Three Years Later

by Sora Takenouchi Ishida

Take a look at the Destined Children three years after defeating Apocalymon and how they work their way on reconnecting with each other. Prequel for Back to Your Heart. Hikari's POV for most of the story.

22. The Battle

Hello! Here I am again, with another chapter! Btw, chapters 7 and 8 from the rewritten version are already on AO3. The link is in my profile. I suggest you go read that version because the first chapters are totally different from the original ones in here. I hope you like this new chapter. Please review!

Oh and btw, Chimeramon's name might be weird while reading, but that's how it's spelled in the original.

Chapter 22: The Battle

We all observed the Digimon in shock. I didn't know what was more surprising: the fact no one knew about this or that it was made of parts of different Digimon. I was sure everyone felt the same way. I took a picture of it to show Koushiro and Jou later, since D-terminals can't attach photos in e-mails.
"What the hell is this?" Taichi asked from the ground.
The Digimon Kaiser began to laugh, visibly proud of his creation. "This is Chimeraimon, the most perfect Digimon ever."
"Chimeraimon?!"
"You must be seriously insane if you think the Digital World should bow down to you!" Sora yelled beside me.
"Congratulations, you'll be the first one to see the great power of Chimeraimon."
A ball of yellow energy began to form in the Digimon's mouth and was released seconds after. HolyDramon dove towards the ground to escape it, while I held on tight on her and tried to look up to see if Sora and Hououmon had managed to dodge it. The yellow bird tried to fly away, but a part of the attack had hit her, causing her to crash into the wall and open a hole with the impact. Both of them were thrown out and Sora's screams could be heard; she had fallen off her partner.
"HolyDramon, let's go save her."
"Got it." She went through the hole and dove down after Sora, but she was falling down very fast.
"We won't make it on time." I exclaimed alarmed. "Can't you go faster?"
"I'm trying my best."
I closed my eyes, not wanting to see what was going to happen. I also covered my ears, though I knew it would be in vain. The thudding sound never came. I opened my eyes a little to spy on what was happening and saw Sora's body lying down on MetalGarurumon's back. It was only when I sighed with relief that I realized I was holding my breath.
"HolyDramon, please take me there. Then I want you to go back to help my brother and the others."
"Got it, Hikari."

Mimi fell to her knees after she understood what had happened. She was in absolute shock. Taichi tried to comfort her, while Yamato and Takeru remained focused on the battle.
"Mimi, Sora is fine, or will be. MetalGarurumon saved her and now Hikari is taking care of her. I know this got you by surprise, it got all of us. But you have to get up there and fight for Sora."
"Taichi, it's better if she stays with them until she recovers." Yamato advised him. "Look at her; she's not in condition to fight. Be considerate at your girl."
"You're right. I'm sorry, let's get you what of here." Taichi brought her up and carefully took her away.
"Are you okay?" Takeru turned to his brother after he made sure Taichi and Mimi were far away.
"I'll be fine." Yamato closed his hands into fists and had a very angry expression, that he didn't have that often. "I just want to make this guy pay for hurting her!"
"And we will." Takeru assured him. "I'm angry too. But doing things without thinking isn't good. We should come up with a plan first. Chimeraimon was able to knock down an Ultimate Level Digimon. We need to talk to Koushiro about this."
"Are you saying we should go back?" Yamato asked. "The Kaiser can tear the Digital World down if we leave now."
"We're retreating for a moment, not backing down from the battle. You've fought evil Digimon before, so you should know we have to give a step back before we can move forward again. Plus, we can't risk anyone else get hurt like Sora."
"You're right." Yamato smiled. "You became even smarter."
"I learned from the best." Takeru smiled back and placed his hand on his brother's shoulder. "Come on, let's go."

Sora was sleeping by the time Yamato and Takeru joined us. I was sitting beside her and Mimi was on her other side. Yamato stared at her concerned and then sat down across her, not moving his eyes away from her at all.
"How is she?" He finally asked.
"She's okay now." I replied looking at her. "Luckily, the attack didn't hit her; it was just the shock and the impact. She should wake up soon."
"We should take her back until she's recovered enough to join us again."
"I think so too."
"If I know her any better, I'd say she won't want to. She'd prefer to stay and help us anyway she can."
"I know, but she should rest before." Yamato insisted. "We won't stop her from fighting. I don't want to do that, and neither does she."
"It's really the most reasonable choice." I said. "We should all go back for now and return tomorrow."
"I agree with Hikari." Takeru spoke. "That would also give us time to come up with another plan. Now that we know how Chimeraimon is like and what he's capable of doing."
"Alright." Taichi agreed. "Let's go."

