They're down to one. Kumbhiramon does not seem worried, even though he has nine digidestined staring back at him, James slowly struggling to his feet as Carmella clings to his arm and Shinsuke braces him upright. He's clearly not with it, eyes barely focused, and Kumbhiramon laughs at him, skittering forward on his thin legs to aim its pestle at him. Carmella screams and Shinsuke pushes them both aside, a challenge on his face as he stretches his hands out on either side of his body and waits.
"Shin-" James struggles to spit out, his eyes roving uncomfortably under his closed eyelids. Carmella's touch is the only thing that grounds him and he forces his eyes open, staring up at her. "Carmella- where-" She looks over her shoulder and he follows her gaze, finding Shinsuke standing face to face with Kumbhiramon, undisturbed by the creature's pestle hanging mere inches from his face. "What- what's he doing?"
They figure it out when Apollomon bursts out of nowhere and sends a flaming fist right at Kumbhiramon, the smaller digimon scrambling away just in time to miss most of the damage from the attack. Apollomon and Nakamura stand side by side, Shinsuke thrilled with himself, when Kumbhiramon dives past him and separates into six, diving- one towards Apollomon, one towards Carmella and James. Two more lunge towards MetalSeadramon and Beelzebumon, another landing between Lilamon and Garudamon, just for the final copy to swipe through where Aiden English, Xavier Woods and AJ Styles are hiding with their young digimon, scrambling and diving and doing all sorts of damage while they're not expecting it and unable to properly defend themselves right away.
"NO!" Seth yells, holding his digivice up. "METALSEADRMON!" He can't digivolve further, but the glow of energy stabs through and powers his partner up, allowing him to fight free from the ocpy and rescue Beelzebumon, who could barely target the copy and had been quickly knocked aside, left to struggle until now. MetalSeadramon dissolves the copy with a blast of lightning from its horn, turning quickly to rid the others of their own copies. Once the three new digidestined are safe, he turns back to the fight and watches with some amusement as Rusev screams at Bakemon, who shreds through one of the copies like it's nothing.
Trying to figure out which isn't a copy is almost easy, any time the one standing between Lilamon and Garudamon are it, as the others get taken care of one by one. Seth stands with his hands on his hips and frowns at the true Kumbhiramon. "So now we've figured out your trick," he calls out to him. "It won't be so easy to confuse us next time. What now?"
Kumbhiramon stares at him blankly for a long moment. "I suppose," he says with a smirk," the only thing to do now is take ALL OF YOU WITH ME!" and he lunges again Seth's eyes widening when he rushes past Seth without him seeing anything.
The glow that comes from his spirit, the power from the digiworld he's collected for who knows how many years, pulses darkly and Seth swallows hard, remembering that power. Hating it. We could lose any hope the next time I can pay attention to what's going on, he realizes with a sigh.
Squaring his shoulders, Seth motions at Kumbhiramon. "Bring it on," he urges him, glancing around for support while he waits for the tru fight to begin..
