Chapter Two: The Return
As the streetlights came on over Odaiba, Daisuke, Ken and Taichi raced along the path that ran through Kaihin Park, heading for the grove of sakura trees where Koushiro had asked the Chosen Children to meet.
It was darker in the park, because there were no streetlights here, but a different sort of luminance brightened the night for them. Shortly after leaving the soccer field, all three of their digivices had begun to glow. Ahead, Daisuke could see a similar glow, which meant that the rest of the digivices were also lit.
"We're here," Taichi panted, as they reached the group of teenagers. "What's going on?"
"Now that everyone is together," Koushiro said, "I'll do my best to explain." He hesitated, and Daisuke saw him glance down at something displayed on the laptop he held. "I should warn you, though, that most what I'm about to say is speculation."
"Just tell us what you think is happening, Koushiro," Yamato told him from where he stood with one arm around Sora. "Your guess is probably better than anything the rest of us could come up with."
"I guess I'll start with what I know for sure," Koushiro began. "Early this morning, I woke up to find a message on my computer. At first I didn't know that it was a message, but I soon recognized it as some sort of binary code, a kind I had only received from one place before."
"The Digiworld," Daisuke murmured. Beside him, Ken unconsciously clutched his D3 tighter in one hand, the indigo light shining out between his clenched fingers.
Koushiro frowned at the interruption, but continued. "Right. Not only that, but it was sent approximately three years ago, right after we fought Belialvandemon. I'm not exactly sure who or what it's from, though I think we can assume for now that Gennai sent it. I had some trouble deciphering the specifics of the code, but Miyako helped me solve it."
For the first time, Daisuke noticed that Miyako was standing just behind Koushiro, close enough so that with one more step she would have been pressed against him. She blushed slightly when the older boy said her name, but spoke out clearly.
"It took some time," she said, "but we were able to figure it out. It's sort of a riddle…I'll read it to you." Miyako cleared her throat slightly, and read from a piece of paper with hastily scribbled characters on it.
"'The world has been reformed, and shapes that once were are no more
Proof and problem found in Heiankyō, where there is need for only four.
To the beginning the rest must go, to restore the virtues that held the balance just so
Eight tools cast to help fight the foe; free the captives or all shall fall to ash and woe.
Two are born of shadow, from fire only one,
Three in forms of water, and two are trapped in stone.'"
Miyako lowered the paper and looked up at them, her glasses reflecting the maroon glow from her D3. There was a moment of silence, and then Daisuke decided to go ahead and say what everyone was thinking.
"What the hell does that mean?"
"We don't really know," answered Koushiro. "Although I think I can explain the first line."
"Explain away," said Takeru. The blonde was standing close to Hikari, not that Daisuke was surprised. He had given up on anything happening between him and Hikari years ago, tired of being second best when it came to the girl's affections. Plus, as he'd gotten older, Daisuke had realized that his tastes were a little differently oriented than he had first suspected.
Koushiro paused to gather his thoughts. "When we destroyed Belialvandemon, we somehow triggered the reconfiguration of the data that makes up the digital world. It's sort of like rebooting your computer, except to a much greater degree. Essentially, the entire world was remade."
"Even our digimon?" asked Iori.
"Yes."
"But that's all right," Takeru said. "Their data would have been be recollected in the digieggs."
Koushiro was shaking his head. "I'm not certain that's how it worked this time. I'm sure the types of digimon we remember will exist, but they may not be our digimon anymore."
"What are you talking about, Koushiro?" asked Mimi uneasily.
"I'm saying that a Tentomon may exist who isn't my partner, who doesn't even know who I am."
Daisuke felt himself pale. The thought of finding Chibimon or V-mon only to discover that his digimon did not remember any of what they had shared was a devastating one.
"But you don't know for sure," Ken said.
Koushiro looked at him. "No, I don't. And I hope I'm wrong."
"What about the next part of the riddle," Sora said, obviously trying to change the subject to something less grim. "Heiankyō…that sounds familiar to me."
Miyako smiled. "It should," she told the redheaded girl. "I actually found out what it meant from one of your father's books, Sora-san. Heiankyō is the old name for the city of Kyoto."
Jyou smacked his forehead. "Oh! That reminds me! Did any of you catch the news before you left?" They all shook their heads. "Well, I got distracted when my digivice became activated and forgot to mention it," he said, sounding a bit embarrassed, "but before Koushiro called me, I saw on the news that digimon have appeared in Kyoto!"
"That explains some of the second line," said Koushiro thoughtfully.
Ken nodded. "Those digimon could be the proof or the problem, or even both. But who are 'the four'?"
No one knew.
"I'm not sure about that," Yamato finally said, "but the part about going back to the beginning could mean the camp where we first entered the digital world."