The seven of us were gathered around Koushiro at the barbecue area in the house. Mimi had gotten over her shock a couple of hours ago and Sora was sleeping in the bedroom she was sharing with me and Mimi upstairs.
"I can't believe the Digimon Kaiser was capable of creating his own Digimon." Jou said after he looked at the picture I had taken one more time.
"You better believe it." Taichi replied. "And how easily he hit Hououmon was surprising."
"Still, there has to be a way to defeat him." Koushiro typed in his laptop so quickly that it was making me impressed.
"Sora hasn't woken up yet?" Takeru asked Mimi, only receiving a negative nod from her. "I see."
"She should be up soon, though I guess she's sleeping more because of the stress than anything else." Jou stated. "It's a good thing you brought her back. We were lucky Hououmon wasn't hit directly."
"I can't even imagine how terrible that would be." Mimi shivered at the thought.
"We need to think about a new plan to defeat Chimeraimon." Yamato said in an attempt to change the subject. "I want to destroy him more than anything, but can we fight him from equal to equal?"
"We're eight against one. We can win this."
"We were eight against Apocalymon and he destroyed our crests and turned us into data."
"But we pulled it off and will do this time too. I believe in me and each one of you."
"Taichi." Mimi said softly and grabbed his hand. "We can do this. We have to."
"For now, we should have some rest. Everyone is probably tired."

Yamato woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, but he was also having trouble sleeping because of the events that happened hours earlier with Sora. When he was returning to his room, he saw a fainted light on downstairs and decided to go down to see who it was. He was surprised yet relieved to see Sora sitting on a chair drinking a glass of water. He fought against the urge to rush to her and hold her in his arms. Instead, he stood by the door.
"Having trouble sleeping?" He asked her and then fully walked in
"Oh, you can say that, yes." Sora held the glass in front of her with both hands. "I ruined our plan, didn't I?"
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm the reason why everyone came back."
"Well…" Yamato pondered what to say.
"Now the Kaiser is gonna advance with his plan to control the Digital World and it's all my fault."
"Hey!" He took the glass away from Sora's hand and put it on the table. He then grabbed her hand, causing her to stand up and pulled her into a hug. It felt so relieving to have her within his arms like this. He had been struggling with it since the incident happened. "This is not your fault at all."
"You don't have to be kind to me just because I'm…" Sora glanced at the door to see if no one was eavesdropping them or could come in any second. When she knew it was safe, she turned her attention back to him with a smile. "…I'm your girlfriend. It does have a nice ring, doesn't it?" She threw her arms around his neck.
"It does, my girlfriend." Yamato smiled and tightened his grip around her, kissing her forehead. "You got me worried for a moment today. Or yesterday."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to."
"I know you didn't. But I was anyway." He paused. "I'm glad you are fine now."
"Thanks to you, who saved one more time."
"You saved me a few times as well."
Sora looked up at him and touched his left cheek with her hand. She stood on her toes at the same time Yamato leaned over and their lips met in a tender and sweet kiss. They broke away in a hurry when they heard a noise and feared getting caught by someone.
"I hate not being able to kiss you whenever I want to."
"Me too. But we agreed to keep things private for a while, so that's how it's gonna be."
"What if we tell everyone?"
"I don't know. I want to wait."
"Then we'll wait."
"Thank you." Sora reached out for his hand and dragged him out of the kitchen.
When they reached the stairs, Sora stood behind Yamato and wrapped her arms around him, leaning her head against his back.
"Can we stay like this forever?"
Yamato smiled and placed his hands over hers. "When the fight is over, we'll be able to spend more time together."
"I wish we could defeat him faster now."
"We should say good night here." He turned to Sora. "We might be loud and we don't want anyone to hear us."
"You're right." She tugged on his t-shirt.
"Soon." He lifted her chin, causing her to look at him.
"Soon."
Their lips met in a brief kiss before they went upstairs to their own bedrooms.

