"What's wrong, Jack?" asked Cody.
"Nothing," said Jack. "I'm fine."
Things had begun to grow dull back at the Shinjuku Skyscrapers. Despite the coffee and comfortable couches, most of the DigiDestined had begun to show their fatigue. Izzy was naturally working with the programmers, but everyone else was just sitting around. Tai and Matt were talking with Wargreymon and Metalgarurumon while Willis tried to get to know Diaboromon a little better, a task made difficult by Diaboromon's limited vocabulary. Mimi, Michael, and Rosemon seemed to be hitting it of nicely with Henry and his little sister. Kari, TK, and their digimon were all over near the couches while Yolei and Sora paced nervously about. Valkyrimon was taking it easy along with Terriermon and Lopmon. Jack and Bahadramon were seemingly isolated from the others, sticking to a corner of the small lobby and only speaking to each other, and even then only a few words passed between them.
"Okay," said Cody. "But if there's anything bothering you, I still think you should tell us."
"I'll keep that in mind," said Jack, a little snidely.
Cody looked slightly hurt as he backed away and returned to the group.
"Well that wasn't very nice," Bahadramon said.
"Look, there's no time for 'nice' right now," said Jack. "We have more important things to worry about."
"NightmareOmnimon…" Bahadramon snarled.
"He's out there…" said Jack. "So why are we in here? We should be looking for him, not waiting for him to show up!"
"Just relax," said Bahadramon. "He'll come soon enough."
"Sure he will," said Jack. "After he's gotten even stronger."
"Maybe," said Bahadramon.
"Definitely! Come on Bahadramon! You and I have to go after him, even if it means doing it alone."
"Don't be stupid! We'd get slaughtered and you know it!"
"Maybe."
"Definitely!"
"Alright, alright!" said the slightly frustrated Jack. "So we don't stand a chance on our own! But being with all the others doesn't seem to have helped us out so far!"
"Sure it has! If it weren't for them, we'd be long dead!"
"Well we haven't gotten any closer to actually winning."
"I think not dying is a big step toward winning," said Bahadramon.
"Whatever," said Jack, turning away from his partner.
"Come on Jack!" said Bahadramon. "We can't fight him as we are now! Even with all of us in our Mega forms, we were still losing. We need to have a plan before we try to take him on again."
"But we don't stand a chance against him," said Jack. "NightmareOmnimon doesn't have any weaknesses. How are we supposed to beat something like that?"
"He does have one weakness," said Bahadramon. "Now, he's mortal. He's fallen out of favor with those 'Vanguard' guys, so they won't help him out any more. Thanks to Protomon, he can't escape his body! If we kill him this time, that'll be it! It's all over!"
"Just one problem with that," said Jack. "I'm not too clear on the part where we kill him."
"Hey, we'll do it," said Bahadramon. "I think we've seen how well we all work together."
"I hope your right," said Jack, slowly beginning to walk away from Bahadramon.
"Me too…" muttered Bahadramon under his breath.
"Wow!" gasped Davis.
"Most impressive," Ken agreed.
The both looked up in awe of Monodramon's Ultimate form: Cyberdramon. He was a truly fearsome-looking digimon with a menacing air about him. He kneeled low to the ground with his back arched and his crimson wings spread wide so as to allow the three humans aboard.
"There'll be time to ogle him later," said Ryo, scrambling up Cyberdramon's back. "Right now we've got to get a move on."
"Of course," said Davis.
Ryo extended his hand to the boys and helped them up one by one. Once all were in position, Cyberdramon leaped into the air and rebounded off the side of the nearby apartment building to gain some altitude. Once he had managed to clear the rooftops of the surrounding structures he caught an updraft with his wings and began to soar higher and higher. Very soon the entire city was stretched out below them.
"What a view…" said Ken.
"So Ryo," Davis began. "Where does this girl live?"
"Uh…" Ryo stalled as he realized that he had missed out on one key detail. "I… don't know."
Ken and Davis just sweatdropped.
"So… where were you planning on taking us?" asked Ken.
"Well…" Ryo thought for a moment. "I've got it! Cyberdramon, can you sense where Renamon is?"
"I can smell a strong opponent from miles away," Cyberdramon snarled. "Of course I can find her."
"Well that's perfect!" said Ryo. "Follow that smell!"
"Right away!" said Cyberdramon as he flung himself forward.
"Oh MAN!" groaned Matt, back in the Shinjuku Skyscrapers. "Would someone PLEASE see about that heater?!"
