Disclaimer: Digimon is somebody else's property, and I intend to get no profits out of this work.
Author's Note: Yes, I really do exist! And I'm sorry about being so late. I'll explain more fully when the next episode comes out.
Episode XXXDistopia
The digidestined were silent. Matt and TK looked shocked. Mr. Ishida had begun to shake.
"Maybe we should start the story." Master Ishiguro stood up. "Or more accurately Adam. He's the only one who was there at the beginning."
"Hmmm..." Adam stood up and began to pace up and down the room. "The question is, where to start. Maybe at the start of all conspiracy stories. You know the type, people who say that all crime in the world is connected by a shadowy cartel, a group of evil directors whose job it is to make the most profits and gain the most power over the rest of the world. Well, the truth is that's all bullshit. Most groups of criminals would sooner kill each other than look at each other, and the idea of getting some vast, multi-corporate entity to exist without dying in the infighting is ridiculous. But these ides have some basis in fact.
"The story starts in the third world about two and a half decades ago. People began to suspect that something was keeping the conflicts in the poorer sections of the world heated up. There wasn't much evidence at the time, only the fact that leaders tended to shut up at odd times, that they tended to avoid certain queries, refused to disclose where they were getting their weapons, where their profits were coming from. Back then the cold war was still going full blast, so nobody was too worried.
"But these incidences only increased as the cold war wound down. That got people suspicious. In particular it aroused the suspicions of two men in the United Nations, William Sandburg who worked for the Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs, and Diego Vazquez, who was an adjunct to the International Court of Justice."
"Where are William and Diego now?" Mr. Hida asked suddenly.
"Diego is on a long vacation, theoretically in the highlands of Peru. I couldn't find him if I tried. William had a car accident involving a man with a rocket-propelled grenade. I hunted down his killer in New Dehli about three years ago."
"Ah." Cody's grandfather fell silent.
"Anyway, they tried to use UN agents and human-rights workers in Africa and Asia to get the answers they wanted. But the people the UN sent were either bribed or blackmailed into abandoning their line of inquiry."
"If they were bribed, why didn't they just make up a story?" Izzy asked.
"Because they were good people." Ishiguro responded from the corner.
"Shouldn't that make them harder to bribe?" Kari asked.
Adam laughed harshly. "No, it makes them easier. A local politician pulls the worker aside and says that this is a matter that is personally embarrassing, and that if the worker lets the issue drop, the politician will pull some strings and make sure that the next aid shipment isn't intercepted by bandits like the previous ten. The worker will think that it involves some sex scandal or something, some cover-up scheme, and will laughingly let it go. But what happened is they also reported to William and Diego about all of this.
"Well, it didn't take too long for the two in charge to put two and two together. The problem appeared when some people kept pushing after being requested to leave it alone. Either their higher-ups ordered them off, or they had 'accidents'. This scared the bejesus out of William and Diego, especially since people were having 'accidents' in parts of the world as diverse as Southeast Asia , Southern Africa and South America, all for the same reasons.
"So they called everything off for a year, and created the most dangerous weapon in recent history. William had access to certain programs involving volunteer aid workers. So together they came up with a list of fifty-six young and idealistic volunteers. They were selected from the financially independent, so it would be more difficult to bribe them, and so they could travel without requiring support from the UN budget. They were selected for different skills they already had, or for connections they had made. I, as you can already guess, had applied to the UN for a chance to do aid work as a college student with specialties in Computer Science, but I also owned through my uncle massive stock in Averson electronics. I remember that one guy, Jacques, was selected solely because he could speak ten languages fluently, and a girl named Rei was picked because she had tremendous stock in a company that specialized in world travel. They even got the world expert at the martial arts, Janero Chou, by some mechanism, away from his mountaintop in the Himalayas.
"So they got fifty college age students together in a room at the UN headquarters building in New York, and the two of them presented every piece of evidence they had, corroborated. By the time they finished their presentation it was obvious that there was some kind of global level conspiracy going on, and it wasn't friendly. Then they asked us to hunt down this group, and find the truth. Serve as traveling inspectors, take a look at how human aid was being done all over the world, and try and link together all these inconsistencies. And so, being the idealistic fools we were, we said yes."
"You would have said yes anyway." Master Ishiguro hid a smile.
