Chapter 49: Digital World: red Nightfall


When they finally saw light that wasn't glowing green and originating from plants, TK had lost count of the days and hours it had been since they first got lost. The light - it wasn't even sunlight, just gray cloudy sky above a barren landscape - stung in their eyes and TK had to rapidly blink tears away. Patamon had no such problems and just bounced off his head, flipping through the moist, cool air in elation.

If he didn't feel too weak to waste energy on movement that had no purpose, TK would be tempted to join him - just looking at the sky after so long of not seeing it, trying to adjust back from narrow corridors to the sheer wideness of outside.

But that wasn't happening. As it was, TK could hardly remain upright and he feared that if he lay down, he would not wake for a long time and feel even worse after.

"We need food and water first," TK rasped, his voice rough from hours of not speaking, from dryness and exhaustion.

The pressing problem was where to find either. Rocks and stones around them, some bigger and some smaller, the largest ones almost the size of small hills. The tunnel they had come out of ended in the only flat and relatively rubble free space around, looking well used. It was the kind of place where Drimogemon preferred to live and they had probably come out in the nest. No plants, no water.

From the way TK's belly was clawing at his insides, they'd better not take too much time finding something. Passing out hadn't happened yet, but judging by the way TK felt and how disturbing light-headed spells snuck up on him every few minutes and every time he moved too fast, too carelessly, it wasn't that long off.

Hunger. Real hunger with no food available. TK had never forgotten what it felt like, but time had dulled the memory. TK assumed Cody felt even worse than he did, if only because he didn't have experience with hunger (starving) to back him up, but he didn't say a thing. Cody was like that. He didn't complain and being as introverted and taciturn as he was, never bothered to state the obvious.

"Patamon," TK raised his voice enough to call his partner to attention where he was currently distracted by freedom. "Could you fly up and take a look around so that we know in which direction we have to go?"

Patamon stopped rolling around on the ground with a sullen pout. "But I'm hungry, TK. When will we get something to eat?"

"I don't know," he admitted, "but if you can see plants or water from up there, we'll be much closer."

Patamon brightened. Without much energy but plenty of enthusiasm to make up for it, the little light digimon flapped his wings as he climbed in the air.

A mute groan from the vicinity of the ground had TK look away from his partner and at the digimon still left with them. Armadimon's legs were stretched away from his body and he lay flat on the dark stones. He didn't look so good, lacking even more energy than Patamon, because unlike TK's partner, the armadillo had to walk the entire way on his own legs.

Cody had sat down next to him, dark rings under his red eyes, dirty and face sunken. In good and normal light, the difference between the Cody he had seen in the human world and this one was stark and it made something inside TK heavy with sadness.

Why did this always have to happen? Why? Why did they have to fight? What did fighting ever bring? Only survivors and no victors, taking bits and pieces of everyone involved. They protect things too, but protecting things that shouldn't be at risk in the first place was not something to weigh against things that got lost. Sometimes without noticing.

Wasn't there a way to prevent situations like this happening, to stop innocent beings from getting involved, letting only those that wanted to fight, fight? How many children were Digi-Destined by now? How many of them would have to fight without any warning before it was over?

What could the digimon possibly want, that it was worth all this?

Cody glanced up from his D-terminal. "The GPS works again. It shows we are near a place called the Rusty Plains." A slight frown pulled his eyebrows together. "Northern Hemisphere. Near the eastern end of the W Mountains. I have never been here before."

TK thought about it, digging through memories. As a child, he hadn't been very attentive - most memories of his first adventure weren't very clear, except for standing impressions (hunger, thirst, darkness, loneliness, fear, warmth, everyone -) "Me neither."

Cody nodded and went back to studying the map.

The W Mountains were one of the many mountain ranges in the digital world and like most things, weren't as bound by laws of physics and logic as one would like. In the real world, mountains grew when earth plates pushed against one another or with the help of similar natural forces. In the digital world, things were built from data. Data fed from the human world, taken apart, put back together and flipped upside down for good measure, took appearances that were in the end based on something real but didn't have to share much with it. Case in point, the W Mountains, named such because on a map they formed a w. Izzy had once theorized that they were based on the constellation they could find in the sky at home rather than just the plain letter of the alphabet. In a weird way, it would make sense.

Like all of them, TK had learned the most basic geography of the digital world. He knew that some had done it on accident in those years where they were cut off from their partners as they tried to reconstruct all the ways they had traveled. Some in nostalgia, some as reminders, and others on purpose. For TK it had been a slippery slope from one to the next. When the Second Generation had become active, he had not wanted to chance getting lost horribly and did his memorizing even though they did have D-terminals at that point. At this point, TK probably knew the geography of the digital world better than of home.

It let him know without looking at a map that they had a long, long way to travel before they made it to Vamdemon's castle. Especially on foot.

