Disclaimer: Although I don't own the concept of digimon itself, Cronomon, Tauromon, Serpentmon, Kappamon and Banemon are all mine. They're also all bad. An you're about to meet them all.

Thank you to everyone who reviewed the first two chapters of this story, it's really encouraging. And as for how they got through the digiport?

Chapter 3 – Welcome Back

"This is weird." Taichi commented, gazing upward at the mountain. "I've never seen a place like this before. How did we end up here?"

"I really don't know," Agumon replied, shrugging, "We just kind of turned up here when you guys came through the Digiport."

"Well, it would help an awful lot if we knew exactly where we were," Sora commented, gazing across the enormous lake to the shadowy forest of the distant shore. "Can't you find anything on you computer, Koushiro?"

"I'm afraid this particular location isn't marked on any of my maps," the redhead apologized, typing on his faithful old laptop. "Though it is definitely part of the Digital World. We're on a landmass in Digiworld quite far away from either File Island or Server, the only two places in Digiworld we really know well, possibly even the other side of the planet. Though it's still a mystery how we managed to get here,"

"Well, I do have some idea," Tentomon volunteered, "I believe that we digimon may have emerged through some sort of mono-dimensional space-rip just as you came to Digiworld."

Everyone looked quizzically at Tentomon.

"Well, I do listen to Koushiro a lot." Tentomon said, "Why shouldn't I come up with my own theories?"

"Even I hardly understand that!" his human friend laughed. "What does that mean in English?"

Gomamon grinned, waving a claw in the air. "I don't know anything about mono-demented space flips, but I can tell you how we got here." he suggested, as Tentomon twitched his antennae indignantly.

"It's mono dimension-" Tentomon began, but was interrupted by Mimi.

"Oh, stop using all those big words." she said, annoyed. "None of understand you anyway. Why don't you let someone we can understand tell us what happened?"

Tentomon sat down in the dust, slightly disappointed, but didn't interrupt as Biyomon explained.

"There was nothing unusual happening, really." she told the crowd. "I was just eating breakfast this morning, when suddenly I'm here instead of there. I think it's got something to do with you coming to the digital world and us having to meet you - but why did we all end up here?"

"That's just what I said." Tentomon muttered to himself.

"Ah, don't worry." Koushiro said, smiling. "You'll have your chance to help out later."

"So what exactly are we going to do?" Yamato wanted to know. "I mean, if Takeru's in trouble, I can't just sit around here. We have to do something."

"Well, just as long as nothing tries to kill me or anything," Mimi shuddered.

Jyou snorted. "You've got to be kidding me. This is Digiworld we're talking about. Everything's out to get us!"

"Going by what Miyako told me, I think we should head up this mountain." Koushiro said "She mentioned the mountain and a castle dungeon in the time I had to talk. We've found the mountain, but there doesn't seem to be a castle anywhere, so I suggest we head up the mountain to search for it. Even if the castle isn't up there, we'll get a better view and might be able to find it"

"That's settled then." Yamato agreed, looking around at his friends. "We'll head up the mountain and see what these digimon are. They can't be any match for ours!"

"Hang on! I'm the leader, I'm supposed to make the decisions." Taichi complained.

"So what do you suggest we do?" Jyou asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, I... what Yamato said, I guess."

Mimi wasn't having any of it, though.

"Me? Climb? A mountain?!" Mimi moaned. "I can't do that! It's so big. And scary. I might break a nail!"

She stamped her foot angrily, then realised that everyone was ignoring her complaints and had begun clambering up the rough mountain path, toward the danger that was lying in wait for them up ahead.

"Oh, why do I have to do these things?" Mimi sighed, and began to clamber up the steep, narrow path behind the others.

"Don't worry Mimi," Palmon assured her friend. "I'll be here with you all the way."

"I suppose it'll be okay, then," Mimi said, still sounding unconvinced, "But why can't anybody else ever save the world?"

******

After half an hour of climbing up the steep, winding path, the Digidestined decided to take a break. The digimon were hungry, Koushiro was back to playing with his laptop and Jyou and Mimi were dead. Well, extremely and unbearably tired, anyway.

So Taichi, Yamato and Sora were left to wonder what exactly they were going to do about an enemy they hadn't even met yet.

"Do you think whoever it is knows we're here yet?" the blonde wondered, leaning against a rock.

"Well, if they don't yet, they will soon," Sora said, loftily, watching Biyomon picking fruit out of a nearby tree. "We always seem to attract plenty of attention, don't we?"

