Chapter 30: Digital World: Dark Evolution I
He was not to do any strenuous or straining exercise, Taichi remembered with black humor.
Though technically what he was doing was no 'exercise'.
He was trying to organize chaos, was actively attempting to keep the chaos makers away, and direct everyone else into the safety of the forest. He was also running back and forth carrying the babies that couldn't move on their own yet and the eggs that weren't ever going to go anywhere if he didn't save them.
Meanwhile Graymon was fighting three BlackGarurumon that had somehow evolved out of the three care-taking Elecmon.
Already half the village had been turned into a battle field, tents and clay houses crumbled and destroyed.
Five BlackGabumon that had evolved out of random in-training digimon were being distracted and fought by older and more agile in-training fur balls. Mostly Koromon.
A twinge of guilt fluttered across Tai's mind. It seemed that whenever they came to Koromon Village bad things were going to happen.
He picked up an arm full of digieggs, suppressing frustration as he saw how many more were still left in the village and started running into the trees again when suddenly the young digimon squealed in fear. With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Tai craned his neck.
It were six BlackGabumon now. A Koromon smashed against a tree and Tai's heart beat painfully in his chest as he had to remind himself that that digimon was not his partner.
That didn't make it better; not his partner, but maybe someone else's.
As soon as he had unloaded the three digieggs to the mass of colorful balls just behind the tree line, he grasped his Digivice in his hands.
Graymon wasn't enough anymore, but WarGraymon was too straining and MetalGraymon too big. He grit his teeth as it couldn't be helped and seconds later MetalGraymon trampled the remains of a house under his foot.
The in-training digimon cheered at the now one-sided fight, but Tai only saw the destruction of the village as he ran back and forth, saving digieggs.
Koichi looked around. It was a small village, primitive and abandoned for a long time. It would have held maybe a dozen digimon once upon a time.
Digimon that would have found enough food from the fertile soil to grow and never worry. But that hadn't happened.
Instead it was simple grass that shot from the earth and fruitless plants had claimed the ground and conquered the digimon's housings.
Koichi could draw a pretty clear picture of what had happened. Maybe. Something caused the digimon to leave –or disappear as he had not yet found a trace of one. This something was probably closely connected with the darkness that was almost literally raining from the gray sky.
The vegetation that was gray, inedible, and incredibly slow growing as it was Darkness that penetrated everything.
For a blade of grass to grow as tall as Koichi at least a dozen millennia had to have passed.
And the grass was twice his size.
It had been such a long time ago, but everything was preserved, looking rather like it had been frozen in time.
Lifeless and motionless as everything was Koichi would have suspected exactly that were it not snowing darkness.
Incredibly enough, everything was simply passive.
Darkness was so there that even Koichi didn't need food or sleep or air.
After Tommy had thanked all Gods he knew and didn't know for a very stable mountain top and evolved to Blizzamon twice to finish digitalizing and then changed to Chakkumon, he skied the mountain down.
It was much more fun than climbing up, that was for sure and he enjoyed it for all it was worth.
It wouldn't last long after all.
His first assumption had proven true. Tommy was on a circular island where the mountain pierced like a needled into the sky with no civilization as far as he could see and of course without a ship or harbour or a continent or other island visible.
It wasn't good. But it also wasn't bad. The parts of land that weren't a dreamily white and wide beach were forest; enough wood to build a float.
Tommy also thought he had seen something interesting that might provide him with some helpful knowledge.
It hadn't been her imagination. Sora had thought maybe… hopefully… but it wasn't; the ground was shaking, trembling. And not from an earthquake.
It was probably much worse.
"Piyomon," she asked, her voice already in a whisper on instinct. "Could you please fly up there once and look around? I have a feeling we are being followed."
Piyomon's round eyes widened a bit further and with reassurances the pink bird flew up, disappearing from her sight behind thick leaves and branches. Immediately Sora shuddered.
Anxiously she stepped from foot to foot only noticing when the soft earth no longer gave way under her that she had dug up some stone. Sora sighed, wondering if it was pathetic how much she needed Piyomon before she blinked in surprise and glanced down at her feet's work again.
Not just any stone, she thought, not some random rock. It was...
"It's terrible, Sora!" Piyomon cried. Sora shot up, arms already in motion before she even laid eyes on her partner.
Not a second later Piyomon crashed into and send her sprawling to the ground. "So many! And they are so big! And Sora-" Piyomon panicked and left Sora to pick out her information from incoherently babbled exclamations. She patted the feathered head pressed against her fondly.
Piyomon was so responsible in one moment only to turn into a helpless child in the next.
Perfectly understandable, though as apparently a herd of Mammothmon and SkullMammothmon was trampling down the rain forest and heading in their direction. They were too fast to outrun, too numerous to evade and too strong to fight.
