Pushing Back the Borders
A Digimon Frontier fan fic by *blinkblink*
Disclaimer: I don’t own Digimon Frontier, nor the
characters. Please don’t sue me.
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Chapter 5
“Spirit… EVOLUTION!”
When the red light disappeared from the back of the
corridor, Agnimon was standing where Takuya had been a moment before. He ran straight through the metal grid as if
it was nothing more than tin foil, and straight down out of the corridor,
turning right and running towards the exit of the cave. Tomoki thought he saw a black shadow fly
after him. The young boy shook his head
and began jogging towards the end of the corridor. Finding no one there to guard it, and (after peeking around the
corner) seeing Lady Devimon’s throne unoccupied, he ran over to the large
platform in the middle of the cave. To
one side of it on the floor lay a basket, in which lay two digivices and a tall
staff with a half-sun soldered onto the top.
Tomoki grabbed the two digivices, his and Kouji-san’s, and turned to go
back. He heard the digimon who had been
imprisoned with them take up his staff, but was already on his way back and
didn’t bother turning around to watch.
The corridor was as dark as it had been before, and Tomoki
found himself wishing he had remembered to bring one of the torches in to light
the way, when the figure returned, his staff aglow. It lit the floor in front of him but no light shone backwards
onto the bearer, and he remained in shadows.
Tomoki followed the light, and the two of them found Kouji lying where
they had left him, grey-faced and dirty.
The light lowered itself, its master had knelt next to the boy.
“Will you tell me what is wrong with you now? I have my staff, and with it the power to
heal you.”
Kouji looked up at the dark shadow behind the light, and
then at Tomoki (who, despite the fact that he was standing behind the digimon,
was still illuminated), and, his face displaying his reluctance and almost
disgust, motioned for the digimon to come closer. Whatever he said, Tomoki never heard, but the digimon nodded (at
least, his light bobbed up and down), and he moved back slightly.
“You are lucky to have survived. You would have probably done better to tell her whatever it was
she wished to know. Or, perhaps
not.”
Tomoki had the eerie feeling that the digimon had turned to
look at him. But said digimon continued
on, and the feeling was forgotten soon enough.
“In any case, what is done is done, and perhaps the chosen
children are more worthy than my brother believes. I’m sure he’ll come to realize it soon enough. That sort of thing seems to run in my
family.” He was now speaking more to
himself than either of the others, but they did not notice, for his staff had
light up, casting a blinding light into the cave, so bright that Tomoki felt
that the cave must burst for holding its brilliance too long. But the light faded away soon enough (though
it seemed almost an eternity while it lasted), returning to the quiet
candle-sized light on the top of the staff.
It clearly showed Kouji sitting up, and then rising, ducking just in
time to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling.
The light bobbed again, this time more of a bow, stood,
turned, and made its way towards the exit to the corridor. Tomoki, in the fading light, pushed Kouji’s
digivice into his hands, and then ran after the strange digimon, calling over
his shoulder, “Hurry up, Kouji-san!
Takuya-oniisan said we’d have to help him with the Devidramon!”
Kouji blinked, pocketed the digivice, and ran after the
smaller child.
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Agnimon ran, his long, golden hair trailing behind him, and
behind it ran Lady Devimon, arms outstretched, nails glinting even in the poor
light, screeching. He shot out of the
cave like a bullet out of a gun, and off into the woods, followed by the ever gaining
Lady Devimon. The trees offered little
protection, any that got in her way were chopped down immediately by her raiser
sharp nails. Agnimon skidded to a stop
and then sprinted off in another direction, dirt flying from under his
feet. Lady Devimon hissed and flew
after him. He changed direction again,
digging dirt up again but this time sending it flying into her face. She wiped her face off and dropped to the
earth, where she again began to pursue her escapee. Agnimon brushed branches out of his way, and then sent them
flying back to strike her harshly in the face, before she ripped the offending
limbs right off of their tree. The
running was getting tiring, and she was beginning to gain, being both lighter
and more practiced in the art of running (it wasn’t that Takuya was
unpracticed, it was that he wasn’t as familiar with this digimon body as he was
with his own). He didn’t know where the
others were, but he knew that they had better start getting their act together.