Hikari shook her head. "No," she said, speaking for the first time, "not all of us were there." She met her brother's eyes. "Everything really started at Hikarigaoka." (1)
"She's right," Taichi said. "That's where all of us had our first encounter with the Digiworld."
"And the 'virtues' can only be our crests," said Sora. "So something must have happened to them when the digital world was remade."
"I agree," said Koushiro. "Any ideas about the rest of the riddle?"
There weren't any, but Daisuke was getting tired of talking anyway. "I say we go to Hikarigaoka," he said.
"Yeah," Iori agreed. "Maybe we can somehow get back into the digital world from there."
"Right," Takeru added. "Our digivices were activated, so there must be a digiport around here somewhere."
"Well, what are we waiting for?" Daisuke asked, and they were gone, sending up a whirl of sakura blossoms in their wake. (2)
The first thing that struck Takeru as odd as they approached Hikarigaoka was the lack of people they encountered. The streets were strangely devoid human life, and many of the windows of the apartment buildings they passed were dark. The second thing was that the closer they got, the colder it seemed to get. Intellectually, Takeru knew that it was a warm summer night, but the hair had risen on his arms and he could see his breath when he exhaled.
He could also feel Hikari shivering where she brushed up against him, and Takeru grabbed her hand as they ran. Her fingers were like ice. "Almost there," he whispered encouragingly, and got a quick smile for his efforts.
Finally, they reached their destination and stood at the district's boundary, looking up. The bridge loomed before them. It was completely dark; even the streetlights here had been mysteriously snuffed out, and if not for the rainbow glow of their digivices, Takeru would not have been able to see his own hands before his face.
"Well, we're here," Jyou said. "Now what?"
"Why is it so cold?" Mimi asked, wrapping her arms around herself. She was clad only in a short summer dress.
"It's okay, Mimi," said Taichi, shrugging off his light jacket and wrapping it around her shoulders. "Should we keep going?" he wondered aloud.
Takeru frowned: something told him that wasn't the right. Apparently, Hikari agreed with him.
"No," she said. "I think…I think we should wait here."
No one questioned her. By now, they had all learned to take Hikari seriously when she offered up advice, because she was usually right. Takeru sometimes thought his friend was psychic. Huddling together to form a loose circle, the twelve teenagers waited.
"I wish whatever we're waiting for to happen would just happen already," Daisuke complained, kicking an empty can down the sidewalk in frustration. Ken laid a calming hand on the auburn-haired boy's shoulder.
Takeru sighed, and shifted his weight a bit, causing the digivice clipped to his belt to brush against Hikari's. There was a sudden flash, and Hikari gasped as a blinding cylinder of light rose up from their D3's.
"Quick!" Miyako said, catching on immediately. "Everyone put your digivices together!" She held her D3 out toward the middle of the circle they had formed, and the other Chosen Children followed suit.
The effect was instantaneous, as a large, multicolored column of light formed from their digivices. Takeru tried to follow it, but it rose higher than he could see.
"What's that?" Sora suddenly cried.
Takeru's eyes snapped back to the base of the column, and sure enough he could just make out a figure taking shape in its center. As the figure became clearer, it took the form of a young boy, a boy with dark blue eyes and who was bald except for a tuft of brown hair fashioned into an unmistakable ponytail on the top of his head.
"Gennai?" Yamato asked in disbelief.
"Very good, Child of Friendship," said the boy who was Gennai. "I am glad you all figured out how to contact me- we have important matters to discuss."
"I'll say," muttered Daisuke.
"I apologize for the cold, but I needed all the energy I could get to appear here, even though the barriers between our two worlds are weakening." It was strange to hear Gennai speaking in such a childish voice. It seemed that every time they met him he was younger, Takeru reflected.
"Barriers?" Koushiro questioned.
"Yes. Surely you, the Child of Knowledge, would have noticed such a thing." Koushiro only looked at the boy expectantly, unaffected by the taunt. It would appear that Gennai's attitude matched the rest of his childlike form.
"Explain it to us, Gennai," Ken said.
"The barriers are bands of energy, layered between the worlds to prevent the crossing over of material from one world to another," the boy explained. "However, the last time the digital world was reconfigured, the barrier that separates it from this world did not form properly. There have always been weak points- I believe you call them 'digiports'- but now the barrier has become so thin in some places that it takes powerful digimon only a bit of effort to cross over. This is a dangerous situation, as you can well imagine."
"That explains how the digimon got into Kyoto," said Jyou, almost to himself.
"But why, Gennai?" Takeru asked. "What went wrong in the reconfiguration?"
Gennai sighed heavily, a gesture that seemed much too adult for his childish form. "Three years ago, Belialvandemon was destroyed, this you know. What you do not know is that at the exact moment his data was pulled apart, the digital world began its reconfiguration process. His virus data in its free form was able to integrate with the foundations of the newly recreated world."
