The Chosen Children knew, intellectually, that they were still in the digital world. What was left of the firewall beckoned in the distance, and they had not yet crossed through it, to whatever lay on the other side. Yet everything else in front of them suggested otherwise.
They had never seen the digital world as the digimon knew it, with its majestic, open, watercolor sky – yet only Oikawa, en route to Zhuqiao shrine, had ever witnessed anything remotely like this.
First of all, it was dark. Darker than it ever got in Tokyo, a Darkness Zone darker than even a cloudy, moonless night in Earth's countryside. Only Zhuqiaomon's flames allowed them to see anything at all, and what they illuminated was a void so featureless they might mistake it for drifting through outer space, except that Xuanwumon and Baihumon still stood upon some kind of ground.
It was here that they first saw their enemy. Not as a shadow behind a decaying firewall, but fully materialized, close enough to reach out and grab. Doing so, however, struck them as incredibly unwise; surely there was some kind of corruption or taint or sharp edge to make them suffer.
The creature was enormous; their own digimon were among the largest in the digital world, but this one made Baihumon look like a house cat, Zhuqiaomon a mere sparrow. The four of them together were not large enough to equal a single face of Apocalymon's polyhedral body, and the creature had more sides than they could count, pentagons stacked upon pentagons.
And then there were the claws. There was something of a resemblance to Qinglongmon's own chains; Lui wondered if Apocalymon himself had placed them there, long ago, to seal his partner's power. But Oikawa spotted the difference; the double helix pattern which linked the claws, inherently, to the very concept of evolution.
"You've caught on, Chosen Child. I am where evolution ultimately leads," Apocalymon said.
"What is this guy even talking about?" Daigo asked.
"He means entropy," Oikawa tried to explain. "Physicists think the universe will end kind of like this. Life running out of energy, nothing but darkness and chaos everywhere." It was a high school student's attempt to explain physics to an elementary schooler, and was accordingly garbled and incomplete.
But Apocalymon, at least, was satisfied with the explanation. "The Digital World is over," their enemy declared. "You can not stand against death itself. All must end someday."
"But why now?!" Maki pleaded, holding her digitama closely, remembering the Bakumon it used to be. "We're still young! We should have our whole lives in front of us! There are still baby digimon out there who deserve the chance to grow up!"
In another world, in another time, perhaps someone's sympathy might have changed Apocalymon's mind. In three years, however, it would be beyond even Yagami Hikari's power to do so, and none of the original generation were at all close to her equal at changing minds or mending hearts.
"I deserved that too," a disappointed Apocalymon said; was that actual sadness on his face, far above them all, atop the polyhedron? "But this world denied it to me. Why should anyone else be happy? All you deserve is to face my wrath! Shokushu!"
Apocalymon's chains whirled and whirled, a metal circle pattern which sought to smash all four gods to pieces. Baihumon grabbed a chain in his jaws, biting hard with fangs that could indeed pierce steel. Zhuqiaomon burnt the chain which got too close to his body. But Xuanwumon could do nothing as the chains scoured his treetops, and the attack clanged across Qinglongmon's own chains, squeezing the bound dragon even tighter.
This result was not nearly enough to satisfy Apocalymon, for Xuanwumon's bulk endured, and Qinglongmon looked no different no matter how tightly he was imprisoned. So he pulled back his attack and switched techniques, his claws morphing into their four defeated foes.
"Ultimate Stream!" The MetalSeadramon shaped claw targeted Zhuqiaomon, for the firebird was always on the wrong side of the elemental struggle against the sea serpent. The fact that the white light was hard to recognize as a water attack at all did not stop it from drenching either Oikawa's coat or his digimon's wings.
"Trump Sword!" There is a long tradition, in mythology, of special, named magic weapons being used to slay dragons. Piemon's blade, even wielded by Apocalymon, is not usually included in that hallowed category, yet Qinglongmon found it no easier to deal with; it was too long, too large, for him to avoid, and he was soon pierced from multiple directions.
