Chapter Twenty-Six

A loud, droning sound filled Hikari's ears as her vision slowly came back, the fuzzy interior of the back a truck swimming into view. Only, it was at a funny angle and the air was choked with dust, making her cough as she came to. A groan escaped her lips and she out a hand to a new tender spot on her head, though her whole body was wracked with pain and in particular her left arm. She tried to move it and more pain flared up through her body, and looking down Hikari saw it was dislocated again.

She hissed in pain and used her good arm to haul herself towards a triangle of light at the back of the truck, groaning with every single movement. Her ribs could be broken as well, she reasoned, alongside any other number of bones. Certainly there were going to be bruises, lots of them, and scrapes.

It was a draining exercise to drag herself along and by the time she made it to the back of the truck, Hikari was exhausted as she stared out at the chaos surrounding her. There were a few other vehicles tipped over on their sides, if not their roofs, and several others were belching flames and black smoke into the sky as soldiers tried to establish a perimeter against the infected Digimon assaulting them. The armoured vehicles still operational were training their turrets on them, firing away, but Hikari could only count eleven of them from her position.

But, she did see the familiar sight of MetalGreymon standing in their midst, firing off attacks, alongside WereGarurumon and Zudomon, so that tipped the balance somewhat back in their favour. There was a flash of light and then, MagnaAngemon joined the fight, followed by Lilymon.

'Hikari!' a familiar voice shouted as she dragged herself further from the truck wreckage. 'You're still alive. Medic!'

She raised her head and saw Mike, the British soldier from her first day on base, come hurrying over with a rifle in his hand and a bloody bandage on his head. Behind him was a soldier she didn't know but they carried a large rucksack, a subdued cross on their helmet that singled them out as a medic, who hauled her into a small lee between the truck and the ground to examine her.

'What happened?' Hikari whispered through gritted teeth as the medic started probing the various lumps and bruises she now sported, paying particular attention to her left arm.

'That's dislocated,' the medic said, quite needlessly. 'Hold on.'

'We got hit,' Mike said. 'We're still being hit.'

A series of explosions sounded just beyond the rudimentary perimeter the soldiers had established, if it could really be called that, and screams soon followed as someone else was struck down. MetalGreymon roared and fired off his missiles at some unseen Digimon, twin booms roiling across the scene seconds later. Elsewhere, one of the American tracked vehicles traversed its turret to bear on a flying Digimon and loosed off a string of rounds.

They connected and the Digimon fell from the sky, bursting into data, but three more took its place. Electric blue lasers slammed into them, courtesy of Daisuke in his suit, but it did little more than scatter them as he moved onto another target. At the very least, seeing he was still alive helped shift some of the worry hanging over Hikari.

'An extraction plan is being worked on,' Mike continued, pausing briefly to raise his rifle and send a burst at something flying overhead, the empty brass casings falling to the floor in a glittering arc. 'But we're still seven miles from the nearest portal, assuming it's still there. Alpha Base has been hit.'

He gestured to several stacks of smoke coming up from behind the horizon in roughly the same direction as the human's base in the region, and the grimness of his tone suggested the casualties from it weren't minimal.

'Where are the others?' Hikari asked, looking at the five Ultimate Digimon helping defend the stalled convoy. There should have been at least another two, plus the Champion forms of Hawkmon, Wormmon and Armadillomon.

'Gone,' Mike said after a moment. 'Just… gone.'

'And Gatomon?' Hikari asked.

She hadn't seen her partner anywhere since coming to, and even though it couldn't have been more than a few minutes since the crash Hikari refused to believe that Gatomon had been destroyed in that time. But, she knew from the saddened look on Mike's face this was the case.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'An Okuwamon went for her almost immediately as she came out of the wreck. It was over before we could do anything.'

The medic chose that point to shove a dressing in Hikari's mouth and pop her shoulder back into place. She screamed in pain, physical and emotional, and fell heavily onto her side as tears streamed from her eyes, biting down onto the dressing. At the very least, it kept her from biting her tongue off.

'No!' Hikari whimpered as she lay there, clutching one arm and her mouth full of dressing. 'No, no, no! Gatomon!'

She spat the dressing out and let loose another pained howl as she thought of her partner, of all the memories they had made together, now gone at the hands of the Dark Ocean's forces. Gone without even a chance to say goodbye.

'We need to get you out of here,' Mike said, hauling Hikari into an upright position. 'The Dark Ocean's coming for you, and we're running out of time.'

'Gatomon!' Hikari said, oblivious to what he was saying, or what the medic was doing. She seemed to blink and her arm was in a sling, and the pain from her arm was starting to fade as the medic pinned an empty needle to her shirt.

