Chapter 21
Home Again - Part 4
"How's this happening?" Takuya grunted angrily to himself as he continued to charge up the flight of stairs.
A few minutes ago the six Warriors short break in the park had been interrupted by an approaching threat. A threat which was descending upon the city from the skies above and the reason why Takuya was currently making his way to the roof of a thirty story building. All around the park the six were ascending different towers in an attempt to encircle the park which they assumed the digimon were heading for.
"How the hell did they get here without setting off a Rift warning? And what's with me and broken elevators! Is it just me?" Takuya continued to stew over his situation, but it quickly came to an end when the roof access door came into view.
Once on the roof the sound of buzzing wings returned, but Takuya ignored it and instead quickly drew his D-tector.
"BEAST SPIRIT EVOLUTION TO… BURNINGGREYMON!"
Takuya made sure to choke down his beast forms customary roar of arrival on the scene. The whole reason he had headed to the roof was to avoid anyone seeing his transformation, which is why it had to be such a tall building, so he didn't want to draw any more possible attention to him with a beastly cry over the populated city.
Coming out of his evolution his reptilian blue eyes instantly locked onto something on his right, sending him dashing to that side of the building, doing his best to avoid tearing up the rooftop with his weight and talon feet. Reaching the edge of the building he twisted with his arm extended out and his claws open. The arching rotation was perfectly timed as the claws caught three speeding yellow blurs as they attempted to shoot past, but ended up meeting the searing steel and exploded in bursts of data.
BurningGreymon took no time to admire his victory, instead he darted his eyes about the city.
"How the hell did this many Flymon get into the Real World without us noticing?" He took a moment to ponder as he tried to make mental notes of where all of the invading digimon were.
The swarm of buzzing Flymon in the sky, circling above the city in haphazard patterns weren't a big problem, even if there were a lot of them. The real problem was the ones scattered about the city below. The yellow insect digimon with orange wings and stingers were crawling around buildings and alleyways, like bees descending upon an abandoned picnic, slowly making their way to populated areas and big trouble.
"We need to hurry," was all BurningGreymon muttered before he stepped off of the roof and descended to the city below.
"ROSEO TEMPORALE" Kazemon cried as she charged through a back alley delivering a multitude of rapid kicks to the small gathering of Flymon. By the time she came out of the attack seven on the insect digimon dropped from the air and walls and impacted the ground with dull buzzes before vanishing in pops of data.
"Twenty so far and they're still coming. How are we going to stop anyone from noticing with this many?" Kazemon took a few seconds to catch her breath and look for a new set of targets. Glancing about she eventually spotted a few crawling down into an adjoining alleyway, meaning that her short break was over.
With a swift kick off of the ground the fairy digimon was back in the air, zipping across the street, striking a few Flymon with a couple of kicks before ducking into the next alley and going after the next group.
She meet the first Flymon with a double flying kick to the head, sending it rocketing backwards with the transference of momentum and directly into another one, crushing both against a distant brick wall and deleting both. Before the others could react to the Warrior of Winds sudden appearance she extended her hands towards the group and called out another attack.
"HURRICANE WAVE"
Tendrils of tornados erupted from her fingertips just as she swung her arms down, sending the small twisters wrapping around multiple Flymon. Once the gathering was ensnared she pulled her hands back, tightening the swirling winds and bringing the captured Flymon close enough together to enact the next part of her plan.
Kazemon released the twisters from her fingers a split second before she shot forward and dove into her own whirling sphere of gales. She came to an abrupt stop in the dead center of the whirlwind and went into a midair handstand as if the air beneath her were solid.
"TEMPEST TWIST"
She cried out playfully, bursting into a flurry of spinning inverted kicks, each one sending the target into the swirling wall of air before bouncing it back into more kicks. The furious assault last less than five seconds and eventually ended in a final powerful kick against a Flymon's abdomen that sent out a wave of pressure, blowing apart her ball of twisting wind and scattering the insect digimon who burst into data each time they collided with something. With that combo twelve more Flymon meet their end, but looking out over the city she could tell that it barely made a small dent in their numbers.
