128

Invasion

"'That awful night … I seed 'em … I was up in the cupalo … hordes of 'em … swarms of 'em …'" – H. P. Lovecraft, "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"

As her latest nightmare rose to previously untouched heights of panic terror, Mimi managed to snap awake. She lay in a cold sweat for a few moments, reassuring herself that she was now awake. The Takenouchis had provided a futon for her and Palmon in Sora's room. By turning her head on the pillow she could see Sora, still asleep and perhaps grappling with a nightmare of her own. Piyomon, who had stayed by her partner's side as if to ward off bad dreams, had dozed off and looked just like a roosting bird – a ball of pink feathers with her head sitting atop it.

Mimi couldn't help but smile a little at the sight, and as the seconds ticked by she lay watching the little Digimon's breathing. Tired or not, she had no immediate desire to go back to sleep.

She had been dreaming that she was back in America, shopping for clothes, but everything was wrong. The fabrics whispered, the lights flickered, the mannequins… In the end she had been trying to get out, but the doors were closed, and dead faces she recognized were reflected in the glass.

The shuddered, thoroughly disheartened again by the memory of it. She tensed when the tones of hers and Sora's D-Terminals suddenly broke the silence. After a second she rolled over and reached for hers.

"I'll protect you… Mimi…" Palmon muttered in her sleep.

Mimi thumbed open the D-Terminal's panel and found a message waiting for her from Koshiro.

"Huh?" She quickly sat up, reading through the message again. Wakened by the movement, Palmon opened her eyes and blinked up at her partner. Mimi crawled out of the futon and touched Sora on the shoulder. "Sora-san?"

Sora started suddenly awake, and Mimi knew that she really had been having a nightmare.

"Mimi-chan? What's the matter?"

"It's from Koshiro-kun," Mimi said, holding up her D-Terminal as if Sora could read it from where she lay. "Something's happening! You got one too."

Now wide awake, Sora quickly got up and retrieved her own device, finding an identical message from Koshiro waiting for her.

I've heard from Gennai-san, it said. Something strange is happening, and the distortion is growing, and the Real World is feeling its effects. There may also be a chance that Daisuke-kun and the others have been found. We should all get ready and meet. Please confirm when you get this message. Communications are breaking down, and the D-Terminals may be affected.

"Sora?" Piyomon asked sleepily. "What is it?"

"I don't know," Sora said as she typed up a quick response. "But we need to get going."

Yamato was prepared for Koshiro's message when it came. He had come to the point of choosing useless wakefulness over sleep made equally useless by troubled dreams. The nightmares of this latest night seemed to have lost something of their realism and detail, but their frequency had increased to the point where they seemed to occupy every minute of unconsciousness. Yamato had been awake at the time his father had left for work.

When he received the D-Terminal message, he had hardly come to the end of it before he was heading for the door, Gabumon following behind him. They'd known that something unusual was going on. The television wasn't picking up anything, and Gabumon had complained to Yamato about feeling cold and creepy without knowing why. When they reached ground level, Yamato wasn't surprised to see Taichi and Agumon already outside and heading for Odaiba Mansion.

Taichi and his partner had actually been outside a long while. He had slipped out as quietly as he could not long after his father left to begin the commute to the mainland, since he dreaded having to answer any questions his mother might ask about Hikari and her whereabouts. She couldn't help but have noticed his recent tenseness, and naturally she would be worried. What if she asked him to put her in touch with her daughter?

"Taichi!"

Taichi turned his head without slackening his pace much. "Yamato, do you know anything?" he called back.

"Not yet."

And that was the end of the conversation. The boys redoubled their speed, and their partners, with shorter legs and encumbered by their usual disguises, were hard-pressed to keep up with them.

About them as they ran they could see the signs that something was wrong. Traffic stood still, without so much as an idling engine, and an oppressive silence had fallen on Odaiba. What noise there was only added to the strangeness. Yamato noticed for the first time what Taichi had before him – the slight trembling of the ground – and panicked yells could be heard not far distant.

"Taichi!" exclaimed Agumon suddenly. Spurred by new hope, Taichi had been focused on getting to Koshiro's apartment as quickly as possible. Had Agumon not called his name he wouldn't have noticed the line of dark figures across the street. At first he mistook them for normal people, in spite of the nasty feeling that even a brief glance had instilled in him. No human being, and few Digimon, had ever appalled him like that.

Slowing down to get a better look at them, he saw them for what they were, though he had no name for them. They stood in a widely spaced row, inky black things with proportions clearly inhuman. Even at a distance he could see the eerie stare of their unblinking eyes.

Taichi stopped entirely and returned their gaze, almost frozen by his strange repugnance. His pause gave Yamato and Gabumon time to catch up.

"What are they?" Yamato asked, but Taichi could only shake his head in confusion.

Then the creatures went into motion. As if at a signal they all came hopping across the street towards the two Chosen Children and their Digimon, moving with surprising speed. Agumon and Gabumon threw off their disguises.

"Baby Flame!"

"Petit Fire!"

The monsters hit by Agumon's orange flames and Gabumon's blue flames recoiled, but the rest still came on. One kicked off the ground with its huge webbed feet, leaping at Taichi with one hand raised to strike. Taichi raised an arm to block the blow, but before it could fall—

"Magical Fire!"

The spiraling flames drilled into the thing's chest, and instead of its hand hitting Taichi, its back hit the concrete.

"Piyomon?" Taichi said, turning to see Sora approaching at a run and her partner flying in to join the fight.

"Poison Ivy!"