Takeru didn't like where this was going.
"The result was a major imbalance of dark and light," Gennai continued. "The spirit of Belialvandemon caused the creation of more evil-hearted digimon than good. They imprisoned the four guardians of the digital world in the regenerated Destiny Stones, and tried to prevent the reformation of the only things that could restore the balance."
"Our crests," Taichi said.
"Yes. But I was able to ensure that this did not happen by using the last of my energy to hide some of them deep inside the data sequences of the digital world. Of where they are now though, and in what form, I know very little."
"But what about our digimon?" Iori asked the question that was on all of their minds.
Gennai looked troubled. "I do not know what became of your partners," he said, "but I expect that they are somewhere in the digital world. Probably grouped together, as they were so connected before the reconfiguration."
"But what can we do without our digimon?" Mimi asked. "It was dangerous enough in the Digiworld before this all happened; it would be even worse now without Palmon by my side."
"You will find a way," came the cryptic reply.
"Wait," Hikari spoke up. "You said you were able to hide some of the crests, but what about the others?"
"Four of the twelve crests I managed to hold onto during my own reconfiguration."
"And you were planning on telling us this when?" Taichi muttered rhetorically.
"Twelve? Don't you mean nine?" Miyako asked. "Daisuke, Iori, and I never had crests of our own."
The boy smiled. "This time you do. Actually, yours are the ones I managed to save, along with the Crest of Kindness." The light flared, and four sets of tags and crests suddenly appeared floating in the column before them.
Takeru couldn't believe it. There are three more crests?
"Take them," Gennai said, and Daisuke, Ken, Miyako, and Iori reached into the light.
"What does it stand for?" Daisuke asked, staring down at his crest in wonder. All Takeru could see from this angle was that it was the same greenish-blue colour he had once heard described as cyan.
"Yours is the Crest of Loyalty." Gennai turned to Miyako. "And you are the Chosen Child of Compassion," he told her.
"And mine?" Iori stood next to Takeru, cradling his crest carefully with two hands. Takeru could see that his younger friend's crest was of the darkest green, and that the symbol on it was an upside-down triangle with three, smaller triangles surrounding each of its edges.
"The Crest of Integrity."
"What about our crests, Gennai?" asked Jyou.
Gennai shook his head, his ponytail swinging back and forth almost comically. "It is as I said; the others were transformed and now rest somewhere in the digital world."
"So they could look like anything and be pretty much anywhere," said Yamato. "Great."
"What about the guardians?" Koushiro suddenly asked. "You said they were imprisoned inside of the Destiny Stones, but since the guardians of the digital world correspond to the four guardians of Kyoto, I would guess that in our world the Destiny Stones are the four great temples of Kyoto. That would explain why digimon appeared there." (3)
"You are correct in your thinking. The digimon there now have been sent to keep the guardians imprisoned," Gennai told them.
"Kyoto is the place where worlds collide," Miyako said, exchanging a glance with Koushiro, "we read about that. It's easier for spirits to cross over there than it is at any other place on Earth. Maybe the guardians of the digital world are imprisoned in the temples instead of the Destiny Stones."
"This is a likely possibility," said Gennai. "If so, you must release the guardians in your world."
"We're definitely going to need our digimon for that," Taichi said. "And I guess that means we need to get to the Digiworld as soon as possible to find them."
Gennai nodded. "Yes. Though be warned that the digital world is not the same place it was before. There is much darkness there." He looked around at the serious faces that surrounded him. "Do not despair; with your crests, I believe you will be able to overcome it. You must find them, before the digital world becomes completely unstable. If that happens, the entire digital plane may collapse, eclipsing this world and everything on it in darkness."
Takeru tried to swallow, and found he could not. Beside him, Hikari was biting her lip, her eyes fixed on a point somewhere beyond their little circle. She seemed very far away, and he resisted the urge to grab her hand again. Suddenly, Takeru noticed that the column of light had grown dim, and Gennai's image was beginning to fade.
"I cannot remain here for much longer," Gennai told them. "You must come now. Put your hands into the light."
"We don't really have choice, do we?" Jyou asked.
There was a brief moment of considering silence, and then Takeru spoke. "Even if we did have choice, we would go, wouldn't we?" He frowned. "At least, I know I would." He reached out to the shining pillar.
Takeru felt the warm light encompass his hand, his arm, and then his whole body as he was lifted up into the stream of energy. The other Chosen Children followed, and soon they were all drifting into another dimension.
(1) Hikarigaoka district is renamed Highton View Terrace in the dub.
(2) Yes, I know sakura trees bloom in April, but let's just pretend that they would last until July, ne?
(3) There actually aren't "four great temples of Kyoto" but I will be using four of the city's temples as the Destiny Stone equivalents. You know, creative license and all that jazz.