"Haaaa… Okay! Let's keep going!" Zoe inwardly sighed before slapping her hands to her digital face and cheering herself on before she took off for the next group.
"And then I said… What's wrong?" A woman in a blue dress questioned her friend who was holding her cell phone up to her ear. There was obviously no one on the other end since the two had been talking only a few seconds ago, but it still appeared as if she were listening for something.
"Don't you hear that buzzing noise?" The other woman answered before pausing to listen a little more. "I've been hearing for the last minute and I thought it might be coming from my phone… but I don't think it is…"
"Now that you mention it…" The woman in the blue dress remarked as she raised her own phone to her ear just as the buzzing grew much louder and shadows grew on their shoulders.
"EEEIII!" The two suddenly shrieked as a large white blur shot between them, kicking up a powerful gust of wind that whipped at their long hair and skirts.
"…What just…?" The two stared blankly at each other, just as oblivious to their ruffled hair and clothes as to the fact that the buzzing noise had suddenly grown much quieter again.
"That was a close one," Lobomon looked back at the two women from the alleyway before glaring angrily at the two Flymon struggling to free their heads from his grip.
The two Flymon had been mere moments away from attacking the two women before he had swooped in between and saved the day, not that the two citizens would ever know.
"What the hell were you two planning?" Lobomon tried to question the two Flymon, he even shook them violently once or twice to try and get their attention, but they only continued to mindlessly try and escape like animals caught in a trap.
"Fine… have it your way…" Lobomon sighed before lowering them down from his line of sight and squeezed down on their heads, crushing them with two simultaneous pops and banishing the small digimon in clouds of data.
From that finish Lobomon drew his blades and swiped them over his shoulder, cleaving the three that had tried to dive bomb him into multiple pieces before he leapt into the air and began jumping between the two faces of the buildings, back and forth to get higher and higher. He seamlessly slashed away at the Flymon while used changing variations of power and force to control the height he was at, he almost had as much control over it as if he were flying with wings. The aerial acrobatics finally came to an end two blocks away atop of a thirty story office building, leaving in its wake at the very least twenty-five dead Flymon.
"Got to keep going," Lobomon ordered his body, forcing himself to continue on without a short break to catch his breath. He knew that with each passing second the swarm got closer and closer to crossing paths with people, a very undesirable outcome.
"ELECTRON CANNON" MetalKabuterimon fired of his cannon for the twentieth time since he had transformed.
Before the group had parted ways to begin the Flymon extermination Takuya and Koji had assigned him a specific job; the one he was carrying out at the moment. Since his forms were mostly large and bulky, making it difficult for him to go unnoticed or even move around the city, they had given him the job of shooting down the Flymon that were still buzzing around high above the city. To achieve that goal he had located the tallest building in the city, rode the elevator to the roof, and transformed into his beast spirit.
His choice of building afforded him two beneficial things. First, if he was above all of the other buildings he didn't have to worry about anyone seeing his digital form blasting beams of energy into the sky. And second, it really cut the distance between his shots and their intended targets, really raising his accuracy.
"Come ooonnnnnn… now! ELECTRON CANNON!" He cried out again when his electronic sights locked onto a group of eight Flymon that had flown in close to each other.
The blast of yellow power, the color of the shot making it invisible in the bright sky from below, cut through the air and into the eight, blowing them apart with its heat and destructive force.
"All right! Another bullseye!" JP cheered his success.
To conserve his power and get the most out of his attacks MetalKabuterimon had been waiting for enough Flymon to get clustered close enough together so that he could wipe out at least more than three with a single shot. The strategy was really paying off at the moment. He currently had the highest kill count, already over a hundred, and he was still going strong. The only problem was that he thought that with how well everything was going for him he'd have been done by now.
"I could have sworn I've shot down more than there was flying around when I originally got up here," MetalKabuterimon tried to think about the situation while searching for his next target.
"ELECTRON CANNON" He unleashed another blast into the sky when six wandered close together within his sights.
"Something's going on here…" He gave a final sigh to the ominous thought before returning to his targeting.