"Well, maybe." Adam looked temporarily embarrassed. "Anyway, we went globetrotting. And we went literally everywhere. That's where I learned to fight with a sword. We went into some not nice places. Brian and I used to joke with Jan that together, we had been in every brothel in Southeast Asia. Sometimes I wonder if that was true."
"What were you doing there?" Joe asked, looking startled.
"Checking where the girls came from. Why they had come there. Many of them came the usual routes, poverty, family, but some had much more interesting stories to tell. Stories of forced labor and kidnapping and slavery. Sometimes we ended up having to break heads with some goons to get away afterwards.
"Anyway, we began to put two and two together, and the underlying thread was the worldwide Utopia Corporation. Izzy, what did you find out about them?"
"That they are a huge corporation. They control openly a huge number of different corporations, in a whole bunch of fields." Izzy fumbled around for a moment. "I have the list here. Let's see. Damocles, Saffron, Utopian Industries, Utopia Enterprises in general concerns, Utopia BioChem, Thelema Research, Draxon Pharmacutecal in BioChemical and Medical research, Raydon-Koessler and Technatos engineering firms, Commonwealth Legal, Tojiki Investment, Tundra Development Inc., a whole list of things. They have interests in every field."
"Almost every field according to that." Ishiguro grumbled ominously.
"What does that mean?" Yolei asked curiously.
"Utopia is a multi-billion dollar enterprise, dedicated to creating a tremendous profit, and solidifying their hold on a variety of interests. The problem is that they don't list their biggest source of income."
"Biggest source?" Izzy sounded curious, none of the others were quite as interested.
"All of those companies invest heavily. They make profits by coming up with new ways to do things, but they also lose a lot of money in failed ventures. Utopia would only be moderately successful if they couldn't capitalize on one of their largest industries. Utopian Arms. There's a company that makes several billion a year in bulk profits. And God knows where they get most of that. That's a tremendous amount of profits, considering what they are. And that's why they have to do what they do."
"Which is?" Tentomon asked.
"Utopian Arms produces what is basically second-rate military equipment. They design it that way, so that the stuff is cheap and affordable. Third world countries love them because when they're dealing with Utopian Arms they get good, dependable stuff for cheap prices. And that's what makes Utopian Arms so big, they sell to a lot of people, and they sell a lot of bulk.
"But they got greedy, or that's what we thought anyway. They developed a system to keep themselves permanently in the black, by playing off one side against another."
"How did that work?" Ken inquired.
"Simple." Adam smiled, more in his element now. "Think of it like this. Two groups are fighting over a country, a government and a group of rebels. For a few years everything has been pretty evenly matched. Now, somehow the government comes up with the money to place a large order for the latest weapons systems that Utopian Arms has to offer. The contract comes through, and armed with the next generation in brutality and decisiveness the government drives the rebels back.
"The rebels are desperate of course; they don't have anywhere else to turn. That's when Utopia makes their move. They come in with another factor and offer bargain prices with long-term loans or some sort of deal, and the rebels get another version of Utopian Arms' latest toys, under a different manufacturing label. If they sold the government tanks, they sell the rebels anti-tank missiles, if they sell the government helicopters; they sell the rebels anti-aircraft missiles and guns, or maybe even jet fighters. It doesn't really matter what it is. But then, if there's something different they want, they cut another deal with the government, sell them another load of stuff, and pretty soon they can keep this conflict going forever, with both sides significantly in debt to Utopia.
"The problem with this approach, of course, is that most of these countries with significant fighting really aren't very rich. If you took their entire budget for a year, they couldn't afford that stuff. So they have to come up with other sources of income. One of the best ways for Utopia Corp. to get income is to get it off of these governments, essentially trading land for weapons, land with oil or diamonds, or some other resource. But not even that works forever. What we found was that they were encouraging the use of alternative methods of payment.
"Human slavery, selling children to brothels and workhouses all over the world. Enforced slave labor camps, like the old Nazi concentration camps, just as brutal, just as deadly. Growing drugs as cash crops, and running a huge international drug cartel, or at least running in cahoots with one. Diplomatic favors that foreign politicians were willing to pay big money to get.