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Izumi and Junpei watched as a flash of red practically flew
past them, followed by an actually flying flash of black and grey. They stared after the two blurs for a
second, before hearing the roar of the Devidramon guarding the entrance and
spirit-evolving. Fairymon flew up and
waited in the trees as her prey drew closer, before flinging herself out in
midair in a sort of soccer tackle, sliding through the air and hitting the Devidramon
feet-first, right in its blood-red eyes.
It shrieked and swatted at her.
Quick wing-action took her out of range of the giant claws, and a hard
body-tackle from behind by Blitzmon distracted it long enough for her to launch
her wind attack at a nearby tree, toppling it directly onto the huge digimon’s
head.
The Devidramon, unbalanced from the tackle, went down under
the tree and she quickly felled more of them, dropping them all onto its back
and wings. Blitzmon picked up a large
cedar-like tree by the end of its trunk and swung it as hard as he could,
repeatedly, at the Devidramon’s head.
It howled under the attack, and beat its wings furiously, trying to
dislodge the trees that pinned it to the ground, with limited success. For any tree that was pushed off, another
two were blown on. The Devidramon soon
found itself almost completely buried in upturned trees, while a digimon a
quarter of its side beat it about the head with a tree. In its uncontrolled fury, it raised its tail
high, before thumping it down hard enough on the ground to cause an almost
mini-earthquake. It was enough to knock
the two attackers off their feet, and it bought the Devidramon enough time to
get its fore-legs under it and push itself up off the ground, dislodging the
trees as though they were nothing more than specs of dust. Fairymon recovered herself quickly enough to
get off the ground and out of the way of the rolling wall of trees, but
Blitzmon was not so lucky and was carried off with them into the woods, pushed
beneath their combined weight down into the dirt.
The Devidramon turned, eyes glinting almost maliciously, to
Fairymon.
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Wolfmon and Chakmon ran out of the cave, and stopped dead to
stare at the scene before them. Off
away past the clearing, clouds of dust were drifting up, indicating that
someone was pulling up huge amounts of dirt underfoot. The screaming that accompanied it left
little doubt that Lady Devimon was one of the ones involved in that. But nearer at hand all the trees that had
once grown around the cave, protecting it from unfriendly eyes, had been
uprooted and tossed around, taking mounds of soil and small plants with
them. A large path had been cleared,
and at the end of it lay a pile of trees, sticking out from a hole in one of
them was Blitzmon, hardly conscious.
Before this pile stood Fairymon, and before her stood the Devidramon,
staring down at her and slowly raising a large foot, clearly intending to
squish her. Both Wolfmon and Chakmon
ran forward, Chakmon to tackle Fairymon out of the way and Wolfmon to grab the
Devidramon by its long tail, and try (in vain) to pull it back. Chakmon was successful in getting Fairymon
out of danger, and Wolfmon was successful in attracting the Devidramon’s
attention.
It turned its huge head around dully to stare at the insect
hanging on to its tail, before raising its tail high into the air. Wolfmon slid down the tail before it could
be driven into the ground, and up the Devidramon’s back, drawing his licht
seigers. The Devidramon swatted at him,
but like an annoying itch, he remained on the one place on the Devidramon’s
back which it could not reach. So, like
any itchy beast, it rolled over on the ground.
Wolfmon leapt clear and perched in one of the few remaining trees,
waiting for the Devidramon to discover that he was no longer on its back. It figured it out after three or four rolls,
and stood up again, only to have Wolfmon leap onto its head and attempt to
drive his licht seigers into its head.
We say attempt because the beast promptly shook its head
hard, and sent Wolfmon flying off into the forest, where he happened to crash
into Agnimon, who was returning from his fight with Lady Devidramon.
