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Chapter Text

~~~ Chapter 1 - Donut Stole ~~~

At first, Abbadomon had been upset that it had been shunted out of the digiverse, and sealed off. It had spent an unknowable amount of time and energy thrashing against the barriers and firewalls the warriors who had defeated it had created. Worse, it had been locked out of the negative energies of the destructive datastreams of social media. 

It had been forced to observe from a distance as those once-tranquil streams became raging torrents. In the void, it was forced to watch those negative energies swirl. Even a single tap would more than double its strength and entropic powers. But it was an ancient digimon, existing in the undercurrents of the digiverse since the very beginning.

It could watch, it was a patient god. Others would rise in its stead, mimicking its power and even a fraction of its form, rising up to end a digiverse or two all on their own. Most were defeated, never truly tapping into the lines of despair and ouroborosis. In some worlds, humans would be pulled in to defend their worlds. 

So Abbadomon had waited, peeling away, chipping bit by bit at the various layers that kept its power from returning the world to nothing. The slightest whisper here, a virus there. Occasionally it took, and an avatar for its will would form. 

Each time it grew too strong, so-called digi-destined would appear and pick up the battle against the godlike virus. On occasion, its emissary would succeed. A digiverse would lose to the glorious nothingness everything craved so much. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough. The number of victories was never enough. So many worlds needed to meet the sweet release of the final end.

Deserved to! Only when all was nothing would it itself cease to exist! It existed because pain, suffering, all existed. One phase would move to the next, and there was nothing else with the capacity or power to absorb the fruits of true randomness and noise in the eternal cycle.

Its eye turned to its current target, one it had been working on for a while. A world that was on the cusp of losing to the so-valued digidestined, the warriors of the status quo. But that was okay. They would only stave the end for a short time. All victories against it while it still persisted in the great void were only temporary, after all.

This time, it would try something new. Find a proper emissary. A single message across the webways opened a portal. It pulled out a profile from a world, one that never had a digiverse of its own, despite having a plethora of opportunities.

A character sheet, some descriptions. An entire line of corrupted evolution dedicated to the great nothingness! It smiled. Every one of its mouths smiled, menacingly. Like it always did. 

"AhA hA HA," it laughed into the void when it located the correct soul. This time, in this world, nothing would remain!

~~~

It was sometime in November, two thousand and six. For halloween, my friends and I had a marathon of halloween-appropriate Tim Burton movies, ending in Nightmare Before Christmas. I was eating breakfast in our Texas house. You would probably know the city. The school district where they spent more than ten million dollars on the brand-new football stadium for high-schoolers.

"Why are you dying your hair black, Kaylee? You're as dark-haired as anyone else in this family."

Our whole gaggle of friends had just discovered deviantart and online art communities, along with a cascade of other things, like anime and fanfiction. It was my refuge from the endless sausagefest and (in my, very, very fourteen-year old mind) innumerable dumb jocks, preps, and stupid Texas pride. Freshman year the history class was Texas History, where the teachers and books basically summed up to "Texas Is Best!".

It did a good job of engendering my hatred of the state.

"Because only the blackest black will match the color of my soul!" I huffed at my mom at the breakfast table. She just gave me the most "I give up" look possible. The toaster popped, and I pulled the tarts of pop, nutella and made a super sugary sandwich. Slamming my notebook full of various colored pencil drawings, 

I burst out of the door and headed to the ninth grader's bus stop, where I sat and waited for my friends, like the criminal I was. The crime? Being fourteen years old. I'd discovered My Chemical Romance, (along with everyone else as the Black Parade had just barely been released and was constantly playing on the radio). When they arrived, we would always try to glomp each other. 

Also, everyone called everything gay. The boys who hung out with us were gay. I'd watched every halloween film I could get my hands on. I had a keychain with Jack Skellington on my backpack, attached to a Kingdom Hearts Keyblade. A pin with the Kingdom Hearts heartless symbol on the back of my backpack. I had a pair of black gloves with skulls I'd painted on and cut the fingers off.

Youtube had started to get big right around that time too— which was how I'd discovered digimon. I wasn't sure exactly where it came from, but I latched onto the Digimon fansubs that were uploaded. They were so much cooler and better than the English versions. The characters sounded so much more mature. 

Except the girl characters. I hated them. Yep, I had been one of those girls. Mom eventually gave up making comments about my hair, and instead started to make comments about how she couldn't wait until I got a job or went off to college. Dad didn't pay a whole lot of attention to my antics, which was fine by me. 

One day