Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon. Or Heroes of Olympus. But I want info on Tri MEOW.
Author's Note: Written for the Novel with Prompts Challenge found on the Digimon Fanfiction Challenges forum. The prompt for this chapter is "earthy".
Also participating in April's Camp Nano. This chapter brings me to 13,605/25,000. Just over halfway! So, as I post this, I am obsessing over the digiegg counter that will finally hatch the last egg that will HOPEFULLY give us a release date on Digimon Adventure tri. By the time I next update, I really hope we have heard a release date, a trailer, and who knows what else! But you never know. Either way, I am SUPER hyped - and while I am still nervous about them possibly ruining some of my favorite headcanons, at this point, I am just ready for it to be here!
Enjoy!
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Cody kept looking back. He half expected to see twelve armor digimon led by a screaming enchanting siren throwing jewelry at their backs, but nothing followed them.
Halsemon and Nefertimon flew northeast. Eventually, the smoke from the burning underground castle faded in the distance, but Cody didn't really start to relax until the lights of Circuit disappeared and were replaced with snowy fields and the sun began to set.
"I've got something for you," he heard Kari say over the sound of the wind whipping around them. She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a gold necklace that she presented to Davis. "It's yours."
Davis looked over his shoulder at her in confusion. Then he did a double take. His eyes widened. "Is that…?"
"What is it?" Yolei asked.
"A crest," Takato whispered.
Cody sent him a confused look as Kari said, "It's your crest."
"Mine?" Davis repeated. "I don't have a crest! What are you talking about?"
That's what I'd like to know, Cody thought, still staring at Takato sitting in front of him. The other boy didn't seem to even notice the staring, though. He was too focused on staring at the crest with an extremely strange expression on his face.
"You do now. Haven't you noticed that your D-3 hasn't stopped glowing since we left Circuit?" Kari asked.
Davis pulled his D-3 off of his belt; Kari was right. It was glowing a soft blue color.
"It was waiting for this."
Kari draped the tag and crest over his neck. As soon as the crest landed softly against his chest, the glowing of his D-3 faded away. Davis picked the trinket up off of his jacket to stare down at it, looking beyond shocked. ExVeemon flew in close to look over Davis's shoulder to get a look for himself.
"We have a crest?" he asked.
Davis looked up at his partner. "I… guess so? Where did you…?"
"It was at Sirenmon's place," Kari explained. "I don't think she knew what it was, but I did. It's the Crest of Miracles."
"I guess we shouldn't be too surprised," Cody said slowly, though he was speaking a bit hypocritically because he was surprised.
"What do you mean, Cody?" Yolei asked.
He looked toward her. "I just mean… if the prophecy is right and you and I are to receive crests as well… It only makes sense that Davis would have one, too."
Davis closed his fist around the tag as a determined expression crossed his face. "Thanks, Kari."
She shook her head. "Don't thank me. It's yours."
He looked back at her. "I meant for… everything. You saved us back there. If you hadn't talked us out of that spell…"
"Don't worry about it," Kari said.
But Cody did worry about it. A lot. He felt terrible about how easily Sirenmon had set him against the others. And those feelings hadn't come from nowhere – she'd been able to get inside each of their heads, because she'd spoken just enough truth to get them to believe the lies. Which meant that some small part of him, no matter how miniscule, resented Davis for being childish, still held a grudge against Ken for what he'd done as the Digimon Emperor, and blamed Takato for TK's disappearance. If Cody were being fully honest with himself, those feelings were very real, even if he wasn't proud of an ounce of it.
And it was more than that, too.
"What Sirenmon said back there…" Cody started uncertainly, not sure if he should bring it up.
"About your father… and my brother…" Ken continued, looking just as uncertain as him.
"Do you think it could be true?"
Ken looked up toward the sky as if trying to search out a way that Sirenmon's words could have just been some elaborate lie, but he didn't seem to be finding the answers that he hoped for. "I've never considered it… never even thought about it…"
"It can't be true, can it?" Yolei asked. "I mean, humans were the ones who…" She trailed off awkwardly.