"SHADOW METEOR" Echoed through the park as a deep purple sphere erupted from a shadowy cluster of trees, streaked across a small section of field and slammed into two Flymon, driving them into back into three more before the ball blasted through them and vanished into the sky.
"I never really thought I'd be the perfect covert operations type," Loweemon chuckled to himself as he ducked behind another cluster of trees, keeping an eye on the picnickers nearby who had been close to the strike but hadn't seemed to notice a thing.
Loweemon, like all the other Warriors, wasn't used to fighting a battle from cover since all of their battles until that point had been head to head conflicts between them and the servants of Lucemon or the Rifted. Guerilla combat wasn't something they ever really thought they'd be reduced to, but in broad daylight in wide open areas with people around called for all new strategies. While the others had been forced to rooftops and back alleys where luckily the Flymon seemed to be swarming, Loweemon had found a talent for moving through the shadows. He could sneak around and launch attacks in public areas as long as he remained hidden in the shade cast by trees and buildings.
Diving through a pair of trees he whirled around and puffed his chest out before calling out another attack, "SHADOW METEOR," sending another destructive sphere into a swooping Flymon, dropping another two along with it.
"I wonder what's going on with these digimon. They don't seem to be act much like normal Rifted. They're avoiding populated areas in the beginning but then certain ones suddenly go on the attack. It's like they're trying to build up the courage to attack or something," Koichi was quickly pulled from his thoughts by the sight of three Flymon dropping from their hiding spot in a tree across the field and lock onto some children playing soccer nearby.
"SHADOW METEOR! SHADOW METEOR!" Loweemon didn't hesitate to strike out with two quick blasts, not taking any chances that he couldn't finish three with one shot when children were involved.
After seeing the two blasts hit their mark Loweemon then shifted seamlessly from the ranged attack as he swung his spear over his head in an arch, splitting four Flymon who had attempted to dive-bomb him from the canopy of leaves above. He then twisted his body at a thirty degree angle and plunged his spear point through a large bush, which when withdrawn had two more Flymon impaled on it.
"Let's keep the pace up," Loweemon encouraged himself before moving on to the next patch of trees.
"FROZEN TUNDRA"
Kumamon felt the subzero point of his body drop through the air and pierce and slice through five Flymon that had been completely unaware of his presence as they crawled along a large drainage ditch.
The moment he touched ground he shifted his body back to its original form and drew his launcher and took aim at the different Flymon crawling and buzzing around him.
"BLIZZARD BLASTER"
The Warrior of Ice twisted around firing off a rapid-fire barge of deadly snowballs into the insect digimon, being careful to only hit the Flymon and not anything else around him, fearing what they shots could do if they went wild and hit people or buildings. By the time he was done thirteen Flymon fell to the dirty concrete in piles of slush before bursting into digital bits.
"Now where are all of you coming from?" Kumamon hummed to himself as the looked around.
"Ohh… great…" Kumamon sighed when he spotted the digital insects creeping out from a sewer culvert like bees from their nests. "I guess I don't have a choice, do I? It's a good thing that this form's still small."
"CRYSTAL BREEZE" Kumamon released a power gust of freezing wind from his lungs that course down through the canal and poured into the sewer which it barreled down and into the darkness, coating every surface it touched with a layer of ice.
"Here we go!" He tried to be enthusiastic about what he was about to do.
He raised his blaster and ran forward onto the ice which transferred his momentum into forward movement as he slipped across the ice. With the grace of a figure skater he flew into the sewers, now layered with ice, and began to ride the frozen twisting tunnels like a water slide. As he slid down embankments, banked around corners, and jumped over pits, he unloaded his lethal shots of snow against any Flymon who had survived the initial freeze.
"This is almost like one of those shooting rides they have at amusement parks, but with actually saving the city thrown in… and a bad smell…" Kumamon chuckled to himself as light began to fill the tunnel again.
The light grew brighter and brighter until the ice stopped and Tommy found himself standing at the edge of another culvert that overhung another system of drainage ditches. Reaching the end of the first system gave him a few second to rest his trigger finger and think; think about how despite the number of Flymon he had already taken out, combined with the large number he was sure the others had, the number of Flymon didn't seem to be decreasing. However, he didn't get a chance to think too much about it since the high pitch whine of the many wings below him made concentrating impossible, so he resigned himself to continuing his assault.