Suppressing a sigh, he watched Patamon descend from the sky, gliding elegantly in the winds.

Something flickered in the corner of his eye and Patamon was hit out of the sky. A strangled sounding squeak reached down to TK where he was staring at the place Patamon was suddenly no longer at.

The screech of a digimon rang through the air, resounding from the mountains and joined by many others. It didn't even register in TK's mind as he shouted for Patamon and ran in the direction he must have landed. The many rocks and stones piled up and gave much room for someone as small as Patamon to disappear from sight in. Panic crawling up his throat, choking with fear, TK tried not to think. Where was he? Was he hurt? Please don't let him be hurt!

Worry for Patamon blew everything straight out of his mind and maybe that was one reason why everything went horrible wrong. TK didn't care to check for danger that was there but was not yet visible, forgot how run down Cody and Armadimon were, that Koichi wouldn't move without incentive and that if he only thought about it a little would realize that any place a Drimogemon dug tunnels would surface, was more than likely close to where more Drimogemon lived.

Only when the ground shook with a first solid attack did TK remember that a world existed outside of looking for Patamon and when he looked up and back from the rock he was trying to climb over, many, many digimon emerged from the natural cover. Two DarkDrimogemon, several DarkGiromon and -TK swallowed - DarkMetalGraymon.

The sight was another shock. For a moment, TK could do nothing but stare. Then the horror grew with realization and new wave of fear. In a tiny piece of his mind that was born from fighting and surviving and desperation, estimations ran - what it would need to defeat this or to out run this - and they spat out HolyAngemon. Making TK panic all over again, because he still hadn't found his partner and oh, what if-

"Run!" He shouted over the space separating him from his friends (when had that happened?), Cody and Armadimon looking frozen as they stared at what the boulder riddled landscape had revealed to them.

Freezing up. It didn't happen very often anymore.

A Drimogemon was close to them, very close, having just crawled out of a hole. In a distant part of his mind, TK realized that that must have been the noise that had drawn his attention.

Cody scrambled up, and backwards, Armadimon crouching on the ground to defend or attack, but, with a sinking stomach, TK understood that it really didn't matter. They were weak, all of them, starved and tired and evolving cost energy their digimon partners didn't really have anymore.

It wasn't going to work like this. Nothing was going to work like this!

But then, the Drimogemon didn't attack. Silence and no movement. In fact, none of the dark digimon seemed to want to. They had only eyes for one thing. Person. Koichi.

TK's blood froze even as he wasn't surprised. If there was something that was worse, it was this.

The DarkDrimogemon tilted its head, sniffing the air, as did the others.

Ducking away, TK restarted his search for Patamon. Without Patamon nothing could be done either. TK couldn't help, even if he stayed and watched. Couldn't fight, wouldn't run. And Cody knew what how to act on his own. Hopefully though, the digimon just wanted to stare at Koichi and not -

TK found Patamon knocked out and with a bump on his head in the rift between two boulders, almost looking stuck. He was out for the count. Climbing onto the next best highest point, TK darted his eyes back to the spot he had come from and that was by now surrounded by digimon.

It was maybe fifty feet away, but that was still close enough to recognize details. Cody had backed to Koichi, with Armadimon in front of him, completely surrounded from all sides and with the digimon closing in slow circling motions as though they wanted to throw themselves on weakened prey but were oddly hesitant at the same time, almost like they were wondering if they should dare. Or like they didn't know what they were supposed to do.

It was a back-to-the-wall situation with no way out, not even with trickery.

TK stared as his mind raced. Would throwing a rock into the predatory silence do something? Would it get attention to TK? If, then TK could disappear between the rocks and force them to look for him - time gained and time played. Would the digimon even notice at all with as focused as they were? Would it only set them off to attack? What did they want anyway? With Koichi? Evolving? Help? He took ten seconds of tearing his eyes away to send off an SOS on his D-terminal, but had no idea beyond that.

Closer. Better get closer.

His friends were there. It might be dangerous, but his friends were there and someone who was at the moment more defenseless than even a child -

DarkGiromon exploded forward, before any other digimon could react, yet it was like watching in slow motion. Chainsaw raised, menacing and cackling something that might be words but that TK couldn't understand, sounding half crazed.

Armadimon jumped, was batted aside. DarkGiromon not even three feet away, swinging the chainsaw in an arc. Cody dropping and dragging Koichi down with him, except - Koichi didn't let himself get pulled.

The chainsaw fell.

Darkness surged.

Exploding with a dark light that was nothing so much as absence of all light, power, heavy and sickening, darkdarkdark, pressing and malicious hunger.

