Disclaimer: I don't own Digimon: Digital Monsters
Author's Note: I would like to personally thank all those who followed this story from beginning to end for sticking it out. I know it took a long time, and I am grateful for the attention you've paid me. Thanks a whole bunch!
-dA
Episode LII
Wrath of God
"I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udun. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass."
Gandalf the Gray, J.R.R. Tokien, The Fellowship of the Ring
"Choice is an illusion we imagine we have to explain the course of events. In the crucial moments of our life, we are who we are, and we do what we must do."
Justice, Musings
Fire
and shadow danced over the city of West Shinjuku. The Monarch was
monstrous, bigger than any of the Mega level digimon in opposition, a
tower of misshapen flesh, designed by someone who had never seen the
body as anything but a vehicle for the subconscious. Dark shadows
danced in his eyes, and the fire of the hells that people had built
inside of him spilled out into the open. He was a creature dreamed by
those who twisted the sheets around themselves in a vain hope that they
would serve as an armor for the soul.
But in this, in putting on flesh and emerging into concrete reality, he had not been prepared for the opposition that would await him. Phoenixmon unleashed a barrage of fire from above, golden feathers exploding from her long wings and descending earthwards like meteors, leaving tracks of molten fire across the sky. The explosions as those darts met the clammy and slimy flesh of the Monarch of the Dark Ocean were incredible, displays that surpassed event he greatest of fireworks displays.
Not that they meant much more than a fireworks display. Against the power of the Monarch of the Dark Ocean, Phoenixmon could never hope to prevail, and she knew it. But she was not alone in this endeavor, and this first bombardment was only a momentary distraction, a blaze of light and color to illustrate to the Monarch the difference between his own gray realm and this one. It was also meant to give the others time to get into position, which they did with a practiced grace born of many years spent fighting side by side.
Valkyrimon and Rosemon stood side by side, weaving their hands together as they summoned power from beyond the known universe, making out of it a single tapestry of fury. From those entwined hands emerged a massive bolt of light, both rose shaded and golden tipped, that hurtled itself directly into the eyes of the massive Monarch. The Monarch reached back and screamed, covering his injured eyes, eyes that were unused to the light, as he recoiled from an attack that could barely harm him. Tentacles writhed from beneath his skin, erupting from that slimy flesh to smash furiously at anything that accidentally wandered within their reach, mangling concrete like it was merely powder.
One tentacle got in a blow at Phoenixmon, who had been swooping down, but she went with the blow, ignoring the pain at contact, and drifted out of range on the force of the Monarch's own attack. Another almost smashed Vikmon's foot into paste, but the huge lumbering digimon was more agile than he appeared. Even as the blow descended he rolled just far enough to remove himself from danger, and then he grabbed onto his attacker. The tentacle began to shake madly as the Monarch sensed that there was something on it, but Vikmon clung on tenaciously. He waited until the wildly moving tentacle brought him up and around, close to where another tentacle emerged from the Monarch's towering body, before making his move. There was a flash of steel as his axe moved, and then a severed tentacle, flopping like a landed fish, crashed onto the ground, completely separated from its owner. The Monarch screamed in real pain, and the inspired throes of agony sent Vikmon careening into a building that promptly collapsed under the impact.
"This guy's not going to go down easy." He muttered as he got back to his feet.
TK and Khartan moved at exactly the same time. Both of them drew their cupped hands back as if gathering something in it, and then threw them out toward each other. From TK's hands exploded a bolt of golden energy, whereas Khartan unleashed a bolt of a dangerous glowering red. The two exploded in the middle ground between them, but Khartan's bolt was by far the larger, and the explosion left him unharmed while sending TK hurling out of control farther back in the Void. But it had served its purpose. In that brief moment the rest of the digidestined exploded into action.
Tai drew upon a reservoir of power that he normally only used to help Agumon digivolve, but this time the power flooded through him instead of his digimon. It rose to his hands, screaming down his arms and he could feel the burning heat, but he was now part of that heat instead of subjected to its fiery caress.
"Fires of Courage!" For the first time Tai understood why digimon called out the names of their attacks. He could feel the power gathering within him, releasing it with those words was an intoxicating feeling. A roaring fireball broke away from his hand like a thrown baseball. Khartan threw up an arm and a wave of darkness settled around him like a cloak. The fireball dispersed harmlessly, covering the side of that darkness with licking flames, but it covered the movements of both Matt and Ken, who were dashing off to Tai's right hand.
Matt raised a hand and a whip-like blast of lightning seemed to extend from his hand. It shot out and raked the ground, managing to catch a bit of the dodging Khartan. That piece that it did touch immediately turned to ice, freezing over. Khartan shattered the ice easily and turned, a sword of pure blood-colored fire emerging from his robes in time to match Ken, who had pulled a blade of purple light from his sleeve. The two of them hung together for a moment, blades flaring at the point where they met, and then Khartan summoned his muscle and threw Ken away like a rag doll.
Yolei went into a running dive and managed to catch Ken before he hit the ground. Kari meanwhile had caught and returned a floundering TK to the battle, and the golden warrior glowed with internal strength. Behind him both Sora and Cody charged in.
TK went straight down the middle, a blast of golden light neatly equalizing with one of Khartan's waves of darkness. For a moment they stood in silent struggle, two wills struggling with each other, power unleashed at point blank range. Then Sora was there, and she flung something at Khartan, a wash of air that cut like knives, leaving ragged holes in the outermost layers of darkness. Behind that Cody had a katana in his hand, and it was glowing with white fire, extinguishing yet another layer of darkness.
Khartan responded angrily, hurling a blast of sheer power at them that sent them all sprawling, and unleashing a spike of darkness at the tumbling Sora. The spike hammered in like an angered demon, only to crash against a blue wall that suddenly interspersed itself between weapon and target, a wall shaped like the Crest of Responsibility. Joe shook with the impact, but he was still concentrating, still holding the barrier up, and keeping his friend safe.
Ken shook his head to clear it as he got back up. It seemed insane, that they could unleash these powers here, but it seemed normal now, almost as natural as using attacks must seem to digimon. He understood now the choice he had made when he had accepted the mantle of a digidestined, and wondered for a moment whether he would have made it anyway.
"Oh what the hell." He said to himself as Tai was sent flying and sped off after the leader of the digidestined.
"Rapidmon!" Willis yelled as another blast of fire from the orbiting Phoenixmon nearly exterminated an entire group of digidestined as it bounced harmlessly off of the Monarch's oily hide. "Get everyone here! This is the big one!"
"We didn't need an invitation you know." Noriko grunted slightly as hundreds of digimon and digidestined followed her in leaping over the rubble. They looked tired and exhausted, but the sight of all those determined bodies but the starch back in Willis's spine.
"All right. Well, we can't do anything now, but wait. We'll have our chance sooner or later…right?"
Omnimon swept his blade across the Monarch's hide, the runes gleaming as if they were burning within. Sparks and streaks of fire erupted from where he touched the scaly hide, but the Monarch appeared to be mostly unaffected, barely even noticing, and certainly not desisting from his attempts to knock Phoenixmon from the sky. The glowing bird of flame was staying just outside his reach, and it was clearly beginning to drive the massive Monarch just slightly over the edge. Against that impotent fury, the pain of getting his hide split apart by Omnimon must have seemed as nothing.
A few golden spears of light rippled across the sky, twisting space around them with their burning heat. At the last moment before they hit, they ripped themselves apart from inside, erupting into dazzling points of light. Lightnings, dozens of bolts, exploded from the remains of each missile, systematically working their way across the damp skin and slithering tentacles of the Monarch's midsection. He howled, more in rage than in actual pain, and his whispering tentacles grasped onto a piece of wreckage, tossing it in the direction of the hovering HerculesKabuterimon with incredible force.
Rotating slowly, the huge mass of twisted concrete and steel hurled through the air at an incredible speed. But before it could hit its target it erupted into a series of red slashes, and abruptly disintegrated into nothing more than dust and sand. As the wind from the sea blew the sand away, it revealed Rosemon, pink and red light glowing around her, inspected her rapier calmly, as if looking for nicks and dents. HerculesKabuterimon floated unmolested in the background.
At the same moment, the Monarch's entire front lit up in a blast of almost intolerable light and heat, purple and fluorescent green blasts of color playing up and down it almost like the lightnings of earlier. Then there was a shock wave that rattled even the mighty Omnimon, a wash of white energy. Above, he could see ImperialDramon, arm-mounted cannon lowered, hovering in the air, the barrel still glowing white from the force of the attack. A moment later the Mega had transformed back into Beast Mode in order to avoid the hurled pieces of rubble that arced skyward in an attempt to flatten him. The Monarch looked really angry now, and there were black lightning bolts beginning to dance from slimy tentacle to slimy tentacle.