"As Takuya would say, this doesn't feel right," Kumamon sighed and glanced back over his shoulder to the sewer he had turned into a tomb for a good forty Flymon before he leapt down from the culvert and down to next drainage ditch in the system, ready to repeat his earlier wild ride.
"LOBO KENDO" Lobomon roared as he hacked a path through a small swarm of ten, venting a bit of his building frustration on the insect digimon.
Before the digital bits of the digimon could even fully vanish he found another group of ten come buzzing over the wall of the empty parking lot, maybe looking for the same thing as the ten before them.
"They just keep coming!" Lobomon growled as he took off charging across the parking lot.
"LOBO K-!" Lobomon's attack came to an abrupt end when a large burning dragon digimon came crashing down on the Flymon. Those that weren't crushed upon his landing were burned to a crisp by the raging flames pouring off of his body.
"They were mine, BurningGreymon," Lobomon lowered his swords and glared at the Warrior of Flame.
"Sorry about that," BurningGreymon chuckled, obviously not meaning his apology.
Normally, neither one of them would care if someone stepped in and eliminated a few targets… they just didn't like it when one of them did it to the other. The two of them had their rivalry to think of after all.
"So, why are you here? You look like something's on your mind," Lobomon noted as he swung his sword back behind him, blindly slicing three Flymon that had tried to take advantage of his seemingly distracted moment. The poor things never knew that he was never unguarded in a fight until the last seconds of their existence.
"What makes you say that?" BurningGreymon stopped looking about and looked into the Warrior of Light's eyes, quickly finding his answer there. "I guess you've been asking yourself the same questions I have."
"Yeah, and we've both probably come to the same conclusion. The number of Flymon hasn't been dropping no matter how many we delete. They actually seem to be increasing," Lobomon replied as he watched a few of the digimon crawl along the roof of a distant building.
"Exactly. And it won't be long before they get brave enough to venture into the more populated areas," BurningGreymon followed up.
"They do seem to be avoiding people at the moment. They've probably never seen anything like people before and are wary of them," Lobomon called on his observations so far to explain the situation.
"Unfortunately, I doubt that'll last. All it'll take is one brave Flymon and then they'll all be doing it, and from there they'll definitely be seen by people… if they haven't already," BurningGreymon sighed. "But getting back to the real problem…"
"The reason for their increasing numbers," Lobomon summed it up.
"Yeah, and what we're going to do about it," he rejoined.
"Hey, MetalKabuterimon," BurningGreymon called to the blue tank of a warrior.
"I was hoping someone would come by… hold on a second… ELECTRON CANNON," MetalKabuterimon discharged a shot into a group of seven, deleting them, before turning his attention back to BurningGreymon. "How are things going below?"
"Things are going fine… but I don't think we're making any headway. I just can't figure out why," BurningGreymon remarked as he walked around the edge of the building, trying to get a complete view of the situation below.
He could see the other four Warriors cutting, kicking, and elementally crushing their way through the Flymon; but for every block they cleared more seemed to sneak into the adjoining ones. This battle was quickly becoming a war of nutrition, with the enemy numbers seemingly going up with the Warriors power slowly ebbed away.
"I'm having the same problem up here. I shoot down seven or eight each time, but when I go to look for more targets it seems like the total number up there's gone up," MetalKabuterimon shared his concern as he tracked another small group of Flymon.
"Yeah, it's like we're not in control of the situation. It's just like when my dad and I were fixing our houses leaky sink and we made it worse. Water was gushing out of the leak faster than we… could… plug… it…" A sudden stroke of realization crossed his Takuya's mind. "MetalKabuterimon!"
"Ah, yeah…" MetalKabuterimon jumped, slightly surprised by how forcefully the Warrior of Flame had called out to him.
"How well can you see around the city with those eyes of yours?" BurningGreymon inquired as he narrowed his eyes and looked out over the city, checking if he could see what he was thinking about with his own eyes.