"Mugen Cannon!" One does not easily fell a digimon like Xuanwumon, whose very body shape is used in fighting games as a metaphor for defensive strategy. The digital world's ultimate destructive power might have legitimately been the only thing capable of this mighty task. For Apocalymon had shot from below, and the forest was toppled.
"Bullet Hammer!" Tigers, sadly, have been hunted for generations; they have only one natural predator, and gunpowder gave that predator a massive advantage. It takes a special type of bullet to pierce a steel tiger's fur, but Pinocchimon had a truly ultimate grasp of gunpowder chemistry, and the bullets, fired now from a metal claw-hammer and not a wooden one, were more than strong enough to pierce through skin and steel fur. They even pierced them twice, leaving exit wounds when they came out the other side.
"Now, let me finish this!" Apocalymon was in no mood to take turns on attacks, and the holy beasts were in no shape to stop him. "Death Evolution!"
Apocalymon was gone now, except they hadn't won anything, had been the ones defeated by his attack. Which meant in truth that the chosen children were the ones who were 'gone' – banished from the digital world, drifting through dimensional space, and in too dark a place, with Zhuqiaomon's flames flickering out, to see where they had gone.
"We can't win," Hiroki finally said out loud.
None of them wanted to face it, but none of them could find a way to dispute his point. Before he used his ultimate attack, they had lost thoroughly to a mere four claws. Apocalymon surely had at least twice as many, somewhere on his body; between his size and strange shape they were hard to count.
They had struggled so much against the Dark Masters – Bakumon's fate could testify to that fact. But their current opponent was more than twice as powerful.
"What went wrong, Ukkomon? I didn't want this. I thought you could grant my wish," Lui protested, pleaded.
"I wanted to grant it," Ukkomon agreed. "Guess I wasn't strong enough."
"Maybe if we could get another heal, but I think we're all out of miracles," Oikawa said sadly.
"Sorry about that," Maki said. "I should've saved this for later and trusted you guys to find a way past Piemon, I had no idea what was coming."
"Wasn't that Bakumon's decision?" Daigo asked.
"Yeah, but he can't apologize for himself." Maki was still, somehow, holding back tears.
"Well, I guess all we can do now is shake hands and say good game." Daigo looked left and right, but could not find his massive opponent. "Where is he? Doesn't he know anything about sportsmanship?"
"Are you really okay with losing to a guy like that?" Baihumon protested, forcing himself to his feet.
"Didn't you still have a bunch of worlds to explore?" Zhuqiaomon asked his partner.
"If the digital world is gone…" Oikawa wondered aloud, "can you find any of them? Is Earth still out there, somewhere?"
"Don't you want to go home?" Xuanwumon asked Hiroki. Perhaps he never quite understood his partner; the snake-turtle was never great at avoiding land mines, even those of the figurative variety. The thought left Oikawa and Maki even more despondent than Hiroki, however, who at least missed his family and hoped that he could somehow, someday, bring Fumiko and Iori to the digital world.
"Just hurry up and hatch, Bakumon, we need you!" Maki begged, rubbing as fast as she possibly could – far faster than could possibly benefit any digitama.
"Don't you want to see the digital world as it's supposed to be?" Zhuqiaomon said.
"Don't you want to tell all the kids back home about this story?" Qinglongmon asked.
"Yeah, but… we can't win. Wishes alone never fix anything, that's what my mom always said," Lui spoke.
"They brought you me, didn't you?" It was Ukkomon, the small Ukkomon, who said that part.
"Sometimes you just know when you're beaten," Daigo said. His team was good, but he'd been in enough games over the years to have plenty of experience with losing.
"And sometimes you make an incredible comeback!" Baihumon answered, and his partner began to smile.
"How?" Oikawa asked. "If we had some kind of special strategy, I could see it, but we couldn't even get an attack in…"
"So let's attack!" Zhuqiaomon said.
The four holy beasts themselves huddled up together, whispering some sort of plan. The children stood off to the side, though they could easily have fit between them; they believed in their digimon.
"I want to show everyone this world someday," Hiroki added. Tragically, he would never get the chance, outside of his own son's dream, many years later. But at that key moment, the idea still sustained him. One must remember that, in modern times, these two worlds have become closely linked, just as Hiroki dreamed.