Behind Sora followed Mimi. Palmon had just engaged one of the enemies with her long vines, stopping it in its tracks, and Agumon was launching fireball after fireball at the others. One creature had closed the distance between it and Gabumon, but with his horn he repelled its swipes and fought back with his claws.

"Hey! Guys!"

It was Jou's voice. He and Gomamon had arrived on the scene.

"Marching Fishes!"

From a portal of swirling white water Gomamon's little allies came streaming. A mass of them smashed into one of the black creatures at top speed, sending it flying.

Before long, the partner Digimon's repeated attacks had knocked down all of the mysterious attackers. But the fight wasn't over. Slowly, the things began to pick themselves off the ground.

"Where's Koshiro?" Taichi asked Jou as he joined the group.

"I haven't seen him," Jou said. "And what…?"

He watched the black monstrosities with a mixture of disgust and bewilderment as the Digimon regrouped, positioning themselves between the humans and the others in a semicircle.

"This isn't working," Yamato growled. "Gabumon, evolve!"

"Okay!" Gabumon shouted. And yet the seconds ticked by and nothing happened. The black creatures had regained their feet. Yamato looked at the screen of his Digivice in bewilderment, but there wasn't the slightest reaction.

"I can't evolve, Taichi!" Agumon said.

"What's going on?" Taichi wondered. "A Dark Tower?"

The Chosen Children could only grit their teeth as their enemies advanced again, cautiously but without any sign of fear. The partner Digimon took up fighting stances once more. It seemed that they would have to rely on their Child forms for this battle.

Again the varicolored fire flew, and Palmon's vines lashed out, and Gomamon's fish lent their support. But everyone could see it wouldn't be enough. More enemies were approaching, so many that the Chosen Children wondered where they all could have come from. They looked like fish-men. Could they have crawled out of Tokyo Bay? They all seemed to be coming from the direction of the water, apparently having crossed the same beach on which the teens had sat the previous night.

"Petit Thunder!"

Pinkish lightning descended on one of the monsters that had been creeping around to flank the wall of Chosen Digimon, paralyzing it.

"Koshiro-kun!" Mimi exclaimed, turning in the direction of Odaiba Mansion. "And someone…"

Others of the Chosen Children looked away from their partners and the fish-things long enough to see that she was right. Koshiro was running towards them, and he was not alone. A white-clad figure came rushing in, and quicker than thought sliced clean through Tentomon's target with a double-edged sword. The monster exploded into black particles and vanished. It was then the newcomer turned his head and gave the children a thin smile. It was Gennai.

Another of the Deep Ones launched itself at him from the side, but with a quick turn and a vertical slash he bisected it as well. Its compatriots kept their distance, but several of them raised their hands above their heads, and the next instant objects as dark as they had formed in their grasp – things shaped like long spikes. Three of the creatures hurled their weapons simultaneously with deadly force and accuracy. Gennai leapt aside, just managing to parry one projectile that he couldn't have otherwise avoided.

Some of the other Deep Ones stepped forward, missiles in hand, but paused as they and the Chosen Children heard the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps. Two of Gennai's fellow Agents had arrived, each carrying his own sword. Gennai heard them too, and immediately went on the offensive, his blade deflecting the Deep Ones' spears and slashing through the Deep Ones themselves. The partner Digimon redoubled their own efforts as Ilya and Benjamin joined the battle.

"Guys!" called Koshiro. He came running up to his friends, and paused for a moment to catch his breath.

"What's happening, Koshiro-kun?" Mimi asked. "Why are Gennai-san and the others here?"

"Koshiro!" The word emerged from Taichi and Yamato's mouth almost simultaneously. They both asked the same question, posed two different ways – the question that had haunted them almost continuously now for over twenty-four hours. Where were Takeru, Hikari, and the rest?

"We don't know that for certain," Koshiro began, as the other two struggled to restrain their impatience, "but their signals were detected in the Digital World by Gennai-san and the others. We think they may have escaped somehow, but we have a problem."

"I'll say we do!" muttered Jou.

"What's happened?" Sora pressed.

"It may take some time to explain," Koshiro answered, "but this is all due to a massive distortion. The power of darkness is starting to pour into our world from somewhere."

"The Digital World?" Sora asked. Koshiro shook his head.

"It's from somewhere else."

"That place…" Taichi whispered with sudden conviction. It had to be the world that his sister had been so afraid of. He realized for the first time that the things they were fighting matched Hikari's shuddering description of that dark ocean's inhabitants.

"It's affecting the Digital World too," Koshiro continued. "According to Gennai-san, the Holy Beasts are at their limit trying to maintain the balance against it. It has something to do with seals of some kind that were recently broken. I don't know all the details yet."

"Hey, why can't our Digimon evolve?" Mimi asked.

"It's probably the dark power," Koshiro answered. "It's similar to how the Dark Towers prevented evolution, but we don't know what exactly is causing it."

Suddenly Agumon's voice interrupted the conversation.

"Taichi! They're backing off!"

It was true. The ranks of the Deep Ones had been thinned considerably now by the swords of the Agents, and the survivors were hanging back, many retreating with slow backward steps. Any sense of triumph on the part of the Chosen was short lived, however.

"Look up there!" Sora said, pointing towards the sky. Something was quickly approaching on huge black wings – a serpentine creature with the same black and glistening surface as the Deep Ones. It swept by overhead, low enough that everyone felt the wind of its passing, then circled about and paused in midair, flapping its wings. They saw its red eyes glaring down at them and heard its hissing roar.

"This isn't good," Gennai muttered to himself. "Chosen Children, run!"