Chapter 26 - Doom Upon All
Invictamon lashed out at Golgomon from below, his broadsword streaking through the air like silver lightning before impacting against the hard black carapace of stony spikes which ran down the length of his opponents arms. The deafening sound of the impact burst through the sky like the resounding clang of a church bell, and far below all of the kids watched in horror as the behemoth demon shrugged off the attack before responding in kind with his own. Flexing his shoulders, Golgomon struck out with a single punch which sent Invictamon barrelling away through the sky. With a roar of delighted laughter, Golgomon followed his attack by raising his hands to the sky and summoning a burning torch of violent red energy. "Gehenna Flare!" He screamed, christening his new attack and sending the blade of surging crimson cutting through the sky towards Invictamon.
Within Invictamon, the spirits of TK and Takato communed silently. "What are we supposed to do, he's just too powerful..." Takato said, watching out from Invictamon's eyes as the Gehenna Flare came closer. "We can't just give up, I won't let us!" Shouted TK, his will bolstered by that of Guilmon and Patamon. "But what are we supposed to do?" Takato asked. For a moment the psychic space their four souls occupied was silent, and then TK let out a sigh. "Takato, I've seen your memories, I know the enemies you've faced before- The Devas, Beelzemon, The D-Reaper...and through all those battles, you never let doubt or fear defeat you, even when all the evidence said you couldn't win. So don't let Daemon be the exception- cos you're better than him, he doesn't deserve to be the one to take you down!".
The golden aura surrounding Invictamon flared into life suddenly, and raising his sword to the sky he shouted "Dragon's Retribution!". His blade shone like the sun before letting loose a gigantic spectral dragon of pure shining gold. The dragon flew like a missile right into the centre of Golgomon's Gehenna Flare, and for a single moment the two attacks were frozen together in the sky as if stuck in perfect stalemate. Then, as suddenly as the dragon had appeared, it tore through Golgomon's attack. Flecks of dissipating red energy followed after the golden dragon as he surged forward, opening his huge spectral jaws and swallowing Golgomon whole before exploding in a shining flare of golden light.
Rising back into the sky, Invictamon kept his guard up as he watched the smoke clear. Slowly, he began to discern the vague outline of Golgomon's form among in the midst of the ball of acrid black smoke which hung in the sky. All at once, the demon lurched forward out of the blackness, and from far below, all assembled gasped in shock. The Skin across Golgomon's chest had largely burnt away, exposing the raw musculature beneath. One of the two horns on his head was broken, and thick black blood gushed profusely from the mouth and left eye. But the worst injury of all was exposed in the next step. Evidently in attempting to shield himself from Invictamon's blast he had failed to protect his left arm- the forearm of which was now little more than a smoking stump.
Down in the remains of the forest, Sora hugged Tai's arm close to her body and whispered "Is it over?". Tai looked up at the hideous wrecked visage of Golgomon and after a moment of trepidation replied "Y-yes, I think so...". They all watched as Invictamon slowly crossed the distance between himself and his enemy, his sword held meaningfully down at his side. Soon, he stood before the Demon Lord. "Golgomon, for the horrible crimes you've committed- you now must pay the ultimate price...". Invictamon raised his sword, ready to strike. In that moment, Golgomon's eyes shone a violent crimson as he let out a scream of the most terrible fury. Before Invictamon could react he was blown backwards, and down below the Digidestined watched in shock and awe more and more furious red energy began to pour out of Golgomon.
This energy began to form into long needle-like spikes which pierced the ground and started to tear and rend their way through everything they touched, all the while the sheer force of Golgomon's scream of anger began to lift trees and rocks into the air and send them flying off into the distance. Tai wrapped his left arm around Sora's waist and held her close while taking shelter behind one of the larger trees boughs he could find, but moments later even that began to shift, as if the very ground beneath it was unravelling and being torn away by the wind. Sora let out an involuntary scream and dug her face into his neck as they were moments later blown backwards into the air. Holding her close and refusing the let go, Tai closed his eyes and heard only the roar of the wind tinged with occasional muffled screams of his friends. The loss of equilibrium and rush of movement as their bodies were rag-dolled into the sky made Tai's stomach lurch and tingle so powerfully that he almost felt lightheaded, a feeling replaced moments later by an overwhelming sense of powerlessness and insignificance as he and his friends were blown away like leaves.
Daring himself, Tai slowly unscrewed his eyelids while the rush of the wind and the flux of ash and dust made his eyes smart and stream. Almost instantly the tingling which had filled his stomach was replaced with a deep and heavy dread as he took in the scene below. The Digital World was tearing itself apart. No. Reality itself was tearing apart. The shards of crimson energy which had surged outwards from Golgomon's wounded body had penetrated not only the ground, but now that the ground itself had been ripped apart, Tai could see that the very fabric of The Digital World had been torn. Cracks began to fan out from every penetration like spiderwebs, not only through rock and stone but along the boughs of trees and across the waters of the nearby lake, and then extending out across the horizon and upwards into the sky. A terrible rumbling filled Tai's ears as slowly these cracks began to widen into great gulfs in the very fabric of reality, with nothing but an endless void of absence in between.
