That wasn’t happening now, where the data seemed to converge into multiple clusters.

Vikemon barely had time to remember why this seemed familiar before he readied himself for a much more difficult fight. In Diaboromon’s second attack, the Virus Digimon had gathered the data of all his lower forms together in order to reach a higher level. It seemed the same thing was happening now, and he could only hope the new forms wouldn’t be as strong as Armageddemon had been. When the data finally took a physical form, Vikemon was somewhat relieved to see they weren’t as large as Armageddemon had been. The creatures had grown, yes, but the new form was only around twice the size of the old one. There were now six black dragons with two sets of red wings and what looked like three tails. However, their wings, tails, and snouts all had vicious-looking metal spikes, giving them a much fiercer appearance.

If he had to guess, Vikemon would say these six new opponents were about at the Ultimate level, compared to the previous form which had been about as strong as a Champion. Still, even with a level advantage, Vikemon wasn’t sure he would be able to win this time. After all, the combined power of three Ultimates had been enough to fight off BlackWarGreymon at full strength, and he was now facing twice that number in far from ideal circumstances. His best bet would be to take out all six at once with his Arctic Blizzard, but the timing would be tricky. As it was, he probably only had enough energy left for one attack anyway, so he would have to be sure to make it count. However, just as Vikemon was trying to think of a way to ensure his plan worked, a new voice called out, “Sunshine Beam!”

As a bright yellow beam pushed the six dragons back, Cody turned to see who had come to help. However, the sight of a flying sunflower only raised more questions than answers. Before he could ask anything, though, he heard Mari’s voice call out,

“Cody, get Vikemon to revert! These things are drawn to the strongest Digimon in the area. We can let them focus on Gundramon while we regroup!” Cody had never worked together with Mari before, but the sight of six more black dragons chasing her down convinced him to trust her. The only modification he made to her plan was to have Armadillomon Armor Digivolve to Pteramon again, giving him more speed to work with and a few seconds to identify Mari’s partner as Sunflowmon.

Even with the slight delay of Armor Digivolution, Cody and Pteramon still managed to pull ahead of Mari and Sunflowmon. After flying a couple blocks without anything following them, Cody had Pteramon stop. After all, they weren’t running away, just regrouping. That meant they’d be heading right back to the stadium as soon as they had a plan. And since Mari had been right about Gundramon working as a distraction, hopefully she knew a little bit more about the new arrivals that would allow them to make a plan.

Cody wanted to question Mari right away, but as soon as he saw her up close he was surprised she had even made it to the battle. She was exceptionally pale, looked like she was about to collapse, and appeared uneasy with being in the air at all, even with Sunflowmon being a gentler ride than most flying Digimon. Mari slid off Sunflowmon’s back as soon as the Plant Digimon landed and immediately threw up on the sidewalk. As Cody went over to try and help her, he heard her mutter: “Well, that’s the first time I’ve thrown up blood. Something tells me this new ARV won’t make it beyond the trial stage...”

Not sure how to respond to that, Cody just knelt down and started rubbing her back. “I’m really glad you tried to come out here and help, but if you were feeling this bad you could have just ignored my message. Everyone else seems to have done that anyway.”

Mari snorted. “Yeah, of course I could have done that. It’s not like the whole reason I signed up for this clinical trial was to find something that would keep me alive so I could keep fighting for a good cause. And I don’t know what message you’re talking about. I only came here because the DexDorugamon attacked some kid’s Guardromon near the clinic.”

Hearing this, Cody almost kicked himself. He should have realized Lucemon would cut off any communication from the stadium as soon as his soldiers started showing up. For the past few months, he had been taken a page out of Daemon’s book with the divide and conquer strategy that had caused so much trouble on Folder. In the wake of that realization, it took him a few seconds to respond to Mari’s last sentence. “Wait, DexDorugamon? Is that what those dragons are called? I tried scanning them with my Digimon Analyzer and couldn’t get anything.”

By this time, Mari had picked herself up. “I couldn’t get anything on them either, but the V-Pets just unleashed an expansion featuring the Dorumon line. Supposedly they have some secret power, but I haven’t seen anything like that yet. Point is, those blue dragons look like what would happen if Dr. Frankenstein tried creating the Champion level Dorugamon. So, I started calling them DexDorugamon. Since the black dragons look very similar to Dorumon’s Ultimate level of DoruGreymon, I call those DexDoruGreymon.”

Cody nodded. “Okay, so we have a name. You also knew the DexDoruGreymon would go after Gundramon instead of us. What else do you know about them?” Mari started massaging her forehead like she was dealing with a headache, so Sunflowmon took care of this question.

“Well, they’re a lot like Arkadimon. Hunger seems to be their primary motivation, and they feed on DigiCores. At least Arkadimon absorbed data quickly so it was relatively painless. These things will physically pull their prey apart to eat their DigiCore.” It was hard for Cody to read Sunflowmon’s expression, but she seemed to grimace at the memory. Cody didn’t want to know what she and Mari had seen in order to know this.

Mari took Sunflowmon’s pause to resume talking. “Basically, picture what you see in nature documentaries when some pack hunters take out something much bigger than themselves. And as if that weren’t enough, these things don’t die—for about every dozen DexDorugamon you kill, a DexDoruGreymon spawns from the data. And since DexDoruGreymon is an Ultimate, that probably means a Mega will appear when we try to kill them off too.”

Cody nodded. “Sounds like we need to hurry. That Gundramon I fought must have some connection to these DexDorugamon, since he also came right back after fatal injuries. He was also pretty mindless, but if they end up working together Keiko and the others at the stadium won’t stand a chance.” He was about to hop back on Pteramon, but Mari stopped him.

“Hang on, something else you should know. I don’t know how helpful I’ll be in the fight. This new medication I’m on is messing with my Crest. They say suffering breeds Empathy, but obviously whoever said that never had a physical manifestation of Empathy they had to deal with. We’ve been randomly dropping to Champion in the middle of fights.”

Cody turned to Pteramon. “Looks like you’ll have to take the lead in the fight again. Are you going to be able to handle it? Gundramon did a number on you.”

Pteramon rolled his eyes, but before he could respond Sunflowmon cut him off. “Well, I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Mari, would you do the honor?” She said this with a grin on her face, and Cody thought that Sunflowmon’s smile just might be the creepiest thing he would ever see in his life, regardless of what else the Digital World would throw at him. However, Mari didn’t seem to be effected by the grin in the slightest. She managed to look her partner straight in the face without flinching as she activated her Crest. “Let’s try taking this slowly. Maybe without Warp Digivolving, my Crest won’t short out as quickly.”

With that, Sunflowmon was engulfed in an indigo light as she called out, “Sunflowmon, Digivolve to… Lilamon!” Mari took a few deep breaths at the appearance of the Fairy Digimon, but beyond that the Digivolution didn’t seem to cause her any further harm. While she prepared to have Lilamon Digivolve again, Cody started wondering if Lilamon and Lillymon arose from the same data. After all, they shared the same theme of being plant fairies, and each of them Digivolved into Rosemon. If they had been native to Earth, Cody assumed they would be the nearest evolutionary relatives to each other, but the Digital World probably didn’t work that way. It looked like the kind of thing Izzy would love to research, but Cody didn’t have any explanation. However, none of that mattered, as Lilamon’s Digivolution caught Cody by surprise and drove all those thoughts out of his head.

“Lilamon, Digivolve to… Lotusmon!” Cody wouldn’t normally find any Digivolution line strange. After all, his partner went from an armadillo, to an ankylosaur, to a dogu, to a Viking walrus. Compared to that, Lilamon turning into another elegant fairy seemed utterly mundane. Lotusmon looked a lot like Rosemon, swapping out the red outfit for a purple dress with a white skirt and sleeves. Instead of using vines as weapons, Lotusmon wielded two staves, one which ended in a rainbow-colored flower and the other which matched the Caduceus symbol he had seen on some of Joe’s textbooks. Still, these differences didn’t do too much to erase the obvious similarities to Rosemon, which was the form Mari had used during her brief time working with Daemon.

Cody was about to ask what had happened, but Mari cut him off. “Listen, I’ll explain on the way. I’m not sure how long we’ll be able to hold the Mega level and I’d rather not waste time.” Lotusmon also seemed to be in a hurry, as she used her Serpent’s Cure on Pteramon as Mari was saying this. Pteramon felt revitalized by the white beam from the Caduceus, though not quite to the same level as Ophanimon would have been able to restore. Still, it was a lot better than nothing, and Pteramon was certain he’d be able to fight at full power again when he returned to his Vikemon form. He almost wanted to Digivolve to Mega again right now, but he knew that wouldn’t be the smartest idea. After all, to get back into the stadium, he would either have to fight past Gundramon and the DexDoruGreymon again, blast a new hole in the wall, or go through the door. And while he knew he would eventually have to face each of those threats, he wanted to make sure everybody still inside was safe. Since even the stadium doors weren’t built for something as large as Vikemon, Digivolving would have to wait until he got inside.

It was a little difficult for Pteramon to fly with three passengers, but as he was faster than Lotusmon it was still the best way to get back to the stadium. Mari just had time to fill Cody in on the details of her partner’s new form. Between Sigma’s ability to warp reality and the raw power of Chaosdramon and Omegamon, Mari had felt like something of a weak link in the Alias III. When Mimi showed up with a Rosemon that could also access Burst Mode, it was obvious Mari would need more than just her own Rosemon in order to not feel completely useless to the team. Luckily, the fight with Arkadimon had given Mari the opportunity and inspiration she needed to address this problem.

“I won’t bore you with the exact details, but there’s a connection between the V-Pet version of Rosemon and the actual Digimon. And since Budmon had been reduced to zero experience, I had a lot of control over exactly how she would grow this time around. HolyAngemon proved it was possible to unlock a second Mega form through careful training, so I took that idea and ran with it. Even Neo thought the lengths I was going to raise the perfect V-Pet were a bit extreme, but now we’ve got access to two Mega forms.”

Lotusmon chuckled. “You know, when you simplify it that much, it really doesn’t sound that impressive. Just trust me when I say I wouldn’t have unlocked this form if I had a Tamer any less skilled than Mari. She’s also really good at picking out which of my Mega forms is best for a given situation.” Cody had to admit Lotusmon had a point. After all, with the current issues Mari was having with her Crest, Vikemon would be taking the lead. Rosemon was more adept at close range combat, not exactly the best idea if you could randomly drop to Champion mid-battle. Lotusmon seemed more like a long-range fighter, and could provide support by healing Vikemon. Since Vikemon himself was a close to mid-range fighter, both areas of support would be exceptionally useful.

This conversation took the group right up to the stadium entrance, where something struck Cody as odd. They hadn’t been that far from the stadium, yet they had finished a decently long conversation. In addition, they now had a Mega level right outside a stadium infested with creatures drawn to the strongest Digimon present, yet they hadn’t seen any signs of danger. Something wasn’t right about this situation, and he turned towards the other members of his group to let them know. However, as soon as he did this, he realized he was the last to notice—in fact, his three companions had most likely noticed some time ago. Pteramon had been oddly silent and flying slower than usual as if expecting an ambush at any second. Mari and Lotusmon bore the outward appearance of calm, but now that he looked closely they too were ready to spring into action at the slightest notice. In fact, they had probably been keeping an eye on the surroundings the whole time they had been telling their story.

Disappointed in himself for being the least attentive member of the group, Cody put his senses on high alert as they moved into the stadium itself. A quick reversion and Warp Digivolution later, and Vikemon was ready to rejoin the fight. He wasn’t quite at a hundred percent, but between Lotusmon’s healing and the new Digivolution he was feeling a lot better and had Mjolnir back. Both things he was exceptionally glad for, as the stadium was all but deserted. With two Megas present, the DexDoruGreymon should have been swarming to them, but the concourse was empty. The absence of the DexDoruGreymon was one thing, but it was the absence of humans that worried the DigiDestined and their partners the most. They hadn’t been gone long enough for the building to evacuate fully, yet nobody was trying to go through this exit. Either something had forced them to evacuate by a different route, or something had happened that meant the people couldn’t evacuate at all. And considering what Mari had seen, it was hard for her not to immediately jump to the worst-case scenario…

For once, Mari was glad to hear signs of chaos. The massive crash she heard in the distance and even felt through her feet couldn’t have been good news, but at least it pointed towards something she could fight face-to-face. She’d much rather have the chance to face death with a glorious battle and a smile on her face than quietly whimper away into a quiet non-existence. Not that she expected to face anything close to death in this stadium. It would take much more than some mindless abominations for Lucemon to get rid of her and Lotusmon.

Following the sounds of the impacts, Cody and Mari eventually returned the concession stand where this whole ordeal began. However, while the concession stand remained recognizable, the rest of the building around it was covered entirely in craters. The source of this wasn’t too hard to guess, as there were around a dozen DexDoruGreymon all charging what looked to be metal spheres ten times their size. Every so often, one would fire their attack towards the concession stand, only to have it deflected by three new figures on the scene—though like the DexDorugamon, they weren’t registering as Digimon to the Digimon Analyzer. They looked a little bit like balls of fire, but with arms like lances and V-shaped masks on their faces.

Whatever these new beings were, Mari could tell they weren’t enemies. Glancing between the figures, she could see a few people huddled together in the concession stand. Considering the size of the DexDoruGreymon’s newest attacks, those fireballs were the only things keeping those people alive. Still, there was a difference between recognizing something as a potential ally and fully trusting it. She would have to stick with Lotusmon to ensure they could fight at full potential, but she could send Cody to see what the heck these things were and what they wanted. Luckily, Lotusmon had just the skills needed to buy Cody the time he would need.

Reaching in to her purse, Mari pulled out a pair of sunglasses and a pack of gum. Far from ideal in terms of preparation, but this wasn’t the Digital World where she could just materialize something better from her Digivice 01. She started sending Cody a message to communicate her plan, but then stopped herself. After all, it wasn’t like the DexDoruGreymon were smart enough to counteract her plan even if she shouted it out, and verbal communication would be both faster and give their potential allies a bit more warning as well.

“Cody, get over here. I’ve got a plan that should stop the DexDoruGreymon for a while, but I’m going to need you to find out what the heck is going on.” Cody only seemed to hesitate for a second before running over to her, allowing Mari to outline her plan. She made sure to shout it out so the fireballs, and more importantly the people they were guarding, at least had some preparation to avoid the trap. So, once Cody stopped giving her the look that clearly said she was crazy—both for the way she was planning on mitigating the effects of the attack and how she had used herself as a guinea pig to find out what would work the best—Mari was ready to put her plan into action.

As soon as Cody started sprinting towards the concession stand, Lotusmon raised her rainbow staff into the air and called out, “Seven’s Fantasia!” A seven-colored glow filled the stadium, but really this was only part of the attack. Much like Rosemon’s Rosy Cradle, this was designed to incapacitate a large number of foes in a short time. However, instead of relying on roses, this attack combined the light show with a nearly-odorless pollen to trap anyone caught with the full effects in a euphoric fantasy instead of just sleep. Of course, such an attack didn’t exactly discriminate between friend and foe, which left a lot of kinks for Mari and Lotusmon to work out before they had been able to use this in a group setting.

Had they been in the Digital World, Lotusmon’s attack wouldn’t be an issue—Mari had long sense developed a program to counteract its effects, and in the Digital World it would be a simple matter of her uploading that program through her Digivice 01 into all her allies. This approach still worked for Vikemon and potentially for the mysterious fireballs, but since she and Cody were in no way Digital it couldn’t work on them. Hence the countermeasures—sunglasses helped reduce the visual component of the attack, and Mari had found a certain cheap brand of gum that claimed to be peppermint flavored was strong enough to override the pollen’s effect. It wasn’t perfect, but it allowed her to function under the effects of Seven’s Fantasia like she had drank a couple glasses of wine instead of passing out—she became slightly tipsy, but no major effects. Cody, who had the gum but was trying to make do without sunglasses by squinting and looking toward the ground, got a stronger effect, leaving him feeling a pleasant buzz. The fireballs were unaffected, but the DexDoruGreymon all suddenly fell from the sky and lay on the ground with only spastic motions from their limbs showing they hadn’t fallen unconscious.

Seeing Cody make it into the concession stand, Mari allowed herself a second to congratulate herself on a job well done. However, that moment was rudely interrupted by a sudden coughing fit. However, that wasn’t nearly as worrying as the blood she saw on her hand after the fit subsided. She knew she had gastrointestinal bleeding from her arrival to the stadium, but apparently she had to worry about pulmonary bleeding as well. She blearily wondered how exactly this new antiretroviral had even made it to the clinical trial stage with all these side effects, but had her thoughts interrupted by a white glow. Recognizing Lotusmon’s Serpent Cure attack, Mari turned to her partner.

“Thanks, but you should probably devote your energies to taking out the DexDoruGreymon. You know you can’t do more than take the edge off my symptoms, and I can handle this. We don’t know when you’ll revert, but we do know that Sunflowmon doesn’t have enough power to take these guys out.”

Lotusmon shook her head. “Sorry, Mari, but you won’t get rid of me that easily. Besides, my ability to hold this form is dependent on you, and something tells me it will be easier to keep your Crest active if you aren’t suffering these attacks. And when I revert, these things will all wake up anyway, so holding this form as long as possible seems to be the priority. Let Vikemon handle the smashing. I’m going to do my job and take care of you.”

Chapter Text

As soon as Cody ran into the concession stand, he felt his head beginning to clear slightly. Whatever these guardian things were, they must have burned away any of Lotusmon’s pollen, weakening the effects of her Seven’s Fantasia. Now that he got a good look at the people sheltering behind the fireballs, however, he began to wonder if that was a good thing. There were around a few seemingly uninjured adults huddled towards the back of the stand, but Cody’s attention was drawn to the other occupants. Noriko and Tsunomon seemed mostly okay except for exhaustion, but they were the exception. There was a small girl with purple hair crying while clutching a purple DigiEgg with white splotches, while Takashi and Hiroshi had more scrapes and bruises than their In-Training Digimon did. However, Cody’s attention was drawn only to Keiko, who looked to have passed out on the floor next to a flickering YukimiBotamon. And judging from the pained look on her face, she hadn’t fallen victim to the euphoric dreams of Seven’s Fantasia. 

Since Noriko seemed to be in the best shape, Cody turned to her for answers. However, she had first arrived after Keiko and the girl had already been moved to the concession stand. And while their current protectors had had the time to identify themselves as Atho, René, and Por, she hadn’t stuck around long enough to hear anything else. Since Fangmon had been agile enough to dodge around the DexDorugamon to reach the concession stand in the first place, Noriko had taken it upon herself to round up as many people as she could and bring them to relative safety. Apparently, it had been difficult to save Takashi and Hiroshi from the swarms they had thrown themselves into, but Fangmon had managed to hold out long enough to get all these people back before reverting to his In-Training form.

Cody found himself taken aback at this—like the other Dark Spore kids, Noriko didn’t have a lot of experience in real combat, yet she had managed to save all these people essentially on her own in her trial by fire. Still, none of this changed the fact that he still had a lot of questions, so he turned towards the fire spirits, or whatever they were supposed to be. One had separated from the group to come talk to him, and judging by the A on its forehead this one must have been Atho. He started to ask what was going on, but Atho cut him off.

“Greetings, companion of our lord’s companion. Forgive me, but we lack the time to address any questions. We have already gone past the point of endangering our lord and his companion by our continued presence. For their sake, we shall not remain in this world now that you have brought fighters of your own. However, before we depart, there is a way to explain ourselves. Though I warn you, the process will not be pleasant. Only one trained in asceticism would be able to withstand the ordeal painlessly.”

Cody wasn’t sure exactly what Atho was talking about, but he needed to know what was going on. He wasn’t exactly an ascetic, but he did prefer to live a simple life and valued self-discipline, so he hoped that would be enough to learn what was going on at a level of pain he could tolerate. Nodding at Atho, he prepared himself for the worst. The fireball responded by resting each of its needle-like arms on Cody’s forehead. Suddenly, all the effects of Lotusmon’s Seven’s Fantasia burned away as Cody suffered from a searing headache. Along with the headache, he started getting strange visions, and briefly heard Atho’s voice claiming they were now sharing memories.

Many of Atho’s memories passed by in a blur, but some lingered long enough for Cody to make sense of them. The first of these showed a gathering of 13 Digimon, including an Omnimon, a Magnamon, and an UlforceVeedramon. This was enough to identify the group as the Royal Knights, which meant Atho was much older than he had any right to be—according to Minervamon, the Royal Knights hadn’t appeared as a full group for eons in the Digital World. The memory then flashed to a Digimon that looked like a larger, bipedal version of BaoHuckmon questioning Yggdrasil’s order to exterminate all Digimon. Just this brief interaction told Cody a few things. First, he had been right to think Atho was ancient, as this lined up with Minervamon’s story. Second, assuming this Digimon was the one Atho referred to as his lord, it meant Keiko’s partner had been a Royal Knight in a past life. Which didn’t make any sense, as Lilithmon and Jijimon both claimed most Digimon from their time had ceased to exist due to age, and the Royal Knights were far older than they were.

Cody missed the details of the next few memories as he tried to figure this new problem out, so he decided to leave off that train of questioning to keep focusing on what Atho had been trying to show him. He had a brief view of a fight against some DexDoruGreymon before he saw the Huckmon-like Royal Knight was engulfed in a white glow, claiming he was giving his life so the world may be resurrected after the war. After that, there was a brief period of pure blackness before the flashes of memory resumed at an even more disjointed pace. He saw Keiko holding YukimiBotamon alongside all the other Dark Spore kids when they got their partners, a brief flash of Gigimon in what must have been Keiko’s room, Huckmon helping bake some bread, and then BaoHuckmon fighting off a Devimon. Luckily, the memories became coherent again and even slowed down just as he saw the DexDorugamon swarm attack BaoHuckmon.

Cody realized the catalyst for the shift in memories wasn’t the DexDorugamon attack itself, but rather a massive purple flash that occurred at the same time. The flash carried the same feeling of energy Cody associated with a Crest activation, but Izzy was nowhere near the stadium to cause this particular surge. To make matters stranger, the source of this flash was clearly an older man with purple hair who shouldn’t have had a Crest to begin with. It was like the man was somehow unleashing a charge of power directly from his soul. Whatever it was, it seemed to energize Atho to the point where his memories stopped jumping around, but it also had the unfortunate side effect of drawing the attention of the DexDorugamon.

Now, from what Cody understood, the DexDorugamon were driven by hunger for DigiCores, and this was supported by their fight against Vikemon where they had tried eating the Mega level without regard for their own safety. This did not match what he witnessed now. The DexDorugamon responded to the soul charge, turned towards the man who was the source of the energy, and started charging metal spheres in their mouths. Apparently, the DexDorugamon recognized this strange energy as a much greater threat than a Mega level Digimon, perhaps because it was so strange it invoked a fear response in them. The man barely had time to push a young girl—most likely his daughter—to safety before the DexDorugamon launched their attack.

Cody was no stranger to the possibility of death. After all, his father had died taking a bullet for a politician. It had taken him years, but he finally made peace with that fact during the fight with MaloMyotismon. He accepted that sacrificing your life to save others was a noble cause, and with the ongoing war against Lucemon had even thought to himself a couple of times that if he had to die, he would want to die saving somebody else. However, there was a difference between accepting these things and having to see them happen right before his eyes. The strongest memory of his father’s death had been the funeral. He hadn’t seen the fateful shot. Now, he watched as this man with purple hair pushed aside his daughter in order to take not just one bullet, but an entire salvo of cannonballs.

Only three things stopped Cody from completely losing it on witnessing Captain Katsuragi’s brutal death. The first of these was an understanding of the reasons behind the death that came from years of living without his father and years of fighting in the Digital World. The second was another flash that filled the memory, this time a fiery orange one that somehow reminded him of Keiko. This brief feeling of familiarity opened him for the third source of stability, as the memory suddenly went into much greater detail. If the purple flash had strengthened Atho enough that the sights and sounds of his memory stopped jumping around, the orange flash served to completely awaken all aspects of the memory. Instead of just seeing or hearing, Cody suddenly found himself experiencing thoughts and emotions that clearly came from an outside source.

While Atho was just as outraged at the death of someone he recognized as a noncombatant as Cody was at the death of a little girl’s father, Atho’s eons of life gave him a perspective that prevented him from letting his emotions get the best of him. Some of this emotional control spilled through the link into Cody, allowing him to stay calm enough and continue processing everything he saw. He heard Captain Katsuragi’s last words to his daughter, and saw the purple DigiEgg appear right as the captain breathed his last breath, almost as if his soul was bringing a partner to his daughter to ensure she would be safe in the future. He saw René and Por easily destroy any DexDorugamon in their way. He felt Atho’s fear when Keiko and Gigimon were drained to the point of unconsciousness or reversion from the strain of his manifestation. Finally, he shared Atho’s satisfaction as he speared a DexDoruGreymon to buy his two companions time to move Keiko and YukimiBotamon to the relative safety of the concession stand, where they took it upon themselves to do the bare minimum of guard duty to try and limit the strain on their partners.

Cody wasn’t sure how long it took him to return to the present after experiencing Atho’s memories. What he did know was it was one of the least pleasant experiences he ever had. He had been in a few fires in his time fighting this war, and suffered from minor smoke inhalation as a result. With that as a baseline, the only thing he could come up with to possibly explain how he felt would be finding the still-warm ashes of a campfire and holding his head in them for a few hours. Unfortunately, the situation wasn’t exactly favorable for him to clear his head. Vikemon and Sunflowmon were facing off against a new enemy that must have been DexDoruGreymon’s Mega form. The purple-armored dragon had sixteen wings arranged in alternating pairs of red feathery wings and black leathery wings. However, the most imposing thing about this new form was its size—Vikemon barely came up to its knee.

Noriko noticed Cody studying the situation and immediately started filling him in. “You picked a great time to get back, Cody. Vikemon took out those DexDoruGreymon easily, but that just caused two of those things to appear. Vikemon managed to draw them outside while Lotusmon got us away from the rubble, but then a third one showed up. Lotusmon and Vikemon managed to take out the first two, but then Lotusmon reverted to Champion again. So, if you have any plans that could help Vikemon, Sunflowmon, and Psychemon take this guy out, we’re all ears.”

Cody hadn’t even noticed the Rookie Digimon shooting his Colored Sparkle attack at the colossal dragon, but judging by the enemy’s actions it wasn’t noticing the electrical shocks either. Looking more closely at all the combatants, Cody saw Sunflowmon was panting heavily while alternating between her Sunshine Beam and Cactus Tail attacks and Vikemon looked just as exhausted as he had before Mari had first arrived. Far from the ideal situation when facing another Mega level. It would be a close call whether they’d be able to win this on their own, and with Lucemon eliminating all communications, it didn’t look like backup would be coming to save them.

A sudden shifting in the rubble caused Cody to turn away from the fight, where he saw Mari dragging herself to the top of the pile. And if she had looked like she was struggling with an illness before, she practically looked like a zombie now. She couldn’t even keep any energy in her voice as she talked to Cody. “Say hi to DexDorugoramon. Smart enough to actually use attacks in a fight, strong enough that it doesn’t really need to. And has some impressive resistance to ice, judging by how easily one shrugged off an Arctic Blizzard.”

As she finished wheezing out her last sentence, DexDorugoramon turned its entire body into metal before charging into Vikemon, knocking an even larger hole into the stadium. Vikemon countered by slamming Mjolnir down on his attacker, but the morning stars just bounced off without as much as leaving a dent. Not that he had been expecting impressive results, since even when DexDorugoramon wasn’t made of metal Vikemon had barely managed to knock out a few feathers, but Vikemon had been hoping for some reaction. The best strategy against these things was to engage them at close range and then have another teammate take them out from a distance while they were distracted, but that had only worked when he and Lotusmon had been fighting together. Sunflowmon and Psychemon were trying their best, but they just didn’t have the needed power to make their attacks count.

With a colossal effort, Vikemon managed to push DexDorugoramon away, just as whatever attack it was using that turned it to metal wore off. Still, Vikemon knew better than to count that as any sort of victory. Vikemon knew he was on his last legs, and if he couldn’t put a stop to DexDorugoramon right now there was no telling how much damage it could cause until backup arrived. He prepared to put everything into one last attack just as the sun came out from behind a cloud. Almost as if this was some kind of signal, Sunflowmon also began charging up for her ultimate attack to launch along with Vikemon’s assault. Sunflowmon’s entire body was glowing yellow when Vikemon made his move and unleashed his Berserk Howl attack.

Now, Vikemon had been hoping the sonic attack would do more damage than any physical or ice-based attack he had used previously. Barring that, he was hoping it would at least disorient DexDorugoramon to soften it up for the rain of blows that came later. What he hadn’t been expecting was for DexDorugoramon to counter the wave of sound with its own. The two shockwaves met and cancelled each other out, causing Vikemon to hesitate out of sheer surprise. However, he knew the boost in strength from Berserk Howl was fleeting, so he charged through his shock and started raining blows on DexDorugoramon. At the same time, Sunflowmon had finally finished charging up sunlight, and unleashed her Sunshine Explosion attack, a rapid-fire version of Sunshine Beam with far more destructive power thanks to the presence of actual sunlight.

The combined barrages of Vikemon and Sunflowmon kicked up a massive dust cloud that prevented Cody from seeing what was happening. When the attacks finally stopped, an eerie silence fell over the area, and Cody found himself holding his breath and hoping for the best. A massive thud suddenly broke the silence as the dust began to clear, but Cody was relieved to see Vikemon had merely collapsed to his knees instead of being destroyed. Sunflowmon appeared to be struggling to stay in the air, but there was no sign of DexDorugoramon. Cody waited until the dust settled to let out his breath. DexDorugoramon was destroyed, and this fight was finally over.

No sooner had this thought crossed Cody’s mind as a cacophony of shrieks rent the air around the stadium. However, unlike before where all the shrieks sounded the same, Cody could recognize three different sounds in the din—the high-pitched shriek of the DexDoruGreymon, the strangely deeper cry of the DexDorugamon, and the almost mechanical grating of DexDorugoramon. The sound proved a precursor to the appearance of pale blue shades in the shape of the destroyed creatures that all started piling together where DexDorugoramon had been destroyed. Vikemon could only watch in horror as the shades suddenly manifested into a much more solid-looking form.

The new apparition took mostly after DexDorugoramon in appearance, having the same head, wings, and armor. However, whereas DexDorugoramon at least looked like a complete Digimon, this new creature looked like an unfinished program—the only thing connecting its armor plates to each other were a network of gridlines. To Mari, it looked like this new creature was stuck mid-Jogress. Since she was out of other Digimon that looked similar to this new form, she decided to call the new arrival Dexmon to keep with her previous naming scheme. Unfortunately, if it followed the same pattern as its previous forms, this new form would either be a Burst Mode or a Super Ultimate, formed after the destruction of three Mega levels.

Vikemon seemed to be thinking along the same lines, as he didn’t even bother getting up off the ground to attack while Dexmon was hopefully vulnerable so recently after forming. He launched his Viking Flare attack directly at Dexmon’s face, but was rather shocked at the result. The attack had bounced off of DexDorugoramon, but it went straight through Dexmon’s armor. Unfortunately, it went through much more than Dexmon’s armor, shooting right through Dexmon without affecting it at all. Either Dexmon was nothing more than an illusion, or it was actually an intangible ghost.

Both of Vikemon’s assumptions were proven painfully incorrect a few seconds later. Even with the chains connected to Mjolnir still passing right through its head, Dexmon let out a deep laugh and slashed at Vikemon with its claws. The Beast Man Digimon was sent flying and reverted all the way to Tsubumon, flickering on the verge of deletion. When Dexmon began laughing even more, Cody realized exactly how much trouble they were in. DexDorugamon and all its other forms had all behaved like mindless beasts, making them much easier to defeat since they weren’t adept at applying their full strength. Dexmon seemed to not only be stronger, but had enough intelligence that it could play with opponents. That was the only explanation for why Vikemon had even managed to survive that attack in the first place.

Unfortunately, Tsubumon didn’t seem like he would be lucky enough to get another chance of survival. The DexDoruGreymon had instantly shifted targets to the strongest remaining Digimon in the area, but after Vikemon’s reversion Dexmon was still focusing on the Baby level instead of the Rookie or Champion who were uselessly lobbing attacks through its body. Dexmon let out a short growl that almost sounded disappointed before charging a green energy in its mouth. Cody could only watch in horror as Dexmon prepared to kill his partner.

Just as Dexmon fired, however, things became completely chaotic. A mechanical voice called out “Hyper Cannon” and Dexmon was forced to turn its head as the Tankmon’s attack exploded in its face. At the same time, a mechanical lizard jumped between Tsubumon and the attack, screamed in pain for the fraction of a second the beam hit him, and then grabbed the Baby level and jumped away once the beam was deflected. However, this wasn’t quite what surprised Cody the most. That honor went to the twenty or so people he saw wearing the uniform of the JSDF, two of whom were watching the battle while the others were busy either bringing out stretchers and first aid kits or helping escort other people away from the area. 

The man in charge of all this looked to be in his sixties, but despite his age he was holding a Digivice in his hand. He introduced himself as Colonel Kozo Fuyutsuki, but before he could go beyond the introduction Dexmon fired his green energy beam at Tankmon. For about half a second, Tankmon screamed in pain. After that time had passed, there wasn’t anything left to scream—he hadn’t even burst into data, he had just disappeared.

With Tankmon’s death, one of the soldiers let out an anguished yell, and Cody wished he could feel the same way. The war with the Demon Lords had been going on for so long and taken so many lives that Cody had almost become desensitized to it. He hated himself for feeling that way, as if the death of his allies and friends were expected and thus not a surprise, but he just couldn’t muster up the same emotion as he had when he first became a DigiDestined. From the look on Fuyutsuki’s face, he was in much the same boat. Cody guessed he had served a long time, and most likely lost some of his men through his years of service. He clearly was affected by Tankmon’s death, but he didn’t let it affect his judgement. He merely turned to his Digimon and gave an order.

“Sealsdramon, keep him busy, but do NOT engage in full combat. We have to keep him busy until reinforcements arrive, and you cannot accomplish this objective if you are dead, Private.”

Sealsdramon barked out “Sir, yes sir!” before he began jumping through Dexmon, just attempting to make enough of a nuisance of himself that the ghost-like creature wouldn’t turn its attention on the rest of the city. While the Champion-level was busy, Fuyutsuki turned to Cody and addressed him in a much less authoritative tone.

“I’m hoping the rest of your group will be showing up soon. We’re broadcasting the details of this attack trying to convince civilians to evacuate, but I’m sure those with the power to stop this would use the information in quite a different fashion.”

Between his awkward phrasing and his body language, Cody was surprised to see how wrong-footed the Colonel was. He went from barking orders to his Digimon while fighting something at least at the Mega level to not knowing how to communicate. However, Cody supposed it couldn’t be helped. Not many details were publicly known about the DigiDestined, but from their various appearances during the crises of the past ten years they were known to be exceptionally young, ranging from children to young adults. It must have been hard for an experienced soldier to defer to the fighting experience of people who weren’t even old enough to enlist yet.

Cody’s thoughts were interrupted by a sudden commotion behind him on the rubble pile. Despite her inability to stand, Mari was trying to push away a medic who was trying to strap her to a stretcher and get her away from the fight. When that effort proved futile, Mari sighed in resignation, but glared at the medic and gave some orders of her own.

“Fine, strap me down. Honestly, I’m probably going to need it after this. But I can manage one more Digivolution, and you’ll give me the 30 seconds I need. Because right now, I’m the only one with a chance of stopping Dexmon. Unless you’ve got something more tangible to pin your hopes on than the timely arrival of another DigiDestined, you’ll do as I say.”

Cody was honestly surprised at the authority Mari could bring to her voice despite her current condition. Then again, her ability to read and manipulate others had been her main asset as an Alias III, and her connection with the Crest of Empathy only reinforced that belief. Regardless of how she did it, she managed to get the medic taking her away to hesitate long enough for her to type a series of commands into her Digivice 01. However, for all her confidence in convincing the medic to follow her plan, Mari wasn’t sure she could convince Sunflowmon to follow this plan. Even looking beyond the danger to herself, Sunflowmon would outright refuse to do anything that would harm her partner. However, there was a way around that. If Sunflowmon didn’t know the plan until it already started, there was nothing she could do to stop it…

Sunflowmon suddenly felt a massive surge in energy as she Warp Digivolved. One second later, Rosemon received her new commands from Mari. Commands that began with the line “I know you are going to hate this, but it’s too late to stop now and the only way out is through.” Rosemon clenched her teeth, but knew Mari was right. She just wished that Mari would think a little bit more about self-preservation, but that discussion would have to wait until after Dexmon was defeated. And she didn’t have a lot of time to implement Mari’s plan to do just that.

Following Mari’s orders, Rosemon flew right up to Dexmon’s face and used her Danger Thorn attack. Predictably, the thorns went straight through the intangible opponent, but they still got Dexmon’s attention. The monstrosity laughed and tried to grab Rosemon with both of its claws. Rosemon was expecting it, but she still gave out a cry of pain when the claws pierced her skin. However, Dexmon seemed surprised to be meeting a sudden resistance as a pink light suddenly enveloped its entire body. Rosemon’s pained gasp turned into a chuckle. “What’s the matter? Surely you must have realized if you hit me, I could hit you back. And if I can’t hurt your body, I’ll just go straight for your soul. Fascination!”

Cody watched as Rosemon’s attack went to work on Dexmon. He knew she hated using the attack, but if she wanted to fight an intangible opponent Rosemon really didn’t have any choice. Dexmon would be paralyzed until all its life energy was drained away. At least, that was what was supposed to happen. What ended up happening was vastly different. Rosemon cried out in shock and fear before reverting to a much smaller form. At least she slipped through Dexmon’s claws this way, but the abomination merely laughed and turned towards the much smaller figure on the ground.

“Sorry I’m late, Mari. I came as quickly as I… oh no, Lalamon!” Cody turned at the sound of Rei’s voice, only to catch a brief glimpse of a giant book floating in the air before it disappeared. An instant later, the book reappeared, bringing with it Rei, Sealsdramon, a pink and green flower bud that must have been Lalamon, and a fourth, robed figure with two orbs swirling around its head. He wanted to ask what was going on, but Rei beat him to the question. It was only when Rei turned to Lalamon that Cody saw how terrified the Plant Digimon truly was, as she was shaking uncontrollably and hugging herself. She didn’t even seem to notice Rei’s question, meaning Cody had to explain about Dexmon, though he didn’t know why Lalamon was reacting like this.

Hearing this, Rei turned to the robed figure. “Well, Wisemon, we always wanted to prove we could fight equally with everybody else, and it looks like this is our chance. Though, you’ll have to put me down first…” Only then did Cody remember that outside the Digital World, Rei couldn’t walk. This Wisemon must have brought her here directly from the Digital World. Seeing the confused look on Cody’s face, Rei explained as best as she could while Wisemon lowered her gently to the ground.

“Oh, don’t be surprised. With Neo as a brother and Hideto as a best friend, of course I could Jogress Pal and Pul. The only problem is those two can’t agree on a name for their combined form. Anyway, we were off in the Digital World when we got a news alert that the attack was happening here, so I followed the signal on Mari’s Digivice to get here. And Wisemon, you don’t have to be THAT gentle with me on Earth. I couldn’t feel it if you dropped me on my legs!”

Even though Wisemon’s eyes were the only part of its face Cody could see, Pal and Pul’s Jogress form managed to look incredibly sheepish. They stopped lowering Rei at the comically slow pace she had been descending at earlier. As soon as Rei was resting on the ground, Wisemon prepared to fight Dexmon, but Lalamon seemed to come out of her shock enough to shout in protest. There was a hysterical tone to the Plant Digimon’s voice, but hearing her explanation and knowing her history Cody didn’t blame her.

“WAIT! You can’t fight Dexmon. Nobody can fight Dexmon! I tried draining away its life energy, and do you know what happened? I LOST all of my own energy! That thing isn’t even alive—in fact, it DRAINS the life of anything Digital near it! It’s even worse than Arkadimon—no matter how horrible that creature was, at least it was a Digimon. This thing is just an undead parasite that won’t stop until every Digital lifeform is eliminated. We can’t kill something that’s already dead. We have to run away, NOW!”

Rei dragged herself over to the panicking Rookie and tried to comfort Lalamon with a hug. “Don’t worry, Lalamon. There’s a way to beat Dexmon without running away. You and Mari never stuck around after we finally mastered Jogress, so you never saw what Wisemon can do.” With this, Wisemon used its book to teleport right in front of Dexmon’s face. The undead program began charging its beam attack, but Wisemon calmly flipped to a blank page in its book and threw its Space-time Stones into Dexmon’s mouth. With a small pop, Dexmon suddenly disappeared, and Wisemon closed its book before splitting back into two PetitMamon.

Cody could only stare open-mouthed at how effortlessly Wisemon had taken out Dexmon, especially considering how much Vikemon had struggled against DexDorugoramon. Seeing his shocked expression, Rei giggled a bit before explaining. “Wisemon’s book supposedly can take you anywhere within space-time. And from what we’ve tested, that’s pretty much true. Problem is, when we first Digivolved, the book was blank, and we could only travel to this weird void. However, if Wisemon manages to record a location and a time, we can then travel to it. So, we just sent Dexmon off to the void of a blank page in the book. If it feeds on Digital life energy, it shouldn’t be able to cause any problems in a realm without anything, let alone life.”

Lalamon let out a sigh of relief that Dexmon was vanquished, but Cody couldn’t help but voice the potential uses of this ability. It would certainly be useful to get rid of Lucemon or anything he threw at them, and if Wisemon could really travel through time, they could easily undo any damage Lucemon caused in the past and stop him with ease. Hearing all this, Rei sadly shook her head. “I don’t think this will work as well as you think. First, we know Lucemon can travel through dimensions on his own, so banishing him to a void wouldn’t accomplish much. Second, Wisemon has to physically see the time or location we want to travel to, or at least something at that location, at least once before we can go there. And even if we could freely travel through time, we can’t do much more than observe the past anyway. We traveled into some old home movies of ours, but we existed like ghosts and couldn’t interact with anything. So Wisemon and I won’t be winning this war on our own.”

When she finished explaining this, the same medic that had carried Mari away came back with her stretcher and started trying to take Rei away, causing her to protest. “Relax, I’m not injured! I’ve been a paraplegic for years now. Just get me a wheelchair and I’ll be good. Focus your time on Mari. She’s HIV positive, and has been on some pretty nasty clinical trials. I think her doctor was Doctor Yakushi, so you should be able to get her charts from him while you treat her.”

The medic repeated the information about Mari into her radio, but she didn’t stand down. Cody wasn’t sure what was going on, but his question was answered when Colonel Fuyutsuki walked up to them.

“I’m sorry about this, but we’ll have to take all of you into custody for debriefing. Don’t worry, we won’t hurt you. We’ve been on the front lines of this fight, and we know you’ve also been fighting to keep people safe. We will provide medical care for your injuries and those of your partners, but you will have to come with us back to our base for questioning.” Turning to Cody specifically, he added, “You look to be underage, so we’ll contact your guardian to alert them about the situation, but beyond that it would probably be in the best interest of your safety to keep this whole affair a secret.”

Chapter Text

Geckovitch scowled as he heard the latest news. According to Igamon, a strange red substance had been appearing almost overnight and overtaking towns throughout the Folder Continent. Not even Hospitown was spared, and since the red blob moved into the town there hadn’t been any communication from Doctor Jijimon at all. Suffice to say, this new menace was bad news, and the general population of Folder knew it. Mostly, it existed only in rumors or superstitious mutterings, but after Daemon and Arkadimon the entire continent was a little quick to blame any occurrence on demons or abominations. And since they believed a dark influence was behind the problems, they turned to the armies of Holy Angel Castle to help them, just as they always had.

Unfortunately, the armies of Holy Angel Castle were far from the force they had been through most of Folder’s history. While the war against Daemon ultimately ended in a victory thanks to the help of the DigiDestined, the toll was enormous. He had always served as more of an advisor to HolyAngemon instead of a fighter, but now he was forced to take charge of the army. And army was a term used only loosely, as apart from himself, HolyAngemon, and Igamon they didn’t have any Digimon beyond the Rookie level. Worse, the only Rookies they had were the ones like Leo, who had dedicated the entirety of their new lives towards training for battle.

Even if HolyAngemon would have allowed it, Geckovitch would never have sent his handful of Rookies out to fight against something he didn’t even understand. And HolyAngemon had enough problems dealing with the corruptive legacy of his battle with Arkadimon. As such, Geckovitch only sent out token scouting parties in response to requests for help, and made sure HolyAngemon was kept out of the loop as much as possible. At least that had proven to be easy, as HolyAngemon had sequestered himself in a distant wing of the castle and asked not to be disturbed until he was certain he wouldn’t bring harm to those around him. The simple fact of the matter was Holy Angel Castle was in no position to keep Folder secure, and unfortunately this meant they simply were unable to respond to the requests for help.

For what felt like the hundredth time, Geckovitch ordered Igamon to scout a new area instead of sending help to his previous assignment. Igamon always looked reluctant to do so, but to the Champion’s credit he didn’t argue. After all, he was just as aware of the facts as Geckovitch was, and while he didn’t like abandoning a town in need he knew there was simply nothing they could do. Only HolyAngemon knew how to call to outside worlds for help, so until he was ready Folder would have to fend for itself.

Just as Igamon was about to head out, however, a Patamon flew into the meeting room in such a hurry that he didn’t manage to fully stop himself and bounced off the wall. When the scout had finally regained his bearings and caught his breath, he quickly gave his report. He had been returning from scouting in the desert when he came across a small band of refugees lead by Gon, protector of the Net Ocean. Unfortunately, they were on the run from an advancing wave of the red mass, and barely keeping ahead of it. The aquatic Digimon were leading the enemy right to the gates of Holy Angel Castle in their bid for a safe haven.

Hearing this, Geckovitch clenched his fists. He knew he couldn’t fight the mysterious substance, so a rescue mission was out of the question. If the refugees came to Holy Angel Castle and brought the substance with them, the entire castle would be overrun, preventing Digimon on Folder from being reborn. Which left no choice but to turn the refugees away before they made it to the castle. Doing so would most likely mean ordering them to their deaths. But if it came down to a handful of refugees or the light of the future, Geckovitch knew which one he had to save.

“Igamon, stay at the castle. I’ll go to these refugees myself. We cannot let this castle fall to the red menace, and thus we must turn its approach away. This castle represents the hope of this world, and that hope must be protected even if we must sully ourselves to do so. I won’t ask anybody to accompany me—their deaths are my burden to bear.” Before Igamon could protest, or Geckovitch could talk himself out of what he was about to do, the Ultimate level headed for the exit. However, despite his haste, he hadn’t left the room before a commanding voice called out to him.

“You will do no such thing, Geckovitch. My castle makes a poor symbol of hope if we must sacrifice innocent lives to maintain it.” With this, HolyAngemon stepped into the room, and even though he knew his master’s condition Geckovitch couldn’t help but stare. The once pure white robes HolyAngemon wore were now charcoal gray, except for a bare patch over the jet-black scar where Arkadimon had stabbed him. In addition to this, his hair had gone from blonde to silver. However, the most evident change was to his wings. Instead of the two majestic wings of his priest mode, HolyAngemon had lost his left wing entirely. His right wing hadn’t fared much better- while it remained at full size, all the feathers had turned black, and each sudden movement by HolyAngemon caused a few more feathers to fall out. They grew back quickly enough, but the wing was obviously diseased.

HolyAngemon noticed Geckovitch staring, but considering how long it had taken for him to adjust to his new appearance he couldn’t blame his advisor. Still, there wasn’t time to waste standing around gawking. “You need not worry, Geckovitch. Though I have been corrupted, I have managed to seal away the demon within. In fact, this corruption may be a blessing. I sensed an acute wrongness approaching, similar to the feeling Arkadimon induced. Were it not for that, I would have remained hidden away until it was too late to save anybody. Now, we must depart.”

Geckovitch immediately jumped to follow his master’s order, but stopped upon further considering the situation. “Do you need me to carry you, Lord HolyAngemon? I imagine flight is difficult on that wing, and we are a bit pressed for time.”

HolyAngemon waved away the objection. “I assure you, that will not be an issue. I sequestered myself for so long in order to ensure I could seal away the darkest of my power without sacrificing my ability to Digivolve.” After saying this, HolyAngemon was obscured by a gray light, showing the corruption extended even to the process of his Digivolution. As such, Geckovitch was not as surprised as he would have been on seeing HolyAngemon’s Dominimon form.

The giant shoulder plates that had once been the main feature of Dominimon’s armor had shrunk down and turned to a worn-down silver color. Apart from his helmet and the wrist guard on his left hand, however, these were the only pieces of armor that remained, as Dominimon now wore a long black cloak with matching boots. Just like they had been in his MagnaAngemon form, however, these changes seemed positively minor compared to his new wings. He was once again missing half of his wings, having only the lower pair and the upper right wing remaining of his original six wings. The wings had also changed in appearance, looking like black versions of his wings in MagnaAngemon’s Battle Mode instead of the divine golden wings of his previous appearance.

While the arrangement of three wings seemed almost as detrimental to flight as only having one wing, the angelic Digimon still managed to fly with only a slight reduction in speed, forcing Geckovitch to quickly fall behind as they travelled in the direction of the refugees. As he panted trying to keep up with his master, the ShogunGekomon could only hope HolyAngemon’s battle prowess was affected as negligibly as his speed had been. After all, his only form of attack had previously been the holy blade Excalibur, and all this talk of corruption and demons wasn’t exactly encouraging to HolyAngemon’s ability to generate such a weapon.

When Geckovitch finally caught sight of the refugees, HolyAngemon had already started rounding them up. Unfortunately, instead of being grouped together like they had been according to the Patamon scout, they had all spread about in panic. A few had stuck close to Gon, but the rest had fanned out in all directions except backward towards the tide of chaos in the form of encroaching red mass. It wasn’t too hard to guess the cause. In his current state, HolyAngemon resembled an attacking demon more than the force of salvation most of Folder Continent expected him to be. Normally, that wouldn’t have been too much of an issue, as HolyAngemon’s name alone would carry enough wait that other Digimon would at least be willing to listen to an explanation. However, since the chaos had spread and was approaching the stragglers from multiple directions time to explain the situation to the refugees was a luxury HolyAngemon and Geckovitch couldn’t afford.

Seeing a Crabmon had somehow managed to get entirely surrounded by the chaos, HolyAngemon knew he had to act quickly. If he just flew in and grabbed Crabmon in an attempt to fly him to safety, the Crustacean Digimon would probably panic and attack him. So, the only option would be to clear an escape path. He called for his Final Excalibur, but was surprised by the result. Instead of the green holy blade, his sword materialized as a gray glow that extended almost twice as long as he was tall. Doubtlessly such a weapon would be unwieldy in single combat, but in the current situation it should work just fine.

HolyAngemon slashed his new blade at the ground, expecting to cut a swath through the chaos. However, it worked even better than he expected, leaving a thin fissure in the ground as the chaos disappeared from the area three feet in any direction from the blade. Testing a theory, the slowly twitched his blade to the side, and watched the chaos retreat before its advance even though it hadn’t been touched by the attack. It hadn’t been damaged in the slightest, but it was almost like it was afraid of him. HolyAngemon smirked. He had to fight off an extreme feeling of revulsion in order to approach the chaos, but his duty to the people of Folder allowed him to push through the fear and fight anyway. This chaos seemed to have the same feeling, only without anything to drive it beyond its own fear. The pain and corruption from his confrontation with Arkadimon would be well worth it if it allowed him to stand against this new threat to the Digital World.

HolyAngemon withdrew his blade—he knew this sword was different than Excalibur, but he had yet to name it—and flew closer to the ground. Seeing the chaos give him a wider berth than it had given his sword, he immediately began planning for the future. After all, if it wouldn’t get anywhere near him, he could easily rescue Digimon cut off by the chaos just by standing near them. And while he wouldn’t be able to permanently protect more than a handful of Digimon this way, there was a place that would be safe: Daemon’s old castle. After all, the chaos was likely avoiding him due to Arkadimon’s influence. How would it react to the location where Arkadimon’s remains still existed?

While HolyAngemon made use of the benefits of his new form, Geckovitch was having less success. His Samurai Tone attack was fairly effective at pushing back the chaos, but as a sonic attack it would be difficult to stop the attack at a certain distance. So, he had to be very careful of the direction he launched his attack in order to clear a path to a stranded Digimon without blasting them as well. Between all the hopping he had needed to do just to get out here and the acrobatic jumps and turns he had to perform while attacking, exhaustion was starting to set in for the Amphibian Digimon. When he got through this, he’d have to start putting himself through training again. He’d definitely gotten out of shape since when he first became HolyAngemon’s advisor.

After rescuing a Gotsumon wearing swimming trunks, Geckovitch took a moment to catch his breath and check on the progress of the rescue mission. HolyAngemon must have convinced the refugees he was an ally, as they were no longer looking at him with fear. In fact, he seemed to have a plan to get everybody out safely, as he was gathering everybody together at Gon’s position. Whenever he would dart out to pick up another straggler, any Digimon with a ranged attack would start blasting at the chaos. It didn’t seem to do any damage, but the attacks at least seemed to keep the chaos pushed away until HolyAngemon would return, and the chaos avoided the angel seemingly of its own accord.

With only a few stragglers left, Geckovitch ended his break. At the current pace, he would just have to save this one last Penguinmon and by that time HolyAngemon would have collected the rest. At least by this point, Penguinmon had calmed down enough to start attacking the chaos on his own instead of cowering in fear, so Geckovitch wouldn’t be alone in his effort to clear a path. Using his Samurai Tone, he cleared a path to three feet away from Penguinmon, well within jumping distance. Just one more rescue, and he could go back to the castle and enjoy some much needed rest.

Geckovitch hopped towards the clearing with Penguinmon, only to feel a strong tug on his leg in midair. He looked down to see a red cable reaching out of the chaos and latching on to his leg. It was the last thing he would ever see, as he died before he even hit the ground. Penguinmon briefly panicked and screamed as something large and red crashed into him, but while the initial contact was made by Geckovitch’s body the chaos followed soon after. HolyAngemon turned to the source of the noise just in time to see one of Geckovitch’s horns glinting in the sunlight before the chaos buried it.

Seeing the death of his advisor, something within HolyAngemon snapped. He felt a swelling of power within himself, and was only dimly aware of channeling that power towards the chaos where Geckovitch had been buried. Only when the power exploded into an orange orb did HolyAngemon finally regain enough awareness of what had happened. For a brief moment, the seal keeping the darkness within him at bay had wavered, and it allowed him to unleash a new attack. And whatever this attack was, the chaos seemed to absolutely hate it. While it had moved away from his sword and his mere presence, the chaos was now in full-blown retreat from the entire area.

As HolyAngemon watched the red blob interspersed with various cables shrink away, he felt a brief desire to chase after it and continue attacking. However, the presence of Gon and the other refugees stopped him from going on this blind charge. It would be best to get them and any other Digimon he could find to the safety of Daemon’s old castle. Along the way, he would also have to stop back at Holy Angel Castle to send a message to the Sovereign and the DigiDestined. Even with the advantages of his corruption, he knew he wouldn’t be able to turn back this red tide on his own. It would be best to call in backup and potentially warn the rest of the Digital World of this new threat. Only when he had done his duty protecting Folder and the rest of the Digital World could he focus on revenge. Then again, somebody would have to travel around the continent and round up as many survivors as possible, and if he just so happened to run into the chaos again he wouldn’t turn away a chance to master his new abilities…

Matt hesitated for a second at the door to the apartment complex. Truthfully, a small part of him would rather be stuck with Cody and the others in military custody than have to deal with this current ordeal. However, that would be another excuse added to the long list of things that kept stopping him. And he was sick of overthinking this. If he just talked to someone about it, that might give him the push he needed to finally go through with it. He just needed someone to listen and maybe give some advice. The DigiDestined wouldn’t be able to help him with this particular problem, and his dad wasn’t very good at this kind of thing, which really left only one choice. Finally steeling his resolve, Matt pressed the intercom button labelled Takaishi and let his mom know he was coming to visit.

Almost as soon as he said this, Matt heard his mom’s worried reply. “Is everything okay? Did something happen to TK?” Matt couldn’t exactly blame her for jumping to that conclusion right away. While he certainly had a better relationship with his mom than he used to, he still wouldn’t say he was super close to her. But he knew where that worry was coming from, so he responded quickly.

“Everything’s going about as well as can be expected. I’ll explain when I get inside, but this is more of a personal visit. Can you buzz me in please?”

Once the door opened, Matt had a long elevator to think of the quickest way to explain the situation and ensure her that TK would be fine. At least TK would be easy to cover—if he wasn’t home, that meant he was still in the Digital World along with Kari, Patamon, Gatomon, and the Sovereign. Considering Lucemon could attack anywhere, there really wasn’t a way to make sure he was safer than that. The problem would be explaining the recent situation, especially since he only knew the basics himself.

He had gotten four messages from Cody and that was all the information he had. The first said there was a swarm of Digimon attacking the stadium and he might need some backup, while the second said there was a rampaging Mega level and he would need some backup immediately. However, the third message cancelled the previous two, explaining Lucemon must have blocked the signal and the fight was over. It also mentioned he was being taken into JSDF custody for questioning and medical attention. While those three had all arrived at the same time—presumably whenever Lucemon’s barrier stopped working—the fourth came much later. Cody said he couldn’t reveal a lot of information, but told everybody not to worry. Mari and Armadillomon would be out of commission for a while, but everybody was supposed to make a full recovery.

Matt knew his mom would immediately want to start investigating this story. While originally he wanted her to look past that, now he thought it might just be the best possible solution. Matt knew Cody wasn’t the quickest to trust people, so the JSDF must have done something to convince Cody they were on his side for him to tell everyone not to worry. Still, just because they had convinced Cody didn’t mean they had convinced Matt. He didn’t think there was anything he could do—he didn’t know where Cody was, and even if he did know he didn’t exactly want to attack an army base and prove all the Digimon haters right—but maybe his mom could do something. She could find out what was going on and expose it to the public if need be.

Surprisingly, Matt found it easy to convince his mom that TK was safe. She had long grown used to both of her sons being needed to save the worlds, so she had immediately jumped to the worst conclusion when Matt showed up out of the blue. With that initial worry taken care of, she moved on fairly quickly. However, Matt found her other reaction fit right in to his prediction. As soon as he filled her in on Cody’s story, she started rattling off contacts she could use to get the full story. As she was rattling off potential ways the JSDF was breaking the law by taking Cody and some other minors into custody, Matt knew he’d have to cut her off if he ever wanted to get to the real issue that brought him here in the first place. It was a sensitive issue, so he’d have to be sure to bring it up gently…

“Hey, Mom, how did you know you were ready to marry Dad?” Matt cringed at how blunt the question was. He hadn’t meant for it to slip out like that. At first, she just looked confused, but then a knowing glint came to her eye. However, beyond that her face was a bit hard to read. On top of the mixed emotions that came with her son thinking about getting married, she knew her own marriage falling apart had left some deep scars for Matt. He had gotten a lot better since he first went to the Digital World, but time couldn’t really heal all wounds. And Hiroaki wouldn’t be much help in this situation—when it came to struggling with emotions sometimes, Matt really took after his father.

Matt’s conversation was interrupted by a series of beeps from his D-Terminal. Since he had his D-Terminal set to only alert him when he received an urgent message, something big must be happening in the Digital World. He saw two messages, one from HolyAngemon and one from the Sovereign. HolyAngemon was asking for their help with a new threat on the Folder Continent, while the Sovereign acknowledged HolyAngemon’s message but were instead calling every DigiDestined with a Crest to deal with a global problem. While Matt hadn’t been hesitating to help before, this last bit of information made him hurry. The Sovereign weren’t exactly happy to let Neo and the Alias III off the hook so easily after working with Daemon. If the Sovereign were willingly asking them for help, Lucemon must have made an overt move against the Digital World.

Quickly thanking his mom for listening and trying to help, Matt headed to TK’s room to use a Digital Gate. While in theory it was possible to use any computer now that a D3 wasn’t needed to open a gate, setting up the program still took time. So, the DigiDestined all had older laptops left in their room for the sole purpose of having a convenient gate to enter and exit the Digital World at any time. Considering the time difference and the urgency of the situation, it would be better for Matt to use TK’s computer than try to set up a gate on his mom’s. These were the only thoughts on Matt’s mind as he opened TK’s door, only to pause a second in surprise and immediately slam it shut.

Matt had been expecting TK and Kari to be the first ones to the meeting at the Digital World. After all, his mom had said TK hadn’t come back yet, and they had been with the Sovereign the whole time in the Digital World. However, he hadn’t been counting on the simple fact that TK and Kari could have gotten back without leaving the room, so his mom wouldn’t know they were here. Had he thought of that and knocked before entering, he wouldn’t have walked in on Kari pinning TK to the bed in a shirtless make-out session.

TK and Kari didn’t seem to notice when Matt walked in, but from the sounds of surprise that came after the slamming of the door Matt was pretty sure they noticed him leave. There may have been a time crunch to get to the Digital World, but there was plenty of time to let TK and Kari get dressed first. And that would at least give him time to figure out how to handle this. Knowing them, TK and Kari would almost be too embarrassed to function for a little bit, and if Tai found out about this things would only get worse. Matt was convinced that deep down Tai was happy for TK and Kari, but considering his overprotective streak it wasn’t worth the risk.

As expected, when TK finally opened the door neither he nor Kari were willing to so much as look in Matt’s general direction. Still, Matt reserved to right to make any comment until there wasn’t a major crisis going on in the Digital World. Catching sight of a line of hickies forming on TK’s neck, however, he realized he would have to buy some more time. Quickly coming up with a new plan, he sighed.

“All right, listen. I was here visiting mom. Kari was back at her place, and fell asleep explaining why she never heard the alert from her D-Terminal. She didn’t answer TK’s message, so he went to pick her up while I went ahead to the meeting. You two just so happened to be wearing scarves or turtlenecks when you arrived in the Digital World.” The fact that Matt was blatantly covering for them only served to make TK and Kari even more embarrassed, but Matt took that response as agreement before heading to the Digital World. As he went through the gate, he allowed himself a small smile. TK and Kari now owed him, and he knew exactly how he was planning on calling in that favor…

Murmukusmon sighed as he looked down on the lone prisoner remaining in Lucemon’s cells. He wasn’t normally one to care, but the sight of the Meramon bound in black chains while all his memories were projected on the wall was simply too pitiful to ignore. Truthfully, he had used to dream about something like this. As someone who could flawlessly imitate any Digimon form, he had wanted to push his infiltration ability even further. He still remembered all the times he had been exposed from failing to answer questions correctly or acting differently than his mark usually did. Having access to the full memories of a subject would finally allow the true perfect imitation he had always wanted.

However, now that he finally had access to his dream source of information, he wasn’t nearly as impressed. First, wading through enough memories to replicate a Digimon’s mannerisms was tedious at best. Since he had to watch everything under the watchful eye of the cackling madman enabling said projection in the first place, any semblance of joy he might have found was quickly eliminated. Second, getting to know so much about Meramon was starting to stir up the little bits of empathy he still felt. But even if he hadn’t connected with Meramon on any level, Murmukusmon knew enough about his ruler to know that he could easily be the one in chains while Lucemon probed through his mind. Now he could easily see why Astamon had grown more and more reckless in his defiance of Lucemon—the Demon Lord had been mad before, but with the power of the gods he could take this madness to new heights.

Still, Murmukusmon didn’t let any of these thoughts show on his face as he turned to face Lucemon. “Forgive me, my lord, but I fear I no longer have time to prepare. If I am to attend this meeting, I will need to leave immediately. Meramon is only a minor player, so I needn’t worry too much about speaking and must only concern myself with listening.” Murmukusmon surprised even himself with this last statement. To him, the third reason he hated the current situation was spoken loud and clear beneath those words: this wasn’t necessary. He was good enough at disguises that he would have pulled this mission off without Lucemon’s little experiment. Still, the Demon Lord either didn’t notice or didn’t care, as he started chuckling.

“Ah, I forget how you mortals are bound by the laws of time. Always marching forward, never able to stop, turn around, or step outside of it entirely. Yes, you should go. I have some plans to attend to, after all. I have some old friends who I’m sure are dying to see me again. After all, to some of them it’s been six years since we’ve so much as talked. I would hate for any interruptions, so be sure to keep an eye on any likely uninvited guests.”

Murmukusmon bowed before leaving, returning to the Digital World in the appearance of the Champion level Digimon. He would keep track of attendance for Lucemon, and even report on the obvious reactions the DigiDestined would have to knowledge of Lucemon’s little plague. After all, he was the best at infiltration, and keeping that title meant he had to go above and beyond the call of duty. Still, that didn’t mean he had to report on everything he would see. There might be some things that would be much more interesting if they could surprise the Demon Lord. And with Lucemon’s observational powers, he could always find out for himself at any time. Anything Murmukusmon reported might as well be a waste of time, so why bother revealing all the details?

Chapter Text

When TK and Kari finally arrived in the Digital World, they expected to be the last ones to the meeting. However, any questions over their late arrival were immediately pushed aside when Rei and Neo entered through a new gate just after TK and Kari got there. Rei was glaring at her older brother, who looked like he wanted no part of this whole situation. Looking closer, TK noticed two lights coming from Neo—the first was the steady brown glow of his Crest, while the second was a blinking yellow light coming from the MetalKoromon he was holding in his hands. TK found this incredibly strange—even if MetalKoromon no longer had the glitch that accelerated his growth and allowed him to reach Burst Mode without the Digimental, he should have Digivolved beyond the Baby stage by now. After all, Poyomon had Digivolved to Tokomon in around a week, and despite Piedmon and Chaosdramon dying at around the same time, Sigma was here with his DemiDevimon. If Neo had his Crest active, why would his partner be stuck at the Baby level?

However, before he could ask Neo anything, Rei turned away from her brother and addressed the group. “Sorry to keep you all waiting, but SOMEONE seemed to think the Digital World would never want to see him again, so he decided just to mope around instead of coming to help. Also, Cody and Mari won’t be making it today. Cody agreed to stay behind since Tsubumon wasn’t ready to fight anyway, and Mari still hasn’t woken up.”

Glancing around the realm of the Sovereign, TK was surprised at all the other Digimon present. The Sovereign usually didn’t like anybody but themselves, their Devas, and whoever they happened to be working with at the time to enter this little pocket dimension. Like Piximon’s house, you couldn’t enter here unless somebody let you in, so something must have been going on to get all the Digimon here. He recognized Monzaemon, Meramon, Piximon, Leomon, and Ogremon among the crowd before Azulongmon called the entire group to order from the sky above the pedestal.

As the dragon Sovereign explained the situation to the DigiDestined, TK felt the cold feeling of dread settle on him. Had Lucemon really managed to call down this red plague while none of them had even suspected? Looking at the crowd of Digimon that could very well represent the entirety of the population of File Island and Server, suddenly the Sovereign’s realm didn’t seem so crowded after all. They may have already failed in their duty as DigiDestined if these were the only Digimon left. And from HolyAngemon’s reports, anything that as much as touched the chaos just died without being destroyed, so the victims probably couldn’t be reborn.

While the news was certainly depressing, TK managed to hold on to a bit of optimism thanks to the plan to deal with this new threat. HolyAngemon discovered one potential weakness to the chaos, and knew Daemon’s Castle would be a safe zone for any surviving Digimon. Between that, the realm of the Sovereign, Piximon’s house, and places like Minervamon’s temple, they might be able to prevent any further deaths. With that in mind, the plan was simple: spread out across the Digital World, round up any survivors they could find, and escort them to safety. Lucemon had caught them napping, but now they could ensure the safety of the rest of the world and make him pay for it.

Unfortunately, at this point he heard only more bad news. Ebonwumon escorted an injured Cerberumon up to the front of the crowd, where the Ultimate level revealed exactly why no Digimon had been reborn recently. If Lucemon was now in charge of the afterlife, of course he wasn’t taking his job seriously. And if he managed to kill Plutomon, he could very easily have taken out the rest of the Olympos XII as well. The DigiDestined had fought, and defeated, demons and abominations before. However, the one opponent they had never defeated before was Millenniummon, who in his higher forms was known as the Evil God Digimon. Now that they were fighting another evil god, TK found himself actually having to put effort into keeping his hopes up.

Luckily, Cerberumon didn’t only bring bad news. Before Plutomon died, he had used his power to protect the Ultimate level, and even gave Cerberumon a small portion of his power. As he said this, the Watchdog of Hell began glowing with a black light, and called out “Cerberumon, Digivolve to… Anubismon!” Surprisingly for the dark transformation, Anubismon looked practically angelic. Other than the jackal head and the missing right arm, TK could have easily mistaken him as a member of the Angemon family. Anubismon explained that he had the ability to reincarnate the data of defeated Digimon, and would be able to serve as the lord of the underworld in his master’s absence.

Unfortunately, since Lucemon had absorbed Plutomon and his duties, Anubismon’s power was limited. He would only be able to return Digimon that died in his presence to DigiEggs instead of Digimon from all over the world. Despite this, TK still found his optimism returning. If Lucemon truly was the lord of the dead now and the DigiDestined destroyed him, there was no guarantee that the cycle of rebirth would continue in the Digital World. With Anubismon present to take on the duties, the Digital World would be able to return to the way it should have been.

Besides, if the fight against Daemon was any indication, Anubismon’s limited range would still be helpful. Demon Lords may destroy opponents and deny them rebirth, but that didn’t say anything about Digimon who died from overexerting themselves in battles against Demon Lords. AeroVeedramon, ChaosPiedmon, and Chaosdramon had all resorted to suicidal attacks to claim victory. Between his Code Keys and his newfound godhood, Lucemon was probably much stronger than either Arkadimon or Daemon. No matter how much they didn’t want to, the DigiDestined might be forced to use such desperate tactics if they wanted to finally win this war.

After Anubismon’s revelation, the Sovereign quickly outlined a new plan for the Digital World. If Lucemon truly had the power of the gods, he could have taken this chaos afflicting the world from any potential history of any of the connected worlds. If he had taken so much effort to bring it here, it obviously wasn’t something they could sit back and ignore. So, in an effort to secure the world, they would be dividing their forces to cover as much ground as possible. All Digimon would be given the option of staying in a safe location or joining the fight against Lucemon. Hopefully, they could build an army strong enough to challenge a literal god before Lucemon amassed even more power.

With the Sovereign done outlining this plan, the DigiDestined prepared to split up to cover as much ground as possible. Almost immediately, Rei claimed she, Neo, and the Alias III would take the Folder Continent, since Neo and the others knew the layout the best. Neo almost immediately protested that Folder was the last place he should go, as none of the Digimon there would ever want to see him again. Not caring that she was surrounded by the DigiDestined and dozens of Digimon, Rei immediately started yelling at her brother.

“What, so because you messed things up you shouldn’t ever go back? What happened to the brother I knew who took responsibility for his actions? If you’re so worried you broke Folder, why don’t you pay for your actions and help fix it?”

“That’s exactly it!” Neo shouted. He then clenched his fist and looked away, as if ashamed of his outburst. Rei was a little surprised, but when Neo didn’t continue she demanded he explain himself. At this, Neo started laughing the same twisted laugh he had used when under Arkadimon’s influence. “You don’t get it, do you? I have the Crest of Devotion now, and suddenly I’m supposed to go off and be a hero? Let’s see how this scenario worked out last time. Using nothing but my talents and my devotion to save my sister, I laid waste to an entire continent. Now you want to me use my devotion and my talents in an attempt to save that continent. I’m not falling into that trap again and hurting others by trying to be a hero.”

Rei flinched back at her brother’s ranting, but Hideto stepped in before Neo could rant any further. “Neo, that’s enough. What happened to you? You never used to admit defeat, and now you’re refusing to even fight? Yes, we did horrible things to the Digimon of the Folder Continent. I’ve got the Crest of Forgiveness now, but I still wouldn’t blame them if they executed us on sight as soon as they got there. But we have to fix this mess, not hide from it. Nobody’s going to get hurt if you help, but Digimon are dying the longer we wait to help.”

Neo turned on his best friend with the same intensity. “Don’t lecture me when you don’t know anything. So nice of you to bring up your Crest, especially since you’ve never even managed to use it. Your partners are already both Mega levels, and you don’t need anything other than Jogress to get to your highest form. I’m in the opposite situation. I need to use my Crest constantly just to make sure my partner DOESN’T reach his highest form. The glitch didn’t go away when Chaosdramon reformatted into a DigiEgg. And now that I know MetalKoromon is a real Digimon, I got to see exactly what its effects are.”

“When MetalKoromon hatched, everything seemed fine. Sure, his data still had the glitch, but seemed to be a happy Digimon, and I was honestly glad to have a second chance to raise him correctly. A week later, he Digivolved to Kapurimon, and while he was still mostly happy he started complaining about a disturbing tingling feeling. Three days later, he Digivolved again, and Hagurumon was in constant pain. I took him to the Digital World and tried to figure out what was wrong, but by the next day he had Digivolved again. Mekanorimon claimed he got around the pain by shutting off some of his brain functions, and asked that I not trouble him with more questions so his head would stop hurting. Within hours, he reached the Ultimate level, and Megadramon couldn’t even speak, only snarling at me. Around this time, I just started looking for a way to reverse his Digivolution. By the time I found a way to do it, he had only been a Machinedramon for a few minutes before he was Chaosdramon once again.”

“Considering my less-than-stellar treatment of MetalKoromon in his previous life, I knew I couldn’t let him suffer again. I reverted him vowed I would give him a better life, and my Crest started glowing. He had already Digivolved to Kapurimon again in the time it took to make that promise to myself, but with my Crest active he stopped Digivolving. That night, I woke up to get a drink and found Mekanorimon sitting in my room where Kapurimon had been. My Crest must have deactivated at some point, so I tried halting his Digivolution again. It was infinitely harder than it had been before. In the time it took me to master the ability of permanently activating my Crest, I managed to find out exactly how easy it is to stop his Digivolution at each level. It gets progressively harder the stronger he is, with it being impossible to stop Megadramon from Digivolving.”

Finishing his story, Neo turned back to Rei. “So, let’s recap, shall we? My partner suffers constant and worsening pain at each level above the Baby stage. If I let him get to the Ultimate level, I either have to forcibly revert him or let him Digivolve all the way to Burst Mode. Unless I’m going to repeat my mistake of letting my partner suffer just to get stronger, I can’t let him fight any battle, let alone against something that can kill an Ultimate level like ShogunGekomon with ease. You say I’m running from my mistakes by avoiding Folder, but I will not let MetalKoromon be hurt on a pointless mission. Apart from Megadramon, none of his forms are mobile enough to make much of a difference in a rescue mission, and I can’t exactly trust Megadramon to fly if I can’t stop him from turning into a flightless tank in midair.”

Rei only blinked at her brother’s reasoning. She knew he and his friends hadn’t exactly dealt with the guilt of their actions at this point, and each of them was handling it differently. Hideto was the best off, but since he still couldn’t activate his Crest of Forgiveness it was obvious he still had a long way to go. She really wasn’t sure what was up with Sigma since he wasn’t the most social of people, but from the look on his face every time he activated his Crest of Darkness something was clearly troubling him. Mari had started throwing herself into new treatments, but at such a reckless pace that Rei began to worry she wasn’t really worried about her safety. Neo had practically been catatonic and barely left his room, but clearly he could still come up with a logical reason to keep running from his problems, making it a lot more difficult to argue with him.

However, where Rei and Hideto had failed to convince Neo, someone else was willing to try. MetalKoromon let out a little jolt of electricity from his tail, giving Neo a minor shock. It wasn’t nearly strong enough to cause any real damage, but it still stung enough that Neo reflexively dropped his partner and his Crest sputtered for a moment. That moment was all the Machine Digimon needed to Digivolve into Kapurimon. The foxlike Digimon had a hard metal helmet, but for this time he needed something much simpler: a mouth.

“Don’t I get a say in this, Neo? You say you won’t treat me like you did last time, but if you keep me at my Baby form I can’t even talk with you. I know you want to take care of me, but can you trust me to make my own choices?”

Neo’s voice cracked as he responded. “I just… didn’t want you to be hurt anymore because of me. It hurts you to Digivolve, so I was trying to stop that. But I guess I’m still making the same mistakes, aren’t I?”

Kapurimon gave a sad smile. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I know you were trying to do the right thing. But I want to help, so can you go with me? As Mekanorimon you could pilot me and since I wouldn’t have to focus on moving myself, I think I could find a way to shut out the pain completely.”

Neo broke down crying and hugged his partner, causing Rei to let out a sigh of relief. She used to be the only one who could elicit such an emotional response from her brother, but she had failed to bring him around each of the past two times she needed to. At least Kapurimon was doing a better job, and Neo was opening up to one other creature. If they all got through this war, perhaps they would all be a little better off than they would have been without the Digital World.

Rei’s musings were interrupted by a sudden growling sound coming from Baihumon. The tiger glared at the other Sovereign before turning to the DigiDestined. “My other colleagues seem too afraid to speak, but I grow tired of waiting. We need the powers of your Crests. If you plan on continuing to sit around talking while the enemy consumes the world, I might even be able to return them to you before you even begin to act.” Baihumon’s declaration caused a swarm of argument. The other Sovereign objected to his implication that they were cowardly, and the original eight DigiDestined objected to another plan that took away their Crests, especially considering how the last plan involving that step had failed so miserably.

The resulting din only quieted down when Azulongmon shouted “ENOUGH!” and summoned a massive thunderclap to punctuate his statement. The Holy Dragon Digimon didn’t normally raise his voice, so everyone quieted down to listen to what the giant Digimon had to say. “These are desperate times, and while we do need the powers of the Crests we may be able to make do with the Digimentals alone. Long ago, we Sovereign fought against Lucemon in a losing effort. Our leader Fanglongmon was sealed away, but thanks to the efforts of Angemon and Angewomon we have finally located his seal. We know it isn’t an easy answer to our problem—Lucemon did defeat Fanglongmon before and has only grown stronger—but we believe Fanglongmon will be an important ally that just might tip the scales in our favor. He is by far the strongest among the Sovereign, and boasts impenetrable armor.”

Matt noticed TK and Kari looked just as surprised at this news as anybody else, but luckily Tai was too busy interrogating the Azure Dragon of the East to think about why they wouldn’t know what their partners had been up to. Azulongmon explained that they had concealed Fanglongmon’s existence because they didn’t want to send the DigiDestined on a wild goose chase until they were sure he could actually help. Also, there had been some discussion on whether Fanglongmon would even help them, as he possessed equal parts of good and evil within him. He had a personal hatred for Lucemon, but he also had a bigger anti-human attitude than Zhuqiaomon did. Still, at this point Lucemon had forced their hand. They had already managed to find the Digimentals of Darkness, Desire, Tenacity, and Pride after they had been lost during Ken’s first journey, and hoped between them and the other Digimentals used by the DigiDestined they had enough energy to simulate the actual Crests themselves and break the seal.

Knowing Azulongmon was right that they would have to take any chance they could to even the playing field against Lucemon, the DigiDestined quickly agreed to lend the Sovereign the Digimentals. If it didn’t work, they could always get them back, and if Lucemon were to attack right now the Digimentals weren’t going to be too useful anyway. TK and Kari had even managed to get in touch with Cody and have him transfer the Digimentals of Love and Reliability to them, but there were still some noticeable absences. First, since the Crests of Forgiveness, Empathy, and Devotion had been lost to history almost at the formation of the Digital World, the Digimentals associated with those traits might never have been created. Second, while Willis and Davis tried to hand over the Digimentals of Destiny and Miracles, they were unable to manifest them in physical form for more than a few seconds.

With all the potential problems, the DigiDestined weren’t quite sure if this plan would work, but as they couldn’t afford to give up their Crests this was the best possible solution. Once the Sovereign had all the Digimentals, they opened a variation of a Digital Gate to send the DigiDestined across the world. With the exception of Davis and Ken, who could cover more ground together thanks to Imperialdramon’s speed, everyone was sent to different areas hoping to find as many Digimon as they could and warn them of the impending danger. The rest of the gathered Digimon either followed their example or volunteered to help the Sovereign in whatever way they could. Nobody noticed as Meramon slipped away and opened a dark portal…

Murmukusmon bowed as he shed his disguise before Lucemon’s throne. The Demon Lord was practically bouncing on his seat with barely contained excitement. It was times like these that Murmukusmon thought his superior’s Rookie form most resembled his true essence. If it weren’t for his overwhelming power, somebody like Lucemon wouldn’t have been tolerated as nobility in the Dark Area. Still, there was no saying whether this was all an act or not, and as Lucemon was now a god in addition to all his other powers, Murmukusmon thought it best to humor the insane Demon Lord.

“Everything is working out as you had hoped, my lord. All but two of the Crest bearers have taken the bait and are spread throughout the Digital World. The other two are apparently in no position to interfere—one is unconscious and the other’s partner hasn’t recovered from the attack on the stadium. However, we may have to make one tiny adjustment. Neo’s sister has managed to Jogress her partners, and with Wisemon she may be able to circumvent any barriers you would place between the worlds. It might be best to cut off all communications as well so she never hears of the current situation. Nothing quite ruins a celebration like uninvited guests, after all.”

Lucemon merely laughed. “If you think a Wisemon could circumnavigate my power, you really have a lot to learn. But I suppose I can humor you. I’m in too good of a mood right now to care.” He made an overly showy gesture with his hands before turning back to his subordinate. “You know, those gestures aren’t any fun if your audience doesn’t appreciate them. But like I said, I’m in a forgiving mood. Now, I really need to go and catch up with my dear sister. Why don’t you let Astamon out of his cell and round up some old friends of mine? I would hate for this reunion to be ruined because the humans experience a communications breakdown.”

Murmukusmon merely nodded and went to the cells. He had been planning on telling Lucemon about Fanglongmon’s potential reappearance, but at this point he wasn’t going to push Lucemon further. He had agreed to release Astamon, so at this point delaying the mission to Earth would just serve to annoy the Demon Lord. And when Lucemon was annoyed, he had a nasty habit of ignoring things like allegiances…

Lilithmon snapped awake to a sudden feeling of dread. She was sensing a powerful lust for power, as well as the presence of six other Code Keys. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what exactly that meant. Luckily, her sense alerted her to Lucemon’s arrival a split second before the portal opened, allowing her to at least compose herself before facing her former ally. Lucemon arrived with a huge smirk on his face, but it completely disappeared when Lilithmon stabbed him in the chest with her Nazar Nail. However, instead of showing the slightest reaction of pain, Lucemon merely looked annoyed.

“Really, is that how you great me after all this time? I would expect that from Daemon or Belphemon, but you always had a different style.” He slapped her across the face, causing her to go flying across the room and leaving her Nazar Nail embedded in his chest. Lucemon didn’t even seem to notice the cursed weapon. “Well, somebody’s been a naughty girl. Here I just wanted to visit my good old sister Layla, but she doesn’t seem too happy to see me. You ran out on our family once, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to bring you back. Permanently.”

Lilithmon bristled at Lucemon’s nickname for her—she had always hated that name. Still, she wouldn’t let Lucemon see her reaction. “Sorry, but I think all this time on Earth is rubbing off on me. Before you have your way with me, you’re going to have to buy me dinner first. Or at least hold my hand.” She launched her Empress Emblaze attack, and the giant hand flew through the wall carrying Lucemon with it. The attack seemed to surprise the Demon Lord more than damage him, but at least it got him out of the house and right into the range of her two bodyguards, who had managed to Fusion Evolve in the time it took the initial skirmish to get to this point. However, as Lucemon effortlessly vanquished the hand, he seemed almost disappointed to see Daipenmon and RhinoKabuterimon.

The two Legendary Warriors didn’t give Lucemon time to react, hitting him with a combination of Condenser Storm and Kakikaki-kun Blast. Lucemon disappeared in the lightning storm and the ice chunks, but Lilithmon wasn’t content to leave things like that, throwing her Phantom Pain attack into the mix. When the attacks finally settled, however, Lucemon merely stood where he had been, yawning without the slightest hint of taking damage. Daipenmon and RhinoKabuterimon both charged him and tried to crush him with close-range attacks, but the Demon Lord effortlessly caught each of them in one hand. “I wouldn’t be so eager if I were you. Don’t you think it would be best for you to wait for your little friends to come along? I owe you all a humiliating defeat, and I’d rather everyone be here at once.”

With this, he called on Belphemon’s Lampranthus attack, binding the Legendary Warriors in black chains. “Now, be good little warriors and sit tight for the rest of your friends. I’m honestly not sure how much I can hold back my power, so if I were to try and attack you I can’t guarantee you’d survive. And when my toys die before I’m ready to be done playing with them, I tend to take my anger out on innocent bystanders.” Tommy and JP were too tightly bound to even speak back, so Lucemon ignored them and turned back to Lilithmon.

“It’s funny you should mention buying you dinner, because I honestly planned to spend some time catching up with you before I absorb you. I want to face the six humans who defeated me last time, and I have a feeling they will fight even harder if they are fighting to save you rather than avenge you. You have no idea how long I’ve been looking forward to this day, so I guess I can forgive you for attacking me earlier.” He pulled the Nazar Nail out of his chest and held it out to Lilithmon, who noticed the slight wound from the claws had healed almost instantaneously after he removed them.

From how easily he had shrugged off all their attacks, Lilithmon knew Lucemon was going out of his way just to toy with all of them. Even with the other four Legendary Warriors here, she doubted they would be able to win this fight. But if Lucemon was going to kill her anyway, she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing her break down. She calmly took her weapon back and put it on her arm before addressing Lucemon. “I know I talked about dinner, but I’m afraid I’m just not that hungry. So, I guess we should just go with small talk. While we’re waiting for the other Legendary Warriors to show up, why don’t you tell me what you’ve been up to?”

“Well, since you last saw me, I killed the Olympos XII and became the god of the Digital World…” As Lucemon went on explaining, Lilithmon started enacting her plan. Lucemon claimed to want to fight the Legendary Warriors all together, so she decided to give him what he wanted and sent a message to all of their D-Tectors. However, she knew that wouldn’t be enough, so she would also have to call in the DigiDestined. It would be trickier than the other message since she hadn’t made the D-Terminals herself, but luckily Lucemon loved to talk to himself, so she should have all the time she needed. It would just be up to her student to spread the message to everyone else…

Ophanimon let out a sigh of relief as her Sefirot Crystal attack destroyed the last bubble of chaos. She and Kari had been down in the sewers of File Island to help evacuate the Numemon, but just as they were meeting with the KyodaiNumemon who served as the chief of the Numemon tribe the chaos suddenly started appearing in the middle of the chamber. Suffice to say, that encouraged all the Numemon to finally evacuate, but then she had to hold the chaos back. Since she wasn’t the most offensively oriented Digimon and her Eden’s Javelin had absolutely no effect, that had proven more difficult than she had thought. Luckily, the chaos had consisted only of a few small bubbles instead of the more evolved form HolyAngemon had talked about.

Just as Kari was sighing in relief that the fight was over, however, Ophanimon suddenly Slide Evolved. Kari instantly scanned the surroundings looking for the cause—she hadn’t provided the darkness for this Digivolution, which meant it came from an outside source. And the only outside sources that could possibly be strong enough to cause that were the Demon Lords. Luckily, her partner seemed to understand the cause much better than she did.

“This isn’t good, Kari. Lilithmon’s calling for help from back on Earth. We need to get back there right now!” Kari immediately started running towards the nearest monitor that served as a Gate, ready to hurry back to Earth. As she ran, she started preparing herself for the fight ahead. Truthfully, she was almost glad Gatomon said the problem was on Earth. For a second, she had thought Lucemon was about to attack them while they were alone. Even though Lucemon’s main goal was to destroy the other Lilithmon, if he was on Earth it meant they would be able to fight him with the other DigiDestined at their side and maybe have a chance of beating him. Still, the situation was far from good. Lilithmon may have weakened a little bit after months away from the Digital World, but she was still a little bit stronger than a Burst Mode Digimon. If she was calling for help, it had to be for something as strong as Lucemon, and even at full strength she wasn’t sure if they could win.

