A/n: Sorry about the lateness of this chapter, but when it gets to be to hot to leave the a/c things have to go undone sometimes.

Chapter 3: Conflicts

Infinitymon walked towards Ryo and Monodramon

"You know what boy. Something about you seems quite familiar." He stated.

Ryo only studied the digimon as he came closer.

"Ah. You smell like my future queen. I remember even seeing you two together. You and my fiery haired goddess."

"What do you want with Rika?" Ryo angrily asked.

"As I said before, to make her my Queen. The two of us will rule the two worlds, create a new, superior race, and all other digimon and humans will be our slaves, not that you'll ever see it because you'll be dead." Infinitymon growled the last part as he leapt at Ryo.

"You're sick. Rika would never do anything like that with a monster like you." Ryo retorted as a light surrounded the boy and his partner. Infinitymon checked himself. The light faded and in the place of Ryo and Monodramon stood Justimon.

"Hmm. Very interesting, very interesting." Infinitymon said to himself before he attacked with his Infinity Mace technique in which he smashed his sharply spiked tail into Justimon's mid-section.

Justimon retaliated with his Justice Kick.

They exchanged attacks back and forth getting closer to the edge of the park each time.

In avoiding one attack Infinitymon jumped up and out of the way, and onto a garbage truck.

"What are we going to do?" Monomon asked.

"Follow him. But first..." Justimon turned towards frightened Rumiko. "Are you okay?"

She nodded.

"Go home then. You'll be safe there." He said before running after the truck.

Meanwhile back in the present, Rika woke up. She hadn't remembered falling asleep. She looked at the locket that she held in her hand and knew that Ryo was truly gone.

The ringing phone pulled her from her thoughts.

"Hello?" She answered.

"Hi Rika." The voice on the other end answered

"What is it Henry?"

"Everyone's back over here except you and Ryo. And you would've known that if you two had stuck around a little longer. By the way where is Ryo? I've called his house but he's not answering."

"I can honestly say I don't know. He's probably trying to be a hero." Rika answered trying to hold back her tears.

"Well hurry over here. We're trying to find out where that digimon went."

She hung the phone up, and headed out the door only to be stopped by her mother.

"Where are you going?" Rumiko asked as Rika went past.

"Out. I'll be back later." Rika quickly said and ran out the door.

Rumiko stared after her daughter as she went down the street. She knew something was bothering her, but had no idea what. They'd become closer little more than a year ago, and it worried her whenever Rika wouldn't tell her something.

Rika finally arrived at Henry's apartment. Kazu, Kenta, Suzie, Takato, and Jeri were sitting in the living room

"So where did you and Ryo sneak off to last night?" Kazu asked as soon as Rika entered the room, and just ignored him.

"Oh, I see. You two were doing stuff, weren't you." He continued with a smirk.

Rika continued to say nothing and only closed her eyes to keep from crying.

"Rika," Takato asked, "Are you okay?"

"What ever makes you think something's not okay?!" She snapped back.

"W-well for one thing," Kenta added for Takato, "You aren't fighting with Kazu about anything he just said."

"Well right now I don't have the time or energy to fight with a dimwitted, horny boy right now when I have more important things to think about!" She shouted, drawing Henry and his father into the room. She calmed down slightly. "I came here with information, but I guess you don't frickin' care!"

"About Infinitymon? What do you know?" Janyuu asked.

"Infinitymon isn't here to worry about anymore. Apparently he some how managed to go back in time, or at least that's what ENIAC told Ryo." Rika mentally kicked herself

Oops. Blew the promise I wouldn't tell anyone where he was. She yelled at herself.

"ENIAC? As in the first computer?"

"I guess so. I wasn't quite filled in on that part." Rika said bitterly.

"If he's in the past, how are we going to stop him?" Suzie asked.

Ruki looked at the young girl. "Ryo claimed he's working on it. We just have to be ready for when they come back." She stuffed her hand into her pocket and tightly clenched the locket Ryo had given her. If they come back.

"Come back? You mean Ryo's..." Henry asked

"Yeah." Was all she answered and left the apartment.

Justimon caught up with the garbage truck and found Infinitymon quite interested with a crumpled piece of paper.

"You're not getting away so easily." Justimon said, startling Infinitymon.

"That's what you think, but I got what I need, and now the Creators will be becoming very, very dead. So sayonara!" He said jumping on the hood of the truck.

The frightened driver slammed on the brakes and Infinitymon raced off.

The sudden halt of the vehicle nearly threw Justimon out of the truck, which caused him to loose sight of Infinitymon.

