Chapter 4

Orgemon charged at Takuya but before he could come in contact with him a giant wall of flame sprung up between them. The fire spread to form a circle trapping Tai and Takuya in the center.

"What's going on?" Tai asked as he ran up to Takuya who took a few backward steps away from the flames.

"Don't ask me I didn't do this." Takuya was franticly looking for a way out of the burning circle. He would be fine but Tai was another story.

'Child of courage.' A voice seemed to resonate from the flames. Takuya smiled widely looking around while Tai looked around confused.

"I'd like you to meet my partner," Takuya told him. Looking in the direction Takuya was pointing Tai could distinctly make out the shadowy form of a tall humanoid figure from within the flames. "This a Agunimon."

'We can help each other; let us merge our power together.' Came the deep rumble of Agunimon's voice. 'Even if you have reawakened the power within you crest it's not enough. Share your courage with us and my power will fuel you partner too."

Tai looked down at his crest that was now shining brightly. He smiled looking back toward Takuya who had a similar grin. "What have we got to lose?."

"Great let's do this then."

Outside the Wall of Flame

Glancing around the chosen took in the destruction of the once busy street. While their partners had taken a huge chunk out of the opposing digimon they were still outnumbered and they were exhausted. Even the warriors where trying to help. Even though they couldn't take on the larger digimon they made sure that the chosen were kept safe from any digimon trying to blindside them.

"What just happened?" Matt asked looking at the other warriors referring to the giant wall of fire that sprung up around Tai and Takuya.

"No idea we haven't had our spirits that long where not sure what we can do yet," JP shrugged. "My guess is that Takuya's spirits are trying to save him."

When the flames died down Tai was standing in the center of the dying flames next to a single pillar of fire while Takuya seemed to be missing. Tai was transfixed on the growing pillar of flame and didn't notice the slightly scorched Ogremon approaching him.

Tai turned to see Ogremon charging at him. Instead of panicking he just smirked at him. The other children began to shout words of warning which were ignored. Before Orgemon's 'Pummle Wack' could make contact, part of the flame pillar shot out catching Orgemon around the middle and throwing him back effortlessly.

The pillar of fire then began to take shape. It shrunk until it resembled the shape of a dragon; the other warriors recognized the figure of BurningGreymon. After a few more seconds the fire seemed to form a physical shape but was still only composed of fire. The figure turned to look at the stunned Orgemon and blasted it with an immense flamethrower leaving a scorch mark where Orgemon once laid. With a roar and a flap of its mighty wings it took to the skies and made a bee line to where Greymon was struggling to hold off DarkTyrannomon. The two of them were trying their best to push each other back but Greymon was being forced to his knees.

Once DarkTyrannomon had successfully thrown Greymon to the ground he began to charge a 'Fire Blast' attack. Before the fire attack could be launched the dragon slammed into him causing the attack to misfire and take a chunk out of a building instead.

"Now Greymon digivolve again!" Tai yelled holding up his digivice in one hand and the glowing crest in the other.

Using the dragon as a distraction Greymon took the opportunity to reach the ultimate level. When the glow of the digivolution faded and MetalGreymon appeared, the flaming warrior disengaged from his fight with DarkTyrannomon leaving the confused digimon wide open for a 'Giga Blaster'. The attack was a direct hit and when the smoke of the explosion cleared there was nothing remaining except a small creator.

"Now that's what I'm talking about." A deeper version of Takuya voice came from the dragon before flying off to assist the other partners in battle.

"That sounded like Takuya," Matt said slightly confused.

"That's because it was, but what was that? It looked kind of like BuringGreymon but it didn't form properly," Tommy said.

"And Greymon digivolved that means Tai reactivated his crest," Joe said, looking at Izzy for conformation.

"I'm not sure how it happened," Izzy grumbled he was used to knowing the answers to these things and being able to figure them out on the spot.

"Gennai was right about us working together," Tai said rejoining the others. "Looks like the crests aren't strong enough to get them to ultimate alone. But it's enough to help you guys evolve." He gestured toward Tommy, JP, and Zoe. "Agunimon told me that if I use my crest to help him and Takuya they would use their combined strength to help Agumon. Looks like it worked."

"But that's not what it's supposed to be like," JP told him. "It looks like he took the form of his beast spirit but it's like the skin was torn away and his insides are just made of fire."

"So the evolution isn't complete then?" Ken asked the warrior's digivolution was complicated.

"It looks like his elemental powers were just amplified but he couldn't complete a full evolution," Tommy said even though he was almost as confused as the others.

"We should figure all this out later were kind of a middle of a fight here!" Matt interrupted them.

With the addition of the new ultimate and Takuya the tide was slowly turning, the numbers of attacking digimon were lessening. Some of the other digimon were even retreating.

