Chap.4-6

​​​Omegamon slashed through the two Digimon in its way, clearing the path to its human target. It thrust its Transcendent Sword toward Kosuke Kisakata’s neck, expecting the soft resistance of hololized flesh but finding only more air.

​

It all happened too fast for Marvin the Songsmith to process.
One instant Tartarus’s hololized form was there, and the next it was gone; Eiji, the DigiPolice squad leader, and the three prototype Digimon vanished as well.
“Did they just get transported? Did they just crack the Gateway?!”
he wondered aloud, raising his fists in celebration within Airdramon’s DigiCore.
“What happened? Where is Ryudamon? Where is the Squad Leader?!”
Satsuki said in a daze.
Had she truly been sent into the Depths?
If she had, then perhaps she’d avoided instant death at the hands of the Royal Knight, which was a silver lining.

​​​Omegamon gathered itself, pulling its extended back foot in toward its body and drawing its sword up to inspect it for any sign that it struck its target.
The blade was clean.

　​​​

Omegamon let out a powerful sigh of lament.
The lone knight entrusted with keeping humans out of the Royal Knights’ sacred realm allowed three of them to infiltrate the Depths.

A cruel fate for a cruel angel.

If Omegamon turned around and targeted Marvin or Satsuki, they and their Digimon would both be dead.
The deputy and the Songsmith scanned the battlefield, taking in the remembrances Tartarus left in his wake: the two Mega-level Digimon he sacrificed, the half-frozen Chaosdramon, the overheated Brigadramon.
Each one, used properly as a shield or distraction, gave them at best a 50/50 shot at escaping—if that.
​​This was a Royal Knight, after all.
It represented some of the most finely tuned AI among the Mega-level Digimon. Was it so honed as to lack emotion, though?
Despite its earlier sigh it showed no fury, in accordance with the laws of nature in the Digital World.

​
It instead leapt into the air, twisted its body at a strange angle and dove headlong into the Gateway, out of sight.

The battlefield fell silent.

The mangled corpses of thousands of Gatekeepers littered the top of the Gateway.
The denizens of the Wall Slum fled the moment they caught sight of a Royal Knight.
Countless code cracker Digimon also lay among the wreckage.

The big, Net-wide “festival” was over.

Marvin hololized himself.
“Thanks for the assist,” he said to Satsuki, who sat beside the wrecked Mekanorimon.
“Where is Ryudamon? Where is my squad leader?”
Satsuki asked wearily, hanging her head.
“Hey now, if we keep bickering we’re gonna be in some real trouble,”
Marvin said, holding his hands up near his head.
“I asked you where my squad leader is, you criminal!”
“So that’s how it is... Look, I lost friends too,”
Marvin offered, scratching his head.
He looked at the SoC leader’s Digimon that Mekanorimon shot down before glancing at his virtual monitor. They were sending out a distress signal.
“Do not mention the squad leader in the same breath as those disgusting code crackers!”
“Wow! The Japanese police, everybody! Listen, my fight’s done. It’s time for love and peace and all that. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got my own crap to take care of. I’m gonna help the friends that you shot down and clean up these Mega-level Digimon. I’ll be seeing you, deputy squad leader,”
Marvin said as he activated his collection tool. The tool gathered the half-frozen Chaosdramon and the two Mega-level sacrifices Tartarus left behind into a Digimon Dock while Marvin focused on helping his fallen comrades. He turned back to Satsuki once he finished.
“Okay, I’m gonna head back to our Wall Slum base now. Later!”
“Ngh!” Satsuki couldn’t help but react, and turned slightly toward Marvin as he walked away.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to be rude. Feel free to join me if you’re about to cross the line. I could probably fix up your Mekanorimon.”

Chaos is the cradle that shelters all digital life and its infinite possibilities.

How far had they come?
How long had they been here?

​
How could they both see for miles, and not see anything at all? They were taking it all in, yet had no sense of this place, or their place in it.

Kosuke, Eiji, and the still-restrained Yulin stood in a void beyond the Gateway, with the prototype Digimon who helped them get there.

​​​

“Are... Are we in the Depths?”
Eiji said, looking around for something to fix his gaze upon and coming up empty.

