THE TRUE MEANING OF GOGGLES.
"Daisuke? Daisuke, if you're unconscious, say something!!"
"Veemon?"
The other digidestined were looking for me. I gave Tai another glance, then decided any explanation would have to wait. "I'm down here, guys--give us a sec, we'll be up in a moment."
"We? What does he mean, we?"
I ignored them. "Exveemon, can you give us a lift?"
"Sure thing, Daisuke." Exveemon hovered by the side of the mountain, allowing us both to climb onto his shoulders. The winged bowling ball scowled at us--could it really be Devimon?
"You know, from the way Takeru carries on about him, I expected Devimon to be a bit, you know . . . bigger."
"We beat him up pretty badly and he de-digivolved," Taichi explained. "He's now Demi-devimon."
"Oh," I shot another look at Taichi. I mean, I couldn't get over how weird this was. I mean, I'd looked up to Taichi all my life. Now I was seeing him as he would have been, when he'd first entered the digital world--
"I guess Devimon wasn't kidding when he said he wanted a rematch."
Taichi gave me a wry smile. "You said it."
"There they are!" Iori waved. "You can land here, Exveemon. There aren't any big rocks."
The fog was clearing quickly now, helped perhaps by the wind from Exveemon's wings. The landing was still somewhat rocky--Taichi and I were dumped rather abruptly.
"Ow!" I would have fallen if Tai hadn't been there to catch me. Figures, I thought. Even when he's my age he's better than me.
"You okay, Daisuke?"
"Just fine."
"Daisuke--" Ken approached, skidding to a halt when he noticed I had an unexpected companion.
"You look like you fell off a mountain," Iori observed, warily studying our new guest.
"I kind of did," I said. "Where's the others?" I was looking froward to Hikari's reaction. It was going to be interesting--I was not disappointed.
"They're over here--" Hikari hurried out of the fog, coming to a screeching halt as she recognized my companion. Gatomon cannoned into her, having had much the same reaction. The looks on both of their faces were priceless--
"Oof!" Miyako and Hawkmon cannoned into them. "Hikari--why'd you stop?" Miyako complained, pausing as she noticed we had another with us. "Hello--"
Gatomon recovered first, shaking her head. "Even given everything that's happened in all my lives, I never expected this--"
"I don't believe it--" Hikari whispered putting a hand out to brush Tai's wayward fringe out of his eyes. "It's really you?"
"Yes," Tai sounded resigned.
Hikari laughed and suddenly glomped him. "You know, I always wanted a little brother--"
"Hey! I may be shorter than you but I'm still older than you--let go--"
I grinned, watching my companion's faces as the penny finally dropped.
"No way--"
"But Taichi's--"
"Interesting," Ken said. "I suppose the feathered bowling ball has something to do with this?"
"It's DemiDevimon," I explained.
"So you managed to defeat him?" Hikari asked, stopping hugging Taichi long enough to let him answer.
"Kinda," Taichi said. "We need to find the others, to see if they've figured out what happened."
As if on cue, we heard footsteps running towards us.
"TAICHI!"
"Over here!" Taichi waved. "I'm okay, you'd don't have to worry--"
"Who said we were worried?" I blinked as a blonde boy, slightly taller than me grabbed Taichi by his collar and began shaking him. "I don't know how or why but this is all your fault Yagami!"
"Hey!"
"YOU-YOU FIEND!" Another person joined us, this time attacking the bowling ball, now cowering in Exveemon's arms. "Change us back right now! Do you have any idea how last season this hat is!?"
"Mimi?" Miyako whispered faintly. Iori and Hawkmon were hiding behind her.
"I think," Ken said beside me. "That it would be fair to assume that Taichi was not the only one affected by whatever it was that Devimon did."
"You think?" I said, watching the tall blonde thwap Tai and trying to place where I'd seen him before.
Ken gave me a sideways smile. "Elementary, my dear Watson."
"Yamato?" a new voice interrupted. "If you've quite finished slapping Taichi around, you might want to come and help your brother--"
I stared at the ginger-haired girl, then at the little kid bawling his eyes out next to her. She'd said 'brother'--
I couldn't help it. I cracked up.
"Daisuke?" Ken asked concerned.
"Takeru looks like a munchkin!" I said, between howls of laughter.
