Lucemon had arranged for the Chosen Children to take a Trailmon out of the Users' Tunnel, with a confident promise that it would bring them where they were meant to go. After all the time they had spent wandering aimlessly, the assurance of an angel digimon was enough to get them instantly aboard.
The Trailmon that traveled their route was brown and wormlike, with four eyes and a frightening set of teeth; they thought it far safer to get in through the side doors. The trip aboard this particular Trailmon meant traveling in genuine luxury, with abundant snacks, soft cushions, and even actual pillows for sleep.
It was a sharp and disturbing contrast to the digital world they saw outside their windows – a place which had not lost its sense of wonder, but which was clearly broken and suffering. Trailmon's tracks were intact, and they passed over valleys and canyons and rips in the very fabric of the digital world.
Until the moment came when the Trailmon hit a pile of rocks, one that had been very deliberately set up as a roadblock, and Hiroki, Oikawa, and Maki were awakened with their partners by a sudden thud.
"My apologies for the delay, passengers," the Trailmon said. A seatbelt light went on, and Daigo, Lui, and Bearmon, who had been playing in the aisles, scrambled to the nearest seats and indeed buckled up.
"I'm going to have to break through this barrier. Cool Running!"
The sudden acceleration was fortunately enough to send the rocks which had blocked its way flying off in all directions. The first set of rocks, at least. But the bandits who had set up this particular roadblock would not be foiled so easily; one particularly brave oni rushed up to a window and smashed it with its club.
"I really don't like these guys," Bearmon said, as he spotted a green, horned digimon through the window. "Let me handle this, Trailmon. We can resume the journey once I'm done."
Bearmon climbed down through the broken open window, with Daigo following cautiously behind him. The Trailmon had struck those rocks in a narrow valley at the bottom of the Great Canyon, an ideal location for any sort of ambush. The stronghold which overlooked them, with various Goblimon moving in and out, left little doubt as to what they were dealing with.
Daigo could've sworn he had saw a green oni, but the digimon standing before him now was brown, with a skull tattoo and a tiger-striped loincloth.
"Leave us alone, Fugamon! Bearmon, shinka! Leomon!" Leomon clearly recognized their opponent, who he seemed to view as some kind of rival. The two brown, bipedal digimon began to battle, sword striking bone with a loud clang. Bakumon hovered cautiously to the edge of the broken window, but Leomon waved him off. The other chosen children and their digimon continued to wait at the intact windows, out of respect for his determination, and watched the lion battle alone.
"Haouken!" The voice sounded like it was coming from both left and right at once. Or was it voices, blending together? They all sounded so similar.
A worried Leomon slowly backed up to dodge the heads of light, and parried a few more thrusts of Fugamon's spiked club with his sword, only to get thwacked on the head from behind by Hyogamon's glacier sword. Ogremon picked him up again, holding Leomon in place for further attacks.
"Three on one isn't a fair fight," Leomon protested. "What happened to your honor?"
"Leomon, where's your pride? You're saying you can't handle it?" Ogremon taunted, to Hyogamon and Fugamon's roaring laughter. "Then surrender!"
Although Leomon had no other lions with him, Bakumon and Ukkomon did float through the open window, and Gottsumon and Floramon climbed down behind them.
"I know it looks tough, but this is my fight!"
Together, they actually outnumbered their foes, but the prospect of needing even one teammate to defeat oni digimon was more humiliating for this Leomon than getting beaten with a thousand of their clubs.
Four on three (or five, could Ukkomon fight?) they actually had the advantage, provided that there wasn't anyone else in that stronghold waiting to join in. But the way Leomon was acting, it would have to be three on three, and as a backup once he could no longer maintain his evolved form. Unless…
Daigo had to admit that he didn't truly understand where Leomon was coming from. Digimon battles sometimes were like life or death things, and other times sounded more like… well, like sports of a kind, this other world's version of martial arts. If he actually had taken any martial arts, maybe he'd understand it better, or maybe it was truly a case where Leomon, for all the strength of their friendship, had a truly alien mind. Competition, to Daigo, had always meant team rivalries. As much pride as he'd take in calling a good game or getting a big hit, the pitcher still had to throw the right pitches, and anything short of a home run (and he was not a power hitter) required others to either get on base or score.
Yet there was still something so frustrating about striking out or going 0 for 4 or something, especially against a rival school or a pitcher who trash-talked him (and as team captain, he got most of the trash talk) before a game. Even if his teammates rescued him in the end, it was still just a bit unsatisfying.