"Let's go!" It was actually Maki who said that, Maki who tried to lead the way; it was all so hard to do anything without Bakumon, but she had to do something. And hearing the words from her were enough to spur all the children who did still have partners into action.
The moment came, soon after Maki's words, when Death Evolution's spell was broken. Even the Darkness Zone became a little warmer, a little brighter, a little less dark. Apocalymon still faced the children, but they and their partners (who looked as good as new) now stared back, without fear.
It is not simply a metaphor to describe Apocalymon as empty inside, and this is what the beast gods relied on. Qinglongmon swung his whole, massive body like a whip, and Apocalymon bounced like a beachball, high into the air. His claws could not take hold of the dragon.
Xuanwumon followed this up, racing under it, withstanding all of his enemies' mockery – "The turtle thinks he's a volleyball player?" He was indeed fast enough to use his trees like a racket, to bat it into the air, high above where Baihumon waited to pounce.
The tiger leaped high into the air, batting it with his own claw, which was wider and thicker than Apocalymon's. The momentum from the combined attack carried it just outside the boundary of the digital world, although the firewall had by this point been so destroyed that it was difficult to locate the border.
But Zhuqiaomon was there to fix that problem. "Firewall!"
Its brilliant flames burnt the air, where they still burn to this day, separating the digital world from the chaos beyond. Apocalymon tried to float back through, but could not breach this barrier, not for another three years.
He was not too far away for the children to hear; his taunts and lamentations carried through where his attacks did not.
"You have made a great sacrifice to defeat me. Fools! The beast gods, your so-called partners, have already devoured you! The day will come when you share my fate, when you realize I was right all along! Hahahaha!"
The sky was blue now, and so was the Net Ocean around them. The ground was intact, not cracked. Many had died during their adventure, and far more eggs dotted the ground than when they first arrived, But the digital world had returned to the kind of place they recognized from their games, to the world they always wanted to discover.
They would not get to stay around to explore it. Gennai and Centarumon showed up within minutes, with a warning that the digital world might erase them, too, as part of its self-repair program. The sunlight was still not back to normal yet; an eclipsed sun failed to fully shine above. This eclipse was not caused not by the movement of any other celestial bodies, but by the re-emergence of the sun itself, which had disappeared when Apocalymon corrupted the digital world into a world of darkness.
A black Trailmon waited for them, at the base of a set of tracks attached that stretched endlessly into the sky. Oikawa could not help but sing a few notes of the Ginga Tetsudou 999 theme at the sight.
Nishijima Daigo would regret it later, but at the time, he was first to board. He had friends back home, people to get back to, and his mind could accept that their adventure was over. He hugged Baihumon closely, nuzzled its white fur, and thanked him for everything. But he was able to say a tearful goodbye and boarded the Trailmon, and Baihumon departed for the West.
He was the leader, right? He was supposed to go first.
In a lot of ways, Ohwada Lui had it easiest of the five. Most importantly of those ways, Qinglongmon stayed behind and traveled east, but Ukkomon got to come home with him.
He wasn't ready for their adventure to end yet; he wanted to make closer friends with everyone, he worried about whether he'd get to see them again. A part of him wondered if his own wish for excitement had made this take longer than it had to, if it had even caused all this in the first place. But his mother was nice again and his father had recovered. Moreover, he was convinced that, if he truly wanted to stay, then Gennai would never have asked him to go home.
So, conflicted or not, he stepped aboard.
Hida Hiroki was visibly torn. He had a family to return to now, not just a strict father. Fumiko needed him. Iori needed him. Oikawa also needed him, and didn't look like he was any hurry to get on.
Did Xuanwumon still need him? Did the digital world? Or was it the other way around? He looked around Xuanwumon's back, marveled at the forest where he stood, the Kunemon crawling through the trees, the Woodmon climbing on top – would virus types be a part of this new digital world?
His dad could say whatever he wanted; still, he was never gonna be able to forget this place.