While she was psyching herself up for the coming battle, Kari was also pulling up the program on her D-Terminal that had the coordinates for the safe house. With this, all she would have to do is open the gate and transfer the data and she would arrive right at the scene of the battle instead of flying in from a distance and arriving too late. However, when she arrived at the monitor and tried opening a Digital Gate, all she got in response was static. Thinking she might have done something to mess with her Digivice, she shut down her D-Terminal and tried again with the same result. Her third try was different, if only for the fact that the monitor blew up thanks to a gunshot from what appeared to be a female Beelzemon.

“And here I got all my hopes up. I thought I sensed Lilithmon down here, but it just turns out to be a cheap imitation.” Lilithmon merely rolled her eyes and smirked at the newcomer.

“I could say the same thing to you. I thought maybe Beelzemon had somehow broken free from Lucemon, but it turns out to be one of his groupies. And while we’re at it, what’s with the outfit. I’m the Demon Lord of Lust, and you’re the one in the skintight leather that’s practically flashing us.”

“Honey, don’t blame me if you’re bad at your job. I mean, out of all the Digimon that look like human females, you might be one of the most modestly dressed. But I guess we can discuss fashion sense some other time. At least, I’m assuming you don’t want to waste time chatting while Lucemon ravishes the REAL Lilithmon.”

Kari agreed that they didn’t have time to waste, but Lilithmon held her partner back and pointed her Nazar Nail at the newcomer. “You may be right, but why should we trust you? How would you even know that Lilithmon was in danger?”

The biker merely put away her gun and smirked. “Well, you may not live up to Lilithmon’s power, but you certainly have her good sense. My name’s BeelStarrmon, and I do work for Lucemon. However, he’s no friend of mine, and Lilithmon is. But since I am working for Lucemon, I have access to the backdoor of any interdimensional barrier he would make—like, say the one that prevents any communication or travel between Earth and the Digital World at the moment.”

With that, Kari pushed past her partner’s former objections. If BeelStarrmon was being honest, she may have been the only way to get back to Earth. If she wasn’t, there wasn’t much that could make the situation worse—she would still be stuck away from Earth as Lucemon got the final Code Key he needed to gain the power of all seven Demon Lords. Kari started sending typing a message warning the others about the situation and the barrier, but before she could hit send BeelStarrmon had summoned a black portal and pushed Kari and Lilithmon through it.

Kari landed face-first in some sand, and as soon as she looked up she saw the all too familiar black ocean. Looking up the gray beach, she could even see the wreckage of the lighthouse that TK had destroyed on her very first trip here—at least, the first trip that wasn’t a dream. Before she even had time to regret trusting BeelStarrmon, she heard the Demon Man Digimon’s laugh.

“If only you two could see the looks on your faces. I said I was Lilithmon’s friend and could open doors through Lucemon’s barrier, but I never said I would bring you to her. Part of being friends with a bunch of demons is knowing when to look out for yourself. It’s a lesson Lilithmon herself made sure I understood. So, you two are going to have to prove to me that you are worth betraying Lucemon if you want to get back to Earth.”

Chapter Text

Astamon flinched and fired his Oro Salmón into the shadows, only for a stray cat to run out of the pile of rubble left from the Ravager’s last fight. The Prince of the Dark Area was doubly ashamed of himself—first for being so jumpy that he would randomly fire into a pile of rubble, and second for failing to kill something as simple as a housecat despite having homing bullets. He was next in line to rule the Dark Area, and he needed to live up to that responsibility. He shouldn’t have let something as simple as Lucemon’s torture throw him off his game this much, even if the Demon Lord had gotten rather inventive in the application of his new, godly powers.

Luckily, even if he was having such an off day, this mission wasn’t exactly difficult. Lucemon wanted to fight all six Legendary Warriors before absorbing Lilithmon’s data, but in order to do that he had to make sure all six Warriors actually showed up in the same place. And despite his godly powers, he seemed to think the best way to attain this was to send his three top soldiers to scour the greater Tokyo area and pick up any stragglers. Even though Lucemon had planned on all the DigiDestined jumping all at once to the Digital World and succeeded in that mission, he didn’t seem to think the Legendary Warriors would communicate with each other. All the Warriors should be long gone by now.

A sudden cry of “Atomic Inferno!” and barrage of fireballs quickly proved Astamon wrong. Leave it to someone as hot-headed as the Warrior of Flame to prove Lucemon right. However, even operating at less than his full capacity, Astamon wasn’t going to let an attack like this stop him. The heroic Demon Man Digimon would have to try a little harder than this if he wanted to destroy the Prince of the Dark Area. Of course, since Astamon knew it was in both of their best interests not to fight, he was quick to cut off any further fighting as soon as Aldamon landed.

“You twit, don’t you have anything better to do than attack me here? Lucemon is sitting at your safe house as we speak, and I’m sure you realize Lilithmon needs all the help she can get in this situation.”

Takuya felt a little wrong-footed at the exclamation. Did the demonic Digimon really just call him a twit? “Yeah, I know the situation. I was on my way there when I heard the gunshots. And if you’re so eager for me to leave, I’m really not sure I should just be letting you run free.”

Astamon pinched his nose as he tried to fight off another resurgence of his headache. “Listen, kid, I’m not exactly having the best day ever here. I tried to help a friend of mine, and my own boss tortured me for it. And now he sends me on a stupid mission to round up any stragglers among the Legendary Warriors—like you—and I really just want to finish this and call it a day.” Snapping his fingers, he opened a dark portal. “This will take you to the woods right outside of your supposedly secret hideout. Just be sure not to hold back against Lucemon.”

Takuya snorted. “Yeah, like I would ever hold back against a guy who casually punched me through a moon. And I’m also not about to jump into a portal because an enemy promises it will send me where I want to go. I jump into that, and I end up in a cell somewhere. I think I’ll pass.” Astamon ground his teeth. He was really going to have to spell this out a lot more plainly.

“Fine, don’t trust me. It would take you, what, half an hour to fly to the safe house? And if you insist on fighting me, it will take much longer than that, assuming you manage to actually win. Lucemon wants to fight all six of you at once, but do you really trust him to stay patient for so long? Besides, it’s in my best interest to help you get to the fight. If Lucemon defeats you, I followed his orders and delivered one of his most hated enemies to his doorstep. If, somehow, you manage to defeat Lucemon, I move from second in command to first in command. And considering the population of the Dark Area is down to around a dozen or so at the moment, we need a sane ruler to help us rebuild. There is no reason for me NOT to send you to Lucemon’s location.”

Takuya wasn’t sure how to respond to this. Looking at it rationally, it was hard to argue against Astamon’s points, and he certainly couldn’t afford to waste any time. Still, he had learned his lesson about blindly rushing in to situations last time in the Digital World, courtesy of Duskmon and then DarkTrailmon. His instinct was telling him not to trust the enemy’s second-in-command, but his head was telling him he didn’t really have any other options. So, he compromised and flew into Astamon, dragging him along through the portal. At least this way if the portal was a trap that would kill anybody who went into it, he would take a powerful member of Lucemon’s army with him.

However, Takuya’s caution turned out to be unnecessary, as he recognized the landscape the portal sent him to. Astamon had been telling the truth. Sheepishly, the Legendary Warrior of Flame released his newfound prisoner, who mumbled something about Takuya being lucky he didn’t feel up to wanton destruction at the moment. With that, Astamon created a new portal and went back to the city, seeing if any more so-called heroes were too busy with other things to answer Lilithmon’s call for help. Now he could finally understand why Lucemon had wanted the extra insurance that they would all make it to the battle…

Sigma took in all the sights before him without any trace of emotion coming to the half of his face that wasn’t hidden by the mask. Just a few short months ago, he had used this rocky terrain as a staging ground for his Mask’s Square against the DigiDestined. Now, he had changed sides and was working with the DigiDestined, but that wasn’t the biggest change between then and now. Apart from a few of the tallest spires, the landscape had been completely covered in chaos. There was the standard formless mass, as well as a large network of cables blanketing the whole area where before there was a barren landscape.

While the area had never been highly populated to begin with, the chaos had either driven away or killed the occasional Golemon or Gotsumon that had lived here previously. However, Sigma wasn’t going to let this stop him from completing a different mission. He might not be helping evacuate Folder that much, but any data he managed to glean from the chaos would only be beneficial in the long run if they wanted to create a more permanent solution. Ideally, he would use Piedmon’s Mask’s Square and try to analyze the chaos within a pocket dimension where he could render it harmless. However, he had only recently managed to unlock the Mega level after his partner’s rebirth, and any use of Mask’s Square forced Piedmon to revert all the way to Zurumon after a short period of time, which would have left them sitting ducks to the rest of the chaos.

Since Mask’s Square was off the table and he didn’t want to risk the chaos somehow clinging to the Trump Swords and killing Piedmon that way, Sigma decided to forgo the Mega level all together. He would still be able to Digivolve in an emergency, but at this point Soulmon was proving enough to keep the chaos from spreading further. This wasn’t to say it was easy—certain attacks like Hell’s Hand, Ghost Chop, and Energy Drain weren’t worth the risk against this opponent—but Soulmon had some potent sorcery, and his Necro Magic attack could dissolve the unevolved chaos and push the cable forms back. Since the Champion level was much easier to maintain than the higher levels, Sigma was confident Soulmon could hold out for long enough that he could crack open the chaos’s code and find out exactly what made it work.

However, the chaos seemed to have other plans. After a few more blasts from Soulmon, all the cables started twitching spastically, and finally they rose out of the rest of the chaos. This revealed a purple bird-like figure at the end of each cable, all of whom were watching Soulmon intently. They didn’t seem particularly hostile, but the Ghost Digimon found their vacant faces and eyespots on each wing incredibly creepy. Since they were an extension of the chaos, however, Soulmon decided to treat them like any other enemy. As these things appeared to be alive, he experimentally used his End Trance attack. If this connected, he would curse the opponent into a slow death. However, the birds countered with a grating scream that disrupted his concentration and negated the attack.

As soon as his ears stopped ringing, Sigma started analyzing the new opponents. Despite their last move disorienting both him and Soulmon, they hadn’t pressed their advantage into an offense. The scream hadn’t even done any damage to Soulmon, proving they were acting defensively instead of offensively. Between that and their constant staring, he guessed that these new creatures were more scouts than anything else. The thought brought a smirk to Sigma’s lips. Before, he had been analyzing the chaos as an inanimate object. Now, he saw it as a living object, and one that was doing its best to analyze him as he was trying to analyze it. This entire task had suddenly gotten a lot more fun.

“Well, Soulmon, I don’t think we should show all of our tricks right now, but we do need a little bit more power to punch through that defense. Are you ready?” At a nod from his partner, Sigma activated his Crest of Darkness, and Soulmon began to glow with a black light as he cried out, “Soulmon, Digivolve to… Phantomon!” The newly Digivolved Ghost Digimon wasted no time in using his Death Sentence attack on the nearest sentries. The attack was basically a superior version of End Trance—it worked faster and was harder to resist. The sentries didn’t have time to invoke their sonic defense, but the attack still had no effect.

Looking at his computer, Sigma realized the attack had worked, but the sentries just seemed to be immune to it. Whatever made up the chaos that gave these things life, it was beyond Phantomon’s power to kill it instantly. Which did limit their options for fighting, but honestly Sigma didn’t mind too much. An instant death attack took a lot of the fun out of a battle. Still, he didn’t want to risk Phantomon touching the chaos, so this next move would be a little tricky.

Sigma sent a quick command to his partner, and then pulled up the same computer program he used to run Mask’s Square. Piedmon had been able to maintain the dimension on his own, but with Sigma keeping track of all the opponents and their whereabouts Piedmon could devote that much more focus to actually battling without losing his advantage. While he wasn’t using Mask’s Square, Phantomon could still use his help. It was possible for him to magically control his scythe from a distance, but it took more out of him than he liked to admit. With Sigma keeping track of all the targets and aiming, Phantomon only had to focus on using the scythe to the exclusion of everything else.

While the sentries had shrugged off Phantomon’s Death Sentence, they were not nearly as capable of surviving his Shadow Scythe. However, their different reactions to their injuries were the most interesting thing to Sigma. The birds that had lost wings or even heads didn’t seem to be affected, but the ones that had their cords cut instantly broke down into blobs of chaos. He quickly scanned the scythe itself looking to see if it had been corrupted in any way from its contact with the chaos, but after the extensive tests showed no change he cautiously had Phantomon grab it again. When the Ghost Digimon didn’t drop dead, he cackled with glee. Now he had knowledge of the enemies’ weak points and a strategy to exploit them. Now he could do some real damage while Sigma cracked this thing’s code open…

Rei’s eyes widened in shock as she looked at the remains of the giant anthill from atop Wisemon’s book. She had come along to Folder mainly because she wanted to be sure Neo would help, but once he had left to evacuate the area of the Metal Factory she realized she would have to go on her own. And unlike her brother or the Alias III, she hadn’t spent any amount of time familiarizing herself with the continent in an attempt to take it over. She only knew three places—the SandYanmamon colony, Holy Angel Castle, and Daemon’s Castle. And since Daemon’s Castle was being used as a refuge and Holy Angel Castle had already been evacuated, she could either blindly travel the continent, tag along with someone else and be useless to the evacuation, or try to convince the insect colony to move away.

At the very least, flying here with Wisemon came with the benefit of automatically adding information on the locations to Wisemon’s book, essentially filling in a map of places that could later be used as warp points. Rei had spent most of the time on the way here trying to figure out how to best convince the highly territorial insects and the mentally unstable Gaiomon to leave the area without getting attacked. However, all those thoughts were pushed aside when she finally saw her destination. The side of one of the anthills had been completely blown away, revealing the tunnels inside that were completely filled with chaos.

Taking a deep breath to compose herself, Rei started planning a course of action. This mountain was clearly filled with chaos, but there was no telling how far into the tunnels it spread. There might still be some Digimon trapped in an untainted area, and she would have to hurry if she wanted to get them out. Hopefully this invasion would convince the Scorpiomon and SandYanmamon to listen to her and get out of here. Convincing Gaiomon wouldn’t be a problem, since something told Rei he had already fled. He was the only Digimon in the area with the power to blow up half of a mountain, and he wouldn’t have done that unless he was creating an escape route.

Still, just because Gaiomon was most likely gone didn’t say much about the state of the rest of the Digimon. Luckily, she had a way to get rid of the chaos that wouldn’t involve touching it. After all, if Wisemon could banish Dexmon to a dimensional limbo, creating a vortex to suck away all the chaos should be easy. Wisemon threw the Space-time stones into the packed chaos, expecting it to get sucked away into the void. However, when a few seconds passed without anything of consequence happening, Rei immediately knew something was wrong. Wisemon tried recalling the stones thinking the chaos might have interfered with their power somehow, but when the attempt failed the Demon Man Digimon immediately started flying away.

Rei turned to her partner in confusion. “Wisemon, why are we running away? We need to help any Digimon that might still be there!” Even with the hood obscuring most of Wisemon’s facial features, Rei was surprised at the intensity of her partner’s gaze.

“Rei, there is more to that chaos than we were expecting. It didn’t just negate the Space-time stones, it destroyed them! Before, it could only kill Digimon and left inanimate objects intact. Now it’s evolved beyond that, and we need to fall back and regroup. I can’t really fight or travel without the stones, and if I partition we won’t be able to Jogress again until tomorrow. I will be able to use my book to show exactly what the chaos did to the others, but I need to be there in person to show that. This can’t wait until tomorrow, so we have to fall back right now.”

Hideto grit his teeth as he looked at the city below him. Back when he was working to destroy this world and rebuild a paradise, he had viewed this city as a complete nonfactor in the grand scheme of things. Star City was a place where popularity was the most important thing, but between the inhabitants’ strange customs and low levels there wasn’t anything worth bringing to Neo’s attention. Even now, the city was a hotbed of strange activity, but apart from that one feature everything else had gone from irrelevant to a scene of nightmares.

The city itself was only recognizable from the few roofs that were tall enough to protrude from the chaos engulfing the entire area. The chaos appeared to form into a more solid mass than its usual blob-like state, but that wasn’t the most disconcerting feature. That went to the cables, which now ended in what Hideto could only describe as strange Digimon-like creatures. There were purple birds with golden eyespots on their wings when he arrived, but as soon as they saw him and Omegamon a few new entities had appeared. One of these looked a bit like a purple ghost with a pumpkin face and two scythes for legs, while another looked like a bluish-grey spider with only four legs. However, most troubling were the much larger figures that only consisted of giant arms, a head, and part of a ribcage. These last purple figures seemed to be the most powerful, and they were by far the creepiest.

Still, just because the hands looked creepy and stronger than the other creatures didn’t mean they were a real threat. Half of the spiderlike creatures started shooting yellow blasts at Omegamon, but they had as much of an effect as a stream of bubbles would on the Holy Knight. All of the pendulum ghosts were coming towards Omegamon as well, but the creepy hands and the rest of the spiders all suddenly went to the far side of the city. Hideto was almost insulted at the lack of respect the creatures were showing Omegamon, so he ordered a test shot of Omega Cannon. The blast tore straight through a dozen of the attackers before colliding with the bed of chaos, managing to both shatter and freeze it at the same time.

After the attack, everything but the hands suddenly turned towards the Holy Knight. However, for all the good this did them they may as well have kept their backs turned, as a short barrage of Omega Howling later and three quarters of the city was covered in ice while most of the chaos had been destroyed. Omegamon could have easily blanketed the whole city and a portion of the surrounding countryside, but he was curious as to what was going on in the other side of the city that the strongest defenders went there despite his presence over here. Perhaps they had another ally fighting against the chaos that was forcing it to split its focus, and Omegamon wasn’t one to indiscriminately fire at potential allies.

Flying to the unfrozen city sector, Hideto and Omegamon were both shocked to see what looked like a samurai version of WarGreymon fighting against the last of the creatures. It was a Digimon neither of them recognized, but that wasn’t the most surprising part—the warrior was standing waist-deep in the chaos, yet the instant death effect wasn’t even slowing him down. He slashed through the cord of the last opponent, and the creature instantly dissolved before the strange streaks of light left by the draconic Digimon’s swords faded.

The Digimon turned towards the airborne Omegamon and let out an exclamation of shock. “Lord Omnimon? You’re still alive?” He then seemed to come down with a massive headache, as he grabbed his head and groaned. Whatever was bothering him didn’t seem to go away, as the Digimon screamed out “Gaia Reactor!” in a pained tone. Omegamon found himself knocked backwards as the ensuing explosion wiped out all the chaos—and the rest of the city—within 30 feet of the new Digimon. Without the chaos latched on to him, the Digimon seemed to recover from whatever had been bothering him, though he fell to the ground panting in exhaustion.

Not sure what to think about this obviously powerful Digimon, Omegamon landed nearby, though made sure he was between the new Digimon and Hideto just in case something went wrong. However, the only reaction the Digimon showed to their presence was a sigh and a look of disappointment. “I should have known you wouldn’t be Lord Omnimon. After all, if you were, I wouldn’t have had to continue this cursed existence. But perhaps meeting you here was fate. After all, who better to pass my duty to than the next generation captain of the Knights?”

Omegamon wasn’t sure how to react to this statement, but Hideto cut in. “Wait, what are you talking about? You say you knew the Omnimon of the Royal Knights, but they’ve all been dead for eons. And how did you even survive standing in the chaos for that long? Ever other Digimon that touched it died pretty much instantly.” The draconic Digimon growled at Hideto’s tone and put his hand on the hilt of one of his swords, but he seemed to think better of violence when Omegamon drew his Transcendent Sword. He turned away from Hideto and addressed Omegamon.

“Your human is poorly trained. If you really seek the mantle of the Royal Knights, it would be best to distance yourself from such unruly creatures. Though I suppose it is part of my duty to pass the answers to his questions on as well as my soul. Chaos is an apt term for what we are fighting. Long ago, the god Yggdrasil oversaw the world, commanding the Royal Knights. However, the Digital World soon grew beyond Yggdrasil’s ability to control, and he turned on his charges in an attempt to save himself. He unleashed a pestilence on the world known as the X-Program, a virus designed to kill all Digimon except for ones the god had hand-picked to live in a new world. However, some Digimon refused to die, and we altered our DigiCores to develop the X-Antibody.”

Omegamon bowed his head. “Forgive me, but we have consulted with Minervamon and heard this story from the goddess of wisdom herself. Is this chaos the form the X-Program took in the ancient past? And if I may ask, how do you know this? Minervamon claimed only certain Digimon have managed to survive since that time.”

The Digimon clenched his fists, and fire suddenly surrounded his body. However, after a few deep breaths, the flames receded, and the Digimon managed to growl out, “If you value your lives, you will not mention that brat again. My name is Gaiomon. I survived Yggdrasil’s pestilence, trained under Omnimon of the Royal Knights after they dethroned the rogue god, and then trained Alphamon back to his Mega level when he sensed incoming disaster. I gave everything I could in service to the Knights, and the Olympians threw me aside like trash!”

Omegamon pushed Hideto a little further behind himself, but Gaiomon seemed to calm down a little bit without an outburst. “Forgive my short temper. I volunteered to serve the Olympians and ensure the X-Antibody would be carried into the future in case the X-Program ever returned to the Digital World. However, when they abandoned me to watch as eons passed by and the world died around me repeatedly, I realized what a fool I had been. If you have the choice, never aspire to the curse of immortality.”

Gaiomon’s voice took on a wistful tone, and Hideto finally looked at the Dragon Man Digimon closely enough to notice the bloodshot eyes and all the scars in his armor. Between these and his bitterness over immortality, Hideto could easily put the pieces together. Gaiomon must have thrown himself into battles repeatedly hoping to finally be put to rest, but had never succeeded. Honestly, Hideto was surprised Gaiomon was still relatively sane after all those eons of watching the world grow and change around him while he was forced to endure for some vague mission from the gods. Since he had gone a little of the deep end just because of one car accident, Hideto knew he wouldn’t have kept himself together so well if he had been forced to watch the entire world fall apart, which it had numerous times since the time of the Royal Knights.

However, any further thought on the matter would have to wait as Gaiomon stopped reflecting on his past. “To answer your other question, this is not the form the X-Program took in the past. The virus didn’t need a physical form, as it permeated every bit of data within the Digital World. It also acted much slower than this new version, if it truly can kill Digimon instantly. The X-Program had a 98% fatality rate, but it worked over the course of hours or even days. If it didn’t, none would have survived its devastation. What worries me is what else lurks within this chaos. Part of its lethality does indeed come from the X-Program, but there is more than that. Still, the promised return of the X-Program has come, which means I may now finally complete my duty. I bequeath my Antibody to you!”

Gaiomon than put his hand to his chest, and pulled out a glowing blue orb. Before Omegamon or Hideto could react, he lunged forward and slammed the orb into Omegamon’s chest, causing it blue lines to appear across Omegamon’s body at the same time as Gaiomon’s body started crumbling to dust. Hideto was forced to watch helplessly as his partner screamed in pain. When Omegamon stopped screaming and fell to the ground panting, his armor had shifted into a much more angular form. Hideto tried using his Digivice 01 to figure out exactly what Gaiomon had done to his partner, but was surprised to see the results. There was some new strange data that must have been the X-Antibody, but there were other changes as well. Statistically, Omegamon had just gotten significantly stronger, almost like the X-Antibody had unlocked a Burst Mode for the already fully-Digivolved Holy Knight.

Still, just because Omegamon was statistically stronger didn’t mean the transformation was good news. It had obviously been painful, and there was no telling what the full details of it had been. Part of him wanted to believe Gaiomon had been telling the truth, but he wasn’t exactly going to trust a Digimon that claimed to be older than the current configuration of the Digital World. He would have to run some more in-depth scans and tests to make sure Omegamon was actually okay before he could judge the latest transformation.

Chapter Text

Lucemon smiled as BeoWolfmon arrived at the safe house. In some ways, things had changed completely since he had assumed his rightful place as the sole god of the Digital World. With access to all the history of the Digital World and a store of divine wisdom, he could finally acknowledge he wasn’t the strongest Digimon in history. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but he couldn’t argue with the facts. Still, the benefits of such power spoke for themselves, and knowing he sat somewhere between third and fifth in history just gave him an actual goal to work towards.

However, despite the changes, some things stayed the same. Now that he had access to the grand history of the Digital World, he appreciated the little things even more. Like the feeling of having his enemies powerless before him. Especially when said enemies had managed to defeat him twice. Still, there was a difference between just defeating your enemies and seeing them truly despair. One was easy, but the other was so much more enjoyable. So what if he had to wait a few minutes to get all six humans that had stopped him last time? He quite literally had all the time in the world to enjoy his revenge.

In fact, the look of surprise on BeoWolfmon’s face when he saw the other five Legendary Warriors all in their human forms made the wait entirely worth it in Lucemon’s eyes. Koji always was the stoic one, so seeing him entirely dumbfounded was a moment he would be sure to enjoy in the future as he looked back on this time from his throne. However, the look didn’t last long, as BeoWolfmon must have thought there was some kind of trick and charged directly at the Demon Lord. Lucemon didn’t even bother blocking the attack, letting the sword hit him directly in the chest. Still, he was surprised to feel minor irritation where the blade touched him, as he thought he was well beyond all the Legendary Warriors in power. He supposed it couldn’t be helped—he was still inherently a creature of darkness and light, so if any elements could hurt him, it would be attacks based on light or dark.

However, while Lucemon noticed some slight irritation, he didn’t let any of it show. Koji only noticed Lucemon take his attack like it was nothing and then start laughing. The mad Demon Lord put his hand on BeoWolfmon’s shoulder as if they were old friends, but at the contact Koji instantly felt a measure of despair as Lucemon’s killing intent made the air itself seem to condense.

Still, the Demon Lord kept his voice almost cordial. “I can’t believe you’d just attack me right away. Even Takuya didn’t rush in like that. Your friends are off having a little strategy meeting, and I suggest you join them. I went through a lot of trouble to ensure this meeting could happen, and I’d hate for you to bore me by losing too quickly.”

With that, Lucemon turned his back to Koji and started meditating in midair. Koji made sure to keep his eyes on Lucemon as he slowly backed away. Just because Lucemon was willing to turn his back on an enemy didn’t mean he would ever do it. However, when Lucemon didn’t as much as twitch by the time he had joined the other Warriors and Lilithmon, Koji only got more suspicious. Still, he undid his Spirit Evolution and turned to his friends, asking what exactly was going on.

Lilithmon rolled her eyes. “What, did Lucemon finally grow tired of hearing himself talk and not explain everything to you? The short version is, he wants to beat you, but killing you would be too easy and disappointing for him. His words, not mine. So, he wanted all six of you to fight him with the knowledge that if he wins, he absorbs my Code Key. And yes, he IS powerful enough that he could reduce me to a trophy whenever he wants. He’s strong enough that the whole world might as well be his toys at this point.”

Takuya clenched his fist. “Well, if he wants to beat us, I’m planning on actually making him work for it. I’m not going to give up now. But we need a plan, and so far we don’t have much. Lilithmon’s attacks didn’t even faze him, and Tommy and JP’s did even less. It’s like our first fights with Duskmon or the Royal Knights, but this time we can’t really hope to fall back and win later. And I doubt he’s going to give us time to scour the Digital World and find the missing Spirits to fight him as Susanoomon. So, if you have any ideas, now would be a good time.”

Koji took a moment to go over all of his friends’ attacks and abilities in his head. While he knew Takuya and Koichi’s moves pretty well after fighting alongside Aldamon so much and repeatedly sparring with Rhihimon after they got their spirits back, he wasn’t as clear on the abilities of the others. Still, he was fairly certain he had a plan that could work. “Tommy, I know you’ve got the ice cream swords, but can you still make regular ice? We’re going to need some water vapor, and while we don’t have Ranamon here between you and Takuya we might be able to improvise…”

When Koji finished outlining his plan, the Legendary Warriors all Fusion Evolved and prepared for what was sure to be the most difficult fight of their lives. Just as Lilithmon had predicted, Lucemon was proud enough to give them the first moves in the fight, so they quickly put the first stages of Koji’s plan into place. Lilithmon, BeoWolfmon, and Rhihimon all hung back, but the other Legendary Warriors pelted the Demon Lord with their attacks. Daipenmon was flinging chunks of ice, though they didn’t stay intact for very long after hitting Lucemon since Aldamon was using his Atomic Inferno in what appeared to be an attempt to burn Lucemon and everything around him. JetSilphymon used her Jet Binter to add force to both attacks and sweep them upward, catching Lucemon in an updraft of fire and ice. RhinoKabuterimon couldn’t benefit directly from the air current, but he still made sure to throw in some lightning bolts for good measure.

After around a minute, the Warriors let up their barrage. Lucemon hadn’t even bothered to react to the attacks, which hadn’t even been enough to ruffle his feathers or his hair. The Demon Lord let out a sigh of disappointment. “Is that really the best you can do? I’d barely call that a warmup, let alone a real battle.”

However, Lucemon was surprised when Takuya laughed right back at him. “Oh, don’t worry. That was just a warmup. Incidentally, do you know what happens when you combine water vapor, heat, an updraft, and electrical imbalance? If you look up, you’ll see it.”

Normally, Lucemon wasn’t the type to listen to an enemy saying “look away”. However, he was confident that he was strong enough that even a cheap shot from the Legendary Warriors wouldn’t accomplish much. So, he made a big show of looking upward, only to see a giant thundercloud right overhead. Lucemon smiled at this—he would have to remember this trick. Recreating thunderstorms would be child’s play for him, but it did add a certain dramatic touch he would be able to incorporate into his arrivals in the future. He even thought of the perfect audience for his first use of this technique.

While Lucemon was working on planning dramatic entrances, the Legendary Warriors were putting their new thunderstorm to practical purposes. Just like when Takuya had returned to the Digital World after his meeting with DarkTrailmon, the weather amplified all their powers, and they made full use of the boost by hitting Lucemon with all their strongest attacks. Aldamon’s Solar Wind Destroyer, RhinoKabuterimon’s Condenser Storm, JetSilphymon’s Ultra Turbulence, and Daipenmon’s Kakikaki-kun Blast all combined into a system of destruction that hit Lucemon with continuous lightning, hail, and a flaming tornado all at once.

The attack lasted until the Warriors had completely exhausted the energy from the storm and from themselves. They had spent themselves to the point where they could barely hold on to their Spirit Evolutions, but none of them believed Lucemon would have been destroyed by that attack. Sure enough, the Demon Lord was still standing when the attacks settled down, but for once it was obvious he had been affected by the attack. His entire body was covered with minor burns and bruises, and most revealing of all was the arms he had crossed in front of his face in an effort to protect himself. In a way, this was a better sign for the Legendary Warriors than the minor wounds—Lucemon would have only bothered to defend himself if he knew the attack had a chance of hurting him.

However, Lucemon didn’t let the attack daunt him. In fact, he started laughing at the Legendary Warriors. “Honestly, I have to say I’m impressed. Overall, your team has weakened since the last time we fought, but even with my godly power you still managed to hurt me a little bit. Of course, I could have stopped that attack as soon as it started hitting me, but I wanted to use this as an opportunity. I let my guard down and underestimated you mortals, so I’ll accept these wounds as punishment for that. With that lesson out of the way, the real fight can begin now.”

Lucemon assumed a ready stance and kept his eye on the exhausted Warriors, but they weren’t the ones who responded. “It’s funny you say the real fight can begin now, Lucemon. We knew that little trick wouldn’t do much to you, but it was just a distraction while we prepared our REAL plan.”

Lucemon turned his head to see BeoWolfmon staring him down, but the Warrior of Light had a much different feeling about him than just a while ago when he had last attacked Lucemon. Considering the streams of darkness connecting BeoWolfmon with both Rhihimon and Lilithmon, it wasn’t too hard to determine the cause.

“Oh, so the Warrior of Light turns to the power of Darkness to defeat me? I guess you’re more like me than you realize. This whole separation of light and darkness has ruined this world and trapped it in a cycle of conflict. The only way to save it is to eliminate it and start over ensuring a perfect balance between the two forces. But there is an abyss between Light and Darkness, and only one who is willing to walk that abyss and defeat the incarnations of both forces can tame the chaos of the world. But if you aren’t careful, the chaos can claim you instead. Why don’t you take a closer look at yourself, my little Abysswalker? You haven’t even come out unscathed from these first tiny steps.”

Lilithmon couldn’t help but agree with Lucemon. While she was using her Darkness Love attack in an attempt to help BeoWolfmon, the Legendary Warrior was suffering side effects from the sudden increase in power. His silver armor was already darkening, almost as if it were showing the wear of hundreds of battles without ever being cleaned. However, the most noticeable difference came from BeoWolfmon’s left arm, where an inky substance was dripping out of the Roland 2 missile launcher system. Even though she was bound to the darkness herself, Lilithmon couldn’t help but feel a sense of dread at this physical manifestation of corruption.

However, BeoWolfmon didn’t seem to care about the potential damage and focused only on fighting Lucemon. He raised his Trinität sword to the sky and called out, “Frozen Hunter!” Lilithmon knew the attack normally involved creating a giant wolf out of light energy, but the influx of her darkness seemed to change BeoWolfmon’s attacks as well as his physical appearance. Instead of the bluish white aura that usually took on wolf form, this new wolf was entirely gray. Also, it looked significantly more solid than an aura had any right to be. A second later, Lilithmon could only gasp in shock as the wolf shrunk slightly in order to manipulate some of its components into a new form.

While Lilithmon was busy staring at the wolf, Lucemon kept his eyes fixed on BeoWolfmon. He knew the wolf itself could be used as an attack, but it was only meant to be a distraction for the main part of the Frozen Hunter attack. Despite expecting the slash that came faster than mortal eyes could follow, Lucemon barely managed to get his guard up in time to catch the blade on his bracers. Even though he blocked the blades themselves, Lucemon still grit his teeth in pain. One of the Trinität’s blades was charged with light energy, while the other was enveloped in the power of darkness. Lucemon knew combining the powers of light and darkness had greatly increased his offensive prowess, but apparently it left him with the weaknesses of each as well defensively. His demonic side was attacked by the light while his divine side was struck with the powers of darkness.

Lucemon had been the only Digimon that could combine light and darkness in his attacks, so obviously he had never realized the defensive flaw in that tactic until another Digimon could use it against him. Still, just like his experience with the storm earlier, Lucemon viewed this as just another opportunity to improve. He had already learned he shouldn’t drop his guard, and now he knew one of his inherent weaknesses. Both pieces of information could only help him in the future after he won this fight. However, while Lucemon was looking beyond this fight, BeoWolfmon wasn’t going to just roll over and give up. He smirked at Lucemon before jumping away, just in time for his wolf to come in and attack Lucemon. However, instead of just ramming Lucemon or using its claws or fangs, the great gray wolf had manifested a giant replica of BeoWolfmon’s Trinität in its jaws and spun in place to slash the demon lord with the blade.

BeoWolfmon coldly smiled at his foe. “You know, she really doesn’t like it when people ignore her. Even I wouldn’t want to get in her way when she gets like this.” Lucemon merely chuckled in response.

“As the Demon Lord of Pride, I have to say arrogance doesn’t suit you. And you hit me once—” Lucemon stood back up just as the wolf was charging in for another spinning slash. “—but as you humans say, sometimes you just have to roll with the punches!” He launched his Deadly Roll attack just in time for the blade to pass harmlessly over his head, but the roll continued as he repeatedly struck the wolf and sent its battered form flying back to BeoWolfmon.

However, Lucemon didn’t stop there. He immediately transitioned into his Paradise Lost Punch, seeming to teleport to BeoWolfmon’s location at the start of his attack. The Legendary Warrior of Light didn’t have time to defend himself, but luckily he wasn’t fighting alone. His wolf companion latched itself onto BeoWolfmon’s arm and transformed into a shield sturdy enough to absorb Lucemon’s blows. Despite the setback, however, Lucemon only burst out laughing.

“Are you sure you should be fighting me? From the looks of things, you want to be just like me! You’ve used your allies just to power yourself up, combined the powers of light and darkness, and now abandoned an ally just to save your own skin. But you’ll never beat me at my own game, and there’s an obvious flaw in your defense. It doesn’t matter how great your shield is, it’s only as strong as the arm that supports it!”

Lucemon continued his Paradise Lost Punch, and Lilithmon immediately realized what Lucemon meant. Since BeoWolfmon was still wielding his Trinität with his right arm, he was holding the shield in his left arm. The same arm that was rotting away under the influence of her darkness. She knew what was going to happen a few seconds before Lucemon’s barrage made it a reality. The Demon Lord’s attack was ferocious enough that it would have broken BeoWolfmon’s arm had it been healthy. Since it had been rotting from the inside, however, the result was slightly different, and ended with BeoWolfmon on the ground screaming in pain as he clutched his shoulder where his arm used to be attached. Lucemon didn’t let up his attack, however, landing a few more blows to BeoWolfmon’s chest until the punishment was too much and he could no longer hold on to his Spirit Evolution.

As Koji lay on the ground screaming in pain, Lucemon had the gall to look relieved. “I’m glad you could survive that. Originally, I wanted you all to keep your Digimon forms to heighten the feelings of helplessness as you watched me take out your remaining allies one by one. However, after that little stunt, I’d have to be an idiot to keep you around and let you empower your brother. Still, I’d hate for you to die and miss the end of this fight. Though from the looks of things, I wasn’t even the cause of most of your pain. Funny how things work out like that, isn’t it?”

Lilithmon looked more closely to see that Koji’s left arm appeared to be rotting away, with all the flesh turning jet black. Her darkness must have harmed him even through his Spirit Evolution. Koji had known the dangers of infusing a being of almost pure light with darkness, but he had insisted on this plan. Before Lilithmon could spend any time feeling sorry about the situation, however, she was interrupted by Rhihimon’s eerily calm voice.

“The funny thing is, you’re already too late, Lucemon. It may have looked like Lilithmon and I were giving our darkness to Koji, but really, she was the only one doing that. I just used a little bit of darkness to hide the fact that Koji was sending his light to me the whole time while I readied my ultimate attack. My only regret is you’ll die without suffering. Black Theorem!”

Kari watched as BeelStarrmon teleported away from Lilithmon’s Phantom Pain attack. The Demon Man Digimon had been toying with her partner pretty much the whole time, always letting attacks get within inches before teleporting thirty feet away and taking a potshot at the harried Demon Lord. Still, from how little damage the shots were doing, it was obvious BeelStarrmon was trying to be annoying rather than threatening. The only time she had gotten serious was when Lilithmon Slide Evolved to Ophanimon, planning to revert to Angewomon and use her Heaven’s Charge to paralyze her nimble opponent. Before Lilithmon could even finish her first transformation, BeelStarrmon had teleported behind Kari and held her gun right to the back of the human’s head, saying she was here to test the new Lilithmon’s abilities and not any other forms. The biker Digimon had immediately teleported away when Lilithmon stopped trying to transform, but the message was clear.

Still, without Angewomon’s abilities, Lilithmon may as well have tried catching smoke as landing a hit on BeelStarrmon. Kari had been watching closely for some pattern or weakness to BeelStarrmon’s ability, but she hadn’t been able to make anything out quite yet. It got to the point where Lilithmon had relied on just throwing blasts of darkness at random, hoping to score a lucky hit. It was an approach that seemed doomed to failure, yet Lilithmon managed to get lucky on her third attempt and at least land an attack within a few feet of BeelStarrmon’s materialization point. It may not have been a hit in any sense of the word, but it managed to kick up some water and splash onto the Demon Man Digimon. It may have been petty, but Lilithmon was finally glad to cause SOMETHING to go wrong with BeelStarrmon’s game.

BeelStarrmon immediately teleported away, but when she materialized again over the beach Lilithmon was vastly disappointed in her reaction. Instead of complaining or even shaking the water off and resuming her game, BeelStarrmon had a huge smile on her face and was letting off such intense feelings of enjoyment that Lilithmon was sure she would have noticed them even if she didn’t have a supernatural ability to sense certain feelings from her opponents. Still, BeelStarrmon didn’t really seem to care about how uncomfortable she was making her opponent feel as she made a sound Kari could only classify as a purr. “Well, you managed to get me wet. And this Dark Ocean water is just great! I haven’t felt this good since my last tussle with Astamon! Think you can keep it up?”

Still, while Lilithmon was choking down feelings of disgust, Kari looked beyond BeelStarrmon’s reaction to the droplets of water falling off the Demon Man Digimon to the sand below. Considering the enemy’s reaction she might have done it on purpose, but maybe BeelStarrmon teleported everything that came into contact with her instead of just herself. If that was the case, all Lilithmon would have to do is get a hold of her opponent and then BeelStarrmon wouldn’t be able to escape. It still left the problem of grabbing on to a teleporter, but Kari had another idea for that as well. It was risky in more ways than one, but they didn’t have time to play things safe if Lucemon was really attacking the other Lilithmon.

Luckily for Kari, BeelStarrmon didn’t really care if Lilithmon took a break from their little game to plan a new strategy. And when the Demon Man Digimon saw Lilithmon’s reaction to whatever the DigiDestined said, she knew she would enjoy whatever the plan was. Anything that caused such a vehement denial from her partner had to be entertaining. Eventually, Lilithmon must have given in to her partner’s demands, as she flew back to face BeelStarrmon once again. The Musketeer was eager to see exactly what was going to happen, but when Lilithmon started glowing with the light of Slide Evolution BeelStarrmon only sighed in disappointment. Not only was this Lilithmon not very strong, she apparently wasn’t really smart either. Oh well, she was in the mood to give a little reminder why changing forms was a bad idea.

BeelStarrmon warped back behind the DigiDestined and put a gun to her head. “Sorry, girl, but your partner just doesn’t seem to understand the consequences of pissing me off. Be a dear and tell her to stop this again, would you?”

BeelStarrmon heard Kari gulp, but while her voice gave away her nervousness Kari’s words gave the exact opposite impression. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can do that. You see, this whole thing—well, I guess it was my idea. Lilithmon needed you to keep still, so I decided to use myself as bait.” BeelStarrmon thought about questioning the DigiDestined of Light further, but decided to teleport away instead and get out of any potential trap. Had she waited a second longer she would have been skewered on Lilithmon’s Nazar Nail, but thanks to her quick judgement she managed to avoid the blow.

At least, this was what BeelStarrmon thought to herself before she noticed a squeezing sensation from her waist to her feet. Looking down, she saw a hand-like shadow wrapped around her like a snake squeezing its prey. As BeelStarrmon tried to figure out how this happened, Lilithmon landed in front of the Demon Man Digimon and decided to enlighten her opponent. “I can’t believe you fell into Kari’s trap. Using herself as bait was incredibly reckless, and now that it worked it’ll be even harder to convince her not to do something like that in the future. Still, I suppose it did get results. You’ve been caught in the grasp of my Empress Emblaze.”

BeelStarrmon huffed, a more difficult task than usual since the shadow had reached up to her chest and was starting to restrict her breathing slightly. “Please, THIS is your Empress Emblaze? I’ve seen Lilithmon use that move, and it didn’t look anything like this.”

Lilithmon rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who thinks size means everything. I might not be able to create an entity nearly as large as the other Lilithmon, so I worked on manipulating the entity I could create. My version can live in shadows and bind its unsuspecting victim. So I simply had it hide in Kari’s shadow, and as soon as you stepped in her shadow to stick a gun to the back of her head it moved to you. And since Kari noticed you brought water with you when you teleported, she knew you’d bring my attack with you as well. Quite the brilliant plan, even if I don’t really approve of the details.”

However, if Lilithmon was hoping this speech would convince BeelStarrmon that she had lost, she would be greatly disappointed. “Well, you managed to grab me with your shadow. So what’s the next move? It looks like you’re building up to the point of strangling me, but do you really think something like that would stop me?”

Lilithmon merely smiled. “Oh, don’t worry. I know how much you’d enjoy something like that. In fact, I can tell you’re actually enjoying what I’m doing right now. Normally I’d just keep squeezing you until you gave up, but if you’re enjoying this so much, I have a better plan. If you don’t give us what we want, I’ll keep you held just tightly enough that you can’t counterattack, but loosely enough that you won’t get any pleasure out of the experience. If you do give us what we want, I’ll let you go—if you want me to.”

BeelStarrmon blinked in shock, and then smiled at her opponent. “Alright, you win. You might not have the same level of power as Lilithmon does, but you certainly have the right attitude. I’ll recognize you as a worthy of the name of Demon Lord. Though there is one slight catch. I can open a rift to Lilithmon’s location, but I won’t be able to pick up any of your friends. You might be able to send a message to them from within the tunnel if you pre-type it, but that’s all I’ll be able to do. I’m good at short range teleportation, but across longer distances or between dimensions it’s a much slower trip and a lot harder to organize.”

Kari immediately started typing out the message she would send to all the DigiDestined to at least let them know what was going on. She would still go on ahead to help as much as she could, but hopefully with a bit of warning the others would be right behind her. After all, Rei had Wisemon, who could navigate dimensional barriers with ease. Lilithmon seemed a little more hesitant to trust BeelStarrmon’s sudden change in attitude, but when the portal opened Kari jumped right in regardless of her partner’s misgivings. Lilithmon wondered what was going on with Kari—usually she only threw herself into something with this intensity when she was trying to distract herself from something else. Still, the portal seemed to be closing, so Lilithmon didn’t waste any more time on the subject. Now, she just had to focus on holding off Lucemon until the others could arrive at the battlefield…

TK wasn’t sure what to think about his current situation. He was just trying to help as many Digimon as possible get to safety, but for the longest time he hadn’t seen anybody. Since he hadn’t seen a hint of chaos either, he had gone with the best possible explanation that all the Digimon in the area had already evacuated. Which in some ways was great news, but it also meant he wasn’t accomplishing anything. Considering the rampaging chaos and the threat of Lucemon starting to take action, he didn’t think he could afford to waste any time.

A sudden crashing sound off to his right drew TK out of his musings. Since loud noises usually involved living creatures, TK quickly went off to investigate. Going into the nearby forest, he found an ogre in silver armor casually knocking down trees and slinging them across his back. It was an impressive display of power, but it looked more like someone gathering firewood than a threatening display of force. Pulling up the Digimon’s profile on his Digimon Analyzer, TK wondered where he had heard the name Ginkakumon before. Still, he could do his job while he satisfied his curiosity. He went up to the Ogre Digimon and announced his presence, but before he could even mention the evacuation the silver Digimon interrupted him with a gravelly voice.

“Human. Come.” The giant Digimon then turned around and started walking away, leaving TK no choice but to follow if he wanted to talk with Ginkakumon. However, after walking for a few minutes, TK realized talking just wasn’t going to happen. Ginkakumon either ignored all attempts at conversation or responded with grunts that TK really couldn’t decipher. Still, there had to be SOME reason Ginkakumon wanted to be followed, so hopefully there was something important—or at least someone who had more conversational skills—waiting at the end of this trip.

After walking what felt like half a mile, Ginkakumon suddenly stopped and called out, “Sister! Brought human!” TK had half a second to wonder what this all meant before a high-pitched voice squealed “TOMMY!” and something gold tackled him into the ground hard enough to drive all the air out of his lungs. As the back of his head hit the ground, he suddenly remembered why Ginkakumon had sounded familiar—the Legendary Warriors had been joking with Tommy about Kinkakumon for the past few months. The more taciturn brother hadn’t been mentioned much, but TK knew about the hyperactive sister. And judging from her squeal earlier, she had never seen Tommy outside of his Daipenmon form and now thought TK was the Legendary Warrior. As he struggled to breathe, TK knew he would have to hurry and let her know her mistake before she accidentally smothered him.

With a Herculean effort, TK managed to struggle his way to a small pocket of air underneath Kinkakumon, take a quick breath, and shout out “I’m not Tommy!” His voice was a lot feebler than he would have liked, and he dearly wished he could have taken a bigger breath, but it seemed to do the job. Kinkakumon backed off just enough that TK could crawl out from beneath her chest, savoring every lungful of fresh air like he might never have the chance to breathe again. And when Kinkakumon whipped out her club and held it an inch over his head while demanding an explanation, TK began to think maybe he didn’t have too many chances to breathe again.

Luckily, Kinkakumon seemed to believe TK when he said he wasn’t Tommy, and explained that he was actually friends with the Legendary Warrior. However, just because she believed him didn’t mean she was letting TK go, so the DigiDestined of Hope had to do something he wasn’t exactly proud of. However, his promise to introduce the Ogre Digimon to Tommy back on Earth at least served its intended purpose of getting Kinkakumon to take her club away from him. TK breathed out a sigh of relief and then cringed as Kinkakumon turned to her brother and started attacking him both verbally and physically for bringing the wrong human. Just as he was about to try and break up the squabbling siblings, however, his D-Terminal chimed.

TK smiled when he saw the message was from Kari, but as soon as he read it the grin quickly fell from his face. He started running for the nearest portal hoping Kari had been wrong about being cut off from Earth, but before he could take a dozen steps he was forced to stop as Ginkakumon crashed into the ground right in front of him. The silver Ogre didn’t seem particularly hurt by his sister’s throw, but upon seeing the look on TK’s face he ignored his current plight to growl out “What wrong?” TK was a bit taken aback by the show of caring from the Digimon that had ignored him the entire way out here, so he quickly explained the situation. Before he could start running for the gate again, however, a hand clamped down on his shoulder.

“So, Tommy is back on Earth, and Lucemon’s attacking? I’m guessing they’ll both be in the same place then. Looks like you’ll get to introduce me sooner than I thought. Brother, let’s go!” TK could only give Kinkakumon a confused look as she smiled right next to him.

Seeing it, the Ogre Digimon elaborated her plan. “Our Beni Hisago is connected to another dimension, and we can use that to cross dimensional barriers ourselves. Shouldn’t be too hard to bring a human along. Though it will be interesting to see how you handle the fumes.” When TK started asking exactly what she meant by that, she just waved him off. “No time to explain—I’ve got a man to save!” She then grabbed TK and hurled herself into the gourd, barely giving the DigiDestined of Hope time to hold his breath before the strange trip ahead…

Rhihimon took a few moments to admire the changes brought about by his use of BeoWolfmon’s power. Of course, when he had stopped time, he had plenty of moments to enjoy that the rest of the world would never experience. Thanks to Koji, he could even fully enjoy the experience. Before, he had been rendered blind when time was stopped and forced to rely on other senses to track down his target. He wasn’t sure if it was due to the powers of Light or just being stronger in general, but now he could actually see everything around him. The only change was a strange flash where everything inverted colors at the moment he stopped time, but after that brief moment the world had settled into a more subdued version than normal—not quite grayscale, but close. Other than that different effect, he really hadn’t changed too much, though his staff was now enveloped in light. Considering Koji’s relative success with a weapon of Light cloaked in Darkness, Koichi was certain he would be able to get similar results with a weapon of Darkness cloaked in Light.

The Warrior of Darkness calmly walked up to Lucemon, who had frozen with his usual smug expression on his face. Rhihimon smiled at this—no matter how long it took to beat Lucemon, the Warrior of Darkness would be able to use Lucemon’s look of superiority as motivation to keep on attacking. Sure, it meant he’d never get to see the look on Lucemon’s face when he realized he was beaten, but in the course of overall victory some smaller pleasures had to be sacrificed. Rhihimon drew back his staff and thrust it at Lucemon, ready to deal the first of many blows that would be needed to kill the Demon Lord.

However, what Koichi hadn’t been expecting was for Lucemon to casually reach out his hand and grab the staff, the smug look never leaving his face. “I’m curious. Did you actually think you had a free shot? It took me all of a tenth of a second to overcome the effects of this Black Theorem. Though I suppose you wouldn’t know that I’ve transcended the limits of time itself!” With this, he struck Rhihimon with his own staff, sending the Warrior of Darkness flying away. Lucemon casually tossed Rhihimon’s staff at the fallen warrior like he was throwing away a piece of trash before turning to the other Legendary Warriors, who all remained frozen in time.

“How does it feel, knowing you can stop time but you can’t even stop me? You thought it would save your friends, but against I, Lucemon, your resistance is useless! You’ve just made it so your friends can’t even try to defend themselves. Though I admit, for all my power, there is one thing I do not yet know that perhaps you could help me with. Tell me, how does it feel to know you have failed so utterly and completely? Let me hear your soul cry out in despair!”

Luckily for Koichi, he wasn’t quite as helpless as Lucemon was implying. He had been more shocked than anything that Lucemon could move even in the world of stopped time, and thus it was easy for Lucemon to send him flying. However, the Demon Lord had been kind enough to return his weapon, and keeping his friends in stopped time wasn’t as big of a deal as Lucemon made it out to be. Rhihimon held up his staff, and suddenly the world returned to full color as time started flowing normally. Lucemon merely sighed. “I guess you haven’t quite reached the point where you’ve begun to truly despair. You just have to rain on my parade, don’t you? Well, two can play at that game. Draining Rain!”

With that, he raised his hand to the sky, and a light drizzle started falling on all the Legendary Warriors. There was a minor energy drain associated with the move, but that wasn’t the effect that kept all the Warriors frozen in place. That honor went to a cold feeling of recognition at the attack and the beginning of an understanding of what it meant. This attack had been Ranamon’s back during their first adventure, so it should only belong to the bearer of the Spirit of Water. And now the Demon Lord was using it. Lucemon saw the look on all of their faces and started laughing.

“Yes, that’s it, that’s the look I wanted to see! Honestly, even with all my power I thought you could still be a threat to me. After all, Susanoomon really did a number on me last time, and I had to respect that going in to another fight. Since the only way to avoid that would be to keep the Spirits apart, I merely watched Lilithmon closely after she first crossed out of the Dark Area. And sure enough, she led me directly to the hiding place of the Spirits. She took all of yours, but left the other eight where they were easy for me to absorb. Honestly, I could have taken your spirits away as well, but Lilithmon was still useful for my plans at that point and I decided I wanted to face you Warriors again. If I held on to the Spirits of Water, Earth, Wood, and Steel, then Susanoomon could never threaten me. Which meant even at your strongest, you would fight me just to see that doing so is useless, useless, use—”

Lucemon was cut off mid speech by a crackling vortex of darkness that appeared over his head. He took up a ready stance just in case this was some new trick Rhihimon had pulled out of nowhere, but even with that precaution he was nowhere near ready to hear a voice call out “Eden’s Air!” The rainbow aura that normally would incapacitate all evil within its area of effect barely restrained the Demon Lord, but shock alone was enough to buy Ophanimon and Kari all the time they needed to come out of the portal and land safely. As an added bonus, all the drained Legendary Warriors got back on their feet, with the exception of Koji who still lay on the ground clutching his arm.

The Demon Lord got over his shock enough to growl angrily at the intrusion. “I go through all the work to ensure the perfect little reunion, and you just have to interrupt. Well, I guess this means I’ll have to—” However, just what it was Lucemon would have to do was cut off by another distortion in the air, though this one wasn’t particularly dark. It was also a lot less graceful than Ophanimon’s entrance, as TK flopped out of the portal and collapsed onto the ground while Kinkakumon and Ginkakumon sheepishly looked at each other. The golden ogre rubbed the back of her neck. “You know, maybe humans don’t have quite the alcohol tolerance that we do. He doesn’t look too good…”

At this point, numerous things happened at once. Kinkakumon caught sight of Daipenmon out of the corner of her eye and immediately ran after the Legendary Warrior she was smitten with. Kari saw TK passed out on the ground and likewise ran over towards her boyfriend. While those two were focusing on things other than the fight, Ophanimon turned her eyes back to where Lucemon had been a second ago only to find air before her. She wildly looked around for the missing Demon Lord, only to hear him laughing on the opposite side of the battle field. The Demon Lord of Pride had one hand over Lilithmon’s mouth, while the other firmly grasped her DigiCore- which was currently behind her body, as Lucemon had impaled her with his arm in order to grab it. The Demon Lord of Lust didn’t even have time to scream before she reverted into a green Code Key—a Code Key that Lucemon wasted no time absorbing.

Having finally achieved his goal of acquiring all seven Code Keys, Lucemon stopped laughing and turned the world’s so-called heroes. “As I said, I didn’t have a choice. You interrupt my perfect scenario twice, and we need to wrap things up. I get the last Code Key, and EVERYONE ELSE DIES!!” He disappeared from where he had been standing before his shout even reached anybody else’s ears. Kinkakumon had more or less ignored the battle while chasing after the giant penguin that had taken her heart, but she finally caught up to the Legendary Warrior just to say “Hi, Tom—” before Lucemon took the phrase “stole someone’s heart” a little too literally. Ginkakumon cried out in horror as his sister befell the same fate Lilithmon had, but his horror quickly turned to rage. His armor started flashing gold, and with a final yell the Silver Ogre had gained a glowing golden aura. He charged at the Demon Lord of Pride with a tackle that would have obliterated a mountain, but Lucemon stopped the charge with one hand.

“Yes, get angry. Unleash all of your hidden power in an attempt to avenge your scatterbrained sister. But I’m through playing around. When I get pissed off, fighting against me is useless!” He dealt Ginkakumon a devastating blow. “Useless!” His second attack eliminated Ginkakumon’s aura and brought the giant to his knees, but the Demon Lord was far too angry to care. He continued with the full barrage of his Paradise Lost Punch attack, punctuating each blow with a cry of “Useless!” at such a high frequency all the words just blended together. Lucemon didn’t even notice that Ginkakumon had been reduced to data long ago as he continued to punch a crater into the ground.

Lucemon might have punched his way to the center of the Earth if nobody had interacted with him, but the gathered Digimon weren’t going to pass up what might be the last opening they would ever get. TK and Koji were still out of commission, and Kari was busy trying to wake TK up, but everybody else launched attacks at the distracted Demon Lord. The combined might of Aldamon’s Solar Wind Destroyer, JetSilphymon’s Jet Binter, RhinoKabuterimon’s Condenser Storm, Rhihimon’s Red Cross, Daipenmon’s Kakikaki-kun Blast, Ophanimon’s Sefirot Crystal, and MagnaAngemon’s Soul Banisher only managed to get Lucemon’s attention without doing any damage at all. As the Demon Lord flew out of the crater he had created himself, he called an orb of light and an orb of darkness to his hands.

“If you are all in such a rush to die, I’d be happy to oblige. But first, there are a couple more intruders that need to be dealt with!” He launched his Ultimate Sacrifice attack, but it went right over Koichi’s head. The Warrior of Darkness turned around wondering what exactly Lucemon had targeted, but as soon as he saw it he immediately started chasing after the attack. Kari had just managed to wake TK up after his trip through the Beni Hisago, but that small victory was rendered irrelevant when Lucemon’s attack surrounded the two DigiDestined.

Koichi knew from experience what it felt like to take the brunt of Lucemon’s attack, and it wasn’t exactly something he could say he lived through. However, his brief brush with death had at least taught him the mechanics of Lucemon’s attack, so he knew there was still hope for the DigiDestined. The dome flashed with a burst of light, and Koichi took this as his cue to stop time once again. Lucemon had said it took him a split second to start moving, and if his attacks followed the same logic he would have to take every split second he could buy. However, he also knew stopping time would leave his other friends completely at Lucemon’s mercy, so he couldn’t afford to stop time continuously. The Ultimate Sacrifice attack switched to an orb of darkness, and Koichi started his plan.

He stopped time long enough to run a single step, then let time start again. The orb switched back to the light attack, and he stopped time again. Running on this pattern, he managed to reach the orb on its third time cycling to the light attack. However, getting to the orb was only part of the problem. He had to let the orb go back to darkness before he could stage any rescue attempt—as the Warrior of Darkness, he could withstand the darkness enough to push his way through, while the light attack would be especially dangerous. As soon as the orb shifted, he stopped time again and plunged his way in to Lucemon’s attack.

Despite being the Warrior of Darkness in a much stronger form than last time he had faced Lucemon, the darkness of Ultimate Sacrifice was a lot more painful than Koichi remembered. However, as he pushed through the pain, he was surprised to find a small point of light in the middle of Lucemon’s attack. Getting closer, he saw TK was shielding Kari with his body, while a tiny dome of pink and gold light surrounded them. Koichi had heard TK talk about how his Crest of Hope existed to shield the light, no matter how hard the darkness pressed against it. Now that had been put to the test, and it looked like Lucemon was just too strong. The shield had been alternatively shattered and pierced, and TK and Kari’s faces were frozen in pain.

Koichi knew he didn’t have time to be gentle, so he simply grabbed the DigiDestined as they were and kept running forward hoping to come out the other side of the attack. However, he knew the first half of the journey was going to be by far the easiest. Sure, he could keep time stopped and push through the darkness while carrying the two humans relatively easily. But there were only three of them in here, and seven of their allies outside currently stuck in time while Lucemon was free to act on his own. He couldn’t afford to keep time stopped, even if it risked his own life. Time restarted, And Koichi managed to keep running despite the searing pain as Lucemon’s attack surged with light. He made it just outside the dome before it switched back to darkness, promptly lost his Spirit Evolution, and fell to the ground, bringing TK and Kari with him.

Nobody was happier to see Koichi make it out of the attack than Ophanimon and Seraphimon, who had managed to Digivolve when TK had first activated his Crest within Lucemon’s attack. However, it was obviously a narrow escape, and the two angels weren’t sure how many more times they could avoid death when Lucemon hadn’t taken any damage at all. It was time for drastic measures. Turning to their allies, the issued a few orders. “Turn away from us and close your eyes! And as soon as it’s over, you need to get everybody else out of here no matter what. Now!”

Lucemon overheard their plan and made sure to stare directly at the two angel Digimon. After all, if they were so desperate that their allies try to shield themselves, they must be doing something worthwhile. He was excited to see what this last resort would be. As such he made no effort to stop the two as they started glowing and called out, “Ophanimon… Seraphimon... DN—”

Lucemon didn’t know if the two angels ever managed to finish their sentence. Immediately, there was a giant flash of light, and Lucemon felt like he had flown directly into the sun. The holy energy was just too overpowering, and he felt as if his skin had burned completely away in the blaze. He wasn’t sure how long he endured the agony, but when it finally faded to a dull ache he opened his eyes to find himself alone in the remains of what had once been the DigiDestined safe house. He still felt the pain, but as he looked at himself he hadn’t been physically harmed. He grimaced in the face of the phantom pain, but still he couldn’t help himself from feeling a little bit excited. There was only one being that could possibly be powerful enough to unleash that much holy energy. And if those two angels had unlocked a lesser form of the same power, he could use them in his final preparations. After all, he needed to develop immunity to that sublime power once he got over the speedbump that was the DigiDestined…

Chapter Text

Beep…beep…beep…

Koichi awoke from his dream thanks to a strange beeping sound bringing him back to reality. The ceiling overhead was completely unfamiliar, but a quick scan of his surroundings told him exactly where he was: a hospital. The beeping was actually coming from his heartrate monitor, so he supposed he couldn’t be mad at it for waking him up. As he looked further around his room, he saw Tommy sleeping on a chair near his bed. The younger warrior looked exhausted, but Koichi couldn’t help worrying about everyone else—last time he woke up in a hospital, everybody else had been gathered around him after helping him come back from the dead. Obviously, this wasn’t as serious of a case as last time, but if only Tommy was here, something must be keeping the others away.

His first attempt at talking just resulting in a coughing fit, but Koichi managed to get Tommy’s attention with that just as well as calling his name would have. “Koichi? I’m glad you’re up—the doctors weren’t sure how long it would take. How are you feeling?”

Just from how Tommy got out of the chair, Koichi could tell he was in a lot of pain. Apparently, even those who were lucky enough to avoid the hospital stay hadn’t made it out of the fight unscathed. Which just made Koichi worry even more. “I’ve been better, but I should be able to pull through. What about the others, though? Did they make it out okay? What happened to Koji, TK, and Kari?”

Tommy’s face fell at the question, which immediately had Koichi fearing the worst. “None of us had any idea what to do after you went into Lucemon’s attack. When you got TK and Kari out, Seraphimon and Ophanimon did something—I’m not even sure what it was, but there was a giant flash and suddenly it felt like my soul was burning. It took a while before I could even move, but luckily it seemed to affect Lucemon more than it did us. Between the four of us, we managed to grab YukimiBotamon, Poyomon, TK, Kari, you, and Koji and make it most of the way to a hospital before we all collapsed. Luckily, the ambulance got to us pretty quickly.”

“Well, that’s good news at least. Are you the only one that didn’t have to stay here?” Tommy turned his eyes downward.

“Well, you’re technically only here for observation, so you might be able to leave by tomorrow. Takuya, Zoe, and JP are in about the same condition as I am. YukimiBotamon and Poyomon--the baby forms of Patamon and Gatomon—still haven’t woken up. Zoe tried passing them off as stuffed toys, but some of the nurses recognized them right away. Luckily, this hospital is a lot more Digimon friendly than I expected—those nurses I mentioned have their own partners, so they pulled a few strings. It’s the only reason I’m even allowed to be in this room, and they’ve got YukimiBotamon and Poyomon hidden away in the pediatric section under the care of two Sistermon.”

“So, I’m guessing they know we’re in here because of a Digimon attack then? I guess it saves me the trouble of coming up with a believable story.” Tommy nodded as if this was the end of the conversation, but Koichi noticed he had avoided some important parts of his last question.

“What happened to TK and Kari? And where’s Koji?” Tommy took a deep breath, but eventually he forced himself to tell Koichi the bad news.

“Okay, I’m not supposed to know any of this and it could get Miki and Megumi—the nurses partnered with the Sistermon—in big trouble if anybody knew they told me. I still don’t have exact details, but what I do know isn’t good. TK and Kari are both in critical condition and were sent to the ICU. And Koji went into surgery a while ago for his arm—you didn’t get a chance to see it, but it looked really bad. Whatever effect Lilithmon had on BeoWolfmon’s arm seemed to have spread to his human form. I’m honestly not sure what the doctors are going to make of that.” Tommy looked like he was about to throw up, so he quickly changed the subjects. “Speaking of your family, do they know about the whole Legendary Warrior thing? They asked a few questions, and we weren’t sure how to answer them. They should probably hear it from you or Koji—”

At this point, Tommy was forcibly removed from the room by a nurse with purple hair. While Tommy had almost thrown up having to think about the news, Koichi hadn’t received it with the most grace either. And since all his vital signs were being monitored, the sudden spike in heart rate had immediately sent an alarm to the nursing center. As Koichi went through the emergency checkup, however, his mind was on other questions. How could he tell his family about everything he’d been up to these past months—and seven years ago? Would TK and Kari make it, or had he been too late to save them? If Koji got the power of darkness from him instead of Lilithmon, would that have been safer? And now that Lilithmon was dead and Lucemon had all seven Code Keys, did he even have time to worry about these questions?

Astamon frowned as he looked down on the Folder Continent from Lucemon’s throne room. Specifically, he was paying close attention to the mountain range that had once been home to Gaiomon and the Scorpiomon colony. Now that the chaos moved in, however, it was safe to say nothing was living in the general area. Unless you counted the various new forms the chaos was assuming. The most prominent new forms were incredibly large—one was pink with yellow mouths all over its body, and the other looked like a giant version of the sentries but served more like an aircraft carrier with hundreds of the smaller forms docked to its body. However, it wasn’t the variety of almost-living forms that concerned Astamon the most. Before, the chaos had settled over the mountain range, burying the features but leaving it obvious there was something under it. Now, it was impossible to distinguish where the mountains had been from the valleys. He knew the chaos was hand-picked by Lucemon to be the perfect killer, but for some reason Astamon felt it had moved beyond killing Digimon to destroying the world itself.

However, any further thought on the matter was pushed aside by a sudden explosion of light and darkness. The thrill of the spectacle was lost on Astamon as this was Lucemon’s preferred mode of entry when he was feeling particularly excited, but any time Lucemon was in the same room Astamon knew better than to focus on anything else. It was far too easy to earn a round of torture or even death just by misreading Lucemon’s mood, and with someone as fickle as the Demon Lord anything less than rapt attention was bound to result in a mistake. Luckily, Lucemon seemed positively giddy at the moment, so the chance of a mishap was marginally lower than it usually was.

“You know, Astamon, the one thing that continually surprises me is how the world can still pleasantly surprise me when I’m at this level. I have access to the entire history of the world—with a few obvious exceptions—and I’ve taken the time to study a fair bit of it. But, still the world just has to throw things at me I couldn’t have predicted to make my day even better. I went to Earth with the goal of a perfect little reunion with the Legendary Warriors before I got the last Code Key. So of course, my perfect plan has to fail, and the DigiDestined of Hope and Light have to find a way to slip through the cracks. You’d think something like that would ruin my day, wouldn’t you?”

Astamon was expecting Lucemon to continue with his story, but apparently, the last question wasn’t rhetorical. Immediately back on his guard, he replied with a noncommittal “It could have, my lord, but I am sure you found a way to turn the situation to your advantage.”

Lucemon merely rolled his eyes. “You know, I almost miss it when I had minions who weren’t so guarded with their responses. Sometimes it’s nice to get an emotional response. Anyway, I DID let it get to me for a little bit. I went a little crazy, and in my rampage I killed Lilithmon and hit the two DigiDestined with my Ultimate Sacrifice.”

At this, Astamon’s mask of indifference completely slipped away. “You killed the bearers of Hope and Light? Without those two, the DigiDestined shall be powerless against you. Truly, this is a historic moment!” The Prince of the Dark Area hoped he sounded excited, because his words rang hollow in his own ears. As a creature of Darkness, he obviously had his natural enmity with the two powers that so often drove back beings like him. However, the DigiDestined were really his only shot at getting rid of Lucemon, so any blow against them was indirectly a blow against him. And while they might not have been the strongest of the DigiDestined—that role seemed to go to Forgiveness or Miracles—they served as the healers for the group in addition to a symbol for the very things the DigiDestined fought for. If they were dead, the DigiDestined might have lost any chance at victory.

Lucemon seemed to grow tired of keeping Astamon in suspense, so he burst out laughing and continued his story. “That’s the thing—they didn’t die! The Warrior of Darkness can stop time, and with careful application of that ability and a surprising amount of willpower he managed to fight his way through the attack and pull them out. Of course, there’s no guarantee they’ll survive the damage they took, but they weren’t utterly destroyed. I was about to attack them again and finish them off, but then their partners did the most wondrous thing. Care to guess what it was?”

Astamon thought for a while about what Lucemon could mean, but he eventually gave up. After all, there was no way to know what the insane Demon Lord would find wondrous on any given day. When he mentioned that he had no idea, Lucemon merely looked disappointed that Astamon wouldn’t play his game. However, his good mood was so strong that the Demon Lord didn’t let such trivial things bother him. “Those two angels, despite their partners’ near-death states, managed to DNA Digivolve. It only lasted a fraction of a second—not even long enough to introduce themselves. But that fraction of a second was all the time they needed to unleash the power of Shakamon into the world.”

“Impossible! No normal Digimon could even approach the power of the Tathagata! They have as much chance of achieving that power as I do of besting Lord GranDracmon. Only you out of all Digimon can dare hope to approach those two forces of nature in power.”

Lucemon held out his hand to cut his underling off. “Yes, I can understand your skepticism, but that is the only possible explanation. For that one moment, I was engulfed in such a potent light that my soul burned. I am a god, and these two mortal Digimon managed to inflict such exquisite agony on me that I’ve never felt so alive. I have been cut through by Susanoomon’s heavenly blade. I have exposed myself to the strongest light and darkness I could find in order to bend each to my will. At my current level of power, only GranDracmon and Shakamon could possibly do something like that to me.”

“If you are so certain, I guess I have to believe you. Still, it is hard to believe that two DigiDestined had access to that much power…”

Lucemon nodded. “Yes, had I not felt the anguish myself, I would not have believed it either. It was a rush unlike any I have felt before, and I now find myself hoping those two DigiDestined will survive after my attack. As you said, those two Digimon were mere mortals, so even with their Shakamon form I would wager they are pale imitations of the real thing. However, I now have a unique opportunity to repeatedly expose myself to Shakamon’s power in order to prepare myself for my real fight. Make sure I have cells ready for two humans and two Digimon once I defeat the DigiDestined—I would hate to miss out on this opportunity the next time it presents itself. But enough planning for the future—tell me, is there any news from the Digital World?”

Astamon bowed his head. “Nothing that would seem to be of any consequence from the rest of the DigiDestined, my lord. They and every Digimon aligned against us is struggling against the chaos, even more so now that it has deployed newer, stronger forms. Their only real means of defense is relying on fragments of Arkadimon’s power to keep the pestilence at bay. Though, there has been an interesting development within the chaos itself. It seems to have learned how to affect the landscape to the point where it can topple mountains.”

Lucemon rolled his eyes. “It’s about time it got back around to what it was supposed to be doing. I brought it to this world because of its unique properties—it is designed to delete anything that exceeds its allotted parameters. And it grew just smart enough to assign its own allotted parameters to everything based on outdated thinking, so it tries to delete everything now. It’s just too bad those kids did a number on it before I could grab it—I really wish it had been at this level of power the whole time. After all, who needs a world to rule when you can rule a multiverse? Now, leave me be. I need to finish subjecting the Code Key of Lust to my will so I may fully use its power.”

Astamon was used to Lucemon abruptly ending conversations, but the Demon Lord’s revelation about the nature of the chaos gave the Prince the final push he needed. He had always known the Demon Lord was insane, but he had thought he wished to rule all the worlds. It was a desire Astamon could understand—he himself wanted to rule over and reform the Dark Area. However, if Lucemon was willing to flat out destroy entire worlds, Astamon wanted no part in those plans—ruling over a void was just as good as not ruling at all. As soon as Lucemon went into his solitary chamber, Astamon went towards the cells. Technically, he was following Lucemon’s orders in making sure a cell was ready for the DigiDestined, but Astamon had long since mastered the art of following Lucemon’s orders while trying to subvert his ruler at the same time.

The Prince of the Dark Area grabbed the unconscious Meramon and opened a portal to the Dark Ocean. He wished he could make direct moves to turn the tide of war against Lucemon, but there was a price to pay for being such a high-ranking advisor. Any high-ranking ally of the DigiDestined would most likely kill him on sight rather than listen to what he had to say. And now that Lucemon could look at any moment in history, he had to make sure he wasn’t meeting with anybody that would make his treason obvious. Since he couldn’t meet with any enemy directly, he had to send someone he trusted that wasn’t a known agent of Lucemon. And at this point, there was only one candidate that fit that description.

On his arrival at the Dark Ocean, Astamon expected a long search for BeelStarrmon. After all, just knowing the world someone was in really didn’t help you find them. And considering BeelStarrmon’s ability to teleport, even exact coordinates wouldn’t have helped pin her down. Surprisingly, however, he found the Demon Man Digimon lying dejectedly in the sand beneath him as soon as he arrived. He had known the Freeshooter for a long time now, so he knew she was incredibly unpredictable. However, as long as he had known her she had always had an undeniable vitality and spirit to her, so being so listless was the only thing BeelStarrmon could have done to surprise the former Musketeer. Feeling a sense of worry for his protégé, Astamon casually tossed the unconscious Meramon aside and flew down next to BeelStarrmon.

The Freeshooter shifted slightly when she heard someone land next to her, but seeing it was Astamon she merely grunted and turned away. “Oh, it’s just you. Listen, I know it doesn’t happen often, but I’m not really in the mood for our usual song and dance right now. I had some fun with the new Lilithmon, but considering her Empress Emblaze attack faded away after I let her go fight Lucemon I’m pretty sure she’s dead now. And for some reason, I feel bad about that. So, it was nice seeing you, but there’s something about being alone in this sand that sounds really interesting right now.”

Still, Astamon wasn’t going to let his friend wallow in misery, so he sighed and lay in the sand himself. “Really, does this help? Because I’ve been struggling with a similar feeling lately as well. I think it’s called remorse. The world is falling apart, and I haven’t done all that I could to stop it. Even though that isn’t my responsibility, I feel like it should have been. And I realize how all this sounds. I mean, I’ve always felt an obligation to help my subjects, but this kind of global caring is something that fits a DigiDestined partner much more than a ruler of the Dark Area.”

BeelStarrmon snorted—not quite a chuckle, but Astamon was glad he got some reaction at least. “Wow, look at you. I’m just not feeling like my usual self, and you have to make it sound like I’m switching sides. You should know me better than that. I go with whatever sounds the most fun to me, and that whole hero gig is a bunch of responsibility and thankless work. Not exactly the exciting life I want to lead.”

Astamon sighed. “Did you honestly think I expected you to do anything else? If I wanted you to immediately jump ship and become some human’s pet, I would have brought a kid as a gift instead of a Meramon.”

BeelStarrmon looked back in the direction Astamon pointed to see that there was in fact a Meramon unconscious in the sand further back. “Well, I’ve gotten some pretty crazy gifts in my time, but this one has to take the cake. And I know I’m into some pretty weird stuff, but I’m not so sure I’d have any fun in this situation. So, what makes this Meramon such a good gift?”

Astamon smiled—he knew he had piqued her curiosity. “Well, you always like some excitement in your life, right? I was thinking you could try to give the role of double agent a try. In a much more obvious role than either I or Murmukusmon can take, seeing as Lucemon keeps a closer eye on us than he does anybody else.”

BeelStarrmon rolled her eyes. “Let’s say I decide to go along with this stupid plan. How exactly would an unconscious Meramon help?” Astamon blinked, and then realized BeelStarrmon hadn’t been in the loop for a while and thus was missing out on some important information.

“Well, this Meramon had been consulting directly with the Sovereign in alliance against us, until he had the misfortune of running into Murmukusmon when he needed a disguise. Since you are a Virus type, I thought you would need some kind of peace offering to prove to our counterparts that you were trying to help them. Returning one of their own from prison and revealing a traitor in their midst would fulfill that purpose. Just give me a bit of time to warn Murmukusmon that his cover will be blown so he doesn’t do something we’d all regret—like dying or killing off potential allies.”

BeelStarrmon nodded. “Alright, I guess he could be useful. And against my better judgement, I think I might go along with this plan. Maybe there’ll be somebody on that side who’s just as fun as you were before this whole responsibility thing happened. And they won’t have any practice dealing with me—I can see that being a fun surprise. So, what exactly would be the goal of me becoming a double agent?”

It had been a long time since Astamon had heard BeelStarrmon sound this serious and actually think of a long-term plan, so he dropped his playful tone as well. “You probably haven’t been following this, but the carrier Lucemon chose for the X-Program has been evolving on the Digital World. Instead of just killing Digimon, it has started deleting anything it touches, and this is apparently what it was supposed to do the whole time. When it was killing Digimon I thought it would be easy to restore them later to serve as our adoring subjects, but if it’s killing the world itself I’m not so sure Lucemon ever planned on restoring his victims after his takeover. Since I want to rule and not eradicate everything, we need to stop this abomination.”

“I have no idea how to eliminate an extradimensional being, but we are lucky. Lucemon revealed that a group of DigiDestined managed to defeat this being in their home world, so they should know how to eliminate it one more time. We need to plan a distraction to get Lucemon out of his throne room, and then we need to get the DigiDestined of Knowledge and the sister of the DigiDestined of Devotion in. He should be able to figure out the home dimension of the terror, and then her Wisemon should be able to get them across and find a solution to our problem.”

BeelStarrmon sighed. “Sounds to me like there are a whole lot of variables to that plan. First, we have to rely on the Sovereign NOT to kill me on sight before I have a chance to explain myself. Second, they have to come up with a distraction that will keep Lucemon busy that DOESN’T involve the DigiDestined, since stopping the chaos and leaving Lucemon alive is a bit counterproductive. And the DigiDestined have long enough odds of victory as it is without taking away their support. Third, even if we get the distraction and the Sovereign agree with this plan, we have to hope the DigiDestined of this other world will agree to help us out. With so many things to go wrong, this is looking like a hopeless gamble. But then again, those are the most fun…”

Hideto watched from Warg’s back as Melga battled with the strange chaos monster covered in giant mouths. The landscape around the two combatants was already covered in yards of ice thanks to Omegamon’s attacks, but when the chaos army was down to only a handful members Melga had asked to fight separately. And really, that was the whole point of this exercise. Or at least, that was the excuse Hideto used. Ever since Gaiomon had given Omegamon the X-Antibody, these trips to fight the chaos were the only time Hideto got to actually do anything.

As soon as he had run his more detailed scans on Omegamon and found nothing too worrisome about the new form, Hideto had Partitioned his partners. Warg and Melga both had transformed as well, proving the X-Antibody spread throughout all of a Digimon’s forms. However, since the X-Antibody was the only thing they had to withstand the chaos, Warg and Melga had been forced to spend almost all their time in stasis as Sigma, Willis, and Izzy tried picking apart the changes in their code and replicating the part of it that gave immunity to the virus. Hideto knew how important this work was, but he also knew how much his partners hated being cooped up like that. He also wasn’t too happy to sit around while his partners had their very makeup picked apart trying to figure out what exactly made their new forms work. He trusted the other DigiDestined, but nothing like this had ever been done before so there was a clear element of risk to the process.

Hideto knew the experiments were important for fighting the chaos, but as far as he was concerned that wasn’t the main threat at the moment. Sure, it was evolving at a worrying rate, but they had pretty much managed to evacuate the inhabitants of the Digital World to safety at this point. Since the chaos couldn’t do much anymore, Hideto wanted to focus on the threat that already had succeeded in hospitalizing or killing most of their allies. Lucemon just got the last Code Key; Mari, TK, Kari, Koichi, and Koji were all hospitalized; Tai and Matt were out of battle as they looked after their families; and for some reason everybody seemed to be ignoring the Demon Lord to focus on the latest abomination. It was like overlooking Daemon to focus on Arkadimon, and Hideto certainly wasn’t going to forget which of those two threats had been greater at the end of the battle.

Between his own personal beliefs and his partners’ dislikes of the experimental data copying, Hideto found every excuse to get away for a while. Of course, if anybody else asked, he gave a much more valid reason for why Warg and Melga needed to leave—they were still getting used to their new forms. And since the best way to practice was to fight, they still ended up working against the chaos even as they prepared to fight Lucemon. Warg had been the first to test if the X-Antibody would allow him to survive contact with the chaos. Hideto had been reluctant to let his partner go with only the word of a clearly insane Gaiomon that it wasn’t a suicide mission supporting him, but Warg had insisted. According to the Dragon Man Digimon, they needed to know if they actually had a form of protection, and it was best to find out now when there would only be one victim instead of later when there could be multiple.

Hideto had tried coming up with a good argument against this logic, but as Warg had waited to bring this up until they were facing a mass of chaos the Mega level had a distinct advantage. Before Hideto could say anything, the Dragon Man dove straight into the red mass, and after a brief second of panic Hideto was relieved to see a giant fireball explode outward from his unharmed partner. From that encounter, Warg learned he had a resistance to the chaos, but not a full immunity. It drained him the longer he stayed in contact with it, and from how he felt after thirty seconds he put the upper limit of time he could safely stay immersed in chaos at one minute. Not a long time by any stretch of the imagination, but still infinitely better than instant death.

With that effect of the X-Antibody tested, Hideto had focused on getting his partners used to the other changes. Like Omegamon, Warg’s armor had changed from a sleek design to an angular one. It was also considerably thicker, which hampered his flying ability a little bit. The added power the new form gave meant he could fly faster than he used to, but he wasn’t nearly as efficient about it so Hideto knew covering long distances would be a little more difficult. The added power was also put into his attacks, some of which changed name but were basically the same things. His Gaia Force was essentially a stronger Terra Force, and his Ultra Tornado had upgraded to Grey Fire Zero. He did have one new attack in Poseidon Force, but Hideto wasn’t sure how useful that skill would be. It was essentially a copy of Gaia Force using water instead of fire, but it had a major drawback. Warg was capable of converting the natural energy around him into a fireball, but he couldn’t make water on his own. This meant he could only use Poseidon Force if he was near a water source, so the only time he had ever used it was when fighting against a mass of chaos that was extending towards the ocean.

Much like Warg, Omegamon hadn’t changed too much either. The same armor changes that affected the Dragon Man extended to the Holy Knight, but beyond that there weren’t any noticeable changes beyond an increase in power. Before Omegamon had been about equal to a normal Demon Lord and equal to about 3 Megas, but with the X-Antibody the Royal Knight had advanced to a point where he was on par with a Super Ultimate Digimon. In fact, he had grown so powerful that he was afraid of using his full power. He preferred to use his Transcendent Sword and Supreme Cannon attacks compared to their upgraded Omega forms in an effort to keep collateral damage at a manageable level. He also had new attack, but he refused to use it. Considering it was named All Delete and the sheer amount of power Omegamon had before getting the X-Antibody, Hideto really didn’t blame his partner for staying away from that one.

However, while Omegamon and Warg hadn’t changed too much, Melga was struggling a bit with his new form. He also had the typical pointy look that the X-Antibody always seemed to cause, but compared to the other changes that seemed completely minor. He was now bipedal, and his left arm wasn’t so much an arm as it was a Gatling gun mounted to his elbow. He still had missile launchers all over his body, but could now fire either normal or ice missiles instead of just the freezing ones. Combined with the laser cannon on his right shoulder, the mechanical wolf was even more ridiculously well-armed than his previous form, but that just meant he had even more weaponry to get used to. These factors just made it more difficult for Melga to get used to the changes, which is why he wanted to fight on his own whenever he had the chance.

Of course, even when he was struggling Melga was still equal in power to a Burst Mode Digimon, so fighting alone wasn’t too much of a setback. The mouth agent and the giant troop carrier were still struggles to fight alone, but with his ability to lock on to the cables that served as their lifelines Melga could usually take them out without things getting too dangerous. Unfortunately, this efficiency meant Hideto often didn’t spend as much time away from the Sovereign’s base as he would have liked. As the last agent faded into bubbles, the DigiDestined of Forgiveness knew he’d have to go back. As much as he hated to leave Warg and Melga, he might have to take another trip back to Earth for the sake of his sanity. Sure, his time there wasn’t much better—he went from watching Warg and Melga in stasis to Mari’s hospital room, where she spent around 16 hours a day sleeping—but at least there he could talk with some of the soldiers and medics. He wasn’t enlisted himself, and Japan hadn’t been involved in an actual war since World War II, but it helped having people around who were trained to fight if need be. They had even let the DigiDestined sit in on various support groups for veterans in a surprising show of support considering the general anti-Digimon sentiment that prevailed in the world.

Hideto was so lost in thought that he wasn’t paying attention to his surroundings, and because of this he almost flew off of Warg when the Dragon Man Digimon came to a sudden stop. After regaining his balance, Hideto followed his partner’s eyes to see ten green humanoid figures standing in a circle around a smaller figure wearing black. Judging from the red cords extending from the backs of the horned figures, they were yet another manifestation of chaos, but they seemed hesitant to do anything other than surround the figure. Hideto immediately guessed the figure’s identity, just in time for HolyAngemon to call out “Masamune!” and call forth his ridiculously long sword. Even with the newly renamed blade’s impressive reach, however, the green figures managed to jump out of the way, revealing themselves to be surprisingly agile.

Melga started flying in to aid the corrupted angel, but Hideto ordered him to hold off for a moment. From what he had heard from Gon, HolyAngemon had been searching out the chaos all over the continent just to blow off some steam. Since Hideto was doing the same thing himself, he knew how counterproductive it would be to interrupt the fight now. Of course, just because he respected HolyAngemon’s right to fight alone didn’t mean he was about to abandon an ally in case things turned ugly. His order also had Melga lock on to all the enemy targets and ready to fire, and Warg was already flying towards the ground to set his partner down and join the fight if need be. Before the Dragon Man could reach the ground, however, HolyAngemon called out “Sin Harvest!” Two of the chaos agents were caught in the confines of an orange orb. After a second, the orb exploded, completely eliminating the beings that had been trapped inside.

Hideto was prepared to leave the rest of this fight to HolyAngemon after witnessing that attack, but before he could even turn away HolyAngemon reverted to his Ultimate form and passed out. Hideto wasn’t sure if it was the side effects of his Sin Harvest attack or if HolyAngemon had just been fighting until the point of exhaustion, but either way the angel was being reckless. If it wasn’t for his automatic repulsion of the chaos, he would easily have been killed right then and there—that is, if Hideto hadn’t been flying by at the time. Hideto didn’t even need to send an order to Melga for the wolf to call out “Garuru Burst!” and rain his entire ordinance down on the enemies.

