Yamato Ishida (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
angry_friendship_wolf) wrote2021-03-08 09:52 pm
angry_friendship_wolf) wrote2021-03-08 09:52 pm
[tri OOM] The Second Battle of Odaiba, Part IV
More Digimon are appearing. Nishijima can see a Snimon appear here, a Tuskmon there, a Vajramon and Pajramon together in one of Odaiba’s parks, an IceDevimon near the convention centre, and more and more.
“Agent Nishijima, this is Professor Mochizuki. We’re pulling all forces back another hundred metres.”
Nishijima blinks down at his phone. Pulling back? Less than half an hour ago, Mochizuki could only offer him an hour before the forces lined up along the edge of Tokyo Bay went charging in.
His phone is silent for a moment. Then: “I need you to do something for me, Agent.”
“Sir?”
“My -- my daughter. Meiko. She isn’t at home,” Professor Mochizuki says. “I think she’s gone to find Meicoomon.”
---
Gennai flicks a hand. The tendrils of dark energy jab at the shield around Meicrackmon, but are rebuffed each time, recoiling in a flash of green light.
Alphamon comes to a stop in front of Meicrackmon, eyes flickering green, wings spread out behind him. “Enough, Gennai,” he booms, his voice reverberating through the air, shaking the concrete and glass of the hotel. “You’ve lost.”
Yamato sees Gennai’s face twist into a snarl, just for a split second, before sliding back into an expression of bland disinterest. “All units, converge on my location,” Gennai murmurs. “Destroy Alphamon at all costs.”
For a moment, there’s silence. It drags on, across long seconds, five and then ten and then fifteen.
Then, Sora’s voice comes over comms. “Taichi, Yamato, all the invading Digimon have turned around. They’re heading your way.”
Gennai flicks his hand again. The tendrils of dark energy crash against the sphere of light around Meicrackmon again and again, trying to break through and get at her.
“I can hold the Libra here for a time, and prevent Gennai from evolving it, but I cannot fend off an assault from his entire force,” Alphamon booms. “Lend me your strength. Defend me, Chosen.”
Yamato looks upwards, locking eyes with Taichi as the other boy flies past on WarGreymon’s shoulder. It only takes one glance to know that Taichi is making the same mental arithmetic as him: Alphamon was an enemy before because he was determined, implacably so, to stop Meicoomon, even if it meant killing people, but that same zeal makes him an ally now. They don’t exactly have many other options.
“Everyone, head to Le Meridien,” Yamato says, tapping his earpiece. “We’ll form a perimeter and protect Alphamon.”
A chorus of affirmatives comes through the comms, and as MetalGarurumon swings by, Yamato hooks a claw onto him and swings back on, ignoring the way his wounds are starting to sting again.
---
Even with the others there, they’re barely managing a stalemate. It’s eight against hundreds, and Gennai’s forces have the Infection fuelling them and boosting their power.
Yamato wheels through the sky on MetalGarurumon, firing off storms of missiles and blasts of ice, giving orders to the others to reposition them where they can be most useful. But the perimeter is shrinking and they’re losing ground, bit by bit, a foot or a meter every few minutes, tightening in on the Le Meridien hotel and, by extension, Alphamon and Meicrackmon.
Gennai keeps up his assault on Alphamon’s shield, funneling that negative energy into spikes, or typhoons, or a barrage of blunt strikes to try and break it. Occasionally, Yamato sees a crack form in the shield, but it’s always sealed up a moment later, as the two of them endure their own stalemate.
“Something else is coming through the Gate,” MetalGarurumon says sharply.
“More of Gennai’s reinforcements?” Yamato asks.
“No way to tell.”
There’s a flash of white from the Gate, then another, then two more, before it goes still again. Yamato tenses up, ready for some new Infected Digimon to materialise.
“The bay,” MetalGarurumon says urgently, as the water boils and froths at the edge of the shoreline. Yamato wheels around towards it, as a shape bursts out of it, droplets pouring off it, sending spray crashing onto the coast.
Two heavy flails, bristly white fur, black armour and a horned helmet, with a cape of furs streaming behind it. Yamato recognises Vikemon even before he sees Jyou perched on its head, waving one arm at them.
A swing of Vikemon’s flail sends a swathe of Gennai’s forces flying, as Vikemon clambers up onto the shore, battering his way through the sea of Troopmon and Valvemon, crushing them under the spiked heads of his weapon.
“Jyou-senpai?” Mimi asks from Rosemon’s shoulder.
