Disclaimer: I still own nothing in this story except for Citadel's finest. Heck, I don't even own this computer. Or this chair. So sue me. Hahahahaha…. I especially don't own Digimon, but if you do and you're thinking about selling I have a nice pen here you can have…
Author's Note: A continuation, but not the true start. I know, for a prologue, this thing is enormous. Sorry about that.
Gennai watched the traffic patterns below him for a moment before returning his attention to the group hovering in the air in front of him. There were six of them, himself, Mike, Amanda, Andrel, Cortell and Vona, almost a hundred meters over the Kamiya apartment. Enough concentrated power to sink Japan back into the sea, and they were waiting for instructions.
Cortell sighed and checked another set of readouts. "As much as I hate to admit it, and I do hate to admit it, I think that Andrel may be right. Someone has been manipulating the Digidestined. Not obviously, no, but enough that the traits that powered their crests are starting to fail, starting to drift away. Ken has always been a problem, but the original six are having real troubles sticking to their strengths. Someone is moving them away. Takeru and Kari are the real problems of course, all this person has to do is accelerate the destabilization of their crests internal patterns and they'll be lucky to escape this as raving lunatics. We need to act on this fast."
Gennai frowned. "Word from the south is that war may be upon us any day. I hope that we can hold out for this. Quite frankly, I don't have the time to deal with this. It's going to be up to the rest of you."
"Wonderful." Vona intoned dryly.
"Oh, I'll be around, as will the others. But you know how it goes…"
"Certainly."
"The easiest way to do this would be for us to set down and just tell them what's going on…" Cortell mused, fingering a strand of power.
"NO!" Gennai, Andrel, Amanda and Mike all shouted at once. Cortell blinked and than shut up. The seals only talked that way when they were receiving insights from their crests, and if they all spoke up at once, it would have to be pretty serious. He abandoned the line of thought, storing it for future inquiry.
"Tabling that argument," Cortell continued, "I suggest that we confront each problem individually, as it happens."
Gennai nodded.
"Furthermore, I suggest that we double forces on Overwatch and guard duty."
Gennai nodded again.
"And that we assign some major backup for this sector."
Gennai nodded a third time.
"Plus, we need some major assets in the Programming department here. And flight backup…"
Gennai nodded once more.
"And for you to buy us all pizza."
"In your dreams computer boy."
Cortell grinned at him, and then turned to Andrel. "Do we have backup?"
"I'll get you some. We were lucky this time, I don't think they expected to have any crestbearers in the region, especially Jessica and Jan. Next time, I'll have four Megas on overwatch. That ought to slow things down."
"Permanent or Temporary Megas?"
"Temporary. I wish I could get you some permanents, but we need them at higher levels."
"I understand." Cortell met Andrel's iron gaze with even eyes. He understood, sometimes victory took precedence over safety.
"Anyway, we can drop in now and figure out what we're going to do about this."
"Right."
Kari smiled as Tai went out of his way to make sure she had something to drink. He had been acting a little overprotective ever since she had gotten injured in the attack in the parking garage last night. Although they had not kept her in the hospital more than overnight Matt, Sora and Yolei had put their heads together and had come up with a "Welcome Home" party, where all the Digidestined would come over, eat a potluck dinner, and spend the night. The Kamiya parents were letting them party almost unsupervised, but the tone was quiet, the sound of people thinking and laughing quietly rather than loud music, and hot, crowded floors like other parties. Kari rather liked it that way.
TK made an awful pun off to her right side, and she punched him lightly in the shoulder, grinning at him. Tai rolled his eyes, but Sora was sitting there looking thoughtful. Ken actually chuckled, a sound he made more often these days, and both Yolei and Davis slapped him on the back. Mimi and Matt were trading stories about some of the crazies they had chasing them, while Izzy sat talking to Joe and Cody off to one side. Everyone was having a good time, enjoying the company of friends. But she did have some business…
She gestured at TK, and he leaned over her curiously. "I need to talk with you and Izzy. Really need to talk." She thought for a moment. "You better bring Ken along too, I have a feeling this may be more important than we thought." She smiled at the corner where the Digimon were engaged in a game of See Who Can Eat The Most. "We'll keep the Digimon out of it for the moment."
TK's gaze sharpened suddenly, and he nodded. He went over to Ken and tapped him on the shoulder. "Kari and I need to have a private conversation," he watched Davis glare at him for a moment, "with you. Could you get Izzy and come meet in her room?"
"Of course." Ken smiled up at them, a little puzzled, but as always, courteous and polite.
"Oh, and Yolei?"
"Yes TK?"
"Keep Davis from listening at the door for us, will you?"
"Of course."
"That's not funny TA!"
TK just smiled and gave Kari an arm to support her as she got up, smiling back at him. Izzy came over when they gestured at him, he was looking more worried than he was puzzled. Kari winked at Tai and walked to her room, with Izzy, TK and Ken with her.
