The Fate of the World: The Last Leg
by Creedogmon
edited by Godeerc VanDrey
Category: Digimon
Genre: Fantasy, Action/Adventure
Rating: PG
Language: English
Summery: The group is heading for Atlanta, but they're not the only ones.
A/N: Okay, I'm chugging along. I'm now officially farther along than I was two years ago. So, read on.
The Patron curves off the side of the road, which has since emptied, strangely. He leans his head down, softly loosens his jaw, and lays down Justine, who rouses.
"Ack!" she screeches, seeing the huge monster, but quickly composes herself, laughing. "That's one wacky, scary form you got there, Phillip."
The Patron returns to human form. Phillip kneels, "You okay?"
"Yep. We in Atlanta yet?"
Phillip signs loudly, looking down the road, "No, but we shouldn't be more than a half an hour away."
"That's good." Justine is breathing heavily. "Just tell me when you're ready to go."
"You bet." Phillip becomes quietly, looking into space pensively.
"Thinking hard?"
"Sorta. I'm just amazed about how some monstrous creature appears and we're mobilized in twenty minutes."
"Gotta save the world, don't we?"
Phillip's eyebrows lower. "How do we know that this thing is threatening the world?"
"I don't wanna take that risk. This things dangerous."
"I guess. The body count's only one."
Justine nearly explodes, "Body count?! Phillip, one death may not count for genocide, but it counts a homicide, and it sure wasn't playing tag with us back there. Now, I know you play video game twenty-six hours a day, but Stuart's not coming back to life when you hit the reset button."
Phillip replies coldly, "I'm ready," more hurt than defensive.
: : :
CJ O'Blackwell looks out the car window dully, as his mother edges forward in the small sedan on the interstate to Atlanta. CJ ruffles his unruly black hair and tries to sleep on his headrest. Unsuccessful, he turns to his left to look at his mother.
"Don't even start," she says without turning her head. "We're picking up your sister in Atlanta. We're not staying in town with those terrorists."
CJ wants to laugh, but wisely decides against it. Terrorists? It didn't look like a terrorist to me; it looked like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. And that big white…
CJ's jaw drops. He could have sworn, because of his daydreaming, he said that mammoth creature in the woods. He leans forward from the seat, scanning the woods for movement and…
"Wicked…," he mumbles.
"What?" Mrs. O'Blackwell prompts.
"Nothing. When will we get to Atlanta?"
"In this traffic? An hour." She sighs heavily and turns on the radio, which is a news story about the "terrorist" attack.
: : :
The woods are silent. A lone deer walks out onto a grassy field and starts to gnaw on some grass. A distant crack. Her neck erects quickly and her hear perk up. Another crack, then another. She turns around; the noises are coming closer. Within feet of her, just inside the woods, the cracks come. A trees falls beside her and she jets off like a rocket. Bullmon continues to run through the forest, the trees shattering in his path.
He suddenly crotches down a bit, then leaps into the air, the two boys on his back hanging on for dear life. He lands flatly on a small meadow within viewing distance of the highway. The boys get off the beast.
"Wild ride, Bullmon," Daniel comments.
"I know! Wasn't it great?" Eric adds, missing the sarcasm.
Bullmon looks pensive, "How close are we?"
Daniel looks at the highway through the trees, seeing a sign. "With your speed, twenty minutes. We're right outside downtown Atlanta. The auditorium is apparently in the Southern region of Atlanta, so we're very close. Phillip says he's gonna stay in Patron form. We can't miss that." He finished, with a smile.
Suddenly, there is the sound of an explosion from the highway. The three run to check it out. The black form the team's been trying to elude has suddenly emerged, quite conspicuously, from the asphalt. It slides through the highway, blocking all lanes as it creeps forward in a rather quick pace.
"Uh-oh," Eric turns to Bullmon, "Ready?"
"As ever," he replies.
Once again, the Bull jumps twenty feet into the air into the woods, the boys gripping his collar, their knuckles white.
: : :
I find riding on the Defender much more relaxing than hanging on to the Sanguine or in the arms of Harpymon. I've always enjoyed chasing my cat around my yard, but this is the first time I've truly appreciated his speed. Holding on to his ever rising shoulder blades, with Diana holding on to my waist with one hand, Virginia in the other, we're making great time. Harpymon, who has both hands free to hold Anna, glides above us.
Well, she was gliding above us; she swoops down to our eye level, beckoning us to stop. We slow and she lays down the rousing Anna. Her eyes pop open and she looks around, disoriented. "What?" she mumbles.