"If he figures out how to throw those things, we could be in trouble." Valkyrimon noted, flashing up to Omnimon's side, hidden in a cloud of pink and purple bubbles of light released by the tiny MarineAngemon. "Or it could be even worse than that."
"I noticed." Omnimon watched the lightning warily. So far they were able to wear the huge Monarch down by attacking from outside of his effective combat range, but that could not go on indefinitely…could it? Sooner or later they would have to come in to settle this, and then things would get messy.
"Is our strategy working?" Valkyrimon asked, dodging past a flying automobile and blasting almost lazily at the Monarch with a bolt of gold and silver energy.
"In a word…no." Omnimon had never let his eyes wander from their target. "Notice his big eyes. It's hard for him to get used to being mortal. He hasn't learned how to look at something without staring directly at it. And those pupils…they haven't even blinked so far. No matter how hard we've hit him, he's never taken his eyes off of them, even for an instant."
Valkyrimon nodded to show that she understood, and cast a brief glance upwards, watching the two angels floating leisurely in the sky. Neither of them had moved since the battle had started, and it was clear that the Monarch understood what that meant.
"Well…he'll flinch sooner or later." Valkyrimon shrugged and ran off to begin her attack run.
"Let's hope so." Omnimon rumbled as he joined up with Vikmon in a powerful assault on still more of those writhing tentacles.
"So what do you think of them?" Oikawa staggered upright slowly, every moment causing him pain. Navigating through another plane, and then refreshing his own power, only to add it to the sum of the strength of the digidestined, had exhausted him. He felt like collapsing into a thousand-year slumber, but he had no chance to do that, he forced himself to pay attention to the struggle that had erupted in two worlds.
"They'll do fine." Gennai shrugged. "Or they won't. We can no longer do anything to influence that."
"It feels harder than I expected to sit here and watch this." Oikawa confessed. "After all, we did get them into this."
"They chose their own destiny. The moment they chose to stand against Parrotmon all those years ago this moment was inevitable. They must now stand alone again against the evil that dwells beyond." Gennai stared at the world through almost closed eyes.
Oikawa considered that for a moment before responding. "Do you know how preachy you sound when you do that?"
"Shut up and watch the fight." Gennai grumbled.
TK hit the ground hard. There was nothing solid there, but he felt that there should be something solid, and he felt his expectations met. His leg coiled like a spring, and even though the surface was made of pure force of will, he could feel the ground he had imagined begin to shake under the impending force. Then the spring uncoiled, and he hurled himself toward Khartan with blinding speed.
To Joe, who was still watching from a distance, it appeared that TK had bounced off of thin air, or the equivalent in the bare world of the void, and was now diving toward Khartan like a furious tornado. Even as he got within striking range, and Khartan batted Matt out of his way, TK's fists and feet were already blurring as they hammered at their foe. Khartan's limbs blurred in response, and for a moment, even to the now super-human senses of the digidestined, the world between those two consisted only of a blur of golden light and a black shade thrown over it. Sparks flew between the two, but there was no flinching in their total concentration.
Then it broke apart, TK hurtling back like a meteor as Khartan kicked him away. Khartan started to dive after him, and then braked himself and leaned back as a white blur nearly took his face off. Kari let the thrust of her kick, her leg shielded in pure, shimmering white, carry her over Khartan's head, and then spun around in a vicious wheel kick that would have taken the monster's head off if he had decided to follow her first attack through.
Ken darted out of the whiteness, exploding into view with a ferocity that made a liar out of the calm expression on his face. He was still accelerating when his fist slammed around straight for Khartan. With barely a flicker of intent the demon gave the impression that he was grinning, and then moved slightly aside, letting Ken pass in front of him, the wind from the force of the attack barely ruffling his shadow. But the attack served its purpose, and Kari used both of her hands to vault off of Ken's shoulders as neatly as if he had been a set of parallel bars, carrying her out of immediate danger. At the same moment, Ken brought his other fist around, this one carrying less force, but starting from a lot closer.
Khartan blocked the attack with one hand, sparks and flames exploding from where the two fighters impacted. Ken grunted as his force was deflected, and tried to slide quickly out of the dark warrior's path. Khartan responded instantly, a sheet of black flame reaching out for Ken, trying to fry the digidestined before he could react.
And missing utterly as Sora and Yolei arrived out of nowhere, Sora flying high and Yolei going low. Sora was covered in red and gold flames, a burning aura that singed the air around her as she pressed her attack. Yolei was covered in some sort of purple glow that sparked and snapped like small lightning bolts, fighting with each other in their eagerness for battle. Sora slammed a high flying sidekick into where Khartan would have been had he not dodged at the last moment, and the flames burnt at his darkness. Yolei broke into a rotating tackle that probably would have broken his shins had he not reinforced them with his own dark power moments before impact. Then they were sent flying by a determined counterattack a split-second before Khartan vanished in a sheet of flame as Davis descended on him as a bolt from above. The kid with the goggles had vanished, and in its place was a snarling demon of vengeance, flame matching darkness in nearly equal proportions.
TK stood up. He was panting, and sweat was pouring down his face, evaporating off almost instantly, but leaving its mark. He seemed to sway slightly as well, marking his exhaustion for all to see.
"Not doing too well, are we?" Ken asked, skidding up next to the blonde.
"I admit, it isn't going exactly like I planned." TK shrugged this away and squared his shoulders in preparation for resuming the battle. "Still, I don't think that we've become unsalvageable yet."
"You never give up Hope." Ken rolled his eyes. "It's your job."
"Damn straight."
"Well…try to come up with a new plan. I get the feeling that the old one isn't really doing much for us right now."
"We just need one chance."
"Good, because we're definitely not going to get two."
"We can't let digimon do all the dying for our world!" General Alexander screamed, pointing at the battle with the Monarch.
"Well, what do we do?" Hayes shouted back.
"We don't sit around here and wait." Alexander snapped back.
Something happened.
"What the hell is that?" Omnimon wondered as the gate flashed.
Something exploded into the void like a rogue torpedo. Even for the enhanced, superhuman reflexes of the digidestined, there was no way to see it clearly, it was only a blur that could not be resolved. Then, for a second, as if by magic, they saw the creature that had emerged from the Gate to challenge their opponent.
Chikara Hida looked different from the grandfather that Cody remembered having. His hands were gripped around a sword, a real one, steel flashing in the white light of the void with an intensity that could not be explained solely by the brightness surrounding them. His eyes were as cold and as hard as steel, and his gaze probably could have cut a man in two. Muscles all over his body could be felt, straining against the boundaries imposed by mortality, pushing him to greater and higher speeds. The blade glinted as two arms prepared for a final thrust. Every part of him seemed committed to the motion, an unstoppable missile fired at the heart of the darkness.
Then his image shimmered. For a moment, flying behind him, there were shapes. One looked like Sorcerymon, and then that shimmered and changed into BlackWarGreymon, and then other shifting images. Oikawa was there, Jun and TK's grandfather, men who had died screaming and digimon who had disappeared. And for a moment, tattered cloak waving in the breeze, they could see Wizardmon there, blasting along like an avenging angel. All of them, here on a plane as close to the boundary of life and death as one could get, were giving what was left of themselves to this final effort.
Chikara Hida exhaled as he unleashed his katana, as it begged to be released, as it swooped toward his opponent's heart. It gleamed, unstoppable as it dove forward.
And missed.
Khartan's reflexes were beyond superhuman. In a split second, while everyone else could only stare at the image of the aged man, he slid aside, just enough so that Chikara Hida's headlong rush, a rush that could not be stopped, carved only through his shadow instead of through his body.
There was damage. The sword made a horrible ripping noise as it sliced through the very essence of darkness that Khartan had cloaked himself with, but even though a great swath of shadow was cut away, there was no true damage to the creature of pure darkness. Only a gleam of light, and a sudden rush as a newly kindled hope left the hearts of the digidestined were left.
Wind whipped through the void in the wake of Hida's passage, and the old man, his attack unable to be halted, slid past and slammed into the stasis field surrounding the singularity box. There was an earth shattering crash, and a flare of light, blinding even against the pure white of the void, as the two bodies collided, and then Cody's grandfather slowly, tenuously, as if he were a hundred years older than he was, turned around.
"I'm sorry Iori." He spoke quietly, voice very soft. "I thought I should be here at the end, when I was here at the beginning."
"I don't understand." Cody whispered.
