Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon or anything attributed to it.

Lol, my writing habits are so much better since I started this story, or at least I think they have...

Chapter 9 – Somebody set us up the wrong gate (hehe)

If you thought the entrance was bad, then the exit was something straight out of the movie Vertigo. If you haven't seen that one, it has a scene in it where someone falls off a tall building. The camera zooms in on their face, and you watch them plummet to their death. Or I guess the exit could have been straight from season three of digimon, in which the tamers literally fall from the sky when they entered the digital world.

Yeah, that's pretty much what happened.

As soon as (I assumed) we had crossed the barrier between the two worlds, I felt myself falling. Not slowly either. Very, very fast. Too fast for comfort.

The ground, of course, had to be at most 300 feet below me.

NOT GOOD.

The ground rushed up to meet me, trying to cause me pain. I knew that this was it. Some fluke thing was going to kill me. Of course. I finally get to the digiworld, and it kills me before I can even set foot properly on the ground. Oh the irony.

Roguemon was falling right next to me, and we just so happened to look at each other at the same time. He looked at me, I looked at him, we grabbed each other, and we took one last look at the ground before it claimed our lives. We also began screaming. Loudly.

I shut my eyes just before we hit 50 feet above the ground, but the impact never came.

Instead, I felt myself land in some kind of netting before it bounced me and Roguemon back into the air.

What in the heck was going on?

Troy, Kira, the three Ninjamon, and all of our supplies past by my vision shortly after I reopened my eyes. They hit the net as well, and were flung back into the air. Troy and Kira were freaking out just as bad as Roguemon and I were, but the Ninjamon looked like they were used to it.

I yelled to them on my way back down. "What's all this?"

The Lead Ninjamon yelled back, "This is the Net Forest; these cables stretch all through the trees making these giant nets."

On my second time back in the air, I actually began to enjoy the bouncing. It was kind of fun.

I lie. It was a lot of fun. I mean, come on, when was the last time you found yourself bouncing enormously high in the air on massive nets in a forest? It was like a trampoline on steroids. So in reply to the whole situation, I began laughing.

After the bouncing finally came to a halt, and we had climbed down to the forest floor, it was time to address what we needed to do next. As much as I loved standing around in a forest blanketed by (randomly) white cables that acted as nets without any knowledge of where I was, I had a MangaAngemon to see.

The Ninjamon pulled out a very detailed map. The leader began to point out our current location. "We are in the Net Forest which is here." He pointed at a large patch of green colored land that sat on the dead center of the map. "We need to go here, to Root City." His fingers moved to a large patch of grey labeled "Root City" just to the right of the forest.

The map made it seem like a long trip, but I was quickly corrected by the Ninjamon. "It is but a few hour's journey. We will arrive by midday."

I looked up to see the sun just starting to rise between gaps in the trees.

Troy asked ironically, "Is an hour here the same amount of time as an hour in the real world?"

The leader responded with his scowl.

Kira laughed.

Roguemon was eager to leave apparently. He already had picked up my backpack of food I had packed, and was looking around. "Which way are we going?"

The leader held up a compass that he pulled from an unseen pocket. The arrow on it quickly steadied, and he pointed. "To the east."

So we all picked up our packs, following Roguemon's example, and we began marching.

I had a feeling this "few hours" wouldn't take very long.

Sonya was not having a good day.

After she returned to the Integral Designs complex, she found it in a state of disarray. Whatever party had taken place the night before had left the place with people lying everywhere, tables overturned, food spilled, computers on the fritz, and the smell of janitorial supplies.

And worst of all, the servers for the game were still not back online.

Ronald and Bill were in a frenzy down in the server room connecting cords, attaching new hard drives, moving servers around, and overall, being sober. But then again, Ronald and Bill never did drink too much.

As they noticed Sonya enter the room, Bill let out a sigh and relaxed against a server. "They gone?"

She leaned against the door, even though she didn't need to relax herself. "Yes, they just left."

Ronald paused for a moment before going back to attaching the power cables to the server he was working on. "Anything new happen?"

