Daichi: And now to finally get off this island! It's actually going to happen this time!
Tsukaimon: And how much suffering is going to be involved here?
Daichi: About as much as can be expected.
Verity: We don't own these things.
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"Angemon… so this is what you chose, huh?" Ib stared up at the brilliant white feathers, the last hints that the youngest of their Champions had ever been there. T.K. was next to her, completely inconsolable at the death of his partner.
She could understand why the decision had been made, of course. He'd wanted to protect T.K., and everything else came second. Even his own life.
But that left the rest of them behind to pick up the pieces. To try and figure out what to do next, how they could possibly save the world when even their first battle had come with a casualty they weren't prepared to accept. She'd tell the little boy that it would all turn out okay, but she didn't feel like lying to anyone today. Especially not a hurt child.
"Do you want to see your brother?" She asked instead, turning to the sobbing boy beside her. He nodded, but made no attempt to move. "Lalamon, go get Matt. And Joe. And everyone else, we need all the help we can get right now."
Her partner flew off silently. Hopefully to do as she said, because as much as Ib could sympathize, that didn't necessarily mean she knew what to do in this situation. But she'd told Angemon she'd look after his partner, and so she would.
Even as the feathers landed in front of them. Even as they coalesced together into the shape of an egg, and she couldn't bring herself to look at anyone, hating herself for being jealous of a grieving child, no matter how unfair it was that he got his friend back, and she didn't.
But she'd still look after him, because she'd promised.
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Gennai didn't notice she was there at first. Ib knew that because, when he told them to come to Server, and fight enemies even stronger than Devimon, she'd spoken up.
"Why? We only barely defeated Devimon, and it took all that Angemon had to do it." She didn't use the word 'won'. What had just happened was hardly a victory. "What makes you think we could handle Digimon that are even stronger?"
Gennai seemed surprised to hear her voice. Still, he kept himself composed, replying with, "It's fairly simple, actually- oh, who were you, again?"
"Ib Himekawa." She ignored the implications that he already knew everyone's names beforehand. That could be delved into later, as well as the fact that this world really did expect kids to be able to solve all their problems. "I'm Lalamon's partner."
"Yes, well, it's true that facing your new opponents would be difficult as it is now, but if your Digimon could Digivolve even further, it would be fairly easy."
"We can Digivolve even more?" Agumon asked, and Gennai launched into a description of Tags and Crests, and the sort of power that they would give, in the hands of the right person.
Ib didn't ask how they could tell who the right person was. If it had picked her, then this world already had a pretty terrible track record when it came to choosing saviours. And, well, maybe it was a good thing that she didn't get them off topic with that, because the transmission glitched out soon after.
She didn't have a very high opinion of Gennai, honestly. They were all children, she was the only one with experience with other worlds, and now they had all been conscripted to deal with something they had no stakes in.
...Okay, so they had technically been conscripted when they had a bunch of Digivices thrown at them, but that was just semantics. Particularly when they hadn't even been told what picking them up would pull them into.
Suffice to say, Ib didn't think much of the suggestion to run off of the island where they at least knew the dangers to some unfamiliar continent on some random old person's word, and she told the others as much. It could be a trap, the enemies could simply be too powerful for them, they could have problems so much as crossing the ocean…
...But then T.K. had looked at the rest of them with teary eyes and proclaimed that he'd be going to Server, because he thought that was what Angemon would have wanted, and they all caved.
She guessed they were going to Server.
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"I thought I'd find you here. Do you… want to talk about it?" Ib didn't respond at first, staring out over the lake they'd stayed by that first night. Joe didn't push her, they were all too tired for that, but she still spoke up, eventually.
"He knew what would happen, I think. Before the possibility even occurred to me." She was talking about Angemon, he knew, though from the way she turned that old lighter over in her hand, she could just as easily have been thinking about someone else.
"You mean back at the mansion, with the angel?" He suggested. Better to keep her mind in the present, where things had actually sort-of turned out okay, than the tragedies that lay in her past.
"...No. Not that. I didn't think a lot of it, at first. But Patamon said that he didn't want to Digivolve, because- because he didn't want to leave T.K.. Like he knew what would happen to him, the first time that he did. He always knew."