“Then that means -- …”
From the north, HeraklesKabuterimon comes sweeping in, with Koushiro sat on his back. Yamato sees lightning flash around his pincers, before he slams into Sephirotmon, tearing through the struts in a single blow.
“Taichi-san, Yamato-san,” Koushiro says over the comms. “We have everything we need for the device.”
Miyako and Holsmon soar past from Yamato’s other side, peppering Gennai’s forces with bolts of red light. Ken and Stingmon streak past him a second later, a laser blade extending from Stingmon’s arm to slash at Gennai, forcing him to dance backwards to the edge of Le Meridien’s rooftop.
“You’re late, guys,” Taichi laughs.
“Sorry, sorry!” Miyako replies, her voice crackling through their earpieces. “But we didn’t just bring the device.”
The Gate roils again, shifting and distorting, and four more bursts of white light ripple out from it.
Yamato sees one land near the Le Meridien, resolving into the towering shape of Monzaemon and what must be nearly a hundred Penmon, swarming forward and clashing against Gennai’s forces.
On the hotel’s other side, Goemon and his generals appeared, followed by a dozen Trailmon, stationary without their tracks but with railway guns trained on Gennai’s army, firing on them.
A little further afield, Andromon lands in a flash of white, and around him, what Yamato thinks must be thousands of machine Digimon appear, charging forward to repel Gennai’s forces.
Out in the bay, CaptainHookmon’s ship erupts out of the water, cannons flashing. Yamato sees Calamaramon flail its tentacles and fall, sinking into the sea under a barrage of cannon fire.
Yamato sees Gennai look in one direction, then another, before grimacing and snapping his fingers, vanishing in a flicker of static.
“They brought us an army,” Taichi says softly. “I -- wasn’t expecting that.”
“They brought us time,” Yamato replies. “And not a lot of it.”
That seems to snap Taichi out of his reverie, and he taps his earpiece. “Digimon, keep fighting. Humans, rendezvous at the rooftop of Le Meridien. It’s time to end this.”
---
They land on the hotel’s rooftop, and Koushiro starts pulling things from his backpack: A branch of white wood first, then a glass canister with red cubes crackling and glitching within it, and then a golden ring marked with DigiMoji.
“Wood from the first Server Tree, Warudamon’s data, and a Holy Ring,” Koushiro says. “The Holy Ring will act as an amplifier, while we can use Warudamon’s data to program the wave to attack the cores of whatever Digimon it encounters, just like her powers did. The wood from the Server Tree will act as both an auxiliary amplifier and a master key of sorts.”
Yamato watches as he puts them together, the three flickering and merging until they form a cube of light, glittering in rainbow colours, with the stretched out Holy Ring revolving around it.
“So we just …” Sora starts, raising an eyebrow at the floating object. “... Pour power into it, and it does the rest?”
“That’s more or less the idea,” Miyako chirps from the sidelines. “Once it’s at capacity, it’ll fire.”
“And so long as the Gates are open, it’ll pass through them and into the Digital World, too,” Koushiro adds.
There’s a moment of hesitation, before they start arranging themselves into a circle, with Taichi at the head, then Yamato, Sora, Koushiro, Mimi, Jyou, Takeru, Hikari, and finally Ken. One by one, they hold their digivices out, and one by one, each digivice emits a beam of light into the device.
Yamato can feel their Crests activating as much as he sees them: The burst of searing heat from Taichi as the light from his digivice turns orange; the burst of wind from Sora; the crackle of electricity from Koushiro, or the wash of briny air from Jyou, or the smell of pollen from Mimi. Yamato shuts his eyes, and feels his Crest lash out with a wave of bone-deep cold, as the light from his digivice turns a ghostly blue.
The ring revolves around the cube faster. The light in it grows stronger. Yamato can hear it humming, the power in it building and building, until it reaches a fever pitch. For a split second, he remembers what Gennai said, that even if this cure works, it won’t cure Meicoomon.
Then the wave bursts outwards, a blaze of white light that engulfs them and then sweeps out across the island, then beyond.
The light from their digivices fade. The cube goes inert, the ring stops spinning, and as its rainbow colours fade into a dull grey, Koushiro reaches forward and catches it.
“Did it work?” Taichi asks.
Yamato glances around. The Digimon of Gennai’s army aren’t attacking any more. In fact, they’re talking, sounding utterly bewildered as they ask where they are and what on earth is going on. The glitches and static that marked them as Infected are fading away.