"My bionic eyes can see the whole city and a mile or so beyond… why?" MetalKabuterimon questioned, taking his eyes off of the digimon above and putting them on BurningGreymon, trying to figure out what he was doing and asking for.
"I need you to look for something," BurningGreymon curtly responded, maybe a bit annoyed about the fact that he couldn't find what he was looking for.
"So you want me to stop shooting the ones in the sky and look for… what exactly?" MetalKabuterimon lowered the charge in his barrel but didn't cancel it until he got confirmation from Takuya.
"Yeah, and what we're looking for is a leak," BurningGreymon responded.
"A leak? Are you talking about a Rift?" MetalKabuterimon quickly made the connection to Takuya's line of thinking.
"No, Koji was right, if it were a Rift then our alarms would have gone off. I think this is going to be something similar to the digi-port we use to get to the Digital World, but this one's probably stuck open," BurningGreymon answered.
"Leave it to me, Taky. I'll find it if it's there," MetalKabuterimon voice turned very confident as he rolled close to one of the sides of the building and began scanning the city below.
"I knew I could count on you," BurningGreymon smiling towards MetalKabuterimon under his face plate, which would have gone unnoticed if not for his warmer eyes.
MetalKabuterimon fell quiet after that. His body locked up and the hum of his cannon died down as his eyes lit up bright yellow. With a mechanical precision he began to slowly rotate as he made a three-hundred- and-sixty degree scan of the city. Two-thirds of the way through his scan his treads locked up and he jerked to a stop.
"I… I think I found it…" MetalKabuterimon spoke up with a surprised tone.
"What is it!?" BurningGreymon jumped on the statement.
"I'm not sure… but it might be a… maybe you'd call it a hole in the air…?" MetalKabuterimon answered as he rolled up closer to the side of the building and leaned forward. "Maybe a hole in space would be a better description of it. Man, Taky… there is a lot of Flymon coming out of it," the Warrior of Thunder turned to look at BurningGreymon, his eyes conveying his genuine concern and confusion.
"Show me where," BurningGreymon order as he stepped up to the edge and looked out in the direction MetalKabuterimon had been looking.
After a few minutes of searching Takuya finally found Lobomon, halfway between where he had left from and the abnormality MetalKabuterimon had located, just as he cut down another four Flymon.
"Lobomon!" BurningGreymon called out as he descended to the rooftop Koji was attempting to clear of an infestation.
"BurningGreymon? What are you doing back so soon?" Lobomon gave him an annoyed glance. He wasn't angry at his friend, but the situation with the endless supply of enemy digimon was starting to wear away at his already thin patience.
"You were right. More and more Flymon keep coming," BurningGreymon remarked as he swung out his arms, clotheslining and crushing a few Flymon that had tried to come at him.
"So there's some kind of portal these Flymon are crawling out of," Koji got his reference right away. There was no need for a further explanation with the intelligent teen.
"Yeah, about a half a mile that way," BurningGreymon nicked his head in the direction JP had given him. "Apparently it's over a bridge near some old apartment building. They seem to be swarming out of some hole in the air before taking off into the sky."
Lobomon paused to consider something a few seconds before his spirit evolution suddenly disbanded and he returned to his human form.
"Koji!? What are you doing?" BurningGreymon was completely surprised by his friend's sudden transformation. He couldn't imagine that it was voluntary considering they were in the middle of large scale invasion, but at the same time he couldn't think of anything that would end it when he only seemed slightly winded.
"I can't use my D-Phone while I'm Lobomon, so if I want to get in touch with Lady Ophanimon I have to take a time out. While I get in contact with her you carry me to the portal, hopefully I'll have finished my business with her by then," Koji replied as he pulled out his D-Phone and held down the zero button, the defeat speed dial for Lady Ophanimon on all of their phones.
"Right," BurningGreymon smirked beneath his faceplate as he picked Koji up in one of his arms.
"Stop enjoying this so much," Koji glared up at him in annoyance. He could see the enjoyment in BurningGreymon's eyes at the fact that he was going to be carrying him around like a doll or some kind of tiny purse dog.
