Chapter 10

Start of a Bad Memory

Dominimon was the name proclaimed by the angelic Digital Ruler.

The moment the digimon had spoken its name Takuya felt an uneasiness wash over him, as if his instincts were trying to tell him something his mind didn't understand.

"Hello, Dominimon…" Koichi greeted the Digital Ruler in the place of Takuya.

Normally it was Takuya, their leader, who was the one who covered the greetings; but right now he seemed lost in thought. He had a look on his face that made it appear as if he was having an internal debate with himself.

"Why the hell do I feel like I want to be running right now? Did I forget to do my morning run today? No, that's not it… But why do I feel like I'd rather be doing that than being here…?" Takuya mentally questioned himself as he watched Koichi greet Dominimon and then let Koji take over with some kind of discussion through the hazy of his mind. He wasn't the type to become lost in metaphysical thought like this, but somehow he just kept sinking further and further into silent contemplation.

"Takuya…?" Koichi looked Takuya in the eyes, not liking the distant look he was giving him. "Takuya!" he called getting closer to Takuya's ears.

This time Takuya heard his name called and used the shock of it to shake himself loose of his mental stupor. "What!?" Takuya jumped before quickly reacquiring what was happening around him. "Did Koji figure out what Dominimon wants from us?"

"They're discussing it now," Koichi noted as he turned and look over his shoulder at his brother, letting the whole situation with Takuya spacing out drop.

"Then we should probably get in on it," Takuya stated, putting a foot forward in preparation to join Koji, but the twin beat him to it.

"It's about time they got done," Koichi yawned with a stretch of his body.

"What are you talking about? They've only been talking for like a minute!" Takuya noted with a confused look towards Koichi.

"Wow… You were really out of it, Takuya," Koichi replied, giving Takuya a surprised look. "They've been talking for like fifteen minutes now."

"Seriously…" Takuya awkwardly retorted before the two started walking towards the approaching warrior of light. "It only felt like seconds… Did I really blank over a whole fifteen minutes?" He pondered as they made their way.

"So you finally with us?" Koji teased Takuya with a mocking smile.

"Hilarious…" Takuya sighed as he leaned slightly to the side and looked past Koji to Dominimon hovering a distance behind them. He didn't know why he had been feeling like he had earlier, but it was gone now and the only thing he felt coming from Dominimon was the same thing he felt from other Digital Rulers of other Zones. The only difference being that he could swear that Dominimon was much more powerful than anyone he had ever met. "So what's the deal? What about the missing Destineds and this mysterious attacker?"

"Dominimon, doesn't seem to know anything about whoever's attacking this Zone," Koji announced in a serious tone. "He does however know where the missing Destineds digivice signals came from last."

"So I guess we start there," Takuya growled through his clenched teeth. He was already feeling a buildup of anger over the possible reasons for the Destineds disappearances. He didn't want to even think about the reasons that would make him the angriest.

Takuya was the eternal good guy who was always on the lookout for ways to save people and got angry at himself when he felt he had failed them. And right now, as long as the Destineds of this Zone were missing, he would continue to blame himself.

"Yeah, but let's not get ahead of ourselves," Koichi commented as he placed a hand on Takuya's shoulder. "First we need to know a few things. Koji, how many people and digimon are missing? And what was their fighting ability?" Koichi asked those questions to see if they could use the strength of the missing group to gauge the power of the unknown enemy that might have been at the heart of the matter.

"There are apparently five kids, each with their own partners," Koji began explaining the statistics of the missing group, showing how thoroughly he had questioned the Digital Ruler. "They have basic combat abilities, nothing special beyond being Destined, so no additional training or anything. They've got two mega digimon and the rest are at the ultimate level. I'm guessing from the way he spoke of their abilities they never faced anything truly terrifying, but still a force to be reckoned with."