“The other Gates are closing,” Hikari says. “I can sense it. The Digimon holding them open are cured.”
A glance up at Odaiba’s Gate, still open, confirms what she’s saying, as the tendrils of dark power dissolve and fade away.
“Then we did it. The cure works,” Taichi replies. “We’ve cured everyone. Nearly everyone. Everyone except …”
All eyes turn up to the Gate, where Meicrackmon is still Infected, still suspended in Alphamon’s shield. The originator of the Infection can’t be cured.
“You’ve done well, Chosen,” Alphamon rumbles. “With this, the Digital World has been saved. The Infection reduced to a single individual. Only one more act remains to ensure its safety.”
It all happens in a split second. Alphamon drops the shield around Meicrackmon. His golden sword materialises in his hand. It scythes through the air, down towards Meicrackmon’s skull. Meicrackmon’s eyes open, luminous green with pupils like a jagged cross. One armoured paw snaps up.
The sword stops with a clang, held in place.
“What do I keep telling you?” Gennai’s -- well, Hikari’s voice, but with the inflections that Yamato knows by now to be Gennai’s, as he materialises wearing Hikari’s shape. “There are a thousand ways that I can win.”
He takes a step forward, his shape shifting into Taichi’s, raising one hand -- with the strange, gnarled digivice he was using to keep the Gate open -- towards Meicrackmon.
“Meicoomon, do you know the faces of the guilty? You must become Apocalymon, because his existence demands that he take shape in this world, again and again, the everlasting icon of the Crests’ failure,” Gennai murmurs. “This attempt failed, but I made plans for another. Do you want to know a secret? I drew Alphamon here.”
Meicrackmon yowls, batting the blade aside and surging forward, latching onto Alphamon’s chest and digging her claws in, prising apart the data. Alphamon yells, grabbing her, trying to pull her off, but she’s gripping him tight, trying to tear her way inside him.
The digivice in Gennai’s hand flickers with a faint light. He holds it higher.
“Stop him!” Taichi yells.
They all sprint towards him. A blast of telekinetic force throws them back. With a scream, Meicrackmon melts into Alphamon, the two of them vanishing into a nimbus of red and black energy.
“Time to wear a different chain,” Gennai says softly. “Meicrackmon, Alphamon, fusion evolution.”
---
On Odaiba's Rainbow Bridge, Meiko turns her head towards the swirling, crackling energy over the Le Meridien.
"I'm coming, Mei-chan."
“Agent Nishijima, this is Professor Mochizuki. We’re pulling all forces back another hundred metres.”
Nishijima blinks down at his phone. Pulling back? Less than half an hour ago, Mochizuki could only offer him an hour before the forces lined up along the edge of Tokyo Bay went charging in.
His phone is silent for a moment. Then: “I need you to do something for me, Agent.”
“Sir?”
“My -- my daughter. Meiko. She isn’t at home,” Professor Mochizuki says. “I think she’s gone to find Meicoomon.”
Gennai flicks a hand. The tendrils of dark energy jab at the shield around Meicrackmon, but are rebuffed each time, recoiling in a flash of green light.
Alphamon comes to a stop in front of Meicrackmon, eyes flickering green, wings spread out behind him. “Enough, Gennai,” he booms, his voice reverberating through the air, shaking the concrete and glass of the hotel. “You’ve lost.”
Yamato sees Gennai’s face twist into a snarl, just for a split second, before sliding back into an expression of bland disinterest. “All units, converge on my location,” Gennai murmurs. “Destroy Alphamon at all costs.”
For a moment, there’s silence. It drags on, across long seconds, five and then ten and then fifteen.
Then, Sora’s voice comes over comms. “Taichi, Yamato, all the invading Digimon have turned around. They’re heading your way.”
Gennai flicks his hand again. The tendrils of dark energy crash against the sphere of light around Meicrackmon again and again, trying to break through and get at her.
“I can hold the Libra here for a time, and prevent Gennai from evolving it, but I cannot fend off an assault from his entire force,” Alphamon booms. “Lend me your strength. Defend me, Chosen.”
Yamato looks upwards, locking eyes with Taichi as the other boy flies past on WarGreymon’s shoulder. It only takes one glance to know that Taichi is making the same mental arithmetic as him: Alphamon was an enemy before because he was determined, implacably so, to stop Meicoomon, even if it meant killing people, but that same zeal makes him an ally now. They don’t exactly have many other options.