"Can't help it," BurningGreymon chuckled before he took off into the air with Koji resting in one arm.
It only took the two of them a minute to reach the portal that the Flymon were pouring out of. It was just as MetalKabuterimon had described. It literal looked like a seven foot hole had been punched into the air just a foot above the ground. Encircling the hole was a large construction site where city workers had been digging up a road and a bridge to lay down new high speed cables. Beneath the bridge a buzzing swarm of Flymon hustled about, crawling on and around each other as they tried to build up the courage to take flight like many before them had.
"How has no one noticed this yet…" BurningGreymon found it hard to believe that the swarming construction site wasn't surrounded by gawkers and police, maybe even the military with how many digital invaders were milling about. "I guess it's just lucky that construction workers don't work on Sundays."
Knowing that they'd need to get closer to the abnormality to do anything about it he set Koji down outside the site before lifting back into the air and moved over the center of the work area. When he was satisfied with his spot he took in a deep breath and called upon his flames.
"WILDFIRE TSUNAMI" The roared went up, sending the raging flames crashing down on the swarm. Deeping the roar he twisted his body violently and swirled the flames, making them roll over the entire site burning all the insect digimon from the face of the city in a single blaze.
"It probably won't take long for more of them to start pouring out of that anomaly," before the flames had even died out Koji had jumped the fence and made his way to the digital hole at the end of the bridge.
"I'll see if I can head them off while you work out a way with Lady Ophanimon to close it," the Warrior of Flame stepped up to the portal and stared into its surface.
"Okay, we'll try and make it qu… Wait a minute! How do you plan to head them off!?" the answer to his question came before he could even finish when BurningGreymon dove into the portal.
"ARE YOU INSANE!? HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU CAN GET BACK FROM WHEREVER THAT LEADS TO?" Koji's cool demeanor broke down into a shocked fit of agitation.
He had never considered trying to pass through one of the rifts, mainly because just as fast as they tended to appeared they seemed to disappear, so it was never an option. However, this didn't seem to be one of the rifts they'd been dealing with for the last couple of years and was instead some kind of opening. And since the Flymon seemed to be coming out of the portal just fine it probably meant that Takuya would be fine; or at least that's what Koji kept telling himself.
However, Koji's worry didn't last long when BurningGreymon suddenly burst back out of the portal covered in a dozen Flymon ten seconds after recklessly diving in.
"GET OFF OF ME!" BurningGreymon roared, throwing out his arms and ejecting flames from the joints in his armor, igniting and incinerating the Flymon.
"Back so soon? Did you have fun on your little trip?" Takuya could feel the sarcasm dripping from Koji's tone.
"Shut up!" his response was an annoyed grunt before it turned more serious. "We really need to close this thing fast."
"Why?" he pulled his ear away from the phone long enough to give him his full attention.
"It's a hive! That portal leads right into the center of a massive Flymon hive. There had to be thousands of them, and that's only the ones that I could see in my short little visit," BurningGreymon huffed to catch his breath after the shock he had been given. The Flymon weren't a real threat individually or in small groups but in a swarm they could even be the downfall of a Legendary Warrior. "I think the ones we've been seeing are the ones who accidently flew into the portal while moving around the hive."
"Great… Lady Ophanimon, did you hear all of that?" Koji did his best to stay cool and calm despite what they had just learned.
"Yes, which will actually make this much easier. Now that I know that it's a digital portal, which I can close, and not a rift, which I can't do anything about, and I have BurningGreymon's short visit to ping the location of it in the digital world off of, it shouldn't take me long at all," Lady Ophanimon went quiet for a few seconds after that before coming back with more. "And there. Now, Koji, hold your D-tector up to the portal and I'll take care of the rest."
"Right, it's up," he responded by hoisting up his D-tector and pointing the screen at the portal.
The moment it was up the screen released a powerful flash, blinding the two for a few seconds, but when their vision returned the portal was gone.
"It's gone… That was it!?" BurningGreymon balked at the empty air where the portal had once floated.
