Yagami Taichi was 11 years old when he first tried to map the digital world, but the map was a mess of scribbles, and Agumon burnt it up. Besides, at the time, they didn't know there was a digital world beyond File Island.

Izumi Koushirou made a better effort with the network overlay in Etemon's pyramid, but it was linked too closely to Earth and too lacking in detail. The D-3s contain full maps… in a square grid, with none of the topological or geographical information that people (and digimon, for that matter, although it was people who were behind the current effort) actually wanted a map for.

The world's latest effort was done by a skilled diplomat and a legendary explorer, both reporting in to the world's top hacker, on a scientific job from the United Nations. Or in other words, an excuse for Taichi, Yamato, and Koushirou to return to what they enjoyed doing most: exploring the digital world.

Whamon carried them through the Net Ocean, and they charted the coastline as it swam. Takeru had helped them gate in once, but Koushirou reminded the group that this map, once completed, would be used by billions of people and digimon, not merely the few with a D-3 to call their own.

All three humans questioned the very existence of the city of Fading Light; no digital gate opened there, and its varying locations within the Transistor Desert, along with its very name, gave them the impression of a mirage. But Tentomon assured them that Cockatrimon's desert ship was registered there ("no real proof, he's always been a rogue"), Agumon assured them that he knew a Tortomon who used to live there, and Gabumon's cousin, Psychemon, was apparently still a resident.

"I even get e-mail from him from time to time, but my replies don't always reach him."

Whamon was eager to join the search, and finding any sort of feature in the vast Transistor Desert was something Koushirou considered worth their while. Taichi and Yamato privately expected failure, but they had to chart this stretch of coast anyway, if only so aquatic digimon would know what currents to avoid. At least looking for a legendary city could keep them occupied while they traversed the nigh-endless stretch of silicon sand and discarded electronics – along with what was, in all other respects, a remarkably straight (and bland) coastline.

Unlike the rumors, the first thing they saw was not the eponymous lights; it was what the local digimon called an earthquake. No one raised in Japan could mistake it for the real thing, or at least the kind caused by tectonic plates. But they heard the giant's footsteps, saw the shore reshaped into capes and bays as the ground rumbled.

They'd have a lot of work to redo, Koushirou grumbled, but Taichi and Yamato had already left Whamon's back for the shore and were too busy racing to the weak, wispy lights of the rumbling's epicenter to pay Koushirou's concern any mind. Even the prospect of danger did not weigh too heavily on them; the ground was irregular, but there was not much to trip on.

The ground had begun to stabilize, in fact, and the lights were moving away fast – too fast for ordinary travelers. Not too fast for a MetalGarurumon. The fading lights, upon closer approach, appeared to be simply the lights of the city, a modern, electrified fortress town atop an ancient base, atop a tortoise.

No mirage, but no oasis either; this was an Eldoradimon.

It is an odd thing to spend time in a city simply to figure out where it's going.


Fading Light did have a hotel for travelers, complete with a Hagurumon at the desk to wave them in and point them to their room. Neither Koushirou nor Taichi had in fact reserved a hotel room in advance, but each assumed the other had, so this detail about the castle town's hospitality simply did not appear in their report.

The hotel had nice, high windows, and the surroundings apart from the city (and they could see over the Eldoradimon's back) were so bereft of landmarks that, if one looked away for a moment, they would no longer be able to tell just how far it had gone. Hopefully, one of them would at least notice when it turned, but the ground beneath them moved constantly; would a change of direction feel any different?

The room was large and comfortable with a nice vantage point, at least, almost a miniature observation deck with beds.

"But hanging out in here isn't answering our questions," Yamato said, getting up from his own bed. "We should get going. Explore Fading Light, ask around."

Koushirou nodded, and Taichi was about to look away when he spotted something at the edge of his field of vision – the upper edge. Brown, like terrain, where he shouldn't see any brown. "Wait a minute, what's that?"

"Cloud Continent is passing overhead," Tentomon helpfully supplied, to an audible groan from a stressed Koushirou.

"Are we gonna have to map that too? Where would we even begin?" he wondered aloud. "We did locate Fading Light, and Cloud Continent does offer a higher vantage point, maybe we should relocate…"

"Isn't it weird to have a continent in the sky?" Taichi asked. "How do digimon get there?"

"We fly. Most of us can once we evolve," Tentomon responded. "More digimon can fly than can swim, so when you think about it Cloud Continent is probably the easiest continent to reach, just gotta wait until it floats past."

"Right. Sorry, stupid question," Taichi said, trying to open the window for a closer look, but there were enough flightless digimon that the hotel had opened the typical Earth safety mechanisms. "Guess there's no choice but to head outside and look."


"This was where they put the elevator, right?" Yamato asked.

The three of them and their partners had circled half the floor on their way back, but could not reach the door they came in through; all they saw was the beige walls broken up by a stretch of white, roughly the size and shape of a door, with the word "ERROR" written on it in big red letters.

"Correct," Koushirou opened his laptop and plugged it into the nearby wall. "Looks like there was an incident with a Kokuwamon. We'll have to take the stairs."