When the barrage of missiles, bullets, and lasers ended, Melga was a bit surprised to see five survivors of his attack. Previously, he had fought against large numbers of small, weak agents and giant agents that were a bit tougher but slower and always in lower numbers. Apparently, these new green agents were the middle ground—faster and more numerous than the giant agents, but significantly tougher than any of the smaller opponents. However, just as he thought that the five surviving agents bounced back from his attack and grew to about three times their original size. The giant agents ran towards Melga and tried to strike the wolf with the horn growing out of their faces, but Hideto’s quick thinking saved his partner from taking the attack. Following his partner’s order, Melga used his Metal Wolf Claw to freeze the ground in front of the charging enemies. It didn’t work quite as well as he had hoped—despite their giant size the agents were surprisingly nimble—but even if they didn’t fall they slipped enough to give Melga and opening to weave through them.

Seeing the increased threat level of the newest agents, Warg flew in to help his brother in arms. However, he needn’t have worried. Melga was initially surprised by the enemies’ durability, but now that he knew they could survive a spread attack he focused on one enemy at a time, quickly eliminating three agents in the time it took Warg to eliminate the remaining two. Individually each would have been a struggle for a normal Mega, but after the X-Antibody ascended them to a level equivalent to a Burst Mode the two Digimon could easily take out opponents one on one. With the last of the chaos dissipated, Hideto turned towards the fallen HolyAngemon. It was most likely the one-winged angel’s own fault he was in this mess, but Hideto still couldn’t leave him out here alone. Warg grabbed the fallen angel while Hideto climbed on to Melga, and the two Digimon then raced each other to Daemon’s old castle. Any time the spent getting HolyAngemon to somewhere he could recover was less time they spent in stasis, but they still needed to work on their speed so they didn’t bother slowing down.

Chapter Text

After leaving HolyAngemon under the watchful eyes of Gon—who was apparently second in command of the Folder Continent after all the casualties—Hideto’s trip back to the Sovereign’s temple was completely uneventful. However, when he finally arrived, it was obvious he had missed out on a lot of excitement. Piedmon was holding what appeared to be a female Beelzemon hostage with a sword at her throat, and HerculesKabuterimon, MegaGargomon, Cherubimon, and the Sovereign all seemed ready to attack her at the slightest provocation. The other Digimon gathered were turning to each other in confusion, but Hideto’s eyes were drawn to the newest member of the group—a large golden dragon larger than any Sovereign but Azulongmon was swishing its tail back and forth, seemingly oblivious to the gouges left in the earth by its golden armor. Hideto didn’t really need to scan this newcomer to know Fanglongmon had finally joined the other Sovereign after his eons of imprisonment.

Omegamon landed right in the middle of the group, providing a much-needed distraction to let some of the tension out of the air. The Sovereign still looked ready to fight, but the partner Digimon relaxed slightly and all the other Digimon seemed to let out a collective sigh of relief at the appearance of the Royal Knight. The only exception was Piedmon, who continued to hold the intruder prisoner. However, now that he was closer, Hideto could see that Piedmon was doing a good job of looking like he was holding her prisoner without actually threatening her. Seeing this, Hideto smirked and turned to Sigma to find out what was happening.

The DigiDestined of Darkness still wasn’t the best at holding a conversation, but at least he didn’t use his text-to-voice program any more. “She warped in here carrying a Meramon. Baihumon attacked her right away. She started teleporting. Digimon started panicking whenever she appeared. Piedmon caught her with Masks Square, and the others are trying to maintain order.”

With that new information, Hideto turned to the apparent captive and smiled. “Sorry about the greeting, but I think you can understand people being a little jumpy considering the situation. So, what brings you around to our not-so-secret safe zone?”

The captive Digimon smiled. “And here I thought your side would be boring. Between this joker here and your attitude, I think I could enjoy this—”

At this, Zhuqiaomon interrupted with a roar. “SILENCE! What makes you think a servant of Lucemon has any right to enjoy themselves after breaching this holy ground? Phoenix Fire!” The Sovereign launched his attack, not even caring that Piedmon would be caught in the flames as well. However, the holy flames never reached their target as Omegamon unleashed a stream of ice that cancelled out the attack with a cloud of steam. The Holy Bird Digimon was incensed that one of his allies would dare get in his way, but even with his temper he knew it was foolish to test the Royal Knight’s strength.

While Omegamon seemed content to stay between Zhuqiaomon and Piedmon without making any threatening motions, Hideto was a little more combative. “What, just because she’s a Virus type means she’s evil? Let’s assume you’re right for a second. What exactly is the purpose of her coming here? She’d have to know showing up in the middle of the Sovereign would be a suicide mission. And why burden herself with a Meramon? Either Lucemon wanted us to kill her, or she’s trying to help us. Either way, I’m not going to be so quick to judge her. And why should you? Sigma and I helped an attempt to destroy the world, and you tolerate our presence because you need us. Times are desperate enough that we may as well listen to what she has to say before we try frying her along with our allies.”

BeelStarrmon started laughing. “Does this kind of thing happen all the time? Open insubordination is so refreshing to see—especially when you know somebody can get away with it. But in a way, birdbrain there was right. Until a few days ago, I was working with Lucemon. But I’m switching sides now. And it really wasn’t too hard to find my way here—I mean, Murmukusmon has been impersonating Meramon for weeks now, so Lucemon knew everything that was happening here.”

She said this as calmly as if she were discussing the weather, but her calmness did not extend to the rest of the listeners, who turned at once to the Digimon they thought was Meramon. The Flame Digimon sighed before changing shape into Lucemon’s leading spy. Cherubimon immediately threw a Lightning Spear at the Demon Lord, but the Virus type disappeared into a dark portal before the attack could connect. However, he must have stayed nearby, as Murmukusmon’s disembodied voice drifted through the temple.

“So, this is the choice you’ve made, BeelStarrmon? I look forward to seeing the end result of your decision. As long as Lord Lucemon lives, your life may as well be forfeit.” With that, Murmukusmon’s voice faded away, leaving an eerie silence throughout the temple. Never one to let things stay quiet for long, BeelStarrmon cleared her throat.

“Well, that was dramatic. But Murmukusmon wasn’t the only thing I came here to tell you about.” She turned to Piedmon and smiled. “It’s been great dancing with you, puddin’, but I don’t know if anybody could take my words seriously if you keep your hands all over me like this…”

Piedmon laughed back as he let her go. “Oh, you are just a treat. We really must do this again sometime. I could use another harlequin in my show.”

The laughter of the two Demon Man Digimon seemed to take the rest of the tension out of the air. However, as soon as BeelStarrmon explained her plan, the brief reprieve shattered. Despite all the evidence that she really had defected to their side, Izzy thought BeelStarrmon’s plan sounded like it would actually help Lucemon. He had studied under Minervamon and knew there were DigiDestined in other universes, so her story about the chaos being defeated by DigiDestined in its home universe was easy to believe. Given some time in the Hall of Olympus, he could probably even open a window into that universe. But that involved him actually getting some uninterrupted time in the Hall, which meant keeping Lucemon’s attention elsewhere. Keeping the Demon Lord’s nearly all-seeing eyes away from his home base would require a distraction, and Izzy wasn’t sure they could pull that off.

Ideally, they wouldn’t be setting up a distraction and would be taking the fight to Lucemon right away before he could fully assimilate Lilithmon’s Code Key. But attacking Lucemon at anything less than full strength was tantamount to suicide, and they had too many people in the hospital to think about mounting an attack. Normally, they would try to use Ophanimon or MagnaAngemon to expedite the healing process, but that plan didn’t work when TK and Kari were the ones out of commission. And Mari may have unlocked another Digimon form with healing abilities, but she was also out of the fight for the next few days. There was nothing they could do to help the recovery, so the DigiDestined were essentially helpless until they got back to full strength.

Since the DigiDestined had to sit this fight out, the only option was for their allies to provide the distraction. However, their strongest fighters were the Sovereign, and Lucemon had defeated all five of them in the past when he was only operating on his own power. Since they couldn’t match Lucemon in terms of quality of fighters, they would have to rely on quantity of fighters. And while they did have a veritable army of supporters around the Digital World, they couldn’t just ask the world’s population to march to their deaths just to buy some time and still think they were any better than Lucemon. As he was trying to find a third option—or at least, a third option that wasn’t doing nothing—he noticed other small groups of Digimon coming to the realization of the sacrifice needed to enact BeelStarrmon’s plan. However, a surprising number of them seemed willing to throw their lives away, so Izzy started putting together an argument to stop them from following through with it.

Before Izzy could even speak his mind, an earthquake rent the ground in two. At least, Izzy thought it was an earthquake, but as he regained his balance he saw Fanglongmon with his claws in the newly-opened fissure revealing the destruction to be the work of the Holy Dragon Digimon. Satisfied that he had everybody’s attention, the Yellow Dragon of the Center snarled out his decree. “Enough squabbling! This girl’s plan is irrelevant. I shall fight Lucemon, and I shall avenge my previous loss. If any of you are foolish enough to get in my way, I shall strike you down without hesitation.” With this, the dragon that had once been emperor of the world lumbered away, leaving the remaining Digimon in a state of shocked silence for a few seconds. Eventually, Ebonwumon took charge and addressed the crowd.

“Well, I suppose that went about as well as we should have expected. Though this might be the only way to get Fanglongmon to follow any sort of plan. That one was always a stubborn one, and grumpy in the mornings too. But we may as well use this to our advantage. I’ll support him in his quest, and only those who are willing to die should join me. And if I get killed by Fanglongmon instead of Lucemon, well, at least I’m not going to feed his power that way.”

With this, a bunch of other Digimon started volunteering to join Ebonwumon, most notably the other Sovereign. Izzy tried convincing the crowd against this course of action, but Hideto cut him off. “Listen, Izzy, I know you don’t like this, but you have to accept that Digimon have their own free will, and we can’t stop them from doing whatever they choose with their lives. I hate this too—I’ve seen more than enough Digimon die while I stood by and did nothing—but we can’t control everything. The best we can do is make sure their sacrifices won’t be in vain. How long would it take you to get ready and do whatever you have to do to get Wisemon the coordinates he needs?”

Before he could respond, Willis cut in. “Whatever you’re about to say, take out a third of the time. This is more important than cracking open the X-Antibody, so I’ll do whatever I can to help. BeelStarrmon probably can’t take both of us at once, but I can do any setup work you need. The sooner you complete this mission, the sooner you can get back and the fewer Digimon have to die for this.”

Izzy nodded his thanks. “With your help, I should be ready in a half hour. I’ll need to grab some things from Earth, and I should probably let everybody else know what’s going on—”

“Don’t worry about that,” Hideto interrupted. “You just do what you have to do. I’ll get Rei here and let everybody else know what’s going on. Sigma, I’m going to need your help with that, so you’re with me.”  The computer expert of the Alias III seemed surprised that he wasn’t being assigned to help the other two, but he closed his laptop and walked to Hideto’s side. Hideto seemed to be scanning the area, but Sigma could tell there was something else on his mind. In fact, the first Alias had some thoughts of his own on the matter, but they were best said away from Izzy and Willis. As soon as the DigiDestined of Knowledge and Destiny took their partners back to Earth, Sigma turned to Hideto.

“How are you planning on telling the others? They won’t be swayed as easily as Izzy was. If they participate, we might not have enough strength to beat Lucemon later.” Hideto merely grabbed his Crest.

“That’s why we aren’t going to tell them the full truth. We’ll have to tell Rei, and we should get Neo here to try and plan out the best possible strategy going into this fight, but the others don’t need to know. I’ll tell them we’re trying to get in contact with DigiDestined from another dimension for help, and Izzy is working on it but it’s a tricky situation so we need to limit all travel to the Digital World until he gives us the all clear. It’s true enough, and it should be good enough to keep everyone back on Earth—at least until everybody’s out of the hospital. And if that makes me a bad person, well, you can just add it to the list of reasons my Crest won’t activate.”

Sigma nodded. He didn’t like the plan, but he could see it was a necessary step. Unconsciously, his hand wandered to his own Crest. Unlike Hideto, he didn’t need to forgive himself to get his Crest to glow. As the bearer of Darkness, his Crest thrived on the darkest aspects of his own nature. A plan like this only made it easier for him to access his full power…

Neo rolled his eyes as he looked at the army gathered before him. He wasn’t sure why Hideto had even brought him here. Sure, he was quite possibly the best battle strategist around, and he had some experience leading vast armies during his… business arrangement with Daemon. But it wasn’t like he could just plan out every eventuality in a fight and create a perfect strategy beforehand. He hadn’t seen Lucemon fight at all, and even with descriptions of all the strategies the Demon Lord used Neo would need to be present to analyze them and exploit any weaknesses. Since part of the reason this whole army was fighting was to prevent any DigiDestined from getting caught in Lucemon’s sights, this worked against his usual strategy.

Normally under these circumstances, Neo would just view the whole thing as a challenge to be overcome and still create a strategy that, while far from perfect, would still be effective. However, the army he was working with was less an organized squad and more a rabble of every Digimon that had ever aligned themselves against the forces of darkness. Despite this fight being well and clearly designated as a suicide mission, he had actually had to turn away volunteers. Even when he was manipulated by Daemon, he wouldn’t have sent a bunch of Baby levels into a fight they had no chance of surviving. Deciding the Champion level was as good of a dividing line as any for when a Digimon had reached adulthood and thus would be able to understand the sacrifice they were making, Neo turned away any Rookie level or lower Digimon.

While this policy wasn’t very popular with the Rookie levels who felt they should be able to fight, Elecmon settled the argument by pointing out the fact that somebody had to watch after the Baby and In-Training levels, so the Rookies that were staying behind had an important task to make sure there were Digimon left after the war with Lucemon. In a gesture of appeasement, Anubismon then publicly announced to the Rookies that he would also be staying behind to watch after the future of the world. The Mega’s announcement swayed all those who wanted to join, though many Digimon who had already volunteered to fight began questioning the God Man Digimon’s loyalty. The Sovereign quickly quelled the dissent, however, because Anubismon had already told them the real reason he was staying behind. He needed to be alive after Lucemon died to take his role as ruler of the underworld and ensure any Digimon could be reborn. If he fought Lucemon and died, the entire Digital World was doomed to become a lifeless wasteland. He would assist the DigiDestined in the final struggle if it was needed, but he couldn’t fight until then.

Neo decided to put Anubismon in charge of the temple, and started assigning other Champion or higher level Digimon to be in charge at the various safe houses. Since HolyAngemon was still unconscious, he left Gon in charge of Daemon’s Castle. He had originally planned on leaving Piximon in charge of his own house, but the Ultimate level insisted on fighting and nominated Leomon to take his place. As the aquatic Digimon wouldn’t be able to make it to Fanglongmon’s chosen battle ground, Whamon was in charge of watching after them in their undersea sanctuary from the chaos. The golden dragon was so stubborn that the other four Sovereign had barely convinced him to wait twenty minutes for more Digimon to gather, so Neo knew he shouldn’t bother giving orders to the headstrong Sovereign. Even with Sigma’s Mask Square speeding up the process of gathering forces, Fanglongmon had torn another fissure in the ground out of sheer impatience. Knowing he needed to hurry before the golden dragon did some of Lucemon’s work for him, Neo had Hagurumon Digivolve twice and stood on Megadramon’s head. If he was going to give a speech, he may as well practice resisting the effects of his partner’s glitch at the same time.

“I’m not going to sugarcoat this. If 95 percent of you die on this mission, I’d be surprised that so many survived. And beating Lucemon may as well be out of the question. But your goal today isn’t to win, or even to survive. You just have to endure. Because of this, you must be even more careful. Do not leave yourself open in the hopes of unleashing a more damaging attack. Keep your eyes on the Digimon next to you and try to help them stay alive. But don’t rely on any Digimon to take control of the situation. If you nominate generals, you are just asking to fall in disarray when those generals inevitably die. There is no way to plan for every contingency in a fight like this, so you will need to be able to think on your feet. But if you want to hold the line and earn a future that will remember you, you WILL find a way to succeed. I have a plan that might help for that…”

A woman with blonde hair sighed as she sat in her chair, alone in a giant dome shaped room. This room was designed to be an emergency command center and brought in information from all around the world, but now the screens were showing no activity and an oppressive silence hung throughout the room. Normally she wouldn’t complain about this—the smallest of warnings could end up becoming a major issue just like the ordeal last year—but ever since her partner had been placed on administrative leave the job just hadn’t been as fun. Though she supposed it was a small miracle that it had taken this long for the suspension to come down—when you work for a government organization designed to monitor all data throughout the world, you really shouldn’t expect to keep your relationship with your superior a secret for long.

With her boss and her partner both on leave until the situation could be sorted out, she had grown a lot closer to the kids in the past month. However, while there was usually one of them standing by just in case a disturbance came up, they were all attending the birthday party today, much to the chagrin of the birthday girl. She was probably hoping for a repeat of last year’s events to break up the party. Smiling at the thought, the woman decided she’d stretch her legs and lowered her chair to the ground, intending to get a cup of coffee. However, as soon as the chair touched the ground, the entire dome lit up with red warning lights.

Quickly getting back to work, she started analyzing the signal, but was shocked to see it was unlike anything else she had seen. This was especially worrisome considering they had seen their fair share of anomalies in the years. It was most similar to the portal they had opened themselves almost two years ago now, but it didn’t seem to be coming from the Digital World at all. Trying to pinpoint a location of the disturbance so she could at least alert the kids to a potential threat, she paled as the computer returned a set of GPS coordinates that coincided with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building—meaning she was sitting right on top of the emergence site. Her computer was automatically sending an alert to the rest of the organization, but something told her that wouldn’t be enough. She pulled out her phone and quickly called her partner.

“Riley, it’s Tally. We’ve got an emergence right at HQ, but it’s like nothing I’ve seen before. Get Yamaki in here, and let the Tamers know—” The call was quickly lost as a white fog suddenly filled the room and disrupted all electrical equipment. Tally put her now useless phone away and started making her way to the exit hoping to get out before whatever the anomaly was could fully Bio-Emerge, but she had only taken a few steps when she heard three crashes from across the room…

When Sora arrived at the hospital, she wasn’t surprised to find Matt sitting in the waiting room wearing the same clothes he had on when TK was admitted yesterday. From the look of it, though, he hadn’t been the only one to spend a sleepless night there, as Tai had also been unwilling to leave until he heard news about his younger sibling. At least their parents had taken shifts running out to get food in the meantime. Sora could tell these two wouldn’t really be affected by the sudden ban on travel to the Digital World. Considering Izzy could do things with a computer that only people like Willis and Sigma could understand, Sora had long since learned just to go with his plans even if they sounded crazy.

Still, it would have been nice to have the Digital World available at the moment. It looked like Matt really needed to get away from the hospital, and it was hard to get further away than another dimension. Then again, maybe even the Digital World wasn’t far enough away. With how little progress they had been making in the war, everybody had been feeling worse and worse about their failures. Matt had been in a pretty dark place even before TK ended up in the hospital. It wasn’t quite as bad as the point in their first adventure where the two of them had each fallen into whatever dark dimension grabbed them during the fight with the Dark Masters, but it was getting close to that level again. Last time Matt had pulled her out of her own depression, so this time she was going to do her best to return the favor.

Luckily, she wasn’t alone in wanting to cheer Matt up. Even though their relationship hadn’t worked out, his mom and dad could really come together and provide a unified front when it came to the safety of their sons. Between the two of them, they managed to convince Matt that he wasn’t helping TK by moping around a waiting room. After that, Sora finally managed to get him out of the hospital. However, since she hadn’t had time to make any preparations for a date, Sora merely led Matt to a nearby park. They both usually liked to have more excitement on most dates, but she could tell Matt wouldn’t be up for anything like that now. Instead, they settled for wandering the paths and enjoying the scenery, eventually sitting down underneath a large cherry tree looking over a pond. If it weren’t for the unusually cold spring, they might have had the cherry blossoms all around them, but the buds still hadn’t bloomed in this part of the country.

Thinking about the flowers got Sora thinking about other things that could be happening right now to make this the perfect date. Specifically, she was thinking about a little box currently tucked away at the bottom of her purse, and how much she’d love to make use of it under better circumstances. Sure, it was a bit unusual that she had gone out and bought a ring, but she and Matt always did have a relationship that was a little unusual. Besides, she was the DigiDestined of Love. If anyone had the right to go out and buy an engagement ring, she figured she was at the top of the list. But now that she actually had the ring, she was starting to doubt if it was a good idea after all. And it especially wasn’t the best idea in the current situation. There would be enough time to think about a wedding after TK and the others were out of the hospital, Lucemon was defeated, and there was finally peace in the Digital World.

As Sora was thinking all of these thoughts, she ended up spacing out a little bit and staring off in the distance. She had been having a conversation with Matt beforehand, but it wasn’t particularly important. Besides, Matt didn’t mind. He knew how much Sora just wanted to make him feel better about things, and he wasn’t doing a great job of showing his appreciation. And while he always thought Sora was beautiful, something was different right now. He lost his breath just looking at her, and suddenly he found words spilling out of his mouth that he hadn’t been planning on saying.

“Sora, will you marry me?” Hearing his own voice being much louder than it should have been and saying those words, the rest of Matt’s mind suddenly caught up to what had just happened. Sora had quickly spun her head around and was now staring at him with a look of shock on her face, causing Matt to keep babbling.

“Oh god, I’m such an idiot. How could I screw that up? I had this whole thing planned out where I was going to borrow Angemon and Angewomon and have literal angels on our side as I proposed, and now I just had to go and ruin it by asking now and—” Matt knew he was babbling, but seeing Sora’s eyes light up as she smiled gave him all the reassurance he needed to take a deep breath and continue with much more confidence. Reaching into his pocket and taking out the ring box, he shifted himself so he was down on one knee and said with much more confidence, “Sora Takenouchi, will you marry me?”

Seeing the ring Matt had picked out, Sora almost burst out laughing, only managing to stop herself because she knew how bad THAT would look. The ring had a small diamond as the centerpiece, with tiny rubies and sapphires surrounding it to make the symbol for the Crest of Love. It was just too much of a coincidence to ignore, especially considering what she was about to do. As soon as Matt had started babbling, she had reached into her purse and grabbed her own ring box. Now that he was kneeling on the ground in front of her, she quickly knelt down herself and showed the ring she had bought to Matt. It was a simple gold band, but it had tiny rubies and sapphires making the symbol for the Crest of Friendship as a way of decoration. Seeing this whole display, Matt had a hard time biting back his own laughter, a giant smile coming to his face as Sora asked, “Yamato Ishida, will you marry me?”

In the Digital World, Anubismon heard a huge crash and ran off to investigate the source. However, instead of finding an intruder, he was confused to find Phoenixmon in the crushed remains of the hut Biyomon usually slept in. Still, the Holy Bird Digimon seemed to know what had caused the sudden Warp Digivolution, as she smiled and shook her head. “Oh, Sora…”

Chapter Text

Yamaki frowned at the data on the screen in front of him. He was trying to analyze what exactly caused two humans and three Digimon to BioEmerge in the middle of Hypnos, but any data in the system for the time of interest was just a garbled mess. The new visitors didn’t seem too threatening, but considering the havoc the last few anomalies had caused Hypnos was put on a state of high alert. Essentially, this meant he was temporarily off of his suspension and the Tamers were working in shifts keeping an eye on the Digimon and the humans who had accompanied them. The two PetitMamon and the Tentomon were under higher security since they could easily cause trouble if they Digivolved, but even the humans had somebody watching over them at all times. They may have looked like harmless unconscious humans, but both the monkey Deva and the D-Reaper had disguised themselves as humans in preparation for their attacks. Until they confirmed the identities of the new arrivals, they’d have to deal with getting medical attention while in a holding cell.

Yamaki was jarred out of his thoughts by a loud clanging walking up behind him. He didn’t even have to turn around to know Shioda had arrived to take his turn keeping watch. The thirteen-year-old was being unusually quiet—usually between his incessant need to talk and his belief that headphones were only a suggestion when it came to music, he drowned out any sound Guardromon made as the robot stomped around. But for all his flaws, at least he was responsible enough to show up a little bit early for his shift. Matsuki and Kitagawa were perpetually late, and Akiyama had a nasty habit of disappearing for days at a time without explanation.

Kazu was about to announce his presence—not that it was necessary to do so—when a sudden buzzing over the intercom cut him off. He heard Kenta’s voice call out in a worried tone, “Hey, Yamaki? Can we get a wheelchair or something in here? She’s awake, but she’s paralyzed from the waist down.”

Before Yamaki could respond, Kazu practically pushed him out of his chair to get to the intercom. “Wow, Kenta, we leave you in a room with a girl for a couple hours and she ends up paralyzed. This is probably why I am taking Sakura to the dance while you’re stuck dateless.”

With this, Kazu did his best to ignore Yamaki’s sunglasses-enhanced death glare as he listened to his best friend argue back in a whiny voice. “I didn’t do it! She says she was in an accident a few years ago. Her name’s Rei Saiba, her dad Takakazu Saiba works in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, her phone number is…” As Kenta kept rattling off Rei’s personal information, Kazu was sorely tempted to take another shot at his friend for trying way too hard to get to know this girl. However, Yamaki was ready this time around and turned off the voice function of the intercom as he started running this Rei’s information through the Hypnos system. One advantage of monitoring all data in the world was the ease of running background checks to make sure anybody who suddenly materialized inside your government building was actually who she said she was.

However, when the search completed, Yamaki started subconsciously playing with his lighter again. There wasn’t any record of a Rei Saiba born within five years of the date she gave. There also weren’t any Saibas currently working in the Ministry of Foreign affairs, and the phone number she gave belonged to a now-closed video game store. All the personal information she gave was so obviously fake that it would be pointless to even attempt to pass it off as true. Which just made the current situation even more suspicious—if this young woman was really trying to do something to threaten the safety of Earth, why would she pick such a flimsy cover story? She was either a comically inept enemy agent, or somehow, she was telling the truth.  Either way, now that she was conscious she would finally be able to explain herself.

Just as Yamaki was about to go down and question Rei himself, another message for him came over the intercom. Apparently the other intruder was also awake, and Nonaka was just now getting his personal information. However, when she revealed the young man’s name to be Koushiro Izumi, Shioda once again interrupted. “Wait, did you say Koushiro Izumi? Let me guess, the Tentomon is his partner, he was adopted shortly after birth thanks to his parents dying in a car crash, his adopted mother is Kae Izumi, adoptive father Masami Izumi…”

Rika actually sounded taken aback as she responded. “Well, yeah, but how could you possibly know all that? He just told me, and he’s been unconscious ever since he got here.”

Kazu just snickered. “See, maybe you’d learn something if you actually WATCHED the Digimon anime. Koushiro Izumi, better known as Izzy, is the DigiDestined of Knowledge in the show. Looks like the ‘cheap marketing ploy designed to only flood the market with casual gamers’ actually came in handy after all, didn’t it? But the girl’s identity is looking to be just as fake as this guy’s. Maybe whatever sent them here scrambled their brains?”

Rika growled out “Why you little—” but Izzy interrupted her by shouting “WAIT!” Kazu flinched—he hadn’t realized Izzy could hear him through the intercom. Maybe Yamaki was right about him being too loud… However, the guy who thought he was Izzy wasn’t letting up on the act even when it had just been exposed.

“I’m not an anime character, but all those things you said about me were true. I can prove it—I have my Crest and I can make Tentomon Warp Digivolve if you want to see it in action.”

Kazu practically shoved Yamaki away from to intercom again. “Now you’re just making it more obvious you’re lying. Even in the show Izzy lost his Crest to free the Sovereign, and Tentomon never Warp Digivolved. If you’re going to do some super-advanced role play, at least get your details right!”

Izzy paused for a second after this—how could he prove he was telling the truth? For that matter, why did this universe have an anime that seemed to cover his life—or from the sounds of it, his first two adventures in the Digital World? It shouldn’t be possible for parallel universes to overlap that much—and then it all clicked. There was one case Minervamon mentioned where two universes had overlapped much more than they should have, thanks to the actions of ZeedMillenniummon. And wherever Millenniummon was involved, there was one human who was never too far behind. A human who had left Izzy’s dimension behind in order to start a new life.

Smirking a little bit, Izzy calmly addressed the voices on the other end of the intercom. “You might not believe anything I say, but I know somebody who should be able to verify it. I need to talk with Ryo Akiyama.”

Rika immediately turned back towards Izzy on hearing Ryo’s name, but before she could say anything Yamaki cut in over the intercom. “So, you say Akiyama might be able to explain everything? I’ll admit, I am curious as to why you and your friend have such interesting cover stories. Nonaka, do you think you can find Akiyama and bring him in? Just make sure you focus on work this time. We don’t need him getting any more distracted than he usually is.”

Considering she had been one upped by Kazu, this new arrival somehow knew her boyfriend, and Yamaki was now ordering her around, Rika thought she was justified to be in a little worse mood than usual at the moment. Luckily, she had just the comeback for this situation.

“Oh, you won’t have to worry about that. I mean, I may have the security clearance for it, but I don’t officially work for Hypnos. But even though I’m not officially an employee, I’m still not going to spend the time fraternizing with a subordinate when I’m supposed to be working.” Rika could practically hear the shocked look on Yamaki’s face in the silence that followed. Feeling a little better about herself, she walked out the room, Renamon silently following behind her. Maybe this would end up just as interesting as her last birthday did…

Ryo finished telling his story and held his breath as he waited for his friends to respond. Their faces showed a mixture of shock, confusion, and betrayal, though the look on Rika’s face stood out far more than anybody else’s. He knew she had put walls around herself after her father left and her mom got custody, but outside of a couple of tournaments he hadn’t really interacted with her until after Renamon and the others caused her to open up a little bit. Now he could practically see the walls spring right back up, though it looked like Rika wasn’t sure if she wanted to hide behind them or tear off a few pieces and beat him to death with them. He came to this world because he was tired of the people he thought he could trust keeping information from him and using him, but now he had done the exact same thing.

To add further to the irony of the situation, he hadn’t even meant to keep his life a secret, but situations left him with no choice. When ENIAC sent him to this universe, the computer must have been still suffering from the effects of ZeedMillenniummon’s rampage, because the transportation was nowhere near as smooth as it should have been. When he woke up, he could only remember his name and a lot of facts about Digimon. Luckily, while there was no record of a Ryo Akiyama being born in this world, there had been a minor scandal fifteen years in this world’s past where a Seigyoku Akiyama had suddenly decided to retire from public life and went off to “commune with nature”. When an amnesiac boy who looked to be born two years after the fact remembered his name was Akiyama, there wasn’t a lot of legal opposition to Ryo going into the custody of his “uncle” Yashimaru Akiyama.

Despite the circumstances, Ryo slowly began to adjust to his new life, and his “uncle” quickly became a loving adoptive father. Since the only thing he had been able to remember other than his name was related to Digimon, Yashimaru tried triggering some more of Ryo’s memories by introducing him to the card game and the anime, hoping the return of some memories would give him more information about his missing sister. Unfortunately, Ryo’s memories remained locked away. He was never a big fan of the anime, and looking back he supposed he was subconsciously projecting his grudge to the animated counterpart of the world that had used him, but beyond that the card game never brought any memories to his mind. However, he retained an instinctual knowledge of how to best command Digimon to win battles, something that translated to him quickly becoming the top-ranked Digimon player in the area.

With his memories now intact, Ryo could almost laugh at his time as the Digimon King. In one tournament, there was a special prize offered to the winner where they would actually make an appearance in the anime in a couple of cameos. It had been a close fight against Rika, who claimed she was only there to get her crown back, but Ryo eventually won. As such, an animated Ryo Akiyama appeared in one scene when Omnimon was fighting Diaboromon, and another as a figure in the backstory of the Digimon Emperor. Somehow, without even trying to do it, he had made the anime even closer to its other-dimensional counterpart by having his character appear in similar situations to what had actually happened. Still, even seeing these events wasn’t enough to trigger his buried memories, and he probably would have lived the life of a relatively normal boy in this world if Cyberdramon hadn’t Bio-Emerged the following week.

Thanks to ZeedMillenniummon’s influence, Cyberdramon could travel between Earth and the Digital World without needing a pre-existing gap in the barrier between worlds. However, with the ferocity brought about by the Evil God Digimon’s influence, Ryo quickly realized it was safer to spend most his time in the Digital World. Eventually, he stopped even trying to go back to Earth for months at a time as he began to feel he didn’t truly belong in that world. At first, he had tried keeping in touch with Yashimaru, letting his adoptive father believe he needed to go back to the Digital World in order to save his “mother”. However, as time went on and he made less and less effort to keep in touch or keep up the story, Ryo ended up driving a wedge between himself and the person who had tried to make a home for him in this new world.

After the D-Reaper fiasco, there was a long year where all the Tamers were forced to remain separated from their partners. In this time, Ryo had tried to reconnect with his dad, but while they got to be on much better terms they never quite recaptured the same relationship they had before Cyberdramon first appeared. In a way, this proved to be a blessing in disguise—Cyberdramon’s presence had started a return of Ryo’s memories, and now in Cyberdramon’s absence he had nothing to do but think about these memories. By the time Yamaki had improved the Juggernaut program to the point where Hypnos could safely open a portal to the Digital World to reunite the Tamers with their partners, Ryo remembered Millenniummon’s name and his long fights against that Digimon alongside first an Agumon, then a Veemon, and finally Monodramon. After Parasimon’s attack last year, he disappeared for nine months to come to terms with memories of people who shouldn’t have existed in real life, like Ken Ichijouji and the other DigiDestined from the anime.

When he came back from his soul searching three months ago, Ryo finally remembered the whole truth of his journeys. However, he wasn’t quite sure how to relay the news to his friends and family, since it wasn’t exactly an easy topic to lead into. He already had people questioning him about why he was so withdrawn, and he didn’t want everybody to think he had gone crazy by telling them such a far-fetched story. What had happened two months after he got back only reinforced his decision. At the Digimon National Championships, he wasn’t exactly surprised to see Rika as his opponent in the finals. However, when he did his usual pre-fight banter of suggesting a date after the match where the loser had to buy dinner, he was shocked when Rika actually agreed to the deal. So shocked, in fact, that he ended up falling a little bit behind in the early stages of the match and wasn’t able to recover, giving him his first ever loss at the tournament level.

At the time, Ryo hadn’t really minded losing the title. In the month he had been dating Rika, he felt more at home in this world than he had since Cyberdramon first appeared to him. He didn’t want to keep his life a secret from her, but he didn’t think it was a good idea to drop such a large bombshell so early in a relationship. Seeing the look on her face now, though, Ryo wished he hadn’t waited. In hindsight, he was doing something very similar to the Sovereign back in the other Digital World—keeping important information away from his friends because he thought they wouldn’t be able to handle it. And considering how far he had gone in response to that treatment, he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to bridge the trust gap that was sure to exist in his relationship now.

While Rika’s face was the most striking, Ryo’s guilt only grew as he saw similar if less pronounced looks on the faces of the rest of his friends. There were a few exceptions to the general rule, however. Suzie, Ai, and Mako were all a little young to understand the full implications of everything in his story and just looked confused. Ryo didn’t personally know this Rei girl, but she sounded about as experienced in Digimon battles as the youngest of the Tamers were. Still, she at least had more life experience, and was looking at him with a mixture of sympathy and a strange recognition. Izzy didn’t look surprised at all by the story since he probably knew all about it anyway, but he actually looked guilty for his complicity in the Sovereign’s plan.

However, the biggest outlier in the group was Yamaki. Of course, his face was usually hard to read considering he still tended to wear sunglasses indoors, but he didn’t show any reaction at all to the story, treating the tale with the same attention he would give the assertion that the Earth was round. Knowing Yamaki, however, this was only because he was already thinking a step ahead and trying to come up with a plan for the consequences of there being an entirely different Digital World and an Evil God Digimon kept at bay only the combined will of Ryo and the part of Cyberdramon that came from Monodramon. At least Ryo didn’t have to worry about his reaction, but he was worried about what would happen as soon as someone else broke the silence and ended the calm before the storm.

Fortunately for Ryo, the next person to speak was Izzy. “Ryo, I’m really sorry for how we all treated you. We thought it was best to trust in the Sovereign’s plan, and really were trying to stop Millenniummon for good. We came here to ask for help, but I understand if you don’t want to come with us. Still, we need information. Recently, we’ve come under attack from this strange red mass that could kill all digital life it touched, and—”

Izzy couldn’t get any further than that. Takato practically shouted “Wait, what!” However, he wasn’t so much confused as he was trying to draw attention to himself, because he saw the look on Jeri’s face and knew she wouldn’t want anybody else turning towards her as she struggled with the reappearance of her own personal nightmare. After a few seconds, Jeri managed to compose herself and shot Takato a smile, letting him know she was ready. Considering everything she went through in the week the D-Reaper had her tied up, Takato was surprised she would ever be ready to face the return of her worst nightmare.

After Takato’s outburst, he started explaining about the fight against the D-Reaper, revealing how it worked, how it evolved, and what agents it employed. Afterwards, Izzy explained exactly what the situation currently was in his Digital World in order to answer Yamaki’s question about how the D-Reaper had crossed between dimensions and how Izzy and Rei had tracked it down. Between the two stories, the Tamers hadn’t noticed time passing until Yamaki looked at his watch and realized it was approaching ten in the evening.

“Making a hasty decision at this point would be catastrophic, so I suggest we call it a night. If Wisemon really can travel to any point in time, we have the luxury of time to come up with a plan of action before these two need to return to their world. We have to think carefully about what we want to do here, unless we want to repeat of Juggernaut’s first activation. All of you should go home, talk the situation over with your parents, and meet up again tomorrow. I’ll arrange a meeting, and we’ll make a decision at that time.”

Everybody looked surprised that Yamaki was actually suggesting people take some time off during what was essentially a digital crisis, but his tone of voice made it clear his “suggestion” was really more of an order. As all the Tamers cleared out wondering how exactly to spread the news to their families, Yamaki held Izzy and Rei back.

“I’m afraid you two will have to stay here tonight until we can make better arrangements. Besides, now that the others are gone, there are some things I need you to do. I need to analyze Wisemon’s mode of travel to see if it created a long-lasting hole in our dimensional barrier. And since you have nothing better to do, you’re going to help me make some phone calls.”

“Last time we faced the D-Reaper, we needed a whole team to create the weapons and programs we needed to finally shut it down. However, considering the flaws and sacrifices we needed to make to enact those programs, I’m sure you’d want us to improve our work before handing it over. The kids in our world have earned the right to make their choice without me influencing them, but if this Lucemon can bring the D-Reaper from our world’s past to your world’s present, I’m not going to sit by and wait until he reverses the process. If we call in the Monster Makers, I’m sure we can improve the Red Card Algorithm and the Doodlebug Program to the point where you should be able to succeed regardless of what the children decide.”

Koji lay back impassively as he listened to his nurses arguing with some JSDF colonel outside of his room. Normally he might be more interested in what was going on, but he supposed the shock of waking up without his left arm--and the pain meds—were making it a bit harder to focus on anything. His parents and Koichi hadn’t been too impressed when his first comments about losing the arm were “well, Kenshin-sensei can’t yell at me for teaching the students to dual-wield anymore.” At the time, it hadn’t seemed like a big deal—he knew the risks associated with his plan and would have gladly traded more than an arm for a chance to stop Lucemon. And he had trained himself to be more-or-less ambidextrous anyway, so it really didn’t matter which arm he lost. Somehow, his family and friends didn’t see things the same way, and a small part of him knew reality would hit as soon as the medications wore off.

Whatever the argument was about, something made it die down quickly and then a man with gray hair walked into the room. Koji could see the man’s standard Digivice, and he managed to piece together what had ended the argument. His nurses had taken special care of him ever since they knew he was a DigiDestined, even sticking around while off-duty to keep an eye on things. They must have thought—justifiably so—that this military official was coming here to make him a scapegoat as a known Digimon supporter. However, once the colonel revealed he had a partner Digimon just like they did, the nurses must have realized he wasn’t quite as antagonistic and were at least willing to let him in. The colonel stared sternly at Koji, who offered a slightly loopy smile in response.

“I’m going to make this quick and simple. It’s obvious you aren’t in a fully capable mental state, but I’m expecting that to wear off within a day. By that time, you will be transferred to our military hospital to begin physical therapy. We have some of the best recovery times in the world, and I’m expecting you to live up to those standards. When other countries say the recovery time to adjust to losing a limb takes six months to two years, our staff says they can get it done in four months to one year. Most of the patients we deal with hear that and make it their personal goal to be running on prosthetic legs in eight weeks. Considering the current situation, you don’t have the luxury of that kind of time. I expect to see the same fire out of you as I see out of your friend Ms. Gotokuji, and if you can hold up that end of the bargain you just might be in fighting shape when Lucemon makes his next move.”

Fuyutsuki allowed himself a small smile as he saw a focused look come to Koji’s eyes despite his medicated state. Turning to Miki and Megumi, he addressed his next lines to them. “You needn’t worry about his safety, Ms. Kurosaki and Ms. Shirakawa. Even in the current situation, we will follow established transfer protocol, though we will expedite the process. Once Ms. Kamiya and Mr. Takaishi are safe to move, we shall be taking responsibility for their care as well. Hopefully, they or Ms. Gotokuji will recover quickly enough that we can make use of their partner’s healing abilities to speed the process. You are, of course, welcome to bring your partners and come along. We’ve practically become a sanctuary for Digimon and their partners since the attack on the convention center.” He paused and a somber look crossed his face. “Now, if you excuse me, I have to attend Private Tankmon’s funeral.”

Though he didn’t leave the nurses time to respond as he left, each of them contemplated his words. Maybe it would be best if they joined the other DigiDestined. Blanc was still working on her Protect Wave trying to develop healing powers within the attack and Noir didn’t have any support options, but each of the Sistermon still could lend a hand. After all this time, they knew the ins and outs of nursing just as well as their partners did, and the only thing stopping them from being actual nurses was the inability for Digimon to get the required licensure. If things were really going to be as high-strung as it seemed in the race against Lucemon’s next move, they would really need to have as many hands as possible helping out…

Yamaki sat impassively as the screens in front of him slowly flickered to life. Usually, he only ever had to attend a video conference like this when the council was either forcing him to comply with stupid decisions or berating him when things went wrong. Suffice to say, it was a little therapeutic to be organizing a meeting instead of a forced attendee. And while it would have been fairly simple to have all the Tamers physically attend this meeting, there were a few key benefits to keeping the participants at a distance from each other. If the meeting was being held in each Tamer’s home, it would be a lot easier for all their families to be just as informed in the process as the Tamers were. Since they were all under 18, it was both a legal requirement and a moral necessity at this point. In addition, it allowed him to block out all video feed from other Tamers so each Tamer could only hear audio from the others. Considering the divisive nature of this issue and the potential for it to become heated, he wanted to minimize the chances of people changing their decisions based on physical or visual indications from the others.

Finally, all eight screens were active, showing the ten Tamers, their eight Digimon, and most of their families. At the very least, the twins’ parents had calmed down since Yamaki’s conversation with them earlier this morning. While Beelzemon had played a key role in the fight with the D-Reaper, his human partners—who despite only having one D-Power claimed to share the title—had been far too young to get involved. As such, their parents hadn’t been with Hypnos throughout the ordeal, and they were significantly less informed than they needed to be. He made the effort to personally explain the new situation to them—and their children—hoping to get them ready for this meeting. They hadn’t exactly been too welcoming of the thought that their children could be facing that monstrosity, but at least they had eventually conceded to attend this meeting and let Ai, Mako, and Impmon listen to what was going on.

With all the Tamers present, Yamaki finally began the meeting. “I wish I could begin this meeting under better circumstances, but I’m sure you all know the situation at hand. At least, I’m assuming your children explained the matter to you, though if you have any questions now would be the time to ask them.” When none of the adults asked about what was going on, Yamaki nodded his head. “Good. Now, due to the interesting nature of the situation, I think it’s best to agree to a few ground rules before we go any further. First, the ultimate decision for everything must come down to the Tamers and their Digimon. Hypnos is already gathering the Monster Makers and preparing in case the D-Reaper crosses back over to our dimension, but we can only fill a support role. It will be the Tamers on the front line, so only they have the right to decide what they do.”

“On a related note, there is one other important condition. If we end up sending a team to this other dimension, we cannot guarantee everything will work smoothly. We will be better prepared than last time where we were unable to even establish contact with them in the Digital World, but I believe they all can tell you that crossing dimensions always has a degree of unpredictability. As we cannot guarantee our ability to help the team, we will have to find another way to ensure the safety of the group on arrival. As such, we will only send a group of Tamers over if the whole group goes over at once so there can be safety in numbers. Therefore, I propose a simple vote, where the majority decision holds. You will all have time to present arguments to support your cause, and then officially cast your vote.”

As Yamaki expected, his declarations started a general outcry among some of his listeners—mostly among the parents for not having a say in the future of their children, but a few Tamers also seemed to dislike the idea of having their fate tied to the vote of the others. Unsurprisingly, this was most obvious in Ryo and Rika. Yamaki knew Ryo was pretty adamantly set against returning to his original dimension and wouldn’t want to have that decision taken out of his hands. Rika at this point was channeling all her shock and anger at the whole situation into fighting, and wouldn’t want the dead weight of reluctant team members slowing her down. Still, Yamaki didn’t maintain his power within Hypnos by backing down whenever someone raised a little dissent against his decisions. Eventually, everyone agreed to his terms, and Yamaki opened up the voting.

Since Ryo was the most connected to the current situation, Yamaki let him speak first. “Listen, I know you think I’m just carrying a grudge against that world. And honestly, I still don’t know if I can trust that world’s DigiDestined or Sovereign. But after all this time, I at least can acknowledge why they thought they needed to do what they did. And I acted like an angry child in the aftermath of the event, so I’m not entirely blameless in that whole scenario. However, there is a reason beyond my personal feelings for me not to return to that world. We all know the D-Reaper can destroy a world given enough time. But ZeedMillenniummon is worse—he only needs an instant to tear the entire fabric of reality apart at the seams. In this world, Cyberdramon can suppress his influence enough to keep him contained. If we go back to ZeedMillenniummon’s home dimension, however, he’ll only get stronger. I don’t want to abandon that world for a second time, but it’s in the interest of the entire multiverse if I stay here. So, I vote against going to help.”

Yamaki didn’t have time to even record the vote before Rika cut in. “I say we go. If the D-Reaper wants to keep coming back, I’ll just keep beating it down until that stupid program deletes itself in shame. I’m not afraid of it or my own partner.” As Cyberdramon snarled at the insult to his partner and Renamon tried to admonish Rika for her attitude, Yamaki was glad he kept those two out of the same room. All the same, their votes ended up exactly where he expected. Before the meeting could get too far off track, he turned everyone’s focus to the Wong household to hear Henry and Suzie’s votes.

Just like Yamaki expected, Henry seemed reluctant to throw himself into a battle for another dimension. “Listen, I don’t want to let the D-Reaper take over any world. But I’m not so sure this is our fight. I mean, the whole reason we got into the D-Reaper mess in the first place was because we jumped into fighting without trying anything else first. When Digimon first started appearing in our world, we met them with hostility and then things escalated to the point of Juggernaut and the Devas. It wasn’t our fight, but we kept at it and things just got worse because of it. I’m all for giving Izzy all the data we have on the D-Reaper to try and stop it, but I don’t think we should go there personally, especially considering what Ryo told us.”

With the votes at two to one against crossing dimensions, Yamaki turned to Suzie. He hadn’t really interacted with the nine-year old at all, so he wasn’t sure how she would vote. She had certainly grown up in the two years since the D-Reaper attack—she could actually pronounce her brother’s name correctly now—but it was obvious Henry wasn’t too happy about Suzie even being part of the conversation. Still, Henry learned his lesson during his fight with Zhuqiaomon and wasn’t going to shut the other Tamers out, no matter how much he wanted to. As far as Suzie’s vote, however, Henry needn’t have worried. The Sovereign apparently knew enough about ZeedMillenniummon’s existence that the Evil God was treated as a legend among them and the Devas. And when Lopmon heard about ZeedMillenniummon actually existing, Suzie had been forced to try and calm her partner down. Between her partner’s fear and picking up on some of her brother’s teachings, Suzie also voted against the trip.

As Yamaki tallied the third negative vote, Ai and Mako nodded to each other. “I think we should share our vote,” the six-year-old boy started.

His twin sister added, “Since we share Impmon and only have on D-Power, we kind of count as one Tamer anyway, right?”

They turned to the rest of the group as if asking if their decision was okay, but when nobody responded their parents eventually just nodded, signaling the twins to continue.

“Well, we think it’s best to go help!”

“We couldn’t be with Impmon in the last fight, and he got really hurt without us. If he has to fight, we may as well do it together before that monster comes back.”

As Yamaki recorded their vote, he was a bit surprised at the point the twins had made. They were viewing the problems in six-year-old terms—there was a bad guy Impmon had to fight, and they wanted to help. But because they were looking at the problem so simply, they realized an important fact—if they didn’t stop the D-Reaper in the other Digital World, it would be easy for it to come back here and then they’d have to fight anyway. Yamaki had been preparing for just such a scenario, but he hadn’t expected two little kids to come to the same conclusion. He had expected them to vote no, but now that they voted yes—even if it only counted once instead of twice—it looked like this might actually be a close decision after all.

Kazu and Kenta took their turns next, and to the surprise of no one they each voted to help. Even after getting their own partners, they still were the most devoted fans of all Digimon media among the Tamers. Living with real life Digimon hadn’t stopped them from idolizing the characters in the show, and now that they had confirmation they were real they were treating this whole thing as a chance to get autographs that nobody else would ever be able to have. Kazu was the one who vocalized that particular thought, but from the look on Kenta’s face he was also thinking the same thing. Besides, unlike the other Tamers in their age group, they had gotten through the D-Reaper ordeal without being targeted themselves, so they didn’t have as much reason to be wary as the others did.

With the votes now at four to three in favor of helping, only Takato and Jeri were left. Jeri looked like she was about to speak, but the sound of breaking glass and hissing from off screen grabbed her attention. A second later, Calumon came running into the picture and jumped on top of Jeri’s head, trying to get away from the Kato’s new cat. The incarnation of Digivolution still hadn’t quite grasped that his new housemate didn’t like getting jumped on in the middle of a nap. With a resigned sigh, Jeri tried calming her cat down, so Yamaki turned to Takato to cast his vote instead.

Takato took a deep breath as he considered his vote. Like Kazu and Kenta, he had always dreamed of actually meeting the characters from the Digimon anime, though as he became a Tamer himself he had somewhat distanced himself from the show. Still, Tai and the others were his childhood heroes, and after all the sacrifice it took to defeat the D-Reaper last time he wasn’t about to let it ravage another world if he could do anything about it. However, thinking about the sacrifices just drove home the simple truth: he wasn’t ready to face the D-Reaper again. To everybody except him and Jeri, the D-Reaper was a horrible monster that had wiped out the Digital World, forced the evacuation of their hometown, and almost killed them repeatedly. Even in defeat, it had forced them to separate from their partners, leaving some pretty deep emotional scars.

However, once everybody else went through the government funded therapy and got their partners back, they seemed to recover from any trauma from the D-Reaper attack. That hadn’t been the case with Takato or Jeri. Where everybody else had been cleared after a couple months of meeting with the therapist, Jeri and Takato still had regular sessions. Things had gotten better now that almost two years had passed, but Takato still sometimes had nightmares, and he knew Jeri had it even worse than he did. She was trying to move on, but by this point Takato knew she was good at hiding her own pain in public. Her family had even gotten the cat to be a companion for her, but since she named it Leo Takato really wasn’t sure if it was helping her or just always bringing the ghost of her partner into her mind.

Since he hadn’t noticed the D-Reaper had taken and replaced Jeri, Takato was constantly haunted with the knowledge that some of the responsibility for her suffering landed on him as well. He had even confessed his feelings to an abomination instead of her! After Guilmon and the others were forced back to the Digital World, he only got more protective of Jeri, to the point where the two of them spent almost all their time together. It got to the point where their parents just let them sleep in the same room, because at least then they didn’t have to watch their child suffer night terrors and have to call the other just to make sure they were okay. Eventually, they got to the point where they didn’t need to lean on each other as often, but Takato would still rather fight Zhuqiaomon again than see Jeri get hurt. And if he voted yes, she wouldn’t have a choice—even without Leomon, she was still a Tamer, and all the Tamers would have to follow the majority decision. Takato wasn’t ready to face the D-Reaper himself, but he especially wasn’t ready to force Jeri to face it again.

When Takato voiced his vote against going to the other world, just about everyone went silent out of surprise. They knew Takato was overprotective of Jeri, and they knew he hadn’t exactly come out of the last fight with the D-Reaper unscathed, but they thought he would definitely vote yes. Before meeting Guilmon, he went beyond even Kazu and Kenta when it came to dreaming about meeting Tai and the others. After getting some experience as a Tamer, Takato was always the one pushing the team into working together and doing the right thing. The other Tamers had known Takato was still attending therapy sessions, but they didn’t think it was too serious. Seeing his reaction now, however, they realized he had been hiding a lot of issues from them this whole time.

After about a minute of silence, Yamaki was ready to turn to Jeri and have her vote. However, considering her history, he really wished he had started with her in the first place instead of Ryo. She had gone through the worst out of any Tamer, and now she had to shoulder the burden of responsibility for the current decision. Yamaki found himself once again questioning why a group of children had to bear such a cruel fate. However, before he could think anything else, Jeri cut in with a small, trembling voice.

“I guess it’s up to me, isn’t it? I’m not even sure if I should have a vote, since I can’t help in the fight anyway…” Her hands started shaking as she clenched her D-Power tighter as if clinging to it would bring her closer to her old partner. “The worst part about being inside the D-Reaper was thinking about how everything was all my fault, and that it was my destiny to be alone. I believed it was my fault that my mother died, that Leomon died, that you were all getting hurt fighting to save me…” Jeri closed her eyes and took some deep breaths before continuing. “I know now those things weren’t really my fault, and even if destiny gives you a horrible hand you can still choose how to play your cards, but that doesn’t help me now… if I say we go, all of you will have to fight the D-Reaper again, and it will be my fault that you are there, but if I say we don’t go, I’m letting a whole world potentially end up in the same situation I was…” Jeri started crying, and her dad and stepmother tried comforting her but weren’t really sure how. However, a small beeping sound cut through Jeri’s sobs and a bit of orange light spilled through her fingers as her D-Power glowed briefly before returning to its inactive state. With tears in her eyes, Jeri managed to sputter out, “Leomon… said I had a lion’s heart. I’m sure… if he were here… he’d think it was best to go. So… I say… we help them…”

As Jeri broke down into fresh tears, Ryo cut in to the feed. He wasn’t exactly happy with the result of the vote, but after hearing Jeri break down like that he wasn’t going to go against it. She deserved to have her decision at least mean something if it was that painful for her to say it. “Okay, so the vote is at 5 to 4. Looks like we’re going. But since we have Wisemon and can arrive at any time, we can afford to take a little time to prepare ourselves. We don’t want this to end up like your last trip to the Digital World.”

Yamaki nodded, taking command of the situation again. “I wasn’t planning on telling you this in case it would influence your vote, but I’ve already begun making preparations. The Monster Makers are making arrangements to get here, and we should hopefully have a better Red Card Algorithm and Juggernaut for you to use within the week. This time, we hope to make the fight much easier for you.”

Chapter Text

BeoWolfmon grit his teeth in frustration as Sealsdramon landed yet another punch on his left side. The individual hits weren’t exactly painful with the level difference, but the nimble Champion had hit him so many times that Koji knew he’d have another nasty bruise as soon as he undid the Spirit Evolution. Of course, it was a small price to pay to get back in fighting shape. Originally, the medical staff was planning on him going through standard physical therapy as both a human and as BeoWolfmon, but their facility didn’t exactly scale up to a twelve-foot-tall humanoid. The therapists were still incredibly helpful, but most of the equipment may as well have been made of cardboard to the Legendary Warrior.

However, Koji found a way to put the relative inadequacy of the equipment to his advantage. He spent a little bit of time getting used to the adjusted balance in his BeoWolfmon form by pushing all the equipment out of the center of the track. Once he managed to do that, he had a nice clear arena where he could start practicing his swordsmanship. While he had always used his Trinität with one hand, his fighting style relied on having the Roland 2 on his left arm to keep the pressure on his opponent at any range. Now that he was limited to close range combat, he had to adjust his style a bit to leave fewer openings defensively while keeping up offensive pressure. At first he was only going through his forms alone, but Sealsdramon had quickly taken interest in his practice and was quick to point out a few flaws.

At first, Koji wasn’t the most welcoming to the comments, but when Sealsdramon jumped in and exploited those openings with a few punches he quickly realized the benefits of practicing in a more fight-like situation. At first he had held back knowing he was powerful enough to destroy Sealsdramon in a single hit, but as the Champion level easily dodged all of his attacks while ordering him to treat it like a real fight he slowly started putting more and more effort in. By the end of the first day, he had a collection of bruises and hadn’t landed a single hit. Still, he had a much better appreciation for Sealsdramon, as the Cyborg Digimon was the only one capable of giving him anything resembling a real fight. Every punch he took from Sealsdramon was one less punch he had to take from Lucemon as he patched up his style, and it would be a lot easier learning how to fight by actually fighting than by standing around and doing everything on his own.

After that disastrous showing his first day, Koji needed Lotusmon to heal him with her Serpent Cure before he could go through physical therapy as a human. Today had been much of the same—a morning of failing to hit Sealsdramon, a quick visit from Lotusmon to undo the bruises, and then some intense physical therapy. Now he was back in the arena, and eager to show Sealsdramon a thing or two. He was starting to read the other Digimon’s movements, and was at least managing to lower the frequency of hits he was taking. Now it was time to see if he could start landing hits of his own. He forced Sealsdramon to keep a bit of distance with a steady string of slashes, but made sure to over swing on the last one. He ended up spinning a little bit with his sword held in a reverse grip over his left shoulder. It left a huge opening, but that was exactly what Koji was counting on. When Sealsdramon ducked in to land another hit, Koji suddenly reversed direction and did a quick spin, whipping his sword around in a blur.

Sealsdramon saw the attack coming at the last second, but was just an instant too slow to fully get out of the way and felt the sword clang off of his armor. Only then did the Champion realize Koji had reversed his blade so he wouldn’t slice his sparring partner to ribbons. It was a clever move, but Sealsdramon had plenty of experience in close range combat and knew the problems with such a flashy technique.

“I’ll give you credit for the surprise attack, but you really shouldn’t rely on that in a fight. You’ll just end up tiring yourself out and making yourself dizzy. The point of this is for you to learn a better fighting style, not one that lets you get a hit in at the cost of weakening yourself for later.”

Koji smirked as he went into a crouch. “Yeah, I know, but sometimes it pays to have attacks even a master swordsman wouldn’t predict. By the way, I won’t be able to avoid hurting you on this one just by turning my sword around. I suggest you watch out.” With that little bit of warning, Koji suddenly launched himself forward, leaving a trail of light in his wake. Sealsdramon was capable of moving faster than the eye could detect and had advance warning, and he still barely managed to avoid the sword thrust, coming so close that he got knocked away just by the air displacement. As he dusted himself off, he shot Koji a smile.

“I suppose I should have expected the Warrior of Light to have some impressive speed, but that was some nice acceleration there. If I didn’t have that warning, I’d have been impaled.” Koji accepted the praise, but wasn’t fully satisfied with the result.

“Yeah, it worked pretty well, but I noticed a drawback. I ended up going too fast to even react to anything. If you had tried counterattacking, there would have been nothing I could do. Against weaker opponents it wouldn’t matter, but Lucemon would be able to take that attack without too much damage and kill me just by sticking out his fist and having me run into it. I need to be less linear with my attacks…”

Koji trailed off as a crazy idea came to him. Normally, he would have dismissed it outright as the perfect combination of impractical, too showy, and just plain stupid. However, after his last couple attacks, he was feeling like he could pull off anything, and if he was ever going to try this out it may as well be now when all it could do to him was earn him a couple more bruises instead of anything more serious. Sealsdramon could tell the Legendary Warrior was up to something, if for no other reason that he was looking more relaxed in his stance than he had been at any time Sealsdramon saw him. However, that small bit of notice didn’t prepare him for when BeoWolfmon suddenly vanished. Sealsdramon put up his guard since he wasn’t sure where the next attack would come from, but when he glanced upwards he could only go slack-jawed at the sight of BeoWolfmon doing a somersault in midair to build up speed to for a downward slam with his sword.

However, because Sealsdramon was too busy being stunned to dodge Koji’s attack, the Legendary Warrior was put in a difficult situation. The momentum from his flip would only make his attack stronger, and he would have been able to destroy Sealsdramon without that advantage. And since he couldn’t fly, he couldn’t stop himself while in midair. Left with no other option, he added another partial twist and flip to throw his trajectory off a little bit. He ended up landing flat on his back right next to Sealsdramon, knocking all the air out of his lungs, undoing his Spirit Evolution, and sending his D-Tector clattering across the floor.

Sealsdramon held out his hand to help Koji up, but Koji was still just focused on trying to breathe more than getting up off the floor. However, before Koji had recovered enough to take the offered hand, an authoritative voice barked out across the room, “Sealsdramon, report to the front gate. The guard shifts have been adjusted, and you are due to report in two minutes.” Sealsdramon snapped to attention at the voice of his partner and commanding officer, barking out “Sir, yes sir!” before sprinting away and leaving Koji on the ground. Fuyutsuki picked up the fallen D-Tector on his way to Koji, but as he stood over the teen he made no effort to return it or help Koji off the ground.

“When I told you I expected you to follow an accelerated schedule for therapy, I thought you were smart enough that you wouldn’t push yourself beyond your physical limits. I’ve seen more than my fair share of soldiers coming in with serious injuries, and while plenty of them have pushed the envelope none of them have ever shown the self-destructive tendencies I’ve seen from you and Ms. Gotokuji. We had you transferred from the hospital so we could help you heal, not so you could push yourself to the point where you collapse without Lucemon doing anything. You can’t bury your problems by retreating into your Digimon form. Until you take that lesson to heart, I’m turning your D-Tector over to Dr. Wataru.”

Koji didn’t have enough breath to form a proper response, so he settled for glaring at Fuyutsuki. However, once he looked beyond Fuyutsuki’s remarks about him, he realized something important—Fuyutsuki had admonished Mari as well as him. Still recovering from his rough landing, he barely managed to wheeze out, “What…happened…to…Mari?” Fuyutsuki had started to turn away, but he stopped as he addressed Koji’s question.

“Much like you, she seemed to harbor the delusion that she was invincible despite all evidence to the contrary. She kept her partner at the Mega level for too long and passed out from the strain. At the very least, Lotusmon managed to stabilize Mr. Takaishi and Ms. Kamiya is starting to show signs of waking up, but from now on we are relying on our medical staff instead of your Digimon’s healing abilities. Now, I’ve sent for some nurses to help you. It’s up to you to actually listen to them.”

Rei sighed as she prepared herself for the return trip home. She had only been in this new world for a week, but it had been nice to get to a place of relative safety where she didn’t have to worry about getting called into battle at the drop of a hat. Normally she’d feel guilty about leaving her friends and her brother to fight while she was on vacation, but thanks to Wisemon it didn’t really matter how long she waited to return. Still, as nice as it was to get away, she knew she had to go back. While that in and of itself made her anxious, it wasn’t the only reason she was nervous. A small part of her was worried she had completely ruined the entire purpose for coming her in her last conversation with Ryo.

While the group of adults known as the Monster Makers was working on the programs to attack the D-Reaper and keep in contact between dimensions, the other Tamers—they didn’t refer to themselves as DigiDestined—went through their own preparations. Rei wasn’t sure what it all entailed, but luckily Jeri—who had unfortunately lost her partner right before the first fight with the D-Reaper—was kind enough to explain everyone else’s preparation. In addition to the standard deal—psyching themselves up for battle and going over strategies—they were taking advantage of a rather unique opportunity.

The model of Digivice the Tamers all used were known as D-Powers, and they had a unique functionality that let them read data off of Digimon Trading Cards and alter their partners’ abilities in accordance with the card. The fight with the D-Reaper had been broadcast throughout the world, essentially turning the Tamers into national heroes. This resulted in a mutually beneficial relationship between the trading card companies and the Tamers, where the card companies got the publicity of working with the “saviors of the world” while the Tamers got access to cards that wouldn’t normally be released. Most of these cards were deemed too powerful for tournament use, but some were made to address problems that wouldn’t come up in the game at all. The best example of this was a card that undid Digivolution, which apparently wasn’t as quick of a process here as it was back home. Ryo was trying to commission a stronger version of that card now just in case the standard card wasn’t enough and ZeedMillenniummon made an appearance.

When Izzy heard this explanation, he was quick to ask if he could examine a D-Power and see if he couldn’t copy that functionality as a means of distributing the X-Antibody once he and the others got around to isolating that particular string of code. Between Izzy going into full technology mode and the Tamers all preparing for the upcoming battle and spending some time with their families, Rei felt like she was the only one who didn’t really have anything to do. Lucemon had the ability to move within stopped time and travel between dimensions on his own, so most of Wisemon’s abilities wouldn’t be much use in an actual battle against the Demon Lord. And at the Champion level, Pal and Pul would be best served just hanging back and protecting all the humans from errant attacks instead of getting involved in the fight itself.

Without any real need to prepare herself for the fight, Rei just tried to make herself useful. At first, she had tried answering any of Kazu and Kenta’s questions about what “really happened” compared to how the anime had portrayed it, but since the anime ended with the fight against MaloMyotismon and she hadn’t even met Tai or the other DigiDestined at that point, she could only relay second-hand accounts that didn’t really satisfy the two fans. And with Izzy busy on his project, they had quickly decided to wait until they met the other DigiDestined to ask them. As she was running out of ideas on what to do, she overheard Rika talking to her dad on the phone, and quickly realized there was one thing that she needed to do. Other than Tai, she hadn’t told anybody about her conversation with Shinobu Akiyama. This meant she was the only one at the moment who knew the state of Ryo’s family back in her world. And while she wasn’t sure of a good way to bring up the topic of his mother’s death and his father’s depression, she was certain that Ryo at least had a right to know, especially considering his history with people from her world keeping important information from him.

However, considering how well that conversation went, Rei almost wished she had kept the information a secret. It was hard enough to track Ryo down, because he seemed to be avoiding everybody when he wasn’t directly needed to make an appearance. According to Henry, that was how Ryo usually was, but apparently it was even worse now that he and Rika were fighting. She wasn’t proud to admit it, but she let the search frustrate her, and because of that she was nowhere near as gentle as she should have been with the revelation. She didn’t exactly blame Cyberdramon for snarling at her when she basically insinuated that Ryo was responsible for his mother’s suicide. She hadn’t meant to say it quite that way, but looking back it was obvious that’s how Ryo would take it. It was by far the worst “conversation” she had ever been a part of, and that included the first time Tai met her, thought she was Sora, and asked the girl who had been paralyzed for two years if she was faking it to get out of their soccer match. At least Tai had the excuse that he was drunk at the time.

Between her horrible handling of the situation and Rika’s anger at him, Rei wasn’t sure if Ryo would even bother showing up anymore. And the whole idea of majority vote had been instituted with the understanding that either all of the Tamers would come to help or none of them would. Takato wasn’t looking the most dedicated to helping either, but now that she knew exactly what had happened in this world’s battle with the D-Reaper she couldn’t say she blamed anybody for not wanting to fight it again. She may have only been involved in this fight for a few months, but she had seen enough to know the whole “saving the world” thing was a lot less glamorous than most kids would believe. She wanted nothing more than for the fighting to be over, so she could imagine exactly what it would feel like to win the fight and think you’ve earned peace only to get dragged right back into chaos.

Rei snapped out of her musings when Ai and Mako walked into the room, bringing Pal and Pul with them. Perhaps because they were partnered with another small demon like Impmon and had a history of sibling rivalry, the two youngest Tamers had really taken a shine to her partners. Still, the human twins looked sad as Pal and Pul went back to Rei’s side. “Suzie says everybody’s looking for Ryo but can’t find him. If he doesn’t come back, does that mean you’ll have to say goodbye?”

Rei just smiled trying to reassure the twins when she herself doubted if Ryo would show up. “Hey, don’t worry. Even if I have to go back home and say goodbye, I can always come visit. After all, Pal and Pul got me here the first time, and it should be even easier to come back now that we know where this is.”

The six-year-olds’ faces lit up at the thought their new friends could come and visit at any time, at least letting them leave the room much happier than they had been when they entered. However, Rei wasn’t sure if she’d be able to keep that promise. If they didn’t manage to defeat Lucemon, she wouldn’t be able to come back. She didn’t exactly see Lucemon as the type to just forgive someone who fought against him. And if this whole plan to get backup ended up falling through, she wasn’t sure if the DigiDestined had enough power on their own to win the fight. She may have been here to get the Tamers for the D-Reaper, but defeating the chaos would mean nothing if the being who brought the chaos to their world in the first place wasn’t defeated.        

Rei sighed as her thoughts again took a dark turn, but this time it was Yamaki who came in and interrupted her. “You needn’t worry. While in most cases Akiyama is far from reliable, he always shows up when his friends need him. Judging from his history, he’s just waiting to arrive at what he views as the most dramatic moment. You should go join the others—you’ll be leaving soon.” Rei blinked in shock. Just looking at the words Yamaki used, it sounded like he was trying to reassure her. However, listening to his tone, it sounded more like he was giving her an order than anything else. It was a strange combination, and she found herself just blankly going along with his suggestion/order.

As she wheeled herself back into the main control room, Rei saw most of the Tamers just lounging with their partners. The only absences were Takato, Jeri, and Ryo, but since Guilmon was here Rei knew Takato wouldn’t be too far behind. Izzy was lost in a discussion with one of the Monster Makers, most likely looking over all the code one last time. Takato and Jeri eventually came in to the room through the side door, leaving everybody but Ryo present for the mission. Rei could feel the anticipation in the air, but the expectant silence was broken by an unlikely source when Pul cleared his throat and asked, “So, before we go, did anybody think about where we should actually go?”

Pal whacked her brother with her baton. “Could you have asked that question in a worse way? You came this close to having a smart thought, and then you can’t even say it clearly! What he means is, we can get back to our world no problem, and we know when we want to get there, but that still leaves the problem of where we should arrive. The world is a big place, after all.”

Rei raised her eyebrows at her partners. “The whole reason all of our friends and allies are fighting Lucemon is to buy us time to get help. I think it’s obvious—we have to go to wherever they are fighting as soon as we can so they know they can retreat.”

Pal rubbed the back of her neck sheepishly. “Yeah, about that… I’m not so sure we’ll be able to do that… I’m not quite sure how to explain it, but something about Lucemon makes space and time go all wonky around him…”

Izzy nodded. “I was hoping it wouldn’t affect Wisemon much, but we’ve dealt with enemies that distort the fabric of reality before. Can you identify Lucemon’s location and have us arrive just at the boundary of the distortion? That should give us time to react if we have another rough landing and time to Digivolve before jumping right into the fight. We just have to make sure we keep Lucemon busy enough that Wisemon can evacuate everyone. I know I’m putting a lot on you, Pal and Pul, but right now you’re the best shot we have.”

“What are we waiting for? Let’s go then.” Everyone turned to look as Ryo strode into the room, a deadly serious look on his face. Rei was impressed that Yamaki predicted this so well, but judging from the looks of indifference on the faces of the other Tamers they had been expecting something like this as well. With a destination picked out and everybody finally present, Rei saw no reason to wait around, especially considering the hostility emanating from Ryo at the moment. Pal and Pul Digivolved, and then Rei slammed her fists together to trigger the Jogress Evolution. Everyone gathered in a circle, and Wisemon hovered over them and opened the book. With surprisingly little fanfare, everyone was sucked inside and began their trip back across dimensions.

Lucemon sighed as he used his newly acquired cape to block another blast of Phoenix Fire from Zhuqiaomon. Truthfully, he didn’t need to bother, but no matter how many times he did it he always found a small amount of satisfaction at deflecting the Sovereign’s attacks with the phoenix’s own feathers. However, at this point he was starting to almost feel bad for the treatment he had inflicted on the pitiful creature. And at the very least, he could admire the bird’s spirit for defying him in spite of everything. Deciding to honor such nobility with a (from this point on) quick death, Lucemon suddenly warped in front of the guardian of the south and grabbed him by the neck, reducing his call for yet another Phoenix Fire to an undignified squawk.

“See, that’s the sound I expected to hear from you long ago. I must say your resistance is quite impressive. After decimating your army in a few hours, I decided to have a little fun with the remainder, but you refused to let your spirit break no matter how much your body did. If Fanglongmon had half of your spirit, he probably could have lasted much longer than 60 hours against me.” Zhuqiaomon was already flickering on the verge of deletion and could hardly breathe, but he still tried to twist his head and impale Lucemon with the remaining half of his beak. Lucemon took a deep breath and threw the struggling phoenix back to the ground. The Demon Lord would hate to reflexively kill his squirming opponent before he could finish his speech.

“Look at you. The vaunted Vermillion Bird of the South, defiant to the end. Even with your beak shattered, your talons declawed, your feathers plucked, and your wings ripped off, you’ve managed to hold on to your pride. And Pride has always had a special place in my heart. I will concede defeat in the battle for your spirit. As a reward for your victory, I shall grant you some last words before I obliterate you.” With this, the Demon Lord started chuckling. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to be as flashy as possible. It’s only fitting that a phoenix goes out in a blaze of glory.”

Zhuqiaomon started chuckling along, bringing a frown to Lucemon’s face. “Are you really doing this? I expect my underlings to force themselves to laugh at my jokes, but I was hoping you could at least hold on to your pride until the bitter end.”

Zhuqiaomon just kept chuckling. “Oh, it isn’t your joke I’m laughing at. Though I guess it is related. You could even say the joke’s on you.” Lucemon summoned an orb of hellfire courtesy of Daemon and prepared to launch it at the laughing Sovereign. “Explain yourself, now.”

Zhuqiaomon had managed to chuckle himself into a coughing fit, but he managed to wheeze out his response. “You make it sound like it was so impressive for me to survive your little game for so long, but I had something keeping me going the whole time. You see, we were never supposed to beat you, just buy time. While you were wasting time plucking my feathers, the DigiDestined were getting a weapon to use against you. And judging by that spatial distortion behind you, I’d say they’re just getting back now.”

Lucemon couldn’t help it—he let his attack dissipate and turned to see what Zhuqiaomon was talking about. Sure enough, there was a spatial distortion, and judging by the appearance of a giant book this was the work of that Saiba girl. Lucemon prepared to attack before the DigiDestined would have time to recover, but he found himself knocked to the ground as Zhuqiaomon hopped into him. “And the second thing I was laughing at- you went through all the work to get that cape, but you didn’t really think it through. Like you said, phoenixes always go out in a blaze of glory!”

With this, Zhuqiaomon ignited himself at the same time all of his feathers comprising the cape Lucemon was wearing also burst into flames. The Demon Lord spent a few seconds extracting himself from the two layers of incandescent flames, by which point the DigiDestined had all finished crossing dimensions. They had even brought the DigiDestined from the D-Reaper’s home universe, so that must have been the identity of the weapon Zhuqiaomon mentioned. As it was, Lucemon could have rendered the whole exercise pointless by destroying them all now—with the exception of a MarineAngemon, their partners had all reverted to the Rookie level in transit—but the whole situation was too interesting to just end so quickly. He did send out a burst of Black Requiem just to stop all but the DigiDestined of Knowledge from Digivolving, but that was just to ensure his opponents would talk before rushing to their own deaths.

However, despite Lucemon’s precaution, he was surprised when the Monodramon suddenly Digivolved and rushed at him. Strikedramon snarled and hit the Demon Lord with his Strike Claw, but the attack just bounced off without doing any damage. Lucemon didn’t even bother paying attention to the attacking Digimon as he addressed Izzy in particular, viewing him as the leader of this whole operation.

“Hold on, did you put on this whole thing just for me? It doesn’t seem like the kind of plan the Sovereign would think up on their own.” Izzy gulped as he stared down the Demon Lord and started sending an emergency message behind his back. Under Black Requiem he would only be able to Digivolve to Ultimate, and he had a feeling MetallifeKuwagamon’s attacks wouldn’t be much more effective than Strikedramon’s against Lucemon. Since he couldn’t exactly look at what he was writing he couldn’t give a detailed message, but he had programmed a general emergency message that would include his current location and the current time. He just had to hope he could stall Lucemon long enough for somebody to actually respond to it. Since Lucemon seemed to want to talk, he might be able to pull it off.

“Well, I can’t take full credit for the plan, but I did play a part in making it possible.”

Lucemon just laughed. “Fine, be modest. But was this at the very least a DigiDestined plan?”

Izzy managed to catch himself before he could reveal the truth. BeelStarrmon was the one who started this whole plan, but she had said she had another source within Lucemon’s forces. Izzy wasn’t about to call out the spies in Lucemon’s camp, so he instead went with a partial truth.

“We had some help from Digimon, but yes, it was mostly a DigiDestined initiative.” Since Hideto and Neo had done most of the work to make sure BeelStarrmon’s plan could succeed, it wasn’t really a lie. Lucemon didn’t seem to find the answer suspicious, but he did lose himself to a fit of maniacal laughter. It took him around thirty seconds to calm down enough to speak.

“So, the great DigiDestined sent hundreds of their underlings to their deaths just for the sole purpose of completing their own agenda? I must say, I’m impressed. I guess I’m starting to rub off on you!” He paused as he felt a strange sensation in his back, only to turn around and see Strikedramon had Digivolved again and hit him with a Desolation Claw attack. The attack worked by deleting data which allowed it to strike through Lucemon’s defenses, but the damage was still incredibly minor and the Demon Lord immediately healed himself. Lucemon growled “You’re starting to annoy me” before backhanding the Ultimate level. Cyberdramon went flying and crashed into the ground, leaving a thirty-foot furrow in his wake. Ryo ran to check on his partner, but Lucemon ignored him and turned back to Izzy, already feeling his cheerful mood returning at the DigiDestined being forced to copy his methods.

“You know, between this whole spectacle and the stunt Hope and Light pulled, I’m really looking forward to what surprises you’ll have in store for me if all of you came to fight me. Let’s see here—it’s been around three days since I absorbed Lilithmon, so I think I’ll give you four more days. That should give me enough time to prepare a show for you to return the favor for your lovely little welcoming committee.”

Rei suddenly spoke up. “When you say four days, do you mean four days in the Digital World? Because with the time difference, that’s only four hours on Earth, and if you want to fight all the DigiDestined they are going to need a little longer than that to recover.”

Lucemon smirked. “Ah, so everyone did survive their last encounter with me! Excellent—I may have paid back the Legendary Warriors for one defeat, but that was towards the spirits themselves. I’ll need to defeat the children again just to make sure the message sticks. And I really hope to see more of what Hope and Light are capable of. After all, it’s quite annoying being able to see everything in history but not be able to see the most important players of the current time. For giving me this information, I’ll give you a reward—I’m taking away the time difference between the worlds. After all, it’s quite fun bending the fabric of reality to your whim.”

As if to accentuate his point, Lucemon suddenly disappeared—he didn’t create a portal or flicker out of existence like the usual modes of transportation, but he just vanished instantaneously. Apart from Ryo who was trying to calm an angry Cyberdramon, everyone let out the breath they had unconsciously been holding after being thrust so unexpectedly into the presence of the Demon Lord. However, after letting out that sigh of relief, Kazu confronted Pal and Pul.

“What gives with the whole ‘landing right on top of Lucemon’ thing? You said you could go anywhere in time and space, and you were supposed to land us far enough away from him that we could actually do something instead of sit and stare! Besides, it sounded like you missed your landing by three days!”

Surprisingly, it was Pul who responded first. “Well, technically, we only mistimed our arrival by two days since we didn’t leave when Lilithmon was destroyed…” Upset that her brother had actually beaten her to the punch with a counterargument, Pal decided to go with a more confrontational approach.

“Do you even have any idea how difficult it is to navigate through the very fabric of space-time? I could try to describe it to you, but it would make your brain explode. I’m sure you’d be fine if you got in an airplane and hit some turbulence, but suddenly we hit some turbulence and it’s all our fault…”

Kenta interrupted the potential argument by stepping in front of Kazu. “Hey, can we please calm down? It’s not like Lucemon tried to kill us anyway. I was expecting him to be the ultimate incarnation of evil or something, but he actually seemed pretty friendly.”

Kenta then jumped about a foot as he heard a voice from above him. “Really, you expected me to be the ultimate incarnation of evil? I don’t know whether to be flattered or hurt.”

Everyone looked up to see Lucemon reclining in the air as if resting on an invisible couch, completing the picture of relaxation by drinking what looked to be a glass of red wine. “Honestly, I don’t know why people keep calling me a monster, or evil, or a power-hungry traitor… okay, two of those three are definitely true, but I’m not really evil. This world is broken, and the only way to fix it is to destroy it completely and rebuild it in my own image so it can finally be perfect. I’m just the only one willing to take the steps necessary to accomplish that. But I wouldn’t expect your imperfect minds to understand what needs to be done. However, it is rather fun seeing you fight among yourselves, so I think I’ll get a little more entertainment out of you.”

As he said this, he waved his hand, causing the darkness left behind by Black Requiem to crystalize into tiny flakes and fall to the ground like a black snowfall. As everyone looked down, they saw themselves reflected in what looked like a mirror made of obsidian before Lucemon called out “Dark Reflection!” Suddenly, all the Digimon from the reflection sprang up out of the mirror and faced their counterparts. Lucemon started laughing as he dismissed the crystalized darkness. “Let me know what you think of this little trick—I’m doing a little improvisation with the power of the Legendary Warrior of Steel. Anyway, I’m actually off now. Have fun!”

As Lucemon disappeared, a loud growling sound caught everyone’s attention as they turned to see Cyberdramon grappling with his own reflection. The other reflections took this as their cue to attack on their own, all rushing at the original versions. From the looks of the initial clash, each copy was equally matched with the originals, but none of the humans were too worried about their chances of success in this fight. Sure, Lucemon had duplicated their partners—at the Rookie level. But Rookies weren’t going to be enough to stop them after everything they had been through.

However, when everybody Digivolved to the Champion level, they were surprised to find their counterparts Digivolving as well. Despite this, Rika just took this as an added challenge. She spoke to Kyubimon’s copy that looked more like a Youkomon than a reflection of her partner. “This wouldn’t be any fun if you couldn’t keep up with that little trick. But I wonder, can you copy this?” She grabbed a card out of her deck holder and swiped it through her D-Power. “Digi-Modify! Hyperspeed Activate!”

Kyubimon vanished as she dashed towards her copy at high speed, but her reflection also gained the speed boost to compensate. Rika just smiled at the thought—Kyubimon may be fighting an exact copy that duplicated all changes to her data, but she doubted Lucemon’s mirror could reflect a Digimon’s skill. Besides, her little trick had another purpose—she was making sure she could still use a Digi-Modify card in this world. This was just a sideshow, but it was important to know exactly what she could use before the main event started.

Takato saw the result of Rika’s battle and decided to test a theory of his own. He swiped his De-Digivolution card to revert Growlmon back to Guilmon, and was glad to see Guilmon’s black copy revert as well. However, his Guilmon just seemed confused by the turn of events. “Takato, why did you do that?”

Takato just smiled. “Don’t worry, Guilmon. These things copy all the changes to your data, but Lucemon never copied the humans in our group. Which means they shouldn’t be able to copy this! Biomerge Activate!” Gallantmon opened his eyes ready to wipe out all the opposing duplicates, but he wasn’t expecting to see a copy of himself with black armor and a blue cape. “Aw, nuts…”

Gallantmon quickly took to the air, hoping to draw his copy away from the others. A fight among Champions could get chaotic enough as it was, but if two Megas fought the collateral damage would be too high. And unfortunately, he didn’t know a way to quickly end a Biomerge—it usually just ended when it was no longer needed. He glanced down at the battlefield and was pleased to see his copy flying up to meet him, as well as Impmon fighting in his Rookie form. The others wouldn’t Biomerge after seeing the result of his transformation, but if Impmon had become Beelzemon Blast Mode there would be even more firepower in danger of hurting their friends.

As Takato was trying to prevent his duplicate from causing chaos among the group, Rei was trying to think of a quick way to defeat her copies. The easiest way would be for someone to defeat their own copy and then move to team up against the next one in line, but in order for that to happen someone had to find a way to defeat themselves. Luckily, Rei didn’t just have one partner to work with.

“Pal, Pul, listen up! The main difficulty here is these things can match everything we can do, but they can only match the Digimon they are reflecting. I’m sure from all your fighting you know each other’s strengths and weaknesses as well as your own, but I don’t think these reflections will have that experience. So, target the other reflection!”

Pal and Pul nodded as they enacted Rei’s plan. Pal sent her Aquary Pressure attack at the Sorcermon clone, while Pul blasted the Witchmon reflection with his Crystal Barrage. Unfortunately, Lucemon’s reflections were either smart enough to adjust strategy or such good copies that the also switched the targets of the attacks, and both Pul and his copy were sent flying back when the Aquary Pressure attacks managed to overpower their icy barrages. While her strategy did result in damage to one of the copies, Rei didn’t want to have that victory be at the cost of Pul’s safety. She tried to channel her brother and come up with the perfect strategy for the occasion, but she wasn’t sure if Neo could get a Digimon to beat an exact replica of itself.

Thinking this, Rei was instantly struck with inspiration. She had been coming at the problem all wrong. Sure, beating exact copies of Pal and Pul in a fight was a difficult prospect, but who said she had to fight? If these copies were really as good as they seemed to be, it was safe to say that down at the level of their data the opponents essentially WERE Pal and Pul. And her Digivice 01s were able to store her Digimon, and only her Digimon, within them. She typed in the command to Pul’s Digivice, and sure enough when the laser carrying the information hit the copy of Pul it was drawn into the Digivice and stored away. She quickly repeated the process with Pal’s Digivice, before turning to see where her help could be used most now that her copies had been temporarily detained.

While Rei was scanning the battle, Izzy finally started focusing his attention on it. Unlike everybody else, he wasn’t facing a perfect copy of his partner—Kabuterimon was facing off against a BladeKuwagamon. That had been enough for Izzy to hypothesize that, true to the name of his attack, Lucemon was more reflecting the darkness within each Digimon than anything else. With Kabuterimon hanging back and fighting more defensively than offensively, BladeKuwagamon had fallen into a similar pattern, leaving Izzy plenty of time to try and analyze the data of Lucemon’s mirror as well as contact everyone else to follow up on his emergency message he sent earlier.

However, his analysis of Lucemon’s attack hadn’t turned up anything he could decipher on the spot, so he had turned back to the fight. He was somewhat curious as to which of Tentomon’s Champion forms would win in a fight, but he had other more interesting things to test out that didn’t involve as much risk to his partner. If Lucemon’s attack worked like he thought it did, it was essentially forcing people to face their darkness. Of course, the original eight DigiDestined had all fought this fight and come to terms with their darkness after Lilithmon attacked them months ago. It was time to see what the mirror could do if the original Tentomon embraced his inner darkness.

Kabuterimon Dark Digivolved to MetallifeKuwagamon, and Izzy smirked as the copy of BladeKuwagamon seemed to get absorbed within his partner. However, before he could celebrate his victory, the mirror beneath MetallifeKuwagamon suddenly flashed, and a blue MegaKabuterimon rose from its surface much like all the other reflections had when they joined the battle. Izzy gave Lucemon credit for accounting for this circumstance, but it wasn’t a major setback. In terms of brute force, MegaKabuterimon was far stronger than MetallifeKuwagamon, but in a fight MetallifeKuwagamon was far quicker and more balanced. Barring a lucky shot, MegaKabuterimon wouldn’t even be able to land a hit on the smaller insect.

Still, despite the clear advantage, this situation offered a unique opportunity that Izzy wasn’t going to pass up. Unlike everybody else who had started using Dark Digivolution, he had never reached the Mega level along that evolutionary path. His bout with the flu had knocked him further behind Joe, and then when that started to clear up Minervamon had offered to personally teach him. Since at that point most fights were beyond the point where one Mega level made a lot of difference, Izzy quickly prioritized learning from the Goddess of Wisdom as a more helpful course of action in the war against Lucemon. While focusing on his studies he didn’t work on Dark Digivolution, but now he had a unique opportunity to see what Tentomon’s Dark Mega form would be.

After quickly sharing his plan with MetallifeKuwagamon to Digivolve for a few seconds and then return to the form where he had such a clear advantage, Izzy focused on switching his Crest from its dark state to its fully active normal state. It took a second or two, but eventually MetallifeKuwagamon started glowing with the bright purple light that accompanied his usual Digivolution to Mega. HerculesKabuterimon called out his name as he finished Digivolving and turned to see what his dark counterpart would be, but instead of seeing a giant insect like he was expecting all he saw was Kenta and MarineAngemon smiling as a black blob dissipated in front of them.