"Huh!" Tai wondered, before Sora recaptured his attention. "I wonder what that's all about?"
"Something happened yesterday." The way Izzy said it, it was not much of a question. Ken looked up startled, but TK and Kari just nodded.
"What?" Izzy continued, staring at them.
"I don't know. And unless TK has been hiding something, he doesn't know either."
"What are you talking about?" Ken asked in his quiet voice.
"It's really quite easy." Izzy told him, smiling. The continuing wrangling between the two geniuses was now a firm tradition. "No knife wound could do to Kari what that one did. She could have bumped her head, but that's logically inconsistent, she has no bruise, no impact marks, and it's physically impossible that a blow like that could avoid leaving a mark. So what happened?"
"Could she have fainted?" Ken asked, not sounding as if his option was very believable.
"I've only seen Kari faint twice." TK told him. "And both times it was under the influence of the Crest of Light. And the doctors agree that there was no evidence of disease, so that can't be it either. Plus…"
"What?" Ken and Izzy both exclaimed.
"I remember something. Something happened, when we were alone in the room before she woke up. Something odd, and different, not something that would happen in the real world. Something almost magical. But I can't get a clear memory. It's like trying to remember an old dream, it just keeps slipping farther away."
"Can you remember anything?" Ken's voice was intent.
"Only images, vague ones." Kari responded. "I remember a man, or maybe several, in glowing armor, sort of like Magnamon's but different, all swirly and glowy, and a kid and some other people, and a glowing golden light." She paused for a moment. "And for some reason, I remember seeing the crest of Love."
"That's not good." Izzy muttered. "Actually, that's close to catastrophic."
Kari and TK both winced. Whenever Izzy used words like catastrophic, really bad things were in the offing. They both turned to look at each other, as if trying to dredge something else out of their memories.
"Do you think that Sora was involved?" Ken asked.
"No." Kari's reply was immediate. "There was a faint feeling of surprise, that this person wasn't Sora, but that's about all I remember."
"Do you remember anything else? Anything at all?"
"No, that's why we decided to tell you guys. You're the smart ones, and you have an almost instinctive knowledge of when things are about to go wrong. Do you have any ideas?"
Izzy had already pulled out his backpack from where he had dropped it near Tai's desk, removed his laptop, and was typing rapidly. After a moment he sat back. "I see nothing, and I purposefully set up programs to monitor the Digital World and look out for this kind of thing. And that means were in trouble. Real trouble."
"Are we blowing this out of proportion?" Ken asked, turning worriedly to Izzy.
"Not a chance."
There was a sudden explosion of noise by the door, the sounds of people scuffling, followed by the sounds of Sora saying; "Quick, I got his arms."
"Come on Davis!" Yolei was yelling. "No listening at the door. And no getting out of this game."
There was a knock at the door and Joe stuck his head in, nudging up his glasses and grinning at them. "Sorry, we had to drag Davis away. Hey, you guys look pretty serious, what's up."
"Come in, and close the door." Izzy's voice was calm. Kari and TK just looked at each other. It was easy to dismiss Izzy sometimes, relegate him to the background, because he was not a very loud guy. But whenever he found something important, he simply took charge. Tai might have been the leader, but if Izzy had told him to jump, Tai would have been out the window and halfway down the apartment before remembering to ask 'Which way?'.
Joe's eyes widened. He too recognized the tone of Izzy when he was "in the zone". He closed the door and then sat down cross-legged in front of them.
"Joe, as a student of medicine I know that you haven't had much experience, but could you explain Kari's behavior last night?"
Joe's eyes grew wide, and he blinked a few times before answering, honestly "No."
"Now, I know you have developed, at times, an interesting streak of curiosity, that occasionally drives you to take a look at certain things. What were the anomalies on Kari's chart?"
Joe blinked again, and his jaw dropped for a moment before he got it back together. "How did you know about that?"
"Joe, you don't send people into the medical wing straight to the intensive ward without good cause. And you don't keep them overnight just because she bumped her head. What was on the charts?"
Joe sighed and took off his glasses. "Okay, I didn't want to tell anyone about this, because I thought it would scare Kari, but you're going to start making some guesses soon, so I better come clean. The first problem was her unconscious state. There was no physical evidence for any kind of damage at all, so there was no reason for her to be unconscious at all. They ran a quick set of tests on her, which I snuck a look at. X-ray got nothing on her head, and neither did any of the other ones.
"The tests that scared the doctors were later. They took her pulse, but it was way too low, almost out of the safe zone and into the danger zone. Blood pressure was near bottom too, which is why she got the emergency ward. Then they took a quick EKG. We didn't have an MRI or even one of the fMRI units we're getting, and the more detailed scanners were off line so they hooked her up quick and got a light reading, checked it and tried to get another, but the resolution was so far…" he paused, wringing his hands. "I'm rambling, aren't I."