TK gagged. Groundless terror threatened to overwhelm him as a flashback added to the crushing weight of Darkness in the air. Everyone - hurt - hopelessness - evil laughter - cruelty - crushed hope - despair - Angemon's white wings of light - gonegonegone -

TK had no idea how long it took him to force himself into a state of mind where he was able to process the outside of his head again, but when he was, he almost wished he wasn't.

Duskmon. There was no question that this was Duskmon. It wasn't the fact that it was a different digimon from the lion typed warrior TK had seen before, but that evil malevolence leaked out of it like nothing else that screamed at him that this was the danger, the other that Koichi's friends feared, no matter how lighthearted Takuya had tried to disguise it. TK could see why. A nightmare reborn. Such a harsh contrast to what Koichi usually radiated that TK needed no warning at all to tell him that this thing was wrong.

(Later, when he had time and energy to think, he would realize what it meant that he noticed so immediately and obviously a difference.)

A red blade, red like the blood that TK could even see from the distance drip down from it, grew out of its skull- like hand, spearing the DarkGiromon through its small metal body.

The many eyes on its skull themed armor rotated around, eerie in size and movement, as the DarkGirmon burst into data. A second rippled blade slid out of its other hand and Duskmon crossed them in front of its body, lowering its stance then disappeared.

Only, as the screaming and screeching showed, it hadn't so much as disappeared as it had thrown itself into the wave of digimon that had started to fall down on them like an avalanche only an instant after the DarkGiromon had broken the status quo.

From his vantage point, TK couldn't observe the battle and was despairingly glad for it as only the sight of Duskmon made him furious and terrified in equal measures. So long as he didn't see it, it wasn't pressed into the front of his mind and TK could focus on Cody and Armadimon.

TK climbed back through the stones, heart pounding in his chest, trying to avoid the fight and any digimon possibly involved, his body shaking both in fear and with adrenaline. Cody was waiting for him, Armadimon in his arms, at the rim of the nest, pale faced with residual horror of having seen of digimon die right before his eyes and who knew how many more in between.

Bursts of data were characteristic, the red particles small but like fast fading mist at a distance. TK had not seen any since that Girmon, but the battle going on in the surrounding rocks spoke for itself. Explosions, heavy impacts, rock breaking, heavy bodies crushing, screaming of metal and the bone shaking roars of several DarkMetalGreymon.

On the plus side, TK and Cody were left alone and ignored. Duskmon didn't seem to have an interest in them and the dark digimon only had eyes for Duskmon. It gave TK a bad feeling, because there really was no good reason for the latter.

"What do they want with Duskmon - or Koichi?"

Cody bit his lip, then shook his head. "I don't know, but I can't imagine it is anything good. Without exception, they are Dark Evolutions and Koichi has powers of Darkness. Perhaps they think they can take it from him. It didn't look like they wanted to take him to their leaders."

TK agreed and it did not make him feel any better. The digimon were all supposed to attack them because they were controlled or because they were evil and had voluntarily joined forces. This...didn't have that feeling. It was odd, too, how Cody and TK had been ignored.

The enemy needed a representative of one element to control the corresponding digimon in the entire world, yet Koichi had never been captured and dark type digimon had never been controlled as, say, the ice types. Yet they were still attacking them, almost blindly and, in fact, they had been evolved to dark types - what was the reason behind that? Was it just to make them stronger? But what reason was there to make a digimon stronger when it couldn't be manipulated like a puppet?

With some effort, TK forced the questions from his mind. He could focus on them for later - now was not the time and place.

"What are we going to do?" Cody asked, voice quiet and tense as he looked in the direction of a latest impact.

"I don't know," TK admitted. "We can't fight and our partners can't either. And even if we could, who are we supposed to fight? Koichi is our responsibility, but," he swallowed, "Duskmon is evil. It would attack us without hesitation." His fists clenched. "And right now it's killing digimon."

"We've got to stop it."

"Yes," said TK and hoped he didn't sound as bitter as he thought. Darkness. It was always Darkness. If only Darkness didn't exist. "But how?"

Cody looked at Armadimon in his arms. "I don't know." The younger boy sounded as hopeless and lost as TK felt. "Don't we...I mean, can we get help?"

Yet another impact vibrated through the ground. TK pulled out his D-terminal. "I sent an SOS, but..." SOS were generally not messages that were answered in text, on the basis that the one in danger wouldn't have time to check for messages. TK didn't think canceling the SOS would be doing any good, since they still were in an emergency, but they did have the luxury of a lull.

"Did you ask if there is something we can do about Duskmon?" Cody prompted, following along a similar train of thought. "When is it going to turn back into Koichi and if there is something to speed it up?"

"Also, if someone has ideas what to do about the many Dark digimon," TK added, thinking aloud as he typed away. If (and that's a big if) there was something they could do about Duskmon, which TK didn't bet on, because that was not Darkness, and because Takuya's 'Duskmon, then run for the hills' was not promising, then it would be a short triumph if the other digimon were going to descend on them.