"I could feel it somehow…that apartment we moved into so long ago. I knew, the moment I touched it, that it rested on a place where the gap between the worlds was thin. If I had never gone there, if my son had never played games on such a thin spot, had never seen the things he did…I wonder if they would have seen us. Without that contact, would the real and the digital worlds have ever come to know each other?"
"Grandpa?"
"You see…I did it." Mr. Hida's breathing was shallow, as if he was struggling to breath, struggling to exist. "I started the true digital age, the age in which we were connected to another world. That was all me…everything that happened, happened because I started it. I may not have played the game, but I placed the pieces. It might have been because of me that two monsters emerged into another soft spot between worlds, worlds that they now knew about. It might be because of me that Myotismon became aware of this world, and struck here not once but twice. By moving into that apartment, I may have made you the man you are today.
"So you see Iori, I was here at the beginning. Now, I thought to give everything to strike at the darkness, and make it the end. I knew that if I could put all of myself, and all of those spirits who have gone before, into one stroke, that I could have hurt him. Hurt him enough to allow you to finish him. But in the end, I am a foolish old man. I have given everything, only to lose it." He began to fade, becoming more transparent, disappearing like smoke. "I gave it everything, and it wasn't enough. I am sorry Iori." His eyes cut Cody Hida far more deeply than any digimon ever had. "I truly love you, and I am more proud of you than you can ever imagine. And I know that one day, we will meet again. Never lose your hopes, your dreams, or your friends…fare well…"
His image faded. Cody screamed, a hopeless, maddened scream. Then he was on his feet in a rush, hurtling himself at Khartan with a fury that equaled Davis's. The rest of the digidestined moved to follow.
All except for TK. He alone had truly seen the expression on the old man's face the moment before he disappeared, and that expression had been one of triumph.
Every artillery piece in a twenty kilometer radius spoke at once in an elegant reprimand that nearly deafened a million men. Even the Missouri joined in, hurtling elemental fury against the Monarch, visible even that far away as a huge bulk, blotting out the heavens. If the noise was incredible, the impact was beyond belief. There were enough incoming shells that you could not see individual explosions. One moment there was a huge mound of slimy flesh and writhing tentacles, the next there was only a sheet of continuous fire, wrapping its desperate embrace around the tower of living skin that it collided with. On the street level men staggered back from the noise and the shock waves that threw human beings physically through the air, even removed from the center of the battle.
Compared to the firepower that had been used in the battle so far, this display of temper and military might could not have seriously hurt the Monarch. But it was bright, and it was loud, and something that the Sovereign Monarch of the Dark Ocean had never been used to, something that passed his limited experiences. He was too new to being a mortal, to new to having a physical body to understand what was happening. So he reacted as any mortal would have.
He flinched.
Seraphimon and Magnadramon did not give each other a signal, they did not bother to confer with other digimon or with each other at all. This was the opportunity they had spent the entire battle waiting for. Even before the Monarch was aware that he had flinched, they were swooping down on him like stooping falcons. They moved so fast that air friction turned the edges of their wings cherry red, but only for a moment.
Then the two forms became almost sinuous, as if they were nothing more than bright ribbons of light that slowly twisted around each other in sequence. Two strands joined, one bright white like the light of the moon, pure as the reflection in a quiet pool, the other a fiery golden corona ripped from the surface of the sun itself. Light blended, and mixed, and suddenly there was only one bolt of light, a giant spear hurtled from heaven from the hands of a magnificent angel, gleaming angrily in the light. That is all there was, all there was time to see, before that bolt from heaven, a hundred times more powerful than any digimon there had dreamed of becoming, struck home with a thunderous rush.
For that brief moment, the world shook. That massive, titanic body, a construction of stone large enough that one could barely see it curve, the sculpture of nature that had passed on the steps of its constant dance through space for uncounted eons, shook. The tremble disrupted tidal patterns all over the world, triggered earthquakes in distant fault lines as the world attempted to adjust for the stress put upon it, and rattled dishes on the other side of the world. Even the moon trembled a little, as if it had been pulled from its perfect contemplation of the skies, before it returned to normal.
Two specks of light could be seen shrinking and falling, before a swooping Rapidmon from the sidelines caught a falling, unconscious Patamon and Gatomon as they headed toward the ground.
And the Monarch screamed, a scream of fury and pain and terror all rolled into one. Tentacles shriveled into wisps of dust and ash as the flames covered the body. Skin was ripped apart, muscle sheared through like paper, explosions erupting inside that horribly malformed body. Somehow, the massive legs hidden inside that writhing monster collapsed, and the Monarch crashed to his knees, humbled by that single strike of angelic power. His eyes rose back to the battlefield very slowly.
Eight Megas and thousand of other digimon were closing in on him. Thousands of humans, carrying thousands of weapons, were closing on his body with one aim in mind, putting this monstrosity out of their life forever. The entire sky was filled with dots as digimon and airplanes, released from the stupor that the huge battle had inflicted on them, rose into combat formations. None of them were his match, even in this weakened state, he could crush any of them like they were nothing more than ants. But they had numbers. Like a swarm of wasps, they could rip him apart one piece at a time, at a ferocious cost to themselves, but they could do it. And from the look in their eyes, it was pretty clear that they were willing to pay that price.
Fear entered the heart of a king of fear. A nightmare dawned on the lord of nightmares. Here he was trapped. Here he was vulnerable. Here, sheer weight of numbers could spell his downfall.
Power gathered within him. Turning, he gestured, and began to open a gate.
TK's eyes widened as he felt space and time shift under him. Only one thought fit into his tired brain at that moment, but it was enough.
That crazy bastard, he thought in appreciation as the scope of Mr. Hida's plans unfurled on him.
"What's happening?" Rosemon managed to grab two lesser digimon, keeping them from flying off in the sudden typhoon-level winds that had sprung out of nowhere.
"He's too big, he's ripping a hole in space time!" Omnimon roared over the deafening din. Even he was struggling to keep from being blown away. "It's not a natural gate, so it's not occurring right! It's sucking him back through, and everything else that's not nailed down is coming with him!"
"Well that's just grand!" ImperialDramon howled. "So what do we do now?"
"All of you are on disaster control duty as of right now!" Omnimon shouted back. "Time to get moving people!"
Gravity suddenly returned to the Void.
"What is that?" Tai screamed out as the sudden new force offset everyone's current plans for combat.
"It's the effect of a large gate. It's like a whirlpool dragging everything in!" Kari shouted triumphantly, casting a group of bright lights directly at Khartan. "The Monarch must have been defeated. He's retreating to his own world."
"And that gives us our chance," TK commanded suddenly. "Tai, Matt, Sora, Ken, keep him busy. Everyone else, give me your full power."
They responded instantly, for once even before Khartan could. TK felt a wellspring of power build within him, even as four blurs closed on the suddenly disconcerted shadow in the middle of the whiteness. But it was not enough. TK could feel it, could sense that the power he had was somehow incomplete, that there was not enough.
"Hurry up!" Kari yelled to him.
"I'm trying. There's not enough power. I need more!" TK yelled, frantically searching for reserves of power that simply were not there. He scrabbled within himself desperately, but now he could come up with not enough to fill those last desperate pieces of his plan.
Sora screamed as Khartan seized her through her protective flames, and then smashed her hard enough to break half of her ribs. It was a horrible grating sound that felt like sandpaper on TK's raw nerves. He was crying in frustration as he reached inward again, praying to whatever gods there were that he could find what he needed.
There was a crack as Khartan shattered Ken's arms.
"TK," Davis's voice interrupted his soul-searching. "Catch."
Something bright and glowing crystal bright arced through the air of the Void with ease, and TK reached out automatically to snatch it out of the sky with lightning fast reflexes that any professional basketball player would have envied. He stared at the miniature star he held in his hands before he recognized it.
It was the essence crystal that Kari had discovered on the surface of Parsifal so long ago, that they had taken from LadyDevimon, and that Davis had secreted away for this one moment, when they would need it again. And now, larger than either the Ascendent or the Nadir, it rested comfortably in TK's hand.
TK's eyes met those of Davis. Davis grinned, and nodded once, even as Matt went down, spewing blood all over the white void.
This time the inner radiance that exploded forth was beyond even what TK had imagined when he dreamed up this mad plan. It filled him with a strength that he could not describe, that he was ready to employ at its fullest extent. Drawing upon their powers, all of their powers now, he gathered the light into one giant bolt of power, and hurled it unerringly at its target.
At the singularity box.
The bolt of raging silver lightning hit the stasis shield in the exact point where Chikara Hida had, and that one imperfection in the defenses that he had put into place with his death blow, allowed TK to shatter that red defensive field like it was merely glass.
Too late. Khartan understood his fate. Too late, as space twisted around them, did he know his peril.