Cody looked toward her. "They never caught the guy who shot my dad. I don't really know the full story… but I'm not sure anybody does. What I do know is that he and his partner answered some strange call… Something about a disturbance, but that was pretty much the only information that they had… When they got there, they separated. His partner went to the front door… my dad went to the back… and then he was shot. Nobody ever saw who did it, and they never caught the guy."
"They never caught the driver who hit Sam either," Ken said quietly. "I saw it, but… I don't remember it." Frustration laced his words. "I must've blocked it out along with everything else."
"Ken, you were just a little kid," Stingmon said, flanking Halsemon's other side. "No child should remember something like that."
"But if I did remember, I might be able to know who…" Ken let out a frustrated breath. "I… My mom told me that I told the cops that a monster was driving the car… The cops just assumed I turned my brother's killer into the Boogie Man."
"But you may have seen a digimon instead," Cody whispered with a horrified realization.
"Holy crap," Davis said. "So… Sirenmon may have been telling the truth…"
"I remember Tai telling me that Devimon mentioned someone telling him about TK," Kari said slowly. "But… Myotismon…"
"His obsession with you happened randomly," Nefertimon said. "I always assumed it was because he thought I was getting too powerful… or that I was becoming subservient enough that he wanted to put the nail in the coffin that would keep me as his slave forever if I were to kill you…"
"I think it was more than that," Davis said. "I met Myotismon once when he was looking for you, Kari. He seemed to recognize me. He thought I might be the eighth child."
"I remember that," Nefertimon said slowly. "He wanted me to look again."
"Then he spoke in this different voice… It sounded like Huang." Davis shifted awkwardly in his seat on Nefertimon's back. "I didn't think it was important when I was telling you all about him before. I didn't get the connection, but now…"
"Holy crap is right," Takato muttered.
Sirenmon had seen the future while she had been nothing but loose data in the Dark World. That was how Huang, Davis's psychotic imaginary friend, had received all of the information he needed to reach through the veil and try to ruin all of their lives. If Sirenmon were to be believed, that's how his father died – because of something Huang feared Cody might do someday. For years after his father's death, he'd been carrying around this strange sense of guilt as if somehow his father being gunned down while on the job had been his fault. His grandfather, mother, teachers, and even grief counselors had all been positive that the guilt was all in his head. But now it turned out that it probably wasn't. In some weird messed up way, his father's death had actually been his fault after all.
When they had left Sirenmon in that exploding underground castle, Cody had felt a little too good. He had hoped that she wouldn't make it out. He'd hoped that she would be destroyed and that her data would go right back to the Dark World to suffer some more, right where she belonged. Those feelings didn't exactly make him feel proud either.
Cody tried to focus on something else – anything else. His gaze went to Stingmon and ExVeemon who were still flying on either side of them. At first he thought it was because they were afraid that they were being followed, but as his eyes trailed over to Nefertimon, he realized it was more than that. Nefertimon flew at a steady pace, her angelic wings angling to catch the wind, but she was carrying a heavy load. Along with the three humans and Armadillomon, she also carried the gilded cage in her paws. He wasn't sure how much it weighed, but he knew it couldn't be very light.
The more Cody thought about it, the more worried he got. Even armor digimon had their limits. Stingmon had reached his after four humans and two digimon, and that was after carrying them for only a few minutes. Nefertimon had been going nonstop for almost two days now.
"We should probably set down soon," he suggested. "We could probably go for a few more hours to make sure that Sirenmon isn't following us, but I think Nefertimon and Halsemon probably need a real break."
"Don't worry about us, Cody," Halsemon said. "We're okay."
"Yeah, we can go for as long as you need us to," Nefertimon agreed.
Yolei shook her head. "Cody's right. Besides, I'm sure Elecmon would like out of his cage. But… where are we going?"
"The southeastern edge of Folder?" Davis guessed.
Cody's memories of the underground castle were pretty fuzzy, but he suddenly remembered hearing about that as well. "Yeah… didn't Sirenmon say something about that, Kari?"
"Kari's brother," Takato said slowly. "Something's happened to him, right? He got lured into some kind of trap."