"So whatever's responsible for their disappearance is probably of a decently high level," Takuya commented as he tried to work up a short list of digimon capable of that kind of power; but the longer he thought about it, the longer the list got. In the old days it would have been a short list, but now that he had gone crossing and learned how different digimon capable of crossing Zones could be, he couldn't make up his mind.

"But still…" Koichi interjected. "To take down an entire team of Destined in mere minutes and completely erase any trace of their whereabouts afterwards is quite an impressive feat. We might be dealing with something very powerful and smart."

"That's what was bothering me too," Koji noted and Takuya nodded his head in agreement.

"Well, there's only one way to answer all of those questions," Takuya stated with a confident and stern look. "We go to where they vanished and do our job until we find them."

"That's a very overly simplified plan," Koji moaned in annoyance. He might have found Takuya's simplistically focused view of what they had to do annoying, but he knew he was only acting so narrowly since he knew there were people and digimon in danger.

"Don't care, let's go," Takuya quickly stated as he urged Koji to disclose the location with some rapid taps on his shoulder.

Twenty minutes later the three Runners found themselves standing just outside large pile of smooth stone rubble situated in the middle of a vast desert surrounded by mountains in the distance. The debris that once might have been a building of some sort was set beside a small lake edge by different kinds of palm trees; it was a true oasis in the middle of a wasteland.

"What did this used to be?" Takuya questioned as he climbed up a large section of what he expected had once been a wall, but was now lying at an angle on the wreckage beneath it. From the top of the wall he could survey the whole pile below him.

The rubble was a mixture of heavy gray stone and broken pieces of wood. Dust, steam, and smoke rose out of different locations, indicating that it hadn't been that long since the mysterious structure had come down.

"It was probably some kind of Headquarters for the Destined of this Zone," Koji answered as he examined the surroundings, looking for any sign of what had happened a short while ago.

"So kind of like Lady Ophanimon's castle for us," Takuya commented as he jumped down from the section of the wall and began unsteadily walking across the cracking and creaking pieces of rubble.

"You think the fact that they disappeared here has anything to do with them going down so easily?" Koichi inquired hoping to confirm his own thoughts.

"It would make sense," Koji turned towards his brother and replied. "If they were somewhere where they felt safe, like their base, they probably weren't prepared for a fight…"

"What do you think, Takuya?" Koichi asked, wanting to know why Takuya was giving them a strange look.

"That doesn't make any sense…" Takuya commented in a whisper, just loud enough for the twins to hear.

"How so?" Koji questioned, wondering what Takuya might have noticed that they hadn't.

"Who attacks the home base of a team of Destined as the first move?" Takuya answered after a period of silence where he tried to arrange his thoughts. "I can see eventually going in for the kill, but right off of the back. I mean how confident of an evil digimon do you have to be to take on a team of Destined on their own turf. True, they could have been caught off guard, but remember the whole thing with Leviamon. He was a powerful Zone Crossing demon lord and he still left the attack on our HQ for his final option against us. And even though we were caught by surprise, we managed to defend the castle and use the familiar environment to turn things around and defeat him."

"So, do you think they weren't taken down here?" Koichi question him while Koji pondered on the good point Takuya had actually brought up.

"No, from the looks of this place I'd definitely agree that a battle took place here… and from the feel of this place I'd say our side didn't win…" Takuya replied, still in deep thought. "But it looks like it was over without either side putting up much of a fight… What digimon could so completely dominate a battle with a team of Destined? For that matter where did it come from?"

"I think we're all thinking the same thing on that account…" Koji responded. "It's got to be a Zone Crossing capable digimon."

"Maybe even a demon lord capable one," Koichi added, not liking the idea of facing a demon lord when they weren't in their own Zone or had the others to back them up.

"I have no idea, but that could explain a lot," Takuya agreed that they had no idea what to expect. "But another thing that's bothering me is what technique could they have used to destroy this building without harming anything around it?"

All around them the only thing that was damaged was the building itself. The gentle lake beside the building and all of its trees were completely undisturbed besides from the stray pieces of rubble that had been blown into the area from the building. The desert that stretched out from there was completely flat and showed no signs of anyone or anything passing through it for days. But the most unsettling part of the whole landscape was where Takuya stood at the moment.