The singularity, disturbed by the sudden rush of energy, triggered. It began to try and change, began to form the gate that would take that lethal object out of this universe, even as it began to be dragged along by the wake of the Monarch, falling ever towards that portal. As nature had intended, it aligned itself with that massive Gate, attracted to that power like a moth to a flame, strengthening the connection the more it was pulled along. Even as it did so, it began to twist space and time, drawing nearby things close to it as it activated. All that power had been waiting, like a row of dominoes, and TK had knocked over the first one. It began to react.
TK unleashed everything he had left, one last blast of power, striking Khartan head on. The dark creature screamed in rage and horror as he was sent drifting into the field of the singularity.
Before he could recover, the drag from the Monarch and the instability caused by TK's bolt of power caught up with reality. The singularity triggered. It jumped directly through the Void, intersecting the massive gate that the Monarch had created, and following that planar tidal pull. It sucked a lot of the Void, and Khartan, along with it. Khartan and his bomb were dragged along with the Monarch and his gate.
"Get us out of here!" TK screamed, panic stricken, and Kari, drawing upon reserves of power that she was not aware she possessed, reached out into the unknown and opened their own gate, sending them into their own world.
For a split second the Monarch of the Dark Ocean, the Emperor Khartan and a naked singularity were all present at the same time on the borders of the Dark Ocean. It only lasted an instant.
Then for the first time in history every shore in the Dark Ocean was fully illuminated. That also only lasted for an instant as well, but it was enough.
Had anyone survived, they might have commented on the noise.
Light flared in Odaiba. A huge, fountaining explosion erupted from where the Gate had been moments before, and tons of concrete and steel where thrown upward as the huge blast of fire and light annihilated what was left of the heart of the Utopia Corporation complex. Clouds of dust shot up into the air.
"Damn, that was close." TK rolled his eyes and collapsed into unconsciousness.
Moments later, Willis was there, Rapidmon blasting his way through the wreckage to find, bruised and battered almost beyond recognition, twelve humans lying in a rough circle.
"We need a medic over here!" He called, but the shout was unnecessary. A dozen men were already there, and then a dozen more, each eager to have a hand in saving the heroes that had already saved them. Colonel Galvanay was there then, swearing in a dozen languages that should any of those digidestined being dragged out of the ruins sustain any damage at all, he would personally flay the man responsible alive. Others rushed in to join, the knowledge that they had found their saviors, those who had been responsible for saving the world, running through the ranks like wildfire.
Digimon and human alike moved out of the way of the convoy carrying the injured children as they were moved into one of the main medical tents, seated on rough cots stripped from a nearby hospital, and covered with rough wool blankets. Each warrior, tried and exhausted, was placed next to the body of their sleeping digimon. For a few moments, the main tent was quiet inside, surrounded by the wall of the curious, the reverent and the just plain tired.
"All right people." Willis came out of the entrance. He clapped his hands together loudly enough to start several dozing patients out of a sound sleep. "They've left things on this end in our hands, so we better get going on it…don't you think?"
There were several grunts of approval and then the men and women and digimon surrounding the medical tent went back to the front lines.
"What's up?" Daniel and what was left of European Legion London came trotting up beside Willis, who looked at them sadly. Already two members in the hospital, and they were still ready for action.
"We've got to free the city of Tokyo." Willis stated firmly. "Let's get down to work."
The tired digidestined moved out, and into history.
Wind blew in a gentle torrent, ocean air, crisp and clean, bringing with it the smell of the sea, and blowing the constant dust away from the procession. Sunlight shone out of a suspiciously cloudless sky, and it was bright enough that light glinted off of every piece of polished brass and steel, the gold pennants of every flag. Thousands of boots glimmered in the sunlight, and thousands of newly stitched blue uniforms glowed comfortably in the cool breeze. Today, there was no construction down on the ruined piers, none of the usual sounds of demolition of those houses too battered to stand up. Today there was only silence, respectful, reverent and proud.
The IDEF was going home.
It had taken two weeks to reconstruct enough of the waterfront for the big ships to fit in, and outside the harbor, the ships were waiting. Container and cargo ships coming into Tokyo harbor, laden with the supplies that the world had sent to rebuild the fallen metropolis, hovered anxiously outside the gates to the sea. Some carried vast quantities of food and other comestible supplies for the survivors of the biggest urban battle in history. Others carried hundreds of tons of building steel, plate glass windows and plumbing supplies that would be the foundation of the new Tokyo.
Already, the jewel of the east was rising again. Less than a hundred years after being destroyed the last time, the Phoenix was rising again, this time looking to become more impressive than she had been the last time, a towering edifice of concrete and steel that would mark the way into a new millennium. A monument to the perseverance and triumph inherent in the human spirit. And not just to the human spirit, for hundreds of digimon were working aside the humans.
But they were not working today.
Rank by rank, row by row, columns evenly spaced, the IDEF seemed to stretch off to infinity. Companies, once full of men, had shrunk to the size of platoons or smaller, leaving comrades behind, either in the rubble or in the hospital. But every man left was standing there at attention, ignoring the bright pounding sunlight, and rejoicing in the simple fact of being alive. Above every formation flags waved proudly in the breeze, a cornucopia of different symbols and images marking men and women from a hundred countries. With them, their uniforms different, their ranks more ragged, were the thousands of children who had risen to fight for the IDEF, thousands of digidestined and their digimon, who had come halfway around the world, to fight a battle that had not been theirs. They had suffered as no child should have had to, they had seen death and disaster, served in the front lines of a war as vicious as any ever fought. They had met all those challenges, and survived, and then triumphed.
And now they were going home.
Ships waited, huge passenger liners, donated by their owners to have the honor of carrying the shining legions home to their own nations. It was an event being watched from all over the world as a thousand new outfits with their cameras and microphones descended on the event, but none of them dared break the profound silence that had followed the final remarks by General Sir Thomas Alexander, who was being lauded over six continents as one of the best generals that Britain had ever produced. There was even talk in London of setting aside a charity fund in his name, for the victims of the war.
"Move out!" Alexander's voice broke into the silence with a suddenness that could not quite hide the tear in his eye.
First the British went. Their arms snapped up and then they marched out of the carefully arrayed ranks, into the open corridors that were left between formations. The wind ruffled the pennants over their heads, but it did not perturb that stately march as company after company marched onto the ramp of the waiting cruise liner that would take them home. Behind them, their ranks tattered from their losses, came the members of the newly reformed European Legion Britain, a solid corps of digidestined and digimon who would help form the nucleus of the European Legion. Many were children who had never been allowed to stay up late before, but they came now, in perfect order, their digimon trotting alongside with them, understanding the importance of the event.
Interspersed within them came the bagpipers, and they suddenly broke out in a rendition of Scotland the Brave that sounded even deeper and more meaningful than the version they had played in the middle of battle. There was a nearly invisible straightening of spines as the music swept through the remaining ranks.
Daniel, still at the head of the digidestined despite the fact that one leg was in a cast, and he was walking with the aid of a cane, swept one hand up in salute toward the figures standing at one end of the podium. Tai returned the salute gravely, and bowed as Daniel marched up the ramp and never looked back.
Then the French marched by, the bright tunes of the French Foreign Legion sounding as hundreds of Frenchmen marched up the ramps to their own cruise liner. Colonel Galvanay saluted General Alexander. Catherine, along with the rest of European Legion France, hundreds of digidestined moving in an organized herd, raised their bright French berets, their own personal addition to the newly designed IDEF uniforms. There was a cheer from both the crowd surrounding the pier, and the crowd on the podium at that. Then, with the music still trailing behind them, they went up the ramps and left.
Country by country they left, some only having a few dozen men and digidestined, some having thousands, all marching off in careful order, offering salute to the men and women would had died in battle, and to those left behind.
TK felt a sad smile grow on his face as they left. They were good men and women and digimon, all of them. And now they were going home, but this time, not for good. There would be more wars, he was sure. There was one that surpassed their imagination occurring out there right now. There would be more battles, more call for brave men and women to sacrifice their lives. And the shining legions would come back to do the job. Once a thing only of dreams, the IDEF was forever.
Then, finally, it was the only the Americans left.
Team Eagle led this parade, Michael resting in the wheelchair that Willis was pushing. He had taken shrapnel in the leg in that final stage of the battle, but the doctors swore that he would be up and about in no time. Behind them thousands of digidestined began to fall in together, and then came the soldiers, rank after rank of the survivors.