It was too much to say he "couldn't let Iori grow up without a father" – if risking that was truly unthinkable, he could never have gone on his subsequent career. But he had his duties to his home world, and although his heart was torn, he still, after a great deal of hesitation, stepped onto the Trailmon.
His partner gone, Xuanwumon began his long, slow journey north. Some would only date the digital world's recovery to the turtle's arrival there, but in truth, the north had never been as broken as the rest of the island; Qinglongmon and Baihumon are far better markers of the new epoch.
Himekawa Maki clutched her golden digitama to her chest, and outright refused to board. "Bakumon hasn't hatched yet."
"I'm sorry." Gennai could say nothing else, nothing kinder; it was the kind of sorry one says after someone close has passed away, when no words could ever possibly console them or bring them back. But there was still a twelve-year-old girl there, fiercely resisting, refusing to board the train, in mortal peril just by remaining in the digital world.
The ethics of Homeostasis' actions have been the cause of fierce debate the world over, and not only during this initial adventure. Should they have let Maki get over her grief on her own time, should they have allowed her to attempt to remain? Was there a better way to do things, or was the manner in which they intervened why things went so terribly wrong? Both Daigo and Maki herself would mull over those questions for the rest of their tragically shortened lives.
Suffice it to say, at this moment in the history of the Digital World, that a white light overtook Maki and gently placed the golden digitama on the ground, then walked into the Trailmon and sat down next to Daigo. By the time her consciousness returned, the doors were locked, they were high above the ground, and the train was already in motion.
Maki was not the only one to refuse to board, however, and no otherworldly entity had any similar connection to Oikawa Yukio's body. "There's nothing left for me on Earth. I have no reason to go home."
"Even if you die here?" Gennai asked.
"I want to die here," Oikawa retorted. "Better here than in that bland, boring planet I was forced to call home. Though ideally, it'll be many decades before they bury me." It would be a mere six years.
"You aren't meant to die here," Zhuqiaomon said, his gaze far behind the firewall. "But don't worry. You won't be stuck on Earth forever. We'll meet again in time, and your heart will indeed be laid to rest in the digital world someday."
Perhaps if Oikawa had a little more trust in those words, a little more ability to wait, he would have met with a kinder fate. Or perhaps not; the human and digital worlds of today were not, after all, only changed to their modern state by the actions of heroes.
Oikawa Yukio would never again view the Digital World without crying; the beautiful scenery he witnessed on his ride out was only seen through waterlogged eyes.
The first generation of chosen children, it should not be forgotten, had a very difficult time on their return to Earth. The oldest members of the Chosen Children web forum are of Taichi's generation, who, for all the difficulty of their parting, all at least possessed seven local friends and the confidence that they'd see their digimon again someday.
Three years is a short period in a history book; in a child's lifetime, it is everything.
The sad fates of all five of these children are stories in their own right, too long to relate in their entirety here, stories which would incorporate their successors. But there are some particular aspects worth highlighting.
Apocalymon's final words would haunt all five of them, and they were not without a grain of truth. Human sacrifice to the beast gods, or kemonogami, was a custom far older than the digital world; professor Takenouchi Haruhiko is not alone in considering these children their final victims.
Maki would cling to the idea of Bakumon as the "great sacrifice", in large part to protect Daigo, who, for the rest of her life (whether dating or parted), she would consider the only living person who understood her.
The older four, in their own way, would all have their remaining life paths shaped by their desire to remain in contact with the digital world – Oikawa's was the most dramatic example, but it was not the only one. The scientist Hiroki took a bullet for was not the only one with power and connections who he spent time around. As a highly respected bodyguard, his ears were quite intentionally close to the sources of power. He quite clearly saw what was happening, who realized that Earth and the Digital World could not forever remain separated, realized this was something human leadership could not ignore. If he had lived longer, perhaps he would have wound up in the role Yagami Taichi would someday assume, an intermediary between Earth and the world he loved.