“Great job keeping him busy Digivolving, you two! MarineAngemon’s Kahuna Waves attack dissolves these reflections, but the stronger you get the longer it takes to take effect. Since your copy was in mid-Digivolution, it couldn’t do anything to defend itself.”

Izzy almost complained about the situation, but decided he couldn’t fault Kenta for taking advantage of such an opening—if their roles were reversed, he would have done the same thing. Izzy looked around at the rest of the battle to see he had actually been one of the last ones Kenta came around to—Ryo and Cyberdramon had been further away from the group so that fight was still going on, and Beelzemon and Takato had just finished off the copy of Gallantmon by working together.

However, just as Izzy was feeling confident that the fight was almost over, a strange shockwave passed over the entire group. Izzy started seeing strange visions: things like Machinedramon’s city, the void that had housed the final battle with Apocalymon, himself at age 10 getting captured by Devimon, and an Omnimon fighting what Izzy recognized from Minervamon’s lessons as Alphamon. The sudden assault of images from random times and places was disorienting to say the least, but as Izzy glanced around at the others his blood ran cold. He saw where Cyberdramon had been fighting his copy, but the Cyborg Digimon was rapidly growing in size. Bands of fractal code appeared around him and seemed to slow the process down, but Izzy could already see the Ultimate level’s form changing into an ethereal mass with two draconic heads.

Izzy knew this could mean only one thing—Ryo’s fears were coming to pass, and Cyberdramon was becoming ZeedMillenniummon once again now that he had returned to this world. However, the impending appearance of the Evil God Digimon wasn’t the most worrying factor of the situation—Cyberdramon’s copy was undergoing the transformation as well. Izzy glanced to Ryo, who was down on the ground searching through all of his scattered cards. Izzy didn’t know if Ryo had dropped his cards in shock or if the fight between the two Cyberdramon had sent them flying, but whatever the cause he really hoped Ryo could find what he was looking for. In his base form Millenniummon had been too powerful for the DigiDestined to defeat. And while they had increased in number and strength since then, Izzy was fairly certain they wouldn’t be able to handle two copies of ZeedMillenniummon on top of the D-Reaper and Lucemon.

HerculesKabuterimon, Beelzemon, and Gallantmon were all trying to blast the still-forming Evil God Digimon, but the spatial and temporal distortion caused their attacks to wink out of existence before they could even get close to connecting. MarineAngemon was going as fast as he could to get to the scene of the fight and hopefully eliminate the copy if nothing else, but the Pixie Digimon wasn’t built for speed. Eventually, Ryo seemed to just give up on his search in frustration and grabbed a card at random. However, Izzy saw a flash of blue light as the card seemed to transform in his hand, and Ryo immediately swiped it while calling out, “Digi-Modify! System Crash activate!”

Reality suddenly popped back to normal at a disorienting pace. As soon as he adjusted to the change, Izzy looked to where the ZeedMillenniummon had been appearing to see two purple slimes that resembled Monodramon’s head passed out on the ground. Ryo breathed a sigh of relief as he picked up his Ketomon, but MarineAngemon wasn’t going to take any chances and made sure to hit the copy with his Kahuna Waves attack. As Ryo cradled his partner, he turned to the rest of the group and spoke with a weary tone. “Can we please get moving? I don’t know how many more near-misses we can handle.”

Chapter Text

After the stress of their arrival in this Digital World, the Tamers were looking forward to getting to a place of relative safety where they could actually prepare for the upcoming battles and hopefully get in contact with Hypnos. Izzy was all too happy to agree with their suggestion, but when he tried to open a digital gate he only got an error message for his trouble. Even though the obvious effects of ZeedMillenniummon’s brief appearance had worn off, the aftereffects were still twisting space enough that he couldn’t get a solid portal. Switching to plan B, he decided to head for the temple of the Sovereign—though judging by the lack of survivors at the battlefield, the Sovereign were no longer alive to claim the temple as their own. It was a somber thought to keep Izzy occupied on the long trip back.

The trip itself was mostly uneventful, but after their unprepared arrival directly into Lucemon’s path the Tamers weren’t taking any chances. HerculesKabuterimon ended up carrying most of the humans on his back, while Beelzemon acted as a guard flying ahead. The Tamers originally wanted to join Beelzemon, but none of them were quite as fast in the air as the giant insect or the Demon Lord and they didn’t want to slow the group down. However, they kept their D-Powers at the ready so they could Biomerge at the shortest notice. Luckily, no threat appeared, and HerculesKabuterimon was quick to revert to Tentomon as soon as they arrived. He may have been a Mega, but carrying that many people on his back was far from comfortable.

When the Tamers saw the magnificence of the temple of the Sovereign, their only reaction was a sense of curiosity. They had seen the land of the Sovereign in their Digital World, but apparently this world’s Sovereign had the exact same architectural tastes. Lopmon had spent much of the early part of her life guarding the Southern Gate, and she couldn’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu as she walked through an exact replica of the very same gate. Unfortunately, the common taste wasn’t a good thing, as Jeri couldn’t help but recognize some familiar surroundings. Takato grabbed her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze, knowing what she must be thinking. He knew he wouldn’t have to try very hard to find the counterpart to the location where Leomon died, and if he could find it he knew Jeri would be able to find it.

Just then, Jeri suddenly stopped in her tracks and let out a gasp of shock. Following her eyes, Takato understood exactly the reason—a Leomon was walking on the path towards them leading a group of In-Training and Baby Digimon. It was a particularly cruel trick of fate that Jeri would meet another Leomon in a place that looked so much like the place she had lost her own partner. The blow only struck harder when Leomon greeted them as he walked past. It may have been because it had been years since he had last heard Leomon’s voice, but he thought the two sounded like they had the same voice. Hearing that voice greeting Jeri as a stranger was almost heartbreaking, and Takato pulled Jeri into a hug as he saw her struggling with tears. Unfortunately, things were about to get a lot worse.

A sudden gust of wind caused Takato to look up just in time to see a dark portal close in the sky and a dark figure come flying right towards Leomon. The figure collided with the lion and kicked up a cloud of dust from the force of the impact. When the dust cleared, it became obvious the figure hadn’t done it intentionally, as she was just as disoriented as Leomon was. However, that wasn’t the worst part—apart from the figure’s outfit making it obvious she was female, she looked a lot like Beelzemon. And she had just come hurtling through the sky and hurt a Leomon right in front of Jeri.

Takato wondered why the universe would do all this to Jeri, but as Leomon dusted himself off and addressed the newcomer those thoughts went away. “You know, BeelStarrmon, there are easier ways of saying hello. And you could easily have hit the children, so I must ask you to be more careful in the future.”

Beelzemon’s female counterpart rolled her eyes. “Yes, obviously I came crashing in here on purpose. If you must know, Lucemon figured out that he had a spy in his ranks, and since I was one of four Digimon that served him and managed to live this long he didn’t even need his omniscience to know it was me. I thought he would kill me, but he said it would be a lot more entertaining if I would stay alive for a bit longer and then threw me through a portal directly into you.”

By this time, Takato had gone from wondering why fate was cruel to being consumed with anger. This wasn’t a case of a horrible coincidence—Lucemon had added this last step on purpose. He was nearly all powerful and clearly knew about the fight with the D-Reaper since he brought that abomination to this world. This meant the Demon Lord knew about what happened to Jeri’s Leomon, and he was abusing his power just to mess with Jeri. Takato wasn’t even aware of his surroundings anymore as he focused on how much he was going to make Lucemon pay for this.

Suddenly, Guilmon snarled out, “Ta…ka…to…” Hearing the pain in his partner’s voice, Takato snapped out of his thoughts and turned towards Guilmon. The Digital Hazard on his chest was flashing red, but the most worrying thing was the fire spiraling out around his body. Takato immediately recognized transformation and knew he had nobody but himself to blame. He had been so angry at Lucemon for trying to recreate one of the worst moments in Jeri’s life, but in doing so Takato was inadvertently recreating even more of the scene. Beelzemon was even pushing everybody else back and planning to stop Megidramon from hurting anybody. Luckily, the precaution wasn’t needed, as Takato realized his mistake before he could repeat it and calmed himself down. Without the anger fueling the transformation, Guilmon managed to suppress the change, and as soon as the fire went away Takato was hugging his partner and crying on to his shoulder.

The other Tamers knew what must be going through Takato’s head, but they hung back and let Takato and Guilmon have their moment before offering their show of support. For his part, Leomon was trying to keep the young Digimon from intruding in their curious state, but BeelStarrmon didn’t really care about any of that. However, she had seen Beelzemon step in, and since then her eyes had been fixated on the Demon Lord. She walked right up to Beelzemon, not even caring that in the process she knocked Kenta aside and ended up standing on Kazu’s feet since Guardromon’s partner had been standing right next to Beelzemon. Kazu managed to shout “Hey!” before he glanced upward and immediately went silent. BeelStarrmon ignored the teen whose face was practically buried in her stomach as she started talking.

“Well, how did such a handsome specimen like you end up with a bunch of losers like these?”

Beelzemon took a step back and blushed as he started spluttering. “Wh... Whoa, lady! I mean, I’m flattered, but we literally just met! And my friends aren’t losers!”

BeelStarrmon just smirked. “What, can’t a girl like what she sees? And I’m not surprised you don’t think they’re losers—because you were one of the losers I was talking about!” Beelzemon blinked, and then noticed his right arm suddenly felt a lot lighter. He heard BeelStarrmon laughing behind him and spun around to see her 20 feet away and holding his Corona Blaster. “Hey, give that back! How did you even—”

“Oh, please, it was easy. All I had to do was distract you so you loosened your grip, and then let my ability to warp space do the rest. Later!” She blew a kiss at the group before teleporting even further away, where Beelzemon could only watch in stunned silence as she started flying away normally. However, his shock quickly was replaced by anger as he started giving chase, only for Ai to call out for him to stop.

“I know you want to go after her, but please be careful, okay Beelzemon? It sounds like there’s a whole bunch of bad stuff out there other than the D-Reaper.” Beelzemon took a deep breath before smiling at his partner.

“Hey, don’t worry. I’ll be back. And I’m not in a hurry to repeat my last experience with the D-Reaper, so I’ll be careful AND get my blaster back.”

Rika rolled her eyes. “What’s the big deal? Won’t that blaster just go away when you revert to Impmon and then come back the next time you go Blast Mode?”

Beelzemon spun to face her. “Well, yeah, but it’s the sentimental value! That blaster came from a toy gun that Ai and Mako’s parents got for me my first Christmas with the family! I couldn’t get Mako’s toy gun back after the D-Reaper destroyed it, but I’m not going to just let this one go without a fight!”

Mako nodded as he pulled a card out of his deck. “Yeah, you go show her that it isn’t nice to just take other people’s stuff without asking! If Ai and me could learn to share, she can too! Now show her who’s boss!”

He passed the card to his sister, but as she swiped it both twins called out in unison, “Digi-Modify! Behemoth Activate!” The cursed motorcycle suddenly appeared out of thin air, but as Beelzemon had long since bent the bike to his will it now only served as a way for him to travel long distances without having to expend any energy flying.

After the dust settled from Beelzemon riding off after BeelStarrmon, the humans all turned to head into the temple. However, Kazu remained motionless, right up to the point where Rika turned and bumped into him as she started walking. “Hey, watch where you’re going, Kazu!”

When Kazu didn’t respond Rika looked like she was about to slap him, but Henry stepped between the two of them before things could get to that point. “Hey, Rika, I understand this hasn’t exactly been a great week for any of us, but we can’t take it out on each other. I let the situation get to me when Suzie came to the Digital World last time, and I’d rather not have anyone repeat my mistake.”

Rika huffed but backed down, causing Henry to turn to Kazu. “And you could do a better job of not just freezing…” When Kazu STILL didn’t respond, Henry went from scolding to concerned. “Are you okay, Kazu?”

Kazu just stayed frozen in place staring upward, causing even Rika to get worried about him. “Do you think BeelStarrmon did something to him? I mean, she was standing…right…” She seemed to figure something out and immediately shoved Henry out of the way before punching Kazu in the stomach hard enough that he collapsed to the ground, which finally seemed to snap him out of his stupor.  He seemed to have a hard time catching his breath after taking the punch, but Rika wasn’t showing him any sympathy as she yelled at him. “I swear, Kazu, this better not have happened for the reason I think it did. You had us all worried, and if it was just because you got a chance to ogle a female Digimon’s chest…”

“It…doesn’t…matter…if…they’re…Digital…” Kazu wheezed out, confirming Rika’s suspicions. “Renamon!” The fox Digimon answered her partner’s call, though she wasn’t sure if Rika was about to ask her to attack Kazu or not. Luckily for the boy, Rika’s order was pretty much the opposite. “Do me a favor and stay between me and Kazu for the next hour to make sure I don’t end up killing him.”

With that, Rika stormed off towards the temple, leaving Henry to help Kazu off the ground. “You know, you really shouldn’t have said anything about that. You know how she feels about that whole thing, especially considering those pictures of her and Renamon that started circulating the internet…”

Kazu brushed himself off as he caught his breath. “Yeah, I deserved that punch. Totally worth it, though.” Henry looked like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to hit Kazu himself or not, but he settled with just trying to put this whole situation behind them.

“You know what, forget it. Come on, we should all catch up to Rika and the others.” Izzy and Rei had already gone on ahead as soon as BeelStarrmon stole Beelzemon’s blaster, as they thought it would be best to find out what they had missed the last three days while the Tamers handled what seemed to be an internal issue. From Leomon, they learned Anubismon had decided to evacuate the Temple of all noncombatants as they made this the main base of operations for the final battle with Lucemon. Thanks to Plutomon’s last gift, he had been able to watch the ‘battle’ between the Demon Lord and the Sovereign-led army to see what he had suspected was true all along: only the DigiDestined had any chance at stopping Lucemon. The Demon Lord may have promised four days until the final battle, but Anubismon trusted Lucemon’s word as much as he trusted that he could win a one on one battle with the Demon Lord.

Since Izzy and Rei spent some time catching up with Leomon, the Tamers managed to beat them inside the temple, where Anubismon was waiting to greet them. Rei was ready to ignore most of the welcome speech since she knew the details by now anyway, but on seeing Takato, Henry, and Rika Anubismon suddenly grabbed his head and collapsed to his knees. Izzy ran up to try and help the God Man Digimon, but he seemed to recover from whatever he just went through enough to address the Tamers. “I thought I sensed a familiar presence come to this world! Tell me, where’s Alice?”

“Wait,” Henry responded, “how do you know Alice?” Anubismon just smiled. “Long ago, the Olympos XII said they needed a messenger to help the Sovereign in another world and embedded a strange power within me. Then they sent me to this other world, where I became Alice’s partner. I had to return once I served my purpose, and that was hundreds of years ago to the point where I had forgotten everything but her. I never would have guessed that I would see all of you again after all this time…”

“So, you were Dobermon. I guess that explains why you could give us the power to Biomerge on Earth if you were working for some gods. I’m not sure if we did this back then, but thanks for your help.” Anubismon acknowledged Rika’s thanks with a smile, but Henry knew he had to ruin the Mega level’s good mood.

“I’m sorry to say this, Anubismon, but none of us have even seen Alice since the fight with the D-Reaper two years ago. We tried finding her, but she had gone missing months before any of us even went to the Digital World. We all thought it was a similar situation to Ryo where she just went off to the Digital World on her own without telling anybody, and she’ll only be found if she wants to be.”

Anubismon’s smile faded at the news, but he nodded somberly. “I was hoping to see her again and apologize for having to leave her, but I guess I’ll have to wait. She is a strong spirit, and I hope it is many more years before I encounter her within the course of my duties as ruler of the underworld.” For a second, Rei thought she saw tears in Anubismon’s eyes, but when he blinked and turned his attention back to the group he looked as stoic as he usually did. “Well, let us make sure we all have a future to think about. I know you will want to spend time on Earth, but I suggest you make an effort to spend most of your time here. From the sounds of things, you haven’t been involved in a major fight for years. You will need to be in your best shape to fight Lucemon, and here your partners may all battle without fear of collateral damage or unwanted attention.”

None of the Tamers were too surprised by this, because Izzy had suggested the same thing to them before they travelled to this world. It seemed like the safest course of action—while they wouldn’t exactly stand out on this version of Earth, the simple fact of the matter was they shouldn’t exist in this world. Apart from Ryo who was declared dead around six years ago, they didn’t have any valid identity to use. Even if they planned ahead and didn’t get in a situation where they would need to provide an ID or use a credit card, they had to be careful using cash as well since there could very well be slight differences in the yen between the two dimensions that would make their money appear counterfeit. And while they could just stay hidden away at the military hospital, Izzy didn’t want to stretch Colonel Fuyutsuki’s resources or hospitality by adding ten people and eight Digimon to the list. Establishing a base in the Digital World seemed like an obvious choice.

Of course, another major part of the plan was to integrate the Tamers in to the fighting strength of the DigiDestined as seamlessly as possible, so they would need to spend a lot of time meeting and working with the other DigiDestined and the Legendary Warriors as well. To that end, after the Tamers dropped off their supplies, Izzy planned to lead them all back to the military base where they could meet all the others who were able to see visitors. Hopefully by this point TK, Kari, Koji, and Mari were all in better shape than they were three days ago, but Izzy didn’t exactly know the extent of their injuries to establish a timeline for recovery. In addition to introducing the Tamers to the others, Izzy knew he would be busy over the next couple of days: if Sigma and Willis hadn’t cracked the code for the X-Antibody he would have to help them through that, and he was also the one responsible for establishing a connection with the Hypnos computers from this dimension so the Monster Makers and Yamaki could analyze the D-Reaper and make sure Juggernaut would still be an effective solution.

The disturbance from ZeedMillenniummon’s appearance either hadn’t spread this far or had dissipated, meaning Izzy had no difficulties opening a Digital Gate this time around. After the rough transition between the two parallel worlds, the trip through the Digital Gate felt a lot smoother than it usually did for Rei. Without having to worry about the turbulence, she was able to stay in her borrowed wheelchair on the trip over, which meant she wouldn’t have to repeat the awkward situation of arriving on Earth just to collapse as her legs stopped working again. However, just as she thought about the ease of the transfer, she heard a loud crash and a muffled “Damn it!” before the flash of light that normally accompanied travel could fade away.

As soon as her eyes adjusted, Rei identified the source of the crash and the swearing as she saw Koji lying on the ground in a crumpled heap. There were long grooves cut all along the floor, which made her believe BeoWolfmon had been in the middle of some sort of training when they suddenly appeared and caused him to fall over. Sure enough, Koji managed to pick himself off the ground and addressed the group.

“Next time, a little warning that you’re arriving would be nice. I’m tired of having to adjust my course in midair.” It wasn’t the friendliest greeting, but Rei could understand why he felt that way. Everybody else was being far too conspicuous about not trying to look where Koji’s left arm had been. Rei knew from experience that when people were trying that hard not to look at her legs after the accident, they may as well have been staring at nothing but them.

Knowing how it felt to suddenly feel like your disability defined you, Rei was quick to change the topic to deflect the attention from Koji’s missing arm. “Sorry, we did let everyone know we were coming, but we should have been a little more specific about our arrival point. How is everybody else doing? Last I heard they were all unconscious.”

Koji just turned and started walking away, but he answered her as he left. “Come on, we’ve got a meeting planned for everyone to get each other’s stories anyway. As for how everybody is doing, TK’s still out but he’s stable, Kari’s awake but confined to her bed, and Mari overexerted herself getting Lotusmon to heal Kari so she’s stuck in bed as well. YukimiBotamon recently managed to Digivolve, but Nyaromon says it will be a while before she’s back at full strength.”

Izzy frowned. “I’m not sure we’ll have that long to wait. We ran into Lucemon on the way back. He gave us four days until he makes his next move. And it sounded like he was preparing a surprise for us.”

Koji stopped for a second at the news, but then he continued at a much more determined pace. “Well, looks like I won’t be doing any more physical therapy as myself then. But don’t bother going in to any details now—I’m sure it will be easier if you just tell everybody at once. Let’s go—Fuyutsuki’s waiting.”

As Fuyutsuki presided over the conference, he thought it might have been the strangest situation in Japan’s military history. He was technically in charge of this as official military policy required an enlisted officer to authorize an operation like this, but he knew he was not a factor in the upcoming war. Even Sealsdramon and Brimpmon as the last two enlisted Digital members of the JSDF weren’t strong enough to make in impact. The only ones who could do anything in this war were the DigiDestined and their allies, which meant the oldest human in the meeting was a 23-year-old. Looking beyond age, there were some teenagers here who were technically Japanese citizens, but they weren’t even from this planet. If he weren’t leading a division of the JSDF with Digital members, he probably would have viewed this as the first signs of insanity. As it was now, he viewed this as what would be the first in a long line of changes to come—especially if he could take advantage of communicating with the other Japan to see how they had successfully integrated Digimon into their military structure. As he was trying to do something similar, the experience in the other world could only be a blessing.

Luckily, the meeting started in familiar territory. Much like any meeting between foreign representatives for the first time, the meeting started with introductions. While Izzy and Rei had apparently briefed the Tamers on the situation and learned their story as well, the other DigiDestined didn’t have that opportunity. With that in mind, Fuyutsuki thought it best to give a summary of everything to make sure each group was on the same page. Besides, he himself didn’t know what these new children had been through, and knowing their stories would help him better understand what was nominally his new unit.

As the introductions continued, Fuyutsuki wasn’t surprised by the general impression he got from the new children. At times, they gave away their youth—like when they first introduced themselves as Digimon Tamers. Ms. Gotokuji was attending the meeting virtually as the doctors had ordered her to stay in bed, and she was not in the best mood because of it. When she claimed in a snarky voice that the label of Tamer was already taken, she started a heated debate over the merit of V-Pets vs the card game from the other world. Eventually the groups compromised by referring to Mr. Saiba’s group as V-Tamers and the other world’s group as just Tamers, and that only came about when Ms. Kamiya cut in over her video feed asking for the meeting to continue.

While she had finally woken up, she was far from recovered, and the weariness in her voice made her sound significantly older than her eighteen years. Unfortunately, this only served to derail the conversation further, as the boy with the Guardromon—introductions hadn’t made it far at all—suddenly exclaimed she sounded exactly like a Ms. Asaji in their world. When the boy with glasses agreed and looked more closely at Ms. Kamiya’s screen, he pointed out that she almost looked like a younger version of Ms. Asaji now that she was a real person instead of an anime character. His eyes then brightened as he pointed out the anime version of Kari wanted to be a teacher when she grew up, and started wondering if maybe this world represented some strange past version of their own world.

At this point, Fuyutsuki excused himself for a cup of coffee as the conversation quickly derailed into an argument over whether that theory was probable or not. When he came back, Izzy was in the middle of a long, complicated explanation that may as well have been spoken in DigiCode to everyone except Willis and Sigma. Finally, Rika snapped and shouted out, “Who cares! We know our two worlds overlap in strange ways thanks to someone who has a pathological need to do things on his own and mess things up for the rest of us. We came here to fight a war, not discuss multiverse theory.”

With that, the conversation finally got back on track, and Fuyutsuki got to see the experienced fighters he expected. Just like the DigiDestined, they had all seen more real battles than most members of the JSDF, but where the DigiDestined behaved as their own force more than anything the Tamers worked alongside government agencies for the good of the country. Fuyutsuki saw all the makings of soldiers in these children, which was both a familiar and uncomfortable feeling. What caused this all to hit home the most, however, was when he saw the reactions of the Matsuki boy and the Kato girl when it came time to tell the story of Leomon’s death. He had seen far too many veterans react in such a way to ignore the symptoms of PTSD. Realizing the story had to get worse after this point, Fuyutsuki made up his mind and called the meeting to attention.

“I see no reason why all the Tamers need to be here to tell this story, and we are already approaching dinner time. Matsuki, Kato, your parents own a bakery and a restaurant, correct? I’d say that makes you perfect for the first shift on mess duty. Take a right down this hallway and go in to the last room on the left. Talk to Ms. Kurata—I’m sure you’ll get along well with her.”

Kazu and Kenta snickered as their friends had to go off and work in the mess hall, but as soon as they were in the hallway Takato and Jeri let out a sigh of relief. They knew it wasn’t healthy to run away from the issue or bottle up their feelings, but they were still glad for the opportunity to leave before having to relive the whole scenario yet another time.

As the two walked down the hallway holding hands, Jeri finally saw Takato start to smile for the first time since arriving at the temple. Wanting to help his good mood along, she stopped for a second and turned towards him. “You know, we better be careful. We’ll be making food for a lot pickier audience than Guilmon here. Are you sure you can handle it?”

Takato recognized the joke and chuckled. “You’re right. But I don’t see what you’re so worried about. I seem to recall you doing just fine when you had to serve Orochimon alone. Compared to that, a bunch of soldiers should be easy.”

Jeri just laughed. “Right, because I’m sure I can just get everybody drunk this time around. We’re on an army base—I highly doubt they have alcoholic milkshakes just lying around.”

Takato laughed as well before he realized they had reached the end of the hallway. His laugh went from amused to sheepish as he turned around and opened the door Fuyutsuki had indicated. As soon as the door opened, however, Takato could only blink in shock. He had expected the kitchen to be the kind of low budget affair you saw in movies about the army, but this was nothing like that. He had just walked into a full bakery that put his family’s business to shame. Either this base was much better funded than he expected or he had always misrepresented army kitchens, but just the smell of this place was enough to make him feel like he had just returned home.

When a familiar sounding voice called out “Would you shut the door!” Takato’s eyes instantly snapped open. Sure, he had been feeling like he walked back into his home, but there was no way he had actually heard his mother’s voice. When the source of the voice walked around the corner from behind the ovens, though, Takato realized the source of his confusion. If Kari and Ms. Asaji were in some way dimensional counterparts of each other with the same dream job, voice, and general appearance, this girl must have been the counterpart to his mother. As if to further reinforce the connection, hopping along behind her was a Gigimon, Guilmon’s In-Training form. If it hadn’t been for the long talk about Kari and Ms. Asaji earlier, Takato was pretty sure he would have thought he was simply having a vivid dream at this point.

However, even though Takato could at least explain away the new arrival, he was still shocked enough that he ended up staring for a few seconds, leaving Jeri to close the door and explain their presence. “Sorry about that. We just arrived on base, and Colonel Fuyutsuki sent us to help prepare for dinner. Do you know where we can find a Ms. Kurata?”

The girl just sighed. “I don’t know why he insists on calling everyone under the age of thirty by their last names. I’m Ms. Kurata; though please just call me Keiko. I’m guessing you are the DigiDestined from that other world?”

Takato had finally snapped back to reality enough to answer. “Oh, you know about that? I thought it would be too confusing to explain, but yeah, we aren’t from this world. How did you figure it out?”

“Well, this is an army base. The only people here other than soldiers and medical staff are the DigiDestined, and Cody told me all about the plan to bring in help from another world. He was really angry at Hideto for keeping everyone in the dark for a couple days, but I guess Hideto had to have his reasons.”

Takato just shrugged, since he had only just met Hideto and didn’t know any details of what had happened in this world for the three days Izzy had been gone. “I don’t know—I just met them all today. If we aren’t going to be preparing dinner, how can we help? My parents own a bakery and Jeri sometimes helps us prepare for big rushes, so if you need some extra hands we’d be happy to pitch in.”

“Wait, your parents have a bakery? I’m so jealous—my dream is to own my own bakery with Huckmon. Oh, sorry, this is my partner Gigimon. As a rookie level he’s Huckmon, but after our last fight he still hasn’t fully recovered. Anyway, I’d be happy for some help, though we aren’t too important to the whole process. The woman who normally runs the bakery is out on maternity leave, and her replacement came down with the flu two days ago. Since I was just visiting here with nothing to do, I volunteered to take over the bakery. We don’t really have any baked goods on the menu coming up for the next week, but we are running low on bread so that’s what I’ve been doing. I’d be happy for some help.”

Chapter Text

Beelzemon grit his teeth as BeelStarrmon made a big show of waving at him with his own blaster before she walked through another dark portal. This was the third time she had done this, and it was increasingly obvious she was treating this whole thing as a big game. Beelzemon knew these corridors of darkness could travel to at least two other dimensions in the Dark Ocean and the Hall of Olympus, and if BeelStarrmon did so he probably wouldn’t be able to track the gun’s location- even though it was a part of him, his ability to sense its location only extended so far. However, she made sure to always pop up within thirty miles every time she disappeared, usually forcing Beelzemon to turn Behemoth around to chase after her. If Lucemon hadn’t already kicked her out of his army, Beelzemon would have thought this whole thing was a trap, but it seemed like BeelStarrmon was just stringing him along for her own amusement.

While this behavior was undoubtedly annoying, Beelzemon decided to play along with her game. At this point, getting the toy gun back wasn’t worth the time he was putting in to the chase, but something about BeelStarrmon’s mannerisms was triggering his own memories. He remembered a lonely little rookie running around town stealing little kids’ ice cream cones and throwing fireballs at pigeons just to feel important. Her little game with his blaster was reminding him of his own previous cries for attention, and he didn’t want anybody else to walk down that path if he could stop them.

Of course, in order to talk with BeelStarrmon he actually had to catch her first. Still, with the D-Reaper and Lucemon both potentially attacking at any time, he knew he couldn’t waste too much time wandering around without at least checking in with the others. Now that he was heading to BeelStarrmon’s position, he could let Behemoth do the driving and started fiddling with a device on the dashboard. This particular addition had been a gift from Yamaki—a communicator that allowed him to send messages to Ai and Mako’s D-Power. Normally such a thing wouldn’t be necessary, but in his case it was the most efficient solution to keeping in touch with his family. He had tried to move in with Ai and Mako, but after their dog Pakkun started playing with him and he set the curtains on fire in a sneezing fit he quickly realized he was allergic to dogs. Rather than force Ai and Mako to get rid of a member of their family, he decided he could keep living like he had before and roam the city. He enjoyed the freedom, and thanks to Yamaki he could always keep in touch with a place he could call home if he wanted.

Ai and Mako were excited to receive a message from Beelzemon, but when it just said he was still okay and gave an update on his location they turned their attention back to the temple courtyard. The scary guy with the white hair said he needed to determine everybody’s strength so he could work them into a plan, and that meant he would be pretend fighting with Takato and the others. They had only seen the fights with the D-Reaper and Parasimon on TV, so this would be their first chance to see a Digimon fight up close, even if it was mostly an act.

While the two six-year-olds were treating this whole thing as a game, Takato wasn’t really sure what to make of Neo’s plan. Sure, he could see the benefit of going into a fight with a plan of attack, especially since they had only managed to defeat the D-Reaper thanks to extensive preparation on the part of Hypnos and the Monster Makers. However, he wasn’t sure why that translated directly to Neo wanting to fight him right away. He could see Rika or Ryo enjoying something like this, but for some reason Neo had specifically requested to battle him before he disappeared for a half hour along with Rei. However, now Neo was back, and it looked like he would finally explain his reasoning.

“Your friends tell me you are the strongest in your group. I won’t claim that title for myself, but I highly doubt you’re in Hideto’s league. Let’s see if I’m right about this so-called Crimson Mode.”

Takato only blinked in response. “Wait, did they really tell you that? I’m not sure if I’m the strongest. That would probably be Beelzemon…”

Rika scoffed. “Oh, grow up, gogglehead. You were slightly stronger than Beelzemon in the Digital World, and his Blast Mode hasn’t shown anything on the level Crimson Mode has. You don’t have to pretend to be weaker than you are just so you won’t attract attention.”

“Yeah, but I’m not sure if I’ll even be able to use Crimson Mode again. I can only use it by tapping into Grani’s power, and I used up most of that stopping those Parasimon…” Hearing this, Calumon’s ears suddenly expanded and he interrupted his game of tag with Kapurimon to go to Takato’s side.

“Hey, hey, let me help! Ever since you learned how to Biomerge I haven’t been able to do anything for you, but I should be able to help you Digivolve past Mega! Please? Please? Please?”

Takato just smiled at his easily excitable friend. “Alright, Calumon, we’ll give it a shot. Are you sure you’re ready for this, Neo? Kapurimon’s an In-Training, which leads me to believe he won’t be ready to Digivolve for a while.”

Neo responded with a smirk. “So, Izzy didn’t tell you, did he? Good.” He pulled a necklace out from under his vest, and when Takato saw the brown glow he guessed this was the Crest of Devotion. “Most people need their Crests to get their Digimon to go to the next level. I have the opposite problem. Kapurimon, are you ready?”

The In-Training shouted out “Yeah!” and for a few seconds, Neo’s Crest stopped glowing. In those few seconds, Takato was shocked to see the tiny foxlike Digimon suddenly grow into a Machinedramon. Neo’s smirk grew. “We’ll, you’ve gotten a lot better at that. I almost didn’t have time to stop you.” Then he turned to Takato. “As you can see, we are more than ready to face a Mega level. And depending on what I see, we might even be ready to take you on when you ascend beyond that level. Stick at the Mega level as a warm up, though, so I can get a baseline of your skill.”

“Well, Guilmon, that sounds like our cue.” Guilmon just nodded. “Right!” Takato held out his D-Power and called out, “Biomerge Activate!” As he merged with his partner, Guilmon called out “Guilmon, Biomerge to…” but he was forced to stop short and throw up his Aegis in order to block a blast from Machinedramon’s Giga Cannon. While the holy shield showed no signs of damage from the attack, Gallantmon felt his left arm tingling from the force of the blow. “Hey, no fair! We barely finished Digivolving!”

Neo scoffed. “I’m sorry, are you expecting Lucemon to fight fairly? We are preparing for that battle, and I need to know more about you than I can see from scans alone. For example, how quickly can you respond to surprises on the battlefield?” Takato grumbled at this, but he didn’t really have a good counterargument. Instead, he fired back with his Shield of the Just as Machinedramon launched another volley of Giga Cannon. Takato put everything he had into the attack, but Machinedramon’s blast slowly pushed through his energy beam to impact on his shield again. Gritting his teeth, he decided to go for a new strategy, and charged in with his Lightning Joust attack. Machinedramon tried to counter with his Booster Claw, but where the Machine Digimon had the advantage in ranged combat he was no match for the Royal Knight at close quarters.

Pressing his advantage, Takato got a few solid hits in before Machinedramon caught him by surprise with his Infinity Hand attack. Still, the blast of energy was much weaker than his Giga Cannon, and Takato quickly got back into the fight. This time, he kept circling around Machinedramon, taking advantage of his opponent’s lack of mobility to create even more openings. As he was about to go in for another hit, Neo called a halt to the battle.

“Ok, that’s enough. I’ve gotten all the data I need for Gallantmon’s stats. You are definitely above average for a Mega level Digimon, and Machinedramon would most likely fail to beat you if he didn’t have help from me. Still, I suppose my expectations of strength for a Royal Knight are skewed by Omegamon, but you are nowhere near that level. Let’s see if this Crimson Mode of yours can prove that you deserve the title!”

Gallantmon sighed. “What are you, the leader of the Royal Knights? We never asked for the title anyway, so we don’t need to prove anything to you. But since you need to see our power before fighting Lucemon, I guess we can show you. Calumon?” The white Digimon shouted out “Yay!” as a red beam of light shot out of his forehead and into Gallantmon. However, Neo was distracted from the impending Digivolution by another glow—this one shining through his vest. He knew what the source had to be, but he was still confused—the Digimental of Legends was currently emitting a blue glow, but each of the other three times it was used it had unleased a rainbow of light. He glanced back to Calumon as the small Digimon’s red glow faded in time with the Digimental’s. When the blue glow faded, there was only the usual small golden ball of light inside the Digimental that showed it had started charging. Still, the brief synchronization between the two catalysts for Digivolution was too big of a coincidence to ignore…

Neo was snapped out of his thoughts when Gallantmon called out to him. “Can you please focus, Neo? I can’t hold this new form forever.”

Neo turned to face the Royal Knight and sighed. “Sorry, but I just discovered something interesting. Anyway, I’m sure this transformation would look impressive to most people, but I’ve seen it too many times already. Machinedramon?” Takato could only watch in shock as Machinedramon also started glowing red before transforming into a new form. He heard about Burst Mode from Izzy, but he hadn’t expected Neo to be able to use it without the Digimental’s power.

Guilmon, however, took the transformation in stride. “Look, Takato, he has a Crimson Mode too!”

Neo let out a cold chuckle. “You can call it whatever you’d like, but we call this transformation a Burst Evolution. Now, how about you try your luck against Chaosdramon?”

Takato nodded and resumed his previous strategy of circling around Chaosdramon while getting a few hits in with his sword Blutgang, but he quickly pulled back. He had no doubt Chaosdramon was stronger than Machinedramon and probably on his level offensively, but defensively even the Red Digizoid armor couldn’t stop the holy power of his sword, as it had no physical form to block. However, Chaosdramon also seemed to be holding back, as he wasn’t using his cannons or any other long ranged attack. Takato was secretly glad for this—while Crimson Mode was stronger than his regular Gallantmon form, the lack of a shield meant he wouldn’t have anything to protect himself from another blast.

Neo called this skirmish to an end after 20 seconds. “Okay, it’s obvious both sides of this battle are holding back far too much to really show your limits. Luckily, I thought of a solution. Sigma, would you mind sending this to Mask’s Square?” Sigma had just arrived on the scene and seemed surprised that Neo was asking for help, but he quickly recovered.

“I’m on it.” He then activated his Crest of Darkness, and in the black glow DemiDevimon Warp Digivolved to Piedmon. A small part of Takato was excited at seeing the Digimon that had been the last two members of the Dark Masters now allied with the DigiDestined, but when Piedmon trapped him with Neo and Chaosdramon in some freaky dimension he immediately brought his focus back to the matter at hand.

“Okay, Sigma, now can you make copies of Gallantmon and Chaosdramon? I need them to be statistically identical to the originals, though they don’t need to act at all. And make them easy to distinguish from the originals.”

Realization dawned on Sigma, though Takato was only confused by the exchange, especially when the masked DigiDestined pulled out his laptop and said, “Give me a minute.” Fifty-seven seconds later, Takato was surprised to see a green Chaosdramon spring into existence in front of him, while across from Chaosdramon stood a green copy of Gallantmon Crimson Mode.

Neo smiled at his Alias. “Excellent work, Sigma.” He then turned to Takato. “We’ve already accomplished one goal here, but I think it would be best to see exactly how much destructive power you can dish out—and how much it takes to destroy you. Now we can do that without killing each other. So, Chaosdramon, Hyper Infinity Cannon!” The Machine Digimon flipped his cannons forward and unleashed a blast so powerful Takato didn’t even see when the copy of Gallantmon got destroyed. However, Neo seemed pleased with the data he got to analyze, so Takato guessed his plan had worked. “So, now I know all I need about your defenses. Still, I’d like to see the limit of your offensive power. I don’t care if it’s overkill; use your strongest attack to destroy the Chaosdramon copy.”

Takato sighed. If it wasn’t vitally important that everyone was aware of each other’s strengths, he would have complained about Neo essentially ordering everybody else around. Sure, he was supposedly the best strategist the DigiDestined had when it came to planning battles, but Takato hadn’t heard enough to know if that was actually true. However, if Rika was willing to put up with Ryo despite their current fight, Takato knew he could handle dealing with someone like Neo in the name of defeating Lucemon. So, he followed Neo’s orders and called out “Crimson Light!” while throwing his lance Gungnir at the Chaosdramon copy. The lance vaporized the copy and continued flying before unleashing a burst of red light that managed to blast apart the confines of Mask’s Square. Takato then made Gungnir reappear in his hand and turned to Neo, who was staring at him with a look of shock on his face.

Eventually, Neo’s face shifted to a look of grudging respect. “You know, you are the first Digimon other than Daemon’s Super Ultimate form to be able to shatter Mask’s Square without targeting Piedmon to do so.” He then turned to Sigma. “How is Piedmon holding up?”

The clown was down on his knees clutching his head in his hands from having his pocket dimension forcibly shattered, but he didn’t seem in danger of reverting. Sigma went over to his partner and rested his hand on the Mega level’s shoulder in a show of support. Takato undid his Biomerge and went over to apologize, but the DigiDestined of Darkness cut him off. “Don’t. We need to prepare for Lucemon. Daemon killed Piedmon by shattering Mask’s Square. Lucemon can do the same, and we need to be ready. We’ve practiced severing the connection. Piedmon and I know it’s necessary.”

Takato just blinked at Sigma’s choppy speech pattern, but Neo quickly drew his attention away from the introverted genius. “I’m really not sure how to classify you. Offensively, you’ve got an attack that’s on a level with Omegamon before the X-Antibody. Defensively, you are less durable than your Mega form. I think I’ll just treat you as a Burst Mode Digimon and assign teams accordingly. However, before that happens, I have some questions regarding your cream puff of a friend.”

“Wait, Calumon? Why don’t you just ask him yourself? He’s smarter than he looks, you know.” Neo rolled his eyes.

“I don’t doubt that, but after seeing him play with Kapurimon I have no desire to put up with his childish antics. What exactly is his story? His data isn’t like that of other Digimon. And he somehow managed to make your team’s Digivolutions entirely dependent on his existence instead of working through the usual channels.”

Takato took a deep breath. “Well, I wouldn’t say he made us dependent on him. You’re right about him not being a normal Digimon, though. Our fight against the D-Reaper wasn’t the first time it attacked out Digital World. In the ancient past, it went through anything that had grown beyond its original programing—basically anything that had Digivolved. In an effort to stop that from repeating, the Sovereign took the power of Digivolution and transformed it into Digimon. Calumon is that Digimon—the physical incarnation of the Light of Digivolution. I think the Sovereign called him the catalyst or the Digi-entelechia but to us he’s just our friend Calumon.”

Neo’s eyes lit up at this last sentence. “So, that’s the connection!” Takato only stared blankly, so Neo pulled out the Digimental of Legends as he explained. “I found this Digimental in an ancient temple dedicated to Shakamon. While Shakamon is classified as the Tathagata Digimon, if you believe the legends of the Digital World Shakamon predated the universe itself. Even gods like the Olympos XII view it not as a Digimon, but a force of nature. This temple took things a step further—saying the Tathagata was the incarnation of all light, and blessed the worlds with the power of Digivolution. This Digimental was described as one of sixteen entelechia the Tathagata spread through the worlds to that purpose.”

“Okay, so does this mean Calumon was once part of this super-Digimon?” Neo just rolled his eyes.

“Maybe. I’m just saying it would explain why the Digimental synchronized with Calumon while you were Digivolving. If you believe the legends, that would make Calumon an incarnation of the red entelechia, while this Digimental is the blue one. Of course, I’m not so quick to believe ancient superstitions. I don’t doubt that Shakamon and its dark counterpart GranDracmon existed. In fact, GranDracmon still does exist hibernating in the Dark Area, and is the reason the Seven Great Demon Lords existed in the first place. Lucemon has been fighting this entire war with the hopes of getting enough power to match GranDracmon, so they must be two incredibly powerful Digimon. But that is all I believe them to be—I don’t view them as actual gods or forces of nature. We’ve seen strange overlaps between our worlds before, so perhaps Calumon is just your world’s version of the Digimental and Shakamon’s involvement is just a fairy tale.”

Takato just sighed. “You know, I sometimes miss when my life was simple. It can be hard enough keeping track of things with one Digital World, and now I’m in a different Digital World that is connected to an anime in my world that somehow has all these weird overlaps…”

Neo rolled his eyes. “You’d think after dealing with one interdimensional threat you’d stop being surprised by these things. Speaking of which, Sigma, has there been any progress on the X-Antibody?”

Sigma turned from his partner to explain. “I came out here to report. We’ve reached a dead end. We isolated the antibody itself, but we cannot upload the data to other Digimon. Even after removing the subroutines that caused the changed appearance and increased strength the program was too complex to transmit with the Digivice 01.”

Takato’s eyes suddenly lit up. “Hey, I think I can help!” He pulled a card out of his deck and closed his eyes for a second, causing the card to turn blue. “We used a card like this to carry a program that made us immune to the D-Reaper’s chaos in our world. Maybe you can do something similar with this X-Antibody. It might only work for the people with D-Powers, but it’s better than nothing.”

Sigma and Neo both just stared at Takato. Eventually, it was Piedmon who broke the silence by breaking into a weak set of chuckles. “You know, kid, you’re going to have to teach me that magic trick. I could have a lot of fun with that…”

Takato just laughed awkwardly. “It’s not really magic. The DigiGnomes just give us the ability to change the cards we draw…” He trailed off as realization struck him. “You know what, I guess it is magic. I guess I never thought about how this whole thing worked until after I met the DigiGnomes, and by that point all of us could do it.”

Neo just shook his head as he snatched to card away. “I’m more worried about the fact that nobody thought of this idea before. Let’s get this program transferred. Even if it will only affect the eight of you, I’m sure Hideto will appreciate the backup. Now, are there any other magical abilities from your world that might come in handy in this upcoming fight? I’d like to know about them now so I can incorporate them into our strategy. And I still need to see everyone else from your world fight.”

Takato shook his head. “I don’t think there’s anything else we need to tell you…”

Neo rolled his eyes. “I’m not so sure if I should trust you. Anyway, we’ve wasted enough time. Let’s go.”

Beelzemon sighed as he homed in BeelStarrmon’s location yet again. After a few hours of chasing her around the Digital World, he got to the point where he was expecting her to just teleport away as soon as he got close to her. It was getting to the point where he was considering just giving up and heading back to the Temple. Sure, he was only still playing along in the hopes of helping BeelStarrmon, but he had a limit to his patience. He was a Demon Lord, after all, not a saint. He’d give it a couple more tries before he gave up. It was her life, and if she wanted to live it like he used to he guessed he’d just have to let her.

He snapped out of his musings when he noticed his blaster was only 100 feet ahead of him—but 200 feet down. Realizing he was quickly racing towards a cliff, he immediately swerved sideways, sending himself skidding towards the cliff. At the last second, he kicked Behemoth backwards, stopping it from falling off the cliff but sending him flying off the edge. Of course, since he had wings but Behemoth didn’t, that had been his plan all along. However, while his plan to that point had gone without a hitch, he wasn’t quite ready for what he would find at the bottom of the cliff—and in his path as he flew down.

Just as he had sensed, BeelStarrmon was indeed at the bottom of the cliff, with his Corona Blaster slung across her back. However, she was completely surrounded by Horn Strikers, with a fairly large crowd of Searchers filling the sky apparently to keep an eye on her even if she did teleport. She was just standing still in the center of the circle with her guns down when the Horn Striker behind her suddenly charged. It didn’t look like she was aware of the threat, but luckily Beelzemon was ready. He pulled out his two Berenjena shotguns and dispatched the agent with his Double Impact. However, this drew everyone’s attention to him, and the Searchers all mobbed him and herded him down to the ground. Beelzemon wasn’t sure if he could touch the agents with the virus built in to the chaos, but he wasn’t about to take that chance. Luckily, the Searchers resumed their position in the dome as soon as he landed, and he stood back to back with BeelStarrmon with his guns ready to attack the next agent that made a move.

“So, fancy meeting you here. After all that time running away from me, did you really need to arrange the welcoming committee?”

BeelStarrmon just chuckled. “Sorry, I can’t take all the credit for this. So, think you can handle this many?”

Beelzemon kept his guns moving, waiting for something to make a move. So far, the Horn Strikers seemed to be waiting for new orders after the new arrival, but he knew the reprieve wouldn’t last. “Well… might be tough if one more shows up.”

BeelStarrmon smiled. “Then that will have to be the one I take care of.”

Beelzemon blinked in surprise. “What, you’re fighting too? Why haven’t you just teleported away or fought back yet then?”

Beelzemon could tell from her voice that BeelStarrmon was rolling her eyes. “Unfortunately, Lucemon realized he forgot to cut me off from the Dark Corridors and corrected that oversight. Or at least, I can’t open any Dark Corridors here. As for why I wasn’t fighting, it’s a little thing called reloading. Some of us have to do that every once in a while.” Suddenly, each of her guns let out an audible click. The Horn Strikers suddenly all sprang forward just as Beelzemon and BeelStarrmon opened fire…

Chapter Text

Beelzemon sprang backwards as another Horn Striker suddenly sprang from the loose chaos of its fallen brethren and nearly gored him to death. Unfortunately, since he and BeelStarrmon were still relying on covering each other’s backs, his move caused him to crash into her and sent them both to the ground. BeelStarrmon took the change in stride and kept firing, as her homing bullets didn’t really need to be shot in a particular direction. However, even though her effectiveness wasn’t really diminished, she couldn’t resist the opportunity to comment.

“You know, this isn’t really the best time for this. I can understand how ‘dodge the horned monsters and don’t touch the goo’ would get you excited, but you could at least get to know me a little better. For instance, fun fact number one: I don’t like being on the bottom.”

Beelzemon ignored her comment as he kept firing from his back. While the D-Reaper was potentially more dangerous in this world, it had a few disadvantages compared to its original incarnation. After kidnapping Jeri and moving to Earth, the D-Reaper was exposed to so many new situations that it was forced to adapt. It had become such a dangerous foe because it had learned from its contact with humans, but thus far it wasn’t the case in this world. The agents all operated as part of a hive mind that wasn’t good at adapting to sudden changes—like when its opponents suddenly fell to the ground and kept fighting. This rigidity of thought was the only reason he and BeelStarrmon had made it as far as they had, though he knew his luck wouldn’t last forever. The D-Reaper was slowly learning new tricks over the course of this fight, so he had to make the most of every advantage he got.

Of course, fighting from his back was still an overall hindrance, so as soon as the D-Reaper’s agents adjusted to the change and started moving again he sprang off of BeelStarrmon’s back—making sure to grab his blaster as he did so. With his strongest weapon now back in his hands, he turned to the skies and eliminated a whole swath of Searchers with a wave of energy. Not wanting to give the agents time to react to the sudden change, he grabbed BeelStarrmon’s arm and pulled her with him as he flew back up the cliff face. However, he only succeeded in getting halfway up when a giant blue laser slammed into the cliff face ahead of him. Beelzemon turned to the source, only to see three Optimizers and two Paratice Heads approaching. The Optimizers seemed content to keep him from ascending further up the cliff with their blasts as they unloaded a swarm of Searchers and Bubbles. It was then that Beelzemon realized the D-Reaper was purposefully keeping him and BeelStarrmon alive so it could learn from their fighting styles. It knew it needed to adapt to the unpredictability of battle, and it was using them as guinea pigs to do it.

While Beelzemon stared down the imposing agents, BeelStarrmon worked her arm free of his grasp and let out a whistle. “So that’s what that blaster is capable of. I tried getting it to work myself, but it was a total dud. And I’m not a fan of when I get a big new toy and it fails to deliver on its promise.”

Beelzemon just responded off-handedly as he started drawing a pentagram in the air. “Are you surprised? The blaster’s a part of me—of course it wouldn’t work if you stole it. Corona Destroyer!” He fired his blaster through the pentagram, which amplified the blast to the point where it was enough to take out one of the Paratice Heads. Unfortunately, by that time the other agents started attacking again, which didn’t give him time to repeat the attack.

BeelStarrmon didn’t seem to mind the battle, keeping up her end of the conversation as if she weren’t constantly shooting things that could kill her with a mere touch. “I don’t know—I’ve found I’m pretty good and handling other Digimon’s blasters. Just ask Astamon—his gun shoots more quickly for me than it will if he does it himself.”

Beelzemon just ignored her and kept focusing on the D-Reaper, causing her to pout. “Oh, you’re no fun. You’re supposed to play along or get all flustered, not just ignore me.”

The Demon Lord snorted. “What, you expect me to react to every sex joke I hear? My partners are six-year-old twins, but practically all of my other human friends are teenagers. I’m enjoying not having to play the role of moral guardian at meetings, making sure Ryo’s flirting doesn’t get out of hand and Kazu did a decent job of hiding his magazines. If you want to see me flustered, you’ll have to do a little bit more than wordplay.”

BeelStarrmon smirked. “Well, that sounds like an invitation. You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” Beelzemon stopped talking for a second so he could focus on dodging between the blasts of the Optimizers, who apparently were less willing to keep them alive from this point on. It made it a little more difficult to hold a conversation, so the two demonic Digimon were forced to sometimes cut themselves off in mid-sentence when things got really tricky. They were still cutting through hordes of agents, but it seemed like for every agent they destroyed a few more took their place. It took three tries, but Beelzemon eventually got to finish his response. “I said I was enjoying not having to care about sex jokes. I’m mostly indifferent really, but you seem to enjoy suggestive dialogue so I thought I’d throw you a bone.”

The demoness merely rolled her eyes at the poor attempt at a joke. “Seriously, you need to step up your game here. Not making an effort is one thing, but failing to rise to the occasion is even more disappointing.”

Beelzemon blinked. “Wait, I just realized what I said. Wasn’t going for the sex joke there—my partners have a dog so I was thinking in the literal give a bone to a dog sense. And sorry, but this kind of humor doesn’t really come naturally to me. If you don’t mind me asking, why are you so comfortable with it? I can understand why humans would be essentially programmed to think about sex since they need to reproduce, but as Digimon we don’t really need it.”

“Well, now you’re just prying. I just met you—did you honestly think I’d want to … FUCK!” Beelzemon didn’t need to ask what caused her sudden outburst—he had grown used to tuning out the gunshots that were constantly interspersed in their conversation, but the sudden click of an empty gun was all the more intrusive. With his Corona Blaster back he hadn’t had to worry about running out of ammo, but BeelStarrmon hadn’t been so lucky. Judging from last time, it would take her a while to reload, but the D-Reaper didn’t seem like it was going to give them any time to do so. While they had been busy fighting whatever Agents charged them and dodging the blasts of the Optimizers, the Bubbles had assumed positions surrounding them and were now starting to open fire.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl as Beelzemon analyzed the incoming attack. Back in his world, he would be able to shrug off individual hits from a few Bubbles, but with attacks coming from all directions he wouldn’t want to chance finding the number of hits it took to actually bring him down. Besides, in this world the blasts just might be carrying the X-Program so one hit could be fatal. He needed a way to protect himself from being caught in a sphere of destruction… suddenly he realized what he needed to do. He reached deep within himself, focusing on his fight with Megidramon—and more importantly the data he had absorbed in order to win that fight. He tried to focus his entire mind on Makuramon’s data, and managed to call forth the Monkey Deva’s Primal Orb attack to surround him and BeelStarrmon just before the blasts hit them.

When the orb managed to hold up against the barrage of attacks, Beelzemon let out a sigh of relief. It had been so long since he had used this attack that he had almost forgotten about it, and he wasn’t sure he would have been able to use it in time. BeelStarrmon also relaxed a little when the shield held, but she seemed more interested in the shield’s existence than its ability to withstand damage. “Well, I see you really are a Demon Lord. This attack belongs to one of the Devas, but you must have killed him and absorbed his data. I’m sure there’s an interesting story there.”

Beelzemon snorted. “What, couldn’t think of an inappropriate way to phrase that? Besides, I think we’ve established that we don’t need to tell each other our life stories.” Suddenly, cracks appeared all along the surface of the Primal Orb as one of the Optimizers blasted it with its plasma stream. Beelzemon gulped as he turned back to BeelStarrmon. “However, in the interest of surviving this, I guess I can tell you later if you can figure out a way to get us out of here. I know you can’t use the dark corridors anymore, but can’t you do that other teleportation thing you did when you stole my blaster?”

BeelStarrmon grinned. “You mean what I was going to do a split second after you put up the barrier? I can twist space to appear anywhere within a 200-foot radius of where I was when I set up the ability, but these things apparently knew that which is why they went for the whole ‘sphere of death’ thing around me. I have to undo the spatial warp and then reset it if I want to travel within a new radius, and let’s just say that doing it multiple times in a row can really take it out of a girl. I’d be able to dodge the first round of blasts but that would be about it. And I can’t take passengers, so you can forget about getting a ride.”

Another blast rocked the Primal Orb, and the cracks spread to encompass the whole structure in a spider web like pattern. Beelzemon knew it wouldn’t withstand another hit, so he had to act fast. “200 feet, right? So you could make it to the top of that cliff?”

BeelStarrmon nodded. “I could probably stretch it a little further, but the Agents would just readjust their position before I could get away. It would really only buy me a minute or so.”

Beelzemon seemed to be focusing on something else, but some of the tension went out of his shoulders. “That’s all we will need. I left my motorcycle on top of the cliff—go up to it and push the red button on the dash. It will send a distress signal to my friends and with backup we should be able to get out of here.”

He closed his eyes as he continued to prepare his next attack. “Take my Berenjena with you—you might need to defend yourself, and hopefully if you have permission to use them they won’t be duds. Also, whatever you do, don’t hop on the motorcycle—Behemoth is cursed so that anybody but me who tries to ride it gets brainwashed and can’t get off.”

BeelStarrmon couldn’t stop herself from giggling. “So, you’re giving me a new gun and directing me to what sounds like an awesome motorcycle? Keep treating me like that and you’ll never have to worry about me NOT getting off.” She grabbed Beelzemon’s shotguns after holstering her own pistols, but before teleporting away she paused for a second. “So, just to be clear, you do have a way to defend yourself without these, right?”

Beelzemon grit his teeth. “Yes, but it takes some focus to get ready. Now, can you please go?” BeelStarrmon wasted no time in warping away, leaving Beelzemon alone in the nearly shattered Primal Orb. He had no way of checking if she would actually call for help or just escape on her own, but he had more important things to worry about.

One of the Optimizers was charging up its laser again, and the Primal Orb was in no shape to withstand another blast. Luckily, Beelzemon had a plan to use his shattered shield to his advantage. Calling on Caturamon’s data within him, he unleashed a Howl of the Heavens attack. The supersonic howl was designed to shatter barriers, but with an already-cracked Primal Orb the result was devastating. The orb was blown apart by the shockwave, with shards flying through the ranks of the D-Reaper’s agents and taking out hordes of Bubbles. It wasn’t enough to kill the Optimizers or the Paratice Head, but without the swarm pinning him down he was easily able to fly out of the way of the Optimizer’s blast.

However, this maneuver brought him within range of the Paratice Head. Beelzemon was ready for the various mouths trying to come down and bite him, but the Reconnaissance in Force agent’s next move was more shocking. “Subject identified. Beelzemon. The Digimon who threatened Jeri Kato and killed Leomon.” Hearing the D-Reaper once again address him in Jeri’s voice, Beelzemon snarled. His Howl of the Heavens had done a number on his vocal cords, but he wasn’t going to let a weak and raspy voice stop him from making his point.

“We’ve gone done this road once before. I don’t need you reminding me. I’ll always have to live with the fact I killed Leomon, but that doesn’t mean he’s gone. A part of him lives in Jeri. And another part lives in me! Fist of the Beast King!”

The flaming lion engulfed the Paratice Head and destroyed the giant agent, though Beelzemon collapsed to his knees in exhaustion after the attack. Unfortunately, the D-Reaper was far from defeated, and Beelzemon’s latest stunt seemed to have captured its attention in a new way. From the remains of all the fallen agents surrounding Beelzemon, a new agent began to take shape. Before Beelzemon could even realize what was happening, he found himself encased within the same shield that had once protected the D-Reaper’s Kernel Sphere, complete with the Gatekeeper agent surrounding it. He wasn’t being tied up or dying from a virus so he supposed he could have been in a worse position, but he knew how hard it was to crack this particular agent open, and he didn’t have the strength left to do it on his own…

Willis wasn’t used to working with a big audience, but after Sigma revealed the news to Neo and Takato everyone had crowded around him to see the finished product. So far, he was running through some more diagnostics on the card, but the only worrying thing he had found was the mysterious change in color from blue to green. Considering the card had essentially been created by magic he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to locate the source of that phenomenon. The card appeared to have all the code needed to transfer the X-Antibody without any bugs, though after the Diaboromon incident he wasn’t nearly as quick to jump to conclusions when it came to his code.

When his last check didn’t turn up anything suspicious, he took the card out of the scanner and held it out to Takato. “Well, it looks like everything will be fine, but we should probably have a live test to make sure it works before we rely on…”

A sudden alarm from Ai’s D-Power interrupted the conversation. The six-year-old looked at the screen only to cry out in alarm. “Impmon’s in trouble, everyone! We need to go save him!” Neo quickly took charge of the situation.

“Rei, have Pal and Pul recovered to the point where they can Jogress again? Wisemon should let us see what we’d be jumping into and get there more quickly. Hideto, get ready for another fight. Ai, can you get an exact location for Beelzemon?”

By the time Ai had used her D-Power’s compass feature to get a direction and a distance to the source of the distress signal, Pal and Pul had Digivolved and Jogressed into Wisemon while Hideto had Warg and Melga standing beside him ready to fight. Wisemon opened its book and prepared to transport Hideto to Beelzemon’s location, but after the little mishap with their arrival at Lucemon’s location Rei first had Wisemon display the location to everyone. To her surprise, she saw Beelzemon’s motorcycle on the ground, with BeelStarrmon standing over it holding Beelzemon’s guns. Mako saw this and immediately cried out. “Hey, I thought she was on our side! Why would she hurt Impmon? Let’s go get her!”

Rei shook her head at the six-year-old’s outburst. “Just hang on a minute. We don’t know for sure what’s going on. Let’s look around some more before we jump to conclusions.” Wisemon panned the area to see if there were any other signs of Beelzemon, and almost immediately saw the Demon Lord use Leomon’s attack to wipe out a Paratice Head. The vast number of agents remaining showed exactly why Beelzemon had called for help, and the situation only became clearer when the Gatekeeper captured the Demon Lord and blocked him from Wisemon’s sight. To make matters worse, the two Optimizers that were still around the Gatekeeper were soon joined by more Optimizers, Horn Strikers, and Paratice Heads. With this, Ryo had seen enough.

“Okay, we need to get there now. Hideto, even an Omnimon might have trouble with that force. We’ll be there backing you up. Willis, looks like your program is going to get a field test.” Takato nodded and held his D-Power horizontally in front of him as he prepared the green card. Henry, Rika, and Ryo copied his pose, though Henry paused for a second and dug out a red card.

“It’s been a while since we’ve swiped this—it might be a good idea to reactivate the program just in case.” He then threw the card to his right, where it somehow managed to travel in a circle going through Rika, Takato, and Ryo’s D-Powers in turn before ending up back in Henry’s hand. Takato then repeated the stunt with the green card, with everybody calling out “Digi-Modify! X-Antibody Activate!” in time with the card swipe.

Hideto couldn’t stop himself from rolling his eyes at the ceremony. “So, you can somehow throw a card in a circle so it perfectly swipes through everybody’s Digivice, and you think our world is the one from an anime?” The Tamers all ignored him as they looked to their partners, who had acquired a slight green glow in the wake of the card swipe. The glow faded after a few seconds, causing Willis to sigh in relief.

“Well, it looks like it worked, but you should all Biomerge now to make sure it will last through the transformation. I’d hate to have it wear off just as you run into battle.”  While the four of them started following Willis’s suggestion, Neo turned to Rei.

“Rei, I want you to take me with them. Just drop me off at the top of the cliff and Machinedramon shouldn’t have to worry about the X-Program. I’ll need to see this fight with my own eyes to see how these four operate in something other than a practice match.”

Rei just nodded. “I guess I’ll need somebody to keep me company up there anyway. I have to stay close enough so Wisemon can get everybody out, but still far enough away that we aren’t in the direct line of fire since we’re more of a support unit anyway.”

Neo rolled his eyes at his sister’s declaration, but decided to wait to comment since Willis had just confirmed the X-Antibody program was still working. Not wanting to waste any more time, Wisemon opened his book and transported Hideto, Neo, Rei, and the four Biomerged Digimon away from the Sovereign’s temple.

As soon as Wisemon arrived at the battlefield, BeelStarrmon let out a low whistle. “Man, Beelzemon wasn’t kidding about getting backup. Should be pretty easy to crack open that bubble with all of you here.” An audible click came from each of her holsters, causing BeelStarrmon to smile. “Sorry, can’t talk. Work to do.”

She dropped the two shotguns she was holding and pulled out her own pistols. At first it looked like she was randomly firing into the air, but the projectiles changed trajectory in midair to rain down on the agents gathered below, specifically targeting the cords on the Horn Strikers. She didn’t have perfect accuracy as the agents started responding to the assault by defending their cords and the bullets could only change direction so quickly, but considering the durability of all the agents below she was racking up an impressive kill count.

With BeelStarrmon opening fire on the agents, the four Tamers jumped in to join the battle. Neo was surprised to see MegaGargomon jump in to the fight at close quarters and use martial arts instead of keeping his distance and relying on his ridiculous number of projectiles, but information like this was the main reason he had come along in the first place. Of course, he wasn’t one to show up at a fight without contributing, so he ordered Chaosdramon to fire on the Gatekeeper imprisoning Beelzemon. The shield cracked under a barrage of Hyper Infinity Cannons, yet the fissures repaired themselves as quickly as Chaosdramon could fire. Neo just glared at his Digivice 01 in response. “Well, I’ll say this for the Reaper. It can make better shields than that artifact from Daemon’s Castle. Hideto, this one’s up to you.”

Hideto, who had likewise been analyzing the situation before jumping in, merely nodded. In one smooth motion, he materialized Warg and Melga and Jogressed them, causing Neo’s eyes to widen a bit. One of the flaws of Jogress was the delay in the process and the fixed materialization point which would allow an opponent to get in a free shot on the combining Digimon. Hideto had somehow increased the speed of the Jogress process to the point where it only lasted for half of the time that it had even back on the Folder Continent. While Neo had focused on controlling his partner’s evolution and Mari and Sigma had pushed themselves to get back to the Mega level, Hideto had apparently been working on improving himself as well. The Royal Knight unleashed his Garuru Cannon on the Gatekeeper, obliterating the protective ring and shattering the shield. However, the aftereffects of the attack covered the agent in a dome of ice, and this ice effectively served as another barrier while the shield quickly repaired itself.

Hideto shook his head. “Sorry about that—we’re still working out some of the kinks with this new form. Omegamon, take this to close quarters. Is fifty percent safe to use?” The Royal Knight didn’t respond with words, instead flying down into the fight with his sword extended. Between the four Tamers who had started spreading out to focus on the other agents and Omegamon flying to attack the Gatekeeper, Neo had Chaosdramon let up on his barrage of the agents to avoid friendly fire. Without the sound of the Burst Mode’s stream of cannon fire, Neo could hear Rei let out a small sigh. Deciding now was as good of a time as any, he turned to his sister to finally tell her what he meant to say before the trip over here.

“You don’t have to feel useless just because you aren’t able to directly help in a fight, Rei. You’re worth is not determined by the strength of your Digimon.” Rei turned to look at her brother and saw a familiar look in his eyes—one she hadn’t seen since a few months before she went to the Digital World. This wasn’t the Neo who was consumed by a desire to rebuild a world or one who was struggling to come to terms with his guilt for his actions—this was just the brother who loved her and worried about her. However, a dark look crossed his face as he added, “In fact, you’ve done more to help out than I have in the grand scheme of things. At least you managed to win a fight and get reinforcements instead of dooming an army to their deaths…”

Hearing this, Hideto turned away from watching the battle with the D-Reaper to try and comfort his best friend, but realized it wasn’t necessary as Rei had pulled her brother into a hug. Never one to express affection physically, Neo flinched back a little bit before awkwardly hugging her back with one arm. With a sniffling voice, Rei pulled her head away from Neo and turned to Hideto. “I know it might take a while, but do you think when all this is over we can really try and be the way we were before this whole mess started? I miss when the three of us were together and happy.”

Hideto immediately walked over and joined the hug. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to let go of his own guilt, but he would do whatever it took to make sure his friends didn’t get dragged down by their own regrets. He did have the Crest of Forgiveness, after all, and even if he didn’t deserve it he would gladly lend its power to helping Neo and Rei live happy lives. There was a long road ahead and they couldn’t afford to take more than the first few steps on it with this war looming over them, but with only a handful of days left until the final clash with Lucemon that war would be over soon, one way or the other…

Takato inwardly flinched as yet another Horn Striker charged at him. The green agent was dispatched fairly easily with a Lightning Joust, but the fact that more and more of the creatures from his nightmares kept charging him made it hard to focus on the battle. He felt an urge to just run away and curl up into a ball somewhere far from this mess, but he knew he had to fight through his fear to help save this world from the D-Reaper. Luckily, he wasn’t alone in his struggles—Guilmon was right here with him, and his partner was taking the lead in controlling their body so they could still fight without his internal struggle hindering them too much.

Unfortunately, Takato’s rationalization and resolve came to a screeching halt when an all too familiar figure emerged from the chaos. Compared to the giant agents surrounding her, it would have been easy to ignore the four-foot-tall human figure. However, Takato could focus on nothing but the barefooted girl in the yellow dress with the red jacket. This was the one thing that haunted his very worst nightmares, and it was now staring at him with Jeri’s face.

“No… you can’t be here… Jeri should be at the Temple… you shouldn’t be able to look like her… unless…” Takato’s mumbling continued despite Guilmon’s frantic calling of his name, as if Takato was suddenly unable to hear anything outside of his own thoughts.

However, there was one voice that managed to reach him—the voice shared between the girl he cared about most of all and the monster that had stolen her face and haunted his nightmares. “Subject Gallantmon identified. Your illogical persistence in saving subject Jeri Kato is futile. Such self-destructive tendencies are why humans must be deleted.”

Hearing this, Takato immediately fell out of his Gallantmon form, leaving a panicked Guilmon trying to get his partner’s attention so they could return to a form where they were safe from the powerful agents surrounding them. However, Takato wasn’t even aware of his partner as the Jeri-type Agent walked towards him, sprouting her blue wings. This agent had only managed to exist because the D-Reaper captured Jeri and analyzed her, but that had never happened with the version of the D-Reaper in this world. If she was here now, did that mean Jeri had once again been captured? The agent was talking as if he was trying to save Jeri, which could only happen if she was in danger again. Had she come to this world just to face her worst experience yet again?

With Takato going into shock while the Jeri-type Agent completely shifted into her monstrous form, Guilmon abandoned trying to shake his partner out of his current situation and stood growling between Takato and the demonic agent. “Stay back! We already killed you once, and I’ll do it again if you keep hurting Takato!”

The agent merely broke into a fearsome grin. “Your naivety proves your imperfection, subject Guilmon. Psychological warfare from such a flawed specimen is futile against me. Subject Takato Matsuki has caused pain to subject Jeri Kato in the past and is now suffering under the weight of his own guilt. This illogical behavior proves that humans and Digimon do not deserve to exist.”

She unleashed the same stream of black wind that had managed to incapacitate Gallantmon towards Takato, but found the attack blocked by a wall of fire. The blazing flames were soon extinguished to reveal a red tail wrapped protectively around Takato while a snarling dragon stared down at her. Before the agent could react, the dragon had pinned her to the ground under one of its massive claws and brought its fearsome head down to her, dripping acidic saliva unto its trapped prey. Much like when first confronted with MarineAngemon’s Kahuna Waves attack, the Jeri-type Agent did not understand what was happening, and this lack of understanding translated to its fearful attempts to retreat. However, Megidramon was not about to let the agent escape.

The dragon snarled out, “If you’re so certain I was trying to lie to you, why don’t you contact the mother reaper and see for yourself? We’ve already saved Jeri, and we killed you to do it!”

The agent mutated again into its final form, but Megidramon was ready for this and put more of its body weight into keeping the Jeri-type pinned to the ground. However, the agent seemed to act on the Evil Dragon Digimon’s advice, as its struggling quickly halted as it processed the data it was receiving from the kernel sphere. “What? Subject Jeri Kato unable to be found? No data present for any of the battles on Earth? UNACCEPTABLE. UNACCEPTABLE. UNACCEPTABLE…”

Megidramon didn’t seem to care that his opponent was currently going through a crash. “You better accept it! You’re just a cheap copy brought here by Lucemon. Your original version was just a shadow of the real Jeri, and we proved that SHE was the one who did not deserve to exist. And you’re just a shadow of that shadow.  So fade away! Megiddo Flame!”

The blast of hellfire quickly destroyed the agent, which had reverted all the way back to its base form that resembled Jeri from the shock of its failed connection to its main host. Unfortunately, this only made things worse for Takato. When Megidramon had shifted to keep the agent pinned down, his tail had moved away, giving Takato a clear view of events. He had gone from seeing the creature who haunted his worst nightmares in the Jeri agent to the scene that also managed to haunt him- Megidramon appearing and killing all the people he loved.

When Megidramon turned his head to face Takato, the boy involuntarily stepped backwards and tripped over a loose rock. The pain from falling to the ground brought him an instant of mental clarity just as Megidramon spoke to him. “I’m sorry if I scared you, Takato, but that agent just always makes me so mad!”

Takato only blinked in response. Last time he had seen Megidramon, Guilmon had completely lost himself to feral instincts. How was he talking now? “Guilmon? Are you in there boy?”

“Of course I am, Takato. I guess this is just what happens when I Digivolve without you. I don’t really like it, though. My whole body feels itchy.” Takato just awkwardly laughed since he wasn’t sure how else to react to the situation. Apparently Megidramon wasn’t just what happened when he lost control of himself, but was actually just another Mega form. Without the corruption of anger, it wasn’t even as dramatic of an entrance as his other two appearances. At least Guilmon was still okay, though Takato still couldn’t help but flinch a little bit as Megidramon grabbed him and started flying away to get him out of the fight. Even without the feral snarling and the hellfire, Megidramon was still intimidating, and his body temperature was still high enough that Takato felt like he was being held against his parents’ oven. Megidramon seemed to realize this after he deposited Takato at the top of the cliff and reverted in order to apologize, but compared to the threat of the D-Reaper Takato knew this was the preferable option.

As a Horn Striker managed to rip off part of his Accel Arm and leave it useless as a weapon, Ryo had to admit he might have bitten off more than he could chew in this fight. Admittedly, part of it wasn’t his fault—ever since coming to this world, ZeedMillenniummon’s influence on Cyberdramon was getting stronger so as Justimon it was difficult to control the bloodlust—but he should have been a little smarter about charging into the biggest group of agents he could find. He was really glad his Trinity Arm was a series of weapons instead of actual extensions of his arm, because he had already lost the Critical Arm and he didn’t want to join Koji’s lessons on how to fight with only one arm. He used his Justice Kick to destroy the latest Horn Striker and switched to his Blitz Arm in midair, but before he could even think about using his Justice Burst attack the D-Reaper spawned a Paratice Head in front of him.

Faster than he could react, the Reconnaissance-in-force Agent extended four of its mouths and clamped down on each of his limbs, immobilizing him in midair. He tried blasting his way out, but the Paratice Head wasn’t affected. It took him a few seconds to notice the energy drain on him to realize the cause—the agent was currently siphoning his energy and his attack was only speeding the process. Without being able to move, he wouldn’t get any momentum to launch his Justice Kick, and he couldn’t rely on his Trinity Arm to get him out with the Blitz Arm ineffective and the Accel and Critical Arms too damaged to function. If he had access to his Modify Cards this would be fairly easy to turn around, but now that he had Biomerged that wasn’t an option. He was really down to three options at the moment: rely on one of his friends to save him, pray to the DigiGnomes hoping for some miracle, or unleash ZeedMillenniummon’s power to overwhelm the D-Reaper at the cost of dooming every world in existence.

Knowing his life wasn’t worth the risk that came with option number three, Ryo called out for help as he started trying to contact the DigiGnomes. He knew his friends would save him, but he thought it was best to try every available option just in case. However, he needn’t have worried; within seconds of calling out he heard an all-too-familiar voice respond with “Amethyst Mandala!”

The glowing cherry blossoms expanded outward to create a barrier that destroyed all the chaos it touched, including the Paratice Head. Freed from the Agent, Ryo awkwardly chuckled. “Thanks, Rika. I owe you—”

Sakuyamon cut him off. “We can’t hold this barrier forever. You should get out of here while you still can. Spirit Strike!”

Sure enough, the barrier faded before the four kuda-gitsune could find their targets, leaving the two Biomerged Digimon vulnerable once again. Ryo knew he would be more of a liability than an asset if he stuck around and managed to get caught again, so he started heading back to the cliff using his Justice Burst to clear the way. However, on his way back he had to take a slight detour to blast some Horn Strikers that were coming up behind Omegamon, who seemed fixated on the barrier before him. Ryo cleared out the last agent—for now—with his Justice Kick before turning to the Royal Knight. “Any luck with the barrier yet?”

Omegamon seemed conflicted as he turned to the Mega level. “I don’t doubt I could destroy this barrier, but I am afraid of the consequences. I am unable to do so while holding back to the level of power I had in my previous form, but I fear if I unleash too much power I will do more harm than good.”

Ryo hadn’t expected a response like that from the Royal Knight, but with Cyberdramon’s history he could understand the feeling of having great power locked away but knowing the consequences of letting it loose. However, they needed to do something quickly to save Beelzemon before they were overwhelmed by the agents, so one of them would have to stop holding back. “Okay, how about you try to take it slow then? Say you are at 50% now, why not try 75? We need to do something.”

Omegamon held his Transcendent Sword aloft as he started channeling his power. “Your percentages are inaccurate, by the way” was the only response Ryo got before the sword became covered in flames that eventually faded away into a pale blue glow. Without further preamble, he swung his sword at the Gatekeeper agent. Ryo watched the blade carve through the shield like it was nonexistent and then was only dimly aware of flying backwards before unconsciousness swiftly claimed him.

Chapter Text

Ryo’s eyes snapped open to stare at an unfamiliar ceiling. Seeing as he spent most of his time outdoors in the Digital World waking up to see a ceiling at all was a little unusual in and of itself, but the fluorescent lighting wasn’t what he was used to seeing in his adoptive father’s house. After a little while of staring in confusion, a few memories started coming back. He remembered coming back to his original dimension to help in the fight against Lucemon, and the battle with the D-Reaper that had destroyed two of his Trinity Arms. The last thing he remembered was seeing Omegamon strike out at the barrier, which gave him a little bit of an idea of where he was. Whatever had happened in the aftermath of that attack must have knocked him out, so he must have been back in the hospital where the other DigiDestined were recovering.

His assumption was confirmed when Megumi walked into the room and checked up on him. She was surprised to find Ryo was almost perfectly healthy despite the fact he had been unconscious for the past day, but Ryo supposed that was just a side effect of taking damage while Biomerged—he felt the energy drain of attacks but most physical damage didn’t transfer over upon separation. Considering every crazy thing that had happened over the past few days, Megumi seemed like she was willing to just write this off as yet another thing she wouldn’t fully understand. Ryo tried asking her what had happened, but apparently she didn’t have all the details. She did, however, say Neo was planning on talking to him as soon as he was feeling up to it, so Ryo just sat back and waited for the white-haired DigiDestined to explain everything.

It was only a few minutes before Neo appeared in the doorframe, though Ryo was surprised to see Sigma waiting in the hallway as well. As the DigiDestined of Devotion leaned against the doorframe holding a mug of coffee, he wasted no time in jumping straight to the point. “We have a little under two full days until Lucemon expects us to fight him. He’ll be preparing a surprise for us, so we should be ready. As soon as you’re cleared for action, go find HolyAngemon. He’ll be working with you and Henry in the upcoming battle. Now, if you excuse me, I have preparations of my own.”

Ryo could only stare dumbfounded as Neo started walking away. “Hang on, that didn’t really explain anything. Can I get some more details on this plan and find out what I’m supposed to be doing with HolyAngemon? And if I’m supposed to be working with Henry, why isn’t he here himself?”

Neo looked like he was fighting off a migraine, but he stopped and took a deep breath before explaining. “Henry and your other friends are off looking for that little girl with the Lopmon. Suzie, was it? And if you must know—”

Hearing this, Ryo immediately sprang out of bed, ignoring the phantom pain shooting through his body at the sudden movement. “Wait, Suzie’s gone? What happened? Is everything okay?”

Neo grit his teeth. “If you want me to explain something, you’ll have to stop interrupting me. Now, for the sake of my sanity, let’s act like you are the absolute last of the DigiDestined to ask me about this and every question you have has already been asked by everyone else. I swear, apart from Kapurimon, I sometimes miss the days when I didn’t have to deal with Digimon or humans constantly asking about my plans. However, if you agree to just be quiet and listen, you’ll get the information you want. Understood?”

Ryo held up his hands in surrender as he took a step back to give Neo his space. Taking this as agreement, Neo started his story. “I’ll start with when you got knocked unconscious. Omegamon put a little bit too much power into his last attack, and since you were the closest to him you got the worst of the collateral damage. Luckily, Rei and Wisemon managed to pull you and all of your friends out of the way before you could be vaporized like the D-Reaper. What followed was another riveting day of doctor’s visits and practice battles that really aren’t worth going into detail. Through this, I found the best squads to divide our team into for the battle with Lucemon. With his power, he could throw anything from an infinitely respawning horde of Vilemon to the D-Reaper to multiple copies of Arkadimon at us, so I wanted us to be ready for anything from a huge army to a smaller but much stronger force. I wanted teams that could hopefully stand up to a Super Ultimate on their own if need be. I had to settle for trying to get a Super Ultimate, two Burst Modes, or three Megas to a squad.”

Ryo nodded. “So, I’m partnered with Henry and HolyAngemon. But what about—”

Neo’s grip tightened on his coffee cup. “What did I say about interruptions? Let me guess, you were either going to ask how I came up with that team assignment, what the other teams were, or how this plays in to Suzie’s disappearance. In the first case, I was trying to create balanced teams whenever possible, though in many cases it came down to just trying to fit together the pieces I had left. HolyAngemon is more of a speed than a power fighter even with his new tricks, and MegaGargomon has a fair bit of power but is on the slower side. Justimon is more of a jack of all trades so you keep the balance the team already had.”

“As for the other teams, the first team that came to mind was the six Legendary Warriors working together to keep Lucemon distracted. Fighting them is personal for Lucemon, so he might decide to play around with them long enough for the other teams to deal with whatever his surprise is and join the real fight. Lucemon could probably take us out one by one without effort, so keeping him busy is the first priority. The second priority is actually making sure everyone can stay in decent shape for as long as possible. That leaves any Digimon with recuperative powers in the healing squad. Between Lotusmon, Ophanimon, MagnaAngemon, and MarineAngemon, we hopefully will be able to all make it to the fight with Lucemon. If not, that’s where the last two members of the healing squad come in: Anubismon believes he’d be able to return a dead Digimon to their Digi-Egg if he’s close enough and Lucemon doesn’t directly absorb their data, and then Wisemon will take the egg and its partner to an alternate dimension with a distorted time flow so they can hatch and get back to a decent level before jumping back into the battle.”

Ryo was taken aback by this revelation. Sure, he was originally from this world, but after so much time in the other Digital World he was too used to its rules—Digimon that died stayed dead. Here, not only was Neo counting on the ability for Digimon to come back from the dead, he was actually planning to weaponize it for the sake of defeating Lucemon. It wasn’t something Ryo was comfortable with, but he supposed with a threat as serious as the Demon Lord it was good to have an ally like Neo who was willing to take advantage of anything he could to win. Neo seemed to notice the discomfort in Ryo’s body language, but as he continued his story it was obvious he didn’t really care what the other Tamer thought.

“After the Legendary Warriors and the healers, it was a little harder to come up with teams that would work well together and hopefully be able to handle a Super Ultimate if need be. The obvious ones were putting Hideto and Davis on their own, as they already have access to the Super Ultimate level or a comparable power. Tai and Matt have partnered up before and have Omnimon as a fallback plan in case they lose their Burst Modes, so they were also an obvious choice. Since Mari and Hideto are both already assigned, Sigma and I are partners. Beyond that, I was just trying to ensure no team was vastly outmatched. I was trying to pair off Burst Modes while assigning Megas in groups of three, but we simply do not have the proper distribution of forms to achieve that. The other teams are Yolei with Ken as a Mega and a Burst Mode, Mimi and Michael with two Burst Modes, Izzy and Sora with two Burst Modes, you with Henry and HolyAngemon for three Megas, Takato with Beelzemon for two Burst Modes, Joe and Cody as a Mega and a Burst Mode, and finally Willis is stuck on his own with two Megas.”

Ryo was trying to keep track of all that in his head, but noticed a few glaring omissions from the list. “Okay, but what about—”

Neo glared at him. “Interrupt me one more time and I’m leaving via Mask’s Square. I have one last team assignment. While the Digimon are busy fighting, we will be sitting ducks. In addition, having a designated healing squad is asking for them to be targeted. As losing either the humans or the healers would be a major detriment to our fighting forces in the long run, we have a reserve squad whose goal is entirely to defend those two vulnerable targets. This squad will have Sakuyamon as she has more defense-based attacks and then any Digimon that is below the Mega level without being on the healing squad, which right now encompasses Kazu, Suzie, and Meramon. I’m not holding out hope for too many other Digimon to volunteer to die like Meramon has, but they would join the reserve squad just to easily work them in. The other teams will be spending as much time as possible getting to know each other’s fighting styles to work as flawlessly as a team as possible.”

“Makes sense, but that still—”

Neo’s grip tightened to the point where his coffee mug shattered in his hand, splattering the surrounding area with what was left of his drink. His only reaction to the coffee stains on his white pants was a small sigh before he turned to Sigma. “Okay, let’s go.” Sigma was about to argue, but the look in Neo’s eyes was enough to get him to revert back to his previous behavior. Suddenly, the two Tamers were enveloped in the confines of Mask’s Square, and an instant later Ryo was just left staring at an empty hallway. He remained like that for thirty seconds before another voice snapped him out of his stupor.

“Sorry Neo can be such an asshole at times, but he did warn you that would happen if you interrupted him.” The source of the voice was revealed when a very bored looking Mari walked into the room, trudging along behind her hospital issued walker. “Mind if I shut the door?” Ryo shook his head, and almost immediately after the door was closed Mari kicked away her walker. “I hate that thing so much. But if being on my best behavior makes the doctors realize they can’t diagnose someone with ‘metaphysical overexertion’ and give me my Digivice back, I can deal with it. I’ve put up with worse.”

Ryo felt like Mari wasn’t really talking to him, but he really only knew her from Rei and Izzy’s description so he wasn’t sure what to make of her just barging into his room. Eventually, he cleared his throat to get Mari out of whatever she had been thinking about and back to the present situation. “So, is Neo always this friendly?”

Mari sighed. “Listen, like I said, Neo is an asshole. But I don’t think he’s slept at all the past two nights, and I hear yesterday got really bad. You got knocked out, so you didn’t see what happened. I don’t even have full details, but from what I understand that entire area where you battled is nothing more than a crater. Wisemon managed to get you out right away, but there were so many people and Pal and Pul still aren’t able to use all of that form’s power. They couldn’t get everyone to safety right away. All Hideto would tell me was he, Rei, and Neo almost died. From the look on Hideto’s face, I really don’t want to think about how close of an almost it was.”

Ryo immediately understood Neo’s attitude. He had seen more than his fair share of adversity through his life, and he knew everyone had their own ways of coping with it. He also wasn’t able to criticize how other people reacted considering his chosen method of going through life. Any animosity towards the white-haired Tamer went away and he looked to Mari with a much softer expression on his face. “Is everyone else okay?” Mari leaned back against the door.

“It depends how you define okay. For the humans, you were in the worst physical shape, though everyone looked pretty shaken. As for the Digimon, it’s a little harder to tell. You probably don’t want to hear this, but Joe had to put Cyberdramon in stasis. He was in pretty rough shape after splitting from you, but he also started going berserk. If Mimi’s Rosemon hadn’t put a leash on him, he would have either destroyed himself or brought out ZeedMillenniummon. Pal and Pul overexerted themselves and are still sleeping it off as Kiimon but we think they’ll be okay. It’s Warg we aren’t sure about.”

Mari paused for a second as she remembered the look in Hideto’s eyes as he told her the story, which gave the Ryo the time he needed to remember who Warg was. If Rei hadn’t mentioned them in passing a couple of times, he would have just assumed Hideto was just partnered to an Omnimon and not a WarGreymon and a MetalGarurumon. He wasn’t sure what could have possibly damaged only half of an Omnimon, but after his experience with Neo he knew better to push Mari and waited quietly until she was ready to continue.