"What happened to Kari's brain wave patterns?" Izzy asked quietly and evenly.
"Almost everything was acting like it was in a coma, almost everything was pretty much shut down. But there were a handful of exceptions. Some of the pieces which they think control the links between emotions and higher thought patterns were lit up like a firecracker. More than that, the action in those sections was probably the highest anyone had ever seen. It was like her brain was on triple overtime and dead at the same time but the wave pattern wasn't right for a sleeping person, or anything!" Joe sighed. "I wish I knew what to do."
"You'll think of something." Izzy told him, his voice relaxed, but his eyes intent.
"No, I don't think we will. I think something happened and we we'll never be able to cure it."
"Stop right there!" Izzy held up his hand.
Everyone stared at him, even Joe looked shocked at his new tone.
"Let's go over the coincidences. A group of street toughs decides to hang out in a crowded parking lot, a crowded parking lot next to a big charity event. They wait while all the rich guests go in, and then they ambush four people who are carrying stereo equipment. They don't go after any easy targets, and they don't try and break into any cars. Nobody inside hears anything. And despite the fact that people should be running in and out, late workers, partygoers who forgot something, attendants, nobody else is in the parking structure." Izzy's eyes gleamed as he continued to count off points on his fingers.
"Nobody except for two people, and that's where it gets really weird. One is a woman who just happens to be one of the greatest martial artists I've ever heard of. Ken, you have more experience in that area, do you think…"
"She was a master." Ken told him bluntly. "Unless somebody has lied on everything they told us, she must have been one of the greatest masters in all of Japan. And I've never heard of her, which says something in itself."
"What about her master, that Janero guy?" TK asked, repeating a name the woman had revealed in questioning.
Ken's eyes got as wide as dinner plates. "Now that is a name to be reckoned with. And a name to impress me."
"Who is he?" Izzy asked. "I've never heard of him."
"He was a martial arts legend, the world's greatest master for a time. He mastered about a dozen styles, for a time, but then he disappeared from the public view about fifteen years ago, and hasn't appeared since."
"Maybe he retired." Joe suggested.
"At twenty-five?" Ken asked, shooting him a glance. "I remember reading something about him when I was in the Emperor stage. I thought that if he reappeared he might be the only one who could be my equal."
"And he taught her?" Izzy asked TK.
"That's what they both said."
"He was there?" Ken exclaimed.
"How curious." Izzy muttered. "A student of the greatest martial arts master in the world, a master who disappeared fifteen years ago, appears just in time to save Kari and the others from death at the hands of thugs. And what do the thugs do when confronted by a superior force. Do they run away? No. Do they try and give up? No. They try and get through her to attack you. They had to know by this time that they're crime had failed, and this only makes sense if they were actually trying to attack one of you guys. Then one scrapes Kari, who has a tremendous medical reaction, and ends up in the hospital in odd medical conditions, is locked in a room with TK. Nobody goes in or out of that room, but a minute later TK exits with Kari, who has been miraculously cured of all her problems."
Everyone was getting grimmer and grimmer. The sounds of music outside drifted through the closed door faintly, and Izzy leaned forward to deliver a final statement.
"And this is timed to go along with the collapse of the Digidestined."
"The what?" Everyone shouted.
"We're falling apart, all of us. Haven't you noticed." Izzy continued intently. "Joe, did you hear yourself earlier. I haven't seen you behave like that since we first arrived at File Island. Mimi is starting to talk entirely about fashion again, Sora's in a deep depression, Matt's growing distant, everyone's going crazy. I would normally trust Tai with my life, but now I wouldn't trust to lead a soccer team onto the field! We aren't quite as bad as we were before we got to the Digi-World the first time, but if we get any worse…" his voice faltered.
"How did you figure this out?" Joe was thinking, and from the look on his face, it was not a good thought.
"Have you seen me in the last two weeks?" Izzy snapped.
"Well, yeah, I saw you in the computer lab…"
"I walked by you on a bench, working on your laptop…"
"I came over to see what you were doing, but you were working on your computer, and seemed kind of busy so…"
Everyone stopped as what they were saying penetrated.
"I've been hovering over computers for the past two weeks. I haven't talked to anyone outside of class. I just realized what was going on two days ago. That's why I'm worried."
"Maybe it's just a phase, maybe it's just something that happened. I mean, out there were getting closer, aren't we?" TK's tone was one of a man who does not believe what they are saying.
"What I'm really worried about is that we're all assuming bad traits. Really bad traits. The traits we had to overcome in order to make our crests glow the first time. And you know what, it seems to have settled in?"
"But we don't have our crests anymore." Kari sounded puzzled.