"When we started to poke around, one of their higher-ups got nervous. He had one of the original students, Jake Fortens from Canada, kidnapped, tortured and murdered. That got the ball rolling all right. We already had a silly name for ourselves, we called ourselves Helios after the old Greek word for sun, and we had made friends all over the world during our travels. They couldn't take us out by cutting our funding from the UN or anything, because we all had our own resources, and now things were getting personal. So there we were, Helios, with agents in almost every country on earth, with a huge multi-national corporation trying to chase us down. I remember shooting it out with warlords in Mogadishu, fighting with assassins in Hong Kong, duels in eastern Europe with the remains of the KGB..."
"I remember that fight in Sofia with what was left of the Sekretni Sluzlbi." Ishiguro chipped in. "The mafia there really didn't like you."
"Oh come on. That wasn't nearly as bad as all three of the golden triangle dealers jumping us at once. I still have a scar from that one. Anyway, we were waging a global war at that point, when Utopia's agents made a mistake. They accidentally managed to blast a British consulate that we were at. We were exchanging information involving local crimes with the authorities, but they must have thought that we were trying to blow their cover. We wouldn't have dared, nobody would ever have believed us if we had, but they were too paranoid for their own good. The thing that they screwed up in was that they managed to call in their debts to three rival gangs, got them to attack all at the same time. That must have gotten somebody suspicious, because two days later we were contacted by the elements within the world's intelligence organizations.
"We formed an alliance, and overnight Helios, with its contacts and allies in every country, became an international powerhouse. Officially we didn't exist, but the battle underground continued on, until White Springs." Adam's face fell, he looked like a man about to uncover unpleasant truths. "That was where we finally found out what they had been doing. They had needed a place to test their newest biological weapons program, a method for increasing human abilities. We hadn't believed that such a thing could exist, but they were doing extensive testing on the human nervous system. They were testing reactions to despair, hopelessness, hope, courage, pain and friendship all at once. And now we know why."
"Why?" Izzy asked.
"We'll get to that." Ishiguro sounded more dangerous than ever now.
"At White Springs, in poorest Africa, they set up a complicated research facility to test these things. The problem with doing tests like this is they require the test subjects to be both human and alive. After about a year of casework, of chasing their dirtiest agents across the globe, we finally assembled enough of Helios Ascendent to launch a full frontal assault on their compound. And we found that they had been taking people apart, literally tearing them to bits, to do their experimentation. We destroyed their compound from top to bottom, and were even more savage later on, killing every man and woman who willingly participated in the research. And at the end, we documented all the evidence we had, and sent it to every media outlet we knew. Perhaps Mr. Ishida can tell you more about that."
"It came in on a Monday afternoon." Mr. Ishida's voice was quiet. "I remember because it was my first day back editing the news desk for Fuji TV, and I always had Sunday off. Anyway, I was in the office when we get this set of video tapes and hardcopies of all these reports in a big cardboard box. The news editor then was a big guy named Watashi, anyway, he gave it this funny look, popped tape one in one of our players, and started it going. It was the most gruesome, bloody thing I had ever seen, and I helped do war coverage in the Middle East too. But five minutes into the tape we knew that we were sitting on the biggest story since Watergate in the US. Watashi was so surprised that he said we should go through all the evidence and put together a big report tomorrow.
"That night one of his two sons got his leg broken in a car accident in Ginza. Nancy had a problem too, two guys accosted her while she was going shopping late at night, and gave her a business card to give to me. The next day all of us at the office got a message from the Saffron Corporation, the first time I had ever heard of them. Basically, all it said was 'How many loved ones can you lose?'. At that point the management came in and told us point blank that they were canceling all news on this because some of the big corporate sponsors were pulling out on them if it went through. I haven't ever been that scared since. Not even with my kids in the Digital World. There they have digimon to protect them, and they know what they're up against. Not like here, where there would only be a moment of pain and terror. Every day I wonder how much they watch us, watch my family. I'm senior at the news desk now. How much are they watching me?"
"After White Springs, they negotiated a peace." Adam continued, stone faced. "They had managed to quash any chance of an organized news release, but rumors escaped. At the same time, we had enough information now to cause them major grief. They agreed to cancel human testing, and reduce their more inhumane practices as long as we forestalled on releasing that information. Of course, in that case, peace meant that our operatives weren't supposed to shoot each other at point blank range. The world was still filled with the two sides, us, and them. The sunburst and the distopia."