Hikari shoved me. "That's not nice. There, there--" she said, scooping up the still crying Takeru and hugging him. "It's okay."
That made me stop laughing in a hurry. Even looking like a munchkin, Takeru gets more attention than me.
"Hey--he's my brother!" Yamato protested.
"This is just brilliant," Sora said to no-one in particular, then pulled Taichi up off the ground. "Did Devimon get away?"
"See that round thing Mimi is slapping the hell out of?" Taichi replied, rubbing his neck where Yamato had been shaking him.
"Oh."
Biyomon fluttered over to Sora. "You'd better come back. Agumon and Gabumon have been helping Gomamon cheer Jyou up--"
"Great," Sora put a hand over her eyes.
I was about to ask why she appeared so concerned when a loud wail made its way over the mountain. "We are so DOOMED!"
"He's still looking on the positive side, huh?" Yamato sighed, exchanging a look with Sora and Taichi.
"I'll go snap him out of it," Tai said, bouncing back over the mountain.
"Tai--wait!" Sora turned to Yamato. "Think we should stop him?"
"Nah," Yamato shrugged, following Taichi. "This should be worth a laugh."
"Sora?" Miyako said in a stunned voice. "What happened?"
Sora sighed. "We're not exactly certain. When we came out of the mist, we were exactly as you see us now--although our digimon were unchanged. They can still digivolve to Ultimate level."
"We took out Devimon with hardly a fight--even though he had this whole army of Ogremon he set on us," Takeru piped up, speaking for the first time, as Hikari wiped away his tears.
"It was weird. He wasn't a match for us--which makes me wonder why he wanted the rematch."
"Why don't you ask him?" I said, turning to where Exveemon was still holding onto Demi-devimon--only to find he wasn't there. "Hey, where'd he go?"
"Mimi?"
The brown-haired girl blushed. "Well, I kind of slapped him so much . . . he de-digivolved--"
"Well where is he now?"
Mimi held her hat out.
We edged closer. Cowering in the bottom of the hat was a little black blob--
"Remind me never ever to piss her off," Exveemon whispered, attempting to hide behind me.
"I agree," Ken said, holding Wormon tightly.
"What did you do that for?" Sora demanded. "Now we'll have to wait for him to digi-volve to tell us what he did!"
"I'm sorry, but if you knew how demeaning it was to be seen in public wearing something this out of date!"
"It's okay, Mimi," I said. "The digital world isn't really public--and you know, all of us know that the dress is Devimon's fault--"
Mimi beamed. "Of course you do. Thank-you Daisuke." She turned back to Sora and Biyomon. "I suppose we should go and see how the others are coping."
The others appeared to be coping quite well. Jyou was polishing his glasses nodding occasionally as Taichi said something while Gommamon and Agumon watched with surprised expressions. Yamato was leaning on a rock a little way distant from them, doing his loner type thing, I guessed.
The red-haired kid sitting typing onto a laptop on one of the rocks nearby, had, by a simple process of elimination, to be Koushiro. "Give me a moment, Taichi. I'm trying to contact Gennai."
"Okay. Is everyone here?" Taichi looked round at us. "Where's Devimon?"
"What's left of him is in Mimi's hat," Sora said tiredly.
"I believe the whereabouts of Devimon is immaterial," Koushiro folded away his laptop and joined the rest of the group. "If he were the one responsible for our transformation we should have regained our normal appearance on his defeat."
"Makes sense," I admitted.
"But that would mean that someone else in behind Devimon's reappearence and challenge," Ken said.
"A logical hypothesis," Koushiro nodded. "One that I was just about to suggest."
"Okay," Tai stood up, grabbing Mimi's hat. "Tell us who you are working for," he said, poking the little dark digimon. "Or I'll use you as a soccer ball--"
Nothing happened.
"Well that was a resounding success," Yamato said from the other side of the peak. "Taichi sit down and stop poking it."
"But it's fun, Yama-chan. He's all squishy--like a stress ball. Who's a cute widdle stress toy, huh? Huh?" Taichi continued to prod the digimon.
"I wouldn't do that," Sora cautioned.
"What are we going to do?" Palmon asked.
"Find out whose really behind this, defeat them, then go home," Mimi answered. "What did you think we were going to do?"
"I suppose hoping for a non-violent solution is out of the question?" Jyou asked.
Gomamon fell over laughing. "You're so funny, Jyou."