They needed help.

TK send off the message and hoped for the best as the two DigiDestined meanwhile maneuvered themselves in a position where they could observe the happenings.


Takuya read the message Sora handed to him and promptly spat out his water through the nose. Then he read again. And again.

Then he groaned and rubbed a hand over his face, forgetting that it was a bad idea with the still fresh, deep grouch in his cheek.

"I don't suppose we are anywhere near them, are we?"

Sora made a noise in the back of her throat that Takuya knew to read as a 'if we were so lucky we wouldn't be here. Try other side of the globe'. In her lap, her tiny partner digimon chirped.

"Well, that's just great." It was all well and good that control over every not darkness typed digimon had been broken since the Great Girl Mimi, who Takuya was going to shower in thanks, had managed to break his friends out, but the thing was, it didn't really decrease the numbers of pursuers on their trail when said digimon and all dark evolved. Into dark types. So of course, Takuya, Sora and her freshly hatched partner still had about a full army's worth of digimon on their trail.

Wasn't exactly easy to deal with.

"Hey, did you tell the others already that the dark types can be turned into nice and helpless digimon when they are forced out of an evolution."

"Yes. I was doing that when you were lighting that field on fire."

"Don't diss arson!" If Takuya weren't as awesome as he was, they'd have been done in by now ten times over. Or something. "You're just jealous of my skill!"

Sora gave him a look and Takuya laughed.

The ability to cause large scale fire and walk through it sure had its advantages when one wanted to run away. Or apply steady, non-lethal, mostly, damage.

Digimon who were stupid and walked into a roaring inferno would still get damaged. And if they got damaged enough, they were forced to devolve. And once they had devolved, common sense would kick in and they'd get the hell out of said fire.

That was Takuya's newest strategy. He was very proud of it. Of course that only applied to those that couldn't fly or didn't have armour strong enough or just plain were too strong to be hurt by a normal fire, no matter how pretty...sufficient to say, Aldamon still had plenty of workout lately.

"I kind feel for your friends with Koji," Takuya told his traveling partner as he roasted something that was supposed to be edible over his palm. "I know him and all and he's going to be a pain. It's like an unwritten law back home. Don't mess with Koichi."


"Koji is not going to take this well," Tommy offered to the other teen, raising his voice against the wind as he handed the D-terminal back.

"Well, yeah," Davis shouted back. "I wouldn't take it well either if my sister went through a Dark Evolution. Not that my sister can evolve."

It's not Dark Evolution, was on the tip of Tommy's tongue, but then he swallowed the words, reconsidering. As far as Tommy got, Dark Evolution was when evolution was forced. Duskmon's evolution wasn't forced. It was natural, just still wrong. Like taken a wrong turn but still on a road. Forced evolution was wrong as well. So maybe it wasn't that far off, calling them one and the same.

AeroV-dramon dived into a cloud and Tommy breathed moisture, his clothes soaked through, but it was still better than the alternative of an energy blast. Tommy was very grateful there were only few digimon capable of matching speed with AeroV-dramon. If they'd have to fight the many digimon after them they'd get nowhere fast.

"Are we anywhere near Koichi's group?" Tommy shouted up front once they had broken out of the clouds and Davis had graduated to free hand flying to simultaneously busy himself with his D-terminal.

"Not really! But wait a moment, I'm trying to estimate how long it would take AeroV-dramon to get to them."

Tommy didn't really have anything but waiting to do. For days on end flying on the back of a dragon, no matter how fast, still got boring pretty soon. Now there was Koichi to worry about too. Tommy bit his lip. Duskmon was never good. For Koichi or anything really.

Distracting himself, he went back to working through the mass of memories he had yet to process. Being split into three wasn't a nice feeling. If he got rid of that, maybe...

"Damn!" Davis cursed. "We'd take days. If only we had Imperialdramon! ...Wait." A pause. "I'm an idiot. Let me check something."


This is the betaed chapter for June. Many thanks to smfan for the hard work!

In case anyone was wondering about the Dark(insert-digimon) digimon. In some cases they then become digimon like Devimon or the like, while in most cases, their higher evolution just gets a 'Dark' attached to their names. The basics of this idea is in 02 where the Digimon Kaiser forced Agumon to dark evolve and where instead of SkullGreymon, he became a dark themed MetalGreymon. To clear it up, that means this Drimogemon + Dark Evolution = DarkGiromon/DarkMetalGraymon/DarkNisedrimogemon or Betamon + Dark Evolution = Devimon/DarkDrimogemon/etc. This is mostly the reason why the digigestined can encounter digimon that are native to the region they are traveling or some that really, really aren't, because they have been evolved wrongly and randomly.

TBC