“Everyone, head to Le Meridien,” Yamato says, tapping his earpiece. “We’ll form a perimeter and protect Alphamon.”
A chorus of affirmatives comes through the comms, and as MetalGarurumon swings by, Yamato hooks a claw onto him and swings back on, ignoring the way his wounds are starting to sting again.
Even with the others there, they’re barely managing a stalemate. It’s eight against hundreds, and Gennai’s forces have the Infection fuelling them and boosting their power.
Yamato wheels through the sky on MetalGarurumon, firing off storms of missiles and blasts of ice, giving orders to the others to reposition them where they can be most useful. But the perimeter is shrinking and they’re losing ground, bit by bit, a foot or a meter every few minutes, tightening in on the Le Meridien hotel and, by extension, Alphamon and Meicrackmon.
Gennai keeps up his assault on Alphamon’s shield, funneling that negative energy into spikes, or typhoons, or a barrage of blunt strikes to try and break it. Occasionally, Yamato sees a crack form in the shield, but it’s always sealed up a moment later, as the two of them endure their own stalemate.
“Something else is coming through the Gate,” MetalGarurumon says sharply.
“More of Gennai’s reinforcements?” Yamato asks.
“No way to tell.”
There’s a flash of white from the Gate, then another, then two more, before it goes still again. Yamato tenses up, ready for some new Infected Digimon to materialise.
“The bay,” MetalGarurumon says urgently, as the water boils and froths at the edge of the shoreline. Yamato wheels around towards it, as a shape bursts out of it, droplets pouring off it, sending spray crashing onto the coast.
Two heavy flails, bristly white fur, black armour and a horned helmet, with a cape of furs streaming behind it. Yamato recognises Vikemon even before he sees Jyou perched on its head, waving one arm at them.
A swing of Vikemon’s flail sends a swathe of Gennai’s forces flying, as Vikemon clambers up onto the shore, battering his way through the sea of Troopmon and Valvemon, crushing them under the spiked heads of his weapon.
“Jyou-senpai?” Mimi asks from Rosemon’s shoulder.
“Then that means -- …”
From the north, HeraklesKabuterimon comes sweeping in, with Koushiro sat on his back. Yamato sees lightning flash around his pincers, before he slams into Sephirotmon, tearing through the struts in a single blow.
“Taichi-san, Yamato-san,” Koushiro says over the comms. “We have everything we need for the device.”
Miyako and Holsmon soar past from Yamato’s other side, peppering Gennai’s forces with bolts of red light. Ken and Stingmon streak past him a second later, a laser blade extending from Stingmon’s arm to slash at Gennai, forcing him to dance backwards to the edge of Le Meridien’s rooftop.
“You’re late, guys,” Taichi laughs.
“Sorry, sorry!” Miyako replies, her voice crackling through their earpieces. “But we didn’t just bring the device.”
The Gate roils again, shifting and distorting, and four more bursts of white light ripple out from it.
Yamato sees one land near the Le Meridien, resolving into the towering shape of Monzaemon and what must be nearly a hundred Penmon, swarming forward and clashing against Gennai’s forces.
On the hotel’s other side, Goemon and his generals appeared, followed by a dozen Trailmon, stationary without their tracks but with railway guns trained on Gennai’s army, firing on them.
A little further afield, Andromon lands in a flash of white, and around him, what Yamato thinks must be thousands of machine Digimon appear, charging forward to repel Gennai’s forces.
Out in the bay, CaptainHookmon’s ship erupts out of the water, cannons flashing. Yamato sees Calamaramon flail its tentacles and fall, sinking into the sea under a barrage of cannon fire.
Yamato sees Gennai look in one direction, then another, before grimacing and snapping his fingers, vanishing in a flicker of static.
“They brought us an army,” Taichi says softly. “I -- wasn’t expecting that.”
“They brought us time,” Yamato replies. “And not a lot of it.”
That seems to snap Taichi out of his reverie, and he taps his earpiece. “Digimon, keep fighting. Humans, rendezvous at the rooftop of Le Meridien. It’s time to end this.”
They land on the hotel’s rooftop, and Koushiro starts pulling things from his backpack: A branch of white wood first, then a glass canister with red cubes crackling and glitching within it, and then a golden ring marked with DigiMoji.
“Wood from the first Server Tree, Warudamon’s data, and a Holy Ring,” Koushiro says. “The Holy Ring will act as an amplifier, while we can use Warudamon’s data to program the wave to attack the cores of whatever Digimon it encounters, just like her powers did. The wood from the Server Tree will act as both an auxiliary amplifier and a master key of sorts.”