"Yes, but in an emergency, can't you see Gennai or someone trying to rebuild them and give them to us. And now they're useless to us, until we can discover what's inside of us that makes them glow." Everyone nodded at Izzy's statement, feeling deeply troubled.
"But then there's something else." Izzy's comment caused them to jerk around. "Remember all those coincidences that lead up the attack on Kari?"
"Well, yeah, that's what we're talking about." Joe replied.
"What doesn't fit?"
They stared at him for a moment before Ken gasped. "Of course, why didn't we see it before!"
"What?" TK sounded excited.
"The turning point, when things didn't fit anymore." Ken sounded excited.
There was a scratch on the door. Joe opened it to reveal Wormmon trying to peer in the doorway. "Tai wants to know if you want to come out. They're baking cookies."
"Tell him we'll be out in a few minutes." Kari smiled at the green worm, and he grinned back. Joe closed the door when he left.
"So Ken, tell us your theory."
"Everything is designed for one purpose. To attack the four of them. Right?"
Everyone nods.
"Except for the fact that, by a strange set of coincidences, Kari is still alive. More to the point, she was saved by an incredible set of coincidences."
"You're saying that something else happened." TK noted, his eyes narrowing.
"Let's assume that there is some force out there trying to harm us. The attack makes sense then, but your salvation doesn't. In fact, half our facts don't fit with the theory, unless we introduce another part."
"What part?" Kari leans over from her seat on her bed.
"A second agency." Izzy says the words with an icy calm the echoes in the room.
"A what?" Joe asked.
"Someone who is trying to protect us, to save us. Somehow, they're watching out for us, but the attack got through they're guard. Maybe they're like Gennai, able to make mistakes. After that, they swooped in, beat off the attack, and saved Kari at the hospital. It's the only explanation that makes sense."
"Should we tell the others?"
"I don't think so…" Ken's voice trailed off.
"No, we shouldn't." TK and Kari spoke up at once.
"Huh?" Joe asked.
"Why not?" Izzy put in.
"They need to discover this on their own. If you tell them it will just be empty words, it will mean nothing. Whoever is watching over us will help us if we need it." TK and Kari spoke up as one, matching each word perfectly. The effect had everyone else's hair standing on end.
"They sound like Paildramon." Ken whispered.
"I have an idea." Izzy began. "Let's do what they say for now, alright. We'll talk about this more later."
"Right." Everyone stood up and left the room.
"Oh man." Kari suddenly slapped her head. "I remember why we don't let Tai in the kitchen anymore."
Everyone was standing around covered in cookie dough. Even the Digimon were looking embarrassed. Matt and Tai were wrestling on the floor, yelling something about dough in Matt's hair, and everyone else seemed to be enjoying the spectacle.
"Well, at least we can have fun cleaning up."
Jan stood and watched the grassy plains as they spread out. From here you could see, well, as far as the eye could see, a phrase that had always troubled him. But here it was true. Everywhere you looked there was grass and wind and a vast emptiness. On one hand, he enjoyed the calm feeling of tranquility, and on the other, he awaited what he knew was coming.
And suddenly, the world was no longer empty.
There was a shimmer of light, a twisting of space, a sudden rush of air, and then the space in front of Jan was filled by two kilometers of steel-titanium battle armor and bristling weapons arrays. The massive Fleet Dreadnought Henry V was hovering in the air, a scant eighty meters above the ground, rushing forward at tremendous speed. As the vessel frantically cleared the Gate there was another shimmer and then a similar bulk, this time of a more rounded nature, appeared, and the supercarrier Roland was there.
There was a moment as the crew and its inhabitants recovered from the shock of transit, and then the huge vessel roared to life. While its mighty engines tried to claw free of the Gate transit zone, catapult and flight crews gave their systems a last thumbs up. With a roar of directional mass drivers and a thunder that shook the very earth, five squadrons of Ultimate and Mega Digimon were catapulted out of the flight decks of the Roland, screaming for altitude. Behind them the next units were hustled into launch position. Despite expectations to the contrary, it took time to launch squadrons of Digimon, who could not make the transit on their own. And without initial velocity, they were dead. Now the crews worked like maniacs, clearing the way for the next squadrons to hit the air. Bodies dived frantically out of the way as the second element lead, a huge Mega level Crossmon, extended a claw with a single talon up, a thumbs up with no hands. There was another roar, and then the second element was in the air, crawling to get distance between them.
Ahead of them the ground shook and roared in pain as the Henry V's targeting systems stabilized, her gunnery officers conferred, and the full firepower of a two kilometer long ship of the line roared out in a horrible symphony.
Behind them there were two more flashes. The Dreadnought Jellicoe emerged from transit, followed by the Supercarrier John Henry, which was already launching her ready squadrons.