“From what I can tell, Omegamon lost all feeling in the left side of his body after his attack on top of the residual damage. Hideto tried to heal it with a Jogress, but as soon as they partitioned Melga collapsed and Warg—well, he started fading away. Hideto managed to get him in a healing pod and he didn’t burst into data, but…”

Mari had to take a deep breath as she remembered what it had felt like when Lalamon had been destroyed. At least then she had known what had happened, and Neo had promised, and delivered, a way to bring her partner back. Hideto wasn’t as lucky.

“Listen, Hideto couldn’t even tell me what happened to Warg. All I got out of Neo was that Warg was now mostly transparent and is barely picking up on the scanners so we can’t determine what’s wrong with him. I’m sure Joe is trying his best, but without Dr. Jijimon there isn’t much he can do. We’ve used up all of our remedies, we can’t get more since the world has mostly been sterilized by that goo, and our healing team is currently down to MarineAngemon, Anubismon, and Angewomon who have all tried to help and failed. I’m not even sure if Lotusmon would be able to help even if I had my Digivice.”

Ryo clenched his fist. He had been through separation from Digimon that had been like his partners in both Agumon and Veemon, and he had seen what it was like to lose an actual partner first hand with Jeri. But this just sounded worse than either of those. It wasn’t a case of knowing the separation was the right thing like Agumon and Veemon. It wasn’t even over quickly like Leomon’s death had been. This sounded like a long drawn out death without any chance of reversing it. It sounded like—

Ryo’s eyes widened in realization. This wasn’t just hitting Mari hard because Hideto was her friend. Warg was suffering from what sounded like the Digimon equivalent of an incurable, drawn out, and terminal disease. He didn’t know the full details, but Rei had let it slip that Mari was still fighting despite her illness. She hadn’t gone into any more details on what the illness was and Ryo hadn’t pried, but now it was obvious that Mari was seeing something of herself in Warg’s condition. Ryo wasn’t exactly the best person in the worlds to provide comfort to someone, but he still walked over to Mari and put his hand on her shoulder in support.

“I don’t know if I can do anything to help, but I’ll try to convince them to give back your Digivice. But if I can’t help Warg, the least I can do is help everyone else. Neo made it sound like they were all looking for Suzie—what happened to her?”

Mari looked like she was glad for the shift to a much less painful subject. “Well, you remember how Neo had that giant list of teams, but the reserve team only had Rika, Kazu, and Suzie? Well, suffice to say, none of them were particularly happy about being left on the sidelines. Rika and Kazu at least are going along with it because they can see it’s a good idea, but Neo really shouldn’t have expected a little kid to be that mature. She threw a little tantrum, and when Henry cut in about her needing to stay out of the fight things just got worse. We all thought she was just storming off to her room, but when she never showed up for dinner we started a search. Fuyutsuki has people watching the perimeter of the base so we know she isn’t out wandering Earth, but that just means she’s in the Digital World. And since we don’t have Wisemon and your Digivices don’t have the same radar functions ours do, pretty much everyone is combing the world the old-fashioned way.”

Ryo nodded. “I’m surprised she could even get to the Digital World. Our D-Powers can’t open gates either. Is there anybody around who could take me to the Digital World?”

Mari shook her head, then stopped herself. “I didn’t think so, but now that I think about it there are. I almost forgot that Fuyutsuki, that Keiko girl, and those two nurses would be able to open gates. Plus whoever it is that’s partnered with the Brimpmon. I’m not sure where to find them, and you should probably stop by Dr. Wataru as well to pick up your Digivice. He’s taken it upon himself to ‘prevent further strenuous activity’ by confiscating anything we could use to make our partners Digivolve. Between Koji, you, me, TK, and Kari, he’s got quite the collection of Digivices and Crests at the moment. I’d start your search in the gym—now that Koji had his D-Tector confiscated again and can’t keep wrecking the place, Lalamon and the other members of the healing team have taken to hanging out there hoping to get TK and Kari back on their feet as soon as possible.”

Knowing Ryo had to get going, Mari walked back across the room, grabbed her walker, and headed for the door. As she was leaving, she turned back to Ryo with one last piece of information. “Oh yeah, if nothing else works, you can try getting in touch with one of the others—your best bet would probably be Joe. He and HolyAngemon are both at the temple, so I’m sure HolyAngemon could watch over Warg and the others for a little bit while Joe opens a gate for you and brings you back. You’ll need to go there anyway to pick up Cyberdramon.”

Ryo thanked her and only waited long enough to change out of the hospital gown before he followed her out of the room. However, by this time Mari was gone, leaving him no idea of which way to go. After wandering for a few minutes he had to admit to himself he had no idea where he was going, and he stopped to ask for directions from a doctor with reddish purple spiky hair. Following those directions, he made it to the gym just to be blinded by a flash of light.

“Gatomon, Digivolve to…”

“Patamon, Digivolve to…”

However, the two holy Digimon’s voices cut out when the light abruptly faded, leaving a winded looking Tokomon and Salamon in their place. MarineAngemon quickly hit them with his Kahuna Waves attack, which seemed to reenergize them. They tried again and succeeded in Digivolving once, but when they tried to go another level higher the transformation shorted out yet again. As MarineAngemon restored them yet again, Lalamon flew over and landed between the two Digimon.

“I think you guys should give it a rest for a little bit. Sure, I know you want to help TK and Kari as soon as possible and you’re only one level away from getting a level of healing powers, but if you keep tiring yourself out it will just get worse in the long run. I mean, look at Mari…”

The conversation was cut short when a gunshot rang out in the room. Ryo quickly turned to the source, only to see Miki storming over to her partner. “Sistermon, how many times do I have to tell you Anthony is not a toy to be used around children? If you can’t learn that lesson, I’ll make sure the kids don’t see Nurse Wolfe for a week.”

Sistermon Noir hadn’t seemed very apologetic before, but now she quickly put away her guns and fell to her knees. “No, please don’t take me off of the pediatric rotation! If I can’t help with the kids, I have to help Mr. Yushima do all the cleaning! And his Sukamon is creepy!”

Ryo saw this was the kind of situation he shouldn’t interrupt, so he looked for something to do to occupy his time before asking Miki for help. However, there really wasn’t too much going on in the gym. In the far corner, Anubismon was floating in the air meditating, but judging by the occasional stray black lightning bolt shooting out from him it wasn’t a great idea to interrupt him either. Sistermon Blanc was shooting occasional glances at MarineAngemon’s group and the others while occasionally tapping the end of her lance into the ground, but she noticed Ryo watching her and went to hide behind her sister with a blush on her face from the attention. The only other occupant of the room was a Gigimon that must have been Keiko’s partner, as Mari hadn’t mentioned anything happening to Guilmon that would force him back to the In-Training level. With nothing else to do, Ryo just wandered toward MarineAngemon’s group so he’d at least be with a more familiar face until Miki and her partner finished their personal interaction.

While Ryo was content to let the scene play out, Gigimon had other ideas. “Please don’t punish the Sistermon, Ms. Kurosaki. We were just playing together. Besides, they promised to help train me later. If I’m supposed to be a big hero when I grow up, I’m going to have to start practicing now.”

Miki just sighed—ever since Gigimon had found out about his past life as Jesmon of the Royal Knights, he felt like he had to repeat that performance in this life. It was certainly an admirable goal, but Gigimon was looking at it with the same enthusiasm of a child who dreams of growing up to be a superhero. Which, when she thought about it, wasn’t really that far from the truth. It was that childlike enthusiasm that made it very hard to go against Gigimon’s wishes, so Miki turned back to her partner.

“Okay, I guess I can let it slide this one time since we aren’t on duty. But if you aren’t more careful, I’ll make sure Homer spends more time with his favorite assistant!”

Sistermon Noir’s face lit up with glee as she started thanking her partner, signaling to Ryo that it was about time for him to head over there. He hadn’t meant to overhear anything, but Patamon and Gatomon had left pretty much as soon as he had arrived to go check on their partners. MarineAngemon had tried to fill the air with his happy babble, but since nobody but Kenta could ever understand him all the Tamers had essentially learned to tune the little sea nymph out of their hearing. Still, now that the conversation was over, Ryo could get back to the task at hand. He walked over to Miki and got straight to the point. “Hi Nurse Kurosaki, I need your help. I have to get to the Digital World, and I have to find Dr. Wataru to get my D-Power and Mari’s Digivice back.”

Miki rolled her eyes. “Oh, I see how it is. You get to hear everything about us and then just skip all the pleasantries at the start. But I suppose you have a good reason to hurry. I can take you to Dr. Wataru, but I don’t think I can help you get to the Digital World. I’ve never opened a gate before since the Sistermon have stayed here since we became partners. Speaking of which, Yumi, I’m putting you in charge here. Can’t let your older sister slip up so soon after she promised to behave herself, right?” Sistermon Blanc seemed shocked to be put in charge and started fiddling with her fingers, but Miki seemed to take this as acceptance and started leading Ryo back through the maze of hallways.

While Ryo was content to walk in silence, Miki seemed to prefer conversation. “So, I noticed you specifically wanted to get Mari’s Digivice back. There something behind that?” However, if Miki was hoping for Ryo to get flustered, she was sorely disappointed.

“Not really. She just filled me in on the details and sounded like she wanted her Digivice back so she could help. Seems like everyone is pretty shaken recently, so any step in the right direction would be a good one.” The conversation halted for about a minute before Miki tried again.

“Okay, so nothing going on with Mari. What’s the deal between you and Rika? There’s obviously a lot of tension there.”

This caused Ryo to stop dead in his tracks. “I’m not… I mean, it’s complicated. Let’s just say my life is strange even by Digital standards, and it may have come back to bite me. Now can we please just drop it?”

Miki sighed. “Well, if you don’t want to tell me that’s fine, but I can keep you wondering around in circles until you finally start holding a decent conversation.” Ryo’s eyes widened at the statement. “You mean you’ve been leading me in circles? I can see where Sistermon gets it from. I’m out of here.” Miki grabbed his shoulder as he started walking away.

“Relax, I’m kidding. I get that there’s some serious stuff going on so I wouldn’t actually lead you the wrong way. I’m just trying to lighten the mood a little bit, and you’re taking yourself way too seriously. I know what it’s like to work a high-stress job, and you need to take some time to de-stress. Your health will greatly appreciate it if you do.”

Ryo only responded with one of Rika’s trademark icy glares before turning away. “Fine. If it’s that important to you, I’ll make small talk. I noticed you referred to Sistermon Noir as Sistermon but Sistermon Blanc as Yumi. Is there a story behind that?” Miki sighed. This wasn’t quite the attitude she was hoping for when she told Ryo to de-stress, but at least it was a step in the right direction.

“Actually, both of them prefer to go by Sistermon, but when both of them are together it got way too confusing. Since they didn’t like to be called Blanc or Noir, we had to come up with another naming scheme for the Sistermon. Cut to us both coming home after a long shift to find them calling each other Heinkel and Yumi. Apparently they were watching some anime and picked names based on the characters. So now if you check the employment records at the hospital, you’ll find a Heinkel Wolfe and a Yumiko Takagi listed on the payroll.”

The situation was so absurd that Ryo couldn’t stay angry. “So you’re telling me that nobody has ever questioned that two Digimon who just started working at the hospital going by the names of two anime characters? And I can see why the name Yumiko Takagi might be able to blend in, but with a name like Heinkel Wolfe I’m surprised nobody looks at Sistermon Blanc with some more scrutiny.”

Miki just smiled. “Actually, it’s my partner Sistermon Noir that goes by Heinkel Wolfe. So yes, we have the sister with light hair and blue eyes going by a Japanese name while the sister with black hair and dark eyes going by a German name. The naming scheme goes the other way in the anime, but they picked names more on the characters’ choices in weapons than appearances.”

“Is this supposed to make me feel any better about the medical industry? I mean, it sounds like they usually work with kids, but you’d think some parent would sue as soon as they found out a hospital was hiring nurses who didn’t go through any form of training.”

Miki rolled her eyes. “Okay, two things. One, you’d be surprised how much the Sistermon know about medicine—they’ve been partnered with us for around five years now, going back to when Megumi and I were both students and they read through our books while we were in class. Two, did you really think we’d let anybody who hasn’t gone through a nursing program try to be a nurse? Someday the Sistermon might be allowed to enroll, but until then they only go by the title Nurse because it’s the role they play when they entertain the pediatric patients. When they aren’t doing that volunteer work, they get to do the job they are officially paid to do—janitorial assistant.”

Ryo threw up his hands in surrender. “Alright, I’m sorry for accusing you of medical malpractice. Though wait, did you say the Sistermon actually got paid? From what I’ve heard, I didn’t think anybody would hire a Digimon. I mean, I can understand Fuyutsuki trying to incorporate them into the JSDF since having Digimon to defend against Digimon attacks makes a lot of sense, but I’m surprised someone would be willing to hire a Digimon to do a regular job like that.”

Miki frowned for a second before replying. “Yeah, this world as a whole still isn’t quite ready to accept Digimon as a part of daily life to that level. We’re lucky to get what we have.” Her frown turned into a smile as if at an inside joke. “Luckily, one of our janitors has quite a bit of sway with the board of directors, and he happens to love having Digimon around. That’s what happens when—well, would you look at that? We’re at Dr. Wataru’s office. I guess my story will have to wait for another time.”

Ryo saw they were standing outside of a door labeled Ryuuichi Wataru, and without wasting any time he knocked. He thought he recognized the voice that told them to come in, and this was only confirmed when Dr. Wataru ended up being the same doctor that had given him directions to the gym in the first place. He was a little disappointed that he had spent all that time just to go in a big circle, but tried not to let his annoyance show as he asked for his D-Power back. However, his tone of voice apparently wouldn’t have hurt at all, as even with his relatively friendly greeting and Miki vouching for him, Dr. Wataru didn’t seem to trust that he was actually healthy enough to get his Digivice back. The doctor pulled up Ryo’s chart on his computer and looked through it carefully, leaving Ryo nothing to do except glance around the office as he tried to control his frustration. The office was pretty sparse in terms of decoration, with just a couple paintings of different interpretations of dragons and piece of what looked to be amber sitting on his desk next to a few photos, of which Ryo could only see the back.

After examining Ryo’s chart for a minute, Dr. Wataru seemed to admit defeat and opened a drawer in his desk before tossing Ryo his D-Power. Ryo managed to snag the device out of midair and felt much better now that he had it back, but he knew this wasn’t the only thing he came here for. He asked if he could get Mari’s Digivice, but Dr. Wataru’s face only hardened in response.

“I see Ms. Gotokuji still hasn’t given up on trying to get others to get her Digivice back. From my understanding, this whole final battle isn’t happening until the day after tomorrow. Unless she’s medically cleared before then, she won’t be getting her Digivice back until a few hours before the battle. If I didn’t believe you that this was for the fate of multiple worlds, she wouldn’t even be getting it then.”

Ryo’s eyes narrowed. While Dr. Wataru seemed to be making an exception due to the exceptional circumstances, didn’t he realize he was making their situation worse by removing valuable preparation time? “With all due respect, Doctor, if you are planning on giving her Digivice back anyway, why not do it now? We need to prepare for the fight, and keeping Mari on the bench hurts that cause. In addition, we could use Lotusmon to speed the healing for our other injured fighters and save everyone a lot of grief, including Mari. You say you’re doing this for her own safety, but really you’re just delaying her from getting a cure. Not to mention the fact that we have a Digimon that’s dying and Lotusmon is one of the few healers we currently have access to.”

Miki started trying to shoo Ryo out before he and Dr. Wataru could get further into an argument, but she was surprised when the doctor interrupted her. “You know what? Let him stay, Miki. Maybe if I explain this to him and he brings the message back to Ms. Gotokuji, I can cut off this stream of kids and young adults who come along and think they would be better at my job than I am. Let me tell you a story, Mr. Akiyama. I won’t go into too many details to protect patient confidentiality, but I’m sure you’ll get the basic idea. I was doing a tour of volunteer duty across the globe helping on humanitarian missions, and I ended up in a part of the world where the only medical care was our pitifully supplied clinic or local shamans. Here, I had a patient come to me with a degenerative liver disease, to the point where the only possible solution was a liver transplant. We had the absolute bare minimum we needed to perform the surgery, and even had a very willing and compatible donor in this woman’s adult son. However, her son had his own condition, one that negatively impacted the ability of his blood to clot. If we didn’t perform the surgery, the mother would soon die from her condition. However, if we did perform the surgery, the risk of death to the son was around ninety percent.”

“Now, let me put this in the context of the current situation. This WarGreymon needing medical attention is the mother dying of liver failure. Lotusmon is the successfully transplanted liver that cures the condition and saves the day. Mari’s Digivice is the scalpel needed to perform the surgery, and Mari is the son who is willing to provide the organ but doesn’t fully realize the consequences of that action. In fact, this situation is worse. At least there was a history of medical knowledge to fall back on in my story. We don’t have any medical history to go back on for Mari’s condition as it pertains to her Digivice. We’ve never seen adverse reactions like this before, but it clearly isn’t safe yet to return her Digivice. I will not kill one patient in an attempt to save another, especially when the dying patient has a chance to be reborn without many lasting consequences.”

Hearing this, Ryo stood up to leave. As he walked to the door, however, he made sure to stop and address the doctor without turning around. “Whatever you have to do to justify yourself, then. However, it sounds to me like you wouldn’t have as easy of a time writing Warg off if he was human. Always good to know where the people around you stand on such issues, wouldn’t you agree?”

Ryo intended this to be his parting shot at the doctor, but Miki suddenly grabbed his arm. “Don’t you dare accuse people like that! Dr. Wataru—” Whatever Miki was going to say was cut off when the doctor interrupted.

“Mr. Akiyama, I suggest you turn around so you can catch this.” Ryo reluctantly turned around, only to barely catch a Digivice before it hit his face. It was the same model as Tai and the rest of his group used, but the screen on this Digivice was only filled with static. Ryo didn’t give this too much thought as he just glared at Dr. Wataru as the doctor started rummaging through his desk drawer.

“In the past week, I’ve obtained quite the collection of Digital artifacts in the interests of keeping your friends safe. There’s Mr. Minamoto, Ms. Gotokuji, Mr. Takaishi, and Ms. Kamiya.” Each name was followed by him laying the listed person’s Digivice on the table, with the last three also being accompanied by the respective Crest. “But the Digivice you have there has been with me far longer than any of these. But while we’re going down memory lane, why don’t I show you my family photo? I’m sure you’ll see something that surprises you.” He turned one of the photos on his desk to face Ryo, and the Tamer’s eyes widened in shock. The picture showed a younger Dr. Wataru standing next to a smiling old man, while a woman with blue hair stood on the elder’s other side. However, what drew Ryo’s attention most were the two figures at the edge of the frame—two Airdramon smiling at the camera.

Dr. Wataru let a sad smile cross his face. “I was born in a mountain village, and unfortunately lost most of my family at a young age. All I had left was my grandfather and my cousin Ibuki. Then, one day, two Airdramon appeared, and after a little bit of time Ibuki and I realized we had found our Digimon partners. Things got a little competitive between us, but those were definitely some happy days. Unfortunately, it couldn’t last—in the summer of 1999, both Airdramon were forced to return to the Digital World, and we didn’t see them again for another five years. Airdramon came back just as I was about to leave on my humanitarian trip, and I was happy to have him accompany me.”

“Of course, just because I was happy to be with Airdramon again didn’t mean everybody else was happy to see him. The rest of the doctors I was working with didn’t trust him, but that was nothing compared to the communities we were helping. They seemed to think Airdramon was an evil spirit that was possessing me, and took it upon themselves to free me from his influence. It turns out, their particular method of driving away evil spirits involved brutal violence and poisons that were strong enough to kill a Digimon. It was a slow process, but that gave Airdramon time to make one last request of me: that I wouldn’t hold his death against humanity and would keep trying to help. As much as I sometimes wish I could just wipe out every hateful human to create a paradise for Digimon, I choose to hold to my promise for Airdramon’s sake.” He shook his head as if ridding himself of the memories before turning to Ryo. “Just something I thought you ought to consider before you accuse me of letting a Digimon die to save a human. Now if you excuse me, I have work to do. Don’t bother coming by here again.”

Chapter Text

Suzie sighed as she skipped another rock across the surface of the black water before her. BeelStarrmon had said this world would be a good way to prove to Henry that she could take care of herself, but she hadn’t realized how boring it would be to only have herself and Lopmon in the same dimension. Maybe it was something about the creepiness of the world but this was starting to feel like a bad idea. Maybe Lopmon had been right all along when she hadn’t wanted to come here. She had been trying to prove she wasn’t a little child who needed to be protected, but now she realized just how childish her response had been. To make matters worse, she couldn’t go back on her own and was just waiting for BeelStarrmon to bring her back. That was supposed to happen tonight, but she was running low on food and water and was starting to wonder if the Demon Man Digimon was actually planning on coming back.

Turning to her partner, Suzie hung her head. “I’m sorry about this, Lopmon. I should have listened to you. This has been the worst camping trip ever.”

Lopmon only responded with a nod, which was the most expressive she had been since a few hours after their arrival in this world. Something about this place didn’t agree with the Animal Digimon and had caused her to withdraw more and more into herself. Suzie had been too stubborn to pay attention at first, but that had quickly faded as her partner got more and more quiet. She had started regretting bringing Lopmon here right after that, but only now was she extending that regret to her own journey. Still, with nothing else to do, she went back to skipping stones across the water. At first she hadn’t been any good at it but after all this practice she was consistently getting three or more skips per throw.

She grabbed another stone and threw it across the black ocean and was surprised to find it skip seven times, though the record throw was cut short before it could make an eighth attempt when a dark figure stuck its head out of the water. The creature seemed to be composed entirely of shadow made into a vaguely humanoid shape, though it had eyes that reminded Suzie more of a fish than a person. Something about this creature felt wrong to Suzie, though she tried not to judge it based on its appearance. She flinched back when the creature snarled at her, but she supposed she would be angry too if someone threw a rock at her head. She started to stammer out an apology, but the creature only responded by snarling more and advancing towards her.

Suzie started backing towards Lopmon as the aquatic creature climbed up onto the beach, but when more heads appeared in the ocean she scooped up her partner and started running away. She didn’t want to have to fight these creatures in their home over a misunderstanding, but it didn’t look like they would be willing to let her talk her way out of this. She started running away from the wrecked lighthouse that had been her campsite since arriving in this world hoping to lose the aquatic pursuers in the forest of the world, but she stepped on a loose rock and rolled her ankle in the process. Her bad luck was compounded when she ended up rolling down a gentle slope and coming to a stop on the gray sand of the beach. She got back to her feet and saw she had a little bit of time left, but her ankle wasn’t exactly cooperating with her putting a lot of weight on it so she knew she wouldn’t be able to run on her own.

Luckily, Suzie wasn’t alone. She had grabbed Lopmon and started running on her own on instinct, but now that it wasn’t an option she could use her head. She was only so fast, but Antylamon was much faster and could easily carry her. The only problem was Lopmon might not be feeling well enough to Digivolve, but something about the stress of the situation seemed to bring a little bit of life back to Suzie’s partner. The Rookie level indicated she would be able to Digivolve, so Suzie pulled out her D-Power. Lopmon still had remnants of the power Zhuqiaomon had given her that allowed her to jump to her Ultimate form without the need of a blue card, but Suzie was needed to jumpstart the process. Unfortunately, her D-Power wasn’t responding to anything she did, revealing a major flaw in her plan.

Not used to her D-Power failing, Suzie was resorting to just shaking it, closing her eyes, and praying. Luckily for her, she had always had an exceptionally strong connection to the DigiGnomes, and that connection managed to create a small spark of light within the Dark Ocean. This proved to be just enough for her D-Power to shake off the effects of this world and flare to life, so Suzie held it out to her partner who was encased in a golden glow. “Lopmon, Digivolve to… Antylamon!” The extra time needed to get her D-Power working had given the shadow creatures time to catch up and surround Suzie and Antylamon, but the rabbit Deva didn’t care about that at the moment. The Ultimate level scooped up her partner and leaped over the startled creatures, though she was surprised when something latched on to her foot in midair and snapped her to the ground.

Despite the interrupted flight, Antylamon had enough freedom of motion to twist so Suzie landed on top of her instead of the other way around. As she felt herself being pulled back towards the shadow creatures and the sea, she quickly pushed Suzie away from her in the hopes of at least saving her partner. Only after this did she look to see what had grabbed her, though she wished she hadn’t. Rising up out of the ocean was a giant shadow that seemed to be composed of tentacles loosely held into a humanoid shape with glowing red eyes. One of these tentacles was currently wrapped around her left leg and pulling her towards the abomination. Not wanting to find out what would happen if she was dragged underwater, she transformed her arms into the Bunny Blades and contorted herself so she could slice off the tentacle holding her. The giant creature only laughed in response as it effortlessly reformed the tentacle, but at least Antylamon had freed herself. However, while she hadn’t been dragged into the ocean, she had still been dragged far enough that she was now surrounded by the smaller shadow creatures.

While most of the smaller creatures were just mindlessly snarling at her, there was one creature slightly larger than the others that walked towards her. This creature was easily distinguishable from the rest by its slightly larger size and glowing red eyes in place of the others’ pale greenish ones. This larger creature paused a few steps away before speaking in a voice that was part hiss, part croak, and one hundred percent creepy.

“The Master thanks you for your gift. After the battle with the Dark Ones, we have been far too weak. The human may not be the Queen of Light, but her power shall be enough to restore the Master. Then she shall give birth to more Deep Ones so our army may grow, capture the Queen, and avenge our loss to the Dark Ones.”

Antylamon wasn’t sure what all of this was referring to, but any plan that involved taking away Suzie’s power and forcing her to give birth to whatever these Deep Ones were wasn’t something she would ever agree with. “Okay, but did you really think I’d let you do that? Bunny Blades!”

Antylamon spun her way through the first layer of shadows surrounding her, cutting through them with no resistance. Unfortunately for her, this was because the creatures were composed of shadow, and shadows weren’t able to be hurt just by cutting them with an axe. The creatures reformed as soon as Antylamon’s axes passed through them, though they could choose to be solid enough to stop her from escaping towards Suzie.

Antylamon wasn’t sure what her next step should be, but luckily she wasn’t alone in this fight. Suzie had been disoriented from her rough landing after Antylamon shoved her away, but she had come around to see her partner ineffectively attacking the creatures around her. And while Antylamon’s attacks weren’t helping, Suzie had an idea. If these creatures were shadows, then the best way to get through them was to turn on the light.

“Digi-Modify! Radiant Glow activate!” Antylamon was once again surrounded by the pink glow that allowed her to fly, but Suzie wasn’t expecting the end result. She was expecting the shadows to be driven back by the light, allowing Antylamon to fly over to her and carry her away. She wasn’t expecting the shadows to burn away, leaving nothing but hideous screams of pain in their wake.

Hearing these screams caused Suzie to drop her D-Power in shock. Sure, she had been somewhat involved in fights before, but that had been Antylamon acting on her own against the D-Reaper. That program was many things, but it hadn’t seemed like it was alive. When Lopmon was only fighting mindless Agents, the fighting seemed justified. However evil these creatures were, however, they were definitely alive. Or at least, they had been until recently, when just one swipe of a card had torn that all away from them. Suzie barely noticed that Antylamon had flown over to pick her up, and likely would have left her D-Power sitting on the beach of the Dark Ocean if Antylamon had succeeded in flying away. However, just because the smaller shadows had been vaporized by the light didn’t mean all of the enemies were gone. The giant tentacle creature hadn’t been harmed by the light, and with its servants gone it was once again taking matters into its own hands.

Just before Antylamon could grab Suzie, the Rabbit Deva was once again ensnared within a shadowy tentacle. However, with the Radiant Glow card still active, the effects were much different than the previous time. The tentacle holding her hissed and let off a horrible stench as if it were burning, though the giant creature refused to let go. In fact, it seemed to welcome Antylamon’s light and draw it into itself, causing pink lines to sear along the tentacle throughout the creature’s body. Though the giant creature seemed to scream with pain, it was instead the sound of her partner’s screams that snapped Suzie back to reality. She came to just in time to see Antylamon revert to Lopmon and fall to the ground, with her smaller size allowing her to slip through the tentacle’s grasp. Without Antylamon providing the light energy, the pink glow faded away, though the pink lines had burned an aftereffect into the shadowy creature, leaving what appeared to be rotting blue flesh where there had once only been black shadow.

Suzie grabbed Lopmon and hugged her close, trying to apologize again for even being in this world. As the monster grabbed her and lifted her in the air, her apology shifted to a tearful goodbye. However, instead of finishing her off quickly, the creature seemed to be trying to communicate with her. In a broken voice that cut in and out of her mind, Suzie heard, “Why …need … light…me…”

Suzie wasn’t sure what was going on, but it sounded like this monster was asking for something. “Do you need help? It looks like light hurts you, but are you asking for some? I don’t know how much I can make but I can try.” An incredibly loud “YES!” cut through Suzie’s mind, so she focused on everything that came with bright lights in her head. It took a while for anything to happen, but after focusing on her connection with Lopmon and the DigiGnomes she managed to create a small pink glow.

Suzie smiled at her success, but suddenly something felt very wrong. Soon, she was screaming in pain as the creature pulled the light from her, but it seemed to be taking more than the little bit of light she had created. Suzie felt like a part of her soul was ripped away and nearly passed out, but luckily the creature stopped whatever it was doing before that could happen. As she hung limply in the creature’s tentacle, the same voice entered her mind once again, this time without any of the weakness or interruptions from the previous communication.

“Is this really the limit of your power? Pathetic. After the last humans to visit these shores I expected more from your species. You do not have enough light to revive me, but you may still give birth to my servants. The Dark Ones shall pay for betraying the Lord of the Dark Ocean, and then the rest of the worlds shall know my rule.”

Suzie could only weakly mutter back. “You…tricked…me? I tried… to help…you…”

The depraved spirit just laughed. “Help? Only the weak are foolish enough to lend aid to others. The strong rule on their own while the weak serve or die. Such is the law of Dragomon.”

Suzie breath caught in her throat at Dragomon’s words. “Henry says… it’s the strong… that have… to help… the weak… and only…the weak…rely…on…hurting…others…” Dragomon’s grip on Suzie tightened to cut off her sobs.

“If you truly believe that, I’ve changed my mind. I do not wish to have Deep Ones be born of such a weak child. I shall simply have to find other hosts until I can capture the Queen of Light for my bride.”

Hearing this, Suzie tried to squirm out of Dragomon’s hold, not even caring that she was more than thirty feet in the air and already injured. When her attempts failed, she resorted to the next option—she bit down on the tentacle holding her. As Dragomon was still mostly shadow instead of flesh, this was luckily less disgusting than it otherwise would have been, though it still left an unpleasant fishy taste in Suzie’s mouth. Dragomon didn’t even notice the attempt at causing him harm, though he did notice a hint of light flickering back in the recesses of Suzie’s soul. This was enough for him to reconsider just tossing her into the ocean and being done with her, so he brought Suzie back up to his eye level.

Suzie also felt some strength returning to her, making it a lot easier for her to string her words together. “Why do you want to hurt others? It isn’t right!”

Dragomon scoffed. “Hurting others is wrong? You didn’t seem to have a problem with killing the pitiful remains of Deep Ones earlier. The strong dominate the weak—there is no other order in the world.”

Suzie practically wailed back at him. “Just because you say that doesn’t mean it’s true! I’ll stop you from hurting anybody else!”

At this, Dragomon physically laughed, not just settling for broadcasting his thoughts into Suzie’s mind. “Oh, you’ll stop me? How do you plan on doing that? You are too weak, and even if you were stronger, you would only prove my point.”

Suzie flinched back at this, wondering how to best phrase her argument. “No, I…” She hung her head, not knowing how to continue, but took a deep breath and stated a new argument. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I probably would. I’m pretty good at hurting things when I don’t mean to. I thought Terriermon was a toy and made him go through so much, I wandered into the Digital World and made my whole family sad, I ran off here again even though this world hurts Lopmon, and then we killed those fish people. I don’t want to fight anymore…”

She then turned and glared at Dragomon with a surprising amount of intensity. “But that’s why I have Lopmon! She didn’t want to help humans. She didn’t want to turn against the Sovereign. She didn’t want to have to face the monster that scared her masters. But she did all of those things, because she knew it was the right thing to do! And because she’s my partner, I can do the same thing! I don’t want to hurt anything, but it isn’t right to do nothing and let others get hurt either!” Lopmon was touched by Suzie’s declaration, but she wasn’t sure what it would accomplish. Unlike with Suzie where Dragomon had wanted to keep her alive, he hadn’t been gentle when extracting the light energy from the Rookie Digimon. She was barely alive, which meant Suzie was in better fighting shape at the moment.

However, what Lopmon hadn’t realized was Suzie’s speech was accomplishing something more than simply stating her intentions. Back on the beach, her D-Power started glowing, and the clouds above Dragomon’s head suddenly parted. The Depraved Monk of the Deep didn’t have time to react as a giant pillar of pink light suddenly shot out of the sky and engulfed Suzie and Lopmon. The light was so potent that Dragomon couldn’t absorb it fast enough, and it burned off all the tentacles caught in its path. They quickly regrew and were restored into their original form, but the change was painful enough and sudden enough that it distracted the Sea Animal Digimon to the point where he couldn’t react before he heard a voice call out, “Lopmon, Biomerge to… Cherubimon!”

Suzie had often asked Henry and the others how it felt to be merged with a Digimon. Now that she finally had done it herself, she realized they had all been right—it was a feeling that was almost impossible to put into words. In some ways, she felt like she was floating in a ball of pink light as a human, and in others she could feel every bit of her rabbit-like body. It was a little disorienting at first, but with Lopmon merged with her it wasn’t too difficult to get used to it. In the time it took Dragomon to recover from her transformation, Suzie had already instinctively gone through her attacks and realized they weren’t exactly to her liking. She had been trying to prove she could get by without hurting people, and her only attacks were throwing lightning and calling down a divine thunderstorm.

While Suzie was trying to figure out what to do, Dragomon lashed out at her with his Tentacle Flapping, intending to steal even more of her light now that she had assumed the Mega form. Lopmon knew Suzie didn’t want to lash out offensively, but she also wasn’t going to just let them get hit. Deciding to get creative with her powers, she summoned countless Lightning Spears. Instead of throwing them, however, she instead bent them around herself, creating a cage of lightning bolts that Dragomon wasn’t able to reach through. His tentacles may have fried a little from contact with the electrical shield, but even Suzie could agree that was his own fault. Still, they couldn’t win on defense alone, which gave Suzie a bit of an idea. It took a little bit to convince Lopmon with her plan to create an entirely new attack, but luckily being Biomerged combined their minds as well as their bodies. While Lopmon and Suzie felt like they were having a conversation, the communication was happening at the speed of thought. Lopmon agreed it was worth a try by the time Dragomon had finished flinching back from the electrical cage.

Before the Sea Animal Digimon could react, Cherubimon charged her hands with light and flew directly at Dragomon’s face. She wrapped her arms as far around his head as she could reach before she called out “Holy Hug!” Dragomon grinned as Cherubimon started flooding him with light, which burned horribly but was easily absorbed. However, this was only the initial stage of the attack, and more of a side effect of using a new attack without taking time to perfect it first. What came next was something only a young child would come up with—Suzie channeled all of her happy memories, hopes, and dreams through the attack. In an effort to show Dragomon the goodness in the world and how you didn’t need to cause pain to enjoy yourself, she managed to create a completely new attack.

Suzie intended the attack to peacefully end the fight and send Dragomon down a better path. What she hadn’t expected was for him to push her away and retreat into the ocean. Dragomon was used to reaching into the minds of others and exerting a minor form of control. To his victims, he was an eldritch horror whose mind was beyond comprehension. However, for all his time spent as the ruler of the Dark Ocean with his particular worldview, that level of compassion and innocence was something he couldn’t comprehend. To Dragomon, it was Suzie who was the abomination, and after she forced her way into his mind he was retreating into the ocean in an effort to make the strange presence in his mind go away.

Suzie hadn’t expected this result from her attack, leaving her floating confused in the air. This feeling was only compounded when she suddenly heard someone applauding her. She turned to see BeelStarrmon floating upside down in the air above her with a smile on her face. “Wow, I’ve got to hand it to you. Not too many girls can look a mass of tentacles in the eye like that without flinching. You managed to drive Dragomon off with one attack. Sure, I always viewed him as a disappointment whenever he stepped out of the shadows, but he was still pretty strong. Now, did you Digivolve the usual way, or is your partner in there somewhere? I’m not really sure how things normally work in your world.”

Cherubimon awkwardly laughed. “I’m here—wait, that doesn’t make sense. We did Biomerge, so I’m both Suzie and Lopmon. You probably can’t tell which one of us is talking…” BeelStarrmon disappeared before reappearing next to the Cherub Digimon.

“Trust me, you have no idea what I’ve been through in my life. This doesn’t even rank in the top ten percent of weird things I’ve experienced. Anyway, sorry about everything. I didn’t think Dragomon or his flunkies were still around—we wiped out those freaky shadow things after Daemon absorbed Dragomon months ago. I wouldn’t have brought you here if I knew it was this dangerous…”

Cherubimon blinked in shock. She hadn’t exactly interacted with BeelStarrmon that much, but this seemed to be a little out of character for the Nightmare Soldier who made it very clear she was helping them just because she didn’t have anything better to do. Then again, she apparently had been spending a lot of time with Beelzemon, and he was probably the nicest Demon Lord in existence. Maybe some of his attitude was starting to rub off on her. “Don’t worry about it—it was an accident. And I wouldn’t have been able to Biomerge without it, so thanks for bringing the two of us closer together.”

“Yeah, I guess I did do that… looks like I did a better job of proving you could take care of yourself than I intended…”

Cherubimon’s eyes widened in shock. “I forgot all about that. Yeah, I guess having a Mega form and that fight with Dragomon proved I was stronger, but really I sort of proved Henry’s point when I ran away here. I acted like such a spoiled child. All because I didn’t want to be part of the backup team…” BeelStarrmon was a little uneasy hearing Cherubimon talk like this. The thoughts were obviously coming from the human girl, but they were being processed through the more mature mind of her Digimon partner.

She shook her head and turned to another subject. “So, I know I’m early, but are you ready to head back? You’ve got a lot of people that would like to see you.” When Cherubimon nodded, BeelStarrmon worked on summoning another dark corridor. While doing so, the Freeshooter was muttering under her breath, but thanks to her new form Cherubimon was able to make out what she was saying: “Even if you’re just a backup, at least you have a team…”

Cherubimon let out a little gasp. “I didn’t know you didn’t have a team. Why don’t we talk to Neo once we get back? And I think I can help you feel better. Holy Hug!” BeelStarrmon wasn’t ready for the Cherub Digimon to pull her into a hug, but her surprise faded to pain when the move started flooding her with holy energy. Suzie flinched back at the Demon Man Digimon’s screams, which broke up the attack. However, just before Cherubimon broke contact BeelStarrmon noticed a twinge of happiness somewhat reminiscent of her own Rizoma de Loto. From Cherubimon’s introduction to the attack, that was probably the intended result, but that just came with its own set of problems.

“Okay, two things. First, I’m a Virus type and a demon. You flood people like me with holy energy, and it hurts like a bitch.”

Cherubimon gasped. “You said a bad word!”

BeelStarrmon just facepalmed. “What are you, eight?” When Cherubimon just indignantly responded that Suzie was nine, BeelStarrmon just sighed. “Fine, whatever. Back to my second point, was your attack supposed to flood me with happiness?” At a nod from the Cherub Digimon, BeelStarrmon frowned. “Listen, you have to be really careful with that. Take it from someone who has a similar attack—that’s a lot more dangerous than you’d think. Until you really master it and know what you’re doing, you shouldn’t use that attack. You’ll either drive people off like you did with Dragomon or you’ll get people addicted to it. I had a really good teacher when I was working on my Rizoma de Loto, so you’ll need to find someone like that in your world. Now let’s go.”

After the two Digimon disappeared, a ball of pink light floated down from within the clouds and landed on the beach. The glow faded to reveal a small white fox keeping its body wrapped around a pink cartridge that hummed with a holy light. The ancient fox spirit smiled at once again being able to help others before it disappeared off into the woods to resume its appointed task of protecting the holy relic given to this world…

Beelzemon found himself once again having to crash Behemoth in order to avoid an obstacle. While last time it had been a cliff, this time it was a swirling vortex of darkness. Considering the only people who knew how to open those either worked for Lucemon or had worked with Lucemon, it wasn’t exactly something he wanted to drive into unprepared. He flew off the back of the fallen motorcycle and pointed his Corona Blaster at the corridor. He wasn’t planning on shooting first and asking questions later, but this way if whatever came out of the portal wasn’t friendly he wouldn’t have to take the time to raise his weapon.

However, when BeelStarrmon and a Cherubimon came out of the corridor of darkness, Beelzemon realized he hadn’t needed the precaution. He put his gun away and crossed his arms, silently demanding an explanation from his female counterpart. She complied, starting with “See, I told you I could find her in no—dibs!” She warped to the fallen Behemoth and hopped on before Beelzemon could stop her. He went to chase her down, only to see Behemoth swing in a wide circle and drive right back up to him, bringing a disappointed BeelStarrmon with it.

“You know, I never really understood Leviamon’s attitude, but now I can kinda see where it came from. This is the second one of your toys that won’t let me play with it, and jealousy is a bitch.”

Beelzemon’s next words were drowned out by Cherubimon’s cry of “Hey! Language!” Hearing a familiar voice within the call, Beelzemon turned to the new Digimon.

“Wait, Lopmon, is that you? It sounded a bit like Suzie too—did you Biomerge?”

Cherubimon just laughed. “Yep! Though if you don’t mind, could you keep it a secret for a bit? I don’t think Henry would believe me if I told him, and I want to apologize for running away. If I tell him I managed to Biomerge after I apologize, it will look like I got what I wanted but I don’t want him to think that. I mean, being together with Lopmon is great, but it doesn’t make up for what I did.”

Beelzemon just walked up and patted Cherubimon on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, kid. Our friends are pretty forgiving. You made a mistake, but if you’re really sorry they’ll welcome you back. If they can accept me, they can accept you.” The tender moment was interrupted when BeelStarrmon gasped. Beelzemon and Cherubimon both turned to the Freeshooter, who warped off of Behemoth and was staring at it cautiously from behind a rock. After a few seconds of realizing how silly she looked, she turned to the other two Digimon. “Sorry about that, but that motorcycle had some…interesting thoughts to broadcast into my mind.”

Beelzemon just stared at her confused for a second—he knew Behemoth had a mind of its own, but it had never given him any additional thoughts as he rode. It never even talked to him, but apparently it was capable of doing that. He asked BeelStarrmon what exactly she meant, but she just averted her eyes with a slight blush on her face. “Listen, I’ve had a pretty long day. Right now I just really want to lay back and enjoy some me time without having to save girls in the Dark Ocean or deal with a psychic motorbike.” She opened another Dark Corridor and gestured for the other two to go through. “This will take you back to the temple. Everyone should eventually meet you there.”

“Wait, did you say the Dark Ocean? How did Suzie get there? And how can you suddenly open these corridors again?”

BeelStarrmon turned away and started walking, not even bothering to look at Beelzemon as she spoke. “In order: yes, I said the Dark Ocean. I knew to find Suzie there since I brought her there knowing she wouldn’t be able to grow on her own in the Digital World since somebody would find her. And apparently I’m so insignificant to Lucemon that he never blocked me from using the corridors, he just blocked off that one area. As for why, it probably amused him. Now that portal closes in twenty seconds so you best get going if you don’t want to walk back.” With this, she warped into the distance before disappearing into a portal of her own. With nothing better to do, both Beelzemon and Cherubimon walked through the original portal to get back to the temple and contact everyone else.

When Ryo got the message that Suzie had been found, he expected to be the first one back at the temple since he and Cyberdramon had gotten a much later start on the search than everybody else. However, when he arrived, he found that Henry, Sigma, and Neo had all arrived before him, in addition to Joe and HolyAngemon who had never left the temple. In fact, Henry and Suzie seemed to be towards the tail end of an argument that had somehow ended up with both sides on the opposite side of where Ryo expected. Henry must have started off being harsh with Suzie and was now trying to apologize for that while saying she had just as much right as anybody else to be in the main force now that she could reach the Mega level. Suzie, who had run away out of a desire not to be kept on the sidelines, was now saying she didn’t deserve the front lines since she clearly wasn’t grown up enough to handle it and was saying she should be in the reserve squad.

Neo seemed to be tired of the argument and cut in. “Listen, I get that this is a big family issue. And it isn’t easy to work through. But the fact of the matter is we could really use another Mega on the front line to balance out the teams. Though clearly, the two of you will be distracted if you are both on the front lines without being able to watch out for each other. So, I’m rearranging a couple of teams. It goes against my goal, but due to the present circumstances your team didn’t work together before anyway. HolyAngemon, I’m moving you to work with Willis while Suzie takes your place with Henry and Ryo. Any objections?”

The one-winged angel shook his head. “I will gladly do this for the good of our cause. However, I wish to spend some more time with Ryo first. I believe I may be able to help his partner contain the evil within him.”

After the Archangel Digimon’s declaration, a loud voice cut across the room. “Well, Rika, it looks like it’s just you, me, and our partners on the backup squad.” The group turned to see Kazu, Guardromon, Rika, Renamon, Hideto, and Melga walking into the room. However, only Kazu, Guardromon, and Renamon seemed to be focusing on the meeting. Hideto and Melga were both busy staring through a wall, which Ryo knew was between them and the room where Warg was still in suspended animation. Rika, however, was directing her gaze directly at Ryo, and he found a hard time focusing on anything else.

He only dimly heard Kazu complain “Wait, if Suzie and Lopmon count as a Mega now, does that mean I’m the only one left who can’t go beyond Ultimate? After all that work to get access to Andromon again we’re left in the dust…” Still, it was hard to focus on Kazu’s whining, as Rika was standing right in Ryo’s face. In a completely emotionless tone, she asked “Are you okay, Ryo?”

Ryo was taken aback by the tone of the question. Rika usually approached life switching between cold disdain and fiery passion. He was expecting her to sound dismissive of him or outright angry, but with such a neutral tone he wasn’t sure what she was thinking. Deciding this wasn’t the time for his usual flirty banter, he adopted a more serious tone.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m even medically cleared to return to duty, which apparently is pretty hard to do around here. But thanks for—”

His sentence was cut off as Rika slammed her fist into his stomach, driving all the air out of his lungs. As he collapsed to the floor, Rika’s gaze turned to ice as her usual cold tone returned. “I still haven’t decided whether to forgive you or not. Until I decide, you aren’t allowed to die. But if you get caught in a situation like that again, my next punch will be about a foot or so lower after I save you. Do I make myself clear?”

Ryo could barely breathe, but he managed to wheeze out a choked “Crystal.” Kazu felt sympathy for his fellow Tamer as he remembered being on the receiving end of one of Rika’s punches all too recently, but considering that experience, the nature of her new threat to Ryo, and the fact he was working on a team with her for the next couple of days, he decided not to mention anything in case he ended up on her bad side again. However, Neo’s reaction was on the opposite end of the spectrum.

“You know, Rika, you would have made a nice addition to Alias III. HolyAngemon, you said you wanted to work with Ryo, so I may as well leave him here with you. Sigma, can you and Piedmon round up everyone else? Now that we’ve got this out of the way we can actually start preparing for battle without any more surprising developments.”

However, Neo’s desire to get through the next day and a half without surprises didn’t even make it past the return trip to Earth. As soon as he arrived back, he saw Davis talking with a blonde girl who looked somewhat familiar. Seeing this girl’s Floramon and hearing her talk with a French accent, he realized where he recognized her from—she had been present for the final battle with Arkadimon last December. More importantly, she had broken in to Daemon’s castle to save Rei and ended up taking the Crests Daemon was using as a power source. Still, for trying to get the DigiDestined and Tamers into some semblance of an army, there were far too many things happening outside of his control.

Walking up to the two, he immediately locked eyes with the French girl and addressed her in English. “Cassie, was it? As much as I’d like the opportunity to thank you for saving Rei, this isn’t a good time. Go back to France and tell all of your friends to stay there.”

If Neo expected her to obey his orders, however, he would be sorely disappointed. She returned his glare with just as much intensity and replied, “Un, my name is Catherine, not Cassie. Deux, do not presume to think you can give me orders. I heard what was going on from Davis and you cannot stop me from joining in on this fight.”

Neo shifted his glare over in Davis’s direction, and it was much more effective against the DigiDestined of Miracles than it had been against the French girl. “So, you told her about this. Remember when I said NOT to involve the international DigiDestined? And that it would be best to keep the impending battle a secret?”

Davis looked down and sheepishly mumbled, “Well, I tried to keep it a secret, but TK never really taught me how to be a convincing liar in French. I have to think too hard just to get my sentences correct to think about being misleading.” Neo merely quirked an eyebrow as Catherine put her hand on Davis’s shoulder and told him he was getting much better at speaking her language for only having a couple of months of practice.

“So, you’ve decided to start studying French in these last few months. Please enlighten me as to what brilliant discovery you made that rendered a foreign language a useful weapon against Lucemon.”

Davis looked back at Neo’s face as he replied indignantly. “Hey, just because I’m fighting Lucemon doesn’t mean I can’t have my own life too. I wanted to learn French because…” He trailed off, realizing the real reason he was studying French wouldn’t exactly be the right thing to say with Catherine standing right next to him. Trying to find some way to save face he faked a little cough and then went with the first thing that came to mind. “I wanted to learn it because it could help with my noodle cart!”

Only after saying that did Davis realize how nonsensical it sounded. He hoped the other two would let it slide, but Neo didn’t seem to be in a forgiving mood. “Really. Speaking in French is going to help your noodle cart. You’ve managed to pique my interest. Please explain how you came to that conclusion.”

Davis was at a loss to explain this one, but the answer came from an unlikely source. “Well, looking at the recent sales figures of exotic restaurants compared to the previous ten years, it would appear the French market would be favorable to opening a business featuring Japanese cuisine.” Neo could only stare blankly at Catherine after her response, while Davis thanked his Crest for miraculously setting things up so the future business major could jump to his rescue. However, the smile faded from his face when Neo turned back to him and switched back to speaking in Japanese.

“Okay, whatever. Clearly learning to speak French has helped you speak with her, but has she been learning Japanese as well?” When Davis answered that she hadn’t picked up anything more than rudimentary Japanese since they usually communicated in English, Neo nodded. “Good. Now don’t pretend you haven’t completely lucked out that she believes that. The real reason you learned French is obvious. Having said that, you’ve let your feelings work against our plan once. Do not let it happen again.” He then turned to Catherine and switched back to English.

“Since you’re here, I suppose I can’t stop you from joining this fight. But there are a few things you should know beforehand. We’ve already tried the whole ‘overwhelm Lucemon with numbers’ thing. All it accomplished was reducing the population of the Digital World down to a few hundred at best. Throwing Champions at him will accomplish nothing. The reason we aren’t getting the other DigiDestined involved is because there is a very high chance we will fail, and if we do we want to leave some form of hope for the world. You don’t stand a chance against Lucemon, but he doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who would spend his days micromanaging the world. It’s going to be up to those left behind to make life under Lucemon as survivable as possible.”

“You make it sound like we have already lost. Surely it will not hurt to believe in ourselves a little more than that. From my understanding, we will be attacking Lucemon and not the other way around.”

Neo shook his head in response to Catherine’s interruption. “If that would give us any advantage, it would only be the element of surprise. And since Lucemon picked the exact time and place of our battle, I would say we gain no advantage. In fact, he was the one preparing a surprise for us. Which is why I’m trying to prepare teams in case we need to split up. You’ll be working with Rika, Kazu, and Meramon. Davis, since you’re responsible for bringing her here, why don’t you go introduce her to her squad mates?” He didn’t wait for Davis to respond as he walked back to Sigma’s side, eager to use all of his remaining time to perfect their battle strategy.

Chapter Text

Mari stared at Dr. Wataru as he held her Digivice and Crest back out to her. As far as she could tell, she hadn’t really demonstrated any recovery since a few days ago when he had quite emphatically shut her down—along with anybody else who attempted to get it back. This whole thing felt like some sort of trap, until the doctor just sighed.

“You can stop looking at me like I’m executing some sort of evil scheme. I told you, you wouldn’t get your Digivice back until you were healed or it was time to fight Lucemon. Going off of the time table I was given, the second case is only four hours away. So, it’s about time I gave this back to you.”

Mari took the offered Crest and Digivice and felt a warm presence as she finally reclaimed them. These items practically carried a part of her soul, and it was great to have them back. She started walking off, only for Dr. Wataru to grab her shoulder.

“If I may provide my medical opinion, I would suggest restoring the two angels first. Getting all the healers back to full strength first should help save all the others more easily. And take these as well since you’ll be stopping by their owners.” He handed over TK and Kari’s D3s and Crests, though he held on to Koji’s D-Tector. “I’ll take care of Mr. Minamoto. From what I’ve heard, not even all of your Digimon working together will be able to regrow his arm, so it might be best if I handle this personally.”

With that, he walked out of the room, with Mari leaving shortly afterwards. She walked back to the gym where everyone else had gathered with a new sense of purpose now that she was final able to help. She ignored everyone present as she walked straight to Lalamon, wasting no time in having her partner Warp Digivolve. That got everyone’s attention, though Patamon and Gatomon were the most excited. One Serpent’s Cure later, Ophanimon and MagnaAngemon were flying back towards their partners’ sides, with Lotusmon and MarineAngemon following behind just in case they were needed. Tai and Matt were only a few seconds behind the Digimon in racing to their siblings’ sides, though even among the group that remained behind it was obvious the mood was considerably lighter now that they had made some progress.

The lighter mood was shattered when a dark portal opened up in the air, causing all the humans to reach for their Digivices on reflex. Only Beelzemon and Suzie stayed calm, and their reaction proved correct when BeelStarrmon floated through and hovered above Neo’s head.

“Hey, just thought I’d give you all a heads up—Lucemon is pushing the battle back an hour. Something about really preparing an entrance.”

Neo’s eyes narrowed. “And how exactly do you know that?”

BeelStarrmon just returned his glare. “Kid, I’ve worked directly under Demon Lords. It will take a lot more than your glare to intimidate me. But if you must know, I had a little run-in with a Tsukaimon while I was enjoying some me time in the Dark Ocean. Little snot thought he was so cool since he was the fourth strongest fighter in Lucemon’s army, but that’s not so impressive when said army only has four members. Anyway, he passed on that message before he got the bright idea that he could get some glory by killing me. Suffice to say, Lucemon’s army only has three members now.”

BeelStarrmon didn’t really care how everyone reacted to her offhand declaration that she had killed something as non-threatening as a Rookie level. Instead, she continued to stare Neo down, and he hadn’t so much as flinched from her statement. “Also, your whole little team idea is stupid. Do you really think just by splitting yourself up into small groups you’ll gain an advantage? I’m glad I’m not involved in this nonsense. I work better alone anyway, and I look forward to laughing at you after I finish Lucemon off.”

The Demon Man Digimon’s bravado instantly went away when Suzie called out, “That’s not what you said back in the Dark Ocean. You sounded like you really wanted to be on a team and were sad that Neo left you out.” BeelStarrmon cringed at how easily the little girl completely eliminated the devil-may-care attitude she was trying to project, but Neo didn’t seem to mind. In fact, his glare softened as he started speaking again.

“If you really wanted to be involved, all you had to do was ask. You’ve made it clear you are only working with us because you had nothing better to do. As a suicide mission sounded like the last thing I’d want to do, I assumed you wouldn’t participate at this point. We are destined to fight Lucemon, and these other Tamers are here because they are in a similar predicament and getting a head start on things. You don’t have to play along with us.”

“Well, I had no idea you thought so highly of my intelligence and so lowly of my sense of honor. Still, it’s probably for the best if you don’t fully trust me—you’ll live longer. Since I would mess with your oh-so-meticulously planned out team strategy, I’ll just go at this alone and pick off any enemy target I can. Seems like a good use of my talent.”

Further discussion was cut off when the healing Digimon came back, followed by a tired looking TK and Kari. Neo wasn’t sure if this was just a normal reaction after a few days of being unconscious or if they hadn’t been fully healed even with all the Digimon’s efforts, but considering the circumstances it didn’t matter.

“I know you want to spend time with your partners, but your skills are needed elsewhere at the moment. We need to go take care of Warg immediately. I’ll take care of bringing TK and Kari up to speed, but the healers need to go to the temple now.”

As he said this, he glanced to Anubismon, who responded with a quick nod. It just seemed like bad luck to say out loud that they needed a Digimon with the power to bring others back from the dead to attend a healing, but with Warg’s condition they might need to rely on the God Man Digimon’s abilities to get Omegamon back. Luckily, Hideto didn’t seem to notice as he headed off with the rest of the group. As they left, Neo turned to the newly-awakened DigiDestined, ready to let them know exactly what they would be facing in a few hours’ time.

As Fuyutsuki walked to the gymnasium, he found himself once again cursing his uselessness. He had joined the JSDF with the intent to protect the people of this country. In some regards, he had had far more success than he expected: no other commanding officer in history had to deal with Digimon attacks, and he had managed to create a unit that lived up to that unique challenge. Still, all those successes only made his inability to truly make a difference more apparent. His relatively small unit was by far the strongest in the Japanese military, thanks to the power of Sealsdramon, Brimpmon, and Tankmon. It was impossible to quantify how strong those three had been in terms of human soldiers, yet as Dexmon proved they were nowhere near strong enough to make a difference in this fight.

Instead, he had to rely on a group of young adults, and in some cases even children. He had chosen to become a soldier, yet he had to rely on this one group of people who had been chosen as children to bear the burden of not just a single country but of multiple worlds. He flashed back to when he was in college and took a theology course. More specifically, he had a new appreciation for the story of John the Baptist—a man who would have been known as one of the greatest holy men of his era if it weren’t for a much more influential figure who was a child at the time. Fuyutsuki wondered if the prophet ever resented that fact.

Fuyutsuki paused in the doorway for a second before entering. He may not be able to make a large difference in the upcoming battle, but he could at least provide one last service to these children. For the DigiDestined from this version of Earth, he had gathered together the closest friends and family of the children to give them some last time with their families before going off to end this war. Admittedly, that hadn’t been very difficult. In the case of the Kamiya, Ishida/Takaishi, and Minamoto/Kimura families, they were already coming by every day to check in on their hospitalized family members. Mari and Sigma were both orphans with no siblings, and their only friends seemed to be within the DigiDestined group anyway. For most of the rest of the DigiDestined, their families were already aware of the ongoing war so all Fuyutsuki had to do was tell them a time and a place and they had all agreed to come before he could even offer.

There were only a few exceptions to the general rule. Hideto hadn’t had any contact with his family in over four years, so Fuyutsuki had gone to ask him if he would like them to be invited instead of treating it as a surprise. Hideto had immediately declined the offer, saying he had a very good reason for breaking off contact with his family and he wasn’t about to change that now. In addition, he told Fuyutsuki to run his plan by the Saibas, where Rei and Neo both declined to inform their families as well. Their father was on a campaign trip on the other side of the country, and Rei didn’t want to burden him with worry. She also tried to find a diplomatic excuse not to tell their mother, but Neo wasn’t nearly as polite when he left her out. Fuyutsuki didn’t agree, but as they were legally adults he allowed them to have their way.

While everyone from this version of Earth had the easy option of coming here in person, the group from the other Earth wasn’t so lucky. The only way they had found of sending people between the two dimensions was relying on Wisemon’s power, and they couldn’t afford to tire out the Digimon just to give everyone a chance to say hello. Thanks to the Juggernaut program developed by Hypnos they had been able to communicate through text and audio, but Fuyutsuki had wanted something a little better than a phone call. Luckily, he had a few connections. While people often thought of soldiers when they pictured the military, the armed forces had often been home for the advancement of science as well. And luckily for him, Fuyutsuki had had the privilege of working with some of the greatest minds Japan had to offer.

Chief among these was Dr. Gengo Aoi, a biochemist who had long held interest in the potential of parallel worlds. A few years younger than Fuyutsuki, he had enjoyed a long career before suddenly moving to America with his new wife in 1996. Looking back, it was strange that the man who had so often dreamed of the other worlds left the country shortly after the event at Highton View Terrace that proved his idea was more than a dream. Around ten years younger was Gengo’s protégé, Misako Togane. She specialized in the study of electromagnetic forces and had the highest IQ on record for Japanese citizens. There was a larger age gap between her and Naoko Akagi, who was just short of her 30^th birthday and already closer to developing a full-scale quantum computer than anybody in the world. Lastly came Gendo Ikari, who was a few years younger than Naoko. Like Gengo he was a biochemist, though Fuyutsuki also saw the mind of a military leader in the young scientist. While the other three had all left the military for civilian careers, Fuyutsuki hoped Gendo would stay in the service as a potential future leader.

Between these four geniuses and the Monster Makers in the other world, it had been relatively simple to tweak the Juggernaut program to allow much greater communication between the two worlds. The exact results of keeping such a line open for an extended period of time were unknown, but with Lucemon acting as an interdimensional threat and Juggernaut already being used safely on a small scale the potential benefits outweighed the risks. It might be a small contribution, but Fuyutsuki was glad to give these children some more time to spend with their families before going off to battle. He had served long enough to know that was what most soldiers thought before deploying, so he could only hope they would appreciate the surprise.

Stepping into the gymnasium, Fuyutsuki felt more like he had stepped onto a college campus than a war council. The DigiDestined were almost casually spread throughout the area, talking in small groups or fiddling with phones and computers. Davis had even brought out a soccer ball and was kicking it around with Catherine, Ai, Mako, and some of the Digimon. Still, the unmistakable tension in the air made it clear nobody was forgetting what they were about to face. Everyone was either going through some last-minute preparations or had reached the point where they were as ready as they could ever be and just trying to keep themselves busy so they didn’t get too nervous. Hopefully his announcement would change all of that.

“I know you are all busy right now, but I have some good news for you all. For those of you from this version of Earth, your families will be arriving here shortly. You should be able to meet them outside. For the rest of you, it took us most of this time, but we’ve managed to improve on the Juggernaut program to the point where we’ve enabled video chat with your families. Each one of you has your own private room. The rest of you will have full access to this facility to do whatever you like. It’s less than you deserve, but all we have to offer at this point. I’m used to dealing with the bravest men and women in the country, but getting a chance to work with those who would put themselves at risk for the sake of the entire multiverse has been the greatest honor in my life. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you. Now, if the Tamers could follow me please, I can take you to your rooms.”

As he led the Tamers away, Fuyutsuki wasn’t surprised to see varying levels of enthusiasm. Ai and Mako still found the whole concept of talking to someone over a computer screen exciting, so they were eagerly following after him. Ryo didn’t seem to want to even come along but was doing so out of a sense of obligation. He was dropped off first, with everyone following after him. Eventually, only Rika was left, though Fuyutsuki stopped her before she stepped in to the room.

“Listen, I know you and Ryo aren’t on the best of terms at the moment, but it’s clear that you know him the best out of everyone. If I were to call his father here—and I mean his father from this world—how would he handle it?”

Fuyutsuki saw the teenager tense up at the reminder of Ryo’s situation, but after taking some time to collect herself she turned away before responding. “Look, this probably shouldn’t be my decision to make. I’m not happy about this whole situation, and part of me doesn’t trust Ryo anymore. Still, he needs to face his father eventually, but now isn’t the right time. Ryo doesn’t do well with social interactions, and forcing him to see his father after all this time would only serve to distract him. And looking at it from his father’s point of view, you should probably wait until after the battle anyway. What’s the point of telling him his son is alive if Lucemon can kill any of us in a matter of hours? It might be best to keep the truth from Ryo’s father until this fight is over, one way or the other.”

Davis stood on the wasteland that would serve as the final battlefield against Lucemon and found himself wishing they could have picked a different location. The Digital World had such beautiful scenery in some areas, and here they were fighting for all life in the world—and potentially others—in an area that was completely barren. Even the fight against Hideto and Omegamon had at least brought some interesting rock formations into play. This was just a flat and rocky expanse that made it look like the world had already ended, which didn’t seem to bode well for the upcoming fight.

A sudden gust of wind caused Davis to quickly grab his D3, but seeing it was nothing he let out a sigh and returned to shuffling his feet. He supposed he couldn’t help feeling a bit jumpy with everything going on. It didn’t help that Neo had ordered them not to Digivolve until Lucemon showed up. In some ways it was the only sensible course of action—their partners couldn’t hold their higher forms forever, and UlforceVeedramon had an even shorter time limit than everybody else. Waiting to Digivolve until the last possible moment would give them more energy and time to devote to the actual battle.

Still, Davis couldn’t help but see one glaring flaw in this plan: it relied on Lucemon not doing anything until he showed up with whatever surprise he had in store for them. Neo seemed to think it was obvious that Lucemon wouldn’t want to kill them without ceremony after setting up this whole show in the first place, but Davis wasn’t so sure you could apply logical thought to the last member of the Seven Great Demon Lords. Lucemon could just as easily decide this whole idea was boring and let them all stand here for hours as he ignored them. This whole scenario was just as likely to be a waste of time or a trap as it was an actual battle.

No sooner had this thought crossed Davis’s mind as a strange humming filled the air. A swirling blue portal formed in the sky, quickly being overlaid with the red circular pattern of the Code Key of Pride. The humming suddenly changed to a strange chanting as a beam of light shot down from the Code Key, striking the ground and mirroring the image in the sky. For a second the area was bathed in a red glow before a white blast of light slammed into the center of the symbol, causing cracks to spread along the ground. Within the center of the impact, Lucemon was crouched down on the ground, not bothering to even look at them for what felt like a minute. Eventually he looked up and smirked at them before disappearing in a flash of light. Hearing applause from behind them, the DigiDestined turned to see the Demon Lord clapping with a smug grin on his face.

“Good, you actually decided to show up. I was half worried you would have tried to save yourselves by running from me. Not that you would ever be able to hide from me, but I have much better things to do with my time.”

Neo, who had the most experience working with a hostile Demon Lord, didn’t waste any time of his own before responding. “Yes, I’m sure an entrance like that must have taken at least a few minutes to prepare. But I know you’ve been working on something bigger than that, so why don’t we just cut to the chase here? Show us your big surprise alre—”

Neo was cut off as he was suddenly ensnared in chains. To take matters further, all the links more than a foot away from him ignited in black flames, quickly getting Lucemon’s point across. “I don’t take orders from you. Still, I plan on looking back through time to watch your deaths repeatedly, and it would be a shame to take out some of my enjoyment of this moment.” The chains disappeared just as quickly as they had appeared, though Neo wasn’t quite as quick to snap back a retort. Satisfied, Lucemon turned his attention to the rest of the group. “Now, last time I fought you sent an army after me. So, it only seemed fair that this time around, I could bring my own. But the whole ‘hordes of demons’ thing has been done far too many times already. So, I thought I’d take a page out of your books and assemble a small elite fighting force. And I have to admit, the irony just added to my enjoyment.”

He snapped his fingers and a column of white light appeared in front of him. “I thought I’d start with someone you’d all recognize. Say hello to Omnimon!” The light faded, revealing the familiar armored form of the Royal Knight. Appearance wise he was a perfect match for Omegamon, indicating that this Omnimon also possessed the X-Antibody and the power boost that came with it. Still, if Lucemon expected this to be impressive he would be disappointed. Between Lilithmon and Hideto, this was now the third time the DigiDestined found themselves fighting against an Omnimon. This didn’t make Omnimon less powerful, but it took away some of the psychological impact.

However, Lucemon wasn’t done quite yet. “Next, UlforceVeedramon!” A column of blue light heralded the arrival of the Holy Knight Digimon. As Davis compared the new arrival to his own partner’s Mega form, he noticed this UlforceVeedramon had his wings in a slightly different position and more accentuated gold spikes jutting from his armor. It wasn’t quite as easy to tell as it was with Omnimon, but if he had to guess this UlforceVeedramon possessed the X-Antibody as well. Davis nodded to Veemon, knowing that this would end up being their opponent once the battle really started. The fight with Arkadimon proved that UlforceVeedramon was simply too fast for anybody to fight without taking him by surprise, so the only way to counter an enemy UlforceVeedramon was with an UlforceVeedramon of your own.

Hideto ignored the new addition and kept his eyes at Lucemon, waiting to see what he would do next. There were a couple end goals the Demon Lord could be aiming for at the moment, and with only two Digimon summoned it was hard to pick out the pattern. So far, he had summoned copies of the two strongest Digimon the DigiDestined had to offer. The third choice broke that trend, however. A golden pillar of light appeared followed by Lucemon’s cry of “Magnamon!” As Magnamon stood next to Omnimon, the similarities in their armor made it clear that this Magnamon was also a carrier of the X-Antibody. Compared to Davis’s version, this Magnamon’s armor was closer to orange than yellow. However, even the parts of Magnamon’s body that weren’t covered in armor had a metallic sheen to them, as if his entire body was made of Chrome Digizoid.

It was the next arrival that cemented Lucemon’s plan in Neo’s eyes. After a black flash and Lucemon’s call of “Gankoomon,” it was obvious he wasn’t just trying to use their own Digimon against them. There was only one group that contained these four Digimon, and Neo just grit his teeth at the implication. He had split everyone into teams just in case of a scenario like this, but discounting the healers and the reserve squad they had twelve teams. Counting Lucemon, they were about to be fighting 14 opponents. Neo didn’t pay the newest arrival—a redheaded man in a black bodysuit and a white cape—any special attention as he started redesigning his teams to fit the upcoming threat.

However, Lucemon’s next exclamation resulted in something startling enough that even Neo had to stop to pay attention. Lucemon had called out “Examon!” with a maroon pillar of light, but when the glow faded there wasn’t an extra Digimon standing beside the other four Knights. The only change was the area suddenly getting darker, as if a cloud had passed over the sun. The rumble of thunder only seemed to reinforce this explanation, but when a gust of wind knocked all the DigiDestined over they noticed they were suddenly only able to move in jerky motions, seeming to take forever to stand up and suddenly appearing feet away from where they had been without actually taking the steps to get there. Another peal of thunder caught their attention, and this time they saw the gust front approaching them. However, just like the DigiDestined the burst of air wasn’t moving in a continuous fashion, instead jumping forward and stopping intermittently.

Even in the Digital World this seemed like a strange way for wind to act, and one by one the DigiDestined slowly glanced upward and tried to wrap their minds around the cause of this phenomenon. In the sky above them was something so massive it was nearly impossible to quantify its size. They had all dealt with large Digimon or similar creatures before—the Mother Reaper had swallowed up a skyscraper and Ornismon could spread her wings over a few city blocks—but whatever this thing was made Ornismon look as small as a pigeon in comparison. Only when they saw the outer edges of this shape dip downward did they realize what they were looking at—a giant set of wings. With each flap, they sent a massive gust of wind downwards and the displaced air rang like a peal of thunder.

As the DigiDestined could only stare in awe at a Digimon that may have been able to spread its wings over the entirety of Japan, Lucemon was decidedly less impressed. “Really? After all this time the world still can’t render Examon at his full size? I knew it was hard enough for this world to contain my power, but I would have thought computing would advance far enough after all this time that a few exabytes here and there wouldn’t make a difference. I can’t stand lag, so I guess it’s time to cut Examon down to size.”

He held his hand up to the sky, and the giant bulk of Examon started shrinking in on itself. By the time the massive dragon landed, he was a fraction of his former size- though he still was about as tall as a skyscraper with a wingspan at least three times bigger than his height. In right hand was what appeared to be a cross between a lance and a sniper rifle, though as it was nearly as long as he was tall it would be a formidable weapon just by virtue of its weight alone.

Lucemon took some time to enjoy the shock on his enemies’ faces, though a small part of him regretted showing Examon at this time. “I originally planned on bringing much more than these five here for this fight, but I underestimated how difficult it actually is to drag a Digimon out of their own time period. I lost so many test subjects to the time stream, and while I’m sure they arrived somewhere at some point in time I really didn’t feel like going through every point in space-time just to find a handful of Digimon from the past. But then I remembered I didn’t have to—one of the powers of Olympos was to create shades of any Digimon! With that, I could invite the whole team to the party. Say hello to Craniamon!”

A purple pillar of light appeared, but Neo ignored it as he addressed the others over his wireless headset. He hadn’t thought they would need the extra communication considering the current plan for battle, but it was proving useful now. “Okay, we’ll need to restructure the teams. Takato, I was having a difficult time placing your Crimson Mode before, but you just got promoted to Super Ultimate status and can fight alone. Ryo and HolyAngemon will split from their teams and form their own squad. That will put us with the right number of teams.”

He paused as Lucemon called out “Leopardmon!” and a brown pillar of light signaled the arrival of a small knight wearing brown lion-shaped armor next to the giant demonic looking purple knight.

“For assignment, Tai and Matt will take on Examon, using VictoryGreymon’s dragon-killing ability to our advantage. If you find yourself with an exact counterpart, they will be your opponent. Otherwise we don’t really have time to analyze the enemy and pick our opponent, so just go with whoever you feel like. The one exception will be Sigma and I, as we’ll have to face—”

For once, Lucemon’s cry came at the perfect time, as both he and Neo said “Alphamon” at the same time. The black pillar of light appeared in front of the other members of Lucemon’s army, and when the light disappeared there was a knight with black armor and golden wings wearing a tattered cape. With his plans completed, Neo saw no reason to let Lucemon’s little show continue.

“Are we really going to sit here while you introduce all of the Royal Knights one at a time? I know you want this to be exciting, but I’m sure you’d just fast forward to the good part of the battle anyway. I know who’s all left. Why don’t you just bring them all in at once? There’s Jesmon, Dynasmon, Gallantmon, Kentaurosmon, and LordKnightmon. Or RhodoKnightmon. Or LoadKnightmon. The ancient DigiCode I read describing the Knights could have really gone either way with the translation.”

Lucemon just sighed. “As much as I hate taking orders, I have to admit you have a point. And if you’re curious, the ‘proper’ species name is RhodoKnightmon, but you won’t have to worry about that. Not that these shades retain everything from their original selves, but this particular RhodoKnightmon was from what became the Folder Continent. She took the name Crusadermon, which is admittedly less of a mouthful. Of course, I’m sure your friends the Legendary Warriors could tell you all about Crusadermon and Dynasmon. But the show must go on.”

He snapped his fingers, and five more pillars of light appeared—two white, two red, and one pink. When the light faded to reveal the last of the Royal Knights, Lucemon gave a theatrical bow before gesturing to the DigiDestined. “There, I got to indulge in my bit of theatricality. I believe that makes it your turn to put on the lightshow now.”

The DigiDestined immediately made good on his suggestion, causing the area to be flooded with a multicolored glow as everyone with a Crest activated it and all the Digimon present jumped to the highest level they could without external assistance. Still, the small army of Mega levels wouldn’t be enough to face the Royal Knights, but that had never been part of the plan anyway. Neo passed the Digimental of Legends to Calumon, causing the small Digimon to glow red as the ancient artifact glowed blue. As the two entelechia synchronized, Calumon called out “Shining Digivolution!” and a wave of purple light washed over the group to trigger further Digivolution.

“WarGreymon, Burst Evolve! VictoryGreymon!”

“MetalGarurumon, Burst Evolve! ZeedGarurumon!”

“Phoenixmon, Burst Evolve! Varodurumon!”

“HerculesKabuterimon, Burst Evolve! TyrantKabuterimon!”

“Plesiomon, Burst Evolve! Aegisdramon!”

“Rosemon, Burst Evolve! Rosemon Burst Mode!”

“GranKuwagamon, Burst Evolve! GrandisKuwagamon!”

“MetalSeadramon, Burst Evolve! GigaSeadramon!”

“Piedmon, Burst Evolve! ChaosPiedmon!”

“Meramon, Warp Digivolve to… PileVolcamon!

“Kiwimon, Warp Digivolve to… BanchoLillymon!”

“Andromon, Digivolve to… HiAndromon!”

Neo had been keeping an eye on Lucemon and the Knights this whole time as he had seen this wave of Digivolution before, but when a bolt of purple light shot into Lucemon and he started glowing in time with the chorus of shouts Neo turned to see what might have gone wrong. On the surface, the Digimental had done its job—just like when they used it against Arkadimon, they had all the same Burst Modes. They even added a few Megas that hadn’t been present last time—Kazu’s partner had upgraded to a more armored version with two nuclear generators, Meramon had become a black-armored wrestler with two volcanoes jutting out of his back, and Kiwimon had skipped the Blossomon stage to become a variation of Lillymon with purple wings, black flower petals, and a weapon that resembled Rosemon’s Thorn Whip if it was used as a yoyo. She was dressed similarly to a biker, with the addition of a red cape to signify her status as a Bancho Digimon.

However, the addition of three Mega levels did not make up for two Digimon that noticeably had not been affected: UlforceVeedramon and Gallantmon. Neo had been counting on those two to fight on their own, and to do that they’d need to tap into the Super Ultimate level for UlforceVeedramon and Crimson Mode for Gallantmon. It was possible the Digimental of Legends just didn’t have enough energy on its own to enable both a mass Digivolution and a Super Ultimate Digivolution, but that was why he had passed it on to Calumon. With two entelechia working together, there shouldn’t have the problem of running short on energy. However, as he glanced back to his friends, Neo realized the problem wasn’t so much with the amount of energy as it was with the distribution.

Judging by the purple glows emitting from Wisemon and each of the Legendary Warriors, they had all absorbed a great deal of the power of Calumon’s Shining Digivolution. Neo wasn’t quite sure what this meant, but the same thing had happened to Lucemon so he needed to find out quickly. Whatever was happening didn’t seem to affect everyone equally, however. Lucemon and Wisemon both had a purple glow surrounding them, but each of the Legendary Warriors had absorbed so much energy it was impossible to tell which warrior was which from the intensity of the glow. Neo was using his Digivice to scan the affected Digimon to find out what could possibly be happening when a wavering voice suddenly cut through all of his thoughts.

“Neo… help…” Hearing Rei calling out to him drove every other thought from Neo’s mind. He didn’t even notice as the Legendary Warriors all screamed and lost their fused forms, instead only having eyes for his sister. Her face had gone completely pale, though that was far from the most worrying thing. That was currently a tossup between the dark aura surrounding her body and her eyes, one of which was glowing a pale blue while the other was a darker indigo. Neo started running towards her, but he had to stop as Wisemon suddenly split back into the two PetitMamon. Pal and Pul were only visible in their Rookie states for an instant before each was consumed in a pillar of black fire, forcing Neo to stop and change direction. The cause of this became apparent when two familiar symbols appeared within the flames—the indigo Code Key of Sloth and the blue Code Key of Envy.

Neo knew these weren’t the true Code Keys, as Lucemon had absorbed those months ago. However, the symbols made it painfully obvious what new forms Pal and Pul were achieving. He knew as PetitMamon they were Mini Devil Digimon and their higher forms were Demon Man Digimon, but with all of their forms being derived from witches or wizards he hadn’t expected them to return to demonic roots as their Mega forms. At this point, Pal and Pul started calling out their Digivolutions, though they really needn’t have bothered.

“PetitMamon, Warp Digivolve to… Leviamon!

“PetitMamon, Warp Digivolve to… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.”

The hellfire cleared as soon as the Digivolution ended, but Neo was once again unable to reach Rei. This time, the cause was Pul’s new form, the deceptively cute Belphemon. In his Sleep Mode, he resembled a giant stuffed animal, though the fangs on top of his head, the scars, and the flaming chains were a giveaway to the demonic power resting within him. His snores alone were enough to drive Neo backwards and caused agony to human and Digimon alike until ChaosPiedmon threw a small Masks Square attack at the Demon Lord. Pul was still visible within the pocket dimension, though luckily no sound was able to escape.

With that obstacle out of his way, Neo sprinted to Rei’s side, ignoring as Pal started throwing a tantrum. “Wait, why does Pul get to sleep through this? That’s not fair! If he gets to nap, then so do I!” The giant red alligator immediately closed her eyes and soon was snoring alongside her brother. While the snores were still grating to listen to, they at least weren’t agonizing. Each exhalation did come with a rainbow mist that didn’t look safe to breathe, but beyond that it didn’t appear to be a threat. Still, Neo was more worried about the fact that Rei wasn’t reacting to his presence at all, and when he shook her she only leaned into him and appeared to fall asleep.

Neo gently set his sister down on the ground, only to have TK and Kari each put a hand on his shoulder. “Listen, I know it looks bad, but this is what happens when your partners become Demon Lords for the first time. Rei will be fine, but right now she’s being overwhelmed by sloth and envy.”

TK nodded after Kari finished speaking. “We could snap her out of it by forcing her partners to revert, but I don’t know if we have time for that. At least if she had to get two sins at once, she got the two that caused her to take a nap. With Wrath I almost attacked all of our allies, and I’m pretty sure Mimi and Sora will never let us live down what happened when Kari was consumed by Lust…”

The conversation ended when Lucemon suddenly burst into laughter. “Oh, this is just perfect! Your little trick was meant to power up your forces, but it also latched on to the spirits of the Legendary Warriors within me! The spirits have now returned to their full power—thanks for making me even stronger!” He then seemed to realize what this meant, and smiled directly at Takuya’s group. “This should have happened for you as well. Go on, hit me with your full power. Royal Knights, attack everyone else!”

The Knights all charged forward, though the DigiDestined teams were quick to move forward and intercept them. ChaosPiedmon had the largest impact, sending a giant version of Mask’s Square out and teleporting the Knights to separate locations within its boundaries so the teams could engage them safely without attacking each other. The Legendary Warriors didn’t notice this, as they had been too busy staring at their D-Tectors. The devices had all changed so they now resembled what Koji and Takuya’s had after Ophanimon had upgraded them to allow Unified Spirit Evolution, just with golden buttons and each individual warrior’s color scheme. The humans felt their spirits calling out to them, and found themselves using a new variant of Spirit Evolution. As one, they all materialized their fractal code and called out, “Execute! Legendary Spirit Evolution!”

Chapter Text

Lucemon grinned maniacally at the sight before him. “Well, I’m glad to see I didn’t misjudge you. You managed to return to your original forms. This works perfectly—I did say I owed you for two different defeats: one as the ancient warriors and once as the spirits. When we last fought, I believe I can count that as revenge against the Spirits. But in order to really get in on the nostalgia, I believe a change of form is in order.” The darkness that coated the left side of his body started retracting inward, causing his wings to return to their original angelic state. The sleeve on his left arm jerked upward in stages as he sealed away his powers of darkness, allowing him to revert to his original form. It came at the cost of reduced power, but this was the way for him to truly get revenge on six of the ten who had rebelled against him and the two that had survived long enough to seal him away.

“There, now this is a proper—” Lucemon’s sentence abruptly ended when AncientMegatheriummon rammed into him with his Great Snowplow attack. Much like the other Legendary Warriors, it had taken Tommy a few seconds to get used to his new form. Luckily, Lucemon had used that time for gloating and reverting to a weaker form, allowing the Warrior of Ice to charge in with his attack. The charge was designed to destroy glaciers with ease, and the tiny angel was sent flying when the ancient beast collided with him. He grimaced in pain and managed to right himself in midair, just to find himself face to face with AncientKazemon. Zoe used her new rapier to slash Lucemon repeatedly, each slash leading a different colored laser. The Rainbow Symphony attack sent the Angel Digimon crashing to the ground, where Koji was waiting.

In the last fight with Lucemon, Koji had lost his arm in an attempt to wield darkness and light at the same time. However, in his new form as AncientGarurumon, his missing left arm had been replaced by an arm comprised of solid light. Koji made use of both of these arms as he went into his Sharpness Claymore attack, charging his swords with light and repeatedly slashing the downed angel before jumping away. The dodge was necessary as Koichi took over for his brother. When Lucemon sealed his darkness away, he also became a lot less vulnerable to light based attacks. However, this came at the cost of an increased vulnerability to darkness, a fact that AncientSphinxmon was all too happy to exploit. His roared out his Dark Blast attack and hit Lucemon with a concentrated laser of darkness before jumping away.

As soon as Koichi was clear, Takuya began his assault. He called out “Gaia Tornado!” and created a swirling vortex of lava that encased Lucemon. WarGreymon had the ability to draw natural energy into a ball of fire with his Terra Force, but AncientGreymon was the originator of that ability and had passed it on to other Greymon species Digimon in the ancient past. Takuya then nodded to JP, signaling he was ready for the Warrior of Thunder to join the attack. AncientBeetlemon responded by launching his Calamity Thunder into the center of the vortex, and the mighty thunderbolt dispersed the former attack with its ferocity.

When the attack cleared, Lucemon had clearly seen better days. He was covered in burns and slashes, and he was missing an arm and a leg. However, despite all this he still chuckled. “I admit, I underestimated how rusty I would be with this form. You may have fought me like this a few years ago, but for me centuries have passed.” There was a flash of light and suddenly Lucemon was healed of all his damage. “Thanks for the warmup. But I’m afraid you’ll have to do a lot better than that to stop me.” He paused for a second as a strange array of shapes and colors flew past him, and recognizing the new dimension he was in he looked beyond the Legendary Warriors for the first time since the fight started. “Did your friends really think Mask’s Square could stop me? I am not bound so easily to a single dimension.”

Takuya just smirked back at him. “Who says this was designed to stop you? We just needed to be able to go all-out without destroying the Digital World. In Mask’s Square, we don’t have to be nearly as worried about collateral damage. You wanted us at full power? You got it!” His boast was cut short as Lucemon punched him in the face, but the Warrior of Flame managed to drive the angel back by igniting himself. As the angel retreated Takuya took a moment to let the stars clear from his vision before he threw himself back into the fight. The opening blows were finished, and now the real fight was about to begin…

Hideto managed to take his eyes off of Rei to turn to Sigma. “How’s ChaosPiedmon holding up? I know this was probably a little bit more than you anticipated coming in to this fight.”

The masked DigiDestined didn’t take his eyes off his computer screen as he responded. “I’ll need to keep an eye on it, but so far it is working. Even with the added field, we were able to keep the needed space manipulation. We’ve lost time manipulation though, and ChaosPiedmon will only be able to fight with one additional copy of himself.”

With this, Hideto glanced up at the black jester floating silently above them before nodding. “Okay, sounds great. Keep up the good work.”

The original plan going in to this fight was to set up a three-layer version of Mask’s Square to host this final battle. The DigiDestined would be sheltered within the smallest bubble with the effort of taking them out of harm’s way so they couldn’t be used as an easy target to weaken their partners. The second bubble would be more along the usual size, and would host ChaosPiedmon and Chaosdramon as they engaged whatever opponent they happened to be fighting. The third and largest bubble would encompass the entire battle to allow the DigiDestined a chance to more closely observe everything while still putting enough distance between the teams that some of the more destructive members wouldn’t have to worry about hitting their allies.

As soon as Belphemon required a personal Mask’s Square of his own, however, ChaosPiedmon wasn’t sure if he would be able to keep the plan going with the addition of a fourth layer of Mask’s Square. However, it sounded like they were as close as they could get to a perfect scenario. The outermost bubble had managed to encapsulate an area around two kilometers in diameter, though within its confines the fighters had nearly five times that amount of space. The bubble the DigiDestined were in felt about the size of a small movie theater, though from the outside they were packed into a space no bigger than a speck of dust. That had also been part of the plan to make everyone so much harder to hit—even if they were invisible someone might get lucky and hit their bubble, but if they were this small the chances of it happening were significantly lower.

The comparison to a movie theater wasn’t just a coincidence, however. The edges of their bubble served as projector screens showing each individual battle raging in the outermost bubble. The screens were more than just a video feed, however. They were designed so the backup squad of Digimon could jump through to help out anyone who was in dire need of it, and also allowed the healing Digimon to treat injured parties without having to jump into battle themselves. They had already had to take advantage of this as the initial charge of the Royal Knights had done more damage to those who intercepted it than they had anticipated. Chaosdramon had taken the worst of it from trying to subdue Alphamon on his own, only to receive a series of deep gashes from the Royal Knight’s Seiken Gradalpha. Luckily ChaosPiedmon had then been able to throw up the second layer of Mask’s Square around the combatants, meaning everyone was now fighting where expected and capable of receiving help.