"You've been out for forty-five minutes," Diana tells her.
"We got away from the gliders. We've got Virginia. And this is Diana," I add, noting her bemused expression at Diana, "…and Harpymon," as I point behind her.
Anna jumps at first, but regains composure, though not completed in the know. "We in Atlanta yet?"
"Just outside the city limits," Diana states. "You know where we're going?"
"Yeah. Just get myself into air, and I'll show you the way."
: : :
Jessica sits anxiously in her seat. She can't dismiss this feeling of… desperation, vigilance… fear. She tries to relax. The Manhattan Select Girls is on stage, the highlight of the competition. Their director, a middle-aged woman with dyed hair is talking to them. Jessica can't hear her. In the enormous auditorium, with forty-foot ceilings and rows for hundreds of chairs, Jessica can barely hear her own breathing. She's tried several times to close her eyes and relax herself, maybe get a vision instead, but so far, has been unsuccessful.
Jessica grabs her chest with both hands. She can feel something. She feels the fear of extreme dangle, of struggle. She herself can't find a reason to be scared, but someone is, and she can feel it.
: : :
We land softly on the ground. Anna shows us the building. It's a huge auditorium.
"Let's go," Diana says, almost lightheartedly.
We don't get two steps when an enormous creature causes a shadow on the ground and lands hard enough to rumble the earth. It's only Bullmon with the ghostly pale Daniel and Eric in tow, who pretty much slide off and land in the soft grass.
Breathing as if he were hyperventilating, Daniel gets out, "It's coming."
Before I have time to realize what "it" is, we hear an explosion, which is followed by a distant rain of asphalt from the near by road. The black, formless mass emerges from the road, greeted by a shower of water from a pulverized water main, and then…
"Wonder of Star!"
The Inquirer blasts the black thing as she jumps from the gargantuan Patron, who is already crouched in attack position.
But the mass doesn't fight back. In fact, it remains stationary even after receiving a sharp blow from Justine. All of a sudden, it begins to rise in the middle and starts to take on a vague and featureless humanoid form. The extremities that serve as it arms start to form into menacingly sharp claws, but before any color appears, the previously putty-like material that was our enemy now shreds to tatters like cloth. The tearing continues up his arms and completely covers the body. It now separates from itself, leaving the rest of the black sludge on the ground. The tatters completely cover its body, which is bony at best. Its face is covered by a hood of layered tatters, and its face in unseen in an eerie, Grim Reaper-esque fashion. The demon is well over ten feet tall, but hardly looks like it from a distance.
I tell Harpymon to take Virginia and keep her safe unless we need her.
It raises his arms into the air and the leftover blackness comes to life, forming a huge globe, which emits a toxic green glow as it expands. The Patron, examining from the road, starts to run forward at it, toward the auditorium. "Deed of Creature!"
: : :
Jessica can hardly breathe because of the terror. She excuses herself, not having heard a note of the Manhattan singers, runs into an adjacent hall, and crouches on the floor, trying to make sense of the mental anguish. Barely a vision, she realizes an inkling of a thought. She pulls herself up and finds a godsend. She pulls down on the fire alarm. Turning her head, she sees the other students filing out of their seats, somewhat disdainfully. For a moment, she becomes tranquil and this odd pleasure, but the feelings surge up again.
Jessica finds herself on the floor, against the wall again, seemingly thrown by the realism of her vision. When regains her composure, she coughs. The air is littered with dust. It wasn't a vision. She runs through the dust, back into the auditorium, where people are screaming as they flee from the room. All the chairs are in upheaval and the latter of the back wall has been bombed away. That's when she sees Christopher. She runs to his side, "Christopher?"
"Jessica. We're in trouble." His pupils then shrink as he looks ahead.
Jessica turns. A ten-foot creature, complete hidden by black tattered cloth walks in. Jessica changes into the Sister and the Caretaker gets up beside her. "Are you…" she begins.
"Fine," he cuts her off. "This thing destroyed the school; it followed us here. We couldn't hold it off, so we came here."
"Matt and James are here," explains Jessica, unnecessarily, but I don't blame her for her disorientation. Diana, who is just behind the Siblings, pushes a chair off of herself.
"Diana?"
"Hey, Jessica. DigiDestined," she says, pointing to herself. "Duck."
"Huh?" Diana grabs Jessica by the collar and pulls her to the ground, as a flying gliding nearly misses her.
: : :
I get up, pulling out my sword, and destroy two gliders with two clean swipes.