The universe trembled again as the last flight of fighter Digimon emerged from the Roland, and as the Henry V locked missiles on another target, and another huge broadside roared away from the lead vessel. Roland was now hurling the gunships into the air, huge passenger Digimon like MegaKabuterimon and other heavy fliers, loaded to the gills with external ordinance. It took longer to get these fighters off the ground, but the gunships were worth their weight in gold, if they could get off before the lead carrier got pasted by local defenses.
There was another pause of several heartbeats as the gunships screamed off the decks of the Supercarrier, and the Jellicoe passed it by, shielding it with its own tremendous bulk. Fire roared and flashed in tremendous volleys as the world erupted in violence.
And then the last gunship was off the decks, and the Roland stopped. Its survival was now meaningless. With all its wings off, it had given the assault wave precious moments, and the loses that the first squadrons would take would mean that a later Supercarrier could refit and rearm them.
Aboard the bridge of the Fleet Dreadnought Charlemagne, Jan dropped the timer he had been holding into the hands of the adjacent captain. It had a single time on it, five minutes, forty-seven seconds.
"Courage, Admiral, Captain, we have recorded a hundred percent kill ratio on the targets." A young human standing at the gunnery officer's station looked up at them.
"Very good officer." Jan looked over at the Admiral. "You have four days to shave one minute and thirty seconds off that time."
The Admiral sighed and rolled his eyes. "Yes sir."
As time grew later, the group split up. The girls went into Tai and Kari's room,. The guys stayed in the living room. Within a few minutes, they were all asleep.
Kari felt herself drifting in the darkness once more, slowly floating away from whatever had anchored her in one place before, free like a leaf on the storm tossed ocean. She raised a hand, more to see if it would still respond than to do anything with it, then let it fall again, returning lifeless to her side. Everything just seemed distant, floating in some far off fog, and she was unable to muster the energy to be truly worried about this situation, odd as it was. For a long time she just floated before the calm winds of that unknown place.
Suddenly, the darkness in front of her broke open with a rush of light and a huge figure, wearing black clothes etched in silver stood there in the gap, towering above her. He smiled at her, and held out one hand, emanating power. "There you are Hikari. I've been looking for you. Will you come with me for a moment?"
The raw power flowing through him overrode the senses she still had, burning what little reason was left to her in the dream plane out. In moments she was drowning in sheer terror. "TK!" she screamed.
TK popped into existence right next to her, looking incredibly confused. His eyes widened as he took in the scene, and then he grabbed her hand, sensed her terror, and shot off into the darkness, away from the figure.
"Wait!" the figure cried, as they accelerated away. And then faintly: "Oh hell."
TK shot through the darkness, bouncing in random directions, giving enough jolts that Kari eventually shook herself out of her shock. After a bit they realized that they were not being chased, and TK slowed down, pausing in place.
"OK, what just happened?" he asked.
"I have no idea." She replied.
"Well…wait, something's happening." TK held up a hand as the mists around them began to lighten and then faded away. They were suddenly standing in an empty valley, coated with green grass and surrounded by high mountains. There was a rock a few meters away, on which sat an old man, watching them carefully. He grinned when they blinked in the bright sunlight.
"Well, well, well. Hikari Kamiya and Takeru Takaichi. Come right to my doorstep, have you?" the man stood up, dropping his tattered gray cloak, and swelling, expanding releasing tendrils of blackness, as if he was some oily primal ooze in human form twisting up to the sky. His hands came together, pointing menacingly at them, and then erupted in blobs of black goo. Kari and TK backed up suddenly, but then they froze, unable to move as his eyes focused on them hungrily, and then beyond them. His eyes widened for a moment, and he exclaimed: "Uh-oh…"
The man who had earlier broken the darkness to find them was leaning against a tree directly behind them, lounging with his hands in the pockets of his black overcoat. He was tall, taller than most of the people either TK or Kari had seen, and had long brown hair. He was grinning fiercely, that is, he was showing his teeth to them.
"I would like to introduce two friends of mine." He announced, taking one hand out his pocket and waving it to one side. Two bright silver lights appeared behind him, quickly coalescing into two bright, familiar, and above all large forms. "This is Magnadramon and Seraphimon. They're going to say a few words to you about good manners. Four words to be exact."
Holy
Flame!
Seven
Heavens!
"Yes, I was right, four words exactly. Oh…that's going to hurt." The man waved a hand over his eyes, then looked up at the towering Megas. "Go get him guys."
As they rushed off after the fleeing dark shape the man walked over to where TK and Kari were standing and put a hand on both of their shoulders. "Sorry about earlier." He remarked, projecting a sense of calm into them. "I forgot that the dreaming releases some of what we are, and I've been told that I'm quite a sight when I'm Working." He pronounced the last word with a capital W, something TK had never heard before. "And I've forgotten that my crest is primarily warlike in nature. It frightens people sometimes. I would like to apologize for it."