"Well looks like we win this one," Davis said confidently glancing around the wrecked street. He was interrupted by a loud roar; they all turned to see MetalGreymon revert back to Koromon after an attack from LadyDevimon. She was tired of seeing her forces pushed back so effortlessly and decided to even the playing field. Now that MetalGreymon was taken out the next target was Takuya, she didn't think the champions were worth her time.

Takuya knew she was coming after him and meet her head on. He flew towards her and blocked her claws as she tried to slash at him with fiery talons of his own. As LadyDevimon and Takuya a traded blows ExVeemon and Stingmon tried to lend a hand but was quickly swatted away by LadyDevimon. Takuya was tiring; keeping up this form was hard work. It was starting to feel like his body was literally on fire. When MetalGreymon was fighting he felt a constant power flowing between them but now it was gone and he was starting to fade.

He was getting sloppy and LadyDevimon quickly picked up on it and slashed at one of his wings. Unbalanced Takuya was forced to make an emergency landing and slammed into the ground. His form was wavering, the fire surrounding him was smaller and BuringGreymon's shape was blurring.

"You may have some new toys children but you still can't defeat me," LadyDevimon cackled raising a clawed hand getting ready to decapitate him. Before she could bring her hand down she was stopped as a white arrow sliced her side. With a shriek of pain she lifted off into the air again to come face to face with Angewomon.

"You again," She spat holding her wounded side.

"I missed you too," Angewoman sneered, before engaging in combat with the fallen angel.

Seeing as he was saved, Takuya slumped to the ground the flames around him dying reveling his human form with bits of the flame still clinging to his skin. Immediately JP and Tai went to check on him, bringing him closer to the group.

"She got here just in time," Takuya panted. "Who's she?"

"That's Kari's partner Angewomon, she and LadyDevimon hold quite a grudge against each other," Tai told him. "If she's here then Kari must be close."

"And Gatomon digivolved that mean that Kari reactivated her crest," Sora said excitedly.

"Don't get too excited yet brats." Arukenimon slinked toward them coming around a pile of rubble. She looked like she was put through a blender, multiple cuts littered her body and her right arm appeared to be broken, and she was limping.

"Now for sure you can't escape. Your partners are all occupied and those weaklings are already exhausted." She pointed at the Legendary Warriors, her eyes then focusing on Zoe. "I'll make you pay for what you did to me." The other girls stepped closer to Zoe trying to protect her.

"I'll enjoy hearing you scream while I kill yo…" Arukenimon was cut off as giant glowing jaws snapped shut around her body. She screamed as what looked like a giant wolf made of a bluish white energy tore her torso away from her lower body. The screams were cut off instantly as she disintegrated. Saying the chosen were startled was an understatement they were still gawking at the creature in front of them until Takuya had to go and ruin the mood.

"That is disgusting Kouji. You just put that thing into your mouth; you don't know where it's been!" Takuya shouted waving his arms around wildly.

The wolf turned and glared at him before crouching down and letting his two unnoticed passengers off from his back. Kouichi jumped off first, and then extended his hand to help Kari down.

"Thanks for the lift," Kari giggled patting the giant creature on its side. It gave her an irritated grumble before it pounced on a Deltamon that had Garurumon pinned with it's skull hand.

"So that thing is Kouji?" Matt asked while watching Kouji and his partner finish off Deltamon.

"Yeah, on the way here he and Gatomon just started glowing." Kouichi tried to explain the best he could. "Then all of a sudden they both evolved were not quite sure how but it probably has something to do with that." He gestured toward Kari's crest that was still glowing.

The battle between Angewomon and LadyDevimon was reaching its peak. Both of them were panting heavily and had multiple wounds.

"I won't lose to you this time Lord Lucemon expects me to hold our position in the human world." LadyDevimon panted. A dark aura surrounded her she was intending to finish the battle quickly. Her clawed hand shot out as she tried to impale Angewoman. The angel dodged slowly leading her opponent closer to the ground. "Coward! Where are you going?" LadyDevimon cried continuing to slash at her.

"I'm just the bait." Angewoman smirked at her. Kouji took his chance and lunged at LadyDevimon slashing at her back. The fallen angel cried out in pain before swiftly turning around and slicing Kouji's shoulder open. Blood spattered the street from the wound on Kouji's shoulder. The glow around him faded and the wolf shape began melting away.

"I'll kill you first for interfering." She glared at Kouji who was now in his human form holding his bleeding shoulder.

He smirked at her, "Your quite easily distracted aren't you." LadyDevimon was confused, what was this kid talking about. Then a gleaming white arrow pierced through her chest. She screamed in agony as it burned through her flesh, the dark aura around her dissipating before she dissolved into digital bits.