"Sound off!" Willis bellowed, unexpectedly loud. From rank after rank a chorus of untrained voices raised a magnificent tune.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored,
He has loosed the fateful lightening of His terrible swift sword
His truth is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps
l can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps
His day is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
And
then they were past the podium, past the digidestined who had started
this all, so long ago and so far away, and then it was all history,
waiting for its chance to happen again, except for one line that
drifted back to the bystanders on the wings of an ocean breeze.
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
Yes, we have and we will. TK thought absently.
This time of parting will come again, and this is only the first of
many battles. But for now, for this brief moment, there is peace.
Author's Note: I would like to personally thank all those who followed this story from beginning to end for sticking it out. I know it took a long time, and I am grateful for the attention you've paid me. Thanks a whole bunch!
-dA
Wrath of God
"I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udun. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass."
Gandalf the Gray, J.R.R. Tokien, The Fellowship of the Ring
"Choice is an illusion we imagine we have to explain the course of events. In the crucial moments of our life, we are who we are, and we do what we must do."
Justice, Musings
But in this, in putting on flesh and emerging into concrete reality, he had not been prepared for the opposition that would await him. Phoenixmon unleashed a barrage of fire from above, golden feathers exploding from her long wings and descending earthwards like meteors, leaving tracks of molten fire across the sky. The explosions as those darts met the clammy and slimy flesh of the Monarch of the Dark Ocean were incredible, displays that surpassed event he greatest of fireworks displays.
Not that they meant much more than a fireworks display. Against the power of the Monarch of the Dark Ocean, Phoenixmon could never hope to prevail, and she knew it. But she was not alone in this endeavor, and this first bombardment was only a momentary distraction, a blaze of light and color to illustrate to the Monarch the difference between his own gray realm and this one. It was also meant to give the others time to get into position, which they did with a practiced grace born of many years spent fighting side by side.
Valkyrimon and Rosemon stood side by side, weaving their hands together as they summoned power from beyond the known universe, making out of it a single tapestry of fury. From those entwined hands emerged a massive bolt of light, both rose shaded and golden tipped, that hurtled itself directly into the eyes of the massive Monarch. The Monarch reached back and screamed, covering his injured eyes, eyes that were unused to the light, as he recoiled from an attack that could barely harm him. Tentacles writhed from beneath his skin, erupting from that slimy flesh to smash furiously at anything that accidentally wandered within their reach, mangling concrete like it was merely powder.
One tentacle got in a blow at Phoenixmon, who had been swooping down, but she went with the blow, ignoring the pain at contact, and drifted out of range on the force of the Monarch's own attack. Another almost smashed Vikmon's foot into paste, but the huge lumbering digimon was more agile than he appeared. Even as the blow descended he rolled just far enough to remove himself from danger, and then he grabbed onto his attacker. The tentacle began to shake madly as the Monarch sensed that there was something on it, but Vikmon clung on tenaciously. He waited until the wildly moving tentacle brought him up and around, close to where another tentacle emerged from the Monarch's towering body, before making his move. There was a flash of steel as his axe moved, and then a severed tentacle, flopping like a landed fish, crashed onto the ground, completely separated from its owner. The Monarch screamed in real pain, and the inspired throes of agony sent Vikmon careening into a building that promptly collapsed under the impact.
"This guy's not going to go down easy." He muttered as he got back to his feet.
TK and Khartan moved at exactly the same time. Both of them drew their cupped hands back as if gathering something in it, and then threw them out toward each other. From TK's hands exploded a bolt of golden energy, whereas Khartan unleashed a bolt of a dangerous glowering red. The two exploded in the middle ground between them, but Khartan's bolt was by far the larger, and the explosion left him unharmed while sending TK hurling out of control farther back in the Void. But it had served its purpose. In that brief moment the rest of the digidestined exploded into action.
Tai drew upon a reservoir of power that he normally only used to help Agumon digivolve, but this time the power flooded through him instead of his digimon. It rose to his hands, screaming down his arms and he could feel the burning heat, but he was now part of that heat instead of subjected to its fiery caress.
"Fires of Courage!" For the first time Tai understood why digimon called out the names of their attacks. He could feel the power gathering within him, releasing it with those words was an intoxicating feeling. A roaring fireball broke away from his hand like a thrown baseball. Khartan threw up an arm and a wave of darkness settled around him like a cloak. The fireball dispersed harmlessly, covering the side of that darkness with licking flames, but it covered the movements of both Matt and Ken, who were dashing off to Tai's right hand.
Matt raised a hand and a whip-like blast of lightning seemed to extend from his hand. It shot out and raked the ground, managing to catch a bit of the dodging Khartan. That piece that it did touch immediately turned to ice, freezing over. Khartan shattered the ice easily and turned, a sword of pure blood-colored fire emerging from his robes in time to match Ken, who had pulled a blade of purple light from his sleeve. The two of them hung together for a moment, blades flaring at the point where they met, and then Khartan summoned his muscle and threw Ken away like a rag doll.
Yolei went into a running dive and managed to catch Ken before he hit the ground. Kari meanwhile had caught and returned a floundering TK to the battle, and the golden warrior glowed with internal strength. Behind him both Sora and Cody charged in.
TK went straight down the middle, a blast of golden light neatly equalizing with one of Khartan's waves of darkness. For a moment they stood in silent struggle, two wills struggling with each other, power unleashed at point blank range. Then Sora was there, and she flung something at Khartan, a wash of air that cut like knives, leaving ragged holes in the outermost layers of darkness. Behind that Cody had a katana in his hand, and it was glowing with white fire, extinguishing yet another layer of darkness.
Khartan responded angrily, hurling a blast of sheer power at them that sent them all sprawling, and unleashing a spike of darkness at the tumbling Sora. The spike hammered in like an angered demon, only to crash against a blue wall that suddenly interspersed itself between weapon and target, a wall shaped like the Crest of Responsibility. Joe shook with the impact, but he was still concentrating, still holding the barrier up, and keeping his friend safe.
Ken shook his head to clear it as he got back up. It seemed insane, that they could unleash these powers here, but it seemed normal now, almost as natural as using attacks must seem to digimon. He understood now the choice he had made when he had accepted the mantle of a digidestined, and wondered for a moment whether he would have made it anyway.
"Oh what the hell." He said to himself as Tai was sent flying and sped off after the leader of the digidestined.
"Rapidmon!" Willis yelled as another blast of fire from the orbiting Phoenixmon nearly exterminated an entire group of digidestined as it bounced harmlessly off of the Monarch's oily hide. "Get everyone here! This is the big one!"
"We didn't need an invitation you know." Noriko grunted slightly as hundreds of digimon and digidestined followed her in leaping over the rubble. They looked tired and exhausted, but the sight of all those determined bodies but the starch back in Willis's spine.
"All right. Well, we can't do anything now, but wait. We'll have our chance sooner or later…right?"
Omnimon swept his blade across the Monarch's hide, the runes gleaming as if they were burning within. Sparks and streaks of fire erupted from where he touched the scaly hide, but the Monarch appeared to be mostly unaffected, barely even noticing, and certainly not desisting from his attempts to knock Phoenixmon from the sky. The glowing bird of flame was staying just outside his reach, and it was clearly beginning to drive the massive Monarch just slightly over the edge. Against that impotent fury, the pain of getting his hide split apart by Omnimon must have seemed as nothing.
A few golden spears of light rippled across the sky, twisting space around them with their burning heat. At the last moment before they hit, they ripped themselves apart from inside, erupting into dazzling points of light. Lightnings, dozens of bolts, exploded from the remains of each missile, systematically working their way across the damp skin and slithering tentacles of the Monarch's midsection. He howled, more in rage than in actual pain, and his whispering tentacles grasped onto a piece of wreckage, tossing it in the direction of the hovering HerculesKabuterimon with incredible force.
Rotating slowly, the huge mass of twisted concrete and steel hurled through the air at an incredible speed. But before it could hit its target it erupted into a series of red slashes, and abruptly disintegrated into nothing more than dust and sand. As the wind from the sea blew the sand away, it revealed Rosemon, pink and red light glowing around her, inspected her rapier calmly, as if looking for nicks and dents. HerculesKabuterimon floated unmolested in the background.
At the same moment, the Monarch's entire front lit up in a blast of almost intolerable light and heat, purple and fluorescent green blasts of color playing up and down it almost like the lightnings of earlier. Then there was a shock wave that rattled even the mighty Omnimon, a wash of white energy. Above, he could see ImperialDramon, arm-mounted cannon lowered, hovering in the air, the barrel still glowing white from the force of the attack. A moment later the Mega had transformed back into Beast Mode in order to avoid the hurled pieces of rubble that arced skyward in an attempt to flatten him. The Monarch looked really angry now, and there were black lightning bolts beginning to dance from slimy tentacle to slimy tentacle.