Sonya knew they probably wouldn't like what they was about to hear, but she told they the events of the past 12 hours anyway.

Bill sat Indian-style on the floor as he listened to Seth's account of the fighting, and how he was able to use the effects of the cards he had on himself in addition to Roguemon. His eyes widened during the account of the surprise attack, but he never said a word.

Ronald never stopped working though. He would occasionally look up at Sonya for some reason, and he was able to put a whole new server together during her speech.

At the end of it, Bill laid back on the floor like a tired child. Sonya could obviously tell that he was worried about Kira. Bill had a hard time hiding his emotions when it came to her.

He posed a question to her. "Do you think I did the right thing?"

She replied with her head hung low, "I can't say."

Ronald however, said, "At least you sent her knowing that you wouldn't be mad at her. That has to count for something." Ronald walked over to Bill and helped him up.

Bill had tears in his eyes. "It's been so hard to know what to do without Jane around. She always knew what to do, you know?"

Sonya put her hand on his shoulder and said, "She did, but you're doing the best you can."

Bill immediately dried his tears and picked up a new hard drive. With renewed vigor, he shouted, "Let's fix these servers!"

Sonya chuckled. That was something Seth might do.

"Are we there yet?" I asked. For such a nice day, this "few hour" hike through cable-infested woods was turning into a grueling dive into exhaustion.

The lead Ninjamon said, "Not yet, but we should be in sight within moments."

We had mostly walked in silence, expect for the few "oofs" and "ouch"es that we seemed to be accumulating. A few of the cables were expertly hidden in the ground just well enough to trip you. Not a fun time when you weren't expecting any kind of limb messing up your walking pattern.

The forest itself wasn't so far off of what you might see in a heavily wooded area. There was the occasional shrub or bush that I hadn't the slightest idea about, and some of the trees were strange looking. Take that, and all the random cabling away, and you had an average real world forest. Well, except for all the lack of life. We hadn't seen any other digimon. That was extremely odd. I though we'd at least see a few. But, no, that would be too simple.

So I asked the obvious question. "Where's all the other digimon?"

The leader said, "This area is generally uninhabited. Even the plant type digimon don't like this area. Most reside on the outskirts of Root City."

Troy asked in reply, "What is the reason for this?"

Ninjamon paused. His fist clenched, and he tensed up. He said in a calm tone, "The war."

I cringed. Great. There's a war involved. No wonder they sent an escort.

He continued. "The neighboring region, the Dark Sector, has sent wave after wave of foot soldiers to conquer our lands. They are leaded by the Seven Demon Lords: Myotismon, Beelzemon, Cherubimon, Piedmon, ChaosGallantmon, Puppetmon, and Lucemon..."

Lucemon. The digimon who almost ended my life just two nights before. Just hearing his name filled me with a feeling of rage. Since I was here, and assuming he was the one who sent those Gotsumon to attack me, I had a bad feeling I was going to see him again.

But this time, he would be the one who was going to get beat to a pulp. I would see to that myself.

While I was seething in my thoughts of vengeance, I tripped on a cable, and feel flat on my face.

Ninjamon continued his speech as I picked myself up. "They have assaulted our borders to the North and West for the past few months. Our defenses are beginning to fail, and hope is steadily being darkened. Their strength is deafening. We may not last through the next month." His voice was steadily becoming more and more emotional. I could easily tell it disturbed him to say this.

The only way I could see to cheer him up was to say proudly as I looked to Roguemon, "Then we'll just have to beat them back."

Roguemon added confidently, "Yeah."

Troy and Kira concurred. "Right," they said in unison.

The leader said, on the verge of tears, "It is not that simple. They have a whole army, what can three humans possibly do?"

He had a point. At this pessimism, (Which I kind of agreed with) we fell silent once more, and focused on avoiding the hidden cables in the ground.

But not for long.

Soon enough, we reached a thick part of the cabling that took a long time to get through, but when we were through...

The lead Ninjamon said proudly, "We have arrived. Behold, Root City!"