With their commander destroyed the rest of the digimon began to retreat. With cries of victory the partners returned to their rookie forms and joined the humans who greeted them with hugs.

"We better get out of here before a crowd gathers," JP told the others who quickly scooped up their partners and were getting ready to run.

"Can you whip up a cover? Some people are already starting to come out of the buildings," Kouji asked his brother who nodded and created a dark grey fog that surrounded the group. The chosen looked a little unnerved this was a little too close to Myotismon's fog for their liking. They quickly raced after the warriors who had already taken off.

Small Clearing in the Park

Running all that way was exhausting the warriors already tired from fighting collapsed to the ground. "You should really get that checked; mom is going to have a heart attack if she sees that, Kouichi told his brother gesturing at the wound on his shoulder that had stained a good portion of his shirt red.

"It's fine," Kouji said bringing up his other hand to cradle his injured shoulder.

"No its not, let me see." Joe went up to him opening his bag to reveal a first aid kit. Kouji gave him a skeptical look. "It's okay; I'm going to school to be a doctor." He reassured him. Kouji just looked away but let Joe clean and bandage his wound.

"Are the rest of you okay?" Sora asked the other warriors taking a seat besides Zoe checking the other girl.

"Just tired," Takuya said lying face down in the grass. "It was awesome working with you by the way." He picked his head up and grinned at Tai and Agumon.

"So what happened to you two?" Matt asked looking at Kouji and Takuya.

"Not sure. It felt like a spirit evolution but I at the same time it didn't. I had all of my spirits power but I couldn't make him take a physical form." Takuya tried his best to explain but he was just as confused as the rest of them.

"You guys were awesome!" Davis couldn't contain his excitement any more. "You where like shooting fire and stuff then turned into some giant flaming monster. So cool!" He would have kept going if Yolei wasn't trying to shut him up making the others laugh.

"We better go see Gennai right away, he might know more about this and he can tell us how the digimon got to our world," Izzy spoke up. "I have a digiport set up on my computer at home we can contact him from there. I'll send him a message about what just happened too."

Izzy was interrupted by a cell phone ringing. It was Tommy's phone; he hurriedly fished it out of his pocket. When he answered his phone the entire group could hear the panicked voice of what they assumed was his mother. The digimon attack was all over the news and it was only natural for parents to worry about their children.

"Sorry guys but I need to go home my mom is having a panic attack," Tommy whispered covering his phone, really wanted to go with them but he couldn't think of a good excuse to give his mother why he couldn't come home.

"Let me talk to her," JP said taking the phone from him. "Hello, Mrs. Himi? This is JP, don't worry Tommy is with all of us. Where at our friends house right now and I think it's safer for us to all stay indoors just in case there are more of those things running around." The rest of the kids were impressed with his story it seemed plausible to all of them and it calmed down the worried parent.

"When everything calms down tomorrow we'll make sure to bring him home," JP finished giving Tommy back the phone. After another minute of Tommy reassuring his mother he was fine he hung up the phone giving an exasperated sigh.

"I think the rest of us should let our parents know what's going on and let's plan to spend the night at Izzy's." Tai said, the rest of the kids nodded and took out their cell phones. It was easy for the ones that had parents that knew about the digimon but the others had a little more trouble convincing their parents that it was safer for them to stay 'where they were at.'

Izumi Residence

"It's kind of cramped in here isn't it?" Ken said as the rest of the children piled into Izzy's room. Izzy's room wasn't the largest and fitting all those people and digimon inside gave everyone little to no personal space.

"So how are we supposed to get to the Digital World anyway?" Kouichi asked, the warriors didn't know about how the portals worked since they got to the Digital World by train.

"Our D3s can open portals to the Digital World on a computer." Ken said showing Kouichi his D3. "But now Gennai has all the gates locked up tight so he needs to open it on his side first before we can get in."

"Hey Kouichi, that looks a lot like what your D-Tector used to look like." Takuya leaned over Kouji who was standing next to his brother. Trying to look over the younger twin he put his hand on Kouji's injured shoulder making him swear loudly and shove him into the surprised Joe. That created a domino effect which led to half the group being in a crumpled heap on the floor.

"Let's get going before someone gets hurt." Cody said raising his D3 and opening the port to Gennai's house.

Gennai's House

Gennai was waiting for them when they arrived. He was patiently sitting on a chair going over some programs on a simple grey laptop then the children landed in his house.

"Welcome back, I'm sure you have a lot of questions. I've been researching and I think I may have a few answers for you," Gennai said closing his laptop and watching as they picked themselves off the floor. "First off I would like to say it is a great pleasure to meet the Legendary Warriors," He bowed, and pulled out a ragged old book from his robe. "I've been doing some reading. This is one of the oldest records we have and it's full of information on the Legendary Warriors."