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A minute earlier…
Agnimon, skidding to a stop once again, changed direction
and speeded off. Or at least, that’s
what he would have liked to happen. In
reality, he did stop, and turn, but at this point he caught his foot under a
root and as soon as he tried to take a step his leg was pulled out from under
him and he ended up lying on his stomach, more than a little stunned, as Lady
Devimon fast approached. He rolled
over, ignoring the pain in his ankle, and tried to start the little
fire-spitter device that sat atop the back of his hand. After a couple of tries
it roared to life obediently, and he pulled out a myriad of little flames and
chucked them at Lady Devimon. She
batted them away as if they were no more than small pebbles. Agnimon gulped. Trapped on the ground, that was the only attack he had open to
him, and it was no where near strong enough to affect his opponent. Things might have gone very badly, if
something had not barreled into Lady Devimon just then, and tackled her away
into the trees. Agnimon pulled himself
to his feet, in time only to hear the voice of the digimon from the cave tell
him to go help his friends.
He stared a minute longer, but the little guy had said he
would take care of Lady Devimon, and the others needed him. He turned his back and ran off towards the
cave.
In the middle of the journey he was suddenly flattened by a
very stunned Wolfmon. Agnimon lay on
the ground for a moment, waiting for the other to let him up, and when he
didn’t, he rose himself and pushed Wolfmon off. Wolfmon rolled onto his hands and knees before standing up,
shaking his head as imperceptibly as possible.
“Feeling better?” It
was rather a stupid question, as the answer was apparent, but there was little
else to be asked.
“Fine. But we have a
bit of a problem.” Leading the way back
to the clearing the fight had made, it became clear there was more problem now
then there had been when Wolfmon had … left.
The Devidramon held in its hand Fairymon, and was crushing her slowly.
Agnimon, now free to use any attack he chose, powered up,
and leapt into the air, flames licking about him, his speed blending them into
a tornado. He broke out of it with
shocking power, and landed a hard roundhouse kick on the Devidramon’s snout,
flames and sparks flying every which way.
The Devidramon released Fairymon, who fell to the ground and
de-digivolved to Izumi, who ran for the relative safety of the area which
Blitzmon was struggling out of. She
watched as two digimon ran into the cave in which Takuya, Kouji and Tomoki had
been kept, before turning back to the battle at hand.
Wolfmon had remounted to his place of before, the
Devidramon’s head, and now that it had been distracted by the kick, he had the
time to drive his licht seigers home.
Combined with Agnimon’s fire attacks and Chakmon’s freezing wind, it was
enough to destroy the Devidramon.
Agnimon scanned the code, and had just finished when they were all
distracted by a scream from inside the cave, followed by a burst of light. Agnimon and Wolfmon sprinted into the cave,
and Chakmon would have followed, had he not been grabbed by Izumi.
“You can’t go in there!
The whole place’s going to collapse in a minute, look!” Sure enough, the entrance (at which she was
pointing) was already beginning to crumble, and rocks and dust had begun to
fall from the ceiling, along with a few minor stalactites. Chakmon, distracted and tired, de-digivolved
back into Tomoki, and watched with Izumi and Junpei (who had managed to finally
free himself from the fallen trees but as the effort involved had exhausted him
beyond the capacity to stay in his digimon form he had returned to his human
one) as the cave shook from the blows being exchanged deep inside it.
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Agnimon ran back into the cave, conscious of the fact that
Wolfmon was running next to him but not particularly interested by it. His focus was ahead of him, in the main
cavern, where the biggest fight he had ever seen was taking place. It wasn’t their strength that made it such a
… good fight, but the fact that the opponents were almost evenly
matched, and thus rebounded off each other and continued to come back for
more. Agnimon skidded to a halt at the
end of the main corridor, where the hallway opened upwards and sideways to
become the huge cavern in which Lady Devimon kept her throne. The throne lay in pieces on the ground, as
did the platform on which it had sat, both wooden structures surrounded by dirt
and wreckage. And more stalactites. The ceiling was coming down, bit by bit,
another piece falling with each attack.