Maki and Daigo were younger, with plenty of chances to determine what to study and how to place themselves in the best possible position to return to the digital world. Graduating high school around the Christmas Invasion of 2002, they volunteered immediately for a certain agency. They ran circles around their bosses and received a personal recommendation from some very powerful figures in the digital world; before long, they were the ones running it.
For Daigo, this meant victory; it was not much exaggeration to describe his reunion with Baihumon as the happiest moment of his life. It was also, however, the time when himself and Maki began to drift apart; for her, returning to the digital world meant facing up to the fact that Bakumon was gone. Homeostasis still had a connection to her, and for entirely different reasons, the two of them hatched an audacious plan…
Lui had the worst reaction of any of them to the arrival of digimon on Earth, for he thought it the unwitting outcome of his wishes; it would cost him everything except his life. This, apparently, was enough of a sacrifice; he was the only one of the five to survive their adventure by a full decade.
Their partners, the holy beasts themselves, had a very different experience, although they would always wonder if it only came about because they devoured their partners' happiness. They would experience the dramatic expansion of the digital world; File Island would always remain at its center, so the gods of north, south, east, and west would be among the first digimon to depart that isle.
Baihumon's reunion with Daigo, of course, had been a gloriously happy occasion for both of them, but Maki's own actions forced on him an awful choice, and Daigo never quite grasped just how far her plan had gone. He tried to warn his partner, but they just got into a fight over it; when the reboot occurred, the lost bond with the Holy Beasts, more than anything else, turned the digital world hostile to humanity.
There was something incredibly tragic about regaining his memories of his partner after said partner was already dead. Considering the fates of the others, it struck Baihumon as foolish to even complain: "Why do you think you're special?" At least Daigo lived a happy life, the happiest of his generation, and had a properly heroic death.
The western gate of the digital world is located in a secluded field at the edge of Folder Continent. Baihumon has never spoken openly about what is on the other side; the commonly cited online claim that it leads to Witchelny owes more to the process of elimination than it does to any actual knowledge about what's out there, and is arguably contradicted by Wizarmon's own landing in Server. Perhaps the real answer was written in Wisemon's book, but that is lost now; if Baihumon can truly see through this gate, he's not talking.
Baihumon is better known today as a patron of Digimon Baseball. The Tigers' current stadium is located on the grounds of his shrine, and he is often seen in attendance when they play the Bears. He stands on the upper deck, watching from behind home plate. According to legend, his choice of seat is so he can still keep one eye on the gate at the edge of the digital world, which is visible beyond the outfield.
Qinglongmon was in an ambiguous position; he was an extra evolution, created from a wish, whose bond with Lui was always weaker than the smaller, unevolved version of Ukkomon. Perhaps this is why, when he was first to speak to later generations of Chosen Children, he said nothing whatsoever about their earlier adventures.
Despite his effort to scold BlackWarGreymon, the eastern gate would be the one breached by the destruction of the Holy Stones. With a partner, Qinglongmon fought hard; without one, it felt natural to rely on others, to grant them a fraction of his might. The Holy Beasts could accomplish little in 1999; their partners gone, they were defeated in the rematch, and a new group of children were required.
His blue lightning bolts did not return to the digital world during BelialVamdemon's crisis; then again, he was a god now, and gods do not easily intervene directly in the world of mortals. Living with eleven digicores would be a testament to his actions in that critical period.
It would be many, many years, and three more apocalypses, before he met Lui and his other self, Ukkomon, again; at least he got the chance.
There is a place in the northern digital world where the Net Ocean flows into the Quantum Sea. Xuanwumon lives on a small island around there, atop a gentle cliff, which was once barren but is now thickly forested. He ensures that nothing which flows under the nearby Infinite Ice Wall can ever damage the structural integrity of the digital world.
He would never meet Hiroki again, but an encounter in 2012 almost fooled him; the boy was far too young for sixteen years later, around as old as Hiroki had been when they met, but digimon always struggle to understand how humans age.
"Hiroki would be proud of you." Whatever had so troubled the boy would be greatly eased by his words. Iori had grown up, without a father, into a fine young man with a good heart and a deep love of the digital world. Armadimon thanked him for helping put his partner's head right; Iori himself would do so in time, but at the moment, he was far too moved to tears.