Cody started for a moment, staring at the ring Adam was displaying, a ring with a golden sunburst on it. "I've seen this before."
"Yes." His grandfather agreed. "I received a communication with it yesterday. You caught a glimpse of it before I could put it in my pocket."
"But, I thought I knew it from before that." Cody paused, and then his eyes widened. "There's one of those in my father's memorial."
"Why would your father have one of those?" Davis asked abruptly, but Ken shushed him with a look.
"Yes." Adam answered gravely. "Your father was one of us."
"Is that why he died?" Cody demanded.
"I fear that might have been part of it. He was escorting one of our highly placed officials, an Egyptian trying to arrange a trade summit. He was unpopular because of his anti-corporate stance. But I still suspect the gunman tried to get him because he was one of ours. The truth is that I, who was covering this mission, was responsible for your father's death. There were five assassins sent to take him out. I got four, but I wasn't quick enough to get the fifth. The police captured him at the end."
"So that's why..." There was a long moment when Cody studied his shoes. When he looked up again his eyes were full of tears, but were steadfast. His life had just been shaken down to its roots. He saw, for a moment, his father, young again, vividly alive, accepting the charge that he had been given, to protect a man no matter the cost, because it had to be done. Adam stared at him compassionately for a moment, and then continued.
"Then, about five years ago, everything changed. Immediately after the Odaiba Fog incident, Utopia descended upon Japan like a tornado. They weren't doing anything illegal, but they were doing a lot of monitoring tests on the Tokyo environment. We naturally kept tabs on them, but it took us a year or two to figure out what they were after."
"Which was?" Tai prompted impatiently.
"Digimon. We didn't figure all of it out for a while, but it appears that they were trying to find out how humans could connect to digimon, and what kind of powers the digimon could actually use. And what kind of powers they could use. Ever since then there's been a race between undercover elements in the major governments and Utopia to try and find out the most about how Digimon tick. But we think that their experiments back in White Springs were about something related to Digimon already, way back then. Until now we couldn't make the connection."
"What is the connection?" Tai asked again, but Izzy snapped his fingers before Adam could reply.
"It's easy." Izzy exclaimed. "And so simple too. Digimon respond to our emotions, they are, after all, part digital data, part dreams. Nightmares too. So, when we give them certain emotions they react differently. Anger and courage seem to have no physical existence, but feed one to Greymon, you get MetalGreymon, but use the other and you get SkullGreymon. If they could figure out how to use those powers they could do what Kari's already been able to do with her crest, amazing things that are way beyond anything we can do normally. Or even worse, they could create those emotions in people. Imagine being able to cause love, or hate, at a whim. It's simply incredible. But wait." Something drew him up short. "If that's what they were up to, why were they researching digimon before they first came through?"
"That's part of the story that nobody else here knows." Adam looked up. "And that's Ishiguro's part."
"I have almost no memories of my parents. They left me alone when I was very small." Master Ishiguro sat down carefully, in a meditating posture. "I do not believe that they choose to abandon me, but rather that they could not afford to raise me. I was given, as is the tradition in certain rural areas, to the local temple to see if they could find something to do with me. But they saw that I had potential they could not use, and they sent me finally to the Dragon's Nest."
"The Dragon's Nest?" Davis burst out. "There's a Dragon here?"
"In a way." Ishiguro smiled. "The Dragon's Nest is an ancient monastery sitting on the top of the Himalayas. Actually, it may not be a monastery, as I have known no religion to ever take hold there. To tell truth I have no idea what it actually would be considered, but inside boys and girls from all over the world are brought up to study. Some seek perfection through song, and they sing constantly. Some through the written word, and they do nothing but write. Some through quiet contemplation and the rote of physical labor. Some seek it through combat."
"The Sattoro Gesai." Patamon whispered out, barely audible.
"Yes. We created that ancient art, though I do not know what language the name comes from. But all our orders serve to protect and defend, with words, politics or steel, the Ancient, the title for the highest of the leaders there. He is...difficult to describe. He has the wisdom of the grandfather, and the strength of youth. In the year after Helios united, Janero was recalled to the Dragon's Nest. Adam came with him. And then the ancient told them the story.