The only exception to this rule had been the battle of the two UlforceVeedramon. Because ChaosPiedmon had to spread his focus over an extra field of Mask’s Square, they weren’t able to watch the battles or intervene in them in anything other than real time. Unfortunately, UlforceVeedramon moved so quickly it was impossible for anyone to actually see what was going on. However, if this had to happen to anybody, it was probably best it happened to UlforceVeedramon. The healers might not be able to help him directly, but the Ulforce was such a powerful healing factor that they wouldn’t be needed. The only problem was the extra strain this put on Davis, but luckily the healers could easily tend to his fatigue, and thus indirectly support the Holy Knight. MarineAngemon was making sure to re-energize the DigiDestined of Miracles every so often, while Davis himself was busy trying to synchronize his Crest to the Digimental of Legends once again in order to give his partner the final push needed to reach his Super Ultimate form.

While MarineAngemon was occasionally tending to Davis, Ophanimon was currently busy trying to minimize the darkness coming from Rei to ensure she could at least sleep comfortably if nothing else. At first, this hadn’t been good enough for Neo, who practically demanded that they forcibly revert Belphemon and Leviamon so his sister stopped being a conduit for the power of two Demon Lords. However, Tai had immediately shut down that notion. At first Hideto had been supportive of Neo’s threat to punch Tai in the face if he didn’t let him help Rei, but when the DigiDestined of Courage explained himself Hideto grudgingly admitted he had a point.

Since Rei didn’t have a Crest, this Digivolution to Mega was only a result of the Digimental’s power and couldn’t be repeated. A quick glance around the edges of their bubble showed that their side was holding their own currently against Lucemon and the Royal Knights, but it was obvious each team was fighting a superior opponent. By the time this battle was finished, they might need everyone at full power, and that included the two new Demon Lords. Hideto could tell from the tone of Tai’s voice that he absolutely hated giving this order and would have given anything to be in Rei’s place, but he was just trying to do what was in the best interests for everyone.

Even Neo seemed to realize this, as he only halfheartedly brought up his next objection that even if Leviamon and Belphemon woke up, they might not be fighting on their side. It was Kari and Mari who weighed in on this, revealing that if the need arose each of their partners could control the Demon Lords—whether it relied on Lilithmon’s Darkness Love or Rosemon’s Thorn Whip. With that decided, it was up to Ophanimon just to make sure Rei was comfortable, and then up to everyone else to keep an eye on how the other fights were progressing and help out in whatever way they could.

UlforceVeedramon grunted in pain as his back was sliced open by his counterpart’s Ulforce Saber. Thanks to the healing power of the Ulforce the damage didn’t last more than a second, but there was a larger problem—the other UlforceVeedramon had been directly in front of him when the attack hit. It was bad enough fighting against someone he could barely keep up with, but somehow this ancient version of himself was able to attack from two directions at once. Seeing UlforceVeedramon X charging to his right side, he threw up his Tensegrity Shield only to feel his left arm get stabbed. Finally having enough of his failure on defense, Davis’s partner used all of his speed to charge directly at his opponent, moving so quickly even he wouldn’t have been able to keep track of himself. “You’re mine!”

His Ulforce Saber pierced right through his opponent—only for his left wing to get sliced off a millisecond later. “What… how…” Suddenly, UlforceVeedramon heard a voice similar to his own in his head. “Wait, are you actually trying to talk with me? As in, with your real voice?” The voice paused for a second before taking on a much more condescending tone. “You are a total amateur, aren’t you? I was known as Godspeed, and this is the champion chosen to fight me? You can’t even use the Ulforce to track my movements or communicate with me! You may call your self UlforceVeedramon, but you may as well be a little In-Training. Isn’t that right, VeeVee?”

Unlike most opponents, UlforceVeedramon X hadn’t bothered to stop his barrage of attacks as he taunted his enemy. However, in between repeatedly trying and failing to block, counter, or even dodge the hits, UlforceVeedramon noticed something odd. His opponent hadn’t slowed down, yet he was able to hear all the taunts in the time it took for his opponent to land six hits. Since he was able to move well faster than the speed of sound and UlforceVeedramon X was faster still, there shouldn’t be a way for UlforceVeedramon X to even relay all that information at that speed. Still, how something like this was possible didn’t exactly concern UlforceVeedramon as he got a glimpse of his opponent and put everything he had into a Dragon Impulse X, managing to aim it properly so he caught his target just as he was coming out of a turn.

However, even that proved to be far too slow, as UlforceVeedramon passed through nothing more than an image of his opponent. An image that seemed to laugh at him as he passed through it. “What, is little VeeVee relying on his eyes in this fight? Haven’t you figured it out yet? You’ve been attacking my afterimages this whole time—and not even then. That implies you’re one move behind me. You’re attacking me where I was five attacks ago. You’ll never get me if you rely on being able to see or hear me. Why don’t you try another sense?”

UlforceVeedramon was about to growl out that he could easily track UlforceVeedramon X by smell but he didn’t want to subject his nose to that when he realized something. UlforceVeedramon X had sounded surprised when he tried talking normally, and then shifted to his current attitude. Clearly sight and hearing weren’t working, but his counterpart had flat out said it was possible to track him using the power of the Ulforce. He hadn’t ever really used the power for anything other than healing, but at this point he didn’t really have anything to lose. He tried tapping deep within himself and really focusing on the holy overwrite within him. He closed his eyes, only to feel a sudden presence bearing down on his left. He deployed his Tensegrity Shield and for once his efforts were rewarded with a dull thud instead of a slashing pain.

Almost immediately the presence jumped behind him, but he was able to turn and intercept this with a shield from his right arm. UlforceVeedramon just smiled—it was a small step, but he was finally able to react to his opponent. It would still take some time for him to get used to this new sense, but eventually he’d be able to take back the offensive. He felt the presence directly in front of him and raised his shield to intercept. Once again, he heard the sound of his opponent’s weapon hitting his shield, but he also felt a stinging pain in his shoulder. For a brief instant, he felt rather than saw what had happened—his counterpart had somehow changed the shape of his sword so it resembled a scythe, allowing the blade to curl around his shield and still hit him.

“Well, I’ll give this to you—you’re a quick learner. But I’m afraid it will take more than that for you to win this one, VeeVee. I can’t make things easy for you. What do you say we turn the speed up a bit?” UlforceVeedramon wasn’t even able to sense his opponent’s actions as the enemy Royal Knight attacked him from six directions. He could only growl in pain until the Ulforce healed his wounds, but by that point his opponent had disappeared from all his senses—though his voice lingered on. “I told you I was known as the Godspeed. I can’t make this easy on you, but surely you can try a little harder? You’re starting to bore me, VeeVee.”

ChaosPiedmon chuckled, though it was obvious from the sound that he felt no joy. Even he was having a hard time making light of the current situation. While he had been dividing his focus across setting up multiple layers of Mask’s Square, Alphamon had proven exactly why he was known as a deterrent force even to beings like the Royal Knights. Chaosdramon’s Red Digizoid armor had been about as effective as paper against the Aloof Hermit’s blade, and even with the timely intervention of MagnaAngemon to heal the injured Machine Digimon he had been forced back to his Machinedramon form for the time being.

With Chaosdramon out of the picture, ChaosPiedmon knew he had to step up to be the main fighter. However, he was far from full power himself. Even with Sigma’s help, he was spreading his power across so many things that he could barely create one more copy of himself. He would like to create hundreds of copies of himself to always keep his opponents guessing which one was real, but at this point he’d have to do with one copy that was taking a disturbingly long time to become solid. Luckily, Alphamon seemed content to let his opponents make the next move, so ChaosPiedmon decided it would be rude to refuse the offer.

With a call of “Trump Sword!” the demonic clown sent two of his swords flying towards the Royal Knight. Alphamon made no effort to defend himself, but the Demon Man Digimon wasn’t going to take any chances. When the blades got within three feet of Alphamon, he teleported them so they came at the Holy Knight Digimon from both sides. Unfortunately, the Royal Knight didn’t need to react to the sudden change, as the blades seemed to hit an invisible wall and merely floated in midair for a few seconds. ChaosPiedmon was about to warp them again to try a new angle, but the swords suddenly disappeared in a burst of flame.

The jester found himself at a complete loss for words as two new swords appeared on his back. Eventually, he managed to get his brain to catch up to what he just saw. “That’s strange, I don’t remember grabbing the flammable swords for that attack. I must really be spreading my focus a little thin. Let’s try that again, shall we?” He grabbed the newly replaced swords, spent some time checking them to make sure they weren’t his trick swords, and called out “Trump Sword” again after they passed his inspection. This time, he didn’t bother throwing them, instead warping them directly into Alphamon’s body.

At least, that had been ChaosPiedmon’s intention. However, the swords instead materialized a foot away from Alphamon, once again held up by some unknown force. When the swords burst into flames again a second later, ChaosPiedmon just hung his head. “I’ll really have to remember that trick for later. If it’s this annoying from this end, I’m sure it would be hilarious to have a barrier that nothing can penetrate and add in a delayed flame effect.” He knew Sigma was already analyzing whatever Alphamon was using, but ChaosPiedmon smirked as he had an idea. “So, nothing can penetrate this barrier? Well then, I’ll just have to attack him with nothing.”

Luckily, within the realm of Mask’s Square, nothingness was just as valid of an object as anything else. ChaosPiedmon concentrated for a few seconds before two glowing red blades extended from the palms of his hands. To an outside observer, the blades appeared to be made from energy, but ChaosPiedmon only gave the blades an appearance at all because he had a flair for the dramatic. The ethereal blades were essentially solidified nothingness, and ChaosPiedmon turned back to the Royal Knight ready to try out his new weapons. However, he noticed something different about his opponent, and immediately used his copy within a deeper layer of Mask’s Square to converse with his partner.

“Hey Sigma, did something happen to Alphamon? His sword and his wings disappeared while I was busy making these.” Sigma and Neo didn’t bother looking away from their computer screens, but Sigma still answered the question. “Honestly, we were hoping you did that. He put away his sword, and then his wings retracted back into his armor. It came with a significant drop in his power as well. If that wasn’t a result of you affecting him, it must mean he powered down on purpose.”

Flashing his attention back to his original body, ChaosPiedmon just smirked. “So, are we so weak compared to you that you’re getting bored and deciding to hold back? Well, let’s just see if we can fix that.” He focused on his blades for a few seconds before pointing them both at Alphamon and stating, “Pierce”. The tip of each blade suddenly shot forward, and unlike his previous attacks this one actually made contact with the Royal Knight. The attack hadn’t been strong enough to penetrate his armor, but at least ChaosPiedmon now had an attack he could use to his advantage. “Sigma, get ready to get some more data on Alphamon. I’m pretty sure we’ll need Chaosdramon to actually do any damage, but I can scout him out for you. Neo, let me know when you’re ready for action.”

With that, he and his copy disappeared, only to take turns flying around Alphamon leaving behind a trail of blade fragments. It became impossible to distinguish between the original and the copy, as each followed the same pattern—appear to the side of Alphamon, leave behind a trail of fragments, shout out “Here!’, and then fire the blades at the Royal Knight. Alphamon didn’t particularly care about the needles that embedded in his armor, but that suited ChaosPiedmon just fine—instead of trying to damage Alphamon, he was using his attack to transmit even more data back to Sigma for analysis. The Aloof Hermit appeared to be scanning the area for a worthy opponent, but if he wasn’t careful he’d regret giving his opponents so much time to analyze his power…

Omegamon took a second to recover after his latest clash with his counterpart. This Omnimon clearly had more combat experience than he did, but to this point neither one of them had the advantage. He supposed he should consider himself lucky in that regard—apart from UlforceVeedramon Future Mode, none of his friends had the same level of power he did. And if he could fight this ancient knight to a draw, he could only hope the other Knights had some weakness to exploit. Then again, that wasn’t making things any easier in his fight.

As always, Omnimon was the first to charge forward into battle, keeping Omegamon on the defensive. However, while he had always been able to turn away his opponent’s Transcendent Sword, he wasn’t able to block out his counterpart’s words. “Why do you hesitate? Please, grant me an honorable death while such a thing is still possible! I am leaving the openings, but I cannot explicitly point them out to you. Why have you not taken advantage? I do not know how long I can hold back the Omega inForce to give you a chance at victory. You must make use of yours before I begin to use mine!”

Within a deeper layer of Mask’s Square, Hideto’s eyes brightened at the new information. For once, Omnimon had actually provided something to follow up on in his pleas for death. The two identical Royal Knights had clashed for a while now, but Omnimon’s words were finally starting to become useful. At first, the Holy Knight had only pleaded for death before continuing. When Omegamon wasn’t able to grant his wish, he at least explained why he wanted to die. Lucemon had brought the Royal Knights forward in time, but he had also somehow gained some level of control over their bodies. Omnimon described it as being trapped in his body and forced to watch as it committed horrible acts. Between this and some event Omnimon referred to as the Great Schism, the ancient Royal Knight seemed all too eager to die before he could besmirch his honor even further.

Hideto really wasn’t sure how to feel about this whole scenario. One part of him was absolutely furious at Lucemon for taking such a proud Knight and reducing him to a prisoner in his own body. Considering how Neo had described his Daemon-induced possession after Arkadimon absorbed the Demon Lord, Hideto had a first-hand account of exactly how horrible that felt. Another part of him just pitied Omnimon and wanted to put him out of his misery, which aligned with the whole goal of killing Lucemon. However, Hideto also remembered the one time Omegamon had turned against him—when Hideto ordered him to kill an opponent who Omegamon couldn’t see as evil. This just reminded him of how he had acted during that whole scenario, which made suicidal depression seem like a healthier response to grief by comparison. Omnimon was asking to die—Hideto had actively tried to kill off an entire world and still couldn’t forgive himself. This added self-loathing on top of the apprehension, pity, and anger he was feeling, which made it difficult to determine how he actually felt.

However, Omegamon didn’t seem conflicted. “You say I need to use the Omega inForce, but I don’t even know what that is. Instead of dying, why don’t you help me beat Lucemon?” He blocked another slash from his counterpart and continued his conversation over their crossed swords. “Your body may be rebelling, but you can still talk to me. Tell me what this power is and how I can draw it out. Make Lucemon regret enslaving the Royal Knights!” Omnimon withdrew his sword and caused Omegamon to lose his balance as he suddenly didn’t have the resistance pushing back against him, but Hideto’s partner managed to right himself before he could be stabbed when Omnimon brought his sword out again. However, the ancient Royal Knight seemed to take his younger counterpart’s words into consideration.

“You say you do not know what the Omega inForce is? Perhaps it bears a different name now, but I sense that you’ve used its power before.” Omegamon wasn’t able to respond for a while as Omnimon rained a series of blows on him that forced him to devote all his attention to defending himself. Eventually the barrage slowed down, allowing Hideto’s partner to continue the conversation.

“Well, there was one strange power I channeled into my sword, but I can’t use it now. It half killed me and apparently deleted a good portion of the landscape along with my foe. I cannot afford to use that here.” Omnimon sprang back from Omegamon and managed to stop himself from attacking for long enough to begin his explanation.

“That power you used was the Omega inForce- or rather, a variation of it. If you charge all of its power into your blade, you are able to unleash the ultimate attack—All Delete. I once used that power on my master Yggdrasil after he attempted to delete the Digital World—and I ended up causing the very destruction I was trying to prevent. Luckily the world was able to reboot itself.” No longer able to resist the compulsion to battle, Omnimon locked swords with Omegamon once again. He took this as his cue to stop reminiscing on his past and start passing on more of his knowledge.

“While All Delete is one application of the Omega inForce, it is not its only benefit. When you master it, you will be able to instantaneously read and react to the next move your opponent will make. You will know what your opponent will do before he does, and prevent it from happening if you so desire. If I weren’t keeping my Omega inForce sealed away, you would have no chance of defeating me.”

Omegamon nodded. “Okay, so that explains what the Omega inForce is.” Using his MetalGarurumon arm, he shoved his older counterpart away to give himself a little space and time to recover after the last exchange of blows. “But how do I use it? Channeling power into my sword is simple, and I can do that on my own. Reading and predicting my opponent’s moves is something I’m used to leaving to Hideto.”

Omnimon let out a chuckle even as he charged back into the fray. “I’m sure Jesmon and Shoutmon would be happy to know you think that. They always did believe true strength came from working with others.”

As he started pushing Omegamon back, Omnimon realized he was running out of time—he was being less and less effective at keeping his own power in check. “I do not know if I can pass on mastery of your power in simple words. But I can at least guide you. Begin by…AGHHH!” Omnimon screamed in pain before igniting his Transcendent Sword at taking a swing at Omegamon. After so long of simple swordplay, Hideto’s partner was taken by surprise by the sudden use of stronger attacks, and barely managed to put up his Brave Shield Omega before the Omega Sword attack made contact. The shield held, but Omegamon was still sent flying away by the flaming shockwave.

Before Omegamon could stop his backward momentum, a massive explosion shook his shield. He didn’t need to be able to see his opponent to realize what had just hit him—of all his attacks other than All Delete, Omnimon only had one attack with that much force. Luckily, the Brave Shield Omega could withstand the Omega Cannon attack, but Omegamon wasn’t sure how many hits it could take. Knowing he had to get the initiative back in this fight, he launched missiles from his MetalGarurumon arm that arced around the Brave Shield Omega and struck his adversary. Omegamon knew such an attack wouldn’t do any real damage, but it gave him the time he needed to put his shield down and jump back into the fight.

Chapter Text

Beelzemon picked himself out of the newly made crater Dynasmon had ever so graciously blasted him into. The Royal Knight had eschewed all forms of special attacks and charged directly at the two demonic Digimon from the start of the battle, which had played against both of their strengths as primarily long-range fighters. While BeelStarrmon could easily avoid the wyvern’s charge with her ability to warp through space, Beelzemon hadn’t been so lucky. He had tried compensating by blasting the charging knight with his Corona Blaster, but the attack had glanced off of Dynasmon’s armor without so much as slowing him down. The surprise had caused Beelzemon to hesitate, which gave the Royal Knight all the time he needed to grab the Demon Lord’s face and slam him into the ground.

The force of the impact almost made him lose consciousness, but luckily the damage didn’t last long. He felt his wounds healing, and as he didn’t feel the usual sting that came when MarineAngemon or other holy Digimon tried to heal him he guessed Lotusmon was the responsible party. He took a second to congratulate himself on figuring this out, but then Lotusmon finished healing him and his mind instantly snapped back to the battle. He hoped his brief mental lapse hadn’t caused the battle to be lost, and scanned his surroundings to find Dynasmon charging directly at him from above. Beelzemon spread his wings hoping he would be fast enough to get away, but suddenly BeelStarrmon appeared between him and the Royal Knight.

“Sorry for the wait. This guy’s tough, but I’ll make him go down. Rizoma de Loto!” She threw a ball of white light directly into Dynasmon’s face, bringing the Royal Knight to a halt. It didn’t seem to do any damage however, leaving Beelzemon a little wary if the fight was actually over.

“Okay, it’s not that I’m not grateful, but are you sure he’s beaten? What exactly did you do to him, and if you could do this all along why did you wait until now?”

BeelStarrmon just warped to the side of the immobile Royal Knight and draped herself over him. “What, is someone a little jealous? You should know you can’t rush a lady.”

Beelzemon rolled his eyes, but beyond that he didn’t react. If BeelStarrmon was going to keep playing her little games, he would play his own and not give her any satisfaction. “Yeah yeah, I get it. You’re your own person, I can’t tell you what to do, you don’t like being tied down—”

BeelStarrmon cut him off. “Well, I’m not so sure about that last one. Sometimes I rather enjoy being tied down.”  Despite his best efforts, Beelzemon couldn’t help but react in shock to that statement, and BeelStarrmon smiled at her victory.

“Oh, you are just too easy. But kidding aside, that attack does take a little bit of time to prepare. It shows my enemies a little taste of paradise. He’ll snap out of it in a matter of hours to a week—”

BeelStarrmon stopped talking when Dynasmon reached up and grabbed her by the chest. He pulled her off of him before calling out “Dragon Thrower!” BeelStarrmon was so shocked that Dynasmon had shaken off her attack that she wasn’t able to warp out of the Royal Knight’s grip. Her delay left her undefended from the dragon-shaped blast of energy Dynasmon fired from the palm holding her. She shot into the ground and hit with a huge explosion. Beelzemon took this all in out of the corner of his eye as he was too busy pouring all of his energy into his next attack to focus on anything other than Dynasmon.

“CORONA DESTROYER!” Beelzemon had started drawing the pentagram as soon as Dynasmon grabbed BeelStarrmon, and now he was unleashing the full force of his strongest attack. Unlike when he used this against the D-Reaper, he wasn’t just firing a stream of shots through the pentagram—he was putting every bit of energy he had into one continuous blast. He wasn’t sure if his blaster could withstand the strain, but he knew he couldn’t afford to hold back. The crimson blast flew directly at Dynasmon, who charged energy into both of his palms and tried to catch the attack.

However, if the Royal Knight thought he could simply power through Beelzemon’s blast, he was gravely mistaken. The beam pushed Dynasmon backwards and cracked his armor. The copy of the Royal Knight snarled at the pain, infuriated that this opponent would dare fight against him and his master. Lord Lucemon was the rightful ruler of this world, and any who stood against that would have to face Dynasmon’s fury. The Royal Knight still struggled against the blast, but he managed to growl out, “Breath… of… WYVERN!”

Dynasmon’s power suddenly exploded into the aura of a gigantic white wyvern. The beast flew forward, pushing through Beelzemon’s blast with little resistance. The Demon Lord kept putting more energy in his attack hoping to keep the wyvern at bay, but suddenly his blaster deactivated and vented out a dangerous looking red energy from its entire length. The blaster had overheated, and now he wouldn’t be able to use it until it cooled down—which was time he didn’t have at the moment. He disengaged his blaster and instead threw Makuramon’s Primal Orb in the hope of trapping the wyvern, but the attack shattered without so much as slowing Dynasmon’s attack down.

Knowing he couldn’t overpower or otherwise divert the oncoming attack, Beelzemon tried simply dodging it. However, the giant wyvern was able to follow him wherever he went, and it was slowly gaining on him with each change of direction. Attacking this thing head on didn’t work, and it looked like he couldn’t outrun it either. He kept flying away hoping the attack might wear off, but he also pulled out his Berenjena and fired his Double Impact into the approaching beast. He wasn’t expecting it to do anything to the wyvern aura, but he supposed he had a chance to get lucky and hit Dynasmon within the attack—and that this might at least distract the Royal Knight enough to dissipate the attack. It was a long shot, but anything was better than just calmly accepting his end.

As he expected, his attack didn’t seem to have any effect. Just as Beelzemon was bracing himself for what would most likely be a fatal attack, another figure appeared next to him. “I told you to go down!”

Suddenly the wyvern stopped, almost as if it had hit an invisible wall. This wasn’t what shocked Beelzemon the most, however—instead it was the sight of BeelStarrmon with one hand floating millimeters away from the wyvern’s head. Specifically, it was the condition BeelStarrmon was in—he was floating behind her, and he could see directly through the gaping hole in her torso. Dynasmon’s attack had disintegrated her jacket and burned her skin, but Beelzemon couldn’t really focus on that as his eyes were drawn to her DigiCore, which seemed to be floating on its own within the hollow Dynasmon had blasted into her.

BeelStarrmon was too busy focusing on whatever she was doing to notice Beelzemon’s stares, but she managed to grunt out a warning. “Get out of here! I don’t know how long I can hold him. I can catch up to you easily, but you need to fly!”

Beelzemon was eager to know how she had survived and how she was holding Dynasmon at bay, but he realized this wasn’t the situation to be asking questions. He didn’t even bother to fly back to where he had discarded his Corona Blaster, instead focusing on putting as much distance between himself and Dynasmon as possible. He had to trust BeelStarrmon had some sort of plan to go with her new abilities.

It was hard to judge distance within Mask’s Square, so Beelzemon wasn’t sure how far he had flown when he saw the gigantic white wyvern fade out of existence. A few seconds later, BeelStarrmon had warped to his side, where she was doubled over and panting. She was bathed in a white glow that showed Lotusmon was healing her, but even so her DigiCore was still visible inside the shrinking wound. BeelStarrmon glanced upwards, saw Beelzemon staring, and immediately crossed her arms over her chest.

“Hey, it’s rude to stare. It’s not like I enjoy having my DigiCore hanging out in full view. I just don’t think I’ll ever be ready for THAT level of intimacy between us.”

Beelzemon made a point to turn away from her and back towards where Dynasmon had been before speaking. “Yeah, sorry. How did you even survive like that, though? Dynasmon’s blast obviously did a number on you, but your DigiCore looked like it hadn’t been touched.” BeelStarrmon let out a weak chuckle.

“I’d like to say I’ve taken bigger payloads before, but I don’t want to lie to you. That’s a skill I picked up from this stranger I met near GranDracmon’s castle. She seemed to know about me, but was pretty dodgy about who she was. Probably what happens when you look like Lucemon’s sister. Anyway, she took a nasty hit from a security measure of the castle, but she had a technique that let her withstand certain death. Since I helped her get further into the castle, she taught it to me. It’s called Safety Guard.”

“Really? That’s the name you went with? I was expecting something a little more grandiose for an immortality technique.” BeelStarrmon smiled, and then realized Beelzemon couldn’t see it so she quickly started talking again.

“I know, right? I reacted pretty much the same way. I was set on changing the name of the technique, but I decided that should wait until I mastered it. As you saw, it’s still very much a work in progress. It isn’t something I can use more than once a month, so I didn’t want to go advertising myself as the Immortal and just asking people to kill me.” She paused for a second, then Beelzemon noticed a strange shift in her voice as she told him, “Okay, healing’s done. You can look now.”

Beelzemon turned to face her, but his eyes widened and he immediately turned away again with a blush on his cheeks. BeelStarrmon’s wound had indeed healed, but the healing hadn’t extended to her jacket. She saw his reaction to her appearance and harshly snapped back. “What, do I disgust you? I thought one of your partners was a five-year-old girl. Surely you’ve seen a Barbie doll without clothes before. Other than my height, there’s no real difference here.”

Beelzemon wasn’t sure how to react to this. He was used to BeelStarrmon constantly teasing and playing up her sexuality, but he hadn’t heard her get this angry before. She had also sounded almost shy earlier, which just made the current situation more confusing.

“Look, I’m not disgusted. But there is a big difference between you and Ai’s dolls—you aren’t just a hunk of plastic. I’ve pretty much filled my quota for inappropriately staring at you today. Keeping my back turned seems like a good way to avoid anything further.”

“Maybe I don’t mind if you stare at me…”

Beelzemon whipped his head around to face her again, though he put extra effort into making sure he was looking at her face. “Wait, what did you just say?”

BeelStarrmon looked like she was about to respond, but then her eyes widened. “Shit, Dynasmon’s coming back. Listen, we’re going to have to finish this conversation later. Mind if I borrow one of your guns? Mine got destroyed.”

Beelzemon turned to see Dynasmon flying at them, though at least without the wyvern aura the Demon Lord was confident he could outrun the Royal Knight. Knowing BeelStarrmon was right that they didn’t have time for this, he passed her his two Berenjena as he questioned her. “Okay, how did you stop him before? Is that something we can use repeatedly?”

BeelStarrmon grabbed Beelzemon’s guns as she answered. “Remember when I told you I couldn’t take passengers with me when I warped? That isn’t a limitation on my part—space itself violently rejects anybody I would take with me. So, when I tried to warp Dynasmon away, he ended up colliding with a wall of compressed space. Luckily for us, his wyvern attack seemed to hurt him a little bit the longer he tried plowing through the wall. Unluckily for us, I’m not sure how many times I’ll be able to use that on him—a stubborn guy like him can really take it out of a girl.”

Even though she was back to her usual joking self, Beelzemon noticed her tone still had that small change that made her sound slightly shier. Coming up with an idea, he took off his own jacket and passed it over to her. She stared at him questioningly, but he insisted.

“Listen, I want you to hold on to that for three reasons. First, it has holsters in the back in case you need your hands. Second, Kazu. Third, it’s a nice jacket, and what I’m about to do might ruin it.”

Before BeelStarrmon could wonder what he meant, Beelzemon started screaming as his skin started bulging. Four white cables suddenly burst out of his back and attached themselves to his left arm, which had morphed into an Infermon’s head. Beelzemon just grimaced after the transformation.

“Okay, I’m really hoping Infermon’s Spider Shooter will be worth that bit of unpleasantness—at least until I get my gun back. Here goes!” Dynasmon had just pulled into range, so Beelzemon blasted the Royal Knight with the shells of negative energy. However, it didn’t seem any more effective than his previous attacks had been. As he and BeelStarrmon scattered and let the Royal Knight pass between them, Beelzemon came up with the only workable plan.

“Okay, here’s what we do—we piss him off enough to use Breath of Wyvern again and you stop him again. Then you get healed up, and we repeat this process until he damages himself enough that we can kill him.”

BeelStarrmon just laughed. “Sounds good to me. I’m told I have a talent for pissing people off.” She turned to Dynasmon. “Hey, Dumbassmon! Did you know that Lucemon only ever thinks about you and your lady friend to laugh about how easy it was to betray you?”

Dynasmon immediately launched his Breath of Wyvern again, causing BeelStarrmon to snicker. “Too easy.” However, she didn’t really enjoy the strain of having to hold the wyvern at bay a second time. This was going to be a long battle, even if Dynasmon kept playing into her hands…

MegaGargomon and Cherubimon had started their fight by charging towards Crusadermon, though the Royal Knight had easily managed to dodge around the two Megas. She didn’t appear to be able to sustain a level of speed comparable to UlforceVeedramon, but she was still fast enough that Willis and his partners hadn’t been able to see her as she dodged around MegaGargomon’s Power Pummel and Cherubimon’s awkward attempt at a melee version of his Lightning Spear. The two Megas were best suited to area of effect attacks, but with more allies than enemies in this charge they had been forced to improvise. The other battles were splitting off to different locations within Mask’s Square so Willis hoped things would clear up soon. The only consolation to the wait was Crusadermon hadn’t even started attacking yet, but with how effortlessly she was dodging around Willis wasn’t sure how well the fight would go when she actually started caring about the battle.

Willis’s bad feeling was only intensified when Crusadermon suddenly appeared standing on MegaGargomon’s shoulder. It was bad enough that she was fast enough to get by his partner without him being aware of her presence, but Crusadermon was obviously taunting her foes at this point. There wasn’t any other explanation of why she would pose on an enemy’s shoulder while holding a rose. MegaGargomon just opened up another gun port beneath her and tried shooting her off, but the pink-clad Knight was fast enough even to dodge point-blank gunfire. She then appeared in front of Cherubimon and called out, “Scarlet Tempest!” She held her rose in front of her Pile Bunker just as she unleashed a whirlwind from the shield.

The resultant flurry of rose petals was as devastating as it was beautiful. It resembled the version of Forbidden Temptation Rosemon could use as a defensive maneuver, but with the Royal Knight it was just as effective as an offensive move. Cherubimon was blasted back down to Lopmon, though luckily he managed to survive. Crusadermon then warped to MegaGargomon and knocked him back to his Rookie level with her Spiral Masquerade. Terriermon hit the ground in the time it took for Ophanimon to heal Lopmon and Willis to reactivate his Crest for Cherubimon to rejoin the fight. The Mega level used his Lightning Spear to separate the Royal Knight from his twin, and once he was sure his brother was out of the crossfire he unleashed his Heaven’s Judgement.

Willis hoped the area of effect attack would help counter Crusadermon’s speed advantage, but the pink knight managed to effortlessly dance between the lightning strikes. Quickly realizing his partners couldn’t keep up with their opponent’s speed at the Mega level, Willis turned to the other Digimon sitting with him in Mask’s Square. “Are any of you fast enough to keep up with Crusadermon? Cherubimon and MegaGargomon can’t. I could fight with Rapidmon and GoldRapidmon, but Omegamon proved we weren’t strong enough in those forms to beat a Royal Knight.”

However, the members of the reserve squad that were available weren’t exactly the best option to help in this situation. Rika dearly wanted to join in the battle instead of sitting around waiting, but she knew Sakuyamon was a defensive fighter who didn’t have the speed to hit Crusadermon or the destructive power to make a difference if she did. Kazu was also eager to fight, but HiAndromon pointed out that while he was much stronger than Andromon and slightly faster he was still a slow fighter. PileVolcamon was much the same—he had powerful attacks, but he wasn’t the fastest. Considering everybody was struggling against the Royal Knights, the few reserves they had needed to be sent where they could accomplish the most good.

However, just when Willis was about to give up and evolve both of his partners to their Rapidmon form just to stall out until someone like UlforceVeedramon, ChaosPiedmon, or BeelStarrmon who could keep up with quick opponents were free to help, someone interrupted him.

“You are asking the wrong question. Can I keep up with this Chevalier? Non. But can I stop her from moving? Oui.” Willis turned to BanchoLillymon. He wasn’t sure where her new attitude had come from considering Floramon was usually so mild-mannered, but if she could help he wasn’t going to complain. He nodded to her, and the copy of ChaosPiedmon that was holding together the inner bubble of Mask’s Square teleported the Fairy Digimon away.

When BanchoLillymon appeared behind Crusadermon, she didn’t let the element of surprise go to waste. Without even calling her attack, she threw out her arm and emitted a blue force field that quickly spread to envelop Crusadermon and the newly-restored MegaGargomon and Cherubimon. Crusadermon noticed the change and tried to turn to face the new arrival, only to find her body wouldn’t move. Frozen in place, she couldn’t even turn to see the new arrival as BanchoLillymon smirked.

“You think your power allows you to determine what justice is, Chevalier? Strength is made to protect the weak, not rule them. In my Absolute Territory, those who would abuse their power over others quickly find themselves unable to act. We shall see who is the underdog now. Boys, will you do the honors?” One disadvantage of BanchoLillymon’s Absolute Territory was she couldn’t attack on her own while restraining an enemy. Of course, that didn’t prevent her allies from capitalizing on an immobilized opponent. Now that Crusadermon was unable to dodge, Cherubimon and MegaGargomon called forth every bit of firepower they hand, blasting the Royal Knight with a combination of Heaven’s Judgement and Mega Barrage…

Valkyrimon and GrandisKuwagamon finally caught sight of their opponent after a long chase. In the initial skirmish, they had been ready to fight against Kentaurosmon, but the bestial Royal Knight had charged towards them so quickly he had only appeared as a red blur. GrandisKuwagamon thought he might have taken a blow from the Holy Knight’s hooves as he ran past, but it went so fast that the Burst Mode couldn’t really identify what had knocked him into the ground. He and Valkyrimon had immediately gotten their guards back up, but Kentaurosmon didn’t seem to want to come back to fight them. Knowing they couldn’t let their assigned opponent run amok and attack their allies, the two had quickly given chase.

Luckily, tracking Kentaurosmon hadn’t been too difficult—he had left a path of cooler air in his wake, and Valkyrimon was able to sense this difference and follow it. However, this fact didn’t comfort Valkyrimon in the slightest. In terms of brute strength, he knew he was no match for a Royal Knight. His only hope had been that he could make use of his speed to gain an advantage and strike with his Fenrir Sword to freeze and incapacitate his enemy. However, Kentaurosmon seemed to be even faster than he was, and judging by the chill in the air that lingered after he passed he wouldn’t be bothered too much by freezing attacks. He couldn’t know for sure, but he decided it was best to be cautious. He could easily have outrun GrandisKuwagamon in this pursuit, but he had a feeling he would need the help of the stronger insect in this battle.

Now that he could see Kentaurosmon, Valkyrimon knew his instinct had been correct. Since he had to slow down for his friend to keep up with him, the Warrior Digimon had had time to shoot a few attacks ahead of himself. Normally, firing blind like this would just be a waste of time, but with Aurvandil’s Arrow firing blindly had no impact on the likelihood of hitting a target. However, judging by the golden arrows lying on the ground near Kentaurosmon, something had gone wrong. Now that he was close enough to see his opponent, Valkyrimon launched the attack one more time, only for the golden arrow to strike Kentaurosmon’s red armor and bounce off without the Royal Knight even bothering to acknowledge it. The six-legged horse was hunkered down and muttering something in a language Valkyrimon didn’t recognize, and blue runes covered his body and the ice surrounding him.

Whatever ritual Kentaurosmon was participating in, GrandisKuwagamon wasn’t planning on sitting back and letting it finish. He charged at his stationary opponent and filled his claws with a purple energy, slashing at the Royal Knight with his Gran Killer attack. The claws made a horrible scraping sound, but Kentaurosmon didn’t seem to notice that or the fact that he had been sent skidding backwards along his ice floe, too engrossed in his chant to process the interruption. GrandisKuwagamon was taken aback by how easily his opponent shrugged off his claws, but upon a closer inspection the insect saw the Royal Knight hadn’t come away without a scratch—the damage was minor but there were now claw marks on the Red Digizoid that covered Kentaurosmon. Wanting to take advantage of the potential weakness, GrandisKuwagamon instead charged the pincers on his head with the same purple energy and attacked the same spot.

The Grandis Scissor attack slammed into the Royal Knight, deepening the scratches in his armor. It also pushed Kentaurosmon back, knocking him off of his ice floe. This finally caused a reaction in the Royal Knight, as when he left the patch of ice the blue runes all disappeared and his eyes snapped open. Reacting with astonishing speed, he held out his shield and called out “Odin’s Breath!” GrandisKuwagamon was too close to avoid the attack, and found himself frozen within the instantaneous blizzard. Kentaurosmon then used his shield to knock the frozen insect away with an almost casual motion that still let out a horrible sounding crack when it hit the ice.

Valkyrimon saw GrandisKuwagamon shrink back down to Wormmon from the blow and instantly felt his chance of winning shrinking along with it. With the current setup, one of the healing squad could probably get Wormmon back into the fight without any problems. Unfortunately, even at full health, Wormmon and Ken weren’t able to attain Burst Mode on their own—and the Digimental of Legends wasn’t something that could be used repeatedly. According to Neo, Davis shouldn’t even have been able to use it in the fight with Daemon, and Ken didn’t have the advantage of the Crest of Miracles to make things go his way. This all added up to losing GrandisKuwagamon when the Burst Mode had barely been able to scratch the Royal Knight—so the odds of two Megas being able to win didn’t exactly look to good.

Luckily, Kentaurosmon didn’t seem too eager to press his advantage, as he resumed his hunkered down pose and his chant. Valkyrimon knew this could be a trap, but it also represented the best opportunity to get an attack in. He might only get one shot, so he had to be sure to make it count. He held out his hand and started focusing the power of his Punishing Storm, but instead of releasing the tornado he gathered and contained it all in his palm. At first he couldn’t stop the energy from leaking out and creating a small wind current around him, but eventually he managed to hold the entire fury of the storm within a sphere the size of a baseball. With his attack ready, he started looking for an opening to use it.

Unfortunately, with Kentaurosmon hunkered down like he was, Valkyrimon didn’t have easy access to the weak point in his armor that GrandisKuwagamon created. However, the Warrior Digimon came up with a plan to correct that course of action. He drew his Fenrir Sword and started charging it with wind as well as decreasing its temperature. It was incredibly difficult to keep containing the storm in his right hand, but he managed to build a comparable amount of energy in the blade on his left hand. With both of his attacks now ready, he flew towards Kentaurosmon, who didn’t seem to care about the charging Valkyrie. At least, he didn’t react to the Mega level’s presence until Valkyrimon slammed the Fenrir Sword directly into Kentaurosmon’s right eye.

The cursed sword was at a temperature near absolute zero, and had had its cutting power enhanced by gale force winds. Not even a Royal Knight can shrug off such an attack, and Kentaurosmon involuntarily reeled back with a screech of pain. Valkyrimon quickly capitalized on the opening by slamming his right fist into Kentaurosmon’s chest, directly where GrandisKuwagamon had scratched the armor. The compressed storm he had been holding instantly broke free of its containment, grinding into the armor and blowing the six-legged centaur backwards in the resulting hurricane. Unfortunately, Valkyrimon hadn’t exactly escaped the attack unscathed either—while most of the force of the blow had been directed at the Royal Knight, some of it had spread back to its caster. The Warrior Digimon couldn’t feel his right arm at the moment, but considering the situation it was a small price to pay.

Valkyrimon smirked—he would be healed shortly, but Kentaurosmon didn’t have the same luxury. However, the smile half faded from his lips when he heard a pained voice call out “Bifrost!” Then he felt a slight cold feeling in his chest before all feeling suddenly went away. In another layer of Mask’s Square, however, someone cried out in pain for him. Yolei had been keeping an eye on the battle, but she hadn’t been ready to see her partner with a blue arrow lodged in his chest. The shock had quickly faded, however, when the Warrior Digimon burst into data. Valkyrimon had always had a connection to her heart, and now that connection had been forcibly ripped away…

Chapter Text

Aegisdramon grunted in pain as Magnamon punched him in the face, sending him flying with a burst of golden light. As the Cyborg Digimon flew backwards, Vikemon launched his Viking Flare attack and struck the Holy Knight in the back. The Chrome Digizoid maces just bounced off of Magnamon’s body with a clang, and the Royal Knight completely ignored the blow as he looked down to his hand and experimentally clenched and unclenched his fist, causing a slightly more intense golden glow to appear. “Interesting. My energy seems to be rebelling against my control slightly. This will have to be corrected.”

He quickly pivoted on one foot and brought his other slamming into Vikemon’s side, knocking the Beast Man flying with a scream of pain as a golden flash detonated right on top of his ribs. Afterwards, Magnamon resumed testing out his movements, frowning every time some golden light escaped needlessly. He wasn’t sure if this was a result of being dragged through time or the influence he felt from this Digimon called Lucemon slightly pulling on him, but he was a Royal Knight. He carried out Yggdrasil’s law, so perfect discipline was an absolute requirement.

Magnamon’s thoughts were cut off by a massive torrent of water that sent him skidding back thirty feet before he could finally check his backwards momentum. Aegisdramon kept up the Tera Hydro Breath attack to give Vikemon more time to heal, but a bright golden glow at the other end of his attack caused him to turn his full attention back to Magnamon. It was hard to make out the figure of the Royal Knight between the torrent of water and the amount of light he was giving off, but one thing was clear: Magnamon had started advancing slowly towards him through the stream of his Tera Hydro Breath. Aegisdramon wasn’t even sure how much pressure the stream of water exerted on a target, but seeing somebody strong enough to walk through it certainly wasn’t good news.

Luckily, Aegisdramon wasn’t fighting alone, and Vikemon wasn’t quite as shocked as his friend was. He saw the golden light moving through the Cyborg Digimon’s attack, and decided to add his own element in support. He channeled his Arctic Blizzard through the stream of Aegisdramon’s water cannon, turning it into a blast of ice that quickly encased Magnamon in a glacier. Unfortunately, this glacier lasted about as long as it took to form—with a hiss of steam, Magnamon seemed to walk right through the icy prison, not even breaking his stride as the ice was melted before him. Now that he wasn’t being obscured from view by Aegisdramon’s attack, Vikemon could see Magnamon had undergone a transformation of sorts—instead of looking like a blue Digimon wearing golden armor, he had turned entirely gold. The change was clearly not just cosmetic though, as Magnamon’s energy was now pouring out of him in a flame-like aura. Every so often, lightning would crackle across the aura, and because Magnamon was choosing to approach them at a walk Aegisdramon and Vikemon had a lot of time to take in their opponent’s transformed state.

However, because Aegisdramon had more time to observe Magnamon’s transformation, he had time to react. Before he had been shocked to see the Royal Knight shrug off his attack, but now he had come to terms with that. And Magnamon was just making himself an easy target. Aegisdramon glanced towards Vikemon, who quickly got the message and starting putting some more distance between himself and the Royal Knight. This proved to be a necessary precaution, as Aegisdramon trained all of his cannons at the golden knight and unleashed his Shine Breaker attack. All the fury of a Burst Mode Digimon converged in a massive explosion of golden light, a sight whose splendor was enough to completely outshine the radiant Holy Knight.

Plesiomon knew Magnamon was likely too powerful to be outright destroyed by that blast, but when the afterglow faded he was shocked to see Magnamon continuing his slow walk towards him. The only visible change was the lack of his flaming aura, but beyond that the Holy Knight was completely unscathed. However, the area around Magnamon proved he hadn’t bothered dodging the attack—while there was a giant crater around Magnamon, the area of land immediately behind him had come out of the explosion unharmed, which could only happen if the blast had hit something in front of it—in this case, Magnamon. As the cyborg Digimon could only stare in shock after all of his energy had washed over Magnamon without any effect, the Royal Knight continued his approach.

“You see now that your attempt to subvert the order of the world is meaningless. My Gold Digizoid state was Lord Yggdrasil’s last gift to me. It represents the strength of my resolve to serve my lord!” Aegisdramon unconsciously started backing away at the sight of the juggernaut slowly approaching him, though Vikemon took the opposite approach. As soon as he saw Magnamon had survived the attack, he started charging towards the Royal Knight. Thanks to his psychological warfare on Aegisdramon, Magnamon had been going slow enough that the Warrior Digimon was able to catch up to him. Vikemon knew his attacks hadn’t so much as slowed Magnamon down before, but this time he was trying a new strategy. Instead of launching an attack, he merely grabbed Magnamon in a bear hug and lifted the smaller Knight off of the ground, restraining his arms and legs.

“If you really serve Yggdrasil, why do you fight for Lucemon now? Yggdrasil brought order to the Digital World, and Lucemon seeks to drown multiple worlds in chaos! You should be fighting on our side to stop him. Or if Lucemon managed to control you enough that you can’t turn against him, you should at least be telling us how to stop you so it’s easier for us to stop him!”

Magnamon’s response to this was a weary sounding sigh. “I’m told this is the distant future. Yet even after all these years, those traitors’ naivety and arrogance lives on. Lucemon has no hold on me. I feel his slight presence, but the power of Miracles protects me. So, I am free to fight the real threat to this world!”

Vikemon was forced to loosen his grip on Magnamon as the Royal Knight suddenly unleashed a small burst of holy light that pushed him away. However, he had no time to react further than that, as Magnamon punched him. Once again there was the flash of golden light, but this time Magnamon wasn’t holding back. Instead of the resultant explosion sending Vikemon flying backwards, the Warrior Digimon was reduced to a cloud of data at the blow. The data flashed a pale blue for a second, but Magnamon didn’t notice as he had already turned to Aegisdramon.

“Among the Knights, I was the closest to Yggdrasil and served as his personal bodyguard. I know the true intent of the X-Program: Yggdrasil needed to destroy the corrupted world to recreate a paradise. This Lucemon may think he is acting of his own volition, but he is carrying out Yggdrasil’s own plan. Those who would serve as an obstacle to this have forfeited their lives!” Aegisdramon had managed to shake off his earlier shock and fear, and was now resorting to one ability Joe claimed he would never lose—the ability to be annoying.

“Well, I hate to break it to you, but Yggdrasil lied about his plan. He was just trying to save his own skin. Trust me, I had to fight through a whole bunch of history to talk with the goddess of wisdom—I know my stuff. And if you were so adamant that you have to kill us, why haven’t you done it yet? I know you can move faster than you have been. Why don’t you just admit you don’t actually want to do this? Yggdrasil isn’t here to judge you anymore.”

Magnamon clenched his fists before taking a deep breath to calm himself. “Only twice in my life have I failed in my duty. The first was when I confronted the traitors as they sought an audience with Yggdrasil. I allowed my emotions to cloud me with doubt, and my lord was slaughtered because of it. The second time was later, after I had been forced to accept this horrid X-Antibody. I had a chance to avenge my master, but in my anger I left myself open for Omnimon to defeat me. I will not let my emotions obstruct me a third time, and if I must fight deliberately to accomplish that I shall!”

Aegisdramon just smirked—Magnamon had just revealed that this new mode of his had a weakness. And if making the Royal Knight angry was what it would take to expose that weakness, Aegisdramon was confident he could live up to the task…

Rosemon fell to her knees, gasping for breath. As soon as Lucemon started calling in the Royal Knights, she knew she was in for a difficult fight. What she hadn’t expected was for Leopardmon to start attacking as quickly as he had. The Royal Knight had started the battle by transforming into the form of a brown lion with wings on its hips. From that point on, he had been visible mainly as a brown blur as he ran around the battlefield. At first, there hadn’t seemed to be any point to this speed, as he was running circles around them without making any sort of move against them. He might have been trying to intimidate them with sheer speed, but against two Digimon who were friends with an UlforceVeedramon such a ploy was ineffective.

However, just because Leopardmon’s speed relative to what GigaSeadramon and Rosemon had experienced wasn’t the best, he was still moving fast enough that the two Burst Mode Digimon hadn’t been able to hit him even relying on spread attacks. However, due to their approach of launching spread attacks, they quickly realized Leopardmon wasn’t running around without purpose. One of Rosemon’s Tifarets hit something in mid-air, causing a spherical globe of energy to explode at the contact. Seeing this, GigaSeadramon switched from relying on his eyes to using the various sensors integrated throughout his body, and with the new input of information he saw Leopardmon’s true plan: he and Rosemon were now trapped in the center of a minefield. GigaSeadramon quickly tried to explain the location of the invisible mines to Rosemon, but Leopardmon didn’t give them the luxury of time to explain things. With his Eroberung attack revealed, he switched to a much more offensive approach.

As the Royal Knight dashed in with his Blockade attack, Rosemon was quickly driven down to her knees from the repeated slashes. Leopardmon may not have been as fast as UlforceVeedramon, but he was still fast enough that he could charge in quickly and attack from a different angle whenever Rosemon tried to raise a defense. Just as she was about to try and see if she could still pull off the defensive variation of Forbidden Temptation she had as a Mega level, a loud clanging interrupted her thoughts. Looking up, it was easy to see why—GigaSeadramon had coiled his body around her, leaving her plenty of room to move but no gap large enough for the Royal Knight to get in. The Android Digimon grunted in pain at each strike of the Royal Knight’s claws, but his armor had been reinforced beyond MetalSeadramon’s Chrondigizoit Alloy to the point where the blows weren’t able to do anything other than scratch the surface.

At this new development, Leopardmon backed off of his attack for a moment, giving Rosemon time to recover thanks to the effort of the healing squad. Likewise, the slight scratches in GigaSeadramon’s armor vanished, proving if nothing else that the two Digimon would be able to outlast the Royal Knight at the current pace. Unfortunately for Rosemon, Leopardmon also seemed aware of this fact as he adjusted his strategy. Instead of charging at GigaSeadramon over and over again, he broke off his Blockade and slammed his paws into the ground. Rosemon only barely heard the call of “Wolkenkratzer!” before she was sent flying. The ground beneath her had suddenly sprung upward, and the pillar of rock was angled just enough that Rosemon was sent flying through one of the gaps in GigaSeadramon’s coils.

Leopardmon immediately capitalized on the opening he created and resumed his Blockade attack on the Fairy Digimon. Rosemon tried to use Forbidden Temptation, but Leopardmon was hitting her fast enough that she didn’t have time to focus and actually launch the attack. After taking a few more slashes, suddenly everything went dark. She briefly wondered if this is what it felt like to die before a strange blue glow filled her surroundings and a familiar voice filled the area.

“Sorry about the slightly inelegant boarding method, but considering the circumstances swallowing you was the best way to get you out of the line of fire.”

Realizing what had happened, Rosemon glanced around at her surroundings. “Man, you really are an assault carrier. This looks more like a hangar than a mouth. Thanks for saving me, by the way.”

GigaSeadramon’s response was a grunt of pain, which made Rosemon realize her friend was now the only one facing Leopardmon’s attacks. “Listen, is there anything I can do from here to help? If not, I can go back out there to at least take some of the pressure off of you.”

After another grunt, GigaSeadramon was able to respond briefly. “Actually, yeah. Follow the lit path up to the control room.” The lighting changed so only a path in front of her was glowing, making it much easier for Rosemon to navigate GigaSeadramon’s interior. Along the way, the Android managed to explain his plan in brief snatches between various grunts and clanging sounds that indicated Leopardmon was still attacking.

When she arrived at the control room, Rosemon felt like she had walked into the set of a naval war thriller. She couldn’t even make sense of the array of monitors before her, but she followed GigaSeadramon’s directions to one that looked like a sonar display. This was actually the sensory array GigaSeadramon had used to detect Leopardmon’s mines originally, but the Android Digimon wasn’t able to keep an accurate map in his head while dealing with the Royal Knight’s constant attacks. With Rosemon keeping an eye on the sensors, however, it would be possible to finally launch a counterattack.

Looking at the pattern of mines left behind from the Eroberung attack, Rosemon was reminded of being caught in a spider’s web. However, that just made their plan a little easier. Spiders always had to leave safe ways to traverse their own webs without being caught, and Leopardmon was bound by the same principle. With the mines scattered everywhere, Leopardmon had limited his own potential angles of attack. Now that she had a whole picture of the battlefield, it was simple enough for Rosemon to find these attack routes and relay the information to GigaSeadramon. The serpent responded by firing his Sky Wave in a constant barrage that covered most of Leopardmon’s attack routes, reducing the area the Royal Knight had to move.

GigaSeadramon had purposefully included some rounds that went flying off into space uselessly in the attempt to make such a barrage seem random, but Leopardmon suddenly stopped in the middle of one of his attack lanes and fell back as though he was trying to think of a new strategy. However, now that he knew where his opponent was, GigaSeadramon wasn’t going to let him escape. He redirected his Sky Wave to target the mines surrounding Leopardmon, hemming the Royal Knight into a corridor with the explosions. He immediately followed this up with his Giga Sea Destroyer, launching his most powerful attack directly at the caged leopard.

Rosemon cheered when the energy torpedo exploded on contact with the Royal Knight, causing him to disappear from view in the light of the explosion. However, when the afterglow faded, she saw the Royal Knight didn’t seem damaged in the slightest. He had returned to his humanoid form, and was holding his sword in front of him in a stance suggesting he had somehow blocked the blow with the glowing pink blade. This was all Rosemon had a chance to notice before he held his blade aloft, called out “Eine Billion!” and brought his sword down in a mighty arc. From that point, all the monitors cut out, and Rosemon could only hear GigaSeadramon’s screams…

TyrantKabuterimon and Varodurumon just stared at Craniamon, waiting for the black knight to make a move. The two Burst Mode Digimon had a clear aerial advantage, but Izzy had found something strange within the Royal Knight’s data when he analyzed him. Craniamon’s black armor was unlike any form of Chrome Digizoid Izzy had seen, and until he cracked what this strange data meant he wasn’t about to see what happened when it was hit by an explosion. This severely hampered the potential effectiveness of the team, as both of their best attacks came in the form of a giant explosion. TyrantKabuterimon was even worse off, as there weren’t any insect Digimon in this dimension other than himself and GrandisKuwagamon, so his Bee Cyclone attack was off the table.

While the limited options and uncertainty had forced the two Burst Mode Digimon to give up the initiative, Craniamon didn’t seem to want to attack either. He summoned forth a massive double-ended spear, but he used it to draw a line in the ground in front of him, point at TyrantKabuterimon, and then jabbed it into the ground. The unspoken challenge was obvious—Craniamon was inviting the King of Bugs to single combat, and was declaring the Insect would not be able to push him off of that spot. TyrantKabuterimon knew he wasn’t much of a melee fighter, but answering the challenge was the best way to keep Craniamon busy until Izzy could determine potential weaknesses and threats. He flexed his claws experimentally before charging them with electricity and flying at the Royal Knight.

It was hard to determine Craniamon’s emotions from his skeletal helmet, but he seemed to enjoy the prospect of facing someone in close-range combat. Before TyrantKabuterimon could hit the Royal Knight with his attack, Craniamon held out his arm and materialized a black shield. TyrantKabuterimon just smirked as his claws hit home- the shield could block the physical component of the attack, but most variations of Chrome Digizoid were conductors. To his surprise, however, the electrical charge lanced out along the surface of the shield and quickly dissipated. The surprise kept coming when Craniamon lashed out with his spear—TyrantKabuterimon was used to his Chrome Digizoid shell stopping or at least slowing down any incoming attack, but the Duo Solar Spear managed to slice through it easily leaving a long gash on his right shoulder.

Izzy winced at his partner’s injury, but the attack hadn’t been in vain. When Craniamon materialized his shield, the DigiDestined of Knowledge was able to identify why the Royal Knight’s armor was so unusual—it stored the data of his weapons, acting similarly to a giant flash drive. Knowing this functionality of the Black Digizoid, Izzy was able to separate that part of its code from the rest to realize the rest of the armor had no special properties compared to the rest of the Chrome Digizoid family. The real issue would be getting past Craniamon’s shield—it seemed to be able to alter its code in response to incoming digital attacks in order to best withstand the blow. That was how it had shrugged off TyrantKabuterimon’s electricity, but no program was perfect. There had to be a limit to its effectiveness, and TyrantKabuterimon had just the attack to test that limit.

Wanting to avoid retaliation while he fired his attack, TyrantKabuterimon flew right up to Craniamon. At such a close range the Duo Solar Spear’s size was a disadvantage, and Craniamon wasn’t able to adjust his grip on the weapon before TyrantKabuterimon launched his Shine of Bee attack. The red-hot explosion was designed to incinerate all of its victims, and the only survivor had been the Super Ultimate-leveled Arkadimon, who hadn’t as much withstood the attack as he had regenerated from it. It was an attack that was impossible to defend against—which is why TyrantKabuterimon was shocked that Craniamon escaped the attack unharmed by simply blocking it with his shield.

To add injury to insult, Craniamon followed this display by bashing the King of Bugs with his shield, forgoing his spear entirely. However, at an order from Izzy, TyrantKabuterimon turned this to his advantage and grabbed the shield as Craniamon hit him with it. Even with his strength, the Burst Mode Digimon wasn’t able to wrest the shield away from the Royal Knight, but that hadn’t been the plan. The Omni Shield had proven to be for all intents and purposes indestructible, and that protection could work both ways. By grabbing the shield and hunkering behind it, TyrantKabuterimon was protecting himself and denying that protection to Craniamon in one fell swoop. Which worked out perfectly, as Varodurumon was waiting for just such an opening to unleash her Aurora Undulation.

While TyrantKabuterimon had kept the Royal Knight distracted, the Holy Bird Digimon had more than enough time to charge her ultimate attack. TyrantKabuterimon may have had a superheated explosion in his arsenal, but Varodurumon had something even better—an attack with enough power to overtake a star. As a beam of light, it also had the distinct advantage of being nearly impossible to dodge or even react to its approach. Even if the Omni Shield was able to withstand such an attack, there wasn’t a way for Craniamon to bring it to defend himself in time.

However, the guardian of the sky was again disappointed when a white force field suddenly surrounded the Royal Knight, withstanding the blow without so much as a scratch. Sora could only stare in shock for a bit as her partner’s sneak attack launched at the speed of light was still somehow not faster than the Knight’s reaction time. Izzy was likewise flabbergasted, but he was resorting to his usual habit when encountering something Digital he couldn’t understand—he was analyzing the data in front of him.

“Okay, so that’s how he withstood the attack—his God Bless extends whatever protective quality his Omni Shield has in all directions. But how did he react to that—”

Sora realized exactly what had happened as Izzy was talking. “He didn’t react to the attack, he reacted to TyrantKabuterimon grabbing the shield! That’s how he had enough time to raise his defense—he had a head start. He must have guessed what we were going for.” As Craniamon’s force field flickered out of existence, the two DigiDestined tried to think of a way to counter this perfect defense.

“There’s got to be some limit to this guy’s power—I mean, he’s only here as a copy and the original died at some point before now. Maybe he can only keep his shield up for a limited amount of time and he isn’t that strong without it? He was legendary for being strong, but not unbeatable.”

Izzy nodded. “You’re right that he must have some weakness, but he hasn’t necessarily been defeated. If Lucemon flung him to another point in time, he would have apparently disappeared from history all the same as if he had died. Regardless, there must be a limit to how long he can keep up that shield, so we should focus on testing that. We need to keep up multi-directional attacks to force him to use the force field, and then keep up the pressure as long as we can.”

There was a brief delay in order to pass this information on to their partners, but Varodurumon and TyrantKabuterimon made good use of the delay to come to terms with their enemy’s ability. For his part, Craniamon seemed content to rely on his absolute defense and force his enemies into close combat. He might not have a ranged presence, but he didn’t need one with his skill set. Still, Varodurumon and TyrantKabuterimon weren’t about to let him have everything go his way. With a nod to each other, the two Burst Mode Digimon launched a combination attack—TyrantKabuterimon unleashing a giant blast of electricity while Varodurumon let loose a stream of iridescent flame. The two attacks combined to trap the Royal Knight within a maelstrom of plasma.

The intent of the attack was to force Craniamon to use his force field to defend himself, but the Royal Knight surprised his two attackers by letting the attack wash over him for a few seconds. Then, he called out “Shock Ringer!” and a sonic wave blasted much of the attack apart. This didn’t prove to be the only effect of the attack, however, and the blobs of plasma that hadn’t dissipated were caught in the rotation of the Duo Solar Spear, and Craniamon used this to send the swirl of plasma right back at Varodurumon. She tried to defend herself with her Purge Shine, but the holy light was meant to stop attacks launched with an evil will—and it was decidedly less effective against her own attack redirected by a Digimon with the personality of a Control Spire Digimon.

However, even though she wasn’t able to nullify the attack, Varodurumon was fairly resilient against fire-based damage. TyrantKabuterimon knew it wouldn’t take long for her to recover, so he went after Craniamon as soon as he stopped spinning his spear. The King of Bugs was pleased to see scorch marks along the Royal Knight’s armor to prove he could be damaged, as this meant it would be easier to defeat him once they got around his shield. And after his Shock Ringer attack ended, Craniamon seemed off-balance, which provided just the opportunity TyrantKabuterimon needed. He flew up behind Craniamon and launched his Shine of Bee attack once again.

Craniamon managed to raise his God Bless to defend himself from the explosion, and TyrantKabuterimon struggled trying to extend the duration of his attack. However, there is only so much you can do to slow down an explosion, and he managed to maintain his attack for a little less than one second. As soon as the Shine of Bee wore off, Varodurumon took over with another Aurora Undulation. She had a little bit more luck in terms of keeping the attack active, but after two seconds she had to pause and catch her breath. It seemed Craniamon needed to recover at that time as well, as his shield faded out of existence just after her attack let up.

Unfortunately for TyrantKabuterimon, Craniamon managed to recover slightly faster this time around. The Holy Knight thrust out his Duo Solar Spear and scored a direct hit on TyrantKabuterimon’s DigiCore. Almost immediately, his body started flickering, and the King of Bugs knew he had just taken a fatal injury. He prepared to unleash one last explosion in an effort to take his opponent with him, but before he could do so the Royal Knight disappeared within a giant beam of blue light. TyrantKabuterimon had just enough time left to wonder who had fired the blast and if it had truly destroyed Craniamon before he too burst into data.

Chapter Text

VictoryGreymon could only stare blankly at the massive shape above them that was actually their enemy in this fight. In some ways, he supposed he should be thankful—he had a sword specifically designed to kill dragons, and by luck of the draw he ended up fighting the one Royal Knight that was a full dragon instead of just having some draconic attributes. However, that wouldn’t really help him if Examon would stay where he was, which was well out of range of even his Trident Gaia, let alone his Dramon Breaker. At least Examon had kept shrinking since he appeared, which was the only positive the Dragon Man could see in the situation. Since he was currently out of options, he turned to ZeedGarurumon to see if his partner could do anything.

The Cyborg Digimon just snorted when VictoryGreymon asked if he could do anything. “I’m not even sure if my Zeed Cannon has that kind of range, but even if I could blast into the exosphere what would be the point?”

VictoryGreymon just did a double take. “Wait, did you say exosphere? Isn’t that basically in space? How did he get up there that quickly?”

The wolf just blinked in confusion before realizing his friend wasn’t equipped with an advanced sensor relay. “Okay, you know how he’s been shrinking this whole time? That hasn’t been shrinking—he’s just been climbing. And while I might be able to shoot him from here, it would most likely fail to do anything. Or worse—it could knock him out of the sky. I do not want to be here when something that big hits the… uh oh.”

 VictoryGreymon knew ZeedGarurumon wasn’t easily intimidated, so he knew the situation had to be serious. He glanced up at the dark spot that was Examon, but he hoped it was just his imagination that it was growing bigger. Quickly turning to a more valuable source of information he returned his attention to ZeedGarurumon for clarification on what was going on. The wolf just weakly chuckled.

“You remember how all the dinosaurs died out on Earth? Let’s just say that will be happening to us if we don’t do anything to slow Examon down before he hits the ground. Unless ChaosPiedmon was able to completely turn off physics.”

VictoryGreymon just gulped—ChaosPiedmon would likely be able to handle this problem if he was completely focused on it, but his attention was split so many ways at this point he was likely doing everything he could to simplify Mask’s Square—so changing physics wasn’t something he was likely able to do. Which meant the best way to survive would be to essentially catch the giant meteor about to strike them. He broke his Dramon Breaker into its components and equipped the pieces to his arms, charging as much energy as he could from the atmosphere. “Well, guess there’s no point sitting around and waiting to get destroyed. You got anything that might be able to slow him down?”

ZeedGarurumon just snorted. “I was going to shoot everything I had at him so I could at least use up all my ammo. If you’ve got any ideas, I’m all ears.”

VictoryGreymon just kept charging his claws. “Well, most meteors burn up when they hit the atmosphere, right? I can channel that power, so maybe if I focus all that right under him when he gets in range it will at least slow him down.”

ZeedGarurumon just nodded. “Unless we get a better idea from the others, sounds good to me. I might be able to extend your range though—you are planning on firing all that energy at him instead of catching him with your hands, right?”

“What do I look like, an idiot? You know what, don’t answer that.” After a few more seconds of charging and trying to measure the distance between himself and Examon, VictoryGreymon just nodded. “Well, I think he’s just out of my normal range so let’s give this a shot. It’s been nice knowing you.”

ZeedGarurumon just flew so he was directly under VictoryGreymon and nodded back. “Likewise.” With that, the two Digimon launched their combined attacks at the Royal Knight—with ZeedGarurumon’s Blowback Breath propelling the energy from VictoryGreymon’s Trident Gaia attack upward. The column of orange energy was massive—though compared to Examon’s size it looked like a string hanging off of the gigantic dragon. ZeedGarurumon’s sensors confirmed it was at least slowing the Royal Knight down, though not nearly enough to make a difference upon impact.

When Examon had covered half the distance down to the two Burst Mode Digimon, ZeedGarurumon added his Full Metal Blaze, launching everything he had in an effort to be defiant to the end. The explosions rippled across Examon’s wings, which covered his body like a shield and didn’t seem to take any damage. This did mean Examon wasn’t able to use them to direct his flight, but when his plan of attack was to fall straight down and rely on his massive size to ensure his enemy wasn’t able to dodge, he didn’t need to aim himself. Eventually, VictoryGreymon and ZeedGarurumon had to let up their attacks as they ran out of energy to sustain them, only able to stare panting at their impending doom.

Suddenly, Examon’s wings sprang open, rapidly slowing his descent. The sudden air displacement let out a massive shockwave, and the two Burst Mode Digimon were buffeted into the ground. Eventually, Examon brought his speed back down below the speed of sound, which let the attack name he shouted out finally pass him and reach the two Digimon below him. The cry of “Dragonic Impact!” was almost too deep to be heard, coming across more like the rumble of an earthquake than a voice. However, VictoryGreymon and ZeedGarurumon cared more that Examon had interrupted the attack than its name, and were relieved to see the Royal Knight land relatively gently, only leaving a crater slightly wider than he was.

The Royal Knight seemed pleased with this development as well, glancing to his wings and rumbling out, “God, thou habban ælfremede—” His thought seemed to be interrupted when his massive lance began glowing with intense blue light. Turning back to the two Digimon who had barely managed to pick themselves off the ground, he growled out, “Prithee, hie! Lucemon deman my feorhbold! Pendragon’s Glory!”

VictoryGreymon and ZeedGarurumon had no idea what Examon was talking about, but they recognized an incoming attack when they saw it. However, just before Examon unleashed his attack, his wings suddenly opened and sent him flying upwards. This threw off his aim, sending the gigantic stream of blue energy over his targets and into the distance.

Examon seemed to be charging another attack with his lance, but his right wing suddenly curled around it and blocked whatever attack he fired off. As the massive dragon came back to the ground, his wing remained guarding the weapon, rendering it unable to do any damage. VictoryGreymon and ZeedGarurumon were dumbfounded, but while Examon seemed to understand they were confused his attempt to explain really didn’t clear anything up.

“My Caledfwich habban ægen willa. Mundbyrdan thee æt mine Ambrosius. Se gæst beon dysig. Forgiefan me freod ær my bord abreoþan.” As Examon continued to shoot rounds from his lance into his own wings, the two Burst Mode Digimon finally put together the basic gist of what was going on—like the other Knights he was being forcibly controlled by Lucemon, but somehow his wings were free of the demon’s will. From the repeated explosions that small blessing might not be with them forever, so they had to act quickly. ZeedGarurumon needed a bit more time to recharge his arsenal, but he didn’t think he’d be needed too much anyway. After all, VictoryGreymon was currently reassembling his Dramon Breaker, and while he looked disgusted at what he was about to do the Dragon Man was perfectly equipped to grant the Holy Knight a quick death…

Takato found himself oddly thankful for Lucemon’s previous welcoming committee as he stared at the Royal Knight across from him. If he hadn’t had the experience of fighting a dark reflection of himself, the sensation of facing an opposing Gallantmon might have thrown him off. Now he knew what to expect, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. The whole plan had been for him to fight in his Crimson Mode, but after Calumon’s Shining Digivolution the little Digimon didn’t have enough energy to allow Takato and Guilmon to get to the next level. To make matters worse, this world’s version of the Catalyst had apparently gone dormant as well, meaning Takato and Guilmon were on their own. They did have a tiny bit of power left from Grani, but it took more and more effort to use that and draw out the Crimson Mode transformation.

Fortunately, Takato and Guilmon were more than capable of splitting their attention while merged together. Guilmon was busy trying to connect with Grani, which left Takato to focus on fighting the alternate Royal Knight. Gallantmon X seemed to be studying Takato, content to let him make the first move. While Takato knew he was at the disadvantage in just about every category and rushing in to fight wasn’t a great idea, he also knew he couldn’t afford to let his opponent analyze him forever. Taking the initiative, Takato hunkered behind his shield and sprang towards his opponent, charging Gram with holy energy as he did so. He was hoping the speed of his Lighting Joust attack would allow him to at least land a hit, but the opposing Gallantmon managed to raise his shield in time to block the attack. This didn’t trouble Takato nearly as much as the psychotic smirk on the opposing Royal Knight’s face as he did so.

An instant later, Takato thanked his lucky stars he had thought to charge behind his Aegis instead of focusing only on his attack. The other Gallantmon transformed his arm into a lance, but whereas Takato’s Gram was a standard lance that could be charged with holy energy, Gallantmon X’s lance was comprised of pure energy. Combined with the distinctive hum, it wasn’t that difficult to see the weapon as more of a lightsaber than a lance. Placing the beam lance directly in the center of Takato’s Aegis, Gallantmon X called out, “Sieg Saber!”

Takato went flying backwards under the force of the attack. At first he believed the attack fired a beam of energy from the lance, but when he suddenly stopped flying backwards and looked more closely, Gallantmon X had merely extended his weapon to a ridiculous length. The attack had more to it than just size, however—Takato could see a series of cracks spreading across the Aegis from the point of contact. If his shield took that much damage, he could only imagine what would happen if he didn’t block it.

Takato quickly jumped backwards to try and put himself out of Gallantmon X’s ludicrous attack range and changed his plan of attack. He obviously wouldn’t be able to compete with his opponent in a jousting match, but he still had a ranged attack. The Aegis began glowing with power, and Takato sent it all at his opponent in a surge of energy as he called out, “Shield of the Just!” However, Gallantmon X didn’t react in the way Takato had hoped. He merely put away his lance and raised his shield before the attack reached him. The enemy Royal Knight then laughed and shouted his own response: “Final Elysion!”

Takato first realized the effect of the attack when out of the corner of his eye he saw two bursts of light fly on either side of him. Only a second later did he realize the attack wasn’t multiple blasts in the slightest- it was one giant blast, and the only reason it had split around him was the center of the attack was slowed down pushing back his own Shield of the Just. However, even when he was aware of this, Takato was helpless to do anything about it—no matter how much energy he poured into his attack, he was unable to push the enhanced blast away. Gallantmon X quickly prevailed in the beam struggle, and Takato was blasted backwards for a moment before the other Royal Knight suddenly ended his attack.

As Takato picked himself off of the ground, he took stock of his situation. His armor was battered, his entire body hurt, and Gallantmon X was clearly just toying with him by this point. To make matters worse, as he grabbed his Aegis, the shield came apart in his hands. Things weren’t looking too good until Takato heard an all-too welcome voice. “Wow, Takato. His attacks are a lot bigger than ours. Can we go Crimson Mode now?”

After getting thrashed around so easily to this point in the fight, Takato couldn’t help but smile at the timing. “I’m ready any time you are, Guilmon. How’s Grani holding up?”

Guilmon instantly sounded dejected. “I don’t think he’s doing very well. I could barely hear him even when I found him. He said he wanted to give us his wings one last time, but I’m worried about him.”

Takato felt his partner’s hesitation, but in this situation he knew Grani wanted to help, and without accepting that help there was no way for them to win. “I’m worried too, boy, but we’ll just have to hope for the best.” Guilmon just nodded back to Takato before the two screamed out their mode change: “Gallantmon Crimson Mode!”

The red glow of the mode change faded away, but Gallantmon X didn’t seem too impressed with the transition. He raised his arm skyward, mimicking Takato’s movements. At the same time, each combatant called out “Royal Saber!” and fired a massive blast of lightning at each other. The two blasts cancelled each other out in a massive thunderclap, and it was clear that the real battle between the Virus types was about to begin…

Ryo and HolyAngemon found themselves outnumbered as soon as their fight with Jesmon started. The white-armored Royal Knight had summoned three fireballs armed with swords that hovered around him as his first move, though the spirits hadn’t strayed far from their master at this point. Ryo had fired off his Justice Burst to test the waters, but the spirits had managed to slash the bolts out of the air without them doing any damage. Seeing this, Ryo turned to HolyAngemon and worked out a quick plan. Ryo switched to his Accel Arm as the corrupted angel charged forward with his Masamune.

Thanks to the ridiculous length of his katana, HolyAngemon was able to keep the pressure up without running the risk of being impaled in return, though the three spirits were able to keep the katana away from their master. However, the whole point of this was to distract the guardians so they wouldn’t see the real attack coming. Jesmon was busy watching the angel struggling with his three spirits, so he didn’t notice Ryo’s Thunderclap heading towards him until it exploded right beneath him. The Royal Knight didn’t seem to take any damage from the attack, but it did have an effect—though not quite as positive as Ryo would have hoped. Whereas before he had been content to sit back and fight defensively, he was now rushing in to fight HolyAngemon in person.

Seeing the Royal Knight charge at his combat partner, Ryo switched to back to his Blitz Arm and volleyed off another Justice Burst as he tried to close the distance. However, two of Jesmon’s attendant spirits just put themselves in the way of the blast, canceling it out. Ryo switched to his Critical Arm as he charged Jesmon, but he was too late to stop the Royal Knight from closing the distance on HolyAngemon and calling out, “Judgement of the Blade!”

Jesmon broke into a strange flipping maneuver, but what Ryo cared about were the trails of light left behind wherever Jesmon’s tail or arm blades streaked through the air. HolyAngemon somehow managed to parry most of the blows, but his Masamune’s size proved to be a disadvantage in such close quarters against a nimbler opponent. He could only hold out so long against the flurry of blows, and eventually one got through his guard—followed quickly by five more.

Jesmon looked poised to continue his attack and destroy the fallen angel, but Ryo had managed to close the distance enough to shout out, “Voltage Blade!” Normally he wasn’t a fan of completely eliminating any chance of landing a surprise attack, but in this case he was fairly certain his attack wouldn’t do significant damage to his opponent anyway. Announcing it was coming, however, would draw Jesmon’s attention away from HolyAngemon, who was in dire need of attention from the healing squad.

However, while he managed to draw Jesmon’s attention, he wasn’t expecting the end result he got. Instead of dodging or even turning to face Ryo’s attack, Jesmon merely called out “Weltgeist!” and was suddenly surrounded by a glowing orange barrier. A barrier that quickly resolved itself into his three guardian spirits- with their swords all pointing outwards, combining with Jesmon’s own blades to leave no gaps.

At this point, Ryo was too far along in his charge to stop himself. He managed to slow down and veer slightly to the side, but all this accomplished was getting himself impaled on one of the spirits’ swords instead of the more intimidating blades Jesmon carried. However, just because the spirits had smaller swords didn’t mean they didn’t hurt—or leave him open for worse punishment. While he was effectively held in place, the other two spirits left the protective formation around Jesmon and surrounded Ryo instead. He lashed out at the one keeping him held in place with his Critical Arm, but the blade just passed through the ball of energy without any effect. He then twisted himself around trying to knock aside the blades on the other spirits- if they could stab him he thought he would be able to hit them, but before he could try a new voice called out, “Atomic Ray!”

A golden beam of light suddenly struck Jesmon, driving the Royal Knight backwards. His three attendants winked out of existence as they returned to his side to stop the attack. This gave Ryo some much needed time to recover, and as he healed he turned to his rescuer. “Thanks, HiAndromon. I can’t say I’m happy we needed to be saved, but I’m glad you showed up. How’s everyone else doing?”

The black-armored android just shook his head. “Not well. We left Rika as the only one watching over the healers, and Anubismon has already had to reformat some of our fighters into DigiEggs. We need to—”

Whatever Kazu’s partner was about to say was interrupted when a white blur suddenly crashed into him. When Ryo noticed a series of glowing lines cutting into the Android Digimon, it became clear what the cause was—Jesmon had somehow increased his speed and was letting loose his Judgement of the Blade attack once again. Even with his Chrome Digizoid armor, HiAndromon screamed out in pain as the blades cut into him again and again. Ryo once again found himself in a position where he needed to throw himself at Jesmon in order to save the life of his companion. He charged in with his Critical Arm, but this time he was prepared when Jesmon used his Weltgeist to defend himself. Skidding to a stop, he brought out his Accel Arm for another Thunderclap. The explosion went off beneath the Royal Knight—but Jesmon was prepared this time, as he jumped upwards and let one of his spirits nullify the blow without even having to break formation.

However, while Jesmon had easily countered his attack, Ryo realized it hadn’t been in vain. First, it had brought attention off of HiAndromon, who was lying on the ground emitting sparks from numerous gashes but was somehow holding his Mega form. With the help of the healing team, he should be able to get back to full strength in no time. However, this paled in comparison to the second effect that Ryo hadn’t planned—his distraction meant Jesmon didn’t notice the sudden orange glow inside the confines of his Weltgeist. By the time HolyAngemon called out “Sin Harvest,” the Royal Knight didn’t have time to react.

As the orange orb burst, Jesmon suddenly lost his guardian spirits and fell to the ground, where he lay flickering on the verge of deletion. Ryo had known HolyAngemon’s attack was powerful, but he hadn’t expected it to do that much damage. Even the corrupted angel was shocked—he had only ever used that attack on chaos constructs before, and they were fairly easy to destroy if you hit them in a weak spot. Used against something much closer to a living being in one of Lucemon’s replicas, the attack showed just how fearsome it really was.  

After a few seconds, HolyAngemon got over his shock at the amount of destructive power he could bring to bear and brought out his Masamune, He swung the massive sword at the downed Royal Knight, and the blade felt no resistance as it crashed into the ground. The angel let out a sigh of relief—only to see Justimon suddenly go flying backwards and split back into Ryo and Cyberdramon. An instant later, HolyAngemon himself was sent flying backwards with two fewer wings than he had possessed previously. He had just enough time to see Jesmon standing unharmed where he had been before the pain caused him to pass out…

Even though Suzie was determined to pull her weight in this battle, she found herself once again pushed behind her brother. However, this time around she couldn’t complain about him being overprotective, because he had at least explained the strategic reason behind his decision. He had significantly more combat experience than she did, and his MegaGargomon form was significantly more durable than her Cherubimon form. He could take the lead at least until they had a better understanding of what their opponent could do. Against a Royal Knight, they couldn’t afford to get careless, and Suzie just didn’t have enough experience to be on the front lines this time around.

However, looking at her opponent, Suzie had a hard time believing such precaution was necessary. Instead of the giant dragon or fifteen-foot-tall armored knights, this Gankoomon looked almost like a normal human. He certainly would have been an imposing human, standing at over six feet tall with fiery red hair and a jacket flaring out behind him like a cape, but now that she was Cherubimon she was looking down on a man who would have normally towered over her. And that was just her own body height—Henry was big enough that Gankoomon wouldn’t have reached the top of his head if the Royal Knight was standing on MegaGargomon’s shoulder. Still, while Suzie wasn’t sure how this new opponent could be a threat, Henry knew all too well the dangers of underestimating an opponent. Gankoomon must have earned his position as a Royal Knight, and considering how strong Omnimon and Gallantmon Crimson Mode were earning such a position wasn’t easy.

Henry assumed one of his tai chi stances in preparation for the upcoming battle, which only caused Gankoomon to start laughing. “Oh, so you are a martial artist as well? I have to admit, I’m pleasantly surprised. I’ve known a few MegaGargomon in my time, but none of them fought in such a way before. Let’s see if your style can top mine!”

Gankoomon uncrossed his arms and assumed a fighting stance of his own. However, he almost immediately shouted out “Tekken Seisai!” and lunged forward. Gankoomon’s fist glowed with a fiery energy, but Henry immediately could tell something was off. No matter how powerful this Gankoomon was, his technique was far too sloppy for a proud martial artist. Henry was easily able to redirect the force of the blow and counter with an elbow strike of his own.

The blow served to knock the Royal Knight off his feet, which only further proved something was amiss to Henry. That blow didn’t have a lot of force behind it and was only meant to keep the Royal Knight off balance, yet Gankoomon had toppled over. It was like the Holy Knight Digimon wasn’t even trying to keep his balance, which only served to put Henry more on his guard. He could only think of two explanations for the situation: either Gankoomon was letting him win by holding back most of his power, or the Royal Knight was actually setting up his fighting style for later. Henry had seen what a master of Zui Quan could do while seeming like a drunkard, and if this Royal Knight had a similar style the fight could still easily turn against him. A second later, Henry was glad he kept his distance, and a fiery golden spirit suddenly burst out of Gankoomon and would have dealt him a heavy blow had he tried to take advantage of the supposed opening.

Gankoomon grabbed onto the arm of his guardian spirit and pulled himself up, but he didn’t seem like he had brought it forth intentionally. “Hinukamay, stand down! This is my fight, and I do not need your assistance!” However, Hinukamay didn’t seem to listen to his master, instead flying right towards Henry.

Gankoomon immediately turned to the combined Digimon and shouted, “I can’t stop him—watch out! Jishin!” Hinukamay slammed his fists into the ground, sending fissures at Henry and forcing him to take to the air to avoid the attack. However, Gankoomon continued to call out warnings, letting Henry know his attacker wasn’t letting up—as well as what to expect. “Kaminari!” Unfortunately, knowing a blast of lightning was coming didn’t exactly give Henry anything he could do to avoid the attack, and the blast knocked him out of the sky just in time to hear Gankoomon say “Kaji!”

However, as Henry prepared himself for the fire attack, another more familiar voice called out “Holy Hug!” Henry blocked the surprisingly weak bout of flame that quickly cleared to reveal Suzie with her arms wrapped around Gankoomon’s body and encasing him in pink lightning. Hinukamay instantly faded away as Gankoomon groaned in pain, but as soon as Suzie let the Royal Knight go he started laughing even as he collapsed to the ground. He stood up and smiled at the Angel Digimon.

“All his power over time and our minds, and Lucemon can still be bested by a young girl’s desire for peace and happiness. Thank you, Cherubimon.” His face then became much more serious as he started handing out orders. “You need to go to Omnimon and do the same thing to him that you did to me. I don’t know how long we will be free from his control, but you need all the allies you can get. GO!”

Suzie wasn’t used to the ferocity of the order and shrunk back, but Lopmon had spent her life serving Zhuqiaomon and was used to obeying such a strict commander. Cherubimon immediately started flying off, though Henry wanted to know more details. Gankoomon brusquely shut down his questioning, telling him “You want answers? Then you better keep up.” He then started running away, forcing Henry to use all of his thrusters just to fly at the same pace. Gankoomon didn’t seem to be hindered by his sprint, as he started explaining as much as he could while he ran alongside the giant mechanical warrior.

“I sent her off for Omnimon because her skill will likely only work on the five of us who are here as ourselves instead of a copy. And of the other four, Omnimon is the best choice. Her ability might not scale to the size needed for Examon, nobody will be able to lay a finger on UlforceVeedramon—except maybe the UlforceVeedramon from this time—and Magnamon…”

He paused for a second as if contemplating exactly what to say next, but he seemed to settle the debate quickly. “Magnamon’s ideals may just more closely align with Lucemon’s than your own. I don’t have time to discuss the details behind the Great Schism, but Magnamon was the leader of the fanatics who rebelled against the other Knights and instigated the first war after Yggdrasil’s defeat.”

Henry knew there must be more to the story of what split the Royal Knights, but this wasn’t the time to have a history lesson. Instead, he focused on more immediate matters. “That explains where Suzie is going. Where are we headed?” If Henry hadn’t been trained to read opponents as he was fighting them, he wouldn’t have noticed the slight change in Gankoomon’s expression that indicated the Royal Knight was feeling even more tension about this topic than he had about the schism.

“Listen, there’s something you should know about me. I am easily one of the weaker Royal Knights—if not the weakest. In a one on one fight, there are very few of my comrades that I could defeat. However, there is one Royal Knight that just might be impossible for anybody other than me to defeat, and I need to get there before he grows too powerful for me to stop.”

Henry waited for the Royal Knight to continue, but Gankoomon spit the next bit out as if he just wanted the conversation to be over. “He is my protégé, and like a son to me. Jesmon’s biggest weakness as of the last time I saw him was inexperience, but he had the makings of a formidable foe. Like Alphamon’s Alpha inForce and Omnimon’s Omega inForce, he has within his data an ability that makes him nearly unbeatable. With his OS Generics, he can rewrite his data to ensure victory—in theory. In practice, every time he takes damage, he is able to heal all of it while increasing his speed and power. I know a way around that, but we must hurry. If your allies have hit him too many times, even I may not be able to stop him…”

Chapter Text

Omegamon found his Omega Sword once again countered by the same attack from his past counterpart. Ever since Lucemon’s control had strengthened over the ancient Royal Knight, Omegamon had been forced to rely on his upgraded attacks just to keep up—the standard Transcendent Sword and Supreme Cannon weren’t enough anymore. However, despite being able to match his predecessor in terms of pure power, Omegamon was at a distinct disadvantage. Omnimon now seemed to be one step ahead of him in the battle, always predicting Omegamon’s attacks and the method he would use to try and defend himself. Clearly, the older Royal Knight wasn’t able to completely hold back the Omega inForce anymore, and that meant Omegamon now had to deal with a clairvoyant opponent as well as a strong one.

To this point, the best strategy Hideto had found was to rely on clashes of Omega Sword attacks. With the enemy able to read all of Omegamon’s moves before he could make them, any attack was dodged or countered. However, in the case of an Omega Sword, Omnimon’s preferred method of countering was to cross blades with Omegamon rather than dodge in another way. While this prevented the Omega Sword from ever directly hitting its target, every time the two blades crossed a mini explosion went off from the excess fire energy, dealing a little damage to both combatants. It was an obvious flaw in Omnimon’s fighting style, to the point where Hideto was sure it was intentional. However, he wasn’t going to turn aside a chance for mutual damage, especially since Omegamon had the advantage of healing—either through the healing team or Infinite Jogress.

However, just as Hideto was confident in his current battle strategy, Omnimon switched up his pattern. Omegamon charged in with his Omega Sword once again, only to withstand a blast from his counterpart’s Omega Cannon. Fortunately the blast was weakened by colliding with the flaming sword first, but it was still powerful enough to knock Omegamon to the ground. Luckily Ophanimon turned her attention to this fight quickly and was able to heal the damage, but the fact remained that the current strategy was no longer working. He would need to find a way to continue dealing damage in order to win that fight, but to do that, Hideto would need to come up with a counter for the Omega inForce—something that he had just found out about during this current fight.