"Dangit!" He yelled, but then remembered the paper that Infinitymon had been looking at. They unmerged and Ryo grabbed it and read part of it '...I've heard quite a bit about your 'Digimon' project and am quite interested in financing it, that is if you can show me something of merit...'

Ryo remembered something Janyuu had said before he left:

"Back before the Digimon project ended, we had a chance to get funding, but we needed something spectacular for it. Shibumi and I were the only one's that were there at the time so we started a project called Infinitymon...We contained him the best we could, because for some reason we couldn't get Infinitymon to be destroyed..."

"Oh, no!" He suddenly realized who it was that Infinitymon was after and jumped out of the truck and started towards the address at the top of the paper with Monodramon following him..

"What's wrong Ryo?" Monodramon asked.

"We have to stop him before he kills Henry's dad and Mr. Mizuno!"

Rika walked in the door of her house.

"I thought you said you were going out." Rumiko called from the living room.

Rumiko walked to where her daughter stood.

"What's wrong Rika? We talked about this before; you can tell me anything." She smiled

Rika looked at her mom, and the tears she'd been holding back rushed out. The two of them sat on the couch.

"He's gone." She whispered.

"Who's gone? Ryo?"

"Yeah."

"Don't cry about it. I know you can do better than him-"

"No, that's not it. He left to try to save all of us...and, um, before he left he..."

"He what?"

"Um...he asked me to marry him."

"What?!" Rumiko was quite flustered by this. "But you're only children."

"Mom, I'm sixteen and he's twenty, we're not children anymore."

"He isn't, but technically you're still a little girl! You can't make decisions like this on your own! Things might seem great now, but what about later. I can't believe you said yes."

"I'm not a little girl anymore. I've experienced more than most anyone else probably would by the time I was ten. Besides, I haven't told him yes, or no, yet. He left before I could even think about what he just said."

"I just don't want you to make the same mistakes I did, that's all."

"I'm not you though, I'm me. Anyways, he, and all my friends, know I won't agree to anything unless I'm sure about my decision."

"If that's what you believe then do whatever you believe is right."

"Thanks mom."

Ryo reached the room at the college that was named in the address on the letter. All of the Monster Makers were in there when he barged in.

"Who are you?" A younger Janyuu asked.

"There's no time to explain, but I need to speak with you Mr. Wong. And you too Mr. Mizuno. Privately." Ryo stated.

The two men looked to each other and wordlessly followed Ryo into the hall.

"What's this all about?" Shibumi asked.

"This is about a program you two created. Infinitymon." Ryo whispered.

"How do you know about that?" Janyuu questioned.

"There's no time to explain, but I need to get you two out of here. I know how dangerous he is, and he's coming to destroy both of you! If he succeeds then the world is doomed!"

Janyuu broke into laughter. Ryo looked at him like he was crazy.

"Digimon aren't real. They are just computer code. Data. There's no way something like that could happen."

"Tao, I know Digimon are real. Just because we can't touch them doesn't mean they don't really exist." Shibumi stated seriously.

"Not this again. You can't seriously expect me to believe that-"

"Digimon are real." Monodramon said stepping out of the shadows behind Ryo.

Ryo spun and looked at his partner. "I told you to keep an eye out for Infinitymon and stay hidden." He scolded.

"But, he was saying that I didn't exist."

"Digimon didn't exist this far back in the past, so technically he's right."

"Th-that thing is a digimon?" Janyuu asked in shock

"Wait." Shibumi interrupted, what did you mean by 'this far in the past'? Who are you?"

"I guess it's unavoidable now. Monodramon and I have traveled back thirty years in the past to save you from your own creation, Infinitymon. He's going to try to kill you."

"Try? I think I'll succeed."

They turned around to find Infinitymon standing there.

"Just because you warned them doesn't mean that they're going to live any longer." He added.

"Run!" Ryo yelled to the men. "You'll have to get through us to get to them."

With a flash of light Justimon replaced the boy and his digimon.

The two men watched for a few more minutes then ran as the Ryo had told them.

Justimon and Infinitymon faced each other again, exchanging attacks. Infinitymon tried repeatedly to get past his foe, only to be pushed back further.

After one such attempt, and failure on Infinitymon's part, the feline-ish digimon backed up and spoke to the hybrid digimon.

"You have only bought them moments more to live. In fact I'm off to destroy them right now." He scoffed and leapt into the air to disappear.

"No!" Justimon cried and grabbed Infinitymon's tail before he succeeded. Infinitymon did disappear though, but Justimon went with him.

To be continued...