Lady Devimon, sensing the entrance of her two once-captives,
turned and sped towards them, arms outstretched, madness showing clearly on her
face. The other digimon, standing
behind her, shot a beam of light at the ceiling above her. It crumbled and collapsed, bringing its
weight down upon her. Agnimon and
Wolfmon backed away instinctively, watching as the ceiling began to crack and
break apart, falling into the cavern.
Agnimon moved forward, trying to run in after the digimon, but Wolfmon
had grabbed hold of his back and began pulling him out.
“Let go of me! I can
save him! What are you doing?! He’ll die!
LET ME GO!!” Agnimon struggled
fiercely, compulsively, against Wolfmon’s grip. Wolfmon growled and gave him a good hard yank.
“Open your eyes. The
whole place is collapsing. There’s no
hope for him, and little for us.
Move!”
“NO! I wouldn’t
leave you behind, and I’m not going to leave him either!” Agnimon turned harshly and brought his arms
down on Wolfmon’s, breaking their hold of him, and ran back into towards
collapsing cavern. The ceiling was
actively falling in now, huge chunks hurtled into the ground, the impact they
caused bringing down more in a chain reaction.
Dust was spreading everywhere, dirtying the air, clogging eyes, ears and
noses.
“TAKUYA! GET BACK
HERE, YOU IDIOT!” Wolfmon lunged after
him.
Agnimon tripped on, narrowly avoiding a large plummeting
boulder. With all the dust, he could
hardly see his hand in front of his face.
There was no way he would be able to find their rescuer by sight, and
with the sounds of the cave collapsing blocking almost all other sound, that
was his only option. He stumbled
forwards, tripped over a piece of rubble, and ended up flat on his face for the
second time in a half-hour. He rolled
over quickly, only to watch as a stalactite fell from directly above him, its
sharp tip aiming for his heart. A staff
flew through the air from behind him, striking the stalactite in its center and
shattering it into harmless small stones.
Agnimon pulled himself to his feet, and squinted in the direction it had
come from. He thought he saw the
outline of a small digimon with a pointed head, and a round body, but in the
dust it was so hard to tell…
“Do as your friend tells you and go! There’s no way for me to escape, don’t
bother with it. My downfall is my own
fault, and of my own choosing. I will
not be responsible for your deaths!
GO!” Had he still possessed his
staff, he surely would have thrown it at the foolish boy, the child in a
digimon’s body. ‘Brother, I am sure you
will come to see them as I do now, the true saviors of our world. These children are worth any sacrifice. As they always have been in our past.’ The ceiling over his head gave out, large
boulders falling down upon him.
Agnimon stumbled backwards, unsure of what to do. Wolfmon grabbed his arm and in his confusion
he blindly followed the other digimon as they staggered back the way they had
come. As they entered the hallway, the
cavern gave an almighty crash and collapsed, a wall of dust and debris flying
out into the hall, driving both digimon to their hands and knees. The roof began to crack and crumble. Agnimon de-digivolved, followed shortly by
Wolfmon, and the two children found themselves kneeling, hardly able to breath,
in the collapsing cave system.
Both staggered to their feet, and Kouji began to run, before
he realized that he had left Takuya behind.
Running back, he found him staring, unfazed by the destruction taking
place around him, at the buried cavern.
“Takuya! So help me,
if you don’t start running, I’m going to knock you out and carry you out
of this cave. Run, damn you!” He shoved Takuya from behind, and a large
piece of ceiling fell and landed right where he had been standing. That got Takuya’s attention, and, pulling
his goggles on, he made a run for the exit, Kouji close behind. They passed by a large corridor in which the
second Devidramon was trying to dig its way out past the rubble already
blocking the exit to its hallway. It
was too late though, and a second later the ceiling of that offshoot fell in,
burying it forever.
Takuya took a large breath, intending to hold it so as not
to have to breath in any more of the dust-filled air, but found that it was
already so dust-filled it was suffocating, and promptly began to cough and hack
as he ran. The ceiling, having had it with
falling in installments, had decided to go out with a bang. The whole lot began to fall, walls, ceiling,
doorways and everything. The two
children put on a final burst of speed, and, when they had no more time to run,
threw themselves forwards.