"I know," groaned Tai as he fanned himself with a magazine. "I'm dying here!"
"Why is it so hot?" asked Sora.
"Several dozen gun turrets…" Metalgarurumon sighed as he lay on the floor. "Chrome digizoid armor… A full complement of missiles that can freeze an enemy solid… You'd think I'd at least get a fan or something."
Izzy was of course far too engrossed in his work to be concerned with the heat. He and the six programmers were all pouring over the data that Izzy's digivice had collected from the fight with NightmareOmnimon. Yamaki was watching over the collection of minds as they worked fiercely. Thus far, nothing truly useful had made itself apparent, but that could change at any moment.
"Hey! Look at this!" Mr. Wong cried out.
All the others immediately left their own workstations and crowded around Mr. Wong, their eyes fixed on his computer screen.
"What is it, Tao?" asked Babel.
"Check it out," said Mr. Wong. "Do you see this sudden change right here?"
"What is that?" asked Daisy.
"It seems familiar," said Yamaki, taking off his sunglasses and looking closer. "It's just like the data I've collected from my study of the bio-emergence process."
"It's a phase warp," said Izzy.
"A what?" asked Curly.
"It's a dimensional distortion," said Izzy. "It causes multiple worlds to overlap, usually for only short periods of time."
"So digimon must be using these 'phase warps' to bio-emerge," said Yamaki.
"I don't know what all this bio-emerging stuff is," said Izzy. "But I know a phase warp when I see one. Here, let me show you."
Mr. Wong got out of the chair and Izzy took his place. Izzy quickly called up a 3-D graphing program designed for just this kind of data interpretation. In a few seconds, he had a working model of the phase warp graphed.
"Hey, that's…" said Mr. Wong.
"Juggernaut," said Yamaki.
"Or at least something very much like it," said Shibumi. "But it looks like this 'phase warp' that the virus managed to come up with is far stronger than Juggernaut, and it's designed to act like a gateway instead of a means of destruction."
"But why would anyone need a gateway this strong?" asked Izzy. "That thing was nearly powerful enough to crush all of us, including NightmareOmnimon."
"I'll bet he needed the extra strength to make it all the way here," said Shibumi. "From what I've learned, the Digital World has four quadrants: east, west, north, and south. Our world is connected to the south quadrant."
"And my world connects to the east," Izzy interjected.
"Right," said Shibumi. "While connections between a quadrant and the corresponding Earth may be common, it's almost impossible to form a direct link between quadrants and Earths that don't match up. If NightmareOmnimon wanted to come to our quadrant…"
"…Then he would need a much more powerful phase warp!" said Yamaki.
"Yeah, but not THIS powerful," said Mr. Wong. "C'mon, just look at this thing!"
"You think there was more to this than just transportation?" asked Daisy.
"Of course!" said Izzy. "When we all talked with the Sovereigns, we learned about this 'D-Reaper' that NightmareOmnimon wants so badly. D-Reaper was supposed to be destroyed months ago… which means we're in the past."
"Can these phase warps actually do that?" asked Yamaki.
"I wouldn't be at all surprised," said Shibumi. "I've tried studying such phenomena, and my findings are incredible. Weak ones only seem capable of transporting data in between the different levels of reality, like the real and digital world. The very strongest can distort time itself, but they are very rare and anything bigger than an electron that tries to move through them is instantly destroyed. I suppose that there might be level at which a warp that can distort time just slightly but still be within human tolerances."
"Hold on," said Mr. Wong. "Look at this here."
Mr. Wong reached around Izzy and pulled up another section of the data, which the digivice had been collection more recently.
"What are you looking at, Janyu?" asked Yamaki. "I thought we were only interested in the fight."
"I knew something was weird about this, and now I think I know why," said Mr. Wong. "Look."
Another 3-D model popped up, this one of the park where the DigiDestined had first arrived.
"This is everything within the digivice's detection radius," said Mr. Wong. "Now watch…"
He clicked the mouse and the entire model was suddenly distorted, but only for an instant. In a moment it had gone from normal to completely deformed and back to normal again.
"What was that?" asked Izzy.
"Evidence of your phase warp," said Mr. Wong. "It would seem that even though it's dissipated for us, it has left a residual trace behind. That residual warp is sending out a distortion wave every few minutes that moves across our world instantaneously. I suspect that the phase warp is so unstable that these waves are expressions of the warp on a much larger scale. If this is true, the phase warp may be causing changes in spatial positions, dimensional positions, or even temporal positions every time it surges up like that. Every time it hits it could be causing changes to anything, anywhere in the timeline."