From one bad situation to the next, she was past the point where she could tense more and become nervous.
Sora sighed instead.
The question was, Sora decided, if the herd was actively aiming for them or if the two of them just happened to be in its path by coincidence. And if it was only a coincidence there was the question if there even was a goal.
The best choice was probably to fly. It would mean discovery, but better that than being trampled to death.
She was just about to announce the idea to her calming partner when the stone split into a crack under her fingers.
Sora didn't need a second to realize what it meant and her heart skipped a painful beat because it was already too late.
The ground gave away under her and she fell screaming into a hole.
Ken wandered quietly through the corridors he had once ordered to be build.
It had been supposed to be the perfect moving stronghold fitting for a supreme ruler of absolute power. It had been supposed to be a warning, a symbol, a threat, a protection, a servant, an ultimate tool and counterpart to the digimon he had created.
It was also the grave of the Digimon Kaiser.
Ken's memories from the time were fuzzy, but he was sure he still knew where the power core lay.
"Ken? Are you okay?"
The former tyrant tilted his head to the side and smiled slightly, patting Wormmon between his antennas where he loved patting best. "I should be asking this. How are you feeling, Wormmon?"
It was also the grave of Wormmon.
"Mmmhmm," said Wormmon, and Ken took that as a positive sign as he climbed the corridors upwards.
The fortress was tilted, not unlike a sinking ship and just like water sand was invading the painfully constructed and for efficiency calculated ways.
The part of his mind that he was ashamed of couldn't wait till the sands had swallowed the proof of his sins completely, buried them from sight and mind. It was the very same part Ken was humouring now.
From a certain point of view.
There were plenty of other, better reasons of course, but he couldn't shake the feeling that what he attempted to do now was only for his own selfish and cowardly reasons.
A fortress like the Digimon Kaiser's couldn't be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. Now more than ever.
But it was also a fact that when he was going to activated the self-destruct the fortress and the most visible sign of the tyrant he had been would be gone.
Wasn't that cowardly?
Matt and Yolei had packed everything they could need for their time in the Digiworld in a couple of backpacks and after they had discussed several options to choose from, they had opted to head back to Myotismon's former castle.
It was logical to head to the starting point when lost.
It'd be nice if it were that easy.
It wasn't of course. For starters the only food they had found was for birds; a great selection, but only seeds nonetheless that had given Matt a flashback to his first trip to the Digiworld.
Surprisingly, remembering how they had whined about it only made him feel some wry amusement now.
Another problem happened to be that they were, quite frankly, on the other side of the world from the castle. Even when flying with Holsmon or MetalGarurumon they'd take weeks to get there.
There was also the problem that flying was taxing on their partners, that they were easily visible for enemies in the air, and that they were easy to miss for their friends.
And that was not taking all the troubles that Chosen Children ran into so easily into account.
"Well, ready?" Yolei was as good as done and couldn't wait to get going. She was very impatient and impulsive and Matt dreaded spending weeks with only her as human company.
"I think we should change our route and stop by a refugee camp," said Matt, looking at the part of the same looking horizon behind which a few hundred miles away and out of their way the next settling lay. According to the D-terminal anyway.
The red head pushed her brows together in a thoughtful but still disagreeing way. "Why bother? It's not like we have any good news to spread."
"But we might hear something about the others there."
"Oh. Yeah." She blinked, smirking she continued, "gossip you mean. You'd know all about how easily that spreads, don't you."
Matt glared, Gabumon's face fell just thinking about the annoyance. "It is you who is a fangirl, not me."
"Me! Ha!" Hawkmon retreated casual careful steps backwards as Yolei put her hands on her hips and her face fell into a dark scowl. "I am no fangirl! Least of all of yours! As if I don't have something better to do than swoon after some wanna-be good looking guy!"
Matt's teeth hurt, so hard he was forcing a smug grin. But it was worth it when Yolei's face darkened to purple with anger at his next words. "Ken Ichijoji."
Hawkmon retreated some more steps. As did Gabumon.
It was going to be some long weeks.
"Say, what do you think this was? Once?"
"Honestly," TK said, as they ascended old and worn stairs that had long since been grown over by greenish glowing moss that was the only source of light who knows how many miles under the surface. "This reminds me of a documentary I saw on TV once. About dead cultures in south America some thousand years ago."
Having left the underground lake through a passage the two boys and their partners had ended up in an even larger cave with glowing moss growing on walls, the ground, on gigantic stalagmites and stalactites and on the huge building filling the entire cave.
The boys had split up, explored a bit and found that the building had a square base, and its form was basically similar to a pyramid only that every layer of the shrinking structure was at least two stories tall.
All in all the complex was at least fifty stories high, but TK couldn't be sure as the tip disappeared into the cave's ceiling.