"If he figures out how to throw those things, we could be in trouble." Valkyrimon noted, flashing up to Omnimon's side, hidden in a cloud of pink and purple bubbles of light released by the tiny MarineAngemon. "Or it could be even worse than that."
"I noticed." Omnimon watched the lightning warily. So far they were able to wear the huge Monarch down by attacking from outside of his effective combat range, but that could not go on indefinitely…could it? Sooner or later they would have to come in to settle this, and then things would get messy.
"Is our strategy working?" Valkyrimon asked, dodging past a flying automobile and blasting almost lazily at the Monarch with a bolt of gold and silver energy.
"In a word…no." Omnimon had never let his eyes wander from their target. "Notice his big eyes. It's hard for him to get used to being mortal. He hasn't learned how to look at something without staring directly at it. And those pupils…they haven't even blinked so far. No matter how hard we've hit him, he's never taken his eyes off of them, even for an instant."
Valkyrimon nodded to show that she understood, and cast a brief glance upwards, watching the two angels floating leisurely in the sky. Neither of them had moved since the battle had started, and it was clear that the Monarch understood what that meant.
"Well…he'll flinch sooner or later." Valkyrimon shrugged and ran off to begin her attack run.
"Let's hope so." Omnimon rumbled as he joined up with Vikmon in a powerful assault on still more of those writhing tentacles.
"So what do you think of them?" Oikawa staggered upright slowly, every moment causing him pain. Navigating through another plane, and then refreshing his own power, only to add it to the sum of the strength of the digidestined, had exhausted him. He felt like collapsing into a thousand-year slumber, but he had no chance to do that, he forced himself to pay attention to the struggle that had erupted in two worlds.
"They'll do fine." Gennai shrugged. "Or they won't. We can no longer do anything to influence that."
"It feels harder than I expected to sit here and watch this." Oikawa confessed. "After all, we did get them into this."
"They chose their own destiny. The moment they chose to stand against Parrotmon all those years ago this moment was inevitable. They must now stand alone again against the evil that dwells beyond." Gennai stared at the world through almost closed eyes.
Oikawa considered that for a moment before responding. "Do you know how preachy you sound when you do that?"
"Shut up and watch the fight." Gennai grumbled.
TK hit the ground hard. There was nothing solid there, but he felt that there should be something solid, and he felt his expectations met. His leg coiled like a spring, and even though the surface was made of pure force of will, he could feel the ground he had imagined begin to shake under the impending force. Then the spring uncoiled, and he hurled himself toward Khartan with blinding speed.
To Joe, who was still watching from a distance, it appeared that TK had bounced off of thin air, or the equivalent in the bare world of the void, and was now diving toward Khartan like a furious tornado. Even as he got within striking range, and Khartan batted Matt out of his way, TK's fists and feet were already blurring as they hammered at their foe. Khartan's limbs blurred in response, and for a moment, even to the now super-human senses of the digidestined, the world between those two consisted only of a blur of golden light and a black shade thrown over it. Sparks flew between the two, but there was no flinching in their total concentration.
Then it broke apart, TK hurtling back like a meteor as Khartan kicked him away. Khartan started to dive after him, and then braked himself and leaned back as a white blur nearly took his face off. Kari let the thrust of her kick, her leg shielded in pure, shimmering white, carry her over Khartan's head, and then spun around in a vicious wheel kick that would have taken the monster's head off if he had decided to follow her first attack through.
Ken darted out of the whiteness, exploding into view with a ferocity that made a liar out of the calm expression on his face. He was still accelerating when his fist slammed around straight for Khartan. With barely a flicker of intent the demon gave the impression that he was grinning, and then moved slightly aside, letting Ken pass in front of him, the wind from the force of the attack barely ruffling his shadow. But the attack served its purpose, and Kari used both of her hands to vault off of Ken's shoulders as neatly as if he had been a set of parallel bars, carrying her out of immediate danger. At the same moment, Ken brought his other fist around, this one carrying less force, but starting from a lot closer.
Khartan blocked the attack with one hand, sparks and flames exploding from where the two fighters impacted. Ken grunted as his force was deflected, and tried to slide quickly out of the dark warrior's path. Khartan responded instantly, a sheet of black flame reaching out for Ken, trying to fry the digidestined before he could react.
And missing utterly as Sora and Yolei arrived out of nowhere, Sora flying high and Yolei going low. Sora was covered in red and gold flames, a burning aura that singed the air around her as she pressed her attack. Yolei was covered in some sort of purple glow that sparked and snapped like small lightning bolts, fighting with each other in their eagerness for battle. Sora slammed a high flying sidekick into where Khartan would have been had he not dodged at the last moment, and the flames burnt at his darkness. Yolei broke into a rotating tackle that probably would have broken his shins had he not reinforced them with his own dark power moments before impact. Then they were sent flying by a determined counterattack a split-second before Khartan vanished in a sheet of flame as Davis descended on him as a bolt from above. The kid with the goggles had vanished, and in its place was a snarling demon of vengeance, flame matching darkness in nearly equal proportions.
TK stood up. He was panting, and sweat was pouring down his face, evaporating off almost instantly, but leaving its mark. He seemed to sway slightly as well, marking his exhaustion for all to see.
"Not doing too well, are we?" Ken asked, skidding up next to the blonde.
"I admit, it isn't going exactly like I planned." TK shrugged this away and squared his shoulders in preparation for resuming the battle. "Still, I don't think that we've become unsalvageable yet."
"You never give up Hope." Ken rolled his eyes. "It's your job."
"Damn straight."
"Well…try to come up with a new plan. I get the feeling that the old one isn't really doing much for us right now."
"We just need one chance."
"Good, because we're definitely not going to get two."
"We can't let digimon do all the dying for our world!" General Alexander screamed, pointing at the battle with the Monarch.
"Well, what do we do?" Hayes shouted back.
"We don't sit around here and wait." Alexander snapped back.
Something happened.
"What the hell is that?" Omnimon wondered as the gate flashed.
Something exploded into the void like a rogue torpedo. Even for the enhanced, superhuman reflexes of the digidestined, there was no way to see it clearly, it was only a blur that could not be resolved. Then, for a second, as if by magic, they saw the creature that had emerged from the Gate to challenge their opponent.
Chikara Hida looked different from the grandfather that Cody remembered having. His hands were gripped around a sword, a real one, steel flashing in the white light of the void with an intensity that could not be explained solely by the brightness surrounding them. His eyes were as cold and as hard as steel, and his gaze probably could have cut a man in two. Muscles all over his body could be felt, straining against the boundaries imposed by mortality, pushing him to greater and higher speeds. The blade glinted as two arms prepared for a final thrust. Every part of him seemed committed to the motion, an unstoppable missile fired at the heart of the darkness.
Then his image shimmered. For a moment, flying behind him, there were shapes. One looked like Sorcerymon, and then that shimmered and changed into BlackWarGreymon, and then other shifting images. Oikawa was there, Jun and TK's grandfather, men who had died screaming and digimon who had disappeared. And for a moment, tattered cloak waving in the breeze, they could see Wizardmon there, blasting along like an avenging angel. All of them, here on a plane as close to the boundary of life and death as one could get, were giving what was left of themselves to this final effort.
Chikara Hida exhaled as he unleashed his katana, as it begged to be released, as it swooped toward his opponent's heart. It gleamed, unstoppable as it dove forward.
And missed.
Khartan's reflexes were beyond superhuman. In a split second, while everyone else could only stare at the image of the aged man, he slid aside, just enough so that Chikara Hida's headlong rush, a rush that could not be stopped, carved only through his shadow instead of through his body.
There was damage. The sword made a horrible ripping noise as it sliced through the very essence of darkness that Khartan had cloaked himself with, but even though a great swath of shadow was cut away, there was no true damage to the creature of pure darkness. Only a gleam of light, and a sudden rush as a newly kindled hope left the hearts of the digidestined were left.
Wind whipped through the void in the wake of Hida's passage, and the old man, his attack unable to be halted, slid past and slammed into the stasis field surrounding the singularity box. There was an earth shattering crash, and a flare of light, blinding even against the pure white of the void, as the two bodies collided, and then Cody's grandfather slowly, tenuously, as if he were a hundred years older than he was, turned around.
"I'm sorry Iori." He spoke quietly, voice very soft. "I thought I should be here at the end, when I was here at the beginning."
"I don't understand." Cody whispered.
"I could feel it somehow…that apartment we moved into so long ago. I knew, the moment I touched it, that it rested on a place where the gap between the worlds was thin. If I had never gone there, if my son had never played games on such a thin spot, had never seen the things he did…I wonder if they would have seen us. Without that contact, would the real and the digital worlds have ever come to know each other?"