"Bit hard to ignore us once they digivolve, isn't it?" Taichi commented, nodding at Agumon, who was stuffing his face with the fruit Biyomon was picking. "Best to let them eat, though. Can't digivolve on an empty stomach!"

"My thoughts exactly." Tentomon agreed. The little guts had already plucked one tree of its fruit and was quickly moving onto another.

"There's not much we can do to plan an attack now, is there?" Taichi asked, getting back to more important matters. "We don't know who we're fighting or what they're going to do when they find us."

"That never seemed to bother you before," Yamato pointed out. "We just went ahead and fought, and if that didn't work, we fought harder. Why should this be any different?"

"Because before, that's what our enemies were doing as well." Sora replied. "This is different, because the others haven't been hurt at all, just disarmed and captured. This new digimon must want something more than just control of the digital world. There must be a reason for capturing our friends, a purpose, something. That's what makes it different."

The boys both looked at Sora in amazement. Why didn't they think of that?

"You think we should just break into the dungeon and then get out of here?" Yamato asked, incredulous

"No, that wouldn't work either, because their digivices were taken from them." The leader shook his head "We'd have to get them back as well."

"When did we find that out?"

"When you were busy dodging Jun."

"Oh, shut up." Yamato scowled.

"Make me."

"Fine then."

Sora sighed as the boys left off conversation and began a furious fight down in the grass. It wasn't surprising, really. Fighting each other was the way the two boys liked to let off steam, and they built up a lot of it when they were in the digital world. It seemed that today they didn't even need an excuse. There was no issue of authority today like their usually was. Ah, well, that was probably a good thing. Best to put off the struggle for leadership for as long as possible

Gomamon crawled to the bottom of Biyomon's tree. "Please, food." he begged. "I'm not meant to climb mountains, my fur's a mess, there's mud on my claws, have pity, Biyomon!"

"Oh, stop whining." Biyomon smiled, and began to pelt Gomamon with fruit.

"Ow! Okay, I'm not hungry anymore. Stop it!"

Suddenly, Biyomon stopped, looking around. "Something's out there," she told the others, looking around from her perch in the tree.

"Do you think it could be the other kids?" Sora asked, hopefully.

"No, it's a digimon, I'm sure of it," Biyomon told her friend, firmly.

Then, out of the blue…

"ROOOOAAAAAAAR!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Suddenly, the digimon forgot about lunch, Yamato and Taichi forgot their fight, Jyou and Mimi both miraculously recovered and Koushiro furiously punched the keys on his laptop.

"Okay, I guess they know we're here after all!" Yamato shouted over the noise.

A big, angry looking digimon crashed through the trees to face the children and digimon. Its body was human, but it had the head and tail of an angry bull.

"That's Tauromon!" Koushiro said, typing on his laptop at warp speed.

"Yes, I've heard of him," Tentomon agreed. "He's a nasty sort of digimon, and you'd better not get him mad, because his Bullseye attack hardly ever misses."

"Let's get out of here!" Taichi yelled. And the Digidestined once again began their usual Digiworld activity. Running.

All six kids scrambled further up the path to the top of the mountain, hoping to outrun the raging Tauromon. Just as they thought they were leaving maddened digimon behind, another huge creature reared up before them, this time a huge snake.

"Serpentmon," Koushiro promptly informed everyone.

"She's got a killer Acid Attack," Tentomon followed up.

"Who cares?" Jyou cried, "I wanna go home!"

"I think Tauromon's coming back!" Biyomon cried urgently from the air.

"Well, we can't run all the time!" Agumon exclaimed, "Digivolve!"

I won't bother you by writing out all the digivolving details, (I find it really annoying, myself) but I'll just say that half a minute later, six champion digimon were facing off against Tauromon and Serpentmon.

"That's more like it!" Taichi exclaimed. "Go get 'em, Greymon!"

"Nova Blast!" Greymon roared, hurling his fireball at Serpentmon. But she ducked out of the way easily, dodging the attack.

"You really think you can hurt me with that?" Serpentmon hissed, taunting them.

"Too right we do!" Kabuterimon rasped, throwing an Electro – Shocker at her from behind.

Garurumon was hitting Tauromon full on in the face with his Howling Blaster, but it didn't seem to be having any effect.

"Meteor Wing!" Birdramon shrieked, hitting Tauromon right in the stomach. The strange looking digimon didn't even flinch, just tossed its head around angrily.

"Harpoon Torpedo!" Ikkakumon's attack was cut short as Tauromon grabbed the missile and crushed it under his foot.