'Come on!' Mike yelled. 'On your feet!'

He grabbed Hikari's good arm and yanked her upwards, to her feet, earning a reproachful tut from the medic at handling an injured child so roughly, but Mike ignored him as he half led, half dragged Hikari to a nearby vehicle that had its roof torn off. A soldier was crouched next to it, rifle firing at a distant target, and he looked up when Mike and Hikari approached him.

'This thing still running?' Mike asked, gesturing at the truck.

'Yes, sir,' the soldier said with a nod, glancing at Hikari. 'I'm taking her, huh?'

'Yes,' Mike said. 'Think you can do it?'

The soldier grinned. 'Trust in the Landy, sir. She'll make it.'

'Good,' Mike said, turning to his ward. 'Let's go.'

'Gonna feel naked without some cover,' the soldier said as he got behind the wheel of the truck, or the Landy as he called it, slapping the ignition button to bring it to life.

'I got that covered,' Mike said, waiving to a nearby group of soldiers, Americans according to the flags on their uniforms, and a single JSDF member, and pointed to the back of the Landy. They got the message quickly enough and climbed in as Mike helped Hikari into the passenger seat, strapping her in.

'Still not feeling great,' the driver said, glancing at the six men sitting behind him with their rifles, plus a light machinegun, held at the ready.

'I said it's covered,' Mike snapped back, grabbing a radio sitting on the dashboard. He keyed the talk button and said, 'Daisuke, it's Mike. We're moving Hikari to Portal A5 via a Wolf. She's got six guns in the back, but we need-'

The rest was cut off the loud buzzing of a Flymon as it swooped in, and then a pained scream from Mike as a stinger from the insect Digimon slammed into his chest, piercing it, but they didn't get a chance to help him because the driver slammed the Landy or Wolf, or whatever it was, into gear and they took off with the engine roaring and the gearbox screaming. Hikari felt her everything flare up in pain from the impact of being slammed back into her seat.

It didn't get any better. Once they were free of the convoy the driver buried the accelerator and they rocketed away, but the ground was anything but smooth and they were doing anything but a steady pace. Hikari did her best to see what the speedo said, and during rare moments of stability she saw they were doing something between forty and fifty miles an hour. The Wolf bounced around as it found each dip and bump, at times seeming to actually come up off the ground, as if the driver was confident it could take the abuse.

She didn't feel like she could, her every injury screaming anew with each impact and jolt despite the painkiller the medic had given her. Obviously Hikari didn't expect it to drown out everything, but it seemed like the contents of the syringe were doing nothing at all. Behind her, the soldiers had their guns up and were firing at anything hostile that thought about chasing them, a futile endeavour really but it worked well enough to distract them for Daisuke to come in and finish them off, flying overwatch.

Further back was the indistinct forms of MetalGreymon, WereGarurumon and MagnaAngemon rushing to keep pace. Of Zudomon and Lilymon there was no sign, suggesting they too had fallen to the forces of the Dark Ocean.

The only Japanese soldier in the truck put a hand to his ear, listening to his radio, and said, 'Point A5 is gone. The infected just trashed it.'

'Alternatives?' the driver asked.

'Finding that out now,' the soldier said, speaking into his mic. A minute later he said, 'All the A portals are gone, same for the B, C and D portals. E might still be operational, maybe F. It's hard to tell. The channels are being overwhelmed.

'We're twelve miles from the E portals,' the driver said, glancing at his instruments. 'Fifteen minutes, if we're lucky.'

'Fifteen minutes?' one of the Americans yelled out from the back. 'Shit, we won't last five with the forces they're sending our way.'

'We gotta try,' another of the Americans said. 'We can't just give up.'

'Yeah, screw that!' a third said. 'These bastards want to play, let's make 'em pay for it!'

All of this happened in English and Hikari heard only snippets of it, but she could tell from the tone of the soldiers that something bad had occurred. She pulled her seatbelt tighter as they flew over another bump in the ground, landing heavily on the other side, earning another hiss of pain from her. When this was all over, she was going to need at least a month in bed just to recover.

She looked up into the air where Daisuke was flying, still with them despite no doubt taking a battering from fighting all these Digimon. A trail of smoke was coming out of his thrusters and one of the lasers attached to his forearms sputtered and sparked, broken beyond use, but still he fought on.

'Come back to me,' Hikari whispered. 'Please, Daisuke. I can't lose you.'

There was no way he could have heard her, and nor could anyone else for that matter given the roaring of the Wolf's engine or the howling of the wind. She barely heard it, and yet Daisuke seemed to because he flew lower and closer to the speeding vehicle.