"Grandpa?"
"You see…I did it." Mr. Hida's breathing was shallow, as if he was struggling to breath, struggling to exist. "I started the true digital age, the age in which we were connected to another world. That was all me…everything that happened, happened because I started it. I may not have played the game, but I placed the pieces. It might have been because of me that two monsters emerged into another soft spot between worlds, worlds that they now knew about. It might be because of me that Myotismon became aware of this world, and struck here not once but twice. By moving into that apartment, I may have made you the man you are today.
"So you see Iori, I was here at the beginning. Now, I thought to give everything to strike at the darkness, and make it the end. I knew that if I could put all of myself, and all of those spirits who have gone before, into one stroke, that I could have hurt him. Hurt him enough to allow you to finish him. But in the end, I am a foolish old man. I have given everything, only to lose it." He began to fade, becoming more transparent, disappearing like smoke. "I gave it everything, and it wasn't enough. I am sorry Iori." His eyes cut Cody Hida far more deeply than any digimon ever had. "I truly love you, and I am more proud of you than you can ever imagine. And I know that one day, we will meet again. Never lose your hopes, your dreams, or your friends…fare well…"
His image faded. Cody screamed, a hopeless, maddened scream. Then he was on his feet in a rush, hurtling himself at Khartan with a fury that equaled Davis's. The rest of the digidestined moved to follow.
All except for TK. He alone had truly seen the expression on the old man's face the moment before he disappeared, and that expression had been one of triumph.
Every artillery piece in a twenty kilometer radius spoke at once in an elegant reprimand that nearly deafened a million men. Even the Missouri joined in, hurtling elemental fury against the Monarch, visible even that far away as a huge bulk, blotting out the heavens. If the noise was incredible, the impact was beyond belief. There were enough incoming shells that you could not see individual explosions. One moment there was a huge mound of slimy flesh and writhing tentacles, the next there was only a sheet of continuous fire, wrapping its desperate embrace around the tower of living skin that it collided with. On the street level men staggered back from the noise and the shock waves that threw human beings physically through the air, even removed from the center of the battle.
Compared to the firepower that had been used in the battle so far, this display of temper and military might could not have seriously hurt the Monarch. But it was bright, and it was loud, and something that the Sovereign Monarch of the Dark Ocean had never been used to, something that passed his limited experiences. He was too new to being a mortal, to new to having a physical body to understand what was happening. So he reacted as any mortal would have.
He flinched.
Seraphimon and Magnadramon did not give each other a signal, they did not bother to confer with other digimon or with each other at all. This was the opportunity they had spent the entire battle waiting for. Even before the Monarch was aware that he had flinched, they were swooping down on him like stooping falcons. They moved so fast that air friction turned the edges of their wings cherry red, but only for a moment.
Then the two forms became almost sinuous, as if they were nothing more than bright ribbons of light that slowly twisted around each other in sequence. Two strands joined, one bright white like the light of the moon, pure as the reflection in a quiet pool, the other a fiery golden corona ripped from the surface of the sun itself. Light blended, and mixed, and suddenly there was only one bolt of light, a giant spear hurtled from heaven from the hands of a magnificent angel, gleaming angrily in the light. That is all there was, all there was time to see, before that bolt from heaven, a hundred times more powerful than any digimon there had dreamed of becoming, struck home with a thunderous rush.
For that brief moment, the world shook. That massive, titanic body, a construction of stone large enough that one could barely see it curve, the sculpture of nature that had passed on the steps of its constant dance through space for uncounted eons, shook. The tremble disrupted tidal patterns all over the world, triggered earthquakes in distant fault lines as the world attempted to adjust for the stress put upon it, and rattled dishes on the other side of the world. Even the moon trembled a little, as if it had been pulled from its perfect contemplation of the skies, before it returned to normal.
Two specks of light could be seen shrinking and falling, before a swooping Rapidmon from the sidelines caught a falling, unconscious Patamon and Gatomon as they headed toward the ground.
And the Monarch screamed, a scream of fury and pain and terror all rolled into one. Tentacles shriveled into wisps of dust and ash as the flames covered the body. Skin was ripped apart, muscle sheared through like paper, explosions erupting inside that horribly malformed body. Somehow, the massive legs hidden inside that writhing monster collapsed, and the Monarch crashed to his knees, humbled by that single strike of angelic power. His eyes rose back to the battlefield very slowly.
Eight Megas and thousand of other digimon were closing in on him. Thousands of humans, carrying thousands of weapons, were closing on his body with one aim in mind, putting this monstrosity out of their life forever. The entire sky was filled with dots as digimon and airplanes, released from the stupor that the huge battle had inflicted on them, rose into combat formations. None of them were his match, even in this weakened state, he could crush any of them like they were nothing more than ants. But they had numbers. Like a swarm of wasps, they could rip him apart one piece at a time, at a ferocious cost to themselves, but they could do it. And from the look in their eyes, it was pretty clear that they were willing to pay that price.
Fear entered the heart of a king of fear. A nightmare dawned on the lord of nightmares. Here he was trapped. Here he was vulnerable. Here, sheer weight of numbers could spell his downfall.
Power gathered within him. Turning, he gestured, and began to open a gate.
TK's eyes widened as he felt space and time shift under him. Only one thought fit into his tired brain at that moment, but it was enough.
That crazy bastard, he thought in appreciation as the scope of Mr. Hida's plans unfurled on him.
"What's happening?" Rosemon managed to grab two lesser digimon, keeping them from flying off in the sudden typhoon-level winds that had sprung out of nowhere.
"He's too big, he's ripping a hole in space time!" Omnimon roared over the deafening din. Even he was struggling to keep from being blown away. "It's not a natural gate, so it's not occurring right! It's sucking him back through, and everything else that's not nailed down is coming with him!"
"Well that's just grand!" ImperialDramon howled. "So what do we do now?"
"All of you are on disaster control duty as of right now!" Omnimon shouted back. "Time to get moving people!"
Gravity suddenly returned to the Void.
"What is that?" Tai screamed out as the sudden new force offset everyone's current plans for combat.
"It's the effect of a large gate. It's like a whirlpool dragging everything in!" Kari shouted triumphantly, casting a group of bright lights directly at Khartan. "The Monarch must have been defeated. He's retreating to his own world."
"And that gives us our chance," TK commanded suddenly. "Tai, Matt, Sora, Ken, keep him busy. Everyone else, give me your full power."
They responded instantly, for once even before Khartan could. TK felt a wellspring of power build within him, even as four blurs closed on the suddenly disconcerted shadow in the middle of the whiteness. But it was not enough. TK could feel it, could sense that the power he had was somehow incomplete, that there was not enough.
"Hurry up!" Kari yelled to him.
"I'm trying. There's not enough power. I need more!" TK yelled, frantically searching for reserves of power that simply were not there. He scrabbled within himself desperately, but now he could come up with not enough to fill those last desperate pieces of his plan.
Sora screamed as Khartan seized her through her protective flames, and then smashed her hard enough to break half of her ribs. It was a horrible grating sound that felt like sandpaper on TK's raw nerves. He was crying in frustration as he reached inward again, praying to whatever gods there were that he could find what he needed.
There was a crack as Khartan shattered Ken's arms.
"TK," Davis's voice interrupted his soul-searching. "Catch."
Something bright and glowing crystal bright arced through the air of the Void with ease, and TK reached out automatically to snatch it out of the sky with lightning fast reflexes that any professional basketball player would have envied. He stared at the miniature star he held in his hands before he recognized it.
It was the essence crystal that Kari had discovered on the surface of Parsifal so long ago, that they had taken from LadyDevimon, and that Davis had secreted away for this one moment, when they would need it again. And now, larger than either the Ascendent or the Nadir, it rested comfortably in TK's hand.
TK's eyes met those of Davis. Davis grinned, and nodded once, even as Matt went down, spewing blood all over the white void.
This time the inner radiance that exploded forth was beyond even what TK had imagined when he dreamed up this mad plan. It filled him with a strength that he could not describe, that he was ready to employ at its fullest extent. Drawing upon their powers, all of their powers now, he gathered the light into one giant bolt of power, and hurled it unerringly at its target.
At the singularity box.
The bolt of raging silver lightning hit the stasis shield in the exact point where Chikara Hida had, and that one imperfection in the defenses that he had put into place with his death blow, allowed TK to shatter that red defensive field like it was merely glass.
Too late. Khartan understood his fate. Too late, as space twisted around them, did he know his peril.