Tauromon roared and tossed his head. "Bullseye!" he said, hurling a red ball of light and knocking all three digimon down at once.

Togemon's Needle Spray had managed to land a hit on Serpentmon, but now the snake had stopped teasing and was fighting back.

"Acid Bomb!" she hissed, spitting a glowing ball at a nearby tree. As the ball hit the tree, the tree began to melt and disintegrate, slowly running into the ground.

"Scary, isn't it?" Serpentmon hissed menacingly, "Well watch out, because next time I won't miss. Will I, Tauromon?"

"No, and nor will I," Tauromon agreed, looking distastefully at the digimon.

"You didn't miss the first time." Mimi pointed out.

"So?"

"We can't take these two out," Sora muttered urgently, gesturing at Mimi to shut up, "We have to get out of here. Now!"

"That sounds good," Jyou agreed, nervously, "RUN!"

The children (and their now much larger digimon) crashed through the forest in an effort to escape the rampaging Tauromon and the smooth, cold Serpentmon.

"Look! A pool!" Ikkakumon grumbled as he lumbered along behind. "Jump in, they might not follow."

Everyone waded out into the deep water, clinging onto Ikkakumon or one of the other digimon. After a few minutes, it seemed that they had escaped the evil digimon.

"Trouble is," Yamato said, sitting high and dry on Garurumon's back, "Now we don't know where the path is."

"We probably won't have to worry about that for too long," Sora said, dryly.

"Yeah, trouble is bound to find us sooner or later," Taichi agreed, watching as Koushiro (surprise surprise) opened his laptop and began typing again.

"Uh, guys?" Ikkakumon said, nervously, "I don't think we're alone. There's something under the water…"

The something burst out of the water right in front of Ikkakumon. It had a lizard like head, long, scaly arms and legs with webbed hands and feet, and a tail with a sort of paddle on the end. It wasn't especially big, but it seemed very sinister, especially the moon and star mark on its forehead.

"This one is Kappamon," Koushiro told everyone. "A water demon digimon. She's supposed to be bad luck."

"In which case, I really do not want to stick around here," Jyou replied, nervously.

"She's also extremely dangerous if you're not polite."

"Why bother with manners when we can fight?" an excited Taichi asked. "Greymon, digivolve!"

Once again, I'll cut the digivolving, except to say that there are now six ultimate digimon ready to fight.

"Giga blaster!"

"Wolf Claw!"

"Wing Blade!"

"Horn Buster!"

"Flower Cannon!"

"Vulcan's Hammer!"

You get the idea.

Kappamon, still remaining silent, merely ducked under the water, easily avoiding all the attacks. Then, the kids heard a strange voice from under the water.

"Whirlpool." It said, quietly and smoothly.

The surface of the pool began to boil, throwing huge bubbles up everywhere, which quickly transformed into heaving waves. In seconds, a huge whirlpool had appeared in the centre of the pool. Then the water rose up from the pool in a whirling column, and crashed down on the kids and digimon.

"Sorry Taichi," Agumon said, digivolving back again. "She's just too powerful."

"Anyone up for another round?" Kappamon asked, menacingly, looking around at all the weakened digimon. "Because I have plenty more where that came from."

"Um, actually, I think we'd better be going now," Gomamon muttered, backing towards the trees, "Don't wanna be late for school, do ya Jyou?"

"What the heck are you talking about, I can't – ouch!" Jyou yelped, as someone trod on his foot. "Oh, yeah, I really have to run, catch you later!"

Everyone bolted, dashing for the trees behind them, and Kappamon roaring in frustration. It seemed she wasn't much use out of the water, which the Digidestined took for a good sign.

"You know," Mimi panted, scrambling upwards as the trees were replaced by rock, "One of these days I'd like to have a nice, quite trip to the Digiworld instead of all this running around,"

"Maybe one day, we will," Palmon told her, "but definitely not today!"

They slowed down after a few minutes of running and hit the narrow path again, continuing single-file. By now the whole group were starting to feel the weight of the packs on their backs and they began to stop more and more frequently. After almost an hour the thinning trees petered out all together and the lethargic path wriggled through a craggy and ever climbing wasteland. It was at about this point that the group realised they were running out of water.

"At least there's nothing attacking us." Jyou was dividing the last of the drinking water into bottles.

"Wonder how long that's going to last," Yamato replied.

"Well, you never know, we could get lucky," Taichi said, stopping and flopping to the ground beneath a huge rock ledge.

Everyone thought they'd take advantage of the temporary safety to have a rest. They dumped their packs under the rock ledge and just sat around, trying not to eat too much of their limited food supply.

