Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon. I do not own Heroes of Olympus. I aint got time for that!

Author's Note: Written for the Novel with Prompts Challenge found on the Digimon Fanfiction Challenges forum. The prompt for this chapter is "glade".

Also written for April's Camp Nano. This chapter brings me to 16,077/25,000. Everybody who is super excited for the new season, keep your eyes and ears open on May 6. That's when a lot of Tri info will hopefully be released. I say hopefully only because every little "sneak peak" that TOEI has shown us so far has been less than nothing, so hopefully this will finally be something.

Enjoy!

Chapter Thirty

ExVeemon held onto Kari, Davis, Yolei, and Armadillomon as tightly as he could, but they were still in pretty much a free fall. He grunted and groaned against the weight he was being forced to carry. Several yards away, Stingmon was doing the best that he could with Takato, Cody, Ken, and Guilmon.

"Here we go again," Davis groaned.

"Gatomon!" Kari screamed.

Davis could barely move; the force of the wind was like a sheet of glass pressed against his body. The wind stung at his eyes, and he struggled to pull his goggles down over his face. Through the haze of the fog, he could see Gatomon flailing through the sky. She was clawing at clouds, trying to slow her descent. ExVeemon was bogged down by the weight of his load; Davis wasn't sure if he could reach her in time. He saw the rapidly approaching ground growing closer and closer. They only had a few seconds before they crashed.

"She's still conscious!" he called out to Kari. "Try to get her to digivolve!"

Kari fumbled for her D-3. "Digi-Armor Energize!"

Nothing happened. Gatomon kept falling; ExVeemon kept following.

A flash of red light exploded to Davis's left, and Aquilamon caught the wind under his wings before he shot into the air, bypassing their falling forms. He redirected his aim before diving toward them.

"ExVeemon," he said, "give me Yolei!"

"Alright. Yolei, get ready!"

With no free arms to help with the transfer, ExVeemon just maneuvered himself above Aquilamon before dropping Yolei who was holding Armadillomon. She screamed as she fell the few feet to his back before catching herself on his feathers.

"That was payback for the Sirenmon comment, wasn't it?" Yolei complained.

She and Aquilamon shot through the sky toward Stingmon to collect Cody, but Davis only saw them for a second before ExVeemon called, "Hold on!" He shot through the sky at impossible speeds, diving headfirst toward the ground as he tried to catch up with Gatomon's falling form. Davis tried to speak as they fell, but his voice was being ripped away by the wind. He could see the ground below them, getting closer and closer. He tried to wipe his goggles clean so that he could better see how far they were from Gatomon, but the moisture in the air kept fogging them back up.

"Here we go!" ExVeemon called.

Two seconds later, they body-slammed into Gatomon, and if she were anything other than a champion digimon, she probably would have been knocked unconscious. As it were, she just clung tightly to Kari as ExVeemon desperately spread his wings. Their fall turned into a steep glide.

"We're still coming in way too fast!" Gatomon cried.

"We need a place to land!" ExVeemon agreed.

Kari pointed out a lake to their right. "Water!"

"Are you trying to freeze us to death!?" Davis yelped. "I'd rather not be known as Davis-cicle from now on!"

His eyes scanned the rapidly approaching snow-covered forest, but all he could see were trees for miles. He was starting to think that Kari's water landing might be the best idea when he finally saw a white snowy glade in front of a large Victorian-style mansion inside of a tall brick perimeter – like some rich European property. The place looked abandoned, but Davis was more focused on the inches of snow that would provide for a nice and hopefully soft crash landing site. He pointed it out.

"ExVeemon! There!"

ExVeemon did his best to steer toward it. The speed was making it hard for him to have any sort of control over their descent at all, but he was making great progress. They were going to make it!

Then everything went wrong. As they approached the lawn, the dark mansion suddenly lit up as they were suddenly fixed with dozens of spotlights, blinding them. He heard bursts like tracer fire, Kari and Gatomon screaming, ExVeemon crying out for them to hold on, and then – BOOM!

Davis blacked out.

x X x

When Davis came to, Ken and Takato were leaning over him. He was lying in the snow, covered in mud and soaked to the core. He spit a clump of frozen grass out of his mouth.

"What—?"