Zhuqiaomon was the only one of the four gods to ever devolve again, and it was this fact, as much as the Dark Towers, which undermined the structural integrity of the digital world in 2002. A partner mad with grief, whose heart was possessed by Vamdemon, could never allow him to retain an Ultimate form.
The fact that the firewall itself still stood was Pipimon's one way to take solace; he, too, missed Oikawa so, so much. Meeting him in his dying days was no less heartbreaking, but the butterflies and Oikawa's dying wish allowed his power to return.
The firewall is far more remote in modern times, but Zhuqiaomon still watches over it; it has not been breached in this century.
Every digimon textbook and encyclopedia, including Gennai and Izumi Koushirou's Digimon Analyzer as early as 1999, describes digimon as divided into Virus, Data, and Vaccine.
It was not always so.
One of the most important tasks of the Firewall was to keep out virus digimon, and it is an undeniable, historical fact that virus types first appeared in 1996. The only cracks shown in that understanding, during that original adventure, was the chosen children's partners themselves; Orochimon and Megadramon were fearsome evolutions, regarded even by Hiroki and Maki, respectively, with more than a little trepidation. Perhaps Ukkomon did not understand this aspect, when determining how to bring them to the next level; perhaps that particular barrier had already been broken.
Many of the digimon who had joined Apocalymon's armies were left behind after the battle of Infinity Fortress, and the digital world's self-repair program, rather than deleting them, simply regarded them as native.
The notion of virus types as invaders took many years to go away, and the actions of Devimon, Etemon, and Vamdemon promoted further obstacles to anyone who wanted to reconcile. It was the second victory over Apocalymon, not the first, which truly began to change this. Yet it changed slowly; there was a time period, at the beginning of the era of digimon partners, when humans were fine with the concept of digimon partners, yet still feared the virus digimon they ended up partnered with. Compromise legislation was even proposed in some countries restricting virus partner digimon, along with digimon evolution, before authorities realized that enforcing anti-digimon legislation is a power humanity does not possess.
Thankfully, these days are gone; indeed, one of the Holy Beasts is itself conventionally regarded, today, as a virus digimon.
The digital world has faced alien enough dangers, in these long and tumultuous decades – Yggdrasil, Dark Towers, arguably humans as well – and many viruses, such as Wormmon, have stood up for digimon everywhere. So virus types are today simply considered another type of digimon, one positively normal by comparison.
There is still something out there, on the other side of the Firewall, and not all of it is horrifying. Zhuqiaomon wonders sometimes, surrounded by butterflies, what worlds are left to explore. The digital world is vast, but after enough time, even the most fascinating place can become positively normal.
Homeostasis seeks stability. Yggdrasil seeks the security of isolation. Neither will ever distract Zhuqiaomon from his duty. But the day may come when the adventurous spirits of humans and digimon carries them beyond it – for there are many more worlds out there than the suffering of Apocalymon's Darkness Zone.
It is difficult, in this era, to know where the human world ends and where the digital world begins; one of the great generational dividing lines is between those who have only ever known digimon as friends, and those who remembered the days when humanity thought itself alone.
Humans and digimon have argued ferociously, on both sides, over whether this is good or bad, have both experienced plenty of destruction and chaos en route to the age when everyone has a digimon partner. It is easy to remember that humans thought their world would end in 2000, because of the round number and the Diablomon incident; most digimon no longer remember how they thought it would also end in 2008, in a panic whose lack of long-term effects has rendered it all but forgotten.
We should not forget those who gave so much to ensure that we could have these arguments at all, that it could have all ended in 1996, if not for the strength of these children's hearts. Four of the five Original Chosen Children were indeed lost, and the lone survivor suffered greatly; we have all benefited immensely from their great sacrifice, and their legacy still touches the four corners of the digital world.
Hida Hiroki. Oikawa Yukio. Himekawa Maki. Nishijima Daigo. May their spirits, which have forever touched the digital world, rest in peace.
A huge thank you goes out to Vethica for editing this fic.