AN: Merry Christmas! Hey guys, I'm back with chapter ten. Decided to have it posted as a bit of a Christmas present I guess. I know it's a few days early, but I probably won't even be near net on Christmas so you know, I had to do it now.

BlitzSnow: Sorry if you were hoping to see the fight this Chapter, I'd planned for it to be in the next one though so no worries it won't be too long.

shadriver: Thanks so much. I'm glad you liked the scene between Kari and Davis. I really enjoyed writing it myself.

SilverIcy: Sorry, no Beowolfmon and Rhihimon vs Olympians this chapter, but it will be in the next one and I promise to try and make it very good.

duskrider: You'll see how they'll react within the next two chapters I promise.

A thanks to Sightbent for being my beta. They've been a big help as usual.

Well, let the show begin.

Worlds Collide

Frowning, Merukimon looked ahead. He'd been so close to ending this farce and now it seemed that the enemy had called in reinforcements. He wouldn't have minded so much if they were like those he'd just fought, but no. He had not been that lucky. From the brief exchange he'd had with the white one, Merukimon knew that they fought like true warriors. He was fairly certain he and Dianamon still held the upper hand in terms of pure power, but now that the enemy was actually able to properly do battle with them, that would only matter if he and Dianamon managed to actually get a clean blow – or if it came down to a clash of attacks.

"The two of ye seem as though ye will be far better opponents than your companions," said Merukimon, readying his knife as Dianamon quickly came to his side. She too had seen Beowolfmon's display. She assumed the black digimon could also fight at their level.

"I see that we agree on something, then," replied Beowolfmon as he readied his Beo Saber, "Tell me, why are you after the beast spirits?" Merukimon merely grinned.

"I do not question orders from my master, so I do not know… and even if I did. I would not tell ye," replied Merukimon as he vanished. Had he been fighting anyone else, they may have lost track of him – but not Koji. He was the warrior of light. His speed was unparalleled. Raising his Saber and pivoting to his left, he met Merukimon's knife. If the Olympian Mega was surprised by this, he did not show it.

"Ye are fast, but we have ye now," smirked Merukimon as he felt something nearing him. Glancing to his right, Koji saw Dianamon dashing towards him. Smirking himself, Beowolfmon merely focused on Merukimon once more. Before Dianamon could land a blow, Rhihimon appeared before her, his spear raised– he was nearly as fast as his brother.

Knocking her scythe upward and opening her guard for an attack, Rhihimon thrust his spear forward as Koji's leg flew into Merukimon's gut. Grunting, Merukimon disengaged as Dianamon strained herself to stay out of the way of Rhihimon's spear. The two Olympian megas backed away. They'd gone on the attack somewhat half-heartedly, wanting to test what they're new opponents could do. They didn't disappoint.

"Play time over?" grunted Rhihimon.

"Certainly," Dianamon replied, before the four Digimon went on the attack.

Kari and the other Destined exited the train in a hurry. Izzy monitored the status of the digital signals he'd locked onto as Kari led everyone to the park.

"This is kind of exciting," said Mimi as they weaved through the crowds on the sidewalks.

"You're telling me," Joe replied.

"I haven't run this much in a while…" frowned Izzy, "and now I remember why I never liked it," he grumbled as they crossed the street to the park. Sora giggled at this.

"You'll be fine Izzy," said Kari, "We're almost there."

The rest of the run through the park was silent and soon enough, the Chosen Children arrived at their destination, thinking they would be prepared for whatever they saw.

The key word being "thinking."

In front of them were Takuya, Zoe, and two more people they didn't recognize. Upon seeing them, Takuya had stopped in his tracks and muttered something that Kari could only assume was "Oh man." The Chosen Children – and Kari especially – had already removed Takuya and his friends from their list when it came to the identities of the Legendary Warriors. There had been too much evidence against them for the Chosen Children to believe it was them at the time… but apparently they were wrong.

"Takuya…?" asked Kari, shocked.

Takuya, for his part was wracking his brain for an excuse. He wondered if Kari and her friends had been close enough to see Koji and Koichi enter the Digital Rift. As he frantically tried to come up with something, a thought occurred to him.

Did they even need to keep their identities a secret? Based on the adventures Kari and her friends had told him about and what Ceresmon said she'd seen of the children he and the other warriors were supposed to work with, Kari and her friends were definitely the people they'd be fighting alongside.

The situation had changed too. They were no longer trying to get into the Digital World to retrieve their spirits and now that they actually had to work with the Digidestined – as they addressed themselves – Takuya didn't see any point in hiding things from them. If they were suspicious enough to ask about it then he'd tell them – and he was betting they were suspicious. Why else would they be here instead of at the meeting place? How did they even know they were here anyway?