"Well, I think that pretty much rules out the smooth trip." Koushiro said, dryly. "Those digimon are going to find us again without much trouble."

"Oh, I don't know." Jyou objected. "It'd be easy to hide with all these rocks."

"We can't stay here forever, though." Koushiro argued. "We'll have to get moving again. This mountain is huge, in area if not in height. We aren't even halfway there."

"It could be worse." Gomamon said. "We could get the rest of the way up the mountain with no trouble at all. We could be lucky."

"Not today," a growling voice said. The children and digimon watched in amazement as the most bizarre digimon yet leapt down from the ledge above them.

It looked, for the most part, like a giant wolf with blue-grey fur. It had enormous paws that looked like they could crush all the digimon in one swipe. And the tail wasn't particularly long, though it was very bushy. The strange thing was, it had three, very wolf like heads.

One of the heads, the one on the left, had its ears pricked, its tongue lolling out and its nose facing into the wind. The one on the left looked warily at the children, as if trying to figure out what to do with them. And the middle head was perhaps the scariest of all, baring its teeth and growling menacingly.

"Incredible!" Koushiro exclaimed, typing furiously on his laptop. "This is Banemon, an extremely powerful digimon. We're really going to have to be careful with this guy,"

"Yes, with those three heads, it's very hard to fight Banemon," Tentomon commented, "You have to attack him from all sides at once,"

"I think we'll manage," Taichi snorted, wriggling out of his backpack "Right, Ishida?"

"Absolutely." Yamato agreed, with a grin.

Yep, the warp-digivolve thing. So now we have WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon.

"Terra Force!"

"Ice Wolf Claw!"

Well, what were you expecting?

"Quick everyone, get down here," Sora said, backing into a small cave she'd found in the rocks behind them. "Yamato, Taichi, you might want to jump down here too!"

"No worries, Sora, we'll be fine!" Taichi assured her. "Go get 'im, WarGreymon!"

"Yeah, right." Sora took their packs anyway.

"Oh, really," Banemon growled. "You think I'm that weak? Well here's something you don't see too often. Wolfbane!"

At that, Banemon's eyes began to glow bright red. The glowing light washed over the two mega digimon, and they fell to the ground.

"Agumon?" Taichi asked, picking up the battered digimon.

"Gabumon?" Yamato wondered, in disbelief.

"I don't know what happened," Agumon croaked.

"He made us de-digivolve, that's what," Gabumon told them.

"Not as powerful as you thought, are you?" Banemon taunted them. "And my master said the Digidestined would be a challenge. Ha!"

"Quick, get back down here!" Sora hissed at the two boys.

"Oh, but…" Taichi started to argue.

"No time, man." Yamato stopped him. "Just get in there. We're gonna have to run again. Sometimes you have to know when to give up."

Banemon yelped in surprise as he realised the children had found a way out. He ran back and forth at the edge of the cave, yelping and snapping, trying to find a way to get in.

"Nice move, furball," a croaky voice said, from outside the cave. "Time for you to go see the master. I'll take care of this lot."

The Digidestined peered out of their crack in the rocks, to see Cronomon hovering in the air before Banemon. She held a strange glowing ball in her claws, and as they watched, it began to glow. Suddenly Banemon disappeared completely, and there was only Cronomon left outside. She landed and turned to look at the Digidestined.

"So, you will have seen all of that, won't you?" she asked, looking shrewdly at the children. "And I suppose you're wondering what I did to Banemon."

"Not really," Koushiro replied, loftily, "I downloaded all the information from my computer. You're Cronomon, and that device in your claw is what you use to teleport things between places."

"Not bad," Cronomon replied. "Yes, you're right, I can jump between places. I just sent Banemon to our master. His master and mine. And now, that's where I'm taking you."

The strange device in Cronomon's claw began to glow again. All the Digi kids and they're mons began to feel really strange. They were floating somewhere, suspended in nothing. And suddenly, They came back to reality.

They were standing at the top of the tall mountain, at last. It was amazing, some of them thought, that a mountain could be this high and not be covered with snow. In front of them was the doors of a castle, heavy wooden doors. The sky was dark, and way below them, the children could just see the edge of the lake where they had started their trip. And as they watched, Cronomon dropped her device and knocked on the door with her claw.

~~~~~~

Well, that chapter was a lot longer than I planned. Hope I didn't bore you too much. I'll get started on the next one right away. Yeah, I know they don't digivolve to ultimate anymore, but I actually didn't know that until today. Blame it on the Channel 10. I never saw the last episode of 01.