Daichi: Now- to move on with the plot! Finally!

Verity: We own nothing.

1221212121212122112

"Your tail ring?"

Gatomon nodded. "Yeah, it's what lets me use my full power. With my strength right now, I might as well be Salamon, except I can jump straight to the Ultimate stage."

"Do you really think it would still be here?" Yolei asked. Privately, Ken had to agree. While no Holy Ring had ever found its way into his possession, a little piece of gold sitting alone in the forest for months on end, undisturbed, sounded more like something out of a fairytale than from real life.

Of course, what made even less sense was that she hadn't simply generated a new one during the many times she'd changed forms since, but it was the Digital World. Sense was one of those things that took a backseat.

"It can't hurt to look, though," Kari pointed out. "We just can't take too long. Ken, you should go find the others. Tell them we'll take a while."

"Got it." They'd be just fine on their own, after all. And it would probably be a good idea to get back to the others regardless. "Come on, Wormmon."

His partner followed him, of course, and they walked as quickly as they could in the proper direction, ignoring any moving shadows and the like.

After all, odds were it was just their imaginations.

1221212121212112121212112

T.K. wasn't really sure at what point he had gotten separated from the others. He'd- well, there had been an odd plant that got his attention, but they couldn't have gone that far in that little amount of time.

Or maybe it had been him that wandered. He couldn't tell, what with how unhelpful his Digivice was being at the moment. Which should probably have been a warning sign, come to think of it.

"T.K.?" He turned to see Ken stumble out of the forest with Wormmon- despite there not being a single sign of his presence earlier. He definitely had a problem. "Where is everyone else?"

"That's what I'd like to know. They just disappeared."

"I could fly ahead and try to find them," Patamon pointed out. "But it really doesn't feel safe to be alone here, does it?"

Both boys shook their heads, T.K. a bit more gently as so not to displace his partner. Difficult, but he had a lot of practice.

It was another five minutes before they realized just how lost they were. T.K. wasn't all that familiar with the local geography, but he was eighty-five percent certain that the air was not meant to smell like salt and decay.

Somehow, the fact that they arrived at a cliff overlooking a pitch-black ocean seemed less surprising than it should have been. But then, with everything that had happened to him recently, this was really just another link in the chain of events that made up his incredibly strange life.

He wasn't sure if he should have been worried about that or not.

22212121211212121

So maybe he hadn't been imagining things. Of course, given where he was, Ken was pretty sure that that wasn't a good thing.

"Here again…" T.K. mused, staring out over the open waters.

"You've been here before?"

"Once. Kari found her way here by accident, I followed. We wouldn't have made it out without Angewomon, most likely." He sounded far too casual about that. Not that Ken could say he was much better. After enough dangerous situations, they all started to have less of an impact.

"At least I'm not the only one…" Ken sighed. "It was a long time ago, but it's not exactly something you forget."

"When was this?" Wormmon asked.

"It was after I left the Digital World for the first time," He replied, deciding not to go into further detail than that until it was fully necessary. "That's how my Digivice changed, it used to be like the small blue ones."

"...So, we should stay away from the water?" Patamon suggested. "There were things that looked like Digimon living in there, we don't want to disturb them." No, that did not sound like a good idea at all.

Not that this left a lot of options. Most of the Dark Ocean, by virtue of the name, was water. But they still tried to make it as best they could, in order to move somewhat inland.

If only they could see anything other than the darkness.

222122212121211221

T.K. had long decided that the Dark Ocean was not the kind of place that he wanted to be in, no matter how strong the call was. And he thought that maybe he had been called, though it was hard to tell. After a while, all his nightmares just started to mix together.

But, well, maybe there was a good thing about this. As much as it could be good, anyway. "How long do you think it'll be until we get out?" He found himself asking.

It took Ken a few moments to answer. "I'm not sure. I don't even remember how I got out of here last time… or in, for that matter. I only just remembered that it even existed today."

"Right. Well, I guess that means we can… that we can talk now." No use putting it off any longer. They were already in the realm of nightmares to begin with, what was just one more?

"Weren't we already talking?"

"No, I mean… about that one thing. That the two of us understand, better than anyone else." They'd reached a nice clearing, no sign of anything trying to attack them, seemed to be a nice place. "We can rest here, if you want."

"That… that'd be nice. Thank you." When Ken sat down, he gathered up Wormmon onto his lap. The perfect picture of two partners.

If T.K. hadn't seen the other boy as the Digimon Emperor, he would have had a hard time believing that they could be the same person. Even now, it was difficult to reconcile the soft-spoken boy he'd befriended with his old enemy.

Maybe that was for the best. It was hard to hate someone who seemed so different, even if his own hate had evaporated at the same time that Wormmon's old body had. Hating something so broken… that'd just turn everything back onto himself.

"So… I'm not sure how much better this is than using a D-Terminal at two in the morning, but at least we're face to face for this." Okay, he had no clue what he was saying.

"You don't have to say anything if you don't want to."

"He's wanted to for a very long time," Patamon pointed out. "It's just… not a good memory. For either of us." A bit of an understatement, but, well, some things really couldn't be accurately put into words.

"I've wanted to say this since… since Kimeramon was defeated. It's not really a happy story, but… but nobody else I know could understand. What it's like to lose a partner." There. He'd said it. "It was the first time he became Angemon. We were fighting Devimon, the same one you took data from, and he'd powered himself up using Black Gears."

Wormmon blinked. "Black Gears?" T.K. felt that maybe clarification would help.

"They're like Dark Rings. I think there might still be a few beneath Infinity Mountain, but that's where it happened, so… I never felt the need to go back and check. We didn't realize they could make Virus Digimon so powerful… Angemon and Devimon were meant to be evenly matched. And, with the Digivices, I guess they sort of were. I mean, we won, but… it didn't really feel like a victory."

"...And I reminded you of that, back then. That's why you punched me."

"Sort of. But, well, like I said. It didn't really make anything better. And it was… well, Kimeramon… that was more of a reminder. Because once it happened… you were just like me. And that's… not really something you want to be."

"...We could be heroes like you," Wormmon suggested. "I mean, once Ken can go out in public again." Ah, Rookie Digimon. No matter what they went through, they were always able to look at things with simple, childish innocence, at least until the situation called for something else.

T.K. envied that, sometimes. Things had been so much simpler when he was younger. Then it started to snow in August and everything started to go downhill from there.

"Oh, you should!" Patamon agreed. Probably to get off the heavy subject as much as anything. Almost certainly, actually. He was really good at pulling others out of despair. Given his Crest, T.K. thought it was appropriate. "It'd be so much fun!"

Ken actually smiled- he didn't do that a lot. Or ever, really. "I think I'll pass. But… it'd be nice. Maybe. It'd be interesting, at least."

"Ken, it's the Digital World. Everything's interesting."

"You say that, but you've clearly never just stared at the walls of an old ruin for an hour." There was a cracking sound just outside the clearing. "...What was that?"

It turned out to be a Control Spire Blossomon that had somehow managed to find a way in. Well, at least they had a way out now.

And, for some reason, T.K. found that using Angemon wasn't quite as tiring to him as it had been in the weeks before.

22121212212121122

Daichi: There. It's finally happened. Ken knows. Though, they haven't really had an in-depth conversation on the topic… they also don't need to.

Vee-Vee: Especially not surrounded by the world of trauma?

Daichi: Exactly.