"Hey that's Bokomon's book!" Tommy ran up to Gennai who was flipping through the pages. "After he met us he filled in the ending half of the book with information he gathered when we were traveling." The warriors felt a wave of nostalgia; they missed Bokomon and Naemon their adventure wouldn't have been the same without them.

"So from what I understand you have two spirits?" Gennai began to question the warriors.

"Yes, we have a human and beast spirit, and Takuya and Kouji could merge both of them together," Zoe began to explain. "The spirits also have the power to merge together to form EmperorGreymon and MagnaGarurumon." The chosen children's eyes all turned to Matt and Tai, Greymon and Garurumon were familiar names to them but they never heard of those forms before.

"In the end when we fought Lucemon all the spirits came together to form Susanoomon," JP finished for her.

"We can't count on that now though the other spirits of steel, water, wood, and earth are missing," Kouji said.

"I'm afraid those spirits were destroyed." Gennai said ashamed. A chilling silence came over the group. Without Suanoomon how were they supposed to beat Lucemon this time?

"Well on that depressing note now that you know about us what can you guys do." Takuya didn't want to dwell on their lost comrades.

"Well basically we use our crests to help our partners reach the ultimate level. Only Agumon and Gabumon have the ability to reach mega," Izzy informed the warriors, pointing at Agumon, the lizard waved at Takuya who waved back chuckling. "The younger chosen have digieggs that their partners use to armor digivolve and their champion forms can DNA digivolve to ultimate and Paildramon can evolve again to Imperialdramon. But the power to DNA digivolve is gone so they can only reach the champion level now."

"Looks like both of our teams are in a real bind." Kouichi sighed the rest of the children had similar depressed expressions.

"Don't be so down children I think I have found a solution," Gennai said smiling, "And I think you have already figured it out."

"What do you mean?" TK asked.

"In the last battle Gatomon and Agumon reached their ultimate forms, and Kouji and Takuya took on an alternate form and were also able to fight. When you combine your powers together you can recover most if not all the strength that we lost." Gennai noticed the confused looks the children were giving him. "The warrior spirits are much weaker than they used to be and the power of the crests are depleted, I think if you guys can somehow share what's remaining of those powers it will form a stronger force."

"So what you're saying is that we need to combine the spirits power with the crests?" Ken asked.

"Yes, in a sense," Gennai nodded.

"But what about us we don't have crests." Davis butted in.

"Don't worry Davis, you and the others without crests have digieggs and that will work the same as the crests, so in theory their armor forms will be stronger than their champion ones," Gennai chucked, and then turning to the warriors he began giving them specific instructions. "Your power comes from both the spirits and yourselves; now that the spirits are weak you must learn to control their powers on your own."

"What you have some training camp set up or something?" Kouji said leaning against the wall.

"As a matter of fact I do. You need to improve both your mental and physical strength." Zoe groaned slumping to the ground P.E was bad enough, now this.

"Have fun guys." Mimi laughed patting her friend on the shoulder.

"Not so fast Mimi you guys are joining them. You guys have an important role too, you are going to be cycling the power of your partners to the warriors and then the warrior's powers back to your partners." Gennai laughed as Mimi joined her friend in her depressed state on the ground. "There should be two of you chosen partnered up with one warrior. The groups will consist of people who share similar attributes."

"This is kind of a lot to take in," Kari spoke up; she wasn't the only one who was a bit confused. "So to sum it up were breaking into groups of three, and we're going siphon the powers of the spirits and our chests between our partners and the warriors?"

"Yes, that sounds about right," Gennai nodded going over everything in his head again.

"How are we going to figure out who were working with?" Matt asked.

"I haven't figured that part out yet. There are still a lot of other things I want to look into."

"I think the partner thing should be easy. I mean Agunimon had contacted Tai on his own," Takuya said jabbing his thumb at Tai.

"And Lobomon was calling out to me," Kari spoke up looking at Koiji.

"I think it would be best for us all to get some training in and the spirits will sense who they will work best with when the time comes," Kouichi said the others nodded agreeing with them.

"I hate to change the subject Gennai but I have a question," Sora spoke up. "All the gates are supposed to be locked so how did those digimon get through?" Most of the others had forgotten about that, they are not just out to save the Digital World but now even the Real World seemed to be at risk. Gennai's gaze dropped to the ground and shoulders slumped.

"The Digital World is lost; Daemon and Lucemon have complete control of the Digital World now. Now they are moving their sights to conquering the human world."

A/N: If that last bit is confusing let me know and I'll go back and try to make it clearer. Thanks for reading :)