The stairwell was not missing, at least, but perhaps it'd be easier if it was; they'd be able to just ride Kabuterimon down to the ground. Instead, there were too many stairs to easily maneuver, and while the humans were at least curious enough to race down twenty flights of stairs, Agumon and Gabumon's short strides slowed the group. (Tentomon, meanwhile, made a leisurely descent.)

By the time they reached the ground floor and rushed out the hotel, Cloud Continent had shifted in the sky, or perhaps ElDoradimon had done so on the ground. It was not so far that AtlurKabuterimon could not catch up to it (for MetalGarurumon was too tired), but it no longer served as an ideal observation platform for the tortoise-city below.

Koushirou watched the sky, debating with himself whether to fly up anyway, when he sighted an orange firebird in the distance. "Birdramon?"

There are, of course, many Birdramon in the digital world, and surely avian digimon, of all species, would be among those to call Cloud Continent home. Leaving the continent outright when it was over a desert, however, was surely less typical behavior.

"Sora!" A waving Taichi put to rest any doubts, even before he saw the kimono-clad young woman clinging to its talon as the Giant Bird Digimon descended.

"Hi, everyone!" she shouted back, before she landed and stepped off her partner. "I was going for a flight after teaching some Baronmon and Kabukimon about modern Japanese fashions when Birdramon spotted you three, so I thought I'd drop in."

"That's four of us in the digital world at once, huh. Been a while," Yamato said.

"Five, actually," Sora answered. "I wanted to bring Mimi along, but she's still busy filming her cooking show. Something about digimushrooms and sea bass. I don't really get it, but she's Mimi, she can make anything appealing and the digimon love it."

"Six," Koushiro said, to everyone's surprise. "Didn't he tell the rest of you? Jou lives on Folder now, he's opened a medical clinic."

"We really have drifted apart, huh," Sora said sadly. "So anyway, how's the mapping project going?"

She handed her digivice over to Koushirou, who put it in the proper jack on his Pineapple laptop.

"First the City of Fading Light on an ElDoradimon, now I've gotta figure out what to do with Cloud Continent… in terms of information, I'm receiving a lot, but when it comes to how to represent it…"

"Wanna take a walk through this city? I'm curious about this fading light, might help clear your head too," Sora suggested, looking at the weakly shining beacon in the distance, and the group was glad to follow her lead.

There were nearly as many humans as digimon walking along the streets of Fading Light, although when one considered the ones flying overhead without riders, humans made up only about a third of the population. No one stopped them to talk, but Taichi overheard chatter about how they were "going to see the teacher" or "the master" and how it made sense for a diplomat to do so.

In reality, they weren't. Well, not as such, anyway. It was just that the vaguely familiar beacon was so prominent that, however much the group wanted to explore, they found themselves pulled inexorably in its direction.


Yagami Hikari had dreamed of being a teacher in the normal Japanese school system, teaching a single grade of elementary school students how to care for their digimon partners. Perhaps someday she would become one. But that was simply not the situation the human world was in these days; people were still more likely to fear digimon than befriend them, and no school district or municipality was so bold as to let kids openly bring their digimon to school.

But kids learned. Adults, too – not just her generation, but loads of others, some old enough to be her grandparents, who still could not bear to leave their digimon behind. They found a way around repression and fear; humans always do.

Initially, she opened her school in Starmon Town, hoping its wild west setting would be remote enough that she wouldn't be bothered. Hikari developed a taste for Welcome Milk, built a nice physical school, and even joined the local militia to drive off Flymon raids; students came from far away to join her. But many digimon were as hostile to humans in their world as the other way around, and once Revolmon pointed its gun in her face and threatened her, she knew it was time to move on.

More than anything, at this point, she wanted security. Somewhere she could build without fear. Tailmon was old friends with an Eldoradimon whose population had evacuated after a digital world peace conference gave the inhabitants access to Server Continent, and an empty turtle-fortress struck her as the safest possible place in the digital world.

A settlement grew up around her school, full of humans and digimon who wanted to stay together and learn badly enough to go all the way into the Transistor Desert – and 'graduates' who, once she ran out of things to teach them, still had nowhere else to go. In time, other digimon became partially aware of the town – not through her network reaching around to the growing number of tamers around the world, simply from seeing the Eldoradimon settlement in the distance.

At first they called it the city of dim light, but as Eldoradimon was shy and faster than most of them, in time 'fading light' became the preferred nomenclature. But it struck Hikari as fitting; after the Meicoomon incident, Homeostasis no longer possessed her, but the Crest of Light still worked and something of a dim, white glow never left her body.

Everyone in Fading Light, apart from a few newcomers who were drawn by the growing local economy, looked up to her, and Tailmon was no less useful a spymaster for her than she had been for Vamdemon. She knew they'd arrived the moment the diplomats from the Digital World Global Survey Project checked into the hotel, and had more than enough time to greet her brother and the others.

And to figure out just exactly how she was going to respond.


Yagami Taichi was not actually an expert diplomat. When it came to something like an adversarial negotiation, his skills were middling at best. It was simply that he was the legendary Taichi, leader of the chosen children and savior of the digital world, so digimon far and wide had a tendency to give him whatever he wanted.