"I suspect that finding the dark digimon in question won't be too hard," Iori said. "Isn't it usually the case that they seek out us?"
"Not all the time. We had to go to server to defeat Etemon, Piedmon and all the others."
"You don't think Etemon is involved? I should have brought earplugs--'
Tai eeped suddenly and we all looked at him. He was sitting a metre away from Mimi's hat with a surprised look on his face. He gave us an embarrassed grin.
"For a baby digimon, Devimon has really big teeth."
The original digidestined sighed and turned back to the discussion. The rest of us continued to stare at him. I'd never seen Tai like this before.
It was interesting.
"Does it strike you that Taichi is not taking this development as seriously as perhaps a leader should?" Ken asked me in a serious whisper.
"Nah. He's probably just goofing off to lighten everyone's spirits," I said, trying to puzzle it out for myself.
"Taichi, will you just leave the baby evil digimon alone?" Yamato said exasperatedly. "We're trying to have a serious discussion here--"
"I'm being serious," Tai said, setting the little blob that was Devimon down in the centre. "It just strikes me that this is what we should be focusing our attention on."
"He can't tell us anything until he digivolves, we've been over that," Yamato snapped.
"But dude--think about it. Isn't that he's even here at all somewhat remarkable?" Taichi looked round at our blank faces. "Last time we defeated him--wasn't he totally destroyed?"
"I wiped him out!" Patamon said cheerfully, getting a dark look from the blob.
"So how do you bring an evil digimon back from--well, the place dark digimon go when they are destroyed?" Taichi said.
From the looks that flashed across the faces of my companions I was missing something.
"What?" I said.
"I believe that Taichi has raised the possibility that either the barrier between the dark dimension has been removed or that someone purposefully brought Devimon back, which in turn, might suggest that other evil digimon have been returned," Koushiro said helpfully.
"Arukerimon might be capable--although it's a far cry from her usual schemes. Although she did manage to create control spires from pure evil--I wouldn't put it past her--" Ken muses, more to himself then any of us others.
"I don't think we can rule out the possibility of there being more someone else involved either--I'll see if Gennai has replied to my message yet," Koushiro said, getting out his laptop again.
"Taichi, why are you grinning inanely at a time like this?" Yamato snapped. "Don't you realize the seriousness of this situation?"
"Yeah," Taichi beamed at him.
"I'm curious to know what the reasoning behind your apparent cheerfulness is, Taichi." Tentomon said, leaving Koushiro to his laptop.
"Simple. We're back in the digital world, with our partners, who can digivolve to ultimate level. It's like we've been given another chance to help our friends, another chance at adventure! Maybe that's the reason we were brought back--" Taichi gave all of us an enthusiastic grin. "Who says this has got to be all gloom and doom, huh?"
Everyone looked at Jyou who was polishing his glasses. He blinked at the sudden attention. "What? I think Taichi has a point--we've all missed being in the digital world, being able to make a difference. Now we can."
"I guess," Sora said.
"Come on," Biyomon said. "This is going to be fun, Sora! Like old times."
"Just like old times," Mimi sighed, looking at her dress. "Oh well. I suppose, I can live wearing this thing, if it means I get to spend more time with you, Palmon."
"Oh, Mimi!"
"I never had a chance to test all my theories about the digital world," Koushiro mused. "This is certainly a stunning opportunity."
"Yamato?" Gabumon asked.
The blonde shrugged. "As long as Takeru's all right with it, I suppose I can deal. Takeru?"
We looked around. The munchkin and Patamon were happily involved in a game of tag on the other side of the peak.
"Takeru! Don't go that close to the edge!" Yamato took off after them.
"Well, then," Taichi said with a satisfied air. "I guess we find something to eat."
"Ken?" I asked, noticing my companion deep in thought. "What's the matter?"
"Something Taichi said. Their digimon can reach an ultimate level?"
"They used to be able to but they gave that up to make a shield thing to protect the digital world from evil," I explained. "Oh. I see what you mean."
"Exactly. If that shield is down, someone took it down--and that might explain Devimon. I'm going to talk to Koushiro--why don't you catch up with Taichi?"
Agumon and Taichi had already headed down the mountain, in search of food. We followed them none to quickly--I wasn't sure how to treat Taichi. To tell the truth, I was no longer sure which of us was in charge here.