"Hey Kari…"

"You…"

"You're one of the original Digidestined aren't you?" asked Izzy, interrupting Kari. Deciding to try to take this all in stride, Takuya replied.

"That's not what we're called," he said, "but since that's what you're most familiar with, I'll let you call us that for now." Izzy was about to ask another question until Kari spoke up.

"Why did you hide this from us?" She asked, her brows furrowed. Takuya looked at her and his heart cringed upon seeing the hurt in her eyes. Kari couldn't understand. She'd thought she and Takuya had been becoming such good friends – and now she was finding out he couldn't even trust her? Had she been too hasty with their growing friendship? How could she have a friend that didn't trust her?

I was right, she thought, now definitely isn't the time to be thinking of boys.

She'd been lying to herself that she wasn't interested in at least going on a date with him – to test the waters of course. It could have been something friendly so she could see if she really felt anything for him aside from physical attraction. Now though, she didn't think that would be happening any time soon.

"W-well… Um…" Takuya stuttered over his words. After seeing the look on Kari's face it clicked that he'd possibly ruined the progress they'd been making as friends.

Should I have been less cautious with the information? He asked himself, I didn't want to lose her friendship over this. Looks like I'll have to clear things up with her.

The only real friend Takuya had made from the Chosen Children had been Kari. Did he want to make friends with the rest? Yes, but she'd been his first so her friendship was important to him. Aside from that he had considered asking her out on a date – a friendly one – but a date nonetheless… though he would only label it as such in his mind. He had to fix this.

"At the time," said Zoe, saving her leader from something that was obviously brining him some discomfort, "We just wanted to get our spirits back. We had a lot of questions that needed answering and honestly we didn't think you'd believe anything we told you about us until you saw it for yourselves. Not to mention that we're a very cautious group. We don't give up information as easily as you all do."

"Spirits? What are those? T.K. asked.

"Follow us," said J.P. before Takuya could start explaining. The group made their way back to the Warriors' favorite little spot in the park and as they got comfortable, Takuya spoke up.

"Well, we have a very different way of digivolution compared to your group. Admittedly, yours is the more practical of the two, but I like ours so I'm not complaining," he replied, beating around the bush since he wanted to ease into this.

"So what is it?" asked Cody.

"Well, you guys told us about your partner Digimon, right?" asked Takuya, "We don't have those."

"What?" asked Izzy, his brows furrowed in confusion as he took a seat in the grass, "but that makes no sense. How would you even attempt to battle against other Digimon? How could you have possibly saved the Digital World?"

"We get our power – and our namesake – from the set of warriors that first brought the Digital World together," Zoe replied, "They were known as the Ten Legendary Warriors. They sacrificed themselves to unify the Digital World, but they left behind their spirits to protect it."

"So you summon their spirits to do battle?" asked Sora, not quite understanding. She didn't see how something like that could work.

"Sort of…" Tommy replied, trailing off as he tried to think of a way to explain.

"There's probably no way to actually explain this any differently, so I'll just come out and say it," Takuya said, "Through the process known as Spirit Evolution we become one with the warrior spirits and turn into Digimon ourselves. That's how we do battle."

Takuya was met with silence.

"You're kidding… right?" asked Yolei. She'd been the first one to recover from the shock that Takuya's declaration had put the Chosen Children in. She couldn't believe that he was telling the truth. That sounded impossible. Disregarding all the technical details that she will probably never understand, she couldn't believe Takuya and his friends could even still be alive.

She remembered that the other Digidestined and herself could sometimes get hurt while just being on the sidelines of a battle between Digimon. But to actually be the one doing the fighting? Just the thought of it sent shivers down her spine. He couldn't be telling the truth. He just couldn't.

Takuya shook his head.

"No. As I said, your way is more practical. You probably had a lot less brushes with death than we did…" he replied, trailing off as he thought about the many times his fractal code had appeared around his body after a defeat. Luck had been the only thing to save him and the other warriors from being killed and he knew it.

"Do you have any proof?" T.K. asked skeptically. He wasn't about to take a story like that at face value.

"Not right now, no," J.P. replied, "maybe if it was night time we would show you, but we aren't taking the risk of being seen Spirit Evolving in broad daylight."

"I still don't understand," frowned Kari, "if you all are our predecessors, why did you seem so surprised when we were telling you about our adventures?" Izzy nodded here, agreeing with Kari's question. It didn't make much sense to him either. Though the tech-genius had a few guesses, he just wanted to be sure.

"To be honest, your adventures didn't surprise us," Zoe replied.

"They sound like the norm, actually," added Takuya.

"Yeah," Zoe agreed, "What really surprised us was how much the Digital World changed. We know a lot of time passed there in comparison to our world, but some of the changes we noticed just got to us."

"What changes?" asked Mimi.