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Izumi, Tomoki, Junpei, Bokomon and Neemon (who had been
hiding in the forest during the battle, and had now appeared to await Takuya’s
return) watched as dust streamed out of the cavern, and listened in horror to
the sounds of rocks falling, of things collapsing. The wide mouth of the cave was cracking, and small rocks rained
down, leaving room for the larger ones to fall down after them, which they did.
After a few minutes of waiting, the entire cave seemed to
shudder, and began to collapse in earnest, starting from the back and falling
in, becoming in a few seconds no more than a flat pile of rocks. Izumi tightened her hold on Tomoki, and
Neemon latched onto Bokomon, trying to hide behind the shorter digimon.
Dust flew out in a huge cloud, as if it had been blown out
by an enormous fan, and then the end of the cave, the entrance, fell to the
ground.
The rocks shifted in their new places, sediment falling this
way and that, dust settling onto the rocks.
The children stared at the rocks before them. Tomoki pulled himself out of Izumi’s grip and ran forward,
digging through the rocks, pushing them this way and that, looking for some
sign of either of the two digimon that had gone running into the cave. He was joined a few seconds later by Izumi,
who was followed immediately by Junpei.
Even as she dug though, Izumi’s brain was already calculating the odds
that they would be able to find their friends.
Slim to none.
“Tomoki, I know you, we, want to find them but, you have to
face the fact that … there’s no reason to think that they even got this
far. They might be buried anywhere
under here and, and,” she paused for a second, “we might never find them.” She took a breath, and steeled her heart
against Tomoki’s large eyes. “Th, this
cave is just so big that the chances of us finding them are, are, not very
good.” She ended lamely, unable to tell
him directly to his face that she thought it quite likely the boy he considered
his brother was dead.
“You’re wrong!
They’re okay! I know they
are! They have to be.” This last sentence was finished as a
whisper, more of a thought, a wish, than an argument. Izumi looked away, whether it was because she didn’t want to see
Tomoki crying, or because she didn’t want him to see her doing the same was
unclear.
A movement in the rubble, followed by a cough, drew
everyone’s attention back to the rock pile.
Some of the pebbles and dust began to shift, as if someone was pushing
at it from underneath. As the three
children and two digimon looked on, and hand appeared, a most definitely human
hand, followed by an arm, followed by …
“Takuya-oniisan!”
Tomoki leapt forwards, scrambling over the loose shale to help the older
boy dig himself out of the rocks.
Takuya, completely covered in light brown dust, began to dig around his
right side, where from Kouji emerged a minute later, coughing and trying to
wipe dust out of his eyes at the same time.
They were dug out by five eager helpers, and pulled away
from the rubble, away from the dust, and the despair.
A few minutes after they had all scrambled off of the
remainder of the cave, three glowing digi-eggs pushed their way to the surface,
and floated away, off to start a new and hopefully better life.
Takuya stared after them remorsefully, looking more to one
than either of the other two.
“You can’t always save the world, Takuya. Sometimes the
world has to save you, and pay the price.”
Kouji walked past him, without even a turn of the head. Anything either of them owed the other had been
paid off. In seconds he had disappeared
into the thick forest.
The others stared after him for a moment, before turning
back to Takuya, and the collapsed cave.
“Well?” Izumi
pressed.
“Nothing. It’s …
nothing. Let’s go.” He led the way, as always, walking away from
the pile of ruins, the opposite way from that which Kouji had taken. They would always meet again, that was clear
enough now. Wherever they were being
led in this world, they were meant to get there together. And, when the time came, Takuya didn’t think
he would mind it that much.
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In the crystal chambers of Lord Seraphimon, the chambers
that were both his home, and his prison, a lone digimon stood watch, sworn to
protect his master until the end of eternity, or until either of them
fell. A few hours ago he had had a
brother, charged with the same mission.
But he was gone now, and the watch had become lonelier still.
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