"Don't get up." Takato was pale and looked pretty shaken. "You hit the ground pretty hard when—when ExVeemon—"

Davis's stomach dropped. "Where is he?" He tried to sit up, but his head felt heavy and the world started to spin around him. They'd landed inside the tall brick walls of the compound, but something had happened on the way in – gunfire?

Ken put a hand on his chest. "Davis, you could be hurt. You shouldn't—"

Davis loved his best friend, but right now, he didn't need his babying. He pushed his hands away and forced himself to his feet. Then he saw the rest of the crash site. Nefertimon and Halsemon must have de-digivolved directly over his compound, because Elecmon's large canary cage was only a few feet away, perfectly undamaged. The Digicores were strewn about the yard as well, having rolled in three different directions. Kari and Gatomon were being tended to by Yolei and Cody, both of them looking banged up, bruised, and scraped up (similar to how Davis must be looking, he figured, if the pains shooting through his body were anything to go by) – but otherwise okay.

His eyes scanned the yard for ExVeemon, his heart pounding fearfully in his chest. Finally, he saw the other partner digimon. All four of them were crowded around something just out of sight, but none of them looked too happy about what they saw.

Davis took off in a run toward them. "V-Veemon!"

The digimon looked up, and Armadillomon and Hawkmon parted to give him room as he collapsed into the snow next to the deep crater that ended a twenty foot long trench. Chibomon laid in the center of it, his eyes rolled up in the back of his head, his skin marred with soot and angry red welts. Every so often, his outlying data would destabilize as if it weren't quite sure it wanted to stay together after all. Davis's hands shook.

"Ch-Chibomon…" he sobbed. He hesitantly reached out and gathered the tiny baby digimon in his arms. "Pl-please be okay… Can you hear me?"

Chibomon gave a shuddering breath, as if he were struggling with every one he took, but otherwise didn't respond. Takato and Ken stood next to him, but Davis's eyes didn't leave Chibomon's face. Chiboman's data destabilized again, and fear gripped Davis's heart so tightly he started to cry. He wasn't even embarrassed. He just hugged Chibomon to his chest while his friends stood on either side, patting his shoulders, saying comforting things; but the buzzing in Davis's ears drowned out their words.

Finally, Guilmon's words cut through: "Don't worry, Davis. Chibomon wouldn't want you to cry. He's going to be okay! He just needs a little rest."

Davis sniffled. He pulled Chibomon back away from his chest, just to be sure that he was still there and breathing. Davis thought he looked awfully pale and fragile for a digimon that was going to be okay, but he had no choice but to believe him.

"Thanks, Guilmon," Davis choked out. He wiped his sleeve across his face, smearing tears and snot across his cheeks, not that he cared for either. "W-why did this…? What happened?" He looked up at Takato and Ken, searching for answers.

But it was a voice from behind him that answered, "I felt it this time."

Davis turned to see that Kari, Gatomon, Yolei, and Cody had moved to join them.

Gatomon continued, "I felt something reach inside my data and rip away my digivolution. I didn't de-digivolve on my own, Davis. Somebody forced me."

"I felt it, too," Hawkmon said. "But I was able to digivolve into Aquilamon just fine."

"When I tried to become Nefertimon again, it was like there was a block," Gatomon said. "Like I'd forgotten how."

Kari gave a small gasp. She pulled her D-Terminal out of her pocket and flipped it open. Tears welled up in her eyes as her face went a few shades paler.

"Kari, what is it?" Yolei asked. "Did you get an email about Tai?"

She shook her head and whispered, "It's gone."

"What's gone?" Cody asked.

Kari looked up at them all, her hands shaking almost as bad as Davis's own, and turned her D-Terminal around to show them. The screen was filled with black and white static full of nothing.

"My Digiegg of Light," she said. "It's gone."

Davis's eyes widened. The whirling in his ears got louder. Yolei and Cody fumbled for their own D-Terminals. They both let out a cry of despair as they saw the same thing as Kari, but Davis barely heard any of this. His free hand dipped into his coat pocket and pulled out his D-Terminal, and it shook as he flipped open the screen – static.

"How did this happen?" Yolei asked. "We defeated Sirenmon!"

"Sirenmon didn't control the digicores or the digieggs," Cody answered. "She just used them to her advantage."

"I don't understand how someone could do this," Gatomon said. "How could someone steal our digieggs when we were thousands of feet up in the air?"

"Because the digieggs are directly linked to the core of the Digital World," Cody said. "So if someone has access to the core…"

"…They'd have access to the digieggs, no matter where we are," Ken finished.