Most digimon in power – even mighty digimon kings – were glad to hand over their location data the moment he asked, and nearly all the rest were persuaded after he explained the purpose of the Digital World Global Survey; only once had he had to issue anything remotely close to a threat, and even KingEtemon fell in line once it was spelled out to him what being an unlisted settlement would truly mean.

His companions had their own skills, of course; Yamato was a natural explorer, adept at navigating any sort of wilderness, and had saved his life in the digital world more than once. And Koushirou, apart from providing the funds, was ironically the actual leader of this expedition; it was, after all, his curiosity that inspired it, and his decision how to represent all their strange findings.

But neither of them could help him here.

When Taichi walked into the Eldoradimon's top tower – the one that reminded him, with the beacon shining therein, of a lighthouse, although it was probably intended to be a castle's keep – he was shocked at who appeared before him as the Master of Fading Light.

It was one thing to persuade a digimon who thought of you as a legend. And quite another to persuade one's own estranged younger sister.

There was a time in her life when Hikari had something of a brother complex, but the conclusion to the Meicoomon incident had left that thoroughly shattered. The fact that Taichi had known nothing of this city before coming here was the strongest proof possible of just how vast the gulf between them was now, just how far they'd drifted apart.

"So what are you here for?"

Taichi didn't realize how long he'd frozen, how long he was just standing there in shock, wracking his brain for what to say. But Hikari was right; he'd come for a reason.

"I'm representing the Digital World Global Survey Project. We're requesting the location data for the city of Fading Light."

"I can not grant your request," Taichi wasn't surprised to hear this from her – but was it because this was not in the interests of this strange city, or was it because he was the one asking the question?

"Do you understand what the location data entails? What the world will make of it if you decline?"

"Yes. We'd be terra nullius, fair game for any aggressive digimon warlord or human government to conquer… if they can find us first. But do you understand what it will mean for Fading Light if it's on every map in both worlds? The digital world needs its secrets."

"But…" Taichi stumbled.

"What if someone tried to take Agumon away, or tried to turn this whole city into Tokyo in 1999? Not every human here is a chosen child, and Tailmon can't protect everyone…"

"That's why we're asking for your location data! We're trying to protect you…"

"Can you? If a bunch of politicians in a major country decide it's too dangerous to have digimon around, and respond to an incident in their world by sending an army to Fading Light, can you really stop them? Or would you just end up taking their side?"

That last barb struck Taichi as particularly uncalled for. He wanted to say "you never found a better way", wanted to point out that Holydramon fought in that last battle on Omegamon's side. But he was a diplomat, and here for a reason, so instead he bit his tongue.

"Oniichan, I don't trust your judgment."

"He's been in there a while, should we knock?" Yamato wondered aloud from outside the door, but Koushirou's reassurance held him back. Held him back – not Sora, who had either heard enough through the door or just still had that perfect sense of when to intervene.

"Hikari-chan…" Taichi turned to Sora when he heard her voice, surprised to see the bold way she was walking into the room, with no concern that she was interrupting a serious and tense negotiation. "The real world has changed since you left, and it's changing more every day. A lot of my mom's clients bring along their Floramon or Palmon for flower arrangement, and a few even bring partners that aren't plant digimon along."

"Change is coming," Taichi agreed. "Even the world leaders who don't like them know they can't keep digimon out for good. If people find out about your school and this town, if anything, the UN will start paying you a salary."

And yet still, Hikari declined. She understood, but she declined; at least Sora's presence meant the siblings weren't fighting anymore.


Yagami Taichi's original map of File Island – the mess of overlapping, swirling lines – came closer to the truth of the digital world than he ever knew. This wasn't to say that Agumon burning it up was some kind of cartographic tragedy – the world had been reconfigured twice since that incident, and Taichi had in any case explored only a portion of File Island at the time. But as a map of routes and not settlements, always twisted, ever-changing, it had stumbled on a certain essential truth.

Or at least that was how Koushirou tried to explain it to him. He wasn't sure he understood. He wasn't sure Koushirou understood, and it stuck him as crazy to even say such a thing about any topic. The final version of the map had as many vertices as individual points, along with broad stretches of unknown terrain, or perhaps unknowable terrain. Fading Light didn't include location data, but a portion of the Transistor Desert was marked with its name… alongside a question mark and an ElDoradimon's sprite.

Privately, Koushirou was frustrated with the result; he had learned that the task was simply impossible, and felt that this was the best he could do. And it was enough to make Yamato give up entirely. Not the exploration part, mind, simply the destination. "I'll go to Mars. I can make sense of Mars."

Taichi had come away the happiest from the experience; if anything, he was disappointed it was over. For him, it wasn't about finishing the mission, per se, but talking to all those digimon, hearing their complaints.

They needed a leader, or at least a diplomat. Someone who would stand up for them in their dealings with the human world.

Taichi had made a promise to relay their issues to the United Nations, and before he finished fulfilling it, he (officially Agumon, but he did most of the talking) was appointed the Digital World's ambassador to Earth – a position he would hold for the rest of his life.