The singularity, disturbed by the sudden rush of energy, triggered. It began to try and change, began to form the gate that would take that lethal object out of this universe, even as it began to be dragged along by the wake of the Monarch, falling ever towards that portal. As nature had intended, it aligned itself with that massive Gate, attracted to that power like a moth to a flame, strengthening the connection the more it was pulled along. Even as it did so, it began to twist space and time, drawing nearby things close to it as it activated. All that power had been waiting, like a row of dominoes, and TK had knocked over the first one. It began to react.
TK unleashed everything he had left, one last blast of power, striking Khartan head on. The dark creature screamed in rage and horror as he was sent drifting into the field of the singularity.
Before he could recover, the drag from the Monarch and the instability caused by TK's bolt of power caught up with reality. The singularity triggered. It jumped directly through the Void, intersecting the massive gate that the Monarch had created, and following that planar tidal pull. It sucked a lot of the Void, and Khartan, along with it. Khartan and his bomb were dragged along with the Monarch and his gate.
"Get us out of here!" TK screamed, panic stricken, and Kari, drawing upon reserves of power that she was not aware she possessed, reached out into the unknown and opened their own gate, sending them into their own world.
For a split second the Monarch of the Dark Ocean, the Emperor Khartan and a naked singularity were all present at the same time on the borders of the Dark Ocean. It only lasted an instant.
Then for the first time in history every shore in the Dark Ocean was fully illuminated. That also only lasted for an instant as well, but it was enough.
Had anyone survived, they might have commented on the noise.
Light flared in Odaiba. A huge, fountaining explosion erupted from where the Gate had been moments before, and tons of concrete and steel where thrown upward as the huge blast of fire and light annihilated what was left of the heart of the Utopia Corporation complex. Clouds of dust shot up into the air.
"Damn, that was close." TK rolled his eyes and collapsed into unconsciousness.
Moments later, Willis was there, Rapidmon blasting his way through the wreckage to find, bruised and battered almost beyond recognition, twelve humans lying in a rough circle.
"We need a medic over here!" He called, but the shout was unnecessary. A dozen men were already there, and then a dozen more, each eager to have a hand in saving the heroes that had already saved them. Colonel Galvanay was there then, swearing in a dozen languages that should any of those digidestined being dragged out of the ruins sustain any damage at all, he would personally flay the man responsible alive. Others rushed in to join, the knowledge that they had found their saviors, those who had been responsible for saving the world, running through the ranks like wildfire.
Digimon and human alike moved out of the way of the convoy carrying the injured children as they were moved into one of the main medical tents, seated on rough cots stripped from a nearby hospital, and covered with rough wool blankets. Each warrior, tried and exhausted, was placed next to the body of their sleeping digimon. For a few moments, the main tent was quiet inside, surrounded by the wall of the curious, the reverent and the just plain tired.
"All right people." Willis came out of the entrance. He clapped his hands together loudly enough to start several dozing patients out of a sound sleep. "They've left things on this end in our hands, so we better get going on it…don't you think?"
There were several grunts of approval and then the men and women and digimon surrounding the medical tent went back to the front lines.
"What's up?" Daniel and what was left of European Legion London came trotting up beside Willis, who looked at them sadly. Already two members in the hospital, and they were still ready for action.
"We've got to free the city of Tokyo." Willis stated firmly. "Let's get down to work."
The tired digidestined moved out, and into history.
Wind blew in a gentle torrent, ocean air, crisp and clean, bringing with it the smell of the sea, and blowing the constant dust away from the procession. Sunlight shone out of a suspiciously cloudless sky, and it was bright enough that light glinted off of every piece of polished brass and steel, the gold pennants of every flag. Thousands of boots glimmered in the sunlight, and thousands of newly stitched blue uniforms glowed comfortably in the cool breeze. Today, there was no construction down on the ruined piers, none of the usual sounds of demolition of those houses too battered to stand up. Today there was only silence, respectful, reverent and proud.
The IDEF was going home.
It had taken two weeks to reconstruct enough of the waterfront for the big ships to fit in, and outside the harbor, the ships were waiting. Container and cargo ships coming into Tokyo harbor, laden with the supplies that the world had sent to rebuild the fallen metropolis, hovered anxiously outside the gates to the sea. Some carried vast quantities of food and other comestible supplies for the survivors of the biggest urban battle in history. Others carried hundreds of tons of building steel, plate glass windows and plumbing supplies that would be the foundation of the new Tokyo.
Already, the jewel of the east was rising again. Less than a hundred years after being destroyed the last time, the Phoenix was rising again, this time looking to become more impressive than she had been the last time, a towering edifice of concrete and steel that would mark the way into a new millennium. A monument to the perseverance and triumph inherent in the human spirit. And not just to the human spirit, for hundreds of digimon were working aside the humans.
But they were not working today.
Rank by rank, row by row, columns evenly spaced, the IDEF seemed to stretch off to infinity. Companies, once full of men, had shrunk to the size of platoons or smaller, leaving comrades behind, either in the rubble or in the hospital. But every man left was standing there at attention, ignoring the bright pounding sunlight, and rejoicing in the simple fact of being alive. Above every formation flags waved proudly in the breeze, a cornucopia of different symbols and images marking men and women from a hundred countries. With them, their uniforms different, their ranks more ragged, were the thousands of children who had risen to fight for the IDEF, thousands of digidestined and their digimon, who had come halfway around the world, to fight a battle that had not been theirs. They had suffered as no child should have had to, they had seen death and disaster, served in the front lines of a war as vicious as any ever fought. They had met all those challenges, and survived, and then triumphed.
And now they were going home.
Ships waited, huge passenger liners, donated by their owners to have the honor of carrying the shining legions home to their own nations. It was an event being watched from all over the world as a thousand new outfits with their cameras and microphones descended on the event, but none of them dared break the profound silence that had followed the final remarks by General Sir Thomas Alexander, who was being lauded over six continents as one of the best generals that Britain had ever produced. There was even talk in London of setting aside a charity fund in his name, for the victims of the war.
"Move out!" Alexander's voice broke into the silence with a suddenness that could not quite hide the tear in his eye.
First the British went. Their arms snapped up and then they marched out of the carefully arrayed ranks, into the open corridors that were left between formations. The wind ruffled the pennants over their heads, but it did not perturb that stately march as company after company marched onto the ramp of the waiting cruise liner that would take them home. Behind them, their ranks tattered from their losses, came the members of the newly reformed European Legion Britain, a solid corps of digidestined and digimon who would help form the nucleus of the European Legion. Many were children who had never been allowed to stay up late before, but they came now, in perfect order, their digimon trotting alongside with them, understanding the importance of the event.
Interspersed within them came the bagpipers, and they suddenly broke out in a rendition of Scotland the Brave that sounded even deeper and more meaningful than the version they had played in the middle of battle. There was a nearly invisible straightening of spines as the music swept through the remaining ranks.
Daniel, still at the head of the digidestined despite the fact that one leg was in a cast, and he was walking with the aid of a cane, swept one hand up in salute toward the figures standing at one end of the podium. Tai returned the salute gravely, and bowed as Daniel marched up the ramp and never looked back.
Then the French marched by, the bright tunes of the French Foreign Legion sounding as hundreds of Frenchmen marched up the ramps to their own cruise liner. Colonel Galvanay saluted General Alexander. Catherine, along with the rest of European Legion France, hundreds of digidestined moving in an organized herd, raised their bright French berets, their own personal addition to the newly designed IDEF uniforms. There was a cheer from both the crowd surrounding the pier, and the crowd on the podium at that. Then, with the music still trailing behind them, they went up the ramps and left.
Country by country they left, some only having a few dozen men and digidestined, some having thousands, all marching off in careful order, offering salute to the men and women would had died in battle, and to those left behind.
TK felt a sad smile grow on his face as they left. They were good men and women and digimon, all of them. And now they were going home, but this time, not for good. There would be more wars, he was sure. There was one that surpassed their imagination occurring out there right now. There would be more battles, more call for brave men and women to sacrifice their lives. And the shining legions would come back to do the job. Once a thing only of dreams, the IDEF was forever.
Then, finally, it was the only the Americans left.
Team Eagle led this parade, Michael resting in the wheelchair that Willis was pushing. He had taken shrapnel in the leg in that final stage of the battle, but the doctors swore that he would be up and about in no time. Behind them thousands of digidestined began to fall in together, and then came the soldiers, rank after rank of the survivors.
"Sound off!" Willis bellowed, unexpectedly loud. From rank after rank a chorus of untrained voices raised a magnificent tune.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored,
He has loosed the fateful lightening of His terrible swift sword
His truth is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps
l can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps
His day is marching on.
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.