"...You couldn't have seen this happening," He reminded her, because apparently she still needed reminding, at this point. "And even if you did, what then? I don't think any of us could have done anything to stop it… and lived, anyway."
"Living… for Digimon, that doesn't seem to mean as much as it does to the rest of us." His friend gave a small, humorless laugh. "He- he said everything would be okay, you know? That I just had to call for him and- and he'd be there." And, suddenly, they were no longer talking about Angemon.
Joe had heard the story before, though there was never all that much detail. It had never seemed important that he ask for it. That little tidbit had consistently slipped through the cracks, though it explained a lot more than Ib probably realized. He wouldn't be the one to tell her that, though. Things were already complicated enough. "He cared about you."
"I know. And Angemon cares for T.K., just as much, and I'm happy they'll be together again, really, but-" She cut herself off, and he decided he didn't want to look too closely at her face at the moment, because being trapped in this world for so long was already straining, and seeing the strongest face they had cry would only make it worse. "It's not fair."
Well. He didn't think there really was any way he could address that.
"Ib! There you are!" Lalamon flew over to them, and Ib tightly held her partner to her chest. Joe decided to give them some space, walking back along the shoreline to where the others were.
Gomamon was awake, too. The only one at their little camp who was- Joe supposed it was his turn to take watch now. Ib certainly wasn't in any condition to. "Where've you been off to, Joe?" The little seal asked, his eyes gaining an odd sort of glint under the light of the moon.
"Oh, you know, just… thinking." The lie came to him so easily, after years of covering up Ib doing things like knocking down all of the clothes at the store, because she had a flashback and was scared of the mannequins. And she really had given him quite a lot to think about. "You know, once they die, humans don't come back?"
"I'd wondered," His partner shrugged. "It makes sense. I mean, if you did come back, why would we have to protect you?" That was actually a pretty good point.
"I guess that's one way to put it. We'd be lost without you, you know?" Ib had been lost for a long time beforehand, but that wasn't something Joe felt he could just talk about. Even to his own Digimon.
"Yeah, I know, I'm awesome." Gomamon waved a flipper nonchalantly. Joe couldn't even bring himself to argue.
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The DigiDestined left File Island late the next morning. Ib stood at the edge of their makeshift raft, watching the place that they had all gotten used to fade away into the distance. Next to her, T.K. snuggled his newly-hatched Poyomon, and she had to remind herself to be happy for him.
"What do you think it'll be like, on Server?" Lalamon asked, and she jumped on the opportunity to distract herself.
"Probably more like File than my world." That was the most she could say for certain. "And it'll be bigger than the island, too, that's why it's called a continent."
"So… lots of places for us to explore?"
"Don't get carried away. It'll be dangerous there. You remember what Gennai said- it's full of opponents who are even more powerful than Devimon."
"Well, yeah, but once we can Digivolve farther…"
"Don't get ahead of yourself," She warned. "You've only even become Sunflowmon the once. It might have been for a long time, but that's still one Digivolution compared to Agumon's five." That they knew of, it could easily have been more. But she didn't mention that. She didn't want her cheery little plant partner to start rivalling her in cynicism or anything.
"I did really well then, though, right?" Ib couldn't bring herself to tell Lalamon that it clearly hadn't been enough, or Patamon would be playing in the sky with Biyomon and Tentomon right then. Survivor's guilt was a cruel mistress, and she wasn't about to subject anyone else to that particular hell.
"...Yeah. Yeah, you did." If only Devimon had noticed them instead of T.K., maybe things would have turned out better. Or maybe they would all have just ended up buried in a landslide.
It wasn't a kind thought, but Ib had run out of those years ago. She just had to get through whatever this crazy world threw at her, head home, and forget that any of this had ever happened.
Well, maybe not the last part. Despite how much it hurt… she knew it would be doing the world a disservice to forget.
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Daichi: And now we're finally off the island! Maybe not proper plot can occur!
Verity: Or you could hold yourself back and just jump off the rails all at once later.
Daichi: Don't tempt me...