At least, that was what it seemed like. Hikari quickly realised he was moving to intercept something ahead of her when the ground erupted with an explosion, a Digimon bursting up from below, and the driver swerved to avoid it but they were going too fast, over rough ground, in something designed as a utilitarian workhorse, and it rolled over.

The soldiers in the back were thrown free as the Wolf rolled, killed when they slammed into the ground, with only Hikari and the driver staying in their seats thanks to their belts, though that wasn't to say they emerged unharmed from the experience.

Hikari felt some of her ribs crack for definite and her head slammed into the dashboard, knocking her out again, as the Wolf tumbled and hung, dazed, in her seat when it finally came to a halt, amazingly upright, but belching smoke and steam from the engine bay. She groaned and fumbled for the seatbelt release, sliding from the seat to the ground below in an untidy heap when she was free. For the moment she felt no pain, but only because that part of her brain had shut down from a stimulus overload. In a few minutes it would come back, and then she'd probably black out.

A dark shape landed nearby and stalked towards her, grabbing her under the arms and dragging her away from the Wolf just as flames appeared alongside the steam coming from the engine bay, the whole vehicle exploding a moment later and taking with it the driver, still belted in behind the wheel. Hikari glanced up at her saviour, recognising them as Daisuke during a moment where her vision wasn't blurry, and she mumbled something about him coming back as he propped her up against a rock.

He made no reply to that, assuming she had even said something coherent in her current state, and turned to face the incoming threat of a veritable army of infected Digimon coming to steal her away for their master. Daisuke rocketed away as Hikari's vision greyed out before coming back, if only partially, and he had moved over from where she had last seen him and was battling someone new, and when it faded and came back again he was somewhere else entirely.

The next time it happened, Hikari registered three more figures standing around her and they all seemed familiar, and it took a second to recognise them as Taichi, Takeru and Yamato, her brother crouched down next to her.

'Hikari, can you hear me?' he seemed to be saying, but to her ears he sounded very far away. 'Speak to me!'

'Taichi?' she muttered out, blinking hard several times. Her brother's visage seemed to hang just before her eyes, blurry, as he reached out to take hold of her.

'Yeah, it's me,' he said. 'Can you stand? Can you move?'

'I think…' Hikari said as she tried to move something, anything, but her body refused to respond. The closest she got was making her arm tremble. 'I can't.'

'Don't worry, it's okay,' Taichi said. 'I'm here for you.'

She felt him scoop her up into his arms and carry her towards a big orange mass that had to be MetalGreymon, standing guard nearby as MagnaAngemon and WereGarurumon tried their best to back Daisuke up, but the odds stacked against them were immense. At least 150-1, maybe, and one of the fighters was on the verge of collapse. Maybe they all were. Hikari couldn't be certain of anything right now. Her consciousness felt like it had drifted away from her body and she was simply spectating it all on a small television screen.

'There's too many of them, Taichi,' she heard Yamato say as one of the Digimon grunted in pain, falling to the ground. 'We'll never make to a portal.'

'I'm not going to give up my sister!' Taichi shouted. 'Would you give up Takeru? Or Sora?'

'We might not have a say in the matter,' Yamato said. 'They're seconds away from overrunning us!'

An explosion slammed into MetalGeymon's back and he crouched over the four DigiDestined to shield them from the debris and blast, grunting. It sounded muted to Hikari's ears, as did everything else. She felt Taichi's grip on her tighten in response and she looked up at him, seeing he sported a bloody bandage on his cheek and parts of his hair had been singed away by fire.

'I'm not losing my sister,' he repeated.

'Then we need Omnimon to get her out of here,' Yamato said.

'No,' Hikari whispered, but it just came out as a soft grunt. 'No Omnimon.'

There was no way they could risk losing him to the Dark Ocean. If they did, then the subjugation of the Earth became a question of when, not if. Surely Taichi and the other two realised that by now, didn't they? Or did they think they could stave off the infection long enough for MagnaAngemon or Daisuke to carry her to safety?

'No,' she tried to say again, managing a croak this time but Taichi either didn't hear or didn't understand what she was saying.

He gently put her back down on the ground and turned to Takeru, giving the young teen a solemn nod that signalled she was now his responsibility to escort to safety. To which, Takeru nodded back and called out for his partner.

'No,' Hikari whispered again, finally coherent enough to be understood, but nobody heard her.

There was a flash at MetalGreymon and WereGarurumon digivolved to the next level, then a brighter one as they fused together and became Omnimon. As they did, MangaAngemon carefully picked up Hikari in his arms and, with Takeru on his back, took to the skies as Omnimon faced down the encroaching Digimon army with just a several wounded Daisuke for backup, though he took one look at the Mega Digimon and moved the other way, after Hikari and Takeru.