Was that what Leomon was feeling right now? Or was he just using his imagination to try to make up for what he could never truly understand?
"Ukkomon, could you do me a favor?" Daigo asked. "I think winning this on his own would mean a lot to Leomon." The idea that relying on Ukkomon for a power-up was not truly "on his own" did not occur to Daigo – nor would it to Leomon, for that matter.
Ukkomon again paused and turned to Lui for permission, who granted it without a second thought. "I don't like seeing anyone ganged up on."
"Leomon, chou shinka! LoaderLeomon!" Here was a properly quadrupedal lion, with an armored body that looked like something out of Go-Lion or Zoids or some other robot anime and/or toy line, with a drill for a mane and a morning star for a tail.
"Loader Morning Star!" Ogremon had in fact managed to hold onto its foe through the entirety of his evolutionary process, in an impressive feat of strength, using both hands. Which meant that his club was on his belt and not actually capable of stopping LoaderLeomon from swatting him aside.
"Boring Storm!" And then came Hyogamon and Fugamon's turn; even a direct hit with the clubs was not strong enough for his gold-plated feline face to feel, and the swiftly rotating drill mane sent both of them flying away.
"You know, I wonder," Daigo thought out loud, right outside the Trailmon, "what if we just took over the Ogremon's fortress for ourselves?"
"We shouldn't need to," LoaderLeomon said. "Ogremon are jerks, but smack them around a bit and they'll be back to their best behavior, at least for a little while. And once we solve the digital world's other problems, we can deal with them at our leisure."
"No, I mean," Daigo tried to elaborate, "it's a really nice building. Hard to break into, strategically positioned, you just knocked out its strongest defenders. If we used it as our own base, maybe we could take back the digital world from there."
"You've been playing too much Fire Emblem," an amused Oikawa said.
"No, I'm serious. Trailmon stopped here – I mean, it didn't intend to, but it did stop – and Lucemon said it'd bring us where we were supposed to go. What if that didn't mean the end of the line?"
"It does mean the end of the line." It was nice to have Trailmon still there to resolve their dispute. "No one else is on this train, this is a special mission for you guys. I'm here to take you exactly where you need to go. And don't worry, it's a way better stronghold."
Daigo did get back on board, riding on LoaderLeomon's back as they climbed through the destroyed window. Ukkomon patched the window up with a wish, and the Trailmon soon resumed its journey. And Daigo he could not help but wonder, as they went further and further uphill, just where the Trailmon was taking them – and the fact that it was a place, not a digimon, only made him wonder all the more.
The train digimon came to a stop near the peak of an enormous mountain. The concept of climbing Everest came to Oikawa's mind, but no trains stopped nearly as close to that mountain's summit. The idea was not to deliver the children to some kind of base camp, from where they would climb the mountain, but to get Trailmon to a station that was as high up as tracks could safely run, leaving only a short stroll to the top.
For a mountain, it was a pleasant place; Mojyamon rolled through the snow, Penmon slid around, and a Buraimon flew overhead, flapping his wings hard while he trained. One did not have to look down too far to see the Penmon fade into Muchomon, the Mojyamon into J-Mojyamon; the base of this mountain was a surprisingly verdant place.
But they were going up. And soon the Chosen Children saw that they were on a single island, adrift in a vast, black sea. Oikawa and Hiroki had seen something similar, admittedly, back when they were riding on Birdramon. But the view of the dark cracks that had become rivers and the ruined coasts was genuinely new to Daigo, Maki, and Lui, although they could have somewhat surmised it from the portions of the digital world they had witnessed.
The firewall was close now, shining brilliantly across the blackened sky. But it was not so close they could reach out and touch it, and they didn't have any digimon with them that could fly. Besides, they didn't know how to repair it anyway.
"We should make a fort!" Lui suggested, and despite his young age, the wisdom of this idea was not easily dismissed. A mountaintop was a great place for defense, there was plenty of food and water here and digimon to bring inside in the even of a siege, and Trailmon did say this was a better stronghold, but…
"What if Mugendramon attacks? I'm sure a fortress will help us against Piemon, but I don't want this place to end up like Terminal Port," Daigo said, not noticing Lui and Ukkomon already beginning to pile up snow.
"Earthworks." It wasn't any of the team who said this, but a bird digimon holding two swords, descending to meet the chosen children. "The old kind of castles don't work against artillery, density should be your fundamental operating principle," Buraimon said.
"Would snow work?" Lui asked.
"Normally, yes. Against Infinity Cannon, no. That attack's super-heated, you don't want your fortress to melt, right?"
"So it doesn't make sense to build here after all." Oikawa was disappointed.