Mimi was sitting on her bed alone when she heard a soft knock on the door. She looked over and saw Taichi standing by the doorframe. She couldn't help but smile.
"How's my beautiful girlfriend doing today?" Taichi sat down beside her and kissed her on the cheek."
"Your beautiful girlfriend is doing great!" She replied excitedly. "She's ready to fight again."
"I'm happy to hear that." He stood up and grabbed Mimi's hand, but she didn't move. "What happened?"
"Aren't you forgetting something?" She asked Taichi after she stood up.
"I don't think so. What?"
"Oh Taichi, you're so oblivious sometimes." Mimi rolled her eyes. "You didn't kiss me today."
"I didn't?"
"Not on the lips!"
"Oh right." Taichi pulled her closer to him and wrapped one arm around her. "I really should change that."
"Yes, you should." She touched his cheek with her hand and closed their distance.
Taichi immediately responded to their kiss by putting his left hand in the back of her neck. Mimi wrapped her right arm around him as her other hand remained on his cheek. The boy opened his mouth and within seconds felt her tongue playing with his own. Then he pulled her closer to him and Mimi let out a small moan into his mouth. This gesture caused cold rushes through Taichi's body. They only pulled away from each other when things began to get too heated between them and Koushiro's voice echoed upstairs.
"I think it's time to go." Taichi said annoyed.
"We can't have a quiet moment alone, just the two of us."
"I'll tell you what." He said as he approached her. "I'll take you on a date when this whole thing is over."
"Really? Can we go to the Ferris Wheel?""I don't see why not." He smiled. "But I thought you were afraid of heights."
"Not when you're there to comfort me. Besides, the view is so romantic and beautiful."
"Oh I get it now." Taichi wrapped an arm around Mimi's shoulder. "You're only going for it to see the view."
"Silly." She giggled. "I'm going because of the company."
"That's better." He smiled. "Now let's go join everyone."

Taichi and Mimi joined us not much later. All of us were already there, either just finished or almost finishing having breakfast.
"Finally." Koushiro said with annoyance.
"Sorry about this. We wanted to have a moment alone."
"We get this, really." Yamato spoke. "But the main point of this trip is to defeat the Digimon Kaiser for once and all."
"Geez, you're so cranky." Taichi rolled his eyes. "Don't you think it's time for you to get a girlfriend, so you can be less jealous of me?"
Sora purposely and very discreetly placed her hand on the empty space on the bench between them and paid fully attention to the conversation, though she didn't move her focus from her food.
"No, I actually don't." Yamato shifted on his seat rather uncomfortably and then placed his hand over his girlfriend's, squeezing it lightly. "And it's really up to me."
"Taichi, can you please stop doing this?" I asked. "It's getting very annoying and over the line because you can't seem to know when to stop. It's making all of us uncomfortable."
"Alright." Jou meddled in. "We have more important matters to deal with right now."
"That's right." Koushiro turned on his laptop. "Okay, so I was able to track down the Kaiser's headquarter, so now we don't have to walk for miles and hours looking for it. There is one problem, though."
"What is it?" Mimi asked.
"It seems the Kaiser drove it to a dark place of the Digital World."
"What?"
"Maybe he thinks it's more difficult to find it there?"
"I don't think that's it." Takeru spoke and we all looked at him. "Chimeraimon has Devimon's arms in his body. It might be a place evil Digimon are kept after we defeat them."
"You really think so?"
"I can't say for sure, but it's a possibility."
"That's horrible." Mimi said a little panicky. "How can he do such thing?"
Taichi grabbed his digivice and stared intensely at it. "We have to defeat this guy for once and all. Let's go."
Me and the other four ones who went yesterday stood up and gathered behind Koushiro as he opened the portal. Mimi looked unsurely at her green digivice.
"What happened, Mimi?" Sora asked her.
"Seeing what happened to you yesterday and all that Takeru said just now made me scared."
"You were so determined earlier."
"I know, I was." She looked at Taichi. "But I don't think I can do this anymore. I can't see other people getting hurt again."
"We completely understand it." I reassured her.
"Yeah. You don't need to fight if you don't want to."
"Thank you."
"I can go in her place."
"Alright."
"You all take care, please."
"Got it."
"If you need anything, I'll be here and will join you if it's needed."
"Great." My brother smiled at her and then turned to us. "Everyone ready?"
We all nodded and lifted our digivices, pointing them to the computer screen. A yellow light came out from it and illuminated us. When it disappeared, only Mimi and Koushiro were left in the house. She sat down beside him and watched his laptop screen.
"Are you sure about this?"
"I am." She nodded. "I would be a burden to everyone right now."
The boy nodded in understanding and looked at the screen again.