Four columns reaching just as high stood in the four corners of its base.
When they had walked behind, it Cody and TK and had ended up discovering a majestic staircase leading up right up to the buildings tip where it might –difficult to tell at the distance- lead to an entrance into it.
It had been no question at all to climb the stairs.
Left and right of them, on the building's main body they saw that the edges between the different layers were slightly holed; they were filled with water now, but TK wondered what they had held originally.
"It's a temple," Patamon said solemnly and TK glanced reflexively up at his partner. Both digimon had been strangely quiet and subdued once they had laid eyes on the complex; a turnabout form their strangely playful and energized selves just before. It had been like someone flipped a switch.
"What kind of temple," TK asked when Patamon was not more forthcoming, but even then there was no reply.
TK exchanged a look with Cody.
It was clear that where ever they were affected their partners. TK had never been in such a place before.
What did that mean?
What was this building? This temple buried so deeply beneath the elements that plants had needed to evolve into light sources and where the walls and stones bore traces of violent battle.
Izzy snatched a tomato out of the data stream racing over his head.
This was by far the most convenient trip to another world he had ever made, he had to admit.
Izzy had his laptop, an access point for it, food just flying by him left and right, no people or digimon to distract and or attack him other than Tentomon and unlimited data to work with.
So.
This meant that once he had filtered through all the unnecessary and unhelpful data which was 99.9999 %, everything would be perfect.
Not.
Izzy was in the internet. As literally inside it. And almost every piece of data was worse than useless to him as the internet covered everything. From amateurish and professional recipes, to basic or highly detailed history, to the math homework that was due tomorrow in a British middle school, to news that were just seconds old, to journals, to entertainment branches full of anime and manga and novels and short stories and TV shows and games and riddles and online notifications of a new dojo that opened and gave free test lessons, to the newest model of mobile phones, to text messages. And so forth.
This was ludicrous.
Up until there had never been too much data.
Izzy had always had too little.
He rather wished he was back to working with too little.
Grunting, Izzy fought his irritation down and forced himself to look at the positive side.
This was a chance.
The internet was connected to the digiworld incredibly closely. Everything that happened on the digital side of reality was in some way and in some form documented in the internet. In pieces the data might be, scattered and adapted to the internet, but it was still there. It was only a matter of finding it, decoding it, and fitting the highly complex puzzle together.
Then Izzy could find out everything that had been happening. The reasons, the causes, the consequences, actions, reactions.
This was too good a chance to pass up.
It was only a matter of filtering the data out.
With more than ninety-nine percent of the available information being utter rubbish and his high tech laptop Izzy would still be sitting here a century from now. And that was not taking into account the masses of data that was being added every second...
It was no good.
This was a nightmare.
"I need a university level server to do anything at all here," Izzy mumbled, biting into a fist full of tomato. And by anything he meant working through 0.0000001 percent per week. Horrible.
"Why?" Tentomon asked and Izzy struggled not to release his irritation on his partner as he looked up. His insect partner was floating around, eyes on a bluish white stream of data that raced at high speed into the rainbow-colored background. "You can ask for help. There are many people who wouldn't mind."
Sighing, Izzy pinched the bridge of his nose. For being surprisingly observant and intelligent, his partner could, at times, be incredibly stupid. "There aren't any people here for me to ask, Tentomon. Who knows where the others have landed and they don't have a pc anyway."
"What are you talking about, Izzy? You can just send them a message, can't you?" With one of his arms, the red beetle pointed at the stream he had been staring at.
Izzy paid it a closer look.
A tomato fell from his hands, his jaw dropped and he had never felt quite so stupid.
It was no university server. No. It was much better with the best being that Izzy had to do almost nothing at all.
Mimi and Palmon climbed out of their hole only long, very long after the ground had stopped shaking and the stomping of giant bodies had faded away.
They were both still shaking when they stood as the only things upright within eyesight.
Originally Palmon and Mimi had landed in a forest with healthy trees and green earth and sunlight breaking through the leaves.
Then they had scrambled for cover in a deep hole under the roots of a particularly old looking tree and hid some twenty feet under the ground.
Now the trees were all gone, shredded to splinters and dust and all leaves grinded into green mush that was further mixed with earth and now unrecognizable as something that had been, at some point in its existence, beautiful.
The hole they had climbed out was now only half a dozen feet of so deep.
Mimi fell down to her knees, trying very hard to stop trembling in terror.
Forest flattened, earth lowered and the only living things left one human and one digimon.
Irrationally she had the sudden urge to eat and after the first riceball she had to fight down hysterical laughter.
For this she had tried to –no, not tried; she had succeeded- convince her parents to let her go?
How stupid she had been.
"Mimi…," Palmon whispered, hugging her side and it was only then that she noticed the tears running down her face.