"If Tai's in trouble, we have to help him," ExVeemon agreed. "It's what he would do for us."
Kari was quiet for so long that Cody started to wonder if they had said the wrong thing. Finally, she let out a shaky breath. "Look, Sirenmon said that all of you would die if we went there. And besides… even if we went there, there's no telling exactly where Tai is or if he's even still…" She trailed off as her voice started to shake too much to form words. She swallowed thickly. "First, we need to find Ebonwumon and drop off the digicores. Baihumon said that Ebonwumon was the only one who could tell us exactly where to go."
Cody didn't like Kari's attempt to evade the topic about her brother, but a look from Yolei made him concede to the subject change. "Okay… So how do we find Ebonwumon?"
Takato looked over his shoulder at him in confusion. "You don't know?"
"No…" Cody said slowly. He looked at Ken, but he looked just as confused as he was. "Should we?"
Takato pulled out his D-Power. "My digivice has had a map up since Circuit, but we've been following its direction, so I assumed that was where we were headed."
"Our idea was simply to get away," Halsemon explained. "I guess we just got lucky."
"That GPS on your digivice is awesome, dude," Davis said. "We don't have to worry about getting lost ever again."
"Not sure how I got it, though," Takato said, frowning down at his D-Power.
"Ebonwumon is one of the Holy Beasts, and they say that he's pretty knowledgeable about everything that goes on in the Digital World," Armadillomon said. "He probably knows we've got the digicores and is just letting us know where to go."
"Or it could be another trap," Kari sighed.
Her tone worried Cody. She didn't really sound nervous; she sounded broken, resigned to their fates, like she had already signed their death warrants, and it was all her fault.
"Kari," Davis said gently, "are you alright?"
"You know, Kari, if your brother's in trouble, we want to help—" Stingmon started.
"You can't," she whispered, her voice getting shakier. "Look, I'm tired. If you don't mind…"
She leaned back against Yolei and closed her eyes. It was a pretty clear sign that she didn't want to talk.
After that, they flew in silence for a while. It was hard to talk about all the things they wanted to when most of it dealt with Kari, and as comfortable as he figured Yolei must be, he wasn't convinced that Kari was really sleeping over there. The silence left him to his thoughts, which weren't much better. They were on their way to visit another Holy Beast, and he could only hope that this one was friendlier than the last. Cody couldn't wait.
He had way too much on his mind to sleep, but now that they were out of danger, his body had different ideas. The four hour power nap seemed like ages ago, and his energy level was crashing. The monotonous beat of Halsemon's wings made his eyes feel heavy. His head started to nod.
"Go ahead and sleep, Cody," Takato said. "I won't let you fall."
He shook his head. "No, I'm okay—"
"I'm the only one with a map, so I'm really the only one who needs to be awake," Takato pointed out. "Besides, someone's going to have to take watch when we land, and its better if it's someone who's already had some rest."
Cody's eyes started to close on their own. "Alright. Just… for a little while…"
He barely finished his sentence before he slumped forward against Halsemon's warm feathers.
x X x
"Cody, can you hear me?"
The voice seemed like it coming from far away, muffled by layers of cotton. Cody's vision slowly came into focus – sort of. Everything was black with lines of binary code running down his line of sight. He'd never dreamed on an archaic coding screen before, but that was the feeling he got as he looked around.
He was surrounded by nothing as far as the eye could see. Binary code in green text floated in and out of his view, the green numbers a simple string of 1's and 0's.
Then Cody realized that something was blocking the string of text in front of him – something semi-transparent and about the size of a man. With the dark background, Cody had to squint to see it properly. It turned out it was a man – or at least a ghost of a man.
The figure approached him and slowly came more into focus. Staring down at him was a dark-haired man in a long purple trench coat. His hair was long and sleek with pale skin and a hooked-nose. He looked like he hadn't seen the sun in years. Possibly decades.
"It is good to see you again, Cody," the man said. "It's been a long time."
Cody's eyes widened. "Oikawa?"
Being in the presence of a man that was supposed to be dead should have been impossible; Cody was pretty sure he should have been more than a little freaked. But after what he'd been through the last couple of days, with disappearing best friends and sirens and earthy dragons, all Cody felt was confusion.