"Wait a minute," Maki said. "Trailmon did bring us to this place, so I don't think we're supposed to leave. And if we don't have anything else to do, I think we should protect the digimon here as much as possible."
"Can we protect them here?" Hiroki asked. "Maybe we're supposed to be further down the mountain, by the train station…"
"But we shouldn't give up the high ground," Daigo said.
"An infinite mountain to stop an infinite cannon," Maki thought aloud. "Maybe if we tunnel inside? Not much to build, though, in that case…"
"It should be possible," Buraimon said. "Infinity Mountain is indeed hollow, and it might be the only place in the digital world that can take a hit from Mugendramon and survive."
It was no easy feat to turn a maze of unconnected caves and still-rendering data into a place where local digimon could flee into and hold out against enemy attacks. Their own digimon evolved to adult to help out. Monochromon was particularly well-adapted for this, but Golemon and Leomon's strength certainly contributed, while Ebidramon (no Togemon this time) could at least slowly move snow out of the way. Populations of Drimogemon and Digmon already lived in the mountain, but they embraced this project; the digital world was more dangerous now, and as long as they kept rooms for themselves, they were willing to accept company. Their excavation was key in linking those portions of the interior which could be safely connected, and their knowledge no less vital in avoiding cave-ins.
As they were working, an Elecmon hurried up the mountain, and it looked absolutely exhausted upon arrival. "I have a request to make of whoever's in charge."
The Drimogemon bade him to climb up on his back and brought him to Buraimon, but Buraimon himself flew the Elecmon to Daigo, who was currently helping Leomon furnish the rooms of the interior.
"I'd like to move the Village of Beginnings into the Infinity Mountain Fortress."
"Go for it." All this work wasn't just about protecting this one small part of the digital world, after all. If this place held out, then no matter how bad things got on the outside, new digimon could be born and this world could have a future.
Construction moved quickly with so many digimon around to help out; it was only a few days after they started that Buraimon pronounced the fortress complete. Perhaps Ukkomon's wish-granting magic had made it an easier task than they expected, or perhaps the digital world simply ran on a different sense of time; building something similar in the human world would have surely taken months if not years.
For the Chosen Children, who had grown so accustomed to battles and running away during their journey in the digital world, it was a precious reprieve.
"It's like I'm a princess," Maki had thought.
The resemblance to a castle was admittedly functional, not coincidental, and the way they'd been furnishing their rooms with luxuries (often with Ukkomon's help) had made the comparison even more on the nose. Hiroki and Oikawa actually had a working game console, and Floramon and Gotsumon joined them for their share of four-player games. The Bears mentioned on Kumamon's hat couldn't get together, dispersed as they had been around the digital world. But there was a full baseball field (if a domed one, with a low ceiling and assorted ground rules for when balls hit it) and Daigo spent a lot of time playing catch with Lui and Kumamon and teaching the game to baby and child digimon, hoping they'd eventually be able to split up into teams and play ball.
He wasn't bored or anything, but he did have one inescapable doubt.
Even calling the others into a meeting had become a process; they'd spent so long side by side, but now they all had their own rooms, and even the "Infinity Defense Council" of which they were supposedly all members would not meet without an actual threat. He hung out with Maki and Lui enough to get their attention any time, but without an adventure to distract them, he didn't actually have all that much in common with Hiroki and Oikawa; the best he could do was to tell the first two they needed to talk, and then hang out in the game room until the older Chosen Children showed up.
"I think we need to leave," Daigo said, once everyone arrived.
"Why?" Hiroki asked. "Didn't Lucemon and Trailmon say this is where we were meant to go?"
"He did, but I think this was what we were supposed to do. And I'm worried that if we do stay, and word gets out that the Chosen Children are living here, this place will become a target." Daigo answered.
"There's one thing that's been bugging me about staying," Maki added. "That prophecy we ran into in Terminal Port, on Gennai's disk. It mentioned north and south, and the gods it invoked imply east and west, but we're right in the center of File Island. Maybe we were just brought here to orient ourselves, and we were supposed to leave once we identified everything?"
"So you think we're supposed to circumnavigate it? Didn't we do half of that already, back when we all got swept away on Ebidramon?" Oikawa asked.
"I think that was the North Pole we got swept to," Maki answered, "but when I look in the opposite direction, nothing in the far south seems that familiar. This island is big and we've explored a lot of it, but not the whole thing."
"And I want to see what Togemon will evolve into," Oikawa said, satisfied by her reasoning.