​

It was all so formless and blindingly bright, save for the floor beneath their feet.
“A level surface... And we can hololize, which means there is three-dimensional rendering power here. Everything’s a bit more straightforward than I imagined it would be,”
​​​Kosuke said.
“I always pictured the Depths as some sort of wild place full of untouched nature, like a rainforest or something,”
Eiji said, hololizing himself into the void.
That’s what the videos in the DDL lobby suggested it would be like, anyway.
“We Digimon have no particular affinity for the abundance of nature you find in the real world. We’re not humans, after all. Right, Loogamon?” Dorumon asked.
“Eh? Speak for yourself. I was raised in the Wall Slum, and my memory’s hazy at best,”
Loogamon shot back.
They clearly didn’t share Eiji’s unease at being in a seemingly infinite void.
He took Dorumon’s point, though.
Eiji grew up in the city, so nature was somewhat foreign to him as well; something he only experienced on camping trips or some other planned outdoor activity. Even the footage of rural towns and farming communities meant to evoke nostalgia in other people didn’t really connect with him. His grandparents all lived on the outskirts of Tokyo.

Kosuke got right back to work on his virtual monitor.

It was impossible to tell what was going on in his mind, but he was clearly energized now that they’d cracked the Gateway.
The Digital World was his life, and had been ever since he was in college.
He’d been at this longer than Eiji had been alive.
Eiji wasn’t about to lie and say he understood what all this meant for Kosuke.
Nevertheless, they shared a common goal:

Rescuing someone close to them who’d gone DMIA.

They had to find Leon and Saya.
​​​“So, what is this place?” Loogamon sniffed, raising their nose into the air. “There’s a bunch of scents in the air that don’t really add up to anything. There’s something here, but there isn’t. It’s like we’re in a giant’s belly.”
“A giant?” Eiji asked, voice slightly trembling with uncertainty.
“Yeah, if you think of hell as a giant. It eats anything and everything, eventually,” Loogamon replied.
But they were in the Depths, weren’t they? That’s where they were supposed to go after they cracked the Gateway.
Then again, the vast nothingness, but for the brightness, did make him feel like he was trapped in some sort of monster slumbering in the Depths.
“Ooh, nice one Loogamon. I didn’t know you had a flair for the poetic,” Dorumon cracked.
“Shut it,”
Loogamon snarled, baring their teeth.

​​“This is the Source Domain,”​

Kosuke announced.
He marveled at the fact that he likely wouldn’t be here had it not been for Dorumon’s suggestion that he crack the gate, and the steady stream of information the Digimon helpfully provided along the way on how to do it.
“The Source, eh? So this is where it all started?”
Eiji asked, trying to get a jump on the story.
“The Digital World was born of noise and chaos, from information without context. This is a place full of ancient data, now long forgotten, known as the Source Domain.”
“Ancient, mmhm...”
“Only old Digimon can access it. That, or Digimon that are compatible with older standards, such as...” Kosuke trailed off.
“Such as us prototypes,”
Dorumon said, showing off their interface. They turned to look at Ryudamon.
“Ah!”
Eiji chirped with a start.
He saw Ryudamon’s eyes open ever so slightly. They weren’t fully conscious yet, nor could they move on account of the restraints—but they were coming around.
“Our old interfaces granted us access, and since you’re all fused to our DigiCores, you got to come along for the ride. There, now you’re all caught up, Deputy Squad Leader.”

Yulin hololized herself.
​​​​

She was indeed the same tall woman Eiji passed leaving DDL not that long ago.
“Kosuke!” she shouted as she strode up to him, fire in her eyes.
She would have punched him if she could.
“Apologies, Yulin, but this was the only way. You wouldn’t have helped me no matter how nicely I asked.”
“Wait, the Gateway—what happened?!”
she demanded, as the confusion set in.
She’d been unconscious ever since her fight against Dorugoramon, unaware that they’d successfully entered the Gateway.
“We cracked it. This is what lies on the other side.”
Yulin’s words caught in her throat.
​

An unprecedented criminal act had taken place as a direct result of her blunder.
Ouryumon bested Dorugoramon.
​​​The mission failed because she hesitated. She’d proven unable to counteract the almost gravitational pull between Kosuke and Saya.