It was as this horror unfolded that Tai suddenly felt a pair of hands deftly catch him and Sora out of the air and instantly slow their momentum, turning their careening path through the air into a controlled flight. Twisting his body around to see just who had caught them, Tai saw that it was Angewomon, with Kari holding onto her neck from behind. "Tai-" she yelled desperately over the roar of the wind and the rumbling of the earth. "What are we supposed to do?!". Even as she asked the situation grew worse and worse, as the spikes of hazard energy which had shot outwards from Golgomon were now retracting. When they had fully returned to his body, the crimson energy began to reform and coalesce, turning itself into a round shell which then began to pulse violently with increasing intensity, as if building up to some awful conclusion. Tai wanted to answer his sister, to comfort his girlfriend, to find the rest of his friends and put a stop to this. But there just was not enough time. Maybe, he thought, all the time that there had ever been had simply been a countdown that was now finally reaching its end.
Turning to Sora, Tai locked eyes with her, the expression on his ash and blood-covered face softening as it changed into that signature easy lopsided smirk that Sora had known and loved since they were kids. No words passed between them in that moment. None were needed. But though time had slowed for them, it could not stop. For then with a final flash and deafening blast, the shell of hazard energy surrounding Golgomon exploded, shattering not only matter but space and reality all around it. For Kari, Angewomon, Sora and Tai there was only light and heat, and then- nothing.
_XX_XX_XX_
Mitsuo Yamaki had been coordinating the defence of the city on an open basis since the initial attack by Barbamon's forces. He was in near constant communication with the Japanese government and had been on a conference call since The Data Beasts had appeared in the sky above Tokyo- demanding they scramble The Airforce to help defend against the attack. He and his team, which was comprised of Gennai, Shibumi and Riley, had very little confidence this would actually help- but they needed to do something to help the Tamers who had remained.
Kazu Shioda had affectionately referred to himself and Gaurdromon along with Kenta and MarineAngemon and Suzie Wong and Lopmon as "The B Team" while their friends had been away, but not with the expectation that they would actually have to do much fighting. Now as they hid beneath the shattered remains of ruined buildings to avoid the attacks of The Data Beasts, he wished that he had taken that monicker more seriously. And though Guardromon, MarineAngemon and Antylamon had put up a good fight, in truth without the power of a mega-level Digimon they could do little to stop the enemies advance. "Note to self", Kazu thought "focus on making Guardromon digivolve.".
The city has gone quiet over the past twenty minutes, and huddled together for safety the three kids and their partners in truth had no idea what was going on, and were too scared to check. Kenta could all too easily imagine himself crawling out into the silent ruined streets of Shinjuku only see to see one of those terrible red horrors they had been fighting come striding forward out of the dust clouds which filled the air, ready to devour him or crush him underfoot like a bug. He suppressed the shudder this thought gave him as he put on a brave face for Suzie, who held on tightly to his left calf, shivering in fear.
Slowly, Kazu produced from his back pocket the satellite telephone Yamaki had given him before sending them out into the field. Dialling the one number saved in the phone, he held it to his ear and waited. He did not have to wait long, as moments later the line connected and he heard Yamaki's familiar low voice on the other end. "Are you all alright?" he said, concerned. "Mostly, a few scrapes and bruises maybe..." said Kazu, taking a moment to breathe in the stale air of the small half-collapsed office space they had squeezed themselves into a half hour earlier. "Good. We need you back here then ." though he had begun to get used to Yamaki's curt attitude, even this statement was a surprise for Kazu, who asked incredulously "Whoa dude, are you sure that's a good idea- like, is the coast clear?". There was a slight pause before Yamaki replied "Our spotters and drones indicate they are all gone, back through the same portal they came from."
Before Kazu could say anything else, Yamaki said, as supportively as he could manage "I'm sure you can handle it- just make your way back here, we'll need to debrief you." Before he hung up the phone. Turning, he could see that Shibumi and Gennai were watching him from down the hall. As Yamaki approached them, he could not help but let out an involuntary yawn and reach up to rub his one remaining eye. The disappearance of his vision that this caused caught him off-guard, momentarily affecting his equilibrium. The failure of the surgeons to save his left eye after he was attacked by LadyDevimon had not initially bothered Yamaki much due to the seriousness of everything else going on, but now as time passed he began to notice it's absence and feel a sense of loss. In their private moments Riley assured him the eyepatch only increased his mystique and made him look roguish, and though he appreciated this, he would have traded it for two working eyes in this moment.