"Yes… What's wrong?" Lady Ophanimon questioned over the phones speaker.
"I… I just expected… more…" BurningGreymon still couldn't take his eyes off of the empty space. "It kind of felt… felt…"
"Anticlimactic," Koji finished for him. It would seem that the sentiment was shared between them.
"Sorry…" Lady Ophanimon didn't really know what to say about their complaint.
"It's cool I guess," BurningGreymon gave a depressed sigh as he looked back to the city.
Koji disconnected the feed to Lady Ophanimon and activated his D-tector. "Whatever, now that the portal's closed their numbers should finally start going down so we need to get back to cleaning up the rest of the Flymon."
The work to track down and delete the remaining Flymon in the city went pretty quickly after the closing of the portal. The warriors had plenty of time to grab a dinner at their grandparent's places, pick up their stuff, and make the seven-o-clock train home. However, during that time something had happened, something that was weighting on a few minds.
Takuya paid no attention to the colorful scenery rushing by outside the train window. Instead, he appeared to be studying his own reflection, but that was only an outer observation, and far from the truth.
"You still thinking about that? You can't even enjoy the short trip home if you're hung up on it like Koji," Zoe nicked her head in the boy's direction, eliciting a quick unhappy glare from him.
When Takuya didn't respond Zoe tapped him on the shoulder, shaking him from his deep thoughts. "Did you need something, Zoe?" Takuya stared at her with a bit of startled confusion.
"No, I guess since you didn't hear a word I said, it answers my question," Zoe sighed behind a small smile. She knew Takuya well enough to know when he was shaken from his daydreaming and when it was deep thoughts.
"I'm guessing it had something to do with me not being able to stop thinking about what we heard?" Takuya smiled at her exhausted attitude towards his preoccupation with the bit of information.
"Yeah, but I can't blame you. Anyways, look at Koji and Koichi," Zoe pointed to the two seats across from them where the twins were sitting perfectly alike. They were sitting up straight in their seats with their eyes closed and no expressions on their faces. Just like Takuya they were completely lost in reflection and thought. "They've been like that from the moment we all sat down."
"I don't really know what all of that means… or if it's even true, but I do know one thing. This changes a lot of things about what we knew," Takuya sighed, his eyes portraying a mixture of confusion and strangely, wonder, as he leaned his head back and stared up at the train cars textured gray ceiling.
A few hours ago, just after the Warriors had finished putting down the last of the swarm of Flymon.
At the end of the fight the six Warriors ducked into a blind alley and ended their digivolution, before sneaking out and joining the crowd of people hanging around the outskirts of a crater in the asphalt made during the battle. It could have been caused by either side in the battle, but who caused it wasn't important. What was important was that it was among the destruction in a public place so some of the people amassed around it might have seen who and what had caused it.
The Warriors had original joined the crowd to avoid the suspicion of being the only people walking away from an interesting scene. It might have been a case of them being overly cautious considering it was highly unlikely that anyone would suspect them of having been involved, but it also provided them with a chance to find out what people had seen of the battle. If there was one thing someone could count on in a crowd, it was that people talked about the reason while it was still fresh.
"Seriously, man, did you see those things?" A teenage boy leaned closer to the man next to him and asked.
"Yes… but I'm not sure what I actually saw… and where did they go?" The man answered back.
"I don't know either. I saw a bunch of blurs and… big bugs I think…" The teen responded, scratching the back of his head in confusion as he did.
"Nothing here with these two," Takuya chuckled to himself as he and the others continued shifting through the crowd.
"Did you see those things?" One excited citizen whispered to the people next to him.
"Yeah, they looked like giant bees. They had to have been part of some kind of stunt, right?" One of the others responded.
"You mean like holograms or robots?" Someone responded to her.
"Again nothing," Takuya inwardly sighed before moving on.
The six moved through the crowd listening for anyone with something interesting to say. For the most part people talked about hearing explosions and seeing big bugs and large humans in costume, but for the most part they were all pretty clueless about what they had actually seen. Who could blame them for not understanding something they had never seen before. People tended to rationalize things down to what they could understand and accept, hence the robot and hologram ideas.