"The story is strange, and I do not know if it is true. Surely it explains some things, but it confuses others. Nevertheless it will do. Long ago there were supposedly many civilizations, each seeking to expand. None sailed so boldly perhaps, or traded so fiercely as the ancient civilization without a name. We call them the Eldest.
"Like I said, we have no hard evidence about this at all. But the story will do. Anyway, we are told that the true power of Eldest came from collecting a material we call essence crystal, the catalyst of life, which they had an abundance of. These crystals are formed by all thinking life, sometimes inside of us, sometimes outside of us. Sometimes they are passed down, sometimes they are left behind. The powers of this crystal were supposed to be fantastic, enabling them to do anything they wanted, and with it they built a mighty empire. Their cities would easily have rivaled ours now, and that was thousands of years ago. But their power attracted great evil, and thus they were assaulted. It is unknown whether they won or lost, but the explosion as they used the total powers of their race was too much, and their world was swallowed. And that would have been the end of it, but their traders, seeking to curry favor with the inhabitants of the outside world, had taken two pieces, mighty stones in their own right, but insignificant compared to the combined might of the Eldest, to different parts of the world. The first of the Ancients received the piece known as the Dragon's Tear, and in the west the Philosopher's Stone was delivered to the inhabitants of England."
"Isn't the Philosopher's Stone that thing in the Harry Potter movie?" Mimi asked.
"Yes, but not the same one. The stones caused problems though; they were objects of power, tremendous power. One could, by luck or by skill, obtain their own piece of essence, enabling them to perform acts that seemed magical, but only by controlling a large stone, or a source of power built up over the ages, could they hope to do any great works of magic. As the population increased, those shards of crystal grew more and more dispersed, appearing in smaller, but more numerous quantities, bonded with skilled and determined people. However, the original stones from the Eldest were the ultimate weapons.
"In the first years the Dragon's Tear was shattered. The largest fragment stayed with the Ancient, while the smaller fragments were scattered throughout Asia. In the west the wizard Merlin strove against the darkness of his day, but on his deathbed, they used his own crystal and sealed him away inside of it. However, such an act cracked the crystal in half, and his last faithful apprentice, Nimue, stole away with one half, the half that possessed the goodness from Merlin's soul, named the Ascendent. The other half, the Nadir, gathered the accumulated evil of its handlers. So, for many years it persisted, the Nadir was taken to the continent, where many men tried to use it for great evil. But always, in an isolated forest in the English countryside, there lived an heir of Merlin. Always they struggled. Eventually the Nadir was rested from the dead hands of a French count by the Frenchman Robespierre, at the start of his Reign of Terror. But it was at the end that it was taken from him, by stealth, by agents of Napoleon. So Robespierre's Reign ended, and the powers of the ancient stone were given to Napoleon. But Napoleon failed to understand the stone's power, and he lost the stone near Austerlitz. Later discovered it was taken to the Imperial Hapsburg museum in Vienna where it remained in a reserved collection, not put out on display. With it safely out of the way the English masters were able to rest, using their power to extend their lifespan, to change their world for the better. And so the powers of England grew still more, while those of the continent waned, until the latest master, the Royal Oak, came unto his power."
"Why, if this is true, didn't the English masters simply wipe out the Nadir? Or rejoin it into the Philosopher's stone?" Izzy wanted to know.
"You underestimate the stone." Adam replied bluntly. "It is, in itself, essentially a sentient being. It has the power to conceal itself, to hide itself from those it does not want to find it. It also has the power to call out to those who might use it as it wills, for it feeds off human suffering. And so, it was stolen from the Imperial collection by a young German art student, a man named Adolf Hitler.
"Thus begins the saddest story in the history of these stones. Hitler was able to channel the power in his stone into his personal charisma. Even worse was the fact that the Nadir can enlarge its powers by absorbing other human essences, by absorbing their souls to an extent. It isn't the same, but at death the energy stored up in your consciousness is released, and the Nadir can feed off of this. So six million Jews went to the gas chamber to feed the monstrous power of the Nadir. A continent writhed in anguish to feed his desire.
"But this had unintended consequences. For all his raw power, Hitler was an amateur. He had not studied the history of the stone, and he did not know how to best employ it. He was unaware of its opposite. And so, before he was truly ready, he entered the awareness of the Royal Oak, who raised the full might of the Ascendent against him."
