DIGIMON WORLD:

CHILDREN OF DESTINY

A Fanfiction By DaekerCroft

-CHAPTER SEVEN-

Jei shielded his eye, turning his head slightly to keep the light from shining directly onto his face. A steady beam of light was piercing the dark sphere, running from the ground high up into the sky where the virus' dark cloud loomed over the mangled remains of the digital world.

"That's it" Dinohyumon said looking straight into the blinding gaze, "that's it's power source. Everything in the digital world that the virus has destroyed is running through that data stream, being corrupted and used as food to make it stronger".

Jei was unsure of what he felt. Afraid? Determined? Maybe a good mixture of both. The stakes of the situation were beginning to sink in like a jagged piece of glass breaking skin. All of the technical malfunctions in the real world were linked to the virus' destruction of the digital world. If one ceases to exist, the other would be thrown into chaos.

"She's in there, isn't she" Jei said stepping forward, "She's still alive, I can feel it".

A cold shadow falling across the environment caught Jei off guard, causing him to spin on his heels and nearly trip over the warped landscape.

"What the hell!?" Jei exclaimed looking all around.

"Oh look darling!" came a shrill female voice, "It's our little playmates! It seems we are one short this time".

"Oh crap" Jei said with a sudden recognision, "It's them...".

He turned back towards the mountain and saw two tall dark figures blocking out the light from the data stream, their shadows cast over limbo island, obscuring everything around it like a black hole from which no light could escape.

"How rude of you to just run out on us Jeishita!" LadyDevimon cackled, "If you wanted to play tag you should have just said so!".

In an instant, both of the figures on the mountain lept into the sky and torpedoed straight towards them.

"Tag!" LadyDevimon shrieked as she tackled Dinohymon into the air and pinned him against a twisted rock face, "you're it!".

Devimon swooped passed Jei who tumbled back, narrowly avoiding the corrupted digimon's reach but landing square on his back.

"We brought along a little friend of yours" Devimon hissed as his feet touched the ground, "Although you may not recognize him, he's gone through a bit of a growth spurt!".

A third figure now towered over Jei who was still struggling to get up. Jei scrambled trying to get to his feet, but before he had the chance, he felt two hands firmly grip his shoulders, hoisting him up so that the tips of his toes just barely brushed against the ground as he kicked frantically trying to break free from the digimon's grasp.

"Whats the matter Jei?" his captor said, "Not scared of your friend are ya?".

"W-What the hell are you talking about!?" Jei stuttered still struggling to free himself, "Who the hell are you!?".

"Heh" the digimon gave a dark chuckle, "penny in the air Jei, penny in the air".

'What the hell is that supposed to mean?' Jei thought to himself. The digimon before him was tall and dark, though not quite Dinohyumon's height. His eyes had the same corrupted static as all the rest, and his stomach was marked in the shape of an 'x'. Jei had no idea who this digimon was, although he could not shake a disturbing feeling of familierity when he looked at him. Come to think of it, he almost looked like...

"V-Veemon!?" Jei said, the sudden realisation hitting him like a brick wall.

"And the penny drops" the digimon replied with a smirk, "but I assure you, it's BlackExVeemon now. What do you think Jei? It's a whole new me. This virus has made me more powerful than I ever was with that immature brat Shion".

"How can you say that!" Jei yelled.

The two were suddenly inturrupted by a large commotion as Dinohyumon broke free from LadyDevimon's death grip and sent here spiraling straight into Devimon, blind-siding him and leaving both dazed in a pile on the ground. While BlackExVeemon was distracted by the spectacle, Jei delivered a desperate kick directly into the digimon's knee and finally broke free.

"Oh no you don't" BlackExVeemon hissed, "I'm not finished with you, ya Justimon wannabe!".

BlackExVeemon recovered from the blow almost immediately and darted after Jei, paying no attention to Dinohymon who came running out of left field, tackling the corrupted digimon and pinning him down with his arms behind his back to prevent any attempts at retaliating.

"Kid, take this!" Dinohyumon said tossing the data stablizer over to Jei, "I can't hold this guy forever and Gomez and Morticia over there aren't gonna be out for long. That thing isn't just a one trick pony, with it you can move in and out of the data stream without consiquence. If Shion's data is still in one piece, you can bring here back, along with any other chosen kids who are still alive in there!".

"But what about you!?" Jei cried

"I'll be fine!" Dinohyumon said struggling to keep BlackExVeemon still, "But you have to go now!".

"Promise me!" Jei said trying not to tear up, "promise me you're going to be okay!".

Dinohymon didn't speak, he just looked down clenching his fist until his knuckles turned white, somehow still managing to put the bulk of his strength into keeping the corrupted digimon pinned.

"Kid, just go" Dinohyumon said, "maybe it isn't up to us to defeat this thing, but we still have destinies of our own to fulfill, and this is where mine has led me. Bring 'em home kid, bring 'em home so they can end this!".

Jei gave a slow nod of understanding. He could feel his eyes strain as they tried to water, but for the first time since all of this started he simply had no tears left, and anyways he was sick of blubbering like an infant. Jei hated goodbyes, so in this instant a different set of words came to mind.

"See you on the other side" Jei said.

Jei had lived a fairly uneventful life, there was never a moment before where he felt truly uncertain, but now in this moment, there was almost nothing he was certain about except for one thing;

"this is what I have to do".

Jei struggled to keep his grip on the final stretch of the mountain. The blood was rushing in his ears from the steep acent, but even so he could still hear Dinohyumon delivering an endless flurry of attacks far below. At least that means he's still alive Jei thought to himself as he hoisted himself up onto the cliff where the virus core was still eating away at the world around them. As he stood, he saw before him the dark sphere pulsating, almost as if it were aware of his presence. As he stepped closer, he could have sworn that he could hear a faint symphony of voices calling out to him. He reached out, expecting to collide with the sphere, but to Jei's surprise, the surface broke and movie away from him almost as if it were some king of viscous black tar. He took a deep breath to steady his nerves and continued forward, the sphere's surface moving away and opening up almost like a giant mouth with no teeth. Just as he crossed the threshold, the sphere quickly moved back into it's original shape, the mouth snapping shut and trapping him inside. Suddenly it felt as if he had been set on fire, or perhaps it was more like a cold burn, similar to the feeling one experiences as frostbite begins to set in. He was being consumed by the virus, broken down into bytes and merged with it's programming.

Jei closed his eyes wishing for it to be over as the sensation became more intense, but just when it was becoming nearly unbarable, it stopped. When Jei opened his eyes, he was in an endless white space, a significant contrast to the dark nothingness that remained of the Digital World outside of this place. The voices from before were now much louder, so much so that Jei could almost make out what they were saying, but there were too many to discern any single voice. Jei's attention turned to a figure in the distance moving towards him. After everything he had been through, his first instinct was to back away and prepare to retreat, but as the figure got closer, and he could see them properly he could hardly able to believe his eyes.

"Shion!" he as his friend collided with him, wrapping her arms tightly around him,

"Jei!" Shion cried as she embraced her friend, "It's really you, I knew you could find us!".