The warriors had almost given up on the crowd when an old man spoke up and caught their attention, his words bringing them to a silent stop.
"This reminds me of years ago…" The old man mused of the past as he stroked his gray beard. "There were monsters running about the city causing all kinds of trouble. I remember when that fog rolled in… well, I don't remember much after that… but I do remember those kids who fought them."
"Kids who fought them…" The warriors whispered the most jarring part of what he had just said to each other. They had expected to hear something related to digimon, but not what they had just heard; other children who fought digimon. Others who might have been like them.
"Sir… could you tell us more," Takuya voice came out a bit too excited, unable to hide his interest, but the old man seemed to enjoy the idea of sharing his story.
"Of course. That's what's wrong with your generation these days. They don't take enough interest in what others have to say, so it's nice that you and your friends do. Good for you. I remember these teenagers a few months ago that," the old man prattled on for a bit after that until Takuya took it upon himself to get the man back on the right track.
"Sir, on behalf of my generation I apologize, but could you go back to what you said earlier," the anticipation was killing Takuya.
"About those teenagers? Sure. Well, you see they-"
"No, not about the teenagers," Takuya couldn't take that story again. "About the children from years ago. The ones who you said fought the monsters."
"Ah, them, of course. I don't remember their faces or much of what they looked like, but I do remember them taking on the monsters. People said I was crazy and dreaming, maybe even senile, when a few years ago I suddenly remember the monster attacks. It was like some kind of veil was pulled back from my mind and I could remember the attacks as clear as day. As well as those heroic children who fought to save the city," the old man tapped the end of his cane hard on the concrete every time he swore to the validity of his claims and memories.
Back to the train ride home.
"It makes sense…" Koji finally broke the silence without looking down from the ceiling.
"What does?" Takuya felt intrigued by his sudden statement; mainly because he could have been talking about anything.
"We went to Odaiba to confirm that digimon had once appeared there, but we never thought about how they would have been taken care of," he rejoined finally lowering his gaze to look at the others and take in their responses.
"I get it," Koichi put his chin in his hand as he thought more about what his brother was saying. "If we were needed to stop the problems in and coming from the digital world, then other kids would have been needed to deal with the incident in the past."
"Wow, other Chosen Children than us," Tommy remarked leaning back in his seat as he thought about the idea.
"They'd actually be adults by now. That was like more than thirty years ago," Zoe corrected the boy.
"Wait, wait, wait, if there were others chosen decades before us, wouldn't someone have mentioned that to use. Everyone kept telling us that we were the first humans to ever come to the digital world," Takuya threw in a valid point. He assumed that with how long they'd been dealing with the digital world that someone would have mentioned children fighting to protect both worlds before them. Their exploits should have been the stuff of legends, just like the warriors before them, and their own achievements.
"That's a good point," JP nodded in agreement with the others, except for Koji that is. He seemed to be pondering something that was taking up a lot of his attention and thought.
"What if it predates what anyone knows about the digital world," Koji spoke up with his hypothesis. "I mean when we first went to the digital world we were there for months and less than an hour passed in the real world while we were gone. It was only when the digital world was reformatted after the fight with Lucemon that its passage of time began to match the real world. Who knows how many millennia could have passed with the previous time difference over the course of more than thirty years."
"We could have actually found something out that outdates the entire recorded history of the digital world… That's pretty cool," Takuya laughed at the possible importance of what they had accidently stumbled across. "Guys, we have to learn more."
"Wow, Takuya's actually excited about learning something," JP's comment managed to pull some laughs from the others.
"Shut up," Takuya retorted, too caught off-guard to come up with a witty response.
"A good place to start would probably be with asking Lady Ophanimon," Koichi suggested.
"Then I guess I know what where doing after school tomorrow," Takuya smiled, not even the idea of having the school the next day could dampen his spirit and interest over their discovery.
The Warriors have taken a big step towards the truth hidden between child and parent that has tied them to the digital world since birth, but despite their discovery and new direction a barrier known as the passage of time stands between them and the past, and the truth with it.
A home coming awaits them all in the coming days.
To be continued…