Where Takuya stood a large circular section of the roof and been completely left intact and had fallen to the ground below and was now stacked on top of an equally sized section of from the looks of it undisturbed flooring. It appeared as if whatever had happened to the building had taken place right on that very spot; a perfectly preserved epicenter.

"It's still smoking," Takuya noted as he swung an open palm at the rising lines of smoke, trying to brush them away from his face. "What the hell!?" He suddenly yelped in surprise.

"What's wrong now?" Koji groaned, turning back and giving his friend an agitated glare.

"My hand went right through the smoke," Takuya announced with a dumbfounded look on his face.

"Of course it did… It's smoke, stupid," Koji growled.

"That's not what I mean," Takuya growled back, "Watch."

Takuya swung out his open palm again, right through the smoke, and it passed through the rising ghostly lines without disturbing them. It was a result that defied the laws of physics and matter.

"What the hell?" Koji and Koichi mouthed like the perfect twins.

"See, you had the same reaction. This is impossible, right?" Takuya questioned, letting the fact that he had in fact scored a victory against Koji slip by unnoted.

"It should be… even for the Digital World…" Koji commented as he climbed to Takuya's spot and began examining the smoke close up.

While Koji examined the smoke Takuya and Koichi continued to explore the collapsed building and surrounding area. After half an hour they came back together to discuss what little they had found.

"Anybody find anything?" Takuya sighed in exasperation as he took a seat on a section of rubble and hung his head, scratching the back of it in annoyance.

"Nothing that I could claim answers any questions?" Koji sighed, taking a seat on some rubble across from Takuya and beside his brother.

"I don't get it. What exactly happened here? We've found a bunch of weird things around here, most notably the physics defying smoke, but none of it really adds up to anything," Koichi growled at the frustrating situation.

"Even the evidence that should point to a battle having taken place here is only the collapsed building," Koji tapped his shoe against the rubble at the mention of the building in question. "It looks like a single blast from the center of the building took it down, but there's no burn, pressure, or energy marks that would go along with any digimon attack. So we can't even determine if there was a battle."

"Well, we do one thing, and it's the most important thing," Takuya tried to keep the team thinking on the positive.

"And that one thing would be?" Koji raised an eyebrow in Takuya's direction while he tried to think about what he and his brother had overlooked that he hadn't.

"That if according to Dominimon this is where the Destineds of this Zone disappeared, I consider it a great relief that we didn't find any bodies or blood here. That's a good sign that their hopefully just missing, and not dead," Takuya leaned back and stared into the sky as he let his thoughts begin to wander.

"Yeah, at least that's something. I have to admit that when we were flipping over the rubble of this place I was terrified that we'd find a twisted or flattened body amongst it," Koichi breathed a sigh of relief at their leader's remark.

"It's a rare event when finding nothing is the best we could hope for," Koji gave a tired laugh at his own words. "I'm with you two on that note, though. However, this leaves us with no leads."

"You have a point, but a little good is still good," Takuya yawned as he stretched his arms and let the tension go out of his spine so that he could fall back onto the warm stone. The warmth surrounding him quickly overcame his frustrated mind and the world around him drifted away.

*BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ Z*

A blaring tone filled the air and snaked its way into Takuya's ears, twisting his face up in discomfort as it intruded on his brain.

"I'm awake!" Takuya yelped as he shot up into a sitting position and began rubbing the tired out of his eyes. However, despite the declaration the sound continued.

With a tired yawn and a slight groan Takuya turned towards the source of the sound, wondering what Koji had held up to his ear to shock him awake like he had. Koji tended to get angry with him when he just drifted off like that.

"Koji, you can st…!?" A half finished, stop, was as far as he got before his eyes widened and his jaw slacked in shock.

"My… room…" He managed to force out of his mouth.

To be continued…