We all beheld the sight of Root City alright. Behold wasn't quite the word I would use though. It was more like, "be awestruck".

The city was massive, even from this distance. City didn't do the word the proper homage though. More like, metropolis. Yep, definitely metropolis. The outskirts of the city was layout like your standard suburban neighborhood. Houses of various design and size littered the grassland surrounding the city.

The city itself contained a massive, sparkling white castle as its definitive, eye-grabbing feature. The castle held numerous spires as well as a high wall that extended around the inner city. The wall was equipped with large cannon, and they must have been large to have been seen at this distance.

The midday sun gleamed across the surface of the castle. It was hard to directly look at it, the glare was almost like looking at the sun.

Across the grassland was patches of farms and windmills that indicated this place must be farmlands for the main city.

All in all, this amazing setup looked like something straight from medieval era England. I wasn't all that big in castles and such, but I was sure this one would warm up to me quite nicely. Even if my stay wouldn't be very long. Just seeing something like this was cool enough, but actually getting to go inside? Wow. Just wow.

Yep, definitely "be awestruck."

The only thing I could say was, "We...get to go...there?"

Troy commented, "'There', Seth, is an understatement."

Kira agreed. "He has a point."

The lead Ninjamon laughed. "You humans are weird creatures. Your giant metal buildings are much more extravagant than Root Castle. Why are you so amazed?"

I replied, "You think our skyscrapers are something special? They've got nothing on this."

He said, "Enough standing around." He turned to one of his comrades. "Go, announce our arrival." The appropriate Ninjamon began dashing towards the magnificent castle. Then the leader turned back to us. "Come, MangaAngemon awaits."

So we started walking.

Again.

Now was their chance.

Those wretched commanders at Root City had evaded their demise long enough.

Etemon recollected the campaign against their foes as he endured the snowstorm.

It all began so easily with the orders from the Demon Lords. The plan was simple. Overwhelm the Root Sector's main city into submission. Once that was done, the rest of the sector would fall with ease.

The first few waves of attack from the North and West were beaten back easily due to the terrain of the Root Mountains. The Root Mountains isolated the Root Sector from the region due to the fact that the mountains made one giant circle around the grassland in the middle of them. The mountains only had four accessible areas through which armies could cross without taking substancial losses from the savage weather in the mountains. The North and West passes were heavily guarded due to their ease of usage. The East and South passes were unusually hard to use because they were both tunnels that ran straight through large mountains.

The few attacks of the tunnel passes failed miserably. The first line of the Root's defense fought back every soldier without faltering in the slightest. The passages were just too narrow to fight effectively, so the dark armies couldn't use their number advantage at all.

Lucemon had come up with the devious and risky plan to get through the South pass, and placed Etemon to be in charge of the force.

Etemon's orders were to take a legion of troops, and wait at the west entrance of the Root Mountains until a snowstorm hit. Then he was to take his troops and rush to the Southern Tunnel Pass that combed the great Mt. Monolith. The tricky part was getting through the bottleneck tunnels, but Lucemon's plan would see to that.

Etemon watched from his place on the back of a Deltamon as the last regiment of his legion slowly made its way into the encampment. He cleared his throat and pulled out his trusty microphone. Tonight, the troops would hear him sing his favorite songs that he himself wrote. Whether they liked them or not.

But tomorrow, the assault on the Root Sector would begin in earnest.

Chaotic Notes:

Yay, slightly more plot!

I could not for the life of me come up with any suitable conflict in this chapter. Sorry if your hopes were up to see some more fighting. Thankfully, your thirst to see fighting will come next chapter, as indicated by the obvious foreshadowing at the end of this chapter.

I had fun trying to figure out ironic ways for Seth and Co to enter the digiworld in a bad spot. I hope you like the way I did it though, cause I had a hard time writing it.

Until next time, good night. (Please, if I'm doing anything wrong, or if you see something I could do better, tell me. If you think I'm doing something right, and need to keep doing it (or do it better), tell me. I want your criticism. And your praise, if you have any. It's the only way this story (and any more that I write) will get better.)