"How do you know this?" Takato asked.

"Oikawa told me," Cody said.

"Oikawa?" Armadillomon repeated. "What are you talking about, Cody?"

"I had a dream. He'd been trying to warn me…" He shook his head. "I'll tell you about it later."

Chibomon shuddered in Davis's hand, and he pulled the little body close to his heart. He unzipped his coat enough to nestle Chibomon beneath the warm exterior. He hoped that his body heat would be enough to keep him warm. He couldn't stand the thought of his digimon partner suffering more than he already had.

Davis wanted more of an explanation than Cody had been willing to give, but he could barely speak to ask. He felt broken, shattered beyond repair – like it was his data that was destabilizing with every breath, not Chibomon's. If he lost Chibomon, if the little baby digimon took one more hit and was destroyed, Davis knew that he'd never recover. He might move, he might talk, and he might keep going and living his life, but he'd always be off balance, never quite the same again.

He looked up at Ken who was regarding him with understanding and sympathy. Davis didn't understand how Ken had kept going after he lost Wormmon. But then again – had he really? Ken had been completely shattered that day, fallen into a coma, and woken up a completely different person. No, Davis surmised, he'd not been fine. And then there was TK… Davis only ever saw the aftermath of TK's trauma of losing Patamon. He wondered what TK was like before all of that. Had he been very different too?

But he hadn't lost Chibomon, and there was no point in breaking down completely. He couldn't afford it. Otherwise, Chibomon would have protected all of them for nothing. They had to keep moving forward – for Gennai, for TK, for Tai.

He looked around. The large Victorian mansion was dark once more, looming over them like a haunted house. Tall dark brick walls stood with ivy covered in snow growing up the siding, broken up by windows that were either covered with curtains or boarded up from having been broken into. It looked completely abandoned, but now Davis got the very strong sense that there was probably something – or somebody – within those walls.

"Where are we?" he asked.

"About two hours from the northern point of Folder by air," Takato said. "I checked my D-Power as we flew in."

"I've never been this far north," Ken said. "I have no idea what's up here or what this mansion is…"

"It's extremely well-guarded," Kari said. "As we were coming in to land, Davis, I saw… It looked like…"

"The entire wall was line with machine digimon, programmed to shoot down anybody who tried to fly in," Wormmon said. "The only reason why we got by was because they were all focused on ExVeemon."

"I saw Guardramon, Mekanorimon, and Tankmon… and I don't think that was even all of them," Takato said. "Whoever they were, they didn't want to let us in here, but they didn't follow us after we landed for some reason."

"They were probably programmed to stay at the walls," Gatomon said. "All it takes is a digimon who knows what he's doing to program innocent machine digimon to do things they normally wouldn't."

"So ExVeemon is the only reason we're alive right now?" Davis asked.

"He's a hero alright," Armadillomon said. "Saved all our lives."

Davis dropped his head, feeling worse than before. "I told him to land here. It's all my fault."

Kari lowered herself next to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Davis, you couldn't have known. None of us did. Don't beat yourself up about it, alright?"

But Davis was beating himself up about it. The weight of the Crest of Miracles around his neck felt heavier than ever. The digieggs were gone. He was the only one that could theoretically get to ultimate if he could figure it out, and he'd nearly gotten his digimon killed. He hugged Chibomon close to his chest and tried not to cry.

"Davis?"

Davis forced himself to look up. Takato held Davis's goggles in his hands. They were scuffed and a little tangled but otherwise looked okay. Davis hadn't even realized they had fallen off in the crash.

"I found these in the snow," Takato said. "I thought you might like them back. I don't remember why I wear mine, but… they usually make me feel a little better about everything."

Davis reached up and took his goggles from Takato's hands. Tai's goggles. Courage. Davis's throat closed up, but for a totally different reason this time. He sniffled and nodded. "Thanks, Takato," he managed as he carefully pulled them on.

"So what now?" Cody asked. "The main gate looks locked, and I doubt we could just fly back out again."

"Ignoring the fact that I can't become Nefertimon anymore," Gatomon said slowly, "I agree. Flying out of here isn't an option. We'd probably just be shot down again."

Davis turned to look up the walkway at the big haunted-looking mansion. "Well, since we can't go out, I guess we could always go in."

Yolei groaned. "I was afraid you were going to say that."