"In the east," Ishiguro continued from Adam. "an ambitious Japanese warrior who longed for the days of samurai conquests once again assembled two of the largest stone fragments of the Dragon's Tear, the Divine Light and the Dragon's Fang on a ruby ring, giving him unanticipated power. He helped drive his country over the edge into the madness of war. But he, in turn, roused the Ancient from his throne.
"The rest was history. Although the powers of darkness initially won them great swaths of land, they were overmatched by the combined powers of those bearing the stones of light. In the end, with his country near ruins, the samurai came to the Ancient and surrendered his ring before committing seppuku at the Dragon's Nest. Hitler took his own life. The Nadir was never found."
"I don't see what this has to do with Utopia. Or with us." Izzy noted clinically.
"That's simple." Adam smiled tightly. "The Ancient foresaw dark days ahead of us. I do not know whether the Tear was guiding him, or what, but he presented Janero with the ring, now known as the Divine Blade. He told me to go to England, to find the grove and find some way to receive the Ascendent. I will not say what happened between myself and the Royal Oak, but I received the stone at last. Somehow, Utopia had become aware of the existence of the Essence crystals, in some way, and were working on harnessing their unimaginable energies. So we struck against them, uniting our power to hold them at bay. When Janero vanished to points unknown he left Ishiguro his ring, and together we made sure that everything kept balanced. Until five years ago, when the picture changed."
"The digimon disrupted it?" Izzy wanted to know again.
"No. We can detect other stones nearby, other shards of essence crystals. And you guys resonate like church bells. Every one of you has two signatures, one from those things you call digivices, the others from you body itself. I think that those may be your crests. And each one of you feels different. You carry the power within you to change the world."
"Hey!" TK exclaimed, digging in his pocket. "Something is weird. I just remembered something, I can pick the two of them up on our D3s."
"What?" Izzy jerked his out in shock. Sure enough, Adam and Ishiguro showed up as two white dots.
"The digimon seem to bring this power out. That must be why Utopia wants to research them so badly. If they could fully control this power, they would be unstoppable." Professor Takenouchi mused.
"How much can you do with this?" Izzy asked curiously, still examining his D3.
Adam shrugged. "How much do you want? From the sound of it, you've harnessed some pretty powerful energies yourself already, so I don't know why you would wish to see demonstrations of what you've already seen. I too, as well as Kari, can light up like a candle if I want to, although I doubt it would do me much good. I have no digimon partner, so I cannot aid them with that power, but I can do to myself what you do with them. I can make myself faster, stronger and increase my mental focus. I can even use some of their energy projection techniques." He held up his hand, palm out and pointed up, and a shard of flame curled up from it, dancing there for a moment, before his hand flicked and the flame disappeared. "It's not much to look at, and I don't wish to use these powers outside of battle, but they are potent.
"And each of you has it." Adam looked at them all with focused eyes. "Each one of you has this kind of power. Each one of you can run so fast that you break the sound barrier. Each one of you can walk on water. Each one of you can punch a hole through a tank. And you wonder why Utopia might be interested in you."
"So what do we do about it?" Izzy asked.
"I don't know. Despite our long-term involvement in this, you have the most expertise in this area. It's your plan." Ishiguro shrugged.
"Then we attack." Tai pounded his fist down.
"Why?" Joe interrupted, looking surprised. "Why are we taking the offensive here."
"He does have a point." Ken mused. "My sensei had a saying, 'If you cannot take the strength from an enemy, you must take the initiative from him instead'."
"Which means?" Davis asked, looking puzzled.
"Simple." Sora looked up at the ceiling. "Utopia is a lot bigger than we are. I'm sure that they are keeping Helios very busy trying to keep track of digimon research all over the world. That makes them the biggest enemy. Since we can't change that, we have to take the initiative, to make them react to us."
"Aren't we jumping to a conclusion here, that Utopia is linked to Khartan?" Matt inquired, leaning forward.
"No." Kari replied, also looking thoughtful. "I can feel it. These things are too coincidental to be anything else. Those two are linked."
"I agree." Tai murmured. "I think that they do have human help. That's just what it feels like. Maybe I'm finally getting those leader instincts that everyone keeps talking about. The question is then what we do about it. After all, we can't exactly take them to court based on this."