He managed to get airborne but barely, the thrusters of his suit belching smoke and flame in equal measure as he struggled to keep pace with the angelic Digimon towards what was hopefully the last remaining portal back to the real world.

Suffice it to say, they didn't make it.

Daisuke slammed into MagnaAngemon and forced him to the side in time to miss a shot from Omnimon, though a near miss from a Mega level Digimon as powerful as him was still destructive in its own right. Simply being caught in the heat and power bleed off was enough to knock them all from the sky and revert MagnaAngemon back to Patamon when they all crashed. The only one who stood back up was Daisuke but it was clearly taking everything he had to do so, his entire body shaking from exertion.

Even so, he raised his arms in a combat stance and span his remaining lasers up. They all then exploded one after the other, leaving them twisted and ruined, and he stared at them in shocked disbelief as Omnimon surged forward, lightning quick, and with just a light tap from his sword sent Daisuke flying backwards into the ground.

'He's infected,' Takeru whispered, staring up at Omnimon as he came closer to him and Hikari, looking down at the pair with empty eyes. 'The Dark Ocean has him.'

'Yes,' Hikari whispered back.

This is what Captain Ishida and the others had worried would happen if the DigiDestined threw themselves into the fight against the Dark Ocean, that their most powerful fighter would become corrupted and turned against them. Worse, nothing could stop him from taking Hikari back to the Dark Ocean, another of their worries they had sought to avert.

They were done for.

'I can. Still. Fight,' Patamon said, struggling to his paws in front of Takeru and Hikari. 'I won't let you hurt them.

He shouted this at Omnimon, defiant to the last, and earned a swipe of his sword for the trouble. Patamon was there one minute and gone the next, exploding into data before their very eyes. A soft cry escaped Takeru's lips at seeing his partner die again, the will to fight leaving his body in an instant. He collapsed next to Hikari and cried, beating the ground in despair, as Omnimon towered over them both.

Fear swept across Hikari as she looked up at him, a feeling that was only partly alleviated when Daisuke stumbled over and fell to his knees beside her, looking a haggard mess with his armour cracked and dented and smoking and sparking all over. He had nothing left to give in this fight and he knew it, gently taking hold of her hand in his, sharing one last moment.

Silence fell over everything with not even the wind making a noise, just the shallow breathing of Hikari and Takeru as they waited for the inevitable to come. For Hikari, this meant a giant beast made of tentacles appearing to kill Daisuke and take her away with it, to the Dark Ocean, and she steeled herself when another dark portal opened behind Omnimon, taller than all the others, and immediately found her sense of smell being overwhelmed by the stench of rotting flesh and saltwater.

The creature that emerged looked exactly like it had in her dreams, innumerable tentacles sliding over one another to form gross, misshapen limbs that oozed slime with a head that possessed glowing red eyes and a slobbering maw lined with yellowed, razor sharp teeth drawn back into a sadistic grin as it looked down at Daisuke.

A tentacle shot towards him and despite herself Hikari shied away from the sight on reflex, not wanting to see the person she was falling in love with die, but there was no sound of metal rending as it was pierced. Rather, it sounded more like creaking and groaning and she cautiously opened her eyes to look, finding that the monster had chosen to wrap Daisuke within its tentacle instead. For the moment, at least.

The tentacle tightened its hold on him and she heard his suit creak in protest as it was crushed, a muffled bang coming from somewhere as a component exploded followed by another, before releasing him. Daisuke dropped and slammed into the ground with a solid thump, his suit smoking from everywhere, but the abuse wasn't over with as another tentacle, smaller than the one before, wrapped itself around his neck and hoisted him back into the air to hang before the monster's face where it fixed him with its evil grin.

'My master said to make you final moments in this pitiful world suffer,' it rumbled, spraying him with spittle as it spoke. 'To pay you back the grave injustice you did him four years ago. I think the Endless Depths should suffice. Cold, alone and surrounded by nothing but darkness as the weight of the water slowly crushes you piece by piece.'

It span and hurled Daisuke with tremendous speed in the general direction of the body of water Hikari had only seen on the map in the conference centre. Within seconds he was gone from sight, too small to see, and the creature turned back to her with that same sadistic grin.

She was soon ensnared in a tentacle, the slime it was covered in making her gag at the stench, and held before the creature's face as it said, 'My queen. From you an invasion force unlike any other shall be born, and with it all will bow before us.'

From somewhere down below she could hear Takeru shouting at the monster to let her go, pleading, but without Patamon or a suit like Daisuke's that was all he could do, and the last Hikari saw of him before getting dragged into the portal was of Takeru down on his hands and knees, screaming her name.

To be continued…