As Omnimon and Omegamon continued to volley attacks back and forth at each other, Hideto forced himself to turn away from the fight itself and focus specifically on the problem. He was the second ranked V-Pet player in the world for a reason, and you couldn’t be best friends with Neo Saiba without being able to quickly adjust to seemingly unbeatable strategies. The Omega inForce was formidable, but it couldn’t be infallible—or else Omnimon wouldn’t feel so much shame over not being able to stop whatever this Great Schism was. So either it was possible to set up a trap far enough in advance that Omegamon couldn’t escape it, or there was some other limitation to his ability to see the future.

However, as he thought this, Hideto realized he may be getting ahead of himself. Omegamon just said the Omega inForce allowed him to read an enemy’s moves before the enemy could make them. While this could be knowledge of the future, it could also be as simple as reading the opponent’s mind. And if that was the case, Hideto had a simple enough strategy to counter it. It would only take a little adjustment to his Digivices and a bit of faith in Omegamon to be able to pull off something he had never tried before. Hideto sent off one more command to explain the basic premise of his plan to Omegamon, but from there assumed radio silence as he set up his Digivices for the next move.

When Omegamon received the command, he had a hard time processing what benefit could come from it. However, he had faith in Hideto, and unlike when they had been fighting under Daemon he had no doubt that what they were doing was the right thing. Still, all the conviction in the world didn’t make his task any easier, especially since Omnimon took the offensive and charged in with his Omega Sword. Omegamon was suddenly much more sluggish, barely managing to bring his Transcendent Sword to block the attack and completely failing to ignite the blade. As such, he was driven back by the blast and took a fair amount of damage, but the payoff was clear when Omegamon’s left arm suddenly snapped up and blasted Omnimon with an icy blast. The move was significantly weaker than even a normal Supreme Cannon, but the important thing wasn’t the power behind the attack, but rather the fact that the attack hit.

Though Omnimon didn’t have full control of his emotions, his eyes widened a bit in shock as he started shaking the snow off of himself. That last attack had found a way to slip past his Omega inForce, leaving him no warning. His younger counterpart seemed just as surprised at what had happened, but Omnimon knew he needed to press this sudden change. He charged in again with his Omega Sword, and once again Omegamon sluggishly raised his Transcendent Sword in an attempt to block. However, just before the ancient Royal Knight could cross blades with his counterpart, Omegamon suddenly vanished in a strange array of gridlines. Omnimon didn’t have time to ponder what this could mean before a glowing blade burst from his chest. A split second later, a voice behind him called out “Omega Blast!”

The massive burst of light emitting from the sword was the last thing the Royal Knight saw before he burst into data. With that threat out of the way, Hideto sent two identical messages to his partners: “Great job, guys. You can go back to working together now.” Almost immediately, Omegamon’s body seemed to relax as the two minds inhabiting his body returned to working on the same page. Hideto had theorized that Omnimon wasn’t using the Omega inForce to see the future so much as he was using it to read his opponent. However, that left one fatal opening—if Omegamon didn’t know what he was doing, there would be no way for Omnimon to read it. To test this, Hideto had started giving Warg and Melga orders separately and relying on them not to communicate with each other. Warg took care of the main body’s movements, but Melga was able to wrest control to launch the Supreme Cannon that finally landed a hit. Since Warg was the main mind controlling the body and hadn’t known about the attack, Omnimon hadn’t known it was coming either.

Of course, relying on two minds in one body would only work as long as Omnimon didn’t know that was the nature of the opponent he was facing. Once Hideto knew his strategy was working, he had to go for the finishing blow—and Omnimon had obliged by rushing right in to Omegamon’s Partition. Melga had pulled it off at the perfect time, and by the time Omnimon could try to locate his enemy it had been far too late. With his opponent defeated, Hideto was prepared to turn to the other battles and see who most needed his help when a new arrival at Omegamon’s side drew his attention. Because he hadn’t been paying attention to the other fights, Hideto wasn’t sure if this Cherubimon was Willis’s partner or Suzie, but as soon as the Cherub Digimon spoke it was obvious who she was.

Omegamon looked a little wrong-footed as Suzie started yelling at him for killing Omnimon when she had just flown all the way here to recruit him to their side, but Hideto just tuned out her complaints and turned to Sakuyamon. Since Rika was the only person who wasn’t focusing on one particular fight, she had taken the role of helping the healers dedicate their attention to where it was needed most. Hideto barely had time to finish asking before Rika quickly made her choice. “Send Omegamon to help Takato. You’re the closest one to him, and he needs the help.” Hideto sent the order immediately, and then started scanning the walls of Mask’s Square trying to find where Takato was fighting the other Gallantmon.

Immediately, he could see why Rika was so quick to send him to help Takato. When he had been demonstrating the power of Crimson Mode against Neo, the advanced form had given off all the splendor expected from a Royal Knight. Now, his wings had faded away, his weapons seemed to be on the verge of flickering out of existence, and his armor was broken off in places. While Gallantmon X also bore some scars from the fight on his armor, he clearly was in much better shape than his opponent. Whereas Takato was struggling to stay on his feet, Gallantmon X carried himself as if he hadn’t taken any damage at all. Hideto knew this could all be an act—Omegamon never let the damage show as a means of psychological warfare as well—but in this case, it certainly didn’t seem like Gallantmon X was hiding his injuries.

Omegamon was doing his best to get over to Takato’s side as soon as possible, but Hideto noticed the Royal Knight was moving at a much slower speed than normal. He didn’t even need to see the scan results to know the cause—Omegamon hadn’t had much practice with Omega Burst, and some of the energy from the Omega inForce must have redirected back on himself. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the brief experimentation with All Delete had proven where Warg had been put in a near-death state, but Omegamon’s energy levels were still taking some time to recover. While he was normally a fairly fast Digimon, Suzie had no trouble outrunning Omegamon as she tried to get to Takato to help save her fellow Tamer.

Unfortunately for Takato, Suzie was still too far away to help immediately, and even with all the attention he was getting from the healing team he knew he wouldn’t be able to stay in this fight much longer. While any wounds beyond things like destroyed armor and shields were easily fixed, nothing seemed to be helping Grani. The ark was quickly losing all of the functions that separated it from a simple program, and no matter how much the healers tried they weren’t able to counteract the loss of energy this inflicted. Takato knew he might only have seconds left of being able to fight, so it was time to take desperate measures.

With no other options, he began focusing all the energy he had left into his Gungnir. Blutgang quickly faded away, and even his armor faded from its brilliant crimson back to its original white. However, Takato didn’t care about any of that, instead trying to infuse all of his strength into one final attack. Grani was about to die, but he could at least leave this world by helping to save it. With all of his energy poured into the divine lance, Takato felt like he was attacking not so much with his own power as he was attacking with Grani’s very essence. When he could give no more energy into the attack, he called out “Quo Vadis!” He hurled Grani’s final gift at the ancient Royal Knight, and prayed that it would be enough to end the threat so the others could focus on Lucemon without having to deal with Gallantmon X.

Normally, Quo Vadis was an even stronger version of Crimson Light, and as such Takato had never tried to use the attack due to its sheer destructive power. Since a normal Crimson Light had been strong enough to shatter Mask’s Square when Piedmon had only had to maintain one layer of it, using the attack when Mask’s Square was key to the DigiDestined’s success was a huge gamble. However, due to the failing power of Crimson Mode, the attack was much smaller than it should have been, which allowed Takato to focus it on a much smaller area. Instead of a giant blast cloud, the burst of light was only slightly bigger than Gallantmon X was, and nothing outside of that sphere was being damaged. Takato allowed himself to fall to his knees with a sigh of relief, thinking the fight was finally over. He was proven painfully wrong when a blue beam shot out of the remains of the attack and headed right towards him. Takato didn’t have time to react to the blow, but before it connected he felt a slight pushing sensation and fell to the ground as a human. While the landing was painful, it wasn’t nearly as painful as seeing the price of his safety—Guilmon was still floating where they had been standing as Gallantmon, with Gallantmon X’s lance plunged straight through his chest.

A second later, Takato’s partner was nothing more than stray data. Takato could only stare blankly at where his partner used to be, not even noticing that Gallantmon X was walking towards him. The Royal Knight had clearly taken damage from the last attack—his left arm was missing—but Takato was beyond the point where he could pay attention to his surroundings. When Leomon died, Takato had instantly flown into a berserker rage. Jeri had screamed in despair, and then fell into a dangerous self-loathing that made her easy prey for the D-Reaper. That had all been before the Tamers started Biomerging with their partners, however. While Takato had occasionally felt some of Guilmon’s pain through the link all humans had with their partner Digimon, after Biomerging the two were much more inexorably linked. Takato had felt a part of himself die just now, and he wasn’t able to handle it. He completely shut down, to the point where he didn’t even feel it when Gallantmon X kicked him in the chest, breaking several ribs. He wasn’t even aware of the reason he was blacking out, as to him there wasn’t any difference.

However, one person who did notice this was Suzie, who arrived on the scene just in time to see Takato hit the ground after being kicked by the Royal Knight. The nine-year-old had always tried to listen to her older brother’s teachings about violence not always being the best solution, and had developed an even more pacifistic style than Henry as a result. As such, she hadn’t really tried to use the full force of Cherubimon’s lightning in combat. She still didn’t feel comfortable using it as a direct attack, but she knew she had to stop Gallantmon X before he could hurt Takato any further. With that goal in mind, she called down her Heaven’s Judgement attack, creating a wall of lightning between the Royal Knight and his helpless victim. She then moved the lighting towards the knight himself in an attempt to herd him away from Takato.

Unfortunately, her plan worked a little too well. Gallantmon X’s attention was drawn away from Takato—but it was now focused solely on the Cherub Digimon that had interrupted his fight. And with one arm already gone, the Royal Knight was not inclined to play with this opponent. He unleashed his Sieg Saber at Cherubimon, and Suzie found herself frozen in place as the giant lance extended towards her. However, the lance hit her in the shoulder instead of the chest, and as she fell to the ground she heard Omegamon call out, “Omega Cannon!” The white-armored Royal Knight had arrived just in the nick of time to redirect Gallantmon X’s attack from being a fatal blow with his Transcendent Sword, and now he was making sure the enemy knight would not have another chance to attack again. The energy blast obliterated the already weakened opponent, giving Omegamon time to look after his companion. Lopmon was unconscious but not in danger of deletion, and Suzie seemed to be physically unharmed. Before the Holy Knight could even ask if she was alright, however, the entire world seemed to be filled with the sound of breaking glass, and Mask’s Square crumbled out of existence…

Willis was surprised at just how long his partners could keep up their attacks. Back on Folder, MegaGargomon had occasionally fired off every round in his arsenal, but the months of training seemed to have increased his ammo stores as well as his familiarity with his Mega form. Not to be outdone by his twin brother, Cherubimon had also called down more lightning than Willis had ever seen in one place before. Eventually, though, exhaustion and a need to reload set in, and the various explosions and thunderclaps finally calmed down in order to see the result of the barrage. At first, it looked like the attack had done absolutely nothing, as Crusadermon was standing unharmed in the same position BanchoLillymon had first trapped her in. However, the Fairy Digimon then let out a little laugh and released the effects of her Absolute Territory.

As soon as the energy field keeping the Royal Knight locked in place fell, so too did the remains of Crusadermon’s armor. It fell to the ground in pieces, and the visor caved in to reveal there was nothing left of the proud Royal Knight inside the pink armor. MegaGargomon and Cherubimon looked taken aback at the result of their combined attack—they had meant to destroy the Royal Knight, but usually when Digimon were destroyed they left nothing behind. Seeing the discarded armor remaining after its wearer had been destroyed was a disquieting reminder of just what was required of them when fighting a war. The two Digimon closed their eyes and bowed their heads at the somber reminder—only to snap them open when BanchoLillymon started screaming.

The fairy Digimon found herself trapped within a cocoon of glowing pink wires that easily cut into her with the slightest contact. However, what drew her attention more was the source of the Laser Lattice attack than its actual effects—the attack was coming from Crusadermon’s discarded right gauntlet. She had just enough time to wonder how the Royal Knight had set up an attack from beyond her death when the netting flashed a bright pink and BanchoLillymon was forced back down to her Rookie form. Almost immediately, the wires stopped cutting into her and instead bound her tightly in midair so she couldn’t move. Floramon’s eyes widened as she realized what this must mean—the Royal Knight wasn’t trying to destroy her. Instead, she wanted to make the Plant Digimon suffer.

Floramon started to cry out a warning to her two comrades, but by that point it was too late. While Crusadermon’s right gauntlet remained on the ground maintaining the Laser Lattice attack, the rest of her armor shot towards MegaGargomon. While Crusadermon had been a highly agile opponent, her armor took it to a whole new level—appearing right in front of the giant mechanical Digimon before anybody had a chance to realize it had moved. MegaGargomon burst into data a short moment later, not even knowing how many hits the armor had landed on him within that moment. Taking out the more defensive of the two remaining fighters with repeated blows of the Fist of Athena attack seemed to calm some of Crusadermon’s rage that had animated her armor, but that just meant she was at a point where she was calm enough to toy with her next opponent instead of killing Cherubimon outright.

The Cherub Digimon wasn’t about to let himself be easily defeated by a discarded set of armor, but there was very little he could do to hit his opponent. Crusadermon’s lingering will was fast enough to dodge most of his lightning, and even if he did manage to hit it the armor would break apart—and then be able to form right back together. It looked like the only way to defeat it would be to completely destroy the armor—whether in one shot, or piece by piece. Still, the armor had managed to survive repeated blasts from his Heaven’s Judgement and his brother’s bombardment, so Cherubimon wasn’t sure he had the level of destructive power needed. If he had time to charge up for a while he might be able to manage it, but focusing his power into an attack was difficult when Crusadermon’s armor would hit him with a single cut of Spiral Masquerade every few seconds.

After the latest attack, Cherubimon knew he would have to get inventive if he ever wanted to make any headway in this fight. He called down another Heaven’s Judgement attack—but this time he directed the lightning at himself rather than another target. The cost of the attack was severe, especially considering his current state of damage, but eventually he managed to work the lightning from offensive strikes into a suit of armor of his own. Crusadermon’s armor came in for another attack, but this time Cherubimon could easily see it coming and dodged out of the way. It had been a risky gamble, but Cherubimon’s plan had worked—by cloaking himself in lighting, he was supercharging his body—and more importantly his nervous system, allowing him to process information more quickly and react appropriately.

Still, even with the sudden boost in his skills Cherubimon knew he had a limited window in which to make it work. The element of surprise would wear off quickly, and even at his new level he wasn’t sure how he would stack up against Crusadermon’s armor at its full power instead of when it was trying to draw out the fight. Luckily, Cherubimon noticed a rainbow glow off in the distance, and immediately knew what he needed to do to end this fight. He rushed over to where Crusadermon’s gauntlet was keeping Floramon trapped and slammed his palms down on the armor fragment, channeling most of the power of his aura into the blow as well. The gauntlet was vaporized in the explosion, but the attack had worked a little too well—Cherubimon had little control over the power he used, and the resulting explosion used up most of his aura and blasted Floramon away instead of gently freeing her.

The Mega level winced at the clumsiness of his rescue attempt, but didn’t have time to even check if Floramon was okay. In the last moment before his aura faded, he hurled what was left of his electricity towards the feet of Crusadermon’s charging armor. It was an attack that the Royal Knight would have been able to dodge even before becoming disembodied armor, and it easily rose above the Lightning Spear. However, this just caused Cherubimon to smile as he reverted back to Lopmon and fell to the ground. Well before he could land, the armor was completely swallowed in a rainbow prominence. The massive blast of energy vaporized the remains of the Royal Knight, leaving Lopmon to let out a sigh of relief. He went to help Floramon get up, and by the time the Plant Digimon had recovered from being blasted away Varodurumon had made her way down and landed next to them.

Floramon was quick to thank the Burst Mode Digimon for saving them with the Aurora Undulation attack, though the small Digimon seemed dejected that she was no longer able to help in the battle. Lopmon tried cheering her up by telling her the healing squad would be getting around to them soon enough, but Floramon just shook her head. After all, while Lopmon was capable of going to the Mega level thanks to Willis’s Crest, Floramon had only been able to Digivolve past Kiwimon thanks to the power of the Digimental. Varodurumon seemed ready to make her own attempt, but the sound of breaking glass interrupted everything. The two Rookie Digimon looked around in shock as Mask’s Square shattered, but Varodurumon didn’t notice any of that. Instead, she could only focus on a feeling of dread as she suddenly reverted back to Phoenixmon. “Oh no, Sora!”

BeelStarrmon groaned as she struggled to maintain her hold on Dynasmon’s wyvern form. Sure, the Royal Knight was taking damage from his continued attempts to push through compacted space, but the continued effort of trying to warp him away was really taking its toll on her. Even with the support of whoever happened to be healing her at the time, she was starting to wonder if she’d be able to see this fight through to the end. This current contest of wills stretched on for what seemed like an eternity before Dynasmon’s wyvern form finally dissipated. The Royal Knight was always quick to recover after these sessions, so the Demon Man Digimon quickly warped away before the dragonic warrior could resume attacking her.

Luckily, this giant version of Mask’s Square retained some of the geographic features of the original surrounding landscape, including the cave BeelStarrmon had found and turned into a sort of base of operations for her and Beelzemon to use as a safe haven between runs harrying the Royal Knight. Unfortunately, she hadn’t had as much time to enjoy the space as she would have liked recently. At first, Beelzemon had taken turns with her to provoke Dynasmon into using his Breath of Wyvern, but recently the Demon Lord had been forced to spend all of his time in this cave as he prepared what he hoped was the one attack in his arsenal that would be able to destroy the Royal Knight for good. Judging from the mass of tentacles she had to swat aside just to approach him, however, he wasn’t quite ready to use it.

“So, I know I give the impression I’m into some freaky stuff, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to draw the line at tentacles. You just about ready to go with this attack yet? It can’t be that hard to subjugate the Chrysalimon data to your will. After all, you’ve already killed them once—how much harder can it be to beat them again?”

Beelzemon just grunted in pain, but seemed to regain enough control to speak after a few seconds. “I can’t exactly shoot my way through the data within me. When it’s just one Digimon’s data, I can handle it no problem. Get a little over 100 working as a sort of hive mind, and it’s a lot more difficult.”

BeelStarrmon was interested in how this whole process even worked, but Beelzemon clearly wasn’t in the best state to describe how data absorption manifested as a power of a Demon Lord. Of course, time was also a luxury at this point, so she likely wouldn’t be able to get answers even if Beelzemon wasn’t writhing in pain with countless tentacles shooting out of his back. Somebody had to go out there to make sure Dynasmon didn’t start attacking anybody else, and from the looks of things it was still going to be her. Rolling her eyes, she decided to just brief her partner on the situation before heading out.

“Listen, I know what you’re doing isn’t easy, and you’re under a ton of pressure as it is. But if you could find a way to get this process done quickly, I’d really appreciate it. We’ve done a pretty good job of expanding the cracks in Dynasmon’s breastplate, and I think they are big enough for you to worm a couple of those tentacles in and do your thing. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to wall him another time. For every time his wyvern attack fails, the next one comes in harder, faster, and longer lasting. I’m starting to lose my ability to keep up with him. It’s also affecting my ability to warp—so I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to outrun him either. I’ll buy as much time as I can, but I’d appreciate it if I’m around to see the payoff.”

Not wanting to give Dynasmon any more free time, BeelStarrmon warped out of the cave before Beelzemon could even respond. She had always made sure to cluster her first appearance point on leaving the cave in a small area to prevent Dynasmon from being able to triangulate the position of the cave by keeping track of the first place she appeared after hiding from him, and now that precaution had proven to be worthwhile. When she appeared back outside of the cave, she was floating less than ten feet behind the Royal Knight, who luckily had his back turned to her. This gave her time to reset her dimensional zone before she announced her presence to the Royal Knight by crying out, “Double Impact!”

The borrowed Berenjena was now working for her as well as it had for Beelzemon—which meant the bullets barely expanded the cracks radiating through the back of Dynasmon’s armor. However, they did get the Royal Knight’s attention, and in a way BeelStarrmon knew was less likely to anger the Royal Knight enough to use his Breath of Wyvern attack right off the bat. While attacks certainly annoyed Dynasmon enough to make him chase after whatever had hit him, he didn’t seem to mind it as much as he did when someone insulted him or his master Lucemon. And while BeelStarrmon had happily exploited the emotional weakness earlier, now that she wasn’t confident she could hold out against the Royal Knight’s full fury she was glad for the ability to take things a little slower.

Unfortunately, even though Dynasmon wasn’t using his Breath of Wyvern, he seemed to be just angry enough that he was pushing his speed and the ferocity of his attacks to a new level. Instead of chasing after her and trying to get her with his Dragon Thrower he called out “Dragon’s Roar!” and fired the same energy he usually kept in the palm of his hands at her from a distance. From the looks of the attack, it would be just as devastating to be hit by one of these blasts as it would to be caught in the Royal Knight’s grasp, so BeelStarrmon made sure she focused on dodging the blasts. Unfortunately, since Dynasmon wasn’t slowing down for things like self-preservation while the Demon Man was, the Royal Knight was quickly closing in on her.

BeelStarrmon found herself missing her usual guns as she tried using the Berenjena against the charging Dynasmon. With her normal bullets, she didn’t have to expend any extra power to ensure they homed in on their intended target. While she could easily warp space to alter the path of the Berenjena’s shots as well, it took a little more focus than she was used to—and with Dynasmon chasing after her she knew splitting her concentration like that was too great of a risk to take. And since she wasn’t sure what the Berenjena’s ammo limit was, she was being a lot more conservative with her shots than was typically her style. Of course, the various blasts weren’t really doing any noticeable damage, but BeelStarrmon felt a little better about her situation if she at least got some hits on an opponent regardless of how little they actually accomplished.

Hoping to get a little more breathing room after a few too many close calls, BeelStarrmon warped away behind Dynasmon. However, as soon as she appeared an explosion went off above her and sent her crashing into the ground. Looking up, she saw Dynasmon had spread his Dragon’s Roar attack in all directions around him, letting her realize how he had managed to hit her. She started to pull herself up, but stopped and smiled when she saw a familiar sight half buried in the dust around her. To make things even better, Dynasmon was currently charging her. She didn’t want him able to dodge the surprise attack.

“Well, I have to admit you’re smarter than I originally gave you credit for, Dynasmon. Launching your attack in all directions as I teleported is an effective counter. But I also suppose I should be thanking you for knocking me down here.” Now that she judged the Royal Knight was close enough, she snapped her fingers and warped space just enough that the half-buried weapon suddenly appeared in her hand in time for her to call out, “Corona Blaster!”

Unlike her attempts before where the weapon refused to work, this time around BeelStarrmon got the satisfaction of seeing the red blast slam into Dynasmon and knock the Royal Knight backwards. The Royal Knight responded by shooting off a Dragon’s Roar, but the blasts went wide of their mark when BeelStarrmon blasted him again.

Unfortunately, BeelStarrmon’s luck didn’t hold out. Her third shot with the blaster was intercepted by an all-too-familiar white aura. BeelStarrmon quickly tried resetting her dimensional field to make it easier to warp away, but true to form Dynasmon had gotten even faster than usual this time around. She got the field reset, but by that time the wyvern was too close to just warp herself away. Gritting her teeth, she once again began to warp the wyvern away, hoping against all odds she would be able to outlast the Royal Knight one more time in order to earn another reprieve.

However, BeelStarrmon was shocked when the wyvern dissipated after only a few seconds. Dynasmon was still within the range where she needed to try and hold him back, but instead of blindly trying to crash through her wall he was now laughing in her face. “Dragon Collider!” The seemingly errant shots he had fired at BeelStarrmon upon her second blast revealed their true purpose as each released an explosion on the scale of a small nuclear warhead. BeelStarrmon was unable to warp as long as Dynasmon was that close to her, trapping her between the blast and her own wall of distorted space.

Dynasmon’s copy allowed himself a few seconds to revel in his victory, but those few seconds proved to be costly. He felt a stabbing pain in his back, which was quickly followed by others throughout his whole body. He heard Beelzemon’s voice call out “Data Crusher!” and all feeling in his body was replaced with a tingling sensation. Beelzemon put all his focus into the attack, not even bothering to gloat or rage against the Royal Knight. Chrysalimon’s attack was designed to destroy the very data that made up an enemy, but his own experience letting the Champion levels attack him in the Digital World had shown they weren’t strong enough to completely erase a Mega level, even in vast numbers. Because of this, the Demon Lord was giving the attack a different goal. He was using his own power to boost the effectiveness of the dozens of Chrysalimon within him in order to break Dynasmon’s data apart without destroying it completely. This still meant there was stray data left of the Royal Knight—but any Digimon from Beelzemon’s world knew exactly what to do with the fragmented data of a defeated opponent.

Once he had absorbed every trace of Dynasmon’s data, Beelzemon finally allowed himself to focus on other things. Glancing at the crater left by Dynasmon’s last attack, he was surprised to see a small figure at the edge of the blast radius. He dismissed the Chrysalimon tentacles as he flew down, and was surprised to see an Impmon passed out on the ground. He was even more surprised when he picked up the Rookie level and her pink eyes fluttered open. “Huh, I can’t believe… I’m alive…maybe I can call myself… the Immortal. Man, I’m awesome…”

She immediately passed out again, but Beelzemon was convinced she would be fine after some rest and treatment from the healers. He was planning on waiting for the healers to do their work, but the sound of shattering glass stopped him. As Mask’s Square crumbled, he knew he would have to rush in to battle right away. He was too far away to make out details of who was fighting where, but he flew to the closest group he could find. On the way, his right hand shifted to be covered in a white gauntlet. Lucemon’s copies may not have had souls of their own, but they still had data to absorb—and Beelzemon knew exactly how to thank Lucemon for the gift. It was time to show him what happened when he attacked the friends of another Demon Lord…

Chapter Text

After what felt like an eternity, Rosemon finally stopped having to listen to GigaSeadramon’s screams. Normally such a situation might be more cause for worry, but since she was currently inside her friend’s head and the emergency lighting was still on, she took this to mean Leopardmon’s attack was over, not that GigaSeadramon had been destroyed. He hadn’t been forced to revert either, so maybe Leopardmon’s attack had just been incredibly painful instead of damaging. Either way, she was worried about how her partner was holding up, so she did about the only thing she could think of and started asking if GigaSeadramon was okay.

Almost immediately, she got a response, though not in the form she was thinking. Unlike before where GigaSeadramon was able to talk to her, he was now communicating via text flashing across one of the main screens in what would have been the control center if he wasn’t a living creature.

“Please keep your voice down. I have taken a lot of damage and am trying to play dead.”

Rosemon wasn’t sure whether she should roll her eyes at GigaSeadramon’s dramatic statement or sigh in relief that he was still okay, so she settled for doing both. In a much quieter voice, she responded, “Okay, I can play along. What exactly happened, is there anything I can do to help, and are you going to be able to keep fighting after this?”

When more text flashed across the screen, Rosemon realized she would have to get used to carrying on a conversation this way. “Leopardmon can shoot sword beams. Thousands of them. And they can cut through my armor easily.”

Rosemon winced. “How bad are we talking about here?” One of the screens showed a diagram of GigaSeadramon to document every place he had taken damage, but the screen was such a collection of red warning signs that Rosemon couldn’t make out any details.

GigaSeadramon seemed to realize this and put a very brief summary. “Propulsion systems are all offline. I have enough energy for one weak shot of my Giga Sea Destroyer, but beyond that weapons are gone as well. I am also currently a severed head, and I don’t know how many pieces my body has been sliced into.”

For a second Rosemon couldn’t believe the last statement, but when GigaSeadramon didn’t indicate he was joking she realized it might just be an accurate statement. “How—”

Almost as if predicting her question, GigaSeadramon started to display a bit more information. “My body was designed to be the ultimate weapons for undersea combat. That includes being able to continue functioning if I have a massive hull breach at any point on my body—I’m designed to be able to seal off or even detach just about anything. As long as my DigiCore is intact, I can survive virtually anything—though Leopardmon hit me a little harder than I was designed to withstand. I’m alive, but not really functioning at the moment. And because I’m designed to withstand being blasted apart, I will need a mechanic team more than a healing team to reassemble.”

Rosemon thought for a few seconds before coming up with an idea on how to make the best out of the current situation. “You said you had one shot, right? Then here’s the plan. I’ll go out there and get him to line up with your cannon so you can hit him with everything you’ve got left. Then, I’ll keep him busy while you revert, get healed, and Digivolve again. I know GigaSeadramon won’t be an option anymore, but I’d much rather fight alongside you as MetalSeadramon than face him alone.”

GigaSeadramon paused for a second before displaying a new message. “Funny, Michael just sent me the same plan. Leopardmon is currently slightly to my left, so if you head out one of the starboard gashes you should be able to sneak out.”

Unlike before, Rosemon didn’t have the benefit of GigaSeadramon lighting a path for her to lead her to her destination, but it was fairly easy to pick a direction and go until she found a hole blasted through the side of GigaSeadramon’s armor. However, almost as soon as she exited, her plan to sneak up on Leopardmon went awry. The Royal Knight must have wandered into GigaSeadramon’s line of fire, and the critically damaged Burst Mode tried to fire off his last shot of Giga Sea Destroyer when he had the chance. However, he must have been more damaged than he had thought, and the energy torpedo was destabilized to the point where it exploded before he could fire it.

The misfire had three different effects. First, it knocked Rosemon away, as even with the relatively weak shockwave she hadn’t been expecting to need to brace herself. Second, it forced the reversion GigaSeadramon had already been planning on using before the Android Digimon expected it, so he found himself in his Baby form of Pichimon instead of his planned reversion only to the Rookie level. Unfortunately, the third effect rendered the difference pointless, as Leopardmon’s attention was instantly drawn to the source of the explosion. Seeing the small white figure where GigaSeadramon’s head had been, he launched another volley of his Eine Billion attack. The flurry of pink beams launched from his sword completely obscured Rosemon’s line of sight to her friend, but when the various severed pieces of GigaSeadramon’s armor burst into data seemingly on their own she knew what must have happened. By the time the pink light faded leaving just the ghost of a blue afterglow, there was no sign of Michael’s partner.

Rosemon responded to the death of her friend by suddenly shutting down all of her thoughts. Leopardmon was in front of her, and anything not directly related to destroying him was pushed aside in her mind. This wasn’t to say she lost focus in a blind rage—as she charged towards the Royal Knight, she took in every facet of the battlefield around her and made note of everything that might provide an advantage or disadvantage. One such factor was Leopardmon’s sword, which was charged with glowing pink energy. Doubtless attacking that with a normal vine would be a bad idea, but luckily she wasn’t the only Rosemon she knew. Borrowing and modifying a trick from Mari’s partner, she took the energy normally used in her Kiss of Breath attack and used it to charge her whip and rapier. By the time she had closed in on Leopardmon, her weapons matched his in seeming to be made completely of pink energy.

Leopardmon saw the charging Burst Mode Digimon and calmly prepared to strike her down. However, Rosemon was prepared for the sword attack, and countered with the whip in her left hand. While she knew she wasn’t likely to be able to deflect the sword itself, the weapon could only go where Leopardmon’s arm was. With a quick flick of her wrist, she bound the Royal Knight’s arm and wrenched it sideways. The unorthodox parry caught the Royal Knight off guard, and Rosemon made use of the sudden opening to put all of her energy into a riposte. The augmented rapier slammed into the Royal Knight’s chest, but the Fairy Digimon barely managed to pierce his armor before Leopardmon managed a counterattack, emitting a brown fog from his entire body.

As soon as the fog made contact with her skin, Rosemon felt her skin begin to burn. To make matters worse, Leopardmon’s Braun Nebel was not only acidic, but started draining the energy off of her weapons as well. As her vines wilted, Leopardmon was able to escape her grasp and spring backwards. Rosemon was certain he was leaving her to be destroyed by the effects of his attack, but in less than a second a massive gust of wind cleared the air around her. This allowed her to clearly see Leopardmon as he brandished his sword in a backwards arc and cleared away the other half of his own attack. The Royal Knight then sheathed his blade and bowed before redrawing it and assuming a ready stance for combat.

Rosemon assumed a similar stance of her own, but she didn’t particularly care about whether she had earned the respect of this fake Royal Knight. Regardless of whether he thought she was a worthy opponent, she was going to bring him down as quickly as possible. The first step of her plan had already been completed, and now all that was left was to finish the fight. She charged back at Leopardmon, ready to repeat the same strategy as before. However, this time the Royal Knight was prepared, and adjusted the timing of his swing so he was able to avoid Rosemon’s parry. Just to be on the safe side, he cut through her whip entirely, and took off her left arm in the process.

Rosemon’s only response was to grit her teeth as she used her remaining arm to throw her cape over Leopardmon’s body. She managed to groan out “Charité” to finish her attack before Leopardmon reached out and stabbed her through the chest. However, just before she burst into data she managed to see Leopardmon bound within a giant tree, and she knew she wasn’t dying alone. The Sinning Tree would keep Leopardmon trapped in a world of illusion until it absorbed all of his data—and if the tree happened to be destroyed, it would take the life of its victim with it. As Rosemon faded away, she knew she had at least helped her friends by taking a powerful enemy with her.

Ryo groaned as he picked himself off the ground, only to realize he was currently in his human form and not Justimon anymore. Looking behind him, he saw Cyberdramon covered in a rainbow glow that meant he was likewise being healed from Jesmon’s latest attack. Knowing it would take a few more seconds before his partner was ready to Biomerge again, Ryo just wondered if Jesmon’s abilities were some form of karmic retribution for his performance in the Digimon card game. With his subconscious memories of having to use the strengths of random Digimon to their fullest in order to survive, he had been able to find all the obscure strategies to find an easy way to victory. Add on his later-developed ability to draw the card he needed when he needed it and his even more recent skill of being able to create cards out of nowhere thanks to the DigiGnomes, and he supposed he was a game breaker in his own right. And after various rule patches and bans, it seemed the universe was now trying a more direct approach to balance his abilities by throwing an even more broken opponent in his path.

A split second later, Ryo’s head suddenly cleared as whoever had been healing him finished the job. Seeing Cyberdramon was taking longer to heal, he started scanning the battlefield trying to make out the current situation. However, apart from HolyAngemon likewise being healed a few yards away, Ryo couldn’t see any signs of the battle. Sound, however, was a different matter, as there was almost a constant metallic clang ringing through the air that told Ryo HiAndromon and Jesmon were still crossing swords. A vicious snarl alerted him to the fact that Cyberdramon was back in action, so Ryo quickly Biomerged before the Ultimate level gave in to his violent nature and charged into battle on his own.

Now that he was seeing things through Justimon’s eyes again instead of relying on weaker human senses, Ryo could actually keep track of what was going on—or at least, he could see HiAndromon and Jesmon briefly whenever they crossed swords, and in between those moments he was able to at least keep track of the white and black blurs they became. At this point, the Android Digimon was the only one who had a chance against the Royal Knight, but Ryo was surprised he had managed to hold on as long as he had. The only thing allowing HiAndromon to maintain an even footing with Jesmon was his Copy Paste attack, which let him copy the attributes of his opponent and use them as his own. As such, he now had exact replicas of Jesmon’s arm blades, and had managed to keep up with the speed and power boosts of the OS Generics.

However, there were two major drawbacks to the current situation that left HiAndromon at a distinct disadvantage. First, Jesmon could keep making himself stronger every time he got hit, while HiAndromon was at a fixed level until he re-used his Copy Paste attack. This was especially noticeable when Ryo and HolyAngemon tried to help—they would be able to get hits in while the Royal Knight was distracted, but any damage they did just made Jesmon stronger and put HiAndromon in a worse situation than he would have been without their interference. He must have managed to renew his Copy Paste before Jesmon was able to do too much damage, but Ryo wasn’t sure how many times the android would get that lucky. The second and more troublesome reason was the simple matter that HiAndromon could copy Jesmon’s swords and level of power, but he simply was not used to fighting in this matter. Jesmon was just far more skilled with the blades than HiAndromon could ever hope to be. The Android Digimon had already reduced himself down to two blades because he was unable to effectively use the tail blade, but even the arm swords were an unfamiliar weapon to the Android while the Royal Knight had possessed them since he first assumed his Mega form.

While Kazu’s partner showed a surprising degree of resilience, eventually Jesmon managed to find an opening in the Android’s fighting style. The slight opening was all the Royal Knight needed to score a hit with his bladed tail—and when HiAndromon reacted to the pain, he left himself open for the rest of the Judgement of the Blade combo. HiAndromon had also managed to increase his durability by copying the effects of the OS Generics on Jesmon, but against this assault Ryo knew it wouldn’t be enough. He was wracking his brain trying to come up with some strategy that might help, but before he could think of anything the ground beneath the two combatants suddenly rose into the air. Trying to find a source, Ryo saw MegaGargomon in the distance alongside what appeared to be Gankoomon. The other Royal Knight had his hands shoved into the earth and seemed to be using that as a leverage point to flip a large section of the ground itself.

As Gankoomon flipped the massive slab of rock, it seemed to change composition, turning entirely into a block of what looked like steel. Ryo supposed such an attack might be formidable if you got trapped under the slab, but Jesmon had more than enough advance warning to dart away even if he hadn’t had his speed amplified numerous times. But even with Jesmon not taking any damage from the attack, Ryo realized it served two important purposes—it brought Jesmon’s attention squarely on to the other Royal Knight instead of anybody else, and it gave the damaged HiAndromon space to revert to Kapurimon in peace before passing out. Gankoomon started going into a long-winded rant about how he was disappointed in Jesmon for letting a copy of himself be so easily controlled, but Ryo didn’t pay attention to that as MegaGargomon and HolyAngemon both started flying towards him.

HolyAngemon brought over the unconscious Kapurimon and then waited for MegaGargomon to explain the situation. Henry gave a brief rundown of what had happened in his brief conflict with the Royal Knight before Suzie had managed to free him from Lucemon’s control, but any further explanation was cut off by a shockwave as the two Royal Knights clashed. Jesmon was not holding back, using Atho, René, and Por to supplement his Judgement of the Blade attack. The only thing that was more impressive to Henry than the sheer grace Jesmon was able to maintain while using nine blades to attack constantly was how Gankoomon was able to keep up with the blows. He only had his fists and Hinukamay, but he was matching his protégé blow for blow and seemingly unaffected by the clash. Henry could now see just how much the Royal Knight had been holding back in his skirmish. He was still calling out his attacks as he launched them—but since it seemed like he was landing a punch every instant, the syllables of his attacks were all running together to the point where even Henry who had seen them before couldn’t identify what attacks he was using.

Even with the numerical disadvantage and Jesmon’s numerous boosts, Gankoomon and Hinukamay eventually started pushing Jesmon back instead of just holding him off. Jesmon had gone from more of an attacking stance to a defensive one, but each time his guardian spirits came into contact with Hinukamay or Gankoomon’s fists the three spirits seemed to waver slightly. By this time, Gankoomon seemed to grow tired of calling his attacks and was starting to lecture Jesmon’s copy, and he had pushed his way close enough to the others that they could make out the words Gankoomon was shouting.

“And you call yourself a copy of Jesmon? You disgust me. Atho, René, and Por should be a reflection of your spirit. Jesmon and I may have somewhat different philosophies, but neither of us would ever waver from our chosen path! Hinukamay stands behind me as a representation of my fighting spirit, but what do your allies stand for? You don’t deserve to be anything even associated with the Royal Knights!”

Gankoomon hadn’t let up on his barrage of blows as he was talking, but he must have gotten carried away emotionally and left the tiniest of openings. Jesmon’s copy wasted no time taking advantage of it, quickly stabbing both of his arm blades into Gankoomon’s chest. The older Royal Knight coughed, but then started laughing. “You think this means anything? Just who the hell do you think I am? Now you can’t avoid my attack!”

At his words, Hinukamay suddenly reached his hand through Gankoomon’s body and into Jesmon’s chest, grabbing whatever passed for a DigiCore in an artificial Digimon. It then started pulling backwards, taking a glowing outline of the fake Royal Knight with it. Jesmon’s body struggled to get away, but Gankoomon grabbed on to his swords and held him close. He then shouted to the others gathered around watching his struggle.

“Hurry up and destroy this pathetic excuse for a Royal Knight! His replica soul may pale in comparison to the real thing, but I cannot guarantee I will be able to hold it for long to keep his OS Generics at bay. And I sealed my own fate when I started this attack- so do not hold back for my sake! Destroy us both!”

The suddenness of the request took Henry and Ryo by surprise, but HolyAngemon immediately began charging his Sin Harvest. The leader of the Server Continent had more experience watching his allies sacrifice themselves than the two Tamers did, and he also had an unfortunate familiarity with the need to make difficult decisions for the greater good. He didn’t doubt that the two Tamers would eventually do what needed to be done, but by the time they had overcome the initial shock the Sin Harvest had detonated. Gankoomon faded away along with the copy of his protégé, who was no longer protected by the OS Generics and thus wasn’t able to survive this time around. However, before HolyAngemon, Ryo, and Henry could even process that the battle was over, Mask’s Square shattered, and the disorientation of the spatial shift drove away further thoughts of the two Royal Knights…

Bukamon managed to pull himself off of the ground and briefly wondered where he was before the rainbow-colored sky reminded him of the ongoing battle. From there, the memories flashed back to him quickly—from Vikemon’s death, to his plan to piss off Magnamon into revealing his weakness, to when he had pushed the Royal Knight a little too far. He didn’t think he had gotten even close to making the Royal Knight lose control, but he had gone from using augmented punches and kicks to unleashing a single blast of golden energy. At first, he hadn’t been too worried, since the blast was slow moving. However, just like the Royal Knight, the attack had a nightmarishly persistent homing ability, and as soon as it did hit Aegisdramon it burned through his armor without any resistance.

Since that was the last thing Bukamon could remember, he assumed the attack had knocked him out, and then someone must have healed him since he was still here and not loose data in the wind. A sudden flood of energy brought him back up to Plesiomon, which at least let him know that Joe was still okay. Now that he wasn’t busy trying to hide on the battlefield for his own safety, the Mega level could devote more attention to his surroundings. It didn’t take long to notice the massive golden glow coming off of Magnamon, or the figure in black armor with two volcanoes bursting out of his back. PileVolcamon seemed to be using the heat of his volcanoes to propel himself forward and put even more force behind his punches. Magnamon reacted to the blows about as much as he had to anything Aegisdramon had thrown at him—meaning he just stood there as the attacks bounced off of him.

Plesiomon wanted to help his friend in the fight, but the simple fact of the matter was he was a poor partner for the former guardian of Mihirashi Mountain. PileVolcamon was clearly a close-range fighter, and Plesiomon’s attacks were a little difficult to focus on a narrow area. His Shaking Pulse would throw off his ally just as much as his opponent, and even though he had gotten much better at targeting his Sorrow Blue by binding it to a blast of water, anything involving blasting water towards a fire-based ally was a clear recipe for disaster. Since he had next to no close-range prowess to speak of, there wasn’t a whole lot he could do in this fight, but he still started flying over anyway. There wasn’t an opening to attack now, but in the middle of a battle things tended to change quickly.

As he flew closer to the Royal Knight and the volcanic wrestler, Plesiomon noticed Magnamon wasn’t the only one unnaturally calm in the current exchange of blows. From how often PileVolcamon was punching the Royal Knight, Plesiomon expected him to be almost as crazy as he had been back when he was affected by the Black Gear. With how Magnamon was just ignoring the Android Digimon’s fists, a little bit of anger or fear would have also been appropriate responses. Instead, PileVolcamon was completely silent and his face betrayed no emotion. Plesiomon knew something would have to give eventually, but he wasn’t expecting the change to be PileVolcamon suddenly smirking and springing back from the Royal Knight. He then jumped into the air, curled into a ball, and called out, “Volcanic Driver!”

Plesiomon was expecting something impressive from PileVolcamon’s reaction, but the attack still managed to surprise him. Instead of directly attacking the Royal Knight, the Mega level drilled directly downwards into the earth. A second later, a pillar of lava burst up below Magnamon, taking the ground he was standing on with it. Plesiomon was impressed—from how difficult it was to make the Royal Knight change position, PileVolcamon had forced the opponent to leave the ground. However, the Android Digimon wasn’t done quite yet. His Volcanic Driver created multiple other lava plumes in the area, and the wrestler used a more concentrated stream to blast himself up to Magnamon’s level. He hit the Royal Knight with a move resembling a clothesline, which served to knock the Royal Knight out of an upright position. PileVolcamon then used the volcanos on his back to redirect his momentum and collide with Magnamon again, this time trapping the knight’s limbs to his body with a bear hug.

The end result of this was Magnamon was trapped in PileVolcamon’s hold, and the two were quickly plummeting towards the ground. Plesiomon watched as the extreme variant of a piledriver started to develop, but despite the obvious inspiration for the move PileVolcamon called out a non-indicative name: “Falcon Drop!”

The Plesiosaur Digimon was sure Magnamon could easily escape from such a move, yet the Royal Knight didn’t seem to particularly care that his head was on a volcano-powered crash course with the ground. He didn’t make a move, even as PileVolcamon finished his attack. The Mega level bounced away from the force of impact and clearly had taken some damage, but since Magnamon had been driven into the ground head first and was now buried in partially melted rock to his waist, he felt confident that he had come out of the exchange for the better.

However, just when PileVolcamon was celebrating getting his first major hit against the Royal Knight, Magnamon finally retaliated. Without even bothering to pull himself out of the ground, he unleashed a more contained version of his Extreme Jihad attack. The outburst of golden energy ripped through stone as easily as it did air, leaving the Royal Knight floating upside down over a new crater of his own creation.

Seeing the radius of the blast, Magnamon paused to take a few deep breaths. He really needed to learn to keep his anger under control if the size of the attack reached its current level after just one hit. Once he had calmed down, he glanced to where PileVolcamon had been—only to see a large skid mark that ended with a dazed Meramon. The Champion level must have been inexperienced with his Mega form to lose it so easily, but now that the Flame Digimon had reverted he was a non-factor in this battle. Still, the fact that such a novice had managed to hit him hard enough that he actually felt it just proved he couldn’t afford to let his enemies keep the initiative for this long.

Plesiomon gulped as the Royal Knight turned towards him, wondering what exactly he could do now that he wasn’t in Burst Mode against an enemy that had already shaken off everything he, Vikemon, and PileVolcamon had thrown at him. However, the moment of panic quickly passed as the Mega level realized he was starting to fall for Magnamon’s psychological warfare again. He had already decided he was outmatched and needed to stall until someone with a way to beat Magnamon came along—whether it was due to sheer power like Omegamon or some other hidden ability that would work in this situation. Suddenly, Plesiomon realized exactly what he was about to say and would have slapped himself in the face if his flippers could reach—he had already been planning on using his Sorrow Blue attack as soon as PileVolcamon had some distance between him and the Royal Knight, and Meramon was now well out of the attack radius.

Magnamon hadn’t bothered turning himself upright, and was just floating upside down staring at Plesiomon with his arms crossed. It was like the Royal Knight was asking to be attacked—and Plesiomon didn’t want to disappoint him. He launched a stream of water at the golden knight—but the slight instability in the flow proved it wasn’t a typical water blast. Upon impact with Magnamon, the stream burst to release the soundwaves from Sorrow Blue that were designed to sap the will of anyone who heard it. On Magnamon, it served to eliminate the golden aura surrounding him and send the knight falling to the ground as he no longer put any energy into keeping himself aloft. Plesiomon thought he may have found a way to win this fight, but just before Magnamon hit the ground again his aura flared back and he stopped falling. Clearly there was a limit to Sorrow Blue’s effectiveness, but Plesiomon was willing to see how often he could blast the Royal Knight to earn a second or two of peace. Unfortunately for him, Magnamon wasn’t about to give him that chance. Instead of using his usual deliberate pace, he went at full speed and flew at the Plesiosaur Digimon. The Mega level didn’t have time to react until Magnamon’s foot connected with his face—and the resulting explosion of miracle energy reduced Plesiomon to stray data.

Chapter Text

Wormmon awoke feeling surprisingly refreshed, which made his sleeping place of a rocky outcrop seem strange to him until everything came rushing back and he remembered his current situation. Glancing around, he saw Kentaurosmon once again hunkering down on a glowing ice floe, but there wasn’t any sign of Valkyrimon. A split second later, he felt a familiar surge of energy from Ken’s Crest of Kindness signifying a Warp Digivolution, but there was another, sadly familiar tinge of darkness behind it as well. While no two humans could ever have the same bond as was present between a human and a Digimon partner, Ken and Yolei were getting to the point that Wormmon was starting to feel some of Yolei’s emotions over his bond with Ken—and this had all the feelings of re-directed distress. It was the strongest darkness Wormmon had felt from Ken since the Digimon Emperor days, but since he had been by Ken’s side through that dark period and was a Virus type with a naturally higher tolerance to darkness meant he was still able to become GranKuwagamon instead of going into a more unstable Dark Digivolution.

However, just because he wasn’t losing himself to a sudden surge of darkness didn’t mean GranKuwagamon wasn’t angry. Since Ken and Yolei started dating, he had become much better friends with Hawkmon, to the point where the only Digimon he was closer to was Veemon due to their relationship as DNA Digivolution partners. Kentaurosmon had most likely killed his friend, and GranKuwagamon wasn’t about to let him get away with it. And considering his skill set, relying on darkness wasn’t a bad thing. He channeled the dark energy into his Zone Black Hole attack, which was a larger, more permanent version of the Catastrophe attack he had used to great effect against the NeoDevimon army on the Folder continent.

Almost immediately, GranKuwagamon noticed a massive energy drain as he tried to keep the larger black hole active while keeping himself outside the event horizon. However, as taxing as the black hole was, GranKuwagamon noticed a faint blue glow coming around the edges like the corona of a star during an eclipse. He couldn’t see the cause, but suspected something might be wrong—so he tried moving himself to a new angle. As soon as he started moving, however, the Zone Black Hole started to destabilize, forcing the insect to choose between keeping his attack active and seeing what Kentaurosmon was doing. Deciding that it was more important to take in the current situation than continue pouring energy into an attack that may not be successful, the Mega level canceled out his attack.

Upon doing so, GranKuwagamon realized the cause of the blue glow—whatever ritual Kentaurosmon was performing must have either completed or at least reached a next phase, and the glowing runes had created a large semispherical barrier around the Royal Knight. Perhaps more importantly, Kentaurosmon was joined by another being within the barrier. The creature had a leopard-like build, though the flowing mane, hooves, and antlers identified it as closer to a Kirin in nature than an actual cat. GranKuwagamon wondered briefly if this ethereal being was Kentaurosmon’s equivalent to the guardian spirits Cody had described that followed Jesmon around, but decided that the nature of this new apparition could be dealt with as he continued fighting the Royal Knight. And while this barrier was strong enough to resist his Zone Black Hole, he had other attacks that were a bit more difficult to turn away.

GranKuwagamon charged his Dimension Scissors attack and fired it at the barrier. While Kentaurosmon’s field was sturdy enough to withstand the pull of the Zone Black Hole, it wasn’t able to stop the attack that didn’t cut through barriers so much as it cut through the space they occupied. The attack slipped through the Royal Knight’s defense and cut a glancing blow—which was enough to disrupt whatever ritual was maintaining the barrier. It popped like a soap bubble, causing the ethereal Kirin to wink out of existence as well. Before the Royal Knight could even process this, GranKuwagamon had thrown another Zone Black Hole directly at him.

The insect held the attack for what felt like a minute before exhaustion finally forced him to let it fade. He expected to catch his breath for a while before joining another fight—but what he didn’t expect was a red blur racing away from him. The blur quickly resolved into Kentaurosmon, who collapsed panting to the ground. GranKuwagamon couldn’t believe the Royal Knight had managed to outrun his black hole, especially considering he had held it open for so long the insect could barely move himself. Unfortunately, the Royal Knight recovered enough energy to raise his crossbow and aim it at the Insect before GranKuwagamon could move out of the way. And while the Knight wasn’t nearly as mobile as he had once been, that didn’t slow down the speed of his Bifrost attack…

UlforceVeedramon collapsed on the ground, unable to keep in the air after all the abuse inflicted on him by his X-Antibody counterpart. Normally, such a thing would be impossible with the Ulforce constantly healing him, but Daemon had proved the Ulforce wasn’t flawless. UlforceVeedramon X may not have had the power of the Dark Virus to disable the healing factor, but he did have enough raw speed to take advantage of the fact that the healing was not quite instantaneous. The ancient knight was just fast enough that he could attack his modern counterpart slightly faster than the mystical overwrite could heal the damage.

Under such a flurry of blows, Davis’s partner had eventually lost any means of fighting back. Not that his attempts to damage his past counterpart had found any success. After the X-Antibody possessing knight had transformed his sabers into scythes, the dual Tensegrity Shields proved a lot less useful. He was able to encase his entire body within the barrier, but this technique stretched the Ulforce to its limits if he maintained it for any length of time, meaning he wasn’t able to recover fully while he was protected. He also ran the risk of UlforceVeedramon X turning his attention towards the other fighters—and if the Royal Knight couldn’t keep up with his ancient counterpart’s speed, UlforceVeedramon didn’t want to see any of his slower allies trying to deal with it. His counterpart was still focusing on him, but considering the speed gap if the ancient knight ever changed his mind Davis’s partner knew there wouldn’t be anything he could do to stop the X-Antibody Digimon from getting away.

With defense no longer an option, he had resorted to trying to find a way to attack. His opponent proved that the Ulforce Saber didn’t have a set form, so he had tried adjusting its shape so it could cover a wider area. In some ways, he had more success than he expected—he had managed to widen the blade and even split it to cover more area—but still, it was never quite enough. Even using both V-Bracelets to form blades and firing his Ray of Victory over as wide of an area as possible couldn’t cover every angle of advance. Eventually, he had just waited to be hit and immediately flared up his Dragon Impulse X. He hadn’t really been expecting it to work, but he must have caught the other Royal Knight a glancing blow. For the first time since the fight started, UlforceVeedramon was actually able to see his opponent and notice that he had managed to damage the ancient knight’s wings—only for the X-Antibody variant to immediately heal and resume his regular speed.

Between that demonstration and the fact that UlforceVeedramon X was slicing him up at the same rate he was healing, Davis’s partner felt like the holy power of the Ulforce had abandoned him in a moment of need. To make matters worse, the ancient Royal Knight seemed perfectly content to rub his utter lack of power in his face.

“Well, is little VeeVee giving up? Maybe that’s for the best. We can’t have little upstarts besmirching the name of Royal Knights, now can we? But as fun as carving an apology out of you is, I guess it would be a shame for another Ulforce user to die like this. If you apologize for your atrocious performance with the Ulforce and give up, I might just let you heal for a few seconds. You can do that, right, VeeVee? Come on, don’t be shy.”

Normally, it would be very difficult to respond to such taunting considering UlforceVeedramon X slashed UlforceVeedramon’s throat open repeatedly, but the present-day knight had improved his handling of the Ulforce during the short duration of the fight enough that he was able to use it to communicate without relying on sound. Of course, since he was currently in the throes of a massive overwrite brought on by anger at his smug opponent, the response was more of a growl of “I… won’t… lose!” than anything eloquent. UlforceVeedramon X just smirked at his opponent, but suddenly UlforceVeedramon calmed down and smiled as he felt the start of a new energy.

“I can’t kneel to you today. The future belongs to those who refuse to give up. And I have a bright future ahead of me. It’s too bad you won’t see more than a glimpse of it, but I guess I can show you.”

UlforceVeedramon suddenly sprouted glowing wings as the rest of his body transformed. Making sure his opponent could know exactly what was going on, he broadcast out via Ulforce “UlforceVeedramon, Super Ultimate Evolution! UlforceVeedramon Future Mode!”

In the time it took the Super Ultimate level to broadcast this message, UlforceVeedramon X had charged forward with his Ulforce Saber returned to its original shape, clearly no longer playing around. However, the Super Ultimate was now able to sense the other Royal Knight’s movements and easily react in time, meaning the X-Antibody version got to experience the feel of attacking an afterimage instead of an actual target. Davis’s partner supposed it would be something completely foreign to a being that up until this point had been the absolute fastest being in the world, but the karmic retribution was satisfying.

Taking advantage of his newfound superiority in speed, UlforceVeedramon Future Mode charged in with his own Ulforce V Saber, ready to skewer the ancient Royal Knight. To his surprise, the wielder of the X-Antibody was able to throw up a Tensegrity Shield of his own to block the attack. The holy barrier seemed to dent in from the strain of stopping the Super Ultimate’s attack, but it held and UlforceVeedramon X quickly moved to counter. UlforceVeedramon Future Mode was fast enough to dodge and attack back, but once again the ancient Royal Knight was just barely able to defend himself. The Super Ultimate realized he had essentially swapped roles with his opponent—he was now faster and stronger, but the other Royal Knight was quick enough that he could just barely hold on in this fight. After repeated cases of the older UlforceVeedramon just barely managing to defend himself, the Super Ultimate finally managed to land a blow—just as his announcement of his new level finished being broadcast.

The Ulforce V Saber severed UlforceVeedramon X’s wing, but the Super Ultimate level knew such an injury was still easily healed using the power of the Ulforce. Just like he had against Daemon, he instead transitioned into his Shining V Force attack, intent on destroying his opponent completely and instantly so there wasn’t anything left to heal. However, UlforceVeedramon X managed to get off one last burst of Ulforce before the final attack hit and destroyed him. His Shining V Force was weaker than his Super Ultimate’s counterpart, but while it didn’t allow him to save himself or inflict any damage it was able to send one last message. The Super Ultimate found himself processing the last words of his predecessor at a speed much greater than he had been able to broadcast his own words.

The message began as an apology for how the ancient knight had acted, explaining he hadn’t been able to fully control himself so he was attempting to anger UlforceVeedramon to the point where the overwrite would close the gap in power between the two. It was also an expression of regret from the past, when for all his speed UlforceVeedramon X hadn’t been able to save his friends. The ancient knight ordered the modern version not to let that happen to him, and the Super Ultimate was all too happy to comply. He was already flying off as the ancient knight’s last words crossed his mind: “It’s too bad. It would have been nice being friends with someone else who can transcend the speed of light.”

This message played as UlforceVeedramon Future Mode easily pushed aside a crossbow bolt headed for GranKuwagamon and eradicated Kentaurosmon without needing to slow down. Flying on to the next closest Royal Knight, he saw Magnamon strike Plesiomon in the face. Suddenly, the Super Ultimate knew exactly what his ancient counterpart had meant. For all his speed, he couldn’t get to Magnamon before this attack connected—and with his new reaction time, it felt like he was watching his friend die in slow motion. He sensed a strange energy from that location, but at this point he was more focused on making sure no other enemy could hurt one of his friends. He charged in ready to kill Magnamon—only for a sickening popping sensation to send him all the way back to DemiVeemon. With no way to control his flight, the In Training Digimon collided with the golden Royal Knight’s aura, immediately blacking out from the force of the impact. The golden Royal Knight wasn’t sure what to make of the new arrival, but from the concurrent shattering of the pocket dimension that had him trapped he had a feeling one of his brethren had struck a decisive blow in this battle…

Sigma was almost glad that Alphamon had a strange ability that defended him from all attacks except for ChaosPiedmon’s ethereal blades. It presented an interesting puzzle, and all the data coming back from the little attacks was helping him focus on it without feeling as if it were a lost cause. This worked to his advantage, because if he wasn’t able to bury himself in his computer he might have to focus on his allies around him. He had gotten a little better at not constantly hiding behind a computer screen, but the current situation made him fall back to his old coping mechanism. The situation with the multiple battles was stressful enough without the almost palpable emotion coming from the crushed members of their team who no longer had partners in this battle. Everyone was showing their grief differently, but the fact that Yolei, Izzy, Mimi, Michael, and Willis were all holding eggs that used to be their partners was causing flashbacks to his own partner’s death. All the emotion threatened to overwhelm the technical expert of the Alias III, so he was reacting in the only way he knew how in order to avoid shutting down when he was still needed in the battle.

While Sigma was reverting to his old self in order to keep up his assigned role, Neo was keeping a much closer eye on everything else. Old habits were hard to break, and Neo still viewed himself as the general of an army. And against what was clearly a superior force in all but numbers, he would need to know exactly how to use every member of his army to their full extent. As it was, they were dealing with enough setbacks. Rei had been taken out of the battle at the very beginning, and while the two Demon Lords were theoretically much more powerful than Wisemon, they were currently useless compared to the utility the Ultimate level offered. Without the ability to warp time, any Digimon that died was out of commission for the rest of the battle. With six casualties already, that would become more and more critical as time went on.

Willis and Izzy at least were continuing to contribute by analyzing all the data from the ongoing fights trying to find any conceivable advantage they could. However, the simple fact of the matter was there wasn’t much else the humans—excluding the Tamers from the other world who could Biomerge—were able to do in this situation beyond offer what moral support they could. Joe was offering whatever medical knowledge might help the healers, Ken and TK were looking after those who had just lost partners, and Michael and Jeri were taking responsibility for the partners of others—Michael was looking after Terriermon’s DigiEgg as well as his own, while Jeri was cradling Guilmon’s DigiEgg as if it were Takato’s life she was holding in her hands. Since Takato was currently drawing the attention of Ophanimon and MarineAngemon and Jeri had lost a partner without a chance of rebirth, Neo did not blame her for her reaction.

Looking beyond the human element of his team, things could be going worse, but it still wasn’t the time for optimism. On the surface, things were actually going well—going in to this fight, the armies had stood at 41 on the side of the DigiDestined against 14 on Lucemon’s side. With 7 Royal Knights eliminated, Lucemon’s forces had been cut in half while 25 fighters in his army remained active—and five more would be back to full strength after getting attention from the healing team. However, the numbers didn’t capture the full extent of the situation. The simple fact of the matter was the Royal Knights were just a distraction Lucemon pulled in for his own amusement, and the real deciding factor in this fight would be how much force they could bring to bear against the Demon Lord.

With that goal in mind, it was hard to consider anything up to this point a success. While the Legendary Warriors were actually doing fairly well fighting Lucemon, it was obvious the Demon Lord was screwing around at this point. Lucemon’s Rookie form killed eight Legendary Warriors in the first battle—and he was far stronger now than he ever had been before. The only thing preventing Lucemon from killing the warriors was the Demon Lord’s own whim. While Lucemon wasn’t even trying yet, the skills Neo had been counting on in this fight to potentially give them a chance at victory were all starting to wear out. Pal and Pul’s sudden Warp Digivolutions had taken Wisemon out of the fight, and the extra strain necessitated by keeping Belphemon contained in his own level of Mask’s Square meant ChaosPiedmon’s reality warping powers were severely limited as well.

Without the ability to manipulate time and space, more strain fell to the healing team and Anubismon. While the healers had started off being able to constantly heal themselves, that measure wasn’t able to be used indefinitely and the exhaustion was starting to show through. They were already taking much longer than before to heal injuries, which would only get worse as the fight dragged on. Anubismon had it even worse. With Lucemon serving as the official lord of the underworld, the relatively newly Digivolved Mega level was struggling to save the data of fallen Digimon with Lucemon so close. Plutomon had transferred his knowledge along with his power to his faithful servant, but the God Man Digimon clearly struggled to reform each DigiEgg. Without the benefits of time manipulation, there was a small window in which he could gather the scattered data within the blue light of his Pyramid Power in order to begin the resurrection process that would normally come easily to him.

Neo was drawn out of his current analysis when Sigma let out a small “Oh!” As someone who had recruited Sigma when he refused to talk with his real voice, Neo had learned how to understand the implicit words behind Alias I’s mannerisms, so he knew what the tiny exclamation likely meant. This was confirmed when the masked man turned to him and requested Chaosdramon’s help. Neo immediately had his partner return to his Burst State in preparation, and wasn’t surprised when he got a message from Sigma on his Digivice 01. The newly-selected DigiDestined of Darkness was still able to convey information more quickly through text than spoken word, so in cases like this when time was a luxury he relied on his old habit to share strategies.

By the time Neo read over Sigma’s summary, Machinedramon had already Burst Evolved and launched a full-power Hyper Infinity Cannon at Alphamon. Since the blast was a burst of energy and not a physical object, it didn’t burst into flames a few feet away from Alphamon, but it did impact with whatever barrier the Royal Knight was using and dissipated without doing any damage. However, this had been the expected result. From Sigma’s analysis, Alphamon was somehow warping Mask’s Square around him, resulting in the ever so frustrating barrier. The fact that the Royal Knight was apparently strong enough to do this was worrying enough in and of itself, but now that Sigma knew how the technique worked ChaosPiedmon could work a way around it. The Demon Man Digimon was lacking in the power to fully exploit the workaround, but that’s where Chaosdramon’s attack came in.

The clown wasn’t able to modify the attack to slip around Alphamon’s barrier in flight, but with a template to work from, it was easy for ChaosPiedmon to create a copy of Chaosdramon’s attack. And from there, altering the attack to work through the barrier was a simple task—as was continuously duplicating the modified blast. Alphamon found himself trapped within a sphere with hundreds of blasts surrounding him. For the first time, the Royal Knight seemed to take the threat seriously—holding his hand out and summoning another green magic circle. Instead of summoning a blade of light for his Seiken Gradalpha, however, this time Alphamon summoned forth a golden blade that looked like a cross between a battleax and a sword. Just by holding the giant blade, Alphamon’s power increased significantly. Neo was about to attribute this to the sword being part of Alphamon’s Burst Mode from the increase, but then Alphamon grew golden wings in a burst of flame as his power increased yet again.

ChaosPiedmon was well aware of his opponent’s increase in power, but it was too late to stop now. Even if his opponent had gone from roughly equal to Omegamon in power to whatever would happen if Omegamon could go Burst Mode twice, he had to fire the attack he had been preparing. He glared at the knight that had so far withstood any attempt to deal serious damage and growled out, “Why don’t you just vanish?”

ChaosPiedmon then began firing each of the duplicated blasts in sequence. Alphamon was able to deflect the blasts by expertly whirling his blade around and knocking the attacks aside, but before Neo could suggest ChaosPiedmon fire all the blasts at once an exclamation behind him drew his attention. Davis called out, “Got it!” and was obscured by a rainbow glow that could only signify one thing—the Digimental of Legends was activating once again, and UlforceVeedramon was reaching the Super Ultimate level at the perfect time.

This little bit of news proved to be a double positive—first, it proved UlforceVeedramon was still alive and hadn’t perished facing his ancient counterpart. Second, the addition of a Super Ultimate could only help their chances of victory—especially considering how easily UlforceVeedramon Future Mode had defeated Daemon’s Super Ultimate form. Neo allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction at the turn of events, but he knew not to let his focus shift from the battle at large just because of one small thing going right for a change. As a result, he returned his attention to the battle with Alphamon just in time to see ChaosPiedmon send every single copy of the modified Hyper Infinity Cannon blasts at Alphamon at the same time. Apparently he hadn’t needed to make the suggestion for the Burst Mode Digimon to follow through with it, but a sudden flash of green made Neo realize something was going wrong. Following up on his instinct, he immediately called out, “Rika!”

Luckily, in her Sakuyamon form, Rika was more in tune with the emotions of others. Recognizing the slight edge of panic in the normally collected Tamer’s voice, she slammed her staff into the ground, dumping all of her power into a barrier that was a combination of Amethyst Mandala, Crystal Sphere, and Twin Blades of Beauty and Truth. She wasn’t sure what exactly was coming, so throwing up every possible barrier seemed the best course of action until she could get more information. However, for all of her haste, she still wasn’t fast enough. Before Neo could even finish calling out to her, the green flash he saw revealed itself to be the precursor to Alphamon’s latest attack—a series of green beams that lanced out simultaneously to pierce every incoming attack and detonate them well before they could hit the Royal Knight. This was shortly followed by a single green beam fired in a much more threatening direction—directly at the bubble hiding the DigiDestined. Rika wasn’t able to finish putting up her barrier before the attack slammed home, completely engulfing what had once been the safest place on the battlefield…

Chapter Text

JP found himself snarling as Lucemon kept dancing between his claws, only to strike him in the face with a barrage of punches and kicks. While the act was frustrating enough in and of itself, the emotion didn’t come from himself so much as it came from AncientBeetlemon’s spirit. Now that he was able to access the original form of the spirit, JP could see that this was very much how the first fight against Lucemon had gone for the Spirit of Thunder. The one consolation was out of all of the Legendary Warriors, he was best able to withstand Lucemon’s hits—his shell protected him better than the armor incorporated into the bodies of the other five.

Still, just because he could withstand Lucemon’s hits didn’t mean he didn’t feel each and every blow. The one consolation was Lucemon hadn’t even bothered to use any special abilities against them. His punches and kicks were still infused with light, but beyond that and whatever ability he was using to heal himself he had refrained from any of his more devastating arsenal of attacks. He had seen what the Demon Lord’s Grand Cross attack could do firsthand, and he wasn’t confident that he could withstand a hit that could destroy a moon. Given that the only possible reason Lucemon wasn’t attacking was he still didn’t view the Legendary Warriors as a threat, that consolation was a lot smaller than it sounded.

After another punch to the face, Lucemon was suddenly knocked away by a rainbow flash of light. JP immediately took advantage of the opening to fly backwards, putting some distance between himself and the angel. As soon as he saw Zoe clear away, he sent a blast of lightning at Lucemon to knock him further away. He knew the blast wouldn’t accomplish anything in the long run since he had been forced to hold back and Lucemon could heal anyway, but any little bit of breathing room was appreciated.

“Thanks for the save, Zoe. We need a plan to keep this from happening, though. We can’t win if we have to hold back to stop from hitting each other.”

“Koichi’s got an idea- we’ll just need—” Whatever Zoe was about to say was cut off as she was forced to use her rapier to block Lucemon’s latest punch. The Legendary Warrior of Wind then flew off, letting AncientGreymon fly up and take her place. While she was by far the fastest of the ancient warriors, Zoe was also the least durable. She was the only one who was small enough and fast enough to dart in and rescue slower fighters like Tommy and JP whenever Lucemon got so close that they couldn’t use their long-range attacks, so she needed to keep herself in the fight as long as possible in order to keep her friends in the battle as well. With Takuya now keeping Lucemon busy dancing around pillars of flame, Zoe took the opportunity to fly back down to where Koichi, Koji, and Tommy were working out the details of their new plan of attack.

While Zoe was returning to the huddle, Takuya was focused on keeping Lucemon distracted. After their initial rush of attacks proved ineffective, the Legendary Warriors knew they would have to fight a little more strategically. While none of them had yet used their strongest attacks, that came with good reason—as forces of nature, unleashing their full power was a lot harder to focus on one target. Lucemon would likely be able to withstand an Omega Corona attack, but Takuya was less confident in his friends’ durability. As such, it would take careful planning to line up all their attacks—and that meant somebody always keeping Lucemon distracted so the others could actually work on a plan. It was a role Takuya was glad to volunteer for: while he was the leader of the team, he knew he wasn’t the best strategist. He could easily hold off Lucemon while the others worked out a more advantageous plan, though, so he took as many turns of the duty as possible, only stopping when he needed to be healed.

However, while Takuya was happy to serve as Lucemon’s punching bag for the sake of his friends, the Demon Lord wasn’t quite as pleased with the arrangement. After dodging around a few more pillars of flame, he backed off and waited for Takuya to stop attacking with his arms crossed. Takuya sensed a trap, but he also knew he couldn’t afford to just waste energy when he had a chance to recover for a bit. Seeing the Warrior of Flame let off on his attack, Lucemon let out an overdramatized yawn.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m getting bored of using you as a punching bag. I can’t decide what to do, though… should I start using my attacks and end this pathetic show, or should I start holding back even more to make things a little more interesting…” The angel then smirked, and Takuya started readying some more fire for what was about to happen… only for Lucemon to fold his arms behind his back.

“Wow, a little jumpy, aren’t we? To make things a bit more interesting, for the rest of the time I’m fighting you, I won’t use my arms.” At one point, Takuya might have been provoked into charging by that statement. However, he liked to think that his experiences in the Digital World had made him wiser than the boy he once was, and he didn’t rise to Lucemon’s bait. Just as well, since Lucemon chose that moment to call out, “Divine Feat!”

At first, Takuya wasn’t sure what was so special about the incoming kick that caused it to earn its own name compared to Lucemon’s previous blows—and then a spear of light suddenly erupted from Lucemon’s heel and pierced AncientGreymon’s left foreleg. Takuya barely had time to grunt in pain before a great sword formed on Lucemon’s other heel. The Rookie level then proceeded to go into a strange midair dance, making it very difficult for Takuya to judge the trajectory of the various incoming slashes and stabs from the blades coming from the angel’s feet.

Takuya wasn’t able to get away from the attacks until Koji flew up and placed himself between the Warrior of Flame and the Demon Lord. Lucemon’s attack hit AncientGarurumon—only to have no effect. The Warrior of Light just smirked at Lucemon. “Sorry, but you’ll have to try a bit harder than that if you want to hurt me with light. Sharpness Claymore!”

As the lupine warrior started trading blows with the angel, Takuya landed near the others and received a welcome relief as one of the healing squad—he wasn’t sure who—mended his injuries. He then noticed Tommy, JP, and Koichi were all moving behind him, and curiosity won out. “So, I take it we have a plan then?”

Koichi didn’t seem to hear him, but the others nodded. “We’ve got it lined up as best as we can. Zoe’s going to drive Lucemon into position—and then you’ll have to blast him. We’ll jump in from there.”

Takuya nodded and started preparing for his attack as the others explained the full details of the plan. It relied on a couple of unknowns in terms of how greatly Lucemon would be affected by some of their attacks, but so far the angel had let attacks hit him only to heal off the damage. If he kept up that attitude, he might try to tank all of their attacks without realizing the real danger until it was too late. Takuya started glowing orange as he built up heat for his ultimate attack, making sure to position his wings to act as a reflector for any excess heat that would leak out to his friends. Behind him, he felt a slight chill as Tommy created numerous icebergs to act as heat sinks for any other spillover. Takuya hoped between that and the fact that most physics wasn’t the same within Mask’s Square as it would be on Earth he could cut loose without accidentally frying his friends.

As soon as he was ready, Takuya gave a brief nod and the other Legendary Warriors sprang into action. Zoe created a gust of wind that blew between Lucemon and AncientGarurumon, allowing the Warrior of Light to start flying away. As soon as Koji was clear, JP cut loose with his Tera Blaster. The massive lightning bolt was the strongest electrical attack in the history of the Digital World—and it knocked Lucemon to the ground right in Takuya’s path.

Before even bothering to see how much damage the attack might have done, the Warrior of Flame called out, “Omega Corona!” The attack unleashed a burst of plasma equivalent to a solar prominence that engulfed the angel before he had a chance to escape. When the attack finally ended, Lucemon was clearly still alive, but badly damaged sitting in a trail of molten rock. He flew towards the Legendary Warriors in anger, only to be slammed back to the ground when Zoe summoned a maelstrom with her Storm Gazer attack.

The wind kept Lucemon pinned to the ground just long enough for the next stage of the attack to begin. Tommy unleashed the furry of the Warrior of Ice using his Freezing Blizzard attack. While the attack normally brought the temperature down to absolute zero, in the wake of Takuya’s attack it was impossible to maintain that temperature. The massive temperature shifts caused the ground to shatter, but Tommy had just been preparing the way for Koji to step in. The Warrior of Light used his own Absolute Zero attack to finish the job the Warrior of Ice started—the superlaser froze Lucemon solid. This guaranteed that the final attack of the combination could hit, as Koichi trapped Lucemon in the black sphere of his Necro Eclipse. The attack was composed of the purest darkness, and was supposed to guarantee the annihilation of any living being, peacefully granting them death. Against someone as powerful as Lucemon, Koichi wasn’t quite so confident—and his doubts proved accurate as a set of white wings erupted from one side of the sphere while a set of black wings erupted from the other.

Lucemon’s Ultimate form dispelled the attack, but it was clear it had left him shaken. He hunched over panting, but started weakly laughing despite all this. “You know, I really am impressed. You’re all a lot stronger than last time around. That last attack was strong enough to eliminate my Ulforce—if I didn’t have access to my Chaos Mode, that would have actually killed me.”

He paused to take a breath, and then straightened himself up. “It looks like I underestimated you. But let’s see how you fare when I unleash more of my power—” As if on cue, Mask’s Square shattered at Lucemon’s last word. However, the Demon Lord seemed just as surprised as the Legendary Warriors at first, though he quickly resumed laughing. “As much as I would love for that to have been caused by me, it seems one of my Knights has managed to attack your human friends. And I must say, for such a seemingly weak species you certainly are hard to kill. All of Alphamon’s power, and he only managed one fatality… seems like I’m not the only one holding back.”

As Lucemon expected, this announcement caused the Legendary Warriors to flinch back. “Oh, don’t worry; you won’t be joining your dearly departed friend too soon. I want to save you for last. Of course, I can’t just let you run around free, so I’ll borrow some power from my Shadowlord Mode. Gehenna Spheres!”

An image of the seven Code Keys appeared behind him before he launched six orbs of darkness, one for each Legendary Warrior. Lucemon wasn’t sure if it was shock over his announcement that prevented them from fighting back or if they had been too tired to dodge, but the whole thing was over with minimal fuss. Lucemon turned away disappointed at how easy it had been to trap them, until a burst of fire hit him in the back. Turning back, he saw AncientGreymon facing him down, and a scowl crossed his face at how the Warrior of Flame could escape his prison. However, it all clicked into place as he saw AncientSphinxmon pull AncientGarurumon out of another sphere. He should have realized an orb of darkness wouldn’t hold the Warrior of Darkness, but at least this allowed him to have a little more fun in his victory…

Jeri groaned as she pulled herself off of the ground. She was dimly aware of her hair sticking to the side of her face due to what could only have been blood and a faint buzzing in her ears, but the warmth of the egg cradled against her was the focus of her attention. Once she was certain that Guilmon would be okay, she turned her attention to the others around her. Mask’s Square was completely shattered, which meant everyone was now strewn about haphazardly. Only a few of the Digimon were starting to recover, and so far it appeared she was the only human still conscious. She was trying to keep track of who was where when she turned and saw Sigma’s bat-like partner launch syringes at the towering form of Alphamon—only for the Royal Knight to ignore them and lash out with his golden blade. The Rookie level burst into data in an instant upon contact with the giant sword, apparently not even having time to cry out.

Seeing this instantly snapped Jeri into action. The last time she had witnessed a Digimon die, she had shut down, and made herself vulnerable to the D-Reaper. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever recover from that experience, but she was certain she didn’t want to repeat it. She didn’t have Takato and the others here to fight for her sake this time around. She reached for her D-Power only to stop when her hand bumped against her card case and sent her cards spilling across the ground. Only now did she realize how badly her hands were shaking as the terror started breaking through her resolve. Mentally, she berated herself for being so weak—her friends needed her, and if she didn’t do anything, more would die. It would be the D-Reaper all over again—everyone suffering because she wasn’t able to fight back. So why couldn’t she stop her hands from shaking? Leomon said she had a lion’s heart, but why could she never seem to show it when it mattered? At this rate, she—

A small tugging at her leg snapped Jeri out of her self-loathing. Looking down, she saw a badly-battered Calumon looking at her with worry in his eyes. He was also trying to talk with her, which was the first time Jeri realized she hadn’t heard anything beyond the buzzing since the giant green flash knocked her to the ground. However, despite the lack of words, Jeri felt as though she knew he was asking her if everything would be okay. Somehow, the personification of Digivolution always seemed to say the right things, even if she couldn’t hear them. Jeri managed to calm her shaking hands down enough for a sad smile.

“No, Calumon, everything isn’t okay—but things will get better.” Almost as if fate was punishing her for her optimism, a shadow fell across her and she glanced up to see Alphamon preparing to swing his giant blade at her. Without time to formulate a plan, she grabbed a random card from the pile on the ground and swiped it through her D-Power, silently praying that she could even Digi-Modify with Leomon gone, and that the card she grabbed would be something helpful.

At least in the first phase, her prayer seemed to be answered—Calumon was engulfed in a flaming aura, and the surge of power forced her to flinch back. Jeri was briefly able to make out a figure wearing a black coat, and knew she had managed to pull her deck’s central card—the card she had added in memory of her fallen partner and what he eventually might have been. Calumon was now within the aura of the Mega level BanchoLeomon, and he swung up his Otokodama to block Alphamon’s slash. Unfortunately, for as powerful as BanchoLeomon could be, he wasn’t on the same level as a Royal Knight. Between using his sword to block and the protection afforded by the GAKU-RAN coat, Calumon was able to survive the blow, but with his sword now shattered it didn’t seem like he’d be able to repeat the maneuver. Seeing the leonine form driven into the ground in defeat, Jeri started regretting trying to fight back—until Alphamon stepped backwards, holding his head in apparent confusion.

Jeri wasn’t sure of the cause, but it looked like seeing BanchoLeomon was affecting Alphamon as much as it was affecting her. Unfortunately, due to the very nature of Digi-Modification, Calumon only temporarily had BanchoLeomon’s power, and the form quickly faded away. As the leonine form was no longer in Alphamon’s sight, it seemed his hesitation disappeared as well. However, for as small of a delay as it had provided, Jeri’s maneuver hadn’t been pointless—it bought enough time for other Digimon to recover and join the fight. Angemon came flying in and landed a punch charged with holy energy on Alphamon’s face, while Lalamon shot exploding seeds at the Royal Knight’s chest. Alphamon responded by head-butting the angel away from him and completely ignoring the plant’s efforts.

However, no sooner had the angel hit the ground than Jeri felt a strange popping in her ears and all the sounds of battle came crashing back—including the painfully loud snores of Belphemon. She turned to see Angewomon with her arms held in the air, extending her Heaven’s Charge attack to its limit in order to heal as many in the area as possible. It wasn’t nearly as effective as it would have been had Angewomon been able to Digivolve—Jeri still had a massive headache for one—but between Angewomon and MarineAngemon, everyone was at least getting the worst of their injuries healed. Angemon took advantage of this by Digivolving to MagnaAngemon as he pulled himself off the ground and immediately threw a Soul Banisher in Alphamon’s face. The attack washed over the Royal Knight without any effect—but the Ultimate level hadn’t expected to be able to override Lucemon’s influence on a being the Demon Lord had created himself. Instead, he used the attack as a cover as he darted behind Alphamon and created a massive Gate of Destiny.

However, before MagnaAngemon could as much as open the gate, Alphamon turned around and fired another green blast. The attack impacted on the closed gate and shattered it immediately, leaving the angel unprepared for Alphamon’s next move. Luckily it didn’t come in the form of an attack, but MagnaAngemon wasn’t too fond of being crushed in Alphamon’s hand like a bug. The Royal Knight then threw the archangel back towards the others, where Angewomon was forced to catch him before he hit the ground. His place was quickly filled by MarineAngemon, who used his Kahuna Waves attack trying to slow the Royal Knight down.

While the sea angel tried to keep Alphamon busy, the DigiDestined started hobbling together as best as they could given their injuries. Joe was busy trying to make sure everyone else was in a position where they wouldn’t worsen their injuries, seemingly ignoring the fact that his own right arm was hanging limply by his side. Normally Joe would be advising that nobody move considering their injuries, but as they weren’t safe regardless of their position it made more sense for everybody to gather together where they had a slight chance of coming up with a plan to win the battle that put them in this situation. Of course, making a plan was difficult when Belphemon’s snores were destabilizing the ground and almost made Jeri miss her temporary deafness.

Almost as soon as she thought this, Belphemon’s snores dropped to around a tenth of their level. Jeri turned to see the Demon Lord of Sloth encased in a blue pyramid before a new figure appeared alongside the sleeping Mega level. It looked similar to the battered Leviamon who had just settled back down to sleep, not content to let her brother be the only one who got to ignore everything going on. The only difference was this new creature was green in color, and instead of having reptilian legs it had the legs of a SaberLeomon. The new figure roared before pouncing towards Alphamon, giving MarineAngemon and Lalamon a much-needed reprieve from the fight. Jeri tried to use her D-Power’s still-functional Digimon Analyzer program to identify the new arrival, but it was as if the creature wasn’t even a Digimon. The mystery quickly revealed itself, however, as a haggard-looking Anubismon flew down and landed beside her with four DigiEggs floating in the air around him.

The God Man Digimon gently lowered the eggs towards Kazu, Kenta, Ai, and Mako, who had been the first people to join Jeri’s group. He then promptly collapsed to the ground, where he lay panting for a bit as the twins started asking him if he was okay. Anubismon just waved off their concerns.

“I’m not used to summoning Ammit—it took more out of me than I expected. You should be worrying about the ones we’ve lost—with Alphamon’s attack, I lost my grip on Gomamon’s data for a little bit, and I was late to grabbing Chaosdramon, Renamon, and DemiDevimon. They may not be everything the once were when they hatch… and I wasn’t able to do anything with Rika’s soul…”

Hearing this, Jeri immediately whipped her head around, not believing what she had just heard. Rika was the toughest of all of them—she had to be okay. Any second now, she’d be dragging herself—or more likely someone else—to the rest of the group. However, as she scanned around, Rika remained conspicuously absent. Angewomon, MarineAngemon, Lalamon, and this Ammit were currently keeping Alphamon busy, but there weren’t any humans in the direct vicinity. The group around her now had most of the DigiDestined gathered together, and in the distance TK and Kari were helping each other make it to join their partners. From another angle, Neo was carrying Rei in his arms, and if it weren’t for the wisps of darkness emanating from her Jeri might have assumed the worst for her as well. Neo obviously wasn’t in the best shape either, but every time he stumbled the members of Alias III were there to catch him—and each other.

However, it was the last group of DigiDestined who confirmed the worst for Jeri. Tai was carrying Davis in a fireman’s carry, but despite his position there were still some signs of life from the DigiDestined of Miracles. The same couldn’t be said of Rika, who hung limply in Cody’s arms. Jeri started taking deep breaths, just trying to keep herself calm. It seemed like even after all this time, the world was still targeting her. She knew that a lot of her growth came from her time with Digimon—and now all those connections were being taken away. Takato had introduced her to the Digital World when he introduced her to Guilmon, Leomon had seen the lion’s heart within her and helped her overcome some of the issues that had been holding her back in life, and Rika had taken her under her wing to teach her how to most effectively use her cards. Now Takato was critically injured, and Leomon and Rika had both been killed in action.

It only took a brief examination from Joe to prove Jeri’s worst fears. She felt another panic attack coming on, but where everyone else was shaken the aspiring doctor tried to take control of the situation.

“Listen, we can’t give up now. Koichi died once in the Digital World, and he’s still here fighting. This might not be the end for Rika. We can regroup with the others, beat Lucemon, and still come out of this okay.”

Mari took this opportunity to cut in. “You know, I’m done with the whole ‘waiting for the best to happen’ thing. Talk is one thing, but let’s take action!” She held out her Digivice, and Lalamon Digivolved to Sunflowmon. After a brief delay, her Crest flared to life and Lilamon joined the others trying to keep Alphamon distracted. However, before Mari could Digivolve to Mega, her Digivice and Crest both suddenly died, and she collapsed to the ground.

Joe quickly rushed to her side, giving her a quick examination. Mari quickly woke up, but Joe recognized the symptoms from Dr. Wataru’s notes. However, just because Mari was re-experiencing her negative reaction to Digivolution didn’t mean that was the extent of the symptoms. Acting on a hunch, Joe started activating his own Crest. Gomamon might have been in a DigiEgg, but Joe wasn’t expecting a Digivolution out of this. Instead this was a test of if he could activate his Crest without any negative effects—and when the Crest of Reliability shorted out and Joe collapsed, his hunch was proven correct. The effects of such a brief test were luckily short-lasting, but it confirmed that Mari wasn’t the only one dealing with adverse problems related to the mechanics of Digivolution.

With this added limitation on top of everything else that had gone wrong so far, Joe really wasn’t sure what the best course of action would be. “Okay everyone, not to cause a panic but I think we might have more cases of Mari’s Digivolution problem. Medically I’d say we shouldn’t Digivolve at all like this, but that really isn’t an option. In light of that, we really need to regroup with the others. MagnaAngemon, Angewomon—would one of you be able to bring me to Takato? I could use your help taking care of him. Then we can grab the others and hopefully they’ll be enough to beat Alphamon so we can focus on Lucemon. Until then, don’t Digivolve unless you need to.”