As he stepped through the doorway to their operations centre he watched as Shibumi sat down at his desk and lifted a cup of steaming tea to his lips which he sipped demurely. The man had recovered from his captivity at Barbamon's hands with seemingly no ill effects. In fact on the contrary, since returning he seemed to have an even keener mind than usual, brimming with ideas and insights. Perhaps, Yamaki supposed, the experience had given him a sense of clarity. In any case, right now he was just thankful for such a useful and capable ally as Gorou. Gennai sat quietly at the other end of the room, engrossed already in the reports that had been flooding in for the past hour regarding the attack of the Data Beasts.
With his one remaining eye, Mitsuo studied the back of Gennai's head quietly, thinking back to their first meeting. The man's handsome face was showing the beginning of age, as was his lustrous cropped brown hair which was flecked with grey strands. When they had first met Yamaki had pegged Gennai as no older than twenty-five, and already in the intervening months the man seemed to have aged ten years. Oh well, he thought, I know better than to ask questions. Whatever Gennai was in reality, he had proven himself an invaluable ally. It was he who had inexplicably shown up in Hypnos Headquarters dressed in a set of white robes and holding the two golden rings which had allowed them to reverse-engineer the technology necessary for inter-dimensional travel. It was he who had explained the nature of Barbamon, Daemon, and the trials of The Digidestined of his reality.
The door to observation deck opened and Riley walked through, holding a pair of binoculars. "As far as I can tell-they're gone, we need to-" at that moment it seemed as if reality itself was suddenly tipped sideways. Everyone in the room was knocked off their feet and in the same moment everything with an electrical circuit seemed to go haywire. As Yamaki slowly rose back to his feet he was intensely aware of the flickering lights and the buzzing in his ears, but beyond that there was another feeling. Vague and hard to place, it was more than anything just an overriding sense of how profoundly wrong everything felt. He couldn't put his finger on it, but it was if the world itself was off its axis, skewed in some intangible and yet unmissable way. Suddenly Riley was shouting in his face and pointing towards the observation deck, and though she was right in front of him, her words seemed distant. Stumbling slowly past her, Yamaki clumsily put one foot in front of the other and he found himself standing on the observation deck, his faced pressed against the glass of the window.
He was in a cold sweat, and his hands would not stop trembling. He thought he might be sick. But as he looked out with his one good eye, he lost all sense of his own discomfort, for what he saw left no room for any thoughts beyond sheer dread. The sky above Tokyo was like a shattered mirror, with various crystalline shards of reality scattered about, and between them nothing but an unending void of hungry nothingness. Occasionally shards would collide with each other and produce a wondrous shower of multi-coloured sparks that would rain across the darkness like meteors. One particularly large shard rotated to face Yamaki, and to his disbelief he could see that beneath the one-dimsensional surface of the shape, there was a three-dimensional world inside that he could vaguely discern. He could make out buildings and cars, and even people. For a second he wondered if perhaps his reality was simply a shard of broken matter in their reality as theirs was in his, and the thought made him shudder.
Turning, Yamaki's eye met Gennai, and the two men were frozen by the sheer enormity of what was unfolding before them. Reality itself has unwound, and they were completely powerless to stop it.
_XX_XX_XX_
Kari awoke to the feeling of coarse sand on her skin. For a moment her mind was absent of all context and she felt a blessed relief of unknowing, but then the memories flooded back in and she sat bolt upright, unscrewing her eyes and being greeted by the deadening greyness of The Dark Ocean. But not as she knew it. For though the beachhead itself remained the same with the usual colourless cold sand and dead lapping waters, the sky was a vibrance of shattered imagery. Every floating jagged shape was its own world, and they all drifted silently through the void sky of The Dark Ocean.
"Kari!" came a voice from behind, and and whipped around to see Tai running towards her with Gatomon and Sora in tow. Stumbling forward, she threw herself into her brother's arms and held him tightly. Her mind buzzed with a million questions but her throat had constricted to allow out only the simplest vowels, and so she let out an involuntary sob and buried her face into Tai's chest. Returning her embrace, Tai breathed heavily with exhaustion, and so for a moment the two siblings simply sank down onto the harsh sand of the beach, saying nothing. But it was then, as Kari began to feel some small measure of comfort that felt Tai's chest tighten and heard his breath hitch in his throat. Looking up, she saw his eyes were fixed on some point far out to sea, and were filled with a terrible dread.
Turning, Kari scanned the dark misty horizon, and it didn't take her long for her eyes to affix on what Tai had seen. Far out to sea Golgomon floated just above the ocean's surface. His body was now fully healed,and as he lifted his eyes to meet Kari's gaze, the very horizon exploded into a cataclysm of unholy power as red lightning cascaded off his body, and the sea began to whip about him. Kari felt a familiar feeling as tears of involuntary terror began to wet her cheek. This was it. Her nightmare was here.
_XX_XX_XX_