Yamato watches as he puts them together, the three flickering and merging until they form a cube of light, glittering in rainbow colours, with the stretched out Holy Ring revolving around it.
“So we just …” Sora starts, raising an eyebrow at the floating object. “... Pour power into it, and it does the rest?”
“That’s more or less the idea,” Miyako chirps from the sidelines. “Once it’s at capacity, it’ll fire.”
“And so long as the Gates are open, it’ll pass through them and into the Digital World, too,” Koushiro adds.
There’s a moment of hesitation, before they start arranging themselves into a circle, with Taichi at the head, then Yamato, Sora, Koushiro, Mimi, Jyou, Takeru, Hikari, and finally Ken. One by one, they hold their digivices out, and one by one, each digivice emits a beam of light into the device.
Yamato can feel their Crests activating as much as he sees them: The burst of searing heat from Taichi as the light from his digivice turns orange; the burst of wind from Sora; the crackle of electricity from Koushiro, or the wash of briny air from Jyou, or the smell of pollen from Mimi. Yamato shuts his eyes, and feels his Crest lash out with a wave of bone-deep cold, as the light from his digivice turns a ghostly blue.
The ring revolves around the cube faster. The light in it grows stronger. Yamato can hear it humming, the power in it building and building, until it reaches a fever pitch. For a split second, he remembers what Gennai said, that even if this cure works, it won’t cure Meicoomon.
Then the wave bursts outwards, a blaze of white light that engulfs them and then sweeps out across the island, then beyond.
The light from their digivices fade. The cube goes inert, the ring stops spinning, and as its rainbow colours fade into a dull grey, Koushiro reaches forward and catches it.
“Did it work?” Taichi asks.
Yamato glances around. The Digimon of Gennai’s army aren’t attacking any more. In fact, they’re talking, sounding utterly bewildered as they ask where they are and what on earth is going on. The glitches and static that marked them as Infected are fading away.
“The other Gates are closing,” Hikari says. “I can sense it. The Digimon holding them open are cured.”
A glance up at Odaiba’s Gate, still open, confirms what she’s saying, as the tendrils of dark power dissolve and fade away.
“Then we did it. The cure works,” Taichi replies. “We’ve cured everyone. Nearly everyone. Everyone except …”
All eyes turn up to the Gate, where Meicrackmon is still Infected, still suspended in Alphamon’s shield. The originator of the Infection can’t be cured.
“You’ve done well, Chosen,” Alphamon rumbles. “With this, the Digital World has been saved. The Infection reduced to a single individual. Only one more act remains to ensure its safety.”
It all happens in a split second. Alphamon drops the shield around Meicrackmon. His golden sword materialises in his hand. It scythes through the air, down towards Meicrackmon’s skull. Meicrackmon’s eyes open, luminous green with pupils like a jagged cross. One armoured paw snaps up.
The sword stops with a clang, held in place.
“What do I keep telling you?” Gennai’s -- well, Hikari’s voice, but with the inflections that Yamato knows by now to be Gennai’s, as he materialises wearing Hikari’s shape. “There are a thousand ways that I can win.”
He takes a step forward, his shape shifting into Taichi’s, raising one hand -- with the strange, gnarled digivice he was using to keep the Gate open -- towards Meicrackmon.
“Meicoomon, do you know the faces of the guilty? You must become Apocalymon, because his existence demands that he take shape in this world, again and again, the everlasting icon of the Crests’ failure,” Gennai murmurs. “This attempt failed, but I made plans for another. Do you want to know a secret? I drew Alphamon here.”
Meicrackmon yowls, batting the blade aside and surging forward, latching onto Alphamon’s chest and digging her claws in, prising apart the data. Alphamon yells, grabbing her, trying to pull her off, but she’s gripping him tight, trying to tear her way inside him.
The digivice in Gennai’s hand flickers with a faint light. He holds it higher.
“Stop him!” Taichi yells.
They all sprint towards him. A blast of telekinetic force throws them back. With a scream, Meicrackmon melts into Alphamon, the two of them vanishing into a nimbus of red and black energy.
“Time to wear a different chain,” Gennai says softly. “Meicrackmon, Alphamon, fusion evolution.”
On Odaiba's Rainbow Bridge, Meiko turns her head towards the swirling, crackling energy over the Le Meridien.
"I'm coming, Mei-chan."