Kari stared at him for a moment, and then, he lifted his hand and flicked out his fingers and her memory returned. From the look on TK's face, his memories had also returned, blasting back through reality. "You're the one!" TK exclaimed, "You're the one who saved Kari, one of the ones Izzy and Ken were talking about."
"Yes, I must admit, I occasionally underestimate Izzy. He really is extremely intelligent, and he was able to piece together a lot of the pieces of the puzzle. But he doesn't know all the story. Not yet. In time he will."
"What do we call you?" Kari asked.
"You can call me Andrel. I guess I'm here to give you some background."
Four columns of light appeared next to him, one a rainbow blur, one a brilliant purple, one a glowing white, and one a rich gold. Gradually they solidified into four people, the child and the tall woman from the operation appeared from the gold and white ones, the purple one contained the other man from that night, and the rainbow one resolved into Gennai, although only faintly.
Gennai turned immediately to Andrel. "Is everything under control?" he asked.
"Yes. We have the area under control. Patomon and Gatomon are getting some exercise, and we can take it from here."
"Good. Fourth Wing is running up the final checks. Eleventh Wing reports contact, and we start transiting reinforcements from the Silbay garrison within the hour. I'll get back to you when I can, but I'll probably be busy for several days. Citadel One out." Gennai faded again.
"Poor guy." The unknown man commented. "If he tries to coexist in multiple places any more often, he's gonna split permanently. I'm Cortell by the way, and I'm here to fill you in on anything sword-boy here forgets."
Andrel elbowed him. The tall woman squeezed both of their shoulders. She spoke with an odd, lilting accent. "I am Amanda. I am pleased to be formally introduced to ones such as yourselves."
The kid spoke up too. "I'm Michael. Pleased to meet'cha."
Everyone shook hands, before the four others found a place to sit. TK and Kari picked a nice rock to rest on, sunning themselves. Andrel looked at the others for a moment, and then spoke up.
"Well, I guess I get to start this off. You probably have a ton of questions. I'm probably going to answer none of them. You know how that goes. Especially since you've been around Gennai for a while."
TK and Kari nodded. Gennai's habit of omitting pieces of information had become annoying over the years, but was now viewed as an odd eccentricity.
"Believe it or not, he does that for a reason. But that's beside the point. I suppose I should start with the crests, they seem to be the focal point of this whole thing." He sat back.
"About fifteen years ago your time, there was a war. That was before you were born, but we think that the older kids got effected by that war in some way. At that point evil spilled into the interconnected worlds."
"Interconnected Worlds?" TK asked.
"Remember Myotismon's gate, the one you used to take you home?" TK nodded, and Kari, who had heard the story from Tai, nodded as well. "Well, if you remember Gennai warned you that there were many worlds you could access. That's one of the properties of the Digital World as you call it. It is a parallel world with Earth, so what happens in one effects the other, but it also serves as a passage to many other worlds, all interconnected through space and time. Anyway, nobody made much of a deal about these connections before people started setting up digital connections in the real world. We're still not sure what triggered it, but there was a sudden shift in the balance, a sudden explosion of evil throughout all the worlds.
"As you know, humans are essential to the Digivolving process. Not just because they provide the necessary energy to complete the evolution process, but because there are certain fundamental properties of humans that Digimon need to proceed into the next phase. It is interaction with human thought and human will that allows the Digivolving process to occur. We believe that, not only are the worlds interconnected, but that in some way they now depend on each other for survival, are somehow interlinked.
"This may seem irrelevant, but it changed the course of the war for good. Up until a certain point, evil was strong enough that good simply got pummeled into near oblivion. Evil creatures that are beyond any of the ones you ever met wandered the land freely, carving it up into empires and kingdoms, filled with cruelty. The sky darkened every day, and most of the worlds' beauty was destroyed.
"At that point, everything just fell apart. The balance almost collapsed. So the worlds, acting on some sort of imperative that stretches our understanding even now, begin to try and stabilize themselves by incorporating the elements necessary to their survival. Humans. And so it just started grabbing any humans it could find that suited its purpose and dragging them across the worlds to wherever we were needed.
"Just like us!" TK exclaimed.
"Not quite, we didn't get it as easy." Andrel's eyes were bitter as he stared at the sky. "Someone had to get it bad the first time in order to make things work."
"What things work? And what do you mean easy?" TK looked annoyed that one of the most important things in his life had been called easy.
"Your digivices for one. Even Izzy admits he has no idea how they work. I wonder if he appreciates how long it took us to build the stupid things. Or how long it took us to design the interior. Even your toned down versions are a pain to build. And you would not believe how much effort went into the crests. Those were the real pain, and it took years to iron out the bugs. And we didn't even manage to do that."
"If the war was only fifteen years ago, how could it take years…" Kari began.