​​​“The DigiPolice watched Ouryumon fall and withdrew. Your deputy, however, fought to the last. She even deployed a Mega-level Digimon to try and rescue you and Ryudamon.”
“Satsuki, no! She deployed Brigadramon?!”
Yulin’s blood ran cold at the thought of Satsuki deploying a top-secret Digimon.
No one could fully control Brigadramon; it wasn’t meant to be deployed in combat scenarios.
“I wasn’t aware you were sitting on a new type of Digimon! It went toe-to-toe with Marvin’s Chaosdramon, but then that Royal Knight Digimon showed up and—well, it was a real party then. Omegamon’s sword was just about to pierce Tartarus’s throat, and...”
the unusually loquacious Dorumon rattled on, gesturing at their neck with their front leg.
​​​“But he managed to release two of the top secret Digimon the SoC collected!”
“They absorbed the blow from the Royal Knight, which was supposed to give the other leaders enough time to escape, wasn’t it?”
Kosuke asked Dorumon rhetorically, a pained grin spreading across his face.
Brigadramon’s appearance caught them off guard; the SoC left it to chance in the end.
“Kosuke! What happened to Satsuki?!”
“She’s not my responsibility.”
The Digital World was a battlefield for code crackers and DigiPolice alike, and Kosuke used that shared viewpoint to his advantage.
His response would put a stop to her questions, if nothing else.
“I don’t know what happened after we cracked the Gateway, but I know my second-in-command is a gentleman, so I trust he’s treating her well. We’ve seen enough people go DMIA.”
“Hang on, you two know each other?!”
Eiji interjected.
​

This was not how he’d seen any conversation between a cop and a criminal play out.
​​​How else would Yulin, the DigiPolice’s top brass, know Tartarus’s real name, let alone be on a first-name basis with him? He heard they had a past, but not one this deep.
“There’s no use in hiding anything, seeing as we’re in the Source Domain. Where else can everything be laid bare, if not here?”
Kosuke said.
​

​​​He gave a brief history of their time as Professor Ryusenji’s students, working side-by-side in his lab.
Eiji knew the head of the DigiPolice had been a student of the professor’s, but it was quite the revelation that both of them were founding members of the venture that became Abadin Electronics.
​

​​​“Wow, so... Tartarus?”
Eiji said uneasily.
“Yes, Eiji?”
“Sorry to cut all this short, but uh... Isn’t that Royal Knight going to come after us?”
“About that...” Dorumon began.
“Only prototype Digimon can access the Source Domain. The Royal Knights are not permitted to enter.”
“Oh, they don’t have the credentials? Phew, that’s a relief!”
Eiji said, his shoulders dropping as relief came over him.
​​​“The Source Domain is also outside the system administrator’s purview, so it’s not even in the index of domains the Royal Knights are sworn to protect. This is something of a lost world, if you will. One that’s still very much part of the Digital World, but different.”
“Huh! Okay.”
“Theoretically, anyway. This is all my own conjecture.”
“What?! Please tell me you’re joking!”
Eiji yelled.
“I mean worst case scenario I’m wrong, the Royal Knight that was after us shows up, and we all meet an unfortunate end. The end.”
“Mmm... No, I’m not picking up any hint of that rust bucket in the air,”
Loogamon said, sniffing rhythmically.
“This domain holds what I—what we, the SoC, seek. The Sacred Chalice. There should be an ancient and forgotten temple of sorts here, perhaps behind some ancient administrative privileges.”
“Every single thing you say about this place makes my fur stand on end—in a good way! This Source Domain place is wild!”
Loogamon said, looking all around.

​

There wasn’t much to see.
It was a completely white, formless space. Just because they couldn’t see anything didn’t mean there was nothing to see, however. At minimum there was a floor, and they hadn’t been deleted out of existence yet, which was nice.
“So... What, some sort console or debug mode for the Digital World?”
Eiji said instinctively.
“Probably not, but you may not be far off,”
Dorumon said absentmindedly.
“Very helpful... What’s up, Loogamon?” Eiji asked, turning toward his distracted Digimon.
“Something stinks over here. But what—gah!”
Loogamon barked as the area they’d been sniffing suddenly reacted, shifting and reconfiguring the space before them.

​

Where once there was nothing, something began to emerge and take shape.
“What did you do, Loogamon?!”
Eiji yelped, visibly flinching.
“I— Ngh!”
was all Loogamon could get out as they bent over backward, stunned stiff.

Character design/illustration illustrator: malo