"I'm not going." Hiroki was the lone holdout, but he wasn't any less determined for this fact. "We gathered all these digimon here and offered them our protection. If we're not around anymore, who's gonna keep them all safe? Sure, there's a fortress now, but is that worth anything without defenders? Without us, what's to say that the place won't be a deathtrap, that these guys won't all just be sitting ducks?"
"What's to say we can defend it now?" And there was Daigo's real reason for wanting out. "I don't think we have the strength to defeat Mugendramon or Piemon here, no matter how great the terrain advantage. And we're just playing around in here, our digimon aren't getting any stronger."
"Maybe we can build a gym to train in?" Gotsumon offered a compromise.
"There are some tough digimon here," Oikawa said. "Not on our level, but I think Buraimon and Mojyamon can hold out for a while, and having all the Drimogemon around means that if worse comes to worse, they'll be able to evacuate. Probably a good idea to add a gym for their sake, but I don't think we should stay."
Hiroki gave serious thought to staying behind. There were so many different digimon here, and even if they had truly kept the viruses out, what was to ensure that everyone would still get along without them? What if Lucemon really did mean they should remain there, to protect the fortress, what if Daigo was wrong – wouldn't it be better for at least one Chosen Child to stay?
He cast a long look at Gotsumon. What if he never evolved past Orochimon because they stayed, what if he never got strong enough? They hadn't relied that much on teamwork, admittedly, but everyone expected the final battle to be four on four, with Ukkomon serving as their powerup… Could he accept it if his partner was the weak link in their ultimate fight?
But what if he did go with everyone, they met an enemy they couldn't escape from, and his digimon paid the price?
"What should I do, Gotsumon?"
"I think Daigo's right," the rock monster said.
"OK, we can go. But we have to do this right and prepare first – and let's get that gym built!"
The ceremony was entirely Hiroki's idea. Even Buraimon, upon hearing about it, was caught completely by surprise. The whole thing was a way to justify their departure, to physically exit this location without convincing the digimon there (or, in truth, Hiroki himself) that they were leaving everyone behind. To plant a flag.
"Is this really about avoiding riots and chaos when we're gone, or do I just have a guilty conscience?" Hiroki thought.
Digimon throughout the mountain gathered in the audience hall – which was simply to say, the main cavern, but now decked out with digivice banners and carpeting – for what was described to them as an "important meeting".
"Our duties as Chosen Children do not permit us to remain here. In light of our impending absence, we have decided to appoint Buraimon to be the governor of this fortress."
The obvious symbol to serve as a token of their investiture was a digivice, of course, but they did not have any extras to spare. Instead, the light of five digivices shined upon the samurai bird, and they handed him a banner with a depiction of one.
"I will do everything in my power to protect the peace of this mountain until the moment these children return. And I truly wish that the rest of you will join me in this heroic task."
The nerves of the digimon gathered soon gave way to loud cheers (but little applause, for most digimon in the fortress lacked hands, and many with hands found them far too fluffy to clap) as Buraimon held his twin swords high, and the noise of the crowd was enough to at least give the children hope that they'd all be okay without them.
"Darkness sails north to become water" was the first line of the prophecy, according to Maki's memory, so it made sense to go north first. Except, as Daigo pointed out, darkness had already become water, as anyone could see once they looked at what had become of the Net Ocean. They never had a compass and the strange sky had not given them a sun to navigate with, but Oikawa and Floramon were absolutely convinced that the snowy place they washed up in had been the North Pole, and Maki agreed with their position, if not quite as strongly.
"Light sails south to give birth to fire" was, therefore, a far more promising lead. After all, wasn't the firewall the thing they had come to this world to fix? Admittedly, they didn't know how, and the Lucemon they'd met in the Users' Tunnel was intent on keeping them away, believing they only wanted to escape. But if there was another access point, one on land, not underground or in the sky...
The children returned to the station where the Trailmon had dropped them off. Not because they needed one to travel (Megadramon equaling if not exceeding its speed) but because the station map was the only clue they had on how to reach the southern end of File Island. But another Trailmon was indeed waiting there for them – a digital express train, at that. Once they saw this digimon, it seemed wise to save the energy, and rude to keep it waiting.
It reached in a little over an hour a location which would have taken them days on foot. All the damage which had been done to the digital world's integrity did not reach this Trailmon's tracks, nor were any bandits so bold as to try to stop this one in motion.
"Then again, most of Tetsuro's problems are after he gets off the train," Oikawa joked as the Trailmon pulled into the station.
"Good thing we don't have a pass to steal," Hiroki added. "Thank you, Trailmon!"