Digimon Adventure Tri: Echo

45) Irrevocable Evolution

If he was being honest with himself, Koushiro didn't know how he was at all keeping his eyes open. 

It had been quite some time since Koushiro and Jou started moving in the direction of the rest of the group, and it had been even longer since Koushiro first started to reach out to the other members of the Chosen Children team. His D-Terminal and laptop had been tucked away into his bag since they had started to move, but Koushiro found himself itching for them, desperate to double check if there were any other notifications that had appeared on the chat log. 

Koushiro looked down at his hand in an attempt to keep himself focused on the situation at hand. He had a lot to concentrate on in terms of pressing forward. The rest of the group was waiting for him, and he was going to find them one way or another. He was counting on himself to be able to meet with them before the next battle took place. They needed backup, and his smaller group did as well. 

"Alright. I think that we should stop for now."

Jou's voice cut through the silence, and Koushiro was simultaneously relieved and concerned at those words. He turned to face the dark-haired boy standing behind him, and Tentomon did much the same from his place on the sand below. "We've been moving for ages, and if we don't get some proper rest, we aren't going to be able to handle another fight if it happens. Even if the Digimon have eaten something, that doesn't change the fact that we haven't been able to sleep ever since we were first attacked by Dagomon. We should find a place to settle down for at least a little while to try and recover our energy," Jou explained when he noticed the quizzical looks he was being given. 

"Okay," Koushiro agreed. He knew that the rest of the group was going to be waiting for him and Jou to arrive, but he was also too smart to let his stubbornness get the better of him. He had to press on and make sure that he was safe to do so, and for the time being, forward movement meant sleeping for a little while. He could barely keep his eyes open, and given the fact that he had been running on adrenaline for what he assumed to be the past few hours, resting seemed to be the best choice for him and the rest of his group. 

Koushiro and Jou didn't have to walk very far to find a cave that pulled itself into the cliffside nearby. Koushiro had to wonder if perhaps the landmass that they were on had this similar structure the whole way around. He hadn't been able to do much of anything to get up on higher ground up to this point, and the cliff above cut off before giving way to a step incline that led down to the beach below. Traveling up to higher ground would undoubtedly involve the Digimon having to evolve to their upper leveled forms, and that was energy that Koushiro knew they weren't going to be able to waste. As such, the cave that cut into the inside of the cliff that seemed to stretch on for an eternity was the group's only option. 

The cave was dark, and Koushiro decided to remedy this by reaching into his bag to pull out the D-Terminal that he had tucked out of view. He opened the device by flicking the lid of it up. He navigated over to the chat log a moment later, reading over the messages that he had received since then. There weren't any updates regarding Meiko in the chat that held exclusively the younger Chosen Children, and Koushiro couldn't help but wince at that fact. He shook his head and tried to concentrate on the positives of the moment rather than letting the negatives overwhelm him. 

Koushiro did notice that there was another notificaiton that had appeared though, and he navigated his way to another chat log that did have a new message. This time, the message was from none other than Hiraku. Koushiro read over it, and by the time that he was finished reading it, he learned that Daigo had taken over Hiraku's computer to type out the message while Hiraku was busy with something else. 

Their new mission was to defeat Dagomon before they returned to Earth. They weren't going to be able to risk leaving Dagomon alone any longer than they had to, and they wouldn't be able to truly find safety as long as Dagomon was still alive. The ruler of the Dark Ocean was the greatest threat to the peace of the worlds in that moment, so defeating him was the only choice that they had.