"Fifteen years your time. Your first adventure, TK, took about a week in Earth time, but close to half a year in Digital Time. The great war was going much faster, it took a few days in Earth time, but over a hundred years in Digital time."
"A hundred years!"
"We learned how to survive. We adapted, and we changed. We sacrificed our lives and our youth for your tomorrow in a way, but that's neither here nor there. We need to talk to you about something."
"What?"
"Well…" Andrel sighed and sat back. "I guess I should start with the crests."
"The crests."
"In the middle of the war we noticed that there was a great power that was assisting us. It is hard to explain this power, but consider it a force of good that transcends everything you've ever imagined, and has great power. Virtually unlimited power, that intelligent beings can draw upon. It comes in many forms, and everyone has all of them, but some people have more of one than others. For instance, the manifestation that we call courage, that which propels one into danger for the purposes of good, is possessed in overabundance by your brother Kari. And Matt forms friendships so deep and powerful that they are never shaken, another manifestation of that power. We developed many crests to assist people in using and manifesting that particular power in the service of good, allowing them access to the true might of what they used naturally. Seven of those symbols we used are currently worn by the Digidestined."
"Seven, but there are eight crests!" TK exclaimed. "Nine if you count Ken."
Andrel raised one finger. "I'm getting to that."
"Oh."
"Anyway, the crests had tremendous powers, the least of which was allowing the Digimon near these people to Digivolve twice, but there were unforeseen consequences. For you, you are bonded to your Digimon, so the power that goes into you spills over into them, automatically allowing them to Digivolve. But the original crests were different. They were designed to unleash the powers they represented into the wielders. The effects were near catastrophic. Each crest has tremendous powers, but it takes tremendous discipline to use those powers, and if you lose control even once, you have an incredible amount of destructive force unleashed on the world. Enough to destroy some countries. In fact, the power was so incredible it took years for the crestbearers to figure out how to live with them, and to this day we still have problems.
"In addition, the crests gave their bearers the power to Digivolve. In a way. You don't want to know what happened the first time we did that. It shocked me to be sure. The combination of all this gave many of us mental problems that no therapist could solve, as well as a much needed lesson in patience and controlling our anger. As you know, should that which the crest represents be lost, the whole thing falls apart, and bad things happen. Just to give you an idea, Jan, who you've seen briefly, has more power at his disposal than the nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, and that's without going to Avatar. You'll learn about Avatar mode later, but just accept that if you lose control of the true power of a crest, bad things happen.
"You mentioned that we have seven crests."
"Courage, Friendship, Sincerity, Love, Knowledge, Reliability and Kindness."
TK looked confused. "But…"
Andrel raised a finger again, quieting TK. "However, we discovered channels to almost undiluted power, channels that were a hundred times as dangerous as the crests. We managed to harness four to create the Seals. Actually, what we created were the greater crests, we'll get to the Seals in a moment."
Four symbols appeared in front of TK and Kari. Two were instantly recognizable, but the other two were odd. One was a circle, with triangular rays emerging from a point in the middle, extending to the interior of the circle glowing red. Another was what appeared to be a stylized sword and shield oriented downward, glowing a deep blue. All four symbols seemed to flicker in front of the eyes, as if they were trying to change shape.
"These are the four seals." Amanda smiled at them. Her chest glowed white in an image identical to the floating ones. "Light, that which brings life to the worlds, and that which makes life worth living."
Michael stepped up, his chest glowing as well. "Hope. That which drives all living things, the light inside that never dies. The force that grows as the evil that seeks to extinguish it increases."
Andrel touched the red one. "Power, the crest that represents the force that dwells within the soul and is unleashed only in the gravest emergency. It was given to Gennai long ago."
His hand hovered over the blue one, and now his voice echoed like an avalanche in the mountains. "Justice. That which is sworn to protect the weak, the innocent and the helpless. The sword of war constrained and bound to the light within." His chest exploded in blue flame for a moment, a color that somehow verged on incandescent white before dying down.
"If the crests were dangerous, the seals were catastrophic. They only reacted to certain things, and they involved powers so vast and incomprehensible that they were nearly our end. You see, the crests may be powerful, but the seals are incredible, a direct channel into the true power that is the Living Light. Even without using my full powers I destroyed an island chain the size of Japan by sinking it back into the sea. My power is so incredibly uncontrollable that I almost died the first time I used it."
"And we have that power?" Kari asked, her voice starting to tremble.
"In a way. You see, the seals were naturally unbalanced. They caused their users to go insane. To counter that, once we started drawing upon their power, we had to create what we call balancing crests. Once each greater crest was united with a balancing crest, a seal was created."