MagnaAngemon volunteered to go with Joe, as he felt Angewomon had a better chance of keeping Alphamon busy since the Royal Knight had already shrugged off everything he could throw at him. The Archangel took a second to promise TK he would be back before he grabbed the aspiring doctor and flew off. Tai couldn’t help but be reminded of the fight with Piedmon where he and WarGreymon had held off the final Dark Master while sending TK and Sora out to get reinforcements. Hopefully this time around would end a little better than all but three of them being turned to keychains and being saved by a last second Digivolution.

Tai was snapped out of his musings when Davis tapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks for the lift, Tai, but I’m good now. You can put me down.”

Tai complied, glad to see something turning around. “Nice to have you back, Davis. Still, you should probably take it easy for a—” Tai’s advice was interrupted when the DigiDestined of Miracles called out, “Golden Armor Energize!” Tai clenched his teeth at having his advice so quickly ignored, but then he realized the implications of this simple action. “Wait, Veemon can use that? What happened to UlforceVeedramon?”

Davis just shrugged, but seemed more energetic than he had a short while ago. “Not sure, but the energy drain is gone so I know he reverted at least as far as Champion. Odds are he still needed my help. And if Armor Digivolution can get around a Control Spire, I figured it could get around whatever medical thing is going on.”

Tai couldn’t help smiling at the younger leader’s nonchalant attitude. He knew Davis was taking this more seriously, but it still helped to have a leader who could make things seem more manageable than they were. However, despite Davis’s attempt at levity, Alphamon quickly returned things to their previous situation when a blast of green energy sent all the Digimon fighting him flying back. The Digimon held on to their higher forms, but from the lack of movement after they landed it was clear they wouldn’t be getting up for a while. Sending Joe to get reinforcements was good in theory, but it relied on being able to last until reinforcements arrived. And with no Digimon standing between them and Alphamon, suddenly time felt like a luxury they might not have.

As much as the DigiDestined of Courage tried to keep his fear in check, Tai couldn’t help but keep his eyes locked on Alphamon’s golden sword, wondering when it would be used against him. He only snapped out of this when the relieving sight of a giant fireball crashed into Alphamon. The Royal Knight wasn’t particularly affected by the attack, but just seeing his partner’s Terra Force let Tai know he wasn’t out of the fight just yet. A few seconds later, a barrage of missiles flew in, exploding and leaving Alphamon in a miniature glacier.

Matt was just as relieved to see his own partner join the fray, but he didn’t expect MetalGarurumon’s attack to hold the Royal Knight at bay for long. “Tai, we need Omnimon!” Tai just nodded and readied his Digivice. He supposed following Davis’s logic, he and Matt should be fine with DNA Digivolving—but just to be safe, he decided to take a leaf out of Neo’s book and call it Jogress. WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon turned into two streams of orange and blue energy that combined to form Omnimon just as Alphamon broke free from his icy cage. The black knight and white knight stared each other down for a second before they sprang forward, crossing blades with a shockwave of energy that sent Tai skidding back until Matt grabbed his arm.

Chapter Text

Magnamon groaned as he opened his eyes—and then was surprised to find himself in this form able to open his eyes at all. Last he remembered, he had gone from maximum speed in his Super Ultimate form to DemiVeemon before crashing into something unyielding—likely Magnamon X. He hadn’t really expected to survive, let alone achieve a higher form so soon. Sometimes, though, it helped to be partnered to the DigiDestined of Miracles. Davis must have been able to activate the Digimental of Miracles, which both proved Magnamon’s partner was okay and gave the golden warrior a chance to face off with his ancient counterpart.

At least, that was the plan. No sooner had Magnamon pulled himself to his feet than a voice called out “Look out!” and the modern Royal Knight was knocked back to the ground as Justimon collided with him. The Android Digimon had his left arm encased in what looked like golden fire right up until the moment of contact when it winked out of existence. Ryo wasn’t sure why Magnamon X’s aura suddenly extinguished, but at least he didn’t have to deal with further consequences of his attempt to Voltage Blade the Royal Knight after his other attacks proved completely ineffective. He paused to help the friendly Magnamon back to his feet—only to see the Royal Knight’s left shoulder guard had gone from a brilliant gold to a dead-looking gray.

Magnamon seemed just as surprised at his normally golden armor turning to lead, but after a few seconds his shoulder guard returned to normal. Something had drained away all the miracle energy powering that section of his armor, and since they were fighting an enemy that also used miracle energy they should be able to recreate that as a valuable weapon. Turning to the Biomerged warrior, he tried to figure out the cause.

“Okay, Ryo, it’s been a while since we’ve worked together, but let’s try and make this work just one more time.”

Justimon couldn’t help but blink in shock. “Wait, you remember all that? But if that’s the case, then why—”

Ryo’s question was cut off when GranKuwagamon was involuntarily sent flying towards them. The giant insect forced the two apart as he skidded painfully along the ground before reverting to Wormmon. Realizing his curiosity about how Veemon’s timeline could actually work with his story was best saved for a time when they weren’t dealing with a rogue Royal Knight and his Demon Lord of a master, Ryo brought himself back to the matter at hand.

“It’s not quite Millenniummon’s mastery of time and reality, but this Magnamon’s miracle energy is pretty tough to beat—none of us have been able to penetrate the aura to even make it to the armor—even with HolyAngemon’s instant kill move.”

Magnamon nodded. “Yeah, speaking as someone who benefits from it miracle energy isn’t something to be trifled with. But something you just did managed to depower my armor, so what happened when you flew into me? We could probably use that to our advantage.”

Justimon shook his head. “I wish I knew. It obviously wasn’t me, since I can’t get through his barrier on my own. Maybe if I unleashed more of ZeedMillenniummon’s power, but it’s bad enough that he’s starting to get more influence on my form as it is. If I purposely start opening that door, I don’t know if I’d be able to stop him.”  Magnamon could understand Ryo’s hesitation, but he wasn’t sure if they could afford to keep holding back any form of power—even one as potentially devastating as the power of an Evil God Digimon.

However, before Magnamon could bring this up, Ryo seemed to be struck by inspiration. “Listen, can you test something? I need you to blast Magnamon X with a burst of pure miracle energy. I think his—”

Whatever Ryo was about to say trailed off as he suddenly clutched his head in his hands, experiencing a strange headache as his vision suddenly faded away, only to form a picture of MegaGargomon being engulfed in a ball of golden light before vanishing. The vision was gone as soon as it had appeared, but the Ryo still couldn’t shake the feeling that something terrible was about to happen. He charged back into battle without explaining anything to his allied Magnamon, just trying to reach the engagement before Henry could suffer the fate Ryo saw in his vision.

As Ryo got closer to the battle, he saw Henry was actually holding his own against the Royal Knight. Somehow, he was managing to deflect his enemy’s blows without suffering too much damage from the explosions—though Ryo supposed some of that could be attributed to Phoenixmon using her Life Force attack to transfer the loose energy back into healing MegaGargomon from the constant burns that came just from touching Magnamon’s aura. It still meant they hadn’t found a way to damage the Royal Knight, but just holding their own was still more progress than they had made up until this point. Just as Ryo was taking the time to reassess the situation that caused him to be here, his headache returned and his vision faded away again. This time, when it came back he got the rather surreal experience of seeing himself charge at the Royal Knight with his Voltage Blade attack. The attack accomplished nothing but lighting the other Justimon’s arm on fire—which Ryo knew all too well, because this was exactly what had happened right before he crashed into Magnamon.

In fact, the scene was such a repeat of his previous experience that Ryo turned around just to see what was different about this situation—and he saw DemiVeemon encased in a golden glow as he started Golden Armor Digivolution. This confirmed what Ryo initially suspected—this vision was actually a view of the past. With the nature of his partner, Ryo wasn’t really surprised to find time moving in a non-standard direction, but he was more worried about what this implied for his previous vision—if he could see the past, would he also be able to see the future? And if he saw the future, did he have the power to change it? Considering what his first vision implied about Henry’s fate, he could only hope it wasn’t set in stone.

Ryo was so lost in his musings that he hadn’t considered another aspect of his past vision—namely his own position in it. If he had to turn around in order to see Magnamon, that meant he was currently between the past version of himself and the past version of Magnamon—and with how events played out, that put him directly into the flight path of his past self. Luckily he remembered this immediately before impact and managed to jump out of the way without taking the brunt of the impact, but even so there was momentary contact between the two versions of himself. Ryo hadn’t expected to be able to interact with himself, and the minimal contact was enough to slightly divert his past self’s flight path so he collided with Magnamon’s right shoulder instead of his left.

The vision faded away after that, leaving Ryo even more confused. Before, he distinctly remembered hitting Magnamon’s left shoulder, deactivating that piece of armor. Now, he also had memories of hitting the Royal Knight’s right shoulder, and he couldn’t say which of the memories actually happened. As he fought off the headache of a potential time paradox, he was joined by Magnamon, who was still confused about the nature of Ryo’s plan. Deciding this would be the best way to confirm which of his memories was correct, Ryo questioned the Royal Knight. Upon confirmation that the golden warrior lost power to his right shoulder, Ryo now had confirmation that it was possible to change time in the context of his brief visions—but before he could plan around this new ability he saw Henry slip in his stance.

Knowing he didn’t have a lot of time to act and that the future he saw could be changed, Ryo immediately jumped into action. He launched a volley of his Justice Burst at Magnamon X, hoping to at least distract the ancient Royal Knight while Ryo rushed towards Henry’s location. When Magnamon X didn’t stop his charge, Ryo resorted to drastic measures. He couldn’t stop the Royal Knight in his attack, so he resorted to the next best option—forcing MegaGargomon out of the way. He only hoped Henry would forgive him later for using his Justice Kick on an ally.

Even with a force equivalent to 45 tons, Ryo knew his Justice Kick would have a hard time moving a Digimon as large and heavy as MegaGargomon. However, the fact that Henry was not expecting the attack allowed Ryo to move him just enough out of the way that Magnamon’s fist just missed the giant mechanical Digimon—but this was a small consolation when the following golden explosion hit both Biomerged Digimon. Ryo had seen the destructive consequences of a direct hit from this attack, but that still hadn’t quite prepared him for the pain of taking a glancing blow himself. Ryo had jumped into the attack trying to save MegaGargomon’s life, but that simple change in fate resulted in two Digimon being knocked out of the fight instead of one- and the giant mechanical Digimon still lost a leg in the exchange.

With Justimon and MegaGargomon now knocked out, Phoenixmon, Magnamon, and HolyAngemon were the only fighters left against the ancient Magnamon. Davis’s partner still didn’t know what Ryo had been planning, but he had faith in the Tamer’s ability to come up with winning strategies after they had worked together to defeat Millenniummon so long ago. He focused all of his energy into the variation of the Magna Explosion attack he had first used against Ghoulmon. The golden beam lanced towards the older Royal Knight, who didn’t notice the attack until an instant before it hit. Unlike before when Magnamon X would simply allow attacks to dissipate uselessly against his aura of miracle energy, the Royal Knight threw up a golden barrier and flew upwards as fast as he could trying to avoid the attack.

Davis’s partner was surprised at the final result of the attack—his beam had only been delayed for a moment by Magnamon X’s shield and went straight through to hit the X-Antibody Digimon’s legs—or at least, that’s what Magnamon had to assume, as Magnamon X was now missing the lower half of his body. Magnamon briefly had time to wonder how this had happened before the strain of his latest attack caught up to him—and caused him to burn through the last of the time he could maintain his Golden Armor form before passing out as Veemon once again.

HolyAngemon saw the savior of his continent fall, and immediately threw himself at the remaining half of the enemy Royal Knight. The fact that Magnamon X was still around and not even flickering meant he wasn’t on the verge of defeat—and thus he would soon be able to resume his rampage. To this point, the only one who had been able to inflict any damage on the Royal Knight had been his modern counterpart—which meant restoring Veemon was a top priority. Phoenixmon wasn’t the best healer, but she at least had that ability—something HolyAngemon had lost when Arkadimon corrupted him in their final fight. As such, HolyAngemon knew he was the most expendable member of their team, and strategically he was the best sacrifice in order to work towards a victory.

HolyAngemon wasn’t sure if Magnamon X’s lack of reaction to his attack stemmed more from shock at losing half of his body or just an extension of his previous attitude of not caring about any attacks coming his way. Regardless of the reason, it didn’t make a difference as the crippled angel tried to put every last bit of power into his combination. Even if he couldn’t damage the Royal Knight, he had to at least keep Magnamon X busy. Even reduced to one of his three wings, he managed to speed past the Royal Knight with his Masamune. Instead of going for a direct hit with the blade, however, HolyAngemon relied on the aftereffects of the slash to hit Magnamon X seven times with a single movement. The barrage didn’t accomplish anything other than producing a series of clinking noises, but HolyAngemon kept repeating the maneuver as he started preparing for his next move. He slowly started lifting the seal he had placed on himself to contain Arkadimon’s corruption. Lifting it was a dangerous prospect—not because he was afraid of losing himself, but because once he gave into the darkness he would shift into a new form that he was not yet ready to fight in. It was a fine balancing act between not letting enough power out and letting too much out to his own detriment.

Luckily, Magnamon X still seemed to be in shock, leaving HolyAngemon a bit of time to experiment. He released just enough energy to the point where the dark power formed a black aura around him, slightly increasing his speed and strength. However, that was as far as he got before the Royal Knight seemed to pull himself together mentally. Magnamon X turned and launched himself at the fallen angel, no longer bothering with his previous attitude of taking things at a more leisurely pace. However, the Holy Knight’s fist didn’t reach his target, as HolyAngemon disappeared in a flash of feathers leaving behind an orb of darkness. When Magnamon X touched it, the orb split into multiple smaller orbs, leaving the Royal Knight surrounded by the vestiges of HolyAngemon’s attack. The orbs all flew inward after a second, though from how easily they dissipated against the Royal Knight’s golden aura HolyAngemon knew he would have to step up his game. Luckily, he was in the perfect position, as he had warped to a location directly below Magnamon.

The fallen angel took a deep breath before raising one hand in the air and calling out, “Pandaemonium Flare!” Drawing his power from the Dark Area itself, he summoned pillars of hellfire that met in the air at Magnamon X’s position. The scorching inferno greedily pulled everything towards it, keeping the golden knight trapped within its embrace. However, HolyAngemon found himself losing control of the attack and started to rise off the ground, heading for the heart of his own inferno. Instead of trying to stop the attack, however, he decided to add to it—and threw a Sin Harvest into the center of the flames. He couldn’t afford to let up his attacks with Magnamon X’s near-invulnerability, so he had to hope his combined attack would accomplish something before he was destroyed by it.

However, before the Sin Harvest could detonate, a separate explosion snuffed out all of HolyAngemon’s attacks—and the life of the angel who had cast them. Magnamon X descended panting after unleashing his Extreme Jihad—considering his body’s weakened state after having the miracle energy that comprised his being neutralized, unleashing his strongest attack had been a risky proposition. He allowed himself a moment to recover slightly before flying towards his other opponents. Considering how low his energy reserves were, he couldn’t afford to give the last two Digimon who knew his location time to plan a counterattack. Omnimon had proven it was possible to defeat the power of Miracles by outlasting it, and Magnamon was not going to make the same mistake twice.

However, when Magnamon X arrived at the location of his remaining opponents, he was forced to stop his charge as he saw something he hadn’t expected—the Justimon woke up and grabbed hold of the Phoenixmon. An instant later, Phoenixmon burst into data that the smaller Digimon gleefully absorbed. The Royal Knight didn’t have time to ponder what this could mean before the Android Digimon suddenly appeared in front of him and plunged his hand into Magnamon’s chest. The Royal Knight could only widen his eyes in shock as a darkness radiated through him that completely engulfed his miracle energy. The voice that came from the abomination before him no longer sounded like that of Justimon—instead, Magnamon X got the brief impression he was talking to a being far stronger than Yggdrasil.

“I suppose on some level I owe you for allowing me a small taste of freedom. In payment, I shall allow you to keep your history.”

Magnamon then felt a strange distortion before he collided with a copy of himself—knocking them both into a devastating beam of golden light. The being in Justimon’s body seemed to appreciate its handiwork for a moment before Phoenixmon knocked him to the ground and pinned him down beneath one of her talons.

“Who are you, and what did you do with Ryo?”

The being just laughed. “Do you really think you could hold me if I wanted to escape? I assure you, your memories of me killing you are accurate. I suppose my Chrono Paradox does result in some inconsequential changes like you being alive. However, it seems my time is up. Tell Ryo his REAL partner says hello.”

Suddenly, Justimon spasmed under Phoenixmon’s foot as the dark energy faded away. With a groan, Justimon’s normal voice responded, “Phoenixmon, can you get off me? What even just happened?”

The Holy Beast didn’t lift her claws away from the fallen Digimon, however. “Why don’t you explain to me what just happened? Magnamon X killed the others, I healed you, and then you killed me. Next thing I know, everyone’s alive again and you’re talking about your Chrono Paradox.”

Hearing those words, Ryo immediately understood what had happened. He interrupted the Mega level perched on top of him. “ZeedMillenniummon must have taken control. I’m not sure what he did or how he was stopped, but since reality seems to be okay I guess things could be worse.” No sooner had he said that than everything exploded into a rainbow of color that suddenly disappeared, leaving a dull tingling as the only sensation he could feel.

Omnimon sprang forward, using his newly-learned Omega Sword attack against Alphamon. The black Royal Knight countered by swinging his golden glaive into the attack, and the two blades clashed with a mighty shockwave. Alphamon was forced to take a single step backwards from the force, while Omnimon skidded backwards just trying to stop his momentum. Beyond this, however, the only damage that seemed to be done was to the cape on each Royal Knight, which caught on fire and burned off. Neither Digimon paid any attention to this, and Alphamon immediately charged forward with another swing of his weapon.

This time, Omnimon was expecting the shockwave from the weapons clash, and managed to prepare himself for the impact. Using his MetalGarurumon arm to brace his sword arm, he managed to hold his ground against Alphamon’s strike. Capitalizing when the other Royal Knight slightly lost balance in the clash, Omnimon leaned backwards and kicked Alphamon into the air. Not wanting to waste the opening, he followed up with his Dash Grey Sword, not wanting to spend the few seconds it would take him to prepare another Omega Sword. Though the attacks were weaker, they were fast enough that Alphamon was briefly forced on the defensive, though he managed to deflect every slash before it could hit him.

Eventually, Omnimon had to slow down his attacks—and Alphamon took advantage with a mighty downward slash. Omnimon was forced to use both of his arms to support his sword in order to block—and only then did he notice through this whole time that Alphamon was just using one hand on his own weapon. Omnimon saw the reason for this as the black knight’s free hand started glowing with green energy, and the fused knight wisely decided to disengage and fly away as quickly as he could. He barely managed to avoid being skewered in the green blasts that seemed to split into ten as soon as they were fired, but Alphamon didn’t let up his barrage. Omnimon managed to fly through the continuous stream of attacks, but this brought no comfort to the white knight—Alphamon was so effectively limiting the directions Omnimon could move that Omnimon knew the only explanation was Alphamon was herding him to a specific location.

After a brief period on the run, Omnimon was flying only a few feet off of the ground when Alphamon changed his attack pattern and brought his off hand onto his weapon, coating it in a golden flame as he flew towards the other Royal Knight. However, despite Alphamon no longer keeping up his attack, Omnimon found himself still trapped as the green blasts continued to impact around him, leaving no way to escape Alphamon’s downward slash without taking any hits from Alphamon’s other attack. With only a split second to react, Omnimon threw up his Brave Shield Omega and flew through the continuous rain of green blasts just before Alphamon could cut him in half. The explosion on the ground added a bit of speed to Omnimon’s dodge—which was the only reason he was able to get through the blasts with only his shield dissolving instead of his entire body.

Omnimon allowed himself to let out a sigh of relief as he launched his counterattack. His Omega Howling had nowhere near the power of Omegamon’s, even ignoring the recent boost Hideto’s partner had received thanks to the X-Antibody. However, Omnimon and his partners weren’t ones to be dissuaded by a difference in power, so the Royal Knight had worked on improving his attack in other ways to compensate. Three icy blasts shot from his cannon towards Alphamon, who wasn’t able to wrench his weapon from the ground in time to evade. Rather than taking the hits, the Royal Knight flew upward—only for the attack to swerve upward and continue chasing him. The homing blasts connected with the black night in a burst of sound—letting Omnimon know that the sonic aspect of his attack had hit as well. The white knight could only hope the sonic assault would be somewhat disorienting and give him an advantage through the rest of the fight.

Alphamon seemed to shake off the attack fairly quickly, but Omnimon still noticed the enemy Royal Knight’s aura seemed just a little less menacing. Alphamon had once more brought out his Seiken Gradalpha, but losing his other weapon seemed to make him more cautious. He kept his distance and continued firing the blasts of green energy from before, but Omnimon noticed the attacks were far fewer in quantity than his previous barrage. Omnimon was able to match the attacks with missiles and blasts from his own cannon, and where before Alphamon’s attack was able to easily disintegrate the Brave Shield Omega this new volley was cancelled out by Omnimon’s weaker blasts. Omnimon couldn’t help but think things were too easy—right up until something slammed him into the ground.

As Omnimon shook off the pain from the surprise attack and the cuts now decorating his armor, he saw his attacker for the first time—a large golden dragon wielding a sword in each arm and with blades for wings as well. However, before he could even identify the dragon, it flew next to Alphamon. The black knight held out his hand, and in a flash of green light the golden dragon transformed back into Alphamon’s sword. In a burst of golden light, the enemy Royal Knight seemed to return to his previous level of power. Omnimon sent a barrage of missiles intending to freeze the Royal Knight, but his salvo exploded a few feet away from Alphamon as the projectiles impacted the knight’s invisible barrier. The dome of ice didn’t impede Alphamon at all as he smashed it with a flash of green energy, but Omnimon still managed to feel relieved—in the time it took Alphamon to return to his full power, Matt and Tai had managed to send a message through to him with data that Sigma and Neo had collected from their earlier fight and what little bit they had collected on their own Digimon Analyzers in the meantime.

Without the benefit of Mask’s Square, it was a lot more difficult to communicate with their partners, but Omnimon was glad to have received this message when he did. He now had a better understanding of Alphamon’s abilities and knew that part of the reason for his power was because he had combined with the dragon Digimon Owryumon to Mode Change into Alphamon Ouryuken Mode. The other Knight’s power seemed a little less overwhelming now that Omnimon knew where it came from—and now that he had a plan for how to deal with it. Looking at how Alphamon had fought him compared to how Omnimon X fought Omegamon, Hideto had realized one flaw in the fighting of the ancient Royal Knights—they assumed the modern versions they faced had the same abilities as their companions had in ancient times. Alphamon assumed Omnimon was able to use the Omega inForce to read any moves in the near future—and thus he tried to set up long term openings for future attacks instead of unleashing his full power right away. It was a sound strategy against the Omega inForce, but because the strategy was based on the flawed assumption that Omnimon could actually use that power Alphamon was preventing himself from winning by just overpowering his opponent from the start.

Omnimon just hoped this wasn’t the only flawed assumption Alphamon was making, as the next phase of the plan depended on exploiting an additional oversight. Of course, even with the general idea of a plan, Omnimon knew it would be difficult to set up the appropriate situation to put the next steps in motion. Now that Alphamon had been separated from his sword once, he would probably be a lot more careful with it in the future. Omnimon would have to force the other Royal Knight to make a mistake in order to proceed—and that meant he had to take the initiative. He launched off another round of Omega Howling, but instead of keeping his distance he charged forward, igniting his sword and managing to outpace the frozen shots and lash out at Alphamon with his Omega Sword.

Omnimon had planned on locking blades with the other Royal Knight and keeping him in place while his blasts could home in and strike Alphamon, but the ancient Royal Knight didn’t cooperate. Instead of trying to power through the other Royal Knight’s strike, Alphamon used his Ouryuken blade to vault over Omnimon and shoot down the Omega Howling blasts with a short burst of his Digitalize of Soul. Before he even finished his flip, however, he stopped his attack and formed a blade of light in his hand, stabbing it backwards into Omnimon’s left shoulder. The Seiken Gradalpha attack left Omnimon’s entire MetalGarurumon arm numb, and the lack of sensation started spreading throughout the rest of his body. Omnimon quickly flew down to the ground before he lost his ability to fly, but one disadvantage of his new form was the lack of any sort of hands to grab and try to remove the magical sword.

Omnimon was so busy trying to deal with Alphamon’s latest attack that he didn’t notice the other Royal Knight was rapidly closing in on him with his Ultimate Ouryuken attack. The paralyzing effect had reached the point where he wasn’t able to turn his head—but luckily, he had partners looking out for him. Just before the golden blade could strike the fused knight, he split into gridlines and Alphamon’s blade passed through the now empty space to impact on the ground with a massive golden explosion. WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon became solid just as the explosion passed them by, and WarGreymon couldn’t believe how lucky they had gotten with the plan to surprise Alphamon with a Partition. MetalGarurumon, however, had a decidedly less optimistic view of the situation. He may not have been impaled with a magical sword anymore, but the aftereffects of the attack meant he could barely move his body. The plan had been for him to take advantage of the opening to attack Alphamon with everything he had to buy a little bit of time, but as it was all the wolf could manage in his current state was a weak attempt at throwing his body into Alphamon’s to push the Royal Knight away.

Despite the unimpressive nature of the attack, the combination of surprise and the backlash from his own prior attack forced Alphamon to take a single step backward, leaving the Ouryuken behind once again. This was all the opening WarGreymon needed to launch his Brave Tornado at the discarded weapon. Once it was separated from Alphamon, the blade was nothing more than a transformation of Owryumon—and as a Dragon Digimon, Owryumon was just as vulnerable to the Dramon Destroyers as a Dramon-species Digimon. WarGreymon’s attack shredded the golden blade, reducing it to golden shards that spread over the battlefield.

With the copy of Owryumon shattered, Alphamon was forced to revert back to his normal mode—though with the explosion of gold and green energy that erupted from him, it was clear that despite the limited individuality Lucemon’s shades possessed, the loss of his partner left the duplicate of the Royal Knight thoroughly enraged. However, the flashy attack went to waste as WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon were no longer there—instead they were in the process of DNA Digivolving back to Omnimon.

This time around, the ancient Royal Knight wasn’t going to let his opponent get away unscathed just due to a timely form change. Seeing where Omnimon was materializing, Alphamon charged forward with his Seiken Gradalpha. When Omnimon once again became solid, Alphamon was so close to him that the fused Digimon didn’t have time to dodge or use his Brave Shield Omega. Without any other choice, he put as much energy as he could into a single sword thrust.

Without the X-Antibody, Omnimon was nowhere near as strong as Omegamon. Even ignoring that power, Hideto’s partner was still much stronger due to more experience fighting in a combined form as well as having a partner like Hideto who could come up with new attacks to widen the combat arsenal. In spite of all that, however, Omnimon still had a vast amount of power, and his training with Omegamon over the past few months had only increased that. When he put all of his power into his sword, he ended up with an attack that was somewhere between an Omega Sword and an All Delete. The speed of Alphamon’s charge meant the ancient Royal Knight also wasn’t able to react Omnimon’s counterattack, and he ended up impaling himself on Omnimon’s sword. The attack blew a massive hole in Alphamon’s chest, obliterating where his DigiCore would be if he were a real Digimon.

However, unfortunately for Omnimon, Alphamon wasn’t a real Digimon. While the injury was still enough to be a mortal blow, Alphamon didn’t burst into data. This meant his initial charge still resulted in Omnimon getting a Seiken Gradalpha embedded in his left shoulder, losing feeling in that arm. He only noticed that for a few moments before Alphamon managed to move his other arm enough that his second Seiken Gradalpha pierced Omnimon’s chest. At that point, the Royal Knight lost all feeling, magically sealed into position by the now deceased Alphamon.

Chapter Text

Lucemon smirked as AncientSphinxmon dove headlong into the Gehenna Sphere keeping AncientMegatheriummon hostage. The warrior of darkness seemed to be all too used to snatching his friends out of their prisons—but after the first couple of rescues Lucemon found this quite annoying. Of course, the Ultimate level didn’t just have darkness at his disposal. With AncientSphinxmon now within the sphere, Lucemon converted it to a prison of light. It wasn’t nearly as potent as he could have made it—but the goal of this was to imprison the Legendary Warriors, not obliterate them. With AncientSphinxmon trapped in an impenetrable barrier of light, no other warriors would be able to leave their prisons of darkness. Lucemon instantly flickered over to AncientGarurumon and trapped him first, knowing he was the only one who had a chance of freeing the Warrior of Darkness. With Light and Darkness both subdued, catching the rest of the Legendary Warriors was surprisingly anticlimactic—Lucemon almost regretted the ease with which he could reduce his former enemies to simple trophies.

The momentary dissatisfaction was washed away in a sudden explosion of cold energy. Lucemon only reacted to the attack by brushing some snow off of his shoulders and turning to face the source.

“You’re the one known as Omegamon, correct? I suppose I should thank you for the refreshing attack. I was starting to feel a little sleepy.” Lucemon’s eyes then trailed to a smaller figure flying in from a different angle. The Demon Lord’s smile just grew wider.

“Well, always fun to face another Demon Lord. I suppose this is a momentous occasion—since neither UlforceVeedramon Future Mode or Gallantmon Crimson Mode can maintain their higher forms, I’m facing the strongest Digimon from the DigiDestined teams of two universes. I guess I should honor that and give you a little bit more of a glimpse of what I’m capable of.”

As he said this, a shroud of dark energy formed around him, eventually taking the form of a giant purple dragon. The seven Code Keys hovered over the demon’s back, though the green Code Key of Lust was dimmer compared to near-blinding intensity of the other six. Though the transformation to his Shadowlord Mode was relatively unimpressive as far as Digivolutions went, the increase in power as Lucemon stopped holding back more than made up for it. Examon’s sheer size was difficult for the Digital World to process, resulting in extreme lag just from his presence until his data was compressed into a smaller form. Lucemon’s power was so great that it overloaded the Digital World and crashed it. Instead of the rocky landscape they had been fighting on, the combatants were now floating in an endless void.

Those gathered around Lucemon could barely hide their shock. Omegamon had seen Arkadimon’s rampage and had for a time actively fought towards a goal that involved the destruction of the world, but seeing it come to play before his eyes wasn’t something he was ready for. Beelzemon had seen the end result of the D-Reaper’s rampage on his own Digital World, but the world had still existed in pieces before it eventually repaired itself into something resembling a whole. The Legendary Warriors were at least more prepared, having lived through the destruction of the Digital World on Lucemon’s orders once. However, even though they had been powerless to stop that destruction, at least they had plenty of opportunities to try—but Lucemon had just accomplished in a few moments what had taken the Royal Knights weeks in the previous battle.

However, all it took was Lucemon’s laugh to snap Omegamon out of his trance. He supposed there was one advantage to this situation—fighting in a void meant he didn’t need to worry as much about collateral damage. For the first time since obtaining the X-Antibody, he unleashed a full power Omega Howling. Lucemon’s laugh was quickly drowned out as the wave of explosions covered the Demon Lord’s body. When Omegamon finished his attack, all that was left of Lucemon was a black sphere encased in several yards of ice. Seeing this, Omegamon kept his cannon trained on the sphere, knowing things couldn’t have been that easy. Sure enough, the ice quickly shattered as the dragon reformed to clutch the sphere once again before Lucemon’s laugh returned.

“I must admit I’m impressed on two fronts. First, there aren’t many Digimon that would be able to damage me in this state. Second, I’m impressed that any Digimon allied with the DigiDestined would be pragmatic enough to attack while their enemy is still getting used to a newer form. In honor of that, I’ll let you have one more attack. Go ahead, try again.”

Omegamon knew this was a trap, but he didn’t see any harm in trying again. He prepared another burst of Omega Howling and started firing just as Takuya called out, “Don’t waste your energy—that dragon can just keep regenerating from any damage!” However, what caused Omegamon to stop his attack wasn’t the fact that Lucemon could regenerate, but the fact that this second barrage never even touched the Demon Lord.

“I’m sorry, are you still expecting me to be limited to the same abilities I demonstrated in our last fight? Need I remind you, I only assumed my Shadowlord form after you had cut me in half and absorbed most of my data. This time around, I have my full power. I can nullify all attacks with my Gehenna—now that I’m prepared, I won’t even need to regenerate!”

What followed was an outburst of maniacal laughter, and Omegamon started running through his options as well. After all, Dot Matrix was a supposedly perfect attack and defense, but it hadn’t been enough to stop Arkadimon’s defeat. While Lucemon devoted his time to gloating, Omegamon started freeing the Legendary Warriors from their prisons. After their long battle against Lucemon they likely weren’t anywhere near full power, but they were the team that had had the most interactions with Lucemon. If anyone had any information that could help win this fight, it would be the Legendary Warriors.

In the time it took Omegamon to come to this conclusion, however, Beelzemon had already put it into practice. He had been closest to Koichi, and in freeing the Warrior of Darkness he learned about Lucemon’s true form hidden within the Gehenna sphere—an impressive defense, if it truly could negate any attack. That just meant Beelzemon would have to get in there with something that wasn’t an attack and bodily drag Lucemon out into the open. Of course, for that to happen, he’d have to get to Lucemon without the more powerful Demon Lord noticing his approach. If BeelStarrmon were here, she would have been able to accomplish this fairly easily with her ability to warp space—but without her, Beelzemon was at a loss for ideas. Luckily, Koichi had his own plans.

As Rhihimon, he had the ability to stop time as he attacked—which would normally allow him to win any fight but Lucemon was able to move through stopped time as well. As AncientSphinxmon, he theoretically would have even stronger time manipulating abilities. He hadn’t exactly tried it out, but considering the situation he was willing to try. The end result was mostly successful—Beelzemon ended up in a localized time field that allowed him to move at a relative speed so fast he could have given an UlforceVeedramon a challenge in a race. Koichi could only maintain the effect for a fraction of a second before the strain caused him to collapse, but at the speed Beelzemon was travelling fractions of a second was more than enough time to get underneath Lucemon right up against the Gehenna Sphere. Unfortunately, Lucemon’s defensive sphere didn’t take too kindly to the high-speed approach of an enemy. Beelzemon crashed into the unyielding sphere with enough force to break his wings.

Beelzemon used up the rest of his time-acceleration field just trying to clear his head from the impact. Luckily, he was fairly hard-headed, and apart from the disorientation and broken wings he wasn’t hurt enough to take him out of the fight. Of course, that now meant he had to find a way through the barrier on the Gehenna sphere, since flying into it hadn’t bypassed its defenses. He tried approaching it more slowly, but when the surface of the sphere still didn’t let him through he realized he needed to get creative. He could try to test his strength and just blast through it, but he didn’t harbor any illusions that Lucemon would just ignore him if he unleashed a giant explosion right under his body. He started with trying his Darkness Claw attack, but the only result was a tiny scratch that quickly sealed itself.

Still, this one bit of progress made Beelzemon realize a flaw in Lucemon’s defenses—one that Lucemon himself had spelled out. After all, he said the Gehenna can negate any attack- not that it did negate any attack. Lucemon likely needed to exert some sort of conscious effort to use that effect—so someone who managed to sneak up beneath the larger Demon Lord would potentially be able to get in with a surprise attack. Of course, even without negating attacks the Gehenna proved to be incredibly durable—but that just meant Beelzemon could try out his new abilities. Calling on the data he had taken from the Dynasmon copy, he used a Dragon Thrower attack but instead of unleashing the blast he channeled the energy into his claws.

The combination of Dragon Thrower and Darkness Claw finally managed to get through the outer shell of the Gehenna—but only barely. Beelzemon started flashing back to when he was desperately trying to pull Jeri out of the Kernel Sphere of the D-Reaper, when he hadn’t quite been strong enough to pull the agent’s shield apart and was pushed out. Not wanting to repeat that performance, he charged even more energy into his claws and managed to rip open a huge hole—which unfortunately was accompanied by a loud sound reminiscent of breaking glass. Knowing he didn’t have a whole lot of time now that his cover was blown, Beelzemon dived head-first into the sphere of darkness.

Clawing his way deeper into the sphere proved only slightly less difficult than breaking through the outer shell. Nothing was visible within, so he had to rely on his starting sense of direction and trust that he wouldn’t start going in circles. The darkness seemed to cling to him and try to drag him back, almost as if he were trying to swim through quicksand. Unbidden, he started flashing back to when he was nearly devoured by the swarm of Chrysalimon—he could almost feel his energy depleting and the same crushing sense of wanting to give up. After all, how could he hope to find Lucemon’s true form within this sphere? Maybe it was best to just surrender now and get it over with.

While Beelzemon was struggling within the Gehenna Sphere, Omegamon had managed to free most of the Legendary Warriors from their inferior prisons. Ever since the sphere had cracked, Lucemon had been oddly silent, which was setting off warning bells in the Royal Knight’s head. Even if the Legendary Warriors were exhausted, they still could be valuable allies when Lucemon sprung whatever trap he had waiting. Unfortunately, knowing a trap was coming didn’t make him any more prepared for when Lucemon suddenly appeared directly above him and stomped him into the ground hard enough that the Demon Lord’s foot shattered Omegamon’s armor. With a casual flick of his wrist, all the prisoners Omegamon had freed were instantly contained once again, and Lucemon just let out a sigh of disappointment.

“Did you honestly believe I would just use the same form from our last battle as my trump card? I’ve evolved to the point where my form is meaningless—I am still far beyond a Super Ultimate. My goal is to build a world of balance between light and darkness—why would I take a form that only embodies one side? At least it offered a convenient trap—I was really hoping someone would take the bait and dive into the Gehenna. Of course, the effect of that level of darkness will be muted on a Demon Lord, but I do wonder how long it will be before he surrenders to his weakness and lets his data corrode.”

As Omegamon gave a weak cough below him, Lucemon glanced downwards. “I am a little disappointed though. I was so looking forward to corrupting a modern Royal Knight. I saw what happened when the other two used dark Digivolution, but I think I could pull off something better than just painting your armor black. Maybe I’ll just keep dragging copies of you into the future to experiment on—but in your current state, you aren’t worth the effort.”

Lucemon conjured a ball of swirling light and darkness in his hand when the sound of shattering glass interrupted him. Turning to his Shadowlord Mode, he saw a wyvern of energy crawling its way out of the Gehenna Sphere. The giant dragon started melting away as the core of its existence was destroyed, and Lucemon allowed his shadow to return to him instead of reforming his Shadowlord Mode. The Crown of the Seven Deadly Sins arranged itself behind Lucemon’s Chaos Mode just as the wyvern faded away to reveal Beelzemon. The strain of using Dynasmon’s attack after his time in the Gehenna Sphere seemed to be too much for the Demon Lord to handle, and he fell to the ground barely able to hold on to his Mega level. Still, the display was enough for Lucemon to let his attack dissipate.

“From looking at his world’s history, there isn’t a such thing as the Code Key of Gluttony. Still, I can’t help but feel like he’s more deserving of the honor of bearing a Code Key than my former compatriot was. My world’s Beelzemon was horribly dull. His Code Key didn’t even resist giving its power to me—at least my more spirited companions inspired some loyalty from their artifacts.”

Suddenly, a massive grin split his face. “In fact, even with all my power, the Code Key of Lust hasn’t been cooperating with me. Until now!” As he said this, the green symbol on the Crown of Seven Deadly Sins flared up to match the others in brightness. However, this change was minor compared to the change brought on in the void surrounding the DigiDestined.

Where before there had been nothingness, a giant tree sprang into existence behind Lucemon, with countless branches snaking out across the void. Taking a closer look at the nearby branches, Beelzemon saw they seemed to have more of a crystalline property than an organic one, but when Lucemon snapped his fingers his attention was instantly drawn away from the tree to the new arrivals. Before he had been operating mostly on his own, and the only allies within his line of sight were Omegamon and the Legendary Warriors. Now, it seemed a good number of his friends had appeared before him—but looking at the shape they were in, Beelzemon suddenly worried that this was actually all of them.

Omnimon was here and hadn’t burst into data, but there was no sign of life from the Royal Knight as he and Alphamon were both impaled on each other’s blades. Phoenixmon seemed mostly okay, bur her feathers were ruffled and she looked like she had been bodily dragged the entire distance here. MagnaAngemon had collapsed on the ground, though he was struggling to pick himself up. Angewomon was trying to heal everyone, but it looked like she had already expended most of her power and wasn’t accomplishing much. Veemon, Wormmon, and Meramon seemed to just be waking up after a period of unconsciousness, while BeelStarrmon wasn’t even moving in her Impmon form. Floramon seemed mostly unhurt, and there were still two Lopmon around—though one of them was unconscious. Disturbingly, there was only one Terriermon, also passed out on the ground. Kapurimon and Calumon were also unconscious, but MarineAngemon was trying to heal them at the moment. Justimon looked shaken but otherwise okay, and Belphemon and Leviamon were somehow still sleeping through everything. Lalamon seemed to be fine, while HolyAngemon and Anubismon looked to still be able to fight.

The fact that these were the only Digimon around just showed how many had been lost in the fight to this point—and that wasn’t even counting the injuries to the children themselves. None of them looked to be in good shape, but Beelzemon couldn’t help but be drawn to Henry’s missing leg or Rika’s unnaturally still body. However, he was forced to look away from the humans when the tree branches started glowing with light and Lucemon’s smug voice cut through the silence.

“You all should feel honored—it’s not often you get to see the fabric of reality. We were in the void between dimensions before, but now I’m strong enough that I can bring the branches of the Server Tree to existence. Even in worlds where the Yggdrasil program has been destroyed, the branches that connected them are still strong. I could reach into other dimensions before, but now I have access to the nexus of reality!”

The glow from the Server Tree’s branches faded, and TK realized Lucemon wasn’t exaggerating. Now Lucemon had seemingly activated them, the tree behaved like a mass of fiber optic cables—but the images shown within corroborated the Demon Lord’s claim. TK could see some things he recognized as happening from his own experience—he once again witnessed Omnimon’s birth and subsequent defeat of Diaboromon in one branch while another showed Kimeramon’s defeat at the hands of Magnamon two years later. Other things he saw he recognized from stories the Legendary Warriors or Tamers had told him—such as Susanoomon defeating Lucemon and Takato merging with Guilmon to fight Beelzemon. There was even an image of a younger Tai wearing a yellow cape and riding an AeroVeedramon into battle against a Ghoulmon that must have come from the world Davis went to after the fight with Parallelmon. But while all of these images came from time periods or worlds he recognized, there were many that didn’t line up with any world history he was aware of.

In one branch, five children faced off against the Dark Masters in what was apparently a losing battle until four of their partner Digimon Digivolved into the Sovereign and the fifth—a Megadramon—sacrificed its life to defeat the evil Megas. In another, an angelic Digimon with black hair, white wings, and a sword challenged a deific figure composed of floating octahedrons—and was quickly struck down with a blast of lightning. A third showed a human riding an Agumon that was somehow flying with a red aura facing off against a figure composed of crystal similar to the Server Tree—and defeating this deific figure by punching it in the face. The next branch over showed the same human trying to repeat this feat while fighting Marsmon—and being slammed so hard over the war god’s knee that his back must have broken. Yet another branch showed a blond boy riding what appeared to be a Greymon with blue armor and wings as he ordered it to fire on two other kids and a small group of Digimon accompanying them.

TK couldn’t help but marvel at all these possible worlds. Sure, he had already experienced more planes of existence than most beings ever had, but it was one thing to know that other worlds existed and another to see a representation of just how many worlds there were. Some of them seemed so similar to his own—for example, one branch showed a version of the battle with Apocalymon slightly different from his own. In this version, it looked like Joe, Izzy, Sora, and Mimi also had access to the Mega level—though Joe’s partner had become a Vikemon while Izzy’s partner had become a slightly different insect than HerculesKabuterimon. The extra power hadn’t helped, though—each of the Mega Digimon had their chests ripped open as they faded away into data. Other versions were significantly different—he was fairly certain he would never be able to replicate one feat he saw where a boy who looked a lot like him managed to fight a volcanic dragon with a sword and actually win. There was even a world where an abomination with a constantly changing form fought against the combined efforts of an Omnimon, an Alphamon, a Diaboromon, and three other Digimon he didn’t recognize. It seemed like in all these worlds, humans and Digimon would be bound together to fight whatever threats could come their way.

Unfortunately, he had his own threat right in front of him, so TK couldn’t afford to get lost in the fact that he was one part of a much larger whole when it came to being a DigiDestined. Lucemon had also seemed enraptured by his new toys, but the Demon Lord was now focusing on his opponents once again.

“As great as being able to hold the threads of reality are, I suppose I should at least appreciate some of the other gifts this new power gives me. The Olympos XII probably thought they were being clever when they removed you from their influence—and I admit, it did disappoint me that I couldn’t just see or manipulate you throughout the time stream. They freed you from the web of fate to stop me—though really, it was never more than a temporary hindrance.”

“When I realized I couldn’t touch you, I decided to look back a little further. It took a little digging from my pawns on Earth, but I found the names of your parents. And once I had that, I could find them in the time stream. I couldn’t see them at any point after you were born, but I could see them before—and affect them as easily as anything else. It would have been so easy to destroy them and prevent any of your births—but I decided that would defeat the purpose. I wanted to defeat the DigiDestined and have everyone know that the world’s greatest defenders were powerless to stop me—but how could I achieve that if suddenly the DigiDestined never existed? If I destroy the one beacon of hope everyone knows, nobody would try to rise against me. If there was never that beacon, people would get it in their heads that they might be the special ones and I’d have to spend every so often quelling an inconsequential rebellion. Much better that I wipe you from existence while still keeping the memory of you alive. And now that I’m this powerful, I can affect you just as well as anything else!”

A wave of light washed over the DigiDestined, but instead of being wiped from existence TK just felt something similar to a slight electrical charge—just enough to make his hair stand up a little bit, but not enough to be painful. Whatever Lucemon did didn’t seem to accomplish much—not counting Rika, all 34 of the DigiDestined (or whatever their preferred term happened to be) were still here. None of the Digimon seemed adversely affected either, so it wasn’t clear what exactly Lucemon was trying to accomplish. Everyone was looking mostly unsure, so Tai seemed to try and inject the team with some confidence.

“Well, looks like you aren’t as powerful as you thought. We’re all still here!”

Lucemon merely glanced down at his hand. “Hm, guess I still wasn’t holding back enough. I didn’t mean to wipe your protégé from reality that completely. Then again, brains weren’t your strong suit. Why don’t you ask your sister and her boyfriend about the four friends the fought alongside in 2002?”

TK and Kari just looked confused. Sure, there had been some disturbances shortly after TK had moved back to Odaiba, but there hadn’t been anything too severe—especially not enough to warrant needing four new DigiDestined. However, Ryo seemed to catch on right away.

“Where are Ken, Davis, Yolei, and Cody?”

Lucemon just smirked. “So, I see your partner gifts you with some degree of freedom from timeline changes. I’m afraid I’ve erased them too completely from existence—including everyone else’s memories. Oh well, at least I know to hold back more. Now, do any of you have any last words?”

Lucemon expected that to be a rhetorical question—and he wasn’t planning on deleting every DigiDestined anyway. However, he got a response right away—and not from a source he was expecting. He had almost forgotten he was standing on top of Omegamon until the Royal Knight coughed out, “Just two.” Lucemon looked down just in time to get a sword to the face as Omegamon called out, “All Delete!”

That attack had once been strong enough to delete the remains of the Digital World. In the current void, there was decidedly less collateral damage—though there was a cracking sound as the branches of the Server Tree absorbed quite a bit of force. The greatest effect was on the Demon Lord, however. Lucemon was strong enough to bend reality to his whim, but he wasn’t quite as durable as an entire plane of existence. The holy sword caused him to explode into a mass of fractal code that dwarfed even what the Legendary Warriors had beaten out of him after he absorbed much of the world.

The sheer quantity of data in addition to the surprise at how quickly this all played out left the DigiDestined and their allies shocked at the end of the fight. Anubismon was the first to react, throwing up a blue pyramid over the fractal code and doing his best to restore the data to a state where it could be reborn as a DigiEgg.

“I can’t promise I’ll be able to restore everyone perfectly. With this much data at once, there is bound to be some corruption. Some will be lost forever, some will be born without memories, and some may become completely different Digimon as their data overwrites each other.” The God Man Digimon suddenly whimpered in surprise and turned to his allies as he barked out another message. “I can’t pull the Code Keys or the Spirits away—and Lucemon is pulling himself back together!”

This was the only warning the DigiDestined got as the fractal code suddenly sprang together. The only one who managed to react in any way was Ryo, who undid his Biomerge with Cyberdramon just as Lucemon reformed himself. The Demon Lord of Pride was clearly shaken after the effects of Omegamon’s attacks—but he looked more angry than damaged. In the time it took Ryo to swipe a card, Lucemon had snarled and slashed his hand out. Just like when Davis and the others disappeared, all Ryo felt was a mild tingling—but he knew his friends wouldn’t be so lucky. Still, he made sure to finish swiping his newest card before even bothering to take in how alone he was. “Digi-Modify! ZeedMillenniummon Activate!”

With Lucemon able to reach the threads of reality that bound the multiverse together, Ryo had realized he was forced to rely on his last resort. Cyberdramon’s body twisted as the Evil God Digimon within him gained full control—and was completely freed from Monodramon’s influence. Ryo held his breath as the red and black heads of his greatest foe appeared—but then he gasped out as ZeedMillenniummon suddenly froze in place as his transformation finished. Lucemon had flown up to him and grabbed one of the green bars of fractal code surrounding the Super Ultimate Digimon.

“I’ll admit, I didn’t expect you to be so resilient against my attempts to erase you. But did you think in all my looking through time, I didn’t think I might have to fight ZeedMillenniummon someday? I couldn’t affect him directly with my power, but I could observe and learn his weakness. He should have so much more power than this, but he locked it away in order for you to have a chance to face him in battle. Strengthening his binding to the point where he can’t even move is child’s play!”

Ryo’s grip almost shattered his D-Power. After everything he had lived through and countless times saving the universe, he refused to fail now. “Okay, so those chains represent ZeedMillenniummon’s desire to bind his destiny with mine? Fine. That just means I’m the one with the key to the lock!”

He swiped the ZeedMillenniummon card again, but this time he transformed it into a blue card mid-swipe. There wasn’t a specific card he had in mind, but rather a specific result- and the DigiGnomes must have still been able to hear his cry. The fractal code binding ZeedMillenniummon shattered, letting the dragon unleash his full power. With Lucemon already straining the fabric of reality, the unbridled might of ZeedMillenniummon proved too much. Branches of the Server Tree that had previously been cracked were now outright shattered, and Ryo could only wonder what this would mean for the state of reality as a whole. However, he didn’t have much time to wonder about this before ZeedMillenniummon swallowed Lucemon whole and both Digimon suddenly winked out of existence.

However, the two reality warpers didn’t leave Ryo alone. It seemed the damage to the server tree had caused what had previously been fixed windows into different universes to behave more like half-realized portals. Ryo could barely make out different figures in the distance, some looking human while others had to be Digimon—or something else entirely. Only a handful were close enough to recognize, however. There was an angel-like Digimon who had fallen to the ground nearby, but either he had been on the verge of death before or the had suffered a horrible tragedy in transit because the left side of his body was scorched while the right side of his body was missing. Further in the distance, Ryo noticed a young man in a black cloak with long silver hair, but the mysterious figure just turned and walked away as if he wasn’t surprised to be taken into a dark void.

Before he could continue looking around, however, a few much more familiar figures appeared around him. All the DigiDestined who had disappeared at Lucemon’s last move faded back into reality, looking rather disoriented at what had just happened. A few seconds later, Davis and the others who had first been erased returned as well—and the DigiDestined of Miracles asked the question everyone seemed to be thinking.

“Okay, putting aside whatever it was that just happened, does the fact that Lucemon’s gone mean we’ve won?” Ryo could see the desire for optimism, but he could still feel a faint connection to ZeedMillenniummon and what he felt wasn’t good.

“I don’t think so. It feels like ZeedMillenniummon is stalling him but I don’t know if he can win. We need to come up with a backup plan just in case.”

Anubismon just started growling. “You say that, but is it even possible? I tried pulling the Code Keys away from Lucemon when he was dead and I couldn’t do it. He’ll be powerful enough to pull himself together no matter how hard we hit him if he has those—and I’m not even sure we can hit him hard enough anymore. I managed to grab Omegamon’s data but it will be quite some time before Warg and Melga’s eggs are fully formed after the damage from All Delete. The Digimental of Legends is out of energy, so we won’t have access to Burst Mode or the Super Ultimate level anymore. I doubt any of us Mega levels could kill Lucemon, so what options do we have?”

Hideto quickly turned to Tai and Matt. “Don’t even think about it. Omnimon wouldn’t survive if you tried to partition him, and we haven’t been able to heal him either. He’s just as out of this fight as Omegamon is.”

The two DigiDestined could only grip their Digivices helplessly as Hideto caught them in the middle of their plan. Takuya took a more direct approach to vent his frustration, slamming his foreleg down on one of the discarded branches of the Server Tree, but either because of his weakened state or the durability of the material even the burst of flame that accompanied this action did nothing to the wood.

“If we just had the spirits of the other four Legendary Warriors we could have the power we needed to kill him over and over again until we found a way to make him stay dead. It’s bad enough he’s so far ahead of us in power, but did he have to plan ahead too? What do we have to do to get this guy to stay down?”

Takuya was hoping somebody would be able to answer him, but he wasn’t expecting the particular voice that answered. “Are you all really this helpless without me? There’s an obvious solution to the second half of our problem.”

Everyone turned to look at the speaker—and they couldn’t believe that Rika was back among them. Ryo in particular was practically in shock. “Rika? I thought you were…”

Rika cut him off. “I probably was. But I really don’t want to think about it right now—I’ll have time to ponder the meaning of all this after we win this fight.” She turned towards Anubismon. “I did get a chance to talk with Alice a little bit though. She filled me in on what happened—and told you not to blame yourself for being unable to pull the Code Keys from Lucemon. She has faith in you still.”

Anubismon smiled briefly before composing himself. “You can be sure I’ll be asking you about how exactly you met my partner when this is all over. But going back to the matter at hand, what solution do you propose?”

Rika just smirked. “The way I see it, you couldn’t pull the Code Keys or the Spirits away from Lucemon because you don’t resonate with any of them on a particularly deep level. However, we should have more success if we have Digimon that do resonate with them try to download them from his loose data. We’ve got MarineAngemon for the Spirit of Water, Kapurimon for the Spirit of Steel, and Floramon for the Spirit of Wood. The Spirit of Earth will be a little trickier, but if Meramon at his Mega level is PileVolcamon he should be able to resonate with the spirit of AncientVolcanomon. And the Code Keys are simple—we’ve already got a Beelzemon, Leviamon, and Belphemon here. Add TK and Kari’s partners and we’ve got five of the seven Demon Lords just waiting to wrest the Code Keys away.”

HolyAngemon interrupted her. “There are a couple of details wrong with your plan. First, we must be sure no matter what that we do not absorb the Code Keys. They are fragments of an ancient evil that cannot be mastered. If we were to absorb them, we would lose control of ourselves and become just as evil as the previous generation of Demon Lords. However, we should still be able to grab them for a little bit. As for your second detail, we don’t have five Demon Lords.”

He let out a sigh before he was consumed by a black aura that hid his form. “Dominimon, Slide Evolution! Barbamon!” The corrupted angel became a bearded demon wielding a staff wrapped in spikes and topped with a skull.

“Arkadimon’s corruption filled me with darkness and twisted my Mega form. I’ve managed to seal away the corrupting influence, but it came at the cost of losing most of my power in this form. For the purposes of taking the Code Key of Greed, what little power I have should still be sufficient.”

Joe nodded along. “Well, normally I wouldn’t be one to suggest doing anything that could make things worse for us, but I say it’s time for us to put everything we have into Digivolving regardless of the health risks. We’ve got one shot at this, and we may as well make it count.”

Everyone nodded at this, but Sigma was quick to interject. “Well, we’ve got a plan for how to beat Lucemon at the end, but how do we get to that point? Everything we have is dependent on us being able to kill him first.”

Rika just stared down the masked Tamer. “Still working on that step. I may be the best Tamer in the world, but I can’t just stop Armageddon on my own.”

Izzy nearly facepalmed at this. “How could we have forgotten? All we need to do is wake up Omnimon and we’ll have everything we need for this.”

Tai and Davis’s groups immediately understood what Izzy was referencing, though everybody else seemed a little confused. Tai’s next response just added to this: “Hey, Kari? You still have that whistle on you? Just saying it would be really helpful right about now.”

Tai had been trying to inject a little bit of levity into the situation, but when Ryo fell to the ground screaming the attempt fell flat. Ryo managed to get himself under control enough to moan out.

“Whatever you’re planning, do it now. ZeedMillenniummon can’t buy us any more time.”

Neo took this as his cue to give out some final orders. “Mari, we need Lotusmon to heal Omnimon. He doesn’t need to be able to fight or even move, but he needs to be awake. Kari, we’ll need Lilithmon’s Darkness Love to get Pal and Pul to cooperate with our plans. Those who are directly involved in the plan should gather together near Omnimon. Everyone else, be ready to distract Lucemon if you have to.”

Everyone did as instructed, but even with how quickly they moved into position they barely had time to take a deep breath before Lucemon suddenly appeared before them in a pillar of hellfire. The Demon Lord of Pride supposed he could have easily erased the DigiDestined from the confines of whatever dimension ZeedMillenniummon had dragged him off to, but he still wanted to savor his defeat of them face to face instead of using such a cowardly means to win. He was certainly more cautious of them now than he had been before—but despite the losses he took from Omegamon’s attack he had gained far more power by absorbing ZeedMillenniummon. He had closely watched the DigiDestined’s fights ever since their defeat of Ogudomon and had seen everything they had to offer—and they had already used up their strongest fighters. He wouldn’t play with his enemies anymore, but it was safe to show his face when he destroyed them.

The Demon Lord’s relatively good mood at his latest conquest was the only thing stopping him from lashing out when his appearance was immediately met with a yell of “Positron Laser!” and a blast to the face. He actually had to brace himself in order to not take a step back, a reminder that the DigiDestined still had Imperialdramon Fighter Mode. Despite the power of the Mode Changed Digimon, however, it still wasn’t enough to do more than minor damage to the Demon Lord. The main annoyance was the giant flash of purple light, but if this was what the DigiDestined were relying on as their last attack he was almost disappointed in the end of the fight with his strongest opponents. When the glow of the attack faded, however, Lucemon’s disappointment was replaced with shock as the Ancient Dragon Man Digimon was flying towards him—and holding a giant sword. He just had time to process Imperialdramon’s armor turning into a pure white before the Omni Blade impaled him through the chest.

As Lucemon’s data started to reset, the Demon Lord could only wonder how this could have happened. He knew of the power of Imperialdramon Paladin Mode and how his technique would be a threat even to him—which was why he hadn’t brought the founder of the Royal Knights to this time even as he brought the others. But the DigiDestined had never shown the ability to advance to this level. Murmukusmon had been spying on them since the clash over the Gate of the Seven Deadly Sins, and they hadn’t bothered using Imperialdramon even when faced with a Super Ultimate. Even in the other world where the adventures of the DigiDestined were accurately chronicled in two anime series and three movies, this form had never appeared. Where did they get this power?

While Lucemon used the slight lag on the Omni Sword attack to ponder how this was all happening, Imperialdramon quickly flew away from the Demon Lord. The Omni Sword was already disintegrating as the last of Omnimon’s life energy faded away, so he couldn’t afford to get in the way of the next steps in the plan. Once again, Lucemon exploded into a cloud of data as he died, but this time Anubismon didn’t bother using his Pyramid Power to trigger rebirth, instead allowing Daemon, Beelzemon, and Barbamon to fly through the data cloud. The emerged from the other side, and the respective orange, yellow, and purple glows proved they had successfully stolen the Code Keys from Lucemon’s data. A second later, Leviamon and Belphemon awkwardly stumbled through, but still managed to latch onto the blue and indigo Keys of Sloth and Envy. Lilithmon went last, glad that Belphemon’s transition to Rage Mode hadn’t been enough to shake him free of the control of her Darkness Love. As soon as she grabbed the Code Key of Lust she collapsed to the ground, finding it difficult to resist the pull of her own Code Key at the same time as she was binding two other Demon Lords with their own keys.

A roar and slight relief of the pressure soon followed this, but instead of being relieved Lilithmon nearly froze in terror. It felt like Belphemon had just broken free of her control, and with everyone so tied up they really couldn’t afford to have the Demon Lord of Sloth go on a rampage. However, the roar was followed by a zapping sound, the smell of burnt hair, and Rosemon calling through gritted teeth, “Okay, I’ve got him.”

Lilithmon was grateful to have Mari’s partner on hand, and just hoped everyone would be able to hold out long enough to be sure Lucemon was actually dead. With the Code Keys sorted out, the four Digimon chosen to bond with the remaining spirits of the Legendary Warriors dove through the now shrinking cloud and just managed to emerge on the other side before Lucemon managed to reform himself yet again.

The Demon Lord was furious at being reduced to data yet again in the fight, and immediately tried to just delete everyone around him to be done with it. When he didn’t feel the technique work, he finally took stock of his situation and realized how much weaker he was than before the attack. It took him seeing the array of Demon Lords in front of him grasping their respective Code Keys to realize the exact source of the problem, but before he could make any move to rectify it the cry he heard from behind him that stopped him cold with dread. “Ancient Spirits Unite!”

Lucemon hoped he had just been hearing things, but when he turned around he saw the very figure that had been haunting his nightmares ever since his defeat at the hands of five humans all those ages ago. The Demon Lord gulped as he tried to plead for his life.

“Now, do we really have to end this with violence? I’m sure we can come to a solution if we talk this out.”

Susanoomon seemed to consider the offer. “You’re right. Even if we kill you now, you’d just be reborn in the new world. Maybe we should just talk this over.”

Lucemon couldn’t believe his luck when Susanoomon suddenly materialized the ZERO-ARMS: Orochi. “And we’ll gladly talk in the new world. But that world can’t exist until we destroy you now. Consider this the final act of justice for the old Digital World. Celestial Blade!”

The sword of light was powerful enough and large enough to bisect a planet with ease. It was an attack designed to eliminate a threat so great that the destruction of a planet was considered acceptable collateral damage. Lucemon was decidedly less durable than a planet, and without the power he had stolen over the past seven months he also didn’t have the ability to heal himself from the damage. The God Man Digimon’s attack utterly destroyed the Demon Lord, finally ending his reign of terror that threatened all realities.

Chapter Text

Once it was clear that Lucemon was finally dead, Susanoomon split apart into the humans and Digimon that had bonded with the ancient spirits. Floramon, Meramon, MarineAngemon, and Kapurimon had never experienced merging with other minds before, so upon their return to an individual form the welcomed the familiar absence of any other presence in their heads. The humans that had bonded with the Legendary Warrior spirits countless times were better off, though as they glanced around them they couldn’t help but feel they had earned nothing but a hollow victory. Once again, the world they had fought to defend had been destroyed, and this time the very structure that supported the multiverse had been damaged as well. The effects were most obvious on their version of the Digital World—where a once thriving population was now down to a mere handful—but there would doubtless be more far-reaching consequences they wouldn’t be able to see. Somehow, they would need to find a way to fix this—but that would have to be months or even years down the road. Right now, they needed to head back home and spend the foreseeable future in a hospital.

It was only when all the conscious members of the team huddled together that Mako raised a question nobody had thought of: “Okay, so how do we get home now?”

Neo quirked an eyebrow at this only to realize he didn’t have an answer for the young Tamer. It proved impossible to open a Digital Gate after the destruction of the Digital World, and their other options for interdimensional travel were also no longer available. Shortly after Lucemon’s death, those that had stolen the Code Keys had passed out from the strain of keeping them in check, luckily dropping them in the process so they weren’t taken over. Still, the passed-out forms of Impmon, Nyaromon, Poyomon, two Kiimon, and a Tsukaimon meant Wisemon wasn’t an option—and meant that any chance of using a corridor of darkness was gone as well. With ChaosPiedmon and ZeedMillenniummon both dead, they couldn’t rely on the reality warpers to get them home either. BeelStarrmon hadn’t woken up either, so right now it looked like the only option was to wait—and hope they found a solution before it was too late.

After ten minutes, it was getting harder and harder to quell the panic spreading through the group. They hadn’t exactly been doing nothing—everybody who was injured had been moved together and they were doing their best to keep them comfortable—but in terms of heading home there wasn’t anything to report. Izzy had decided to channel his frustration into something more productive, and he had found a way to deconstruct the Code Keys into a smaller form to store them in a safer manner than just letting them lay around. Of course, considering their nature he decided he wouldn’t use the flash drive they were stored on for anything else just to be safe. Since storing data seemed to be the only thing his laptop was still good for in this void that was once the Digital World, he then got to work helping Anubismon store the data that would eventually be born into the new world—assuming a new world ever formed.

Izzy was just trying to keep himself distracted, but when a new voice sounded out in the void he was almost glad to have something new to focus on. “Good, you’re all still here. I thought I sensed the Freeshooter.”

Everyone turned to face the new arrival, revealed to be Astamon. However, Lucemon’s former lieutenant wasn’t alone, as he was carrying two humans over his shoulders. Hideto quickly started analyzing his options in a fight but realized it was pointless—if Astamon wanted to kill them, there wasn’t anything they’d be able to do to stop him in their current states. They didn’t have a conscious Digimon above the Rookie level, and Astamon was able to fight on an even footing with Megas. Of course, considering their likely fate was dying of thirst or starvation, maybe Astamon would be doing them a service by putting them out of their misery quickly.

However, while Hideto was looking at things pessimistically, Neo was looking at this as an opportunity. After all, Takuya had told them about Astamon’s actions and it was clear the Prince of the Dark Area wasn’t Lucemon’s closest ally. They had done Astamon a favor by deposing the Demon Lord, and the Ultimate level also had the ability to open dark corridors. Regardless of the fact they had just been on opposite sides in a war, right now the best option would be to somehow ally with Astamon at least until they could get out of here. At the very least, Astamon didn’t seem hostile—once he arrived he gently set the two people he was carrying down near the other unconscious humans. Now that they were closer, Neo recognized one as Colonel Fuyutsuki, while the other one was a brown-haired man with glasses who looked to be a few years older than Joe. Hideto immediately started questioning the Demon Man Digimon on what he had done to them, but Astamon just waved his objections away—with an arm Neo noticed was glowing green.

“If you must know, I found them like this. Whatever happened to the Digital World seems to have messed with a lot of things—they probably ran into something their minds couldn’t handle. Physically they appear to be fine, but who knows what they saw that caused them to be like this. I’ve seen some things in the Dark Area that most mortals wouldn’t be able to comprehend without going insane—and that was from my home dimension. With reality as messed up as it is, maybe whatever happened to my arm happened to their heads. You should probably get them checked out when you head to your home world—assuming it still exists.”

Neo just nodded. “We’d be happy to take them off of your hands—but we don’t have a way home ourselves. Assuming you still have access to the Dark Corridors, I think we can come to an arrangement here. Your home has been destroyed—but I have the means to recreate the Digital World. If you help us return to our home, I will restore yours. If you don’t help us, neither one of us will ever see our home dimension again.”

Astamon just snorted. “Word to the wise, kid—don’t try to play hardball with royalty from the Dark Area. You have no idea what our day to day interactions were—a friendly chat for us is more menacing than anything you could come up with.”

He shook his head and straightened himself up. “Still, I’ve got nothing better to do—may as well take you up on your offer. Fair warning—last time I tried to travel between dimensions something ripped my arm off and replaced it with this green stuff. It doesn’t seem like it’s spreading, but obviously I can’t guarantee a safe trip.”

Everyone was a little suspicious at how easily Astamon was cooperating with them, but since they didn’t have any other option they went along with it well enough. All the Digimon agreed to be stored away within either Izzy’s computer or a Digivice 01 to make the trip easier, meaning when it was time for Astamon to open a portal he only had to bring the humans with him. Everyone who could still walk helped to carry those who couldn’t, and then all that remained was for Astamon to open the portal. He thrust out his hand and was rewarded with nothing more than a slight shimmer, more of a heat haze than an actual portal of darkness. Grunting, he added his other arm—the one that was made of pulsating green data. This time around, a portal formed—though not the one Astamon was expecting. Instead of a swirling mass of darkness, this new portal glowed green and had symbols on the outside that rotated, reminding Astamon of a clock. Still, through the portal he could see what looked to be a couple of humans, so he assumed it lead somewhere relatively safe and dove in. The experience was disorienting, and all too suddenly he found himself hitting the ground and collapsing while the humans screamed in shock.

The lone angel continued his vigil in the realm of nothingness long after the humans had departed. The mysteries revealed to him on this day may just make up for the excruciating pain inflicted on him by god. He knew he had been foolish—what hope did god’s left hand have of trying to lash out at god itself? However, he couldn’t stand the corrupt system of justice that decreed the world must always have good and evil until the black and red dragon devoured them all. That was not the justice he believed in—and so he had rebelled against god. He supposed losing the right half of his body was an appropriate punishment for his betrayal—but the subsequent events may have proven to be well worth the cost.

True, losing half of his body was the most painful thing he had ever experienced. However, he had then fallen into a new dimension and witnessed a great many things in the Server of the Gods. In his previous life, he had been the ruler of death, and that granted him certain power over the core of any being. He was nowhere near powerful enough to remove pieces of the server tree, but he could take the pieces knocked off in the clash of these titanic powers and graft them onto his body. It would take a long time until he had the prosthetic molded into fully functional limbs, and he would probably never shrink them down to the point where his right arm wasn’t much too large, but it was a process he was willing to invest more time in—especially considering the other pieces of information he had learned.

In witnessing numerous other worlds through the power of the Server Tree, he had seen numerous failures of Yggdrasil. This was the god that had proceeded his own, but if Yggdrasil was not infallible who was to say that Homeostasis was? Perhaps his own god’s plan for the world would also be able to be thwarted through drastic measures. Besides, he was also able to witness the red and black dragon in action—and while it was indeed far too powerful for a world to survive its wrath, it had proven it wasn’t invincible. It was doubtful any Digimon from his world would ever be able to rise and match the level of power of the abomination, but if the dragon was not invincible than it was likely not inevitable either. If he could change the course of the world significantly enough—say, by turning it from a scattered selection of zones into a united Empire, he may just prevent the horrible future ordained by god. Even if that didn’t work out, he could recruit humans to his cause. In all the worlds he had witnessed, humans had been able to push Digimon beyond the boundaries of what should have been possible. Indeed, there were many possibilities open to him that he would never have found if he hadn’t betrayed his god.

His musings were interrupted when he sensed a dark presence nearby. Investigating what else could possibly exist in this void surrounding the damaged Server Tree, he walked to the scene of Lucemon’s final death. Here, in the midst of the void was a small area of blackness—with a single red eye staring back at him. The angel reached down and picked up the tiny creature with his only functional arm and brought it up to his face.

“So, it seems that titanic presence that defeated the red and black dragon hasn’t been completely eliminated. You are just a shadow of that being, but your pure darkness might still provide what I need. I don’t know how to best use that, but perhaps it is time to seek out my brother. I’m sure he will be interested in what you have to offer, Shademon.”

Ryo woke up disoriented, but the first thing he noticed gave him hope that this battle was actually over—he was lying in a bed and not in a void somewhere. As more of the room came into focus, he identified his location as a hospital room—which really didn’t do much to clarify just where he was. After his numerous multiversal exploits, he knew this didn’t mean he was necessarily in a hospital in his home dimension—and with his circumstances he wasn’t even sure which dimension would be considered his home dimension anymore—but at the very least, it meant he was safe for the moment. Hopefully, the same applied to everyone else. He would have to wait a little bit to find that out, but whatever the monitors were that were hooked up to him would doubtless bring someone to him that could start answering his questions.

When a familiar face entered the room, Ryo found himself more hopeful than before. “Megumi, is that you?”

The blonde nurse just smiled. “Well, I guess the fact that you recognize me is a good sign, but we’ll still have to put you through a few tests to make sure everything’s fine. Standard procedure whenever someone regains consciousness.”

Ryo mostly tuned out the medical protocols, instead focusing on the brief pieces of time where Megumi filled him in on details of what he had missed. Apparently, he had been unconscious for two weeks, and was the last of the DigiDestined to regain consciousness—though many of the others were still bedridden at this point. Those that were up and about were still being held for observation, though they had freedom to move about the base.

After Ryo passed his initial evaluation, Megumi sighed. “Okay, Dr. Wataru will probably keep you in this room overnight before giving you freedom to at least get moving again, but I’d say you are well enough for visitors. Now, I know things have been crazy for a little bit and it would probably be best to settle down, but now that you are medically cleared I don’t think I’ll be able to keep this first visitor out any longer.”

Having said that, she stepped out into the hallway and Ryo braced himself for what was bound to be a difficult conversation. After all, the only one who would care about him that much was Rika, and he wasn’t exactly sure where they stood now—though he was infinitely grateful that he even had the opportunity to be in such an awkward situation considering the alternative.

However, when the door opened, it wasn’t Rika who walked in. Instead, it was a severe looking man with a head of gray hair—but beyond that, it was a face Ryo would recognize instantly. He may not have seen it for years, but his eyes had the same glare they had from so long ago, forcing Ryo to break eye contact. Sighing, he said the only thing he could: “Hello, Father.”

If Shinobu Akiyama had an emotional reaction to this statement, only a Digimon with enhanced senses would be able to pick up on it. “Father? I’m not so sure I deserve to be called that. My only son was declared dead years ago, and he had changed so severely before he went missing that I thought I lost him long before that. And yet, here I stand looking at a young man that looks so much like him with the same name and I can’t help feeling like I’m meeting a stranger for the first time.”

Something in his eyes softened then, and from the change in his tone of voice Ryo couldn’t help but turn back to him. “And yet, despite all this I find myself hoping that it really is you, Ryo, as a chance for me to undo some of my mistakes. I don’t know the full details of the story, but I let myself be consumed by anger until I had nothing left in my life. Now you just come tumbling back into my world, and I know Hisa would never forgive me if I let this opportunity slip away. Please, will you grant an old man one request and let me know my son again?”

By the time Davis was cleared to leave his room, all the DigiDestined had been able to return themselves to as normal of lives as they could have while still being contained to a single military base. Of course, there was still the fact that they couldn’t leave, but that was more for their own protection than anything. After all, it was clear to everyone that the latest time the sky ripped open to show a battle between giant monsters was connected to Digimon—and since the aftermath of that fight resulted in the loss of global communication lines, people were thrown into a bit of a panic. The army thought it was best to keep the DigiDestined and their families away from the public until things had calmed down a little bit—or until the Digital World could be recreated and with it have some semblance of a network restored.

Of course, that didn’t mean the DigiDestined were just doing nothing. Koji and Henry were working through physical therapy as they adapted to the new prostheses they had after the fight with Lucemon, and everyone was spending time with the military therapists to deal with the psychological aftermath. At first Davis wasn’t sure how this would help, but after so many years of being a DigiDestined without any official support structure he found himself wishing they had something like this before. It probably would have helped Ken and TK work through their grief after their experiences in a much faster and healthier way than what ended up happening. Hypnos had apparently set up something similar for the Tamers, and Davis vowed if he ever had kids with their own Digimon he would make sure to know where the nearest psychiatrist’s office was just in case he wasn’t enough to help.

Beyond that, however, the main work was being done in what had been the gym before BeoWolfmon’s training had damaged a good chunk of it. Now, it had turned into a computer room as Izzy, Willis, Ken, and Yolei worked with the data Neo and the Alias III had collected back when they were trying to replace the Digital World with a perfect world of their own creation. Apparently they had a model that would have worked perfectly as well—but when Lucemon destroyed the Digital World, he took with it a lot of the foundations that Neo had been planning on leaving intact. Without it, the world they tried to build just kept falling apart due to something with quantum mechanics that Davis was pretty sure he’d never understand or really need to. Regardless of the cause, the simple fact of the matter was they couldn’t just create a new Digital World from scratch without having something to support it.

To that end, they had been repeatedly running simulations to try and prep the world for the stress it would be under, though even with all the customizations Izzy and Sigma had made to their laptops this proved to be beyond them. And despite everything they had done for the world, the DigiDestined didn’t have quite the influence to just commandeer a supercomputer to run this for them. Which lead to the one thing Davis had been able to contribute to the efforts—a relatively simple idea that had proved to be surprisingly effective. With all forms of electronic communication facing a major degradation, video games that relied on internet connections quickly became worthless. With that, consoles became a lot cheaper—and with a few calls to friends, they had managed to amass quite the stock. Willis and Yolei had managed to cobble all these consoles together into one massive processer that could handle the strain of supporting a Digital World—at least briefly. The other DigiDestined had taken to calling it ‘the Motomiya Supercomputer’ and Davis, recognizing it was all in good fun, just went along with it. Sure, the computer wasn’t nearly as glamourous as it should have been, but looking back on himself as an 11-year-old he was nowhere near what people would expect as a leader either. Hopefully this scrapped together piece of hardware would rise to the occasion as much as he had been forced to.

Now that he was finally able to get out of his room, Davis was taking the chance to see the computer that bore his name. It actually looked better than he had expected—instead of the rat’s nest of cords that he assumed could be found behind any entertainment center, everything was neatly linked together—which must have been especially challenging since Davis could identify multiple different gaming systems from different companies in the conglomeration. There was a single table alongside the supercomputer, with three laptops connected to it serving as different monitors. All in all, it looked a lot more mundane than Davis expected—but he supposed that basing all of his images of supercomputers on movies and the fact that he had been to a Digital World gave the wrong impression on what a computer could really do. Still, it looked better than he thought—even if it hadn’t yet quite accomplished the results everyone had been hoping for.

Judging by the look on everyone’s faces, the most recent attempt had failed as well. Davis was sure things would eventually work out, but he could understand the frustration at the lack of progress after months of attempts. He was just about to go over to the rest of the group and try to offer his own words of encouragement when a voice behind him made the DigiDestined jump.

“Would you mind if I take a look at this data?” It took a little bit for Davis to calm down. Even with the current truce, Davis couldn’t help but feel a little jumpy around Astamon—he was quite proud to be a Demon Lord and from what Davis had heard while still confined to his room, he had a nasty habit of breaking into the armory and playing around with human weapons. He didn’t exactly view Astamon as an enemy, but he wasn’t sure if they’d ever become friends.

The Demon Lord just strolled past Davis without giving him a second glance as he walked up to the monitors. Within thirty seconds of examining the monitors showing the world model, he just scoffed. “I figured as much. You are letting your biases shape the world you create. This world could never exist because it is too imbalanced—too much focus on the light and not enough on the darkness.”

Astamon then sighed as he seemed to fight with himself for a little bit before announcing, “You need to release the Code Keys into the world.” As he expected, the DigiDestined quickly and vehemently shot down his suggestion. The Prince of the Dark Area let them protest for a while before he cut them off again and explained his reasoning.

“Do you think I’m happy about this? The Code Keys will be drawn to the highest concentration of darkness, which need I remind you is my domain. They will corrupt my subjects and spread evil throughout the world. But despite this, they are a powerful preserving force as well. How else do you think Lucemon, Lilithmon, and the others were able to stay alive through the millennia? The Keys are fragments of GranDracmon’s being, and he is eternal. You may doubt the legends if you want, but I’ve seen him in his sleeping form. I’ve felt the power of even his restrained presence. I will take full responsibility for my subjects to try and mitigate the corruption, but if we don’t rely on the Code Keys we will never be able to create a world ourselves.”

Nobody had an argument against this and Neo eventually decided. “Looks like I’ll never be able to create my utopia then, but I guess this can be just another entry on the list of horrible things I’ve done for the greater good. Let’s just do what he says.”

Izzy and Willis still seemed hesitant to unleash the physical manifestation of the seven deadly sins on the world they were trying to create, but Sigma had served as Neo’s Alias for quite some time and knew there was no point in delaying. He started setting up a transfer to take the data on the Code Keys and incorporate it into their model of the Digital World—and surprisingly, they almost immediately settled in as if the world was reclaiming a piece of itself instead of being linked to foreign data. Sigma had expected recompiling the world to take a few hours, so the speed of the success left him a little dumbfounded. Willis and Izzy seemed just as perplexed, but the trio decided not to question their good fortune. Instead, they started another test of inserting the world data into the quantum sea, trying to once again create a Digital World. On previous tests, their worlds had started breaking apart within a couple of minutes and been completely erased within a half hour.

With that timetable, nobody was expecting results immediately on starting the test—but suddenly a new window popped up on Sigma’s monitor displaying a string of ones and zeroes. None of the other background processes had stopped so the attempt hadn’t immediately crashed, leaving everyone to wonder what had happened. However, after a little bit of staring at the screen, Willis just started laughing. “Well, this is either a huge coincidence or a sign that things are actually working.”

Izzy and Sigma understood the message shortly after that, and Izzy helpfully translated the message for those who couldn’t understand it from the start. “If you convert that string of binary to ASCII characters, you get the following message: ‘This is Yamaki. We’ve lost contact. Please reestab’. It looks like we’ve reestablished contact with Hypnos—even if we can only receive 50 characters of text at a time.”

The announcement sent a wave a relief through the Tamers who heard it. The facts that they had lost contact with their home dimension and hadn’t been able to restore this Digital World had started to leave them with the question of if they would ever get home. They had tried keeping a brave face for the sake of Suzie, Ai, and Mako, but even the youngest Tamers had started to feel like they would never see their parents again. The fact that they now had a concrete piece of communication meant they might eventually be able to send messages back—and eventually send themselves back as well. 50 characters might not be much when it came to sending a message, but those 50 characters had succeeded in delivering something much more important than any specific content—hope.

Rika woke up and stared at the ceiling of her extended-stay hotel for what she hoped would be the last time. It had been two months since the last test of creating a new Digital World for this dimension, and despite a rather rocky existence the world was still going strong. With it had come more restoration in communication ability—to the point where video messages could be sent to and from home. With the interdimensional pathways more stable, it was now deemed safe enough to attempt to travel back. It had been six months since Lucemon’s defeat, and the Tamers were finally able to head home. Rika knew it would be a challenge to catch up after missing six months of her life, but after the challenges she had faced at the end of the war she was looking forward to such mundane difficulties.

As she went to the computer room, she could see similar sentiments on the faces of all of her friends. Ai and Mako were the most visibly excited to see home, but everyone had a mix of anticipation and slight anxiety as they hoped to get home—as well as take advantage of a stop along the way. There was an all too noticeable absence as they took stock of everything that had been lost since coming over here. Renamon, Cyberdramon, and Guilmon had all died—and unlike herself, they hadn’t been able to come back yet. Henry had just received a new prosthetic leg to replace the one he had lost in battle, and though he joked that Ryo should have really tried to get ZeedMillenniummon to bring it back instead of just Rika it was obvious he was more concerned about what the battles had done to Suzie. After all, he had a physical wound and lost his leg, but those who hadn’t been directly in the mess of things against the D-Reaper had lost what innocence they had managed to maintain and would now bear the mental scars that the previous veterans had all learned to cope with before.

Of course, that wasn’t to say there weren’t gains from this little adventure as well. There was a certain peace of mind that came from defeating an enemy that would have easily overrun your world before he had the chance to actually do it. Suzie had managed to strengthen her bond with Lopmon, being able to Biomerge for the first time. Kazu and Kenta had nearly fainted when they were presented with two of the first printed copies of A Digimon Adventure by Takeru Takaishi, signed by all the DigiDestined from this world. TK had apologized for only having enough time to finish the story of his first adventure before they went back to their world, but the two clearly were happy to have what they deemed as the Holy Grail of Digimon merchandise. Rika wasn’t too excited about her own copy, but she still recognized the gift for what it was and appreciated the thought behind it. However, she was more looking forward to what she hoped would be the next gift she received.

Once everyone was gathered around the computer, Rika could feel that she wasn’t the only one anticipating this. TK, Kari, Davis, Yolei, Ken, and Cody all held their D3s to the monitor—and for the first time in months, a Digital Gate opened. Though the trip through the portal was still rougher than it had been, everyone arrived at their destination—which resembled a ruined castle covered in ivy. However, HolyAngemon couldn’t help but smile at the sight of his home. Even with the Code Keys, the world had gone through a rough couple of months of earthquakes and other upheavals as it started to settle into place, but they ivy just showed that despite the struggle life would once again return to the Digital World. And no better example of this was found than when Anubismon unleashed his power and dozens of DigiEggs suddenly surrounded the castle.

While HolyAngemon had his eyes on the number of his new charges, Rika could only focus on the yellow DigiEgg that was now in her arms. She hadn’t wanted to get her hopes up too much, but just holding this egg let her know her partner would soon be back. She couldn’t help smiling through the tears in her eyes—but when a familiar voice suddenly broke down into sobs Rika quickly turned her head. Hearing Jeri cry made her realize how hard this must be for the other girl to see everyone else get their partners back—but when she saw Jeri the cause of the crying instantly became clear as she was clutching an orange DigiEgg for dear life.

Impmon was standing next to hear grinning while he scratched the back of his head. “Glad you like your present, Jeri. It’s something I worked out with Mari. It’s been great having Leomon with me, but I think it’s time he went back to where he belongs.”

This was all the little rookie Digimon could say before Jeri pulled him into a bone-crushing hug. Just the sight of this renewed Rika’s joy—and she could see this reflected on everyone’s faces as well. Still, this was their first of a couple stops on the journey, so eventually everyone waved goodbye. Neo, Hideto, Rei, Pal, and Pul stayed with HolyAngemon as everyone else boarded Imperialdramon and flew away.

This pattern continued at numerous locations across the Digital World as the DigiDestined and Anubismon made sure to visit every location that served as a major birthplace for new Digimon. Anubismon claimed until he was more used to his power he would need to rely on going to these locations physically to create DigiEggs from the loose data, and since there were far too many DigiEggs to raise in one place it was necessary to split them up. At each location, Anubismon would create the eggs and a few of the surviving Digimon would stay behind with some human representatives to watch out for the new life. It would spread the DigiDestined fairly thin—but they wouldn’t need to stay for very long.

Rika knew just how awkward it had been for Ryo to reconnect with his father, but that awkwardness had resulted in sweeping changes for this world. Shinobu Akiyama had completely changed his tune—announcing his upcoming retirement and using his influence to rally support for pro-Digimon legislation. It hadn’t yet become law, but it looked like there would soon be a program paying humans to work in the Digital world for month-long shifts to help raise the newborn Digimon and create human settlements across the Digital World. There were some details that still needed to be ironed out, but with the rampant optimism after Lucemon’s defeat Rika knew things would be turning around for the better.

The last stop proved to be in the Dark Area, where Astamon was volunteering to watch the eggs that would become his subjects alone, knowing that the environment of the Dark Area wasn’t suited to human life. After Anubismon brought the data of numerous dark Digimon into DigiEgg form, the Demon Lord made a huge showing of snapping his fingers.

“That’s what I’ve been forgetting! If I’m here watching DigiEggs, who’s going to bring our guests back home? It would take a dark corridor to travel to that dimension.” A smirk then crossed his face as he pointed to BeelStarrmon. “Well, Freeshooter, it pains me to admit it, but it looks like you’ll have to bring all these people back home. Probably be difficult for you to come back too.”

BeelStarrmon huffed in anger before teleporting to his side with her gun to his head, but Astamon then pulled the Mega level Digimon into a hug. “I will miss you, you know, but we both know you wouldn’t do well if you were tied down here. You deserve to go somewhere with much more freedom—where the only way you get tied down is if you want to be.”

With this, Astamon gave a pointed glare at Impmon, and Rika couldn’t help rolling her eyes. She wasn’t sure how a Demon Lord could take himself seriously when his last actions were a rather tender moment with an old friend followed by a fairly transparent attempt at matchmaking. It was probably for the best that only four people who were staying in the world actually saw that. BeelStarrmon didn’t seem to care about any of that as she kissed Astamon on the cheek, thanked him for everything he had done for her over the years, and promised she’d come back to visit sometime. Kazu and Kenta couldn’t help but snicker at this, which finally seemed to break the mood. BeelStarrmon warped over to the two boys, slapped them upside the heads, and set to work opening a portal. With one last look at the dark area, the Tamers—and Ryo’s father—walked through the portal and headed back home.