I hear a scream from on stage, so I jump up, slashing on oncoming glider. On stage is a petite brunette, about my age, crouching behind a pile of chairs. Another glider comes toward us, so I create a defense aura around the two of us, into which a glider crashes. I pull her up, "Get outta here!"
Speechless, she nods but points to the other end of the stage, where a girl is crouched. "I'll get her. Go!" The girl runs off. I run toward her, but am knocked off course by a glider.
: : :
Matt looks up and sees Christopher deflected by the glider. He jumps up, but the Caretaker already has taken care of the glider, but is now holding off a hound. He points to the corner of the stage and yells, "Get her!"
Matt looks down and sees a tall redhead, hiding, white as a sheet. She looks up at Matt, crying, then turns her head to the left and screams. Matt looks to his right and seeing the oncoming glider. He grabs her and puts his arms tightly around her. He creates a tree to grow up between them and the glider, which shatters along with the trunk. Matt pushes away the fallen tree, grabs the girl by the hand, and takes her down the stairs. He points and she runs around the chaos and out the door.
He runs over to Daniel and the two begin to alternate trying to capture the demon creature with stone and branches, but each time, the cage is destroyed by a black tentacle from blob. When they abandon this plan, they witness several large risings in the black mass, who take the form of four-legged hellhounds, who rush toward the two. Matt and Daniel exchange glances before Daniel pushes Matt back, touches the ground and pulls a crude stone club from the ground. As the hellhounds come within reach, Daniel gives each a good smack to two of the beasts, which fall over. Daniel raising his club, baseball bat style, to the remaining dogs, but the herd of the them are caught in a tree cage, which crushes them.
"Hey, I was gonna hit them," Daniel complains to Matt.
"Hit that, Mike McGuire!" Matt replies.
Daniel turns and knocks away two gliders.
: : :
I slash at the oncoming minions with my sword, finding them far from powerful. Diana has chosen the more dignified attacking style: she picks up a chair and pounds mercilessly at anything that approaches her. Jessica grabs my shoulders and whispers in my ear, "I'm behind you; hold them off for a second." I hold my sword up ready, but the approaching hellhound looks up at me then jerks his head to the right, chasing nothing, but finally settling on another hellhound to attack. In fact, all the creatures are now attacking one another. I turn around. Jessica's eyes have gone milky. She's miraged all the fighters into attacking each other.
This leaves ample time for the Patron to stomp on the lesser canines. Spiremon is having a ball chomping the gliders with his beak. That only leaves the demon. Anna and Justine stand side by side, eyes fixed on the motionless demon. Their auras reigniting, they jump forward, aided by their powers.
"Wonder of Star!"
"Brightness of Cinder!"
The girls are now surrounded by unstable spheres of energy, which lurch forward and surround the demon. The tatters start to burn away and off-white bone is uncovered beneath. The revealed bone soon shatters. The torso is worn away first, then the arms and legs. The dissolving creature falls back into its gelatinous ooze. Within seconds, a form appears rising from the black stuff. The transformation is identical to before. The creature emerges again. But this time, the spread blackness creeps back toward the center, around its originator, and starts to rise on the edges while rotating slowly. It forms into a column, reaching to the ceiling.
It begins to glow with that same toxic green light. Now unoccupied with all the fighters gone, the whole team looks to the column. Our digivices begin to shrill loudly, and shoot beams of light toward the form, which seems to absorb them. The green glow brightens then dims to nothing, leaving the column somewhat hardened. A pounding stillness ensues. I watch as dust falls straight to the ground.
I look around. Jessica stands still, also looking around. Diana puts her chair down and Hawkmon flaps down beside her, which Virginia following close behind her, more for Katmondu than Hawkmon. Katmondu rubs against my leg, oblivious. Spiremon devolves and sits down by James, who appears on the stage. Daniel and Matt exchange glances and revert to normal form. Anna and Justine stare at the column close up, not saying a word. Phillip stands dwarfed by the huge void that used to be the outside wall. Eric and Wormmon come out from around the corner.
There is a profound silence until we hear, "Wicked."
This comes from C.J. O'Blackwell, who stands, eyes wide open, standing at the very middle of the destroyed wall.
: : :
A/N: I find it very strange that I've continued to write the sequels to all these stories when I've yet to publish them. And it's not like I don't spend a lot of time on the Internet or anything. Oh, well.
(Sonriso) - Wait a second, did they win? Huh? I'm so confused! Creedogmon, you screwed everything up. Ever heard of tying up loose ends?
A/N: Halfway through the story, Sonriso?
(Sonriso) - Oh.