"What are you doing here? How are you here? I thought you were…" He paused. "Wait, is this a dream?"
Oikawa gave a soft smile. "Yes and no. This is a dream, but that does not mean it is any less real."
"Because dreams in the Digital World can sometimes be linked to the other worlds making them more than just dreams," Cody said slowly, remembering everything he had ever learned about the Digital World from Izzy. "That's almost fascinating."
"You sound just like your father," Oikawa said. "I miss him."
Cody looked up at him uncertainly. "Yeah… I still don't get how I'm talking to you, though. I thought you were… gone."
"To be quite honest, I'm not quite sure myself. I'm not alive, not in the traditional sense of the word, but I'm also not gone. I'm still here, whatever that means," Oikawa said. "There is a great many things that I still don't understand about my state of being right now. Time never seems to pass and yet it never seems to end. But I hear things, understand things – I've become part of the Digital World in my own way. And with that, I knew you were here, and I knew I had to talk to you."
"About what?"
Oikaway looked away from Cody to stare up at the – well, it wasn't really a ceiling or sky, but he stared upward as if he were seeing both. He looked almost uncomfortable as he fidgeted where he stood, like he wasn't quite sure what to do now that he had a body back even if it were only in a dream.
"Hiroki was always better at explaining things than me," Oikawa reminisced. "He always understood things better too. Especially about the Digital World. There was so much that we didn't know… and yet, he always seemed to know it all. We made a promise to get to the Digital World together one day… and I made him another promise too."
"What promise?"
Cody wasn't sure where this was going, but he couldn't help but be completely entranced with what Oikawa was saying. He so rarely got to hear stories about his father that he had never heard before. At this point in his life, he was pretty sure he had heard them all, but Oikawa had never gotten the chance to give him what he knew. It didn't matter if any of it was relevant or not; Cody found himself soaking it all up eagerly all the same.
"That I would watch after you if anything were to ever happen to him." Oikawa let out a heavy sigh. "I didn't do a very good job of keeping that promise, and I know now is much too late, but… Hiroki is still the greatest man I have ever known, and if there is any chance that I can still keep my promise to him, I want to at least try."
There was another reason for his eagerness as well. Oikawa – as far as Cody knew – was supposed to be dead. If this man was watching after him, communicating with him, then that meant that there was a small chance (no matter how small) that his father was out there doing the same. Cody thought about his dad watching his progress through the years from wherever he was, from his kendo lessons to his time as a digidestined, and it filled with him with more relief than he'd ever care to share with anybody.
"Oikawa, you gave your life to protect me, to protect all of us," Cody said. "You kept your promise."
"I tried." Oikawa's expression was hard to make out in the darkness and translucency of his body. "But by using my knowledge on the World of Dreams and the residual energy from that world that was still left here in the Digital World, I realized that I could do more, that I could help one last time. There are other factors involved that have allowed this to happen, such as the cracks between this world and the other Digital World, but—" He went silent for a moment. "The point is, I'm here now, because I have to tell you something."
Cody was pretty sure that Oikawa had almost said something important, but he wasn't sure what.
"What is it? What do you have to tell me?" Cody asked. "Is it about my dad?"
"You mean about what Sirenmon said?" Oikawa asked.
"Is it true?"
Oikawa was silent long enough for Cody to know that the answer wasn't going to be something that he was going to like. "I can't say for certainly," he finally said, "but after everything that I've learned and heard since being part of the Digital World… I can say that it's a very big possibility. The one behind all of this… he has been planning this for a long, long time."
"Who is he? Is it—?"
"Don't say his name," Oikawa cut him off. "I'm part of the Digital World now, which means that he and I are connected. We can't risk him possibly listening in on us."
Cody's eyes widened. "He can eavesdrop on dreams?"
"Let's just say that it's not an impossibility." Oikawa said this as if he were talking conspiracy theories about aliens and hidden nuclear weapons, and yet Cody got the chilling feeling that he may very well be onto something here.
"Well, what about the Holy Beasts?" Cody asked instead. "Why was Baihumon acting like such a jerk?"