Palmon looked like she wanted to cry too. Only because Mimi was sad. Mimi didn't want that. She didn't want to make Palmon sad.
Maybe she hadn't been stupid.
Mimi didn't want this. But hadn't she also known that even if she didn't, she couldn't outrun it? Mimi would have ended up in this situation no matter what she desired. But she hadn't struggled against it, hadn't complained.
So her parents didn't know about the dangers.
And they wouldn't worry.
They didn't suffer because of what happened to Mimi.
Wasn't it fine, then?
Kari drifted back to consciousness slowly. Her head ached, her eyes were too heavy to open and it was cold. But after antagonizing long moments she no longer felt capable of falling back to sleep and she tried to shift.
The pain jolted her fully awake.
Her eyes shooting open, she groaned. It hurt.
Even breathing hurt. In an antagonizing numb way. Old pain. Pain that was healing. What did that say about Kari that analyzing the state of her body and estimating its capabilities was the first thing on her mind? Even before caring about where she woke up.
As she took glances at her body, she noticed even her neck was stiff and tense.
Light was flickering and fleeting, but it was enough to see the sleeves of her jacket ripped with larges gashes that continued on her skin.
Disoriented and numb she wondered if it was blood in her mouth or if she only imagined the taste by looking at herself. She had similar wounds on her legs and torso, and with every breath she took she suspected she had cracked a rip or two along with the superficial gashes that were clearly intent on making her bleed, uncomfortable, and hurting in a way that wasn't life-threatening.
Good, she thought. Good.
Then reality caught up with her and Kari had to fight off several notions of panic bubbling in her chest.
She was fine, she told herself. Alive. The worst had already happened; panicking would do no good now.
She squeezed her eyes shut, leaned her head back against a smooth surface and focused on taking deep breaths, taking note of every stitch of discomfort as even the smallest movement brought her distraction.
When she opened her eyes again, this time in a significantly calmer state of mind she took in what she assumed to be her cell.
It was a strange cell, but as it was the digiworld and run by digimon Kari tried not to pay illogical part too much mind.
Kari was tied to close immobility by skin-warm iron chains hugging torso and binding her arms to what she identified as a column. Her arms were tied away from her, stretched out and the curve they had to bend backwards to fit snuggly to the column was getting more uncomfortable by the minute. She was so tightly bound she couldn't even lean forward. Stuck in sitting position, her legs and feet were the only parts of her body not bound and that she could still move.
The column she was tied to was one of ten arranged in a circular formation with all of them far enough apart that she stood no chance touching them even if she were able to distance her entire body from hers.
Torches were hanging on even farther away walls and the ceiling disappeared entirely in the shadows.
The room, or rather hall, was circular.
And...
Gatomon wasn't here. Wasn't anywhere near her. Wasn't-
She was alone. Utterly alone and who knew what had happened to Gatomon. Was she even still alive? Was she well? It was Kari's fault. Angewomon's terrified and fearful expression was burned into her memory. If only Kari had watched her back!
She had blacked out then and Gatomon would have done everything to keep her save after that.
Kari's eyes burned and strangulating fear for her partner choked her throat.
Tears escaped her eyes silently until sudden spikes of pain wracked her body, her bindings started to glow hot-cold white and darkness swamped her mind.
Again.
Far, far above the world it protected, almost on a different plane entirely, a creature convulsed as a foreign force invaded its mind.
It howled in pain, the sound lost in a storm of its own making.
A battle unlike what it had ever experienced.
It were not talons ripping into its body of air and energy. It was not fire scorching over its skin, nor was there a well know voice.
Instead it was assaulted from within, its own powers directed against itself and it knew this was a fight it could not win.
A battle unlike what it had ever experienced.
But it could not allow itself to lose; what it protected was far too important, far too vital and failure would spell certain doom not only for its reign.
Sometimes, it knew, death was preferable to life. Such a choice had never been available or allowed.
But now was a time of choice. A time of crossroads and fate and chance and hope and it let go of the focus of its power. Let it go free.
The single act wouldn't be noticed, wouldn't be seen until it was too late. For such was the way of virtues and hearts.
And Qinglongmon let itself fall.
The first chapter for July. The next one will come in August. :)
First of all I thank you for your patience with me. I missed only one update, but it felt much longer to me. Free time? What exactly is that? An abstract concept? I can't remember ever having something like that drowning in work as I am. Drowning in work as I am going to be for the foreseeable future. It is most unpleasant.
Well... enough complained.
I'm looking for a Beta-reader. I don't know why I haven't gotten the idea earlier than a couple hours ago, but better late than never. Plotwise I don't really need help, but it'd be very nice if someone could correct my spelling and grammar.
Please leave a review and a vote on your way out. :)