Andrel pointed and four more images appeared. "The Crest of Power is the symbol of the strength within, but it is also dangerous when uncontrolled. The use of power, as you well know, can lead to disaster as easily as it can lead to triumph, and can destroy more than it preserves in an instant. To prevent it's misuse it is united with the symbol of the circle with the rays outward, that which is within considering that which is without. The Crest of Wisdom, that which gives Wisdom to counter Power."
Amanda spoke up, coming up and taking Andrel's hand in her own. "Light is the Crest of one side of the balance, giving it tremendous power. But Light and Dark are two sides of the same coin, two ways of looking at the same picture. If one concentrates on Light alone, they forget the importance of the darkness. The symbol of Light traced in black is the Crest of Shadows, which reminds its bearer that it is not pure Light, but the struggle between Light and Darkness that produces true beauty and good."
Michael looked very serious as he came up to TK and Kari. "Hope is the crest that can never be extinguished. But, if the bearer loses hope at all in anything, that part of them, and that part of the world, simply dies. It takes much to prevent a simple being from losing Hope. The Crest of Hope is the star rising to the Heavens. The star falling downward is the symbol of the stuff of miracles coming to Earth, and represents the dreams of those who Hope. And it is those dreams that empower the Crest.
There was a pause. Then Kari spoke up. "What about Justice?"
Andrel's voice rang out like a steel bar dropped in a quiet library. It was as cold as the winds that whipped across glaciers, and sharp as razor blades and as hard as the men who lived on the barren coasts of the north. "The Crest of Justice is known as the Crest of War, for it is the creed of Justice to defend against any tyrant, no matter how powerful, or how many followers they may have assembled. Justice deals with the march of armies as often as the trials of courts. Justice must enjoin in war, and activity we abhor, to preserve the greater good, thus the paradox of good. The broken sword is the Crest of Mercy, that which serves to balance the native savageness of the sword of Justice. It is that which prevents Justice from turning to tyranny."
His voice trailed off, and his eyes looked somewhere else. The symbols disappeared.
"So we need those balancing crests?" Kari asked, trying to avoid what she saw in Andrel's eyes.
"No, you don't." Cortell spoke up for the first time, smiling genially, looking just like Izzy for a moment. "When Gennai and Andrel came up with the Digidestined test plan he asked us to make crests for the original children. When that worked, we were able to update our model. What we created were imitation or copied crests, items that drew their power from the original crest, shielding their wearer from the flow of power and madness that came from them. Andrel and Gennai decided that crests would not be enough, so we created the seals of light and hope and moved them into crest form. Those symbols that you wore were powered off of Amanda and Michael's symbols remotely, so you were shielded from most of the madness. In addition, Andrel managed to create some aspects of the seal's balance inside of you."
"So why are you telling us this?" Kari asked.
Andrel sighed. "Because Izzy is right. You will be needed once more. And soon. You've already done all that we could have expected of you and more, but we have nobody else to turn to, except for you. The war is on the verge of flaming up again, and you are terribly vulnerable. Even though you have only a fraction of the true power of the seals, your connection with the powers of Light makes you a tempting target for the forces of darkness. And the strain of drawing subconsciously on your crest for so long is beginning to wear down on your natural stamina."
"I thought we gave up the crests." TK reminded them.
"In essence you did. The easy connection to the power was lost when the essence of the crests was removed, but this essence is carried in every person. The presence and integration of the crests into your minds opened channels for the power. Big channels. In reality you can still draw on powers beyond anything you've ever done, but it will require concentration and discipline. It will also require us to manipulate your minds a little so that you are more fully shielded against the effects of your own power. And it will require you to remember or relearn what your crests truly mean."
"How much work will it take to do this?" TK asked.
"Actually, we just did most of it. That's what we were doing while you were talking." Cortell grinned at them.
"I didn't feel anything." Kari told them.
"You weren't supposed to. But you may be a little less irritable now." Cortell nodded graciously at her.
"She's not irritable!" TK objected.
Cortell just grinned even wider.
"And…" Andrel sighed. "You won't remember any of this unless we visit you again."
"Huh! How come?" TK demanded, eyes flashing.
"Because, you're not quite ready. You have things to learn first." Andrel looked quietly at their glances of incomprehension and sighed. "Look at it like this. In your fight with Apoclymon, you finally understood some of the nature of the crests, right? Now, we could have told you that the crests were powered by those special qualities within you and the faith you had in each other when you first got them, but what point would that have served? You would have thought you knew all the answers, and not bothered to get the real answers from your experiences. Without being able to learn for yourself what these things truly mean, you will be simply unable to use them properly. You need to learn from experience."
"I guess so." TK sighed.
"I know so. And in time, so will you." And then the background vanished and the two tumbled back into the realms of reality.
Another Note: Once more sorry about the length. And if you think that I was Davis bashing, I would have to disagree. I think that this is how he would naturally behave. I'll spend more time talking about the Digidestined soon….I promise. Really. Just bear with me.
Sorry about how long it is. I write long.