"He excels at that," Oikawa said, "but there is more to it. He doesn't know it – none of the Holy Beasts do, and most of them wouldn't believe you if you told them – but their lord is your enemy. The Holy Beasts are fighting a war within themselves between following what is written in their code and following what is right. The Holy Beasts want to help you, and you need their help… But I would not trust them."
"How are we supposed to accept their help if we cannot trust them?" Cody asked.
"By being extremely cautious," Oikawa said. "When the Holy Beasts still existed outside of the Digital World's dimension, they were far more omnipotent then they are now. They would have been able to see their Lord's corruption, but he was smart. He hid it until the Destiny Stones were all but destroyed, forcing them onto a corporeal plane of existence. Now, he simply whispers into their ears, manipulating them from afar. They are as vulnerable as any other digimon."
"Whispered manipulation…" Cody muttered. "That's what he did to Myotismon."
Oikawa nodded. "That is his specialty, and yet, that is his least dangerous aspect by far. I'm sure you've heard of some of the things stirring within the Digital World."
"Barbamon and his allies, you mean," Cody said. "Digimon reforming instantly. Digimon appearing from the Dark World. Sinkholes and parts of the Digital World just turning on its inhabitants. Things like that."
"Yes." Oikawa's image seemed to fade in and out of focus, as if he were having a hard time staying put. "The Digital World is a fragile place, and after the battle against MaloMyotismon, the barriers were weaker than ever before. And now… The Digital World is doing everything it can to stay together, but it cannot take much more. I can feel the very fabric of this world's reality stretched to its limit. With every pillar of darkness that is risen, this world grows weaker. It will not last much longer."
"Pillar of darkness," Cody said. "That has something to do with whatever is hatching out of that dark digiegg, doesn't it?"
"He is one of seven Demon Lords, seven digimon of pure darkness. Together, they are a different breed altogether."
"What does that mean?"
"Since the beginning of time, digimon have been born and deleted," Oikawa explained. "Every time this process takes place, there is a miniscule amount of leftover data that finds its way to the Dark World, a world created from the collective data of deleted digimon. All of this excess data can periodically combine to create monsters like Apocalymon or the Scubamon that Kari once met. But there are also whispers of a great dark prophecy that foretells the coming of seven great Demon Lords, born from the data of the Dark World. If all seven are to unite…"
"Bad things will happen," Cody guessed.
"Mm," Oikawa agreed. "Gennai knows that the Demon Lords are playing a dangerous game, reaching across worlds to bring all of them together. He knew the only way to defeat them was if he played by the enemy's real – which in turn is playing right into his hand. But he's right: the twelve of you have to unite. This upcoming war will take place on two fronts… This world cannot bear the entire brunt of it. We have to protect this world and all the other worlds out there. You're a big part of that, Cody."
"What part?" Cody asked, and as soon as he said it, more questions came flooding out. "Why did he go after my dad? Or Sam? And what does this have to do with TK?"
Oikawa regarded him sadly. "He needed you vulnerable, Cody. He hoped that losing your father would… would do to you what it did to me… But you were stronger than he anticipated. He didn't realize the strength of your heart, and that Justice is not something that you can easily sway. As for Sam… It is easier to be cruel than it is to be kind, but even Ken won out in the end. And TK…"
Cody's dream went fuzzy. Oikawa disappeared from his view, and the green binary text distorted into gibberish. Then everything came back into focus.
"You're starting to wake up," he said. "But you need to know: Greed and Pride are working together to feed you lies. Do not trust them."
"Who?" Cody asked, confused.
Oikawa frowned, his image growing more unstable by the second. "I already told you. Also: along the way, you're going to lose some valuable tools. It will make you feel powerless, even hopeless, but don't despair. There's always another way to grow stronger."
"What do you mean? That doesn't sound good."
"It shouldn't. But there's nothing you can do to stop it. These tools were created from the very core that fights against you, and it was only a matter of time before he repossessed them to weaken you." Oikawa's image was barely visible now, just mist in the darkness. "Now, you need to wake up before—"
Cody snapped awake to Ken and Takato screaming.