"Another question would be what their purpose is." Izzy pointed out thoughtfully. "After all, I cannot see how a corporation that wishes to make a profit would gain anything by allying with a dictator determined to take over the world. It's a lot to swallow all at once."
"It's possible that Khartan is running Utopia." Tentomon pointed out.
"Possible but unlikely." Izzy frowned. "Why would he have been concerned with our world for so long, with one of his own."
"He could have been greedy." Patamon suggested.
"I don't trust that any more than you do." Gatomon curled a whisker. "After all, he's shown no evidence of anything besides clever planning so far. If I were him, I would certainly not expend this much effort without planning something."
"Maybe they're his scientists." Joe suggested. "After all, he has to have them somewhere, doesn't he? I expect that devising a way to get power similar to the power of the crests would be of great interest."
"Except that doesn't make any sense either." TK replied. "From all that Gennai and the others have hinted at, it seems that all kinds of people can use this kind of power, can manipulate it somehow. Why would he need to research it on his own?"
"It seems the key here somehow is that he wants something in this world." Gatomon sat up and looked around at all the others. "After all, that's the only reason I can think of him for being here. Somehow, this Utopia corporation has to be the key to him getting whatever he's looking for. So somehow we have to take it down."
"I must admit, Utopia's procedure has always puzzled me." Adam admitted quietly. "It always seemed odd that they would spend so much time working on a project like this, which doesn't have much profit at stake. Nobody is insane enough to try and conquer a world, even with a few super-powered people. I'm not invincible, and I carry the largest Essence Crystal in existence. I always figured that they were planning to use some sort of outside support, but you news has made me fear the worst."
Izzy narrowed his eyes in concentration. "You're afraid that they're agents of an outside power. Like one of the forces of darkness. That they've been taking instructions and have been learning how to harness the power that those otherworld masters command. That would explain why they have been focused on this project with such intensity. It also means that they could have some very disturbing connections."
"Yes." Adam sighed. "That is exactly what I'm afraid of."
"So, how do we attack?" Yolei asked after a brief pause. "What path do we take?"
"Flatten their headquarters?" Davis asked.
"No, then they would come after us with everything they've got. We've got to find out what they want." Ken replied, not making eye contact.
"Infiltration perhaps." Izzy suggested.
"Spying?" Mimi made a face.
"It sounds like a good plan." Kari raised an eyebrow back at Mimi. "We do need to find out what they're up to."
"But we can't forget our other responsibilities." Cody responded. "And that includes patrolling the city against monster attacks."
"So, we need daily patrols. And we need to prepare an assault on Utopia itself." Gatomon suggested. "We need a way to respond fast."
"I think I can help there." Professor Takenouchi looked nervous, but determined. "I can get groups of you to join me for a 'special project'. You can spend that time cruising the city, and keeping an eye on what's happening."
"And I can assist you there." Mr. Ishida stood up. "As news editor I have access to news stories as soon as they're reported. Given your enemies's fondness for media coverage, I can safely say that I'll know about that next monster attack within thirty seconds of the moment it starts."
"So, we can connect ourselves with a communication network, and cover this whole damn city." Tai slammed his fist down.
"Meanwhile you have to come up with a plan to attack this Utopia place. Or at least find out what's going on." Gabumon pointed out.
"Leave that to Izzy, Ken, Yolei and me." Adam stood up. "We can arrange a computer search, find out as much as we can about Utopia's most recent ventures, see if we can guess their next move from their publicity reports. We can also come up with some toys to take a look and see what the creeps are doing."
"We can help with that." Professor Takenouchi stood up firmly. Jim got up next to him. "Together we can get the rest of the Ghostbusters to try and figure out some way to keep an eye on these people."
"And with our digimon we can find a way to launch a frontal attack." Yolei exulted. "We can scout out the terrain for you."
"We'll be ready when you are." Tai stood up. "So, are we doing this, or not?"
"Right on!" The digimon all yelled.
"Well, I guess we're all in this together." Jim stood up.
"Dad, I never knew you would allow us to get away with this." Sora looked at her father in wonderment.
"Well, I don't think I have a choice." Professor Takenouchi suddenly looked very proud, beaming down at his red haired daughter. "You kids have the fate of the world in your hands again. I have to do everything I can to help you, or else none of us are going to make it out of here alive."