"Well, the biggest one was kind of why we didn't trust you right away. You see, you told us that you'd been called to the Digital world by Gennai – and on a higher level, Azulongmon. You told us he was the Digital World's protector. When we were in the Digital World it had three protectors. None of which went by Azulongmon," said Takuya.

"Yeah," added Tommy, "back when we were there it was protected by Cherubimon, Seraphimon, and Ophanimon; our guide had been Lady Ophanimon – and truthfully, we've never even heard of a Digimon by the name of Azulongmon."

"Furthermore, the only time you ever mentioned Seraphimon and Cherubimon was during a fight where Cherubimon had been corrupted and turned into Kerpymon according to what Koji said. That was fairly concerning to us – especially because that wasn't the first time he'd been turned dark side," J.P. added, frowning at the memories of their time doing battle against Kerpymon.

"Next, during our time in the Digital World there were these Digimon known as Trailmon. They were basically trains that allowed for travel around the world. We thought it odd that you never mentioned them and all we can assume is that they don't exist anymore," Zoe said, a scowl slowing making its way onto her face. She already wasn't looking forward to the extra walking that would need to be done once they started making more frequent trips to the Digital World.

The Chosen Children were surprised to say the least. They couldn't imagine that someone aside from Azulongmon could be the protector of the Digital World and now they find out that it wasn't even a "someone," but instead it was multiple Digimon. The very idea was odd to them.

"Okay, so assuming that you're telling the truth," started Joe, "Why couldn't you have told us this sooner?"

"Like Zoe said, we don't give information as easily as you all do. We're very cautious – which is probably Koji's fault – so we just didn't tell you. We felt the need to wait," Takuya replied. Before any of the other Digidestined could speak up, Izzy spoke, intent on getting some of his other questions answered.

"So, if you become your Digimon, what were those corresponding Digital Signals in the Digital World I picked up?"

"What signals are you talking about?" asked Tommy. Realizing that the Warriors had no idea what he was talking about, Izzy told them what Digital Signals were and explained how it varied between Digi-eggs and Digimon and how the ones that matched them were off.

"I think – I think he's talking about our Beast Spirits," J.P. said.

"Beast Spirits?" asked Cody.

"Yeah, the Ten Legendary Warriors had a set of spirits for each of them. A Human Spirit and a Beast Spirit," Zoe replied.

"Ceresmon brought us our Human Spirits, but she hadn't felt safe retrieving our Beast Spirits. Koji and his brother Koichi went to retrieve them just before you guys came. Plutomon's forces were moving in on them," Takuya replied.

"Yes, we were alerted to something moving towards them too… Tai, Matt, Davis, and Ken went to try and protect them," said Sora, a frown making its way onto her face as she worried about Matt.

The two groups continued to talk from there, discussing what differences there were between the versions of the Digital World each group had protected. The conversation lasted for another hour before things finally screeched to a halt. It was still a bit awkward to talk for them and the fact that the warriors still hadn't talked about their adventures at all was beginning to get to the Digidestined.

"So…" started Yolei. She would have went on to ask about their adventures if not for the Digital Rift that opened up behind the Legendary Warriors. Quickly, the two groups focused on the rift, though the Digidestined were tense. They'd never seen anything exactly like that before and their first thoughts were that it could be hostile. Their worries were soon put to rest when Koji and Koichi walked out of the rift, followed by Tai, Matt, Ken, Davis, and Ceresmon in human form. The six humans looked battered and bruised, but it was better than the condition Ken, Davis, and T.K. had returned in the last time.

"What happened?" asked Takuya, "Did you get the Beast Spirits?" Koji merely nodded in confirmation as he eyed the Digidestined. Turning back to his leader, he arched a brow, clearly not amused. Shrugging, Takuya told him he'd fill him in. Sighing, Koji held up his D-Tector. Takuya knew he was agreeing to get the full story later in his own stubborn way as he and Koichi transferred the Beast Spirits back to their friends.

"We got there just in time to save their Digimon from being deleted," said Ceresmon.

"These Olympian Digimon are strong," said Koichi, frowning, "They fight like us." Takuya frowned, during their adventures there weren't many Digimon who fought like true warriors and not just powerhouses throwing around their weight, but the ones the Legendary Warriors had encountered were always their greatest enemies.

"Tell us everything," said Takuya, slipping into his leader mode.

Koji was only too happy to comply.

To Be Continued…

So, here is chapter ten. Sorry it's kind of short, but I needed to end it here. The Digidestined finally find out about the Legendary Warriors! Whoop! I know you guys didn't get the conclusion of the fight between Koji, Koichi, Dianamon, and Merukimon here, but I don't worry it will be in the next chapter. Review please, it'll get me extra motivated to update. Till next time guys! And again, Merry Christmas!

Oh, and before I go, there is a poll on my profile I'd like you guys to check out.