"I see," said Shibumi. "So that warp was probably causing changes here even before these children arrived."
"Right," said Mr. Wong. "It's possible that because of this phase warp I decided on tea this morning instead of coffee, or someone in South America might stub their toe three years from now, when they might have not done so without it."
"Or there are much worse possibilities," said Daisy. "It might change something small three hundred years ago and we could suddenly find ourselves in the middle of World War III. We have no way of knowing"
"But who's to say that's not where we're supposed to be?" asked Babel. "Maybe this warp has actually changed us all completely from who we might have been and the world we might have lived in already?"
"For now, we'll assume everything as at least close to the way it should happen," said Yamaki. "It's conceivable that the Tamers might still be stuck in the Digital World without the warp, or that Shibumi might still be out in the country, or that we all might have gone down to greet the Tamers instead of just Janyu, the childrens' parents, and myself. This doesn't change the fact that the virus is still out there. Now it just means that we have to destroy it as quickly as possible before this phase warp destroys us."
"But there's still another problem!" said Izzy. "We have no way of knowing whether or—"
"EEEEEEEAAAAAAAAA!!!" screamed Mimi.
"What IS that stuff?!" yelled Tai.
"I don't know but it just ate through the coffee table!" shouted Joe.
Izzy, the programmers and Yamaki all rushed out to see what was the matter, but they still couldn't believe their eyes when they reached the others. Some sort of red gelatin was flowing from the air ducts and seemed to devour whatever it touched. Most notably, it was giving off an incredible amount of heat.
"It's the D-Reaper!" yelled Henry, who had been backed against the wall by the strange fluid.
"How did it get here?!" shouted Terriermon from atop Henry's head..
"Henwy! I'm scared!" Suzie cried as she clutched her brother's vest.
"Don't worry Suzie!" Lopmon called from the other side of the D-Reaper river. "I'll save you!"
"It's everywhere!" shouted TK.
"Where's it coming from?!" yelped Cody.
"Behind!" shouted Yamaki.
The programmers and Izzy quickly turned their heads and saw that their workstations and almost everything behind them was rapidly being engulfed by more of the fluid.
"Must escape!" shouted Diaboromon.
"There's no time!" yelled Magnadramon.
"Hurry!" yelled Wargreymon.
As this went on, Cyberdramon finally reached the place he had been searching for. He landed in the garden at the center of Rika's house, which could easily be described as lavish. All of the lights were strangely on, especially considering how late it was getting. Cyberdramon kneeled to allow his passengers off his back.
"Finally," said Ryo as he slid to the ground after Ken and Davis.
"So did this girl say anything about what happened to this friend of yours?" asked Davis.
"No," said Ryo. "But it's got to be bad."
"How can you be so sure?" asked Ken.
"Let's just say she wouldn't have called me if it wasn't," said Ryo.
"There you are!" shouted a female voice.
They all turned to look at the girl. Ken and Davis recognized her as being the one from the park who they'd spoken with briefly.
"What's up?" asked Ryo with an odd smile.
"Sorry 'Mr. Legend' but there's no glory to gain here," said Rika. "I just thought you might want to know what happened."
"Well are you gonna' tell me?" asked Ryo.
"I'll think about it," Rika said coolly.
"Well take your time," Ryo said with even more confidence.
Ken and Davis weren't quite sure what to make of this scene. They could only describe it as a showdown, watching the two opponents stare at each other. And yet, the tension seemed more playful than hostile. Finally, one of them blinked.
"Alright, you win," said Ryo with mock disappointment. "But I really do want to know what happened to Takato."
"Right this way," said Rika, beaming with self-assurance after her victory.
Rika turned and began walking down to one of the rooms and Ryo began to follow close behind her. Cyberdramon, Ken, and Davis came along a little farther back.
"So what was that?" Davis whispered.
"Beats me," said Ken. "But I think Rika won."
"Unless Ryo let her win," said Davis.
"Hmm… that's a good point," said Ken. "I think we'd be better off just following them to where their friend is."
"Sounds like a plan," said Davis.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
[There you go, another chapter. I'm sure many of you have noticed the discrepancies between my description of the events and they way they actually happened in the series, and I've now explained how that came to be. Anyway, I'm still pretty swamped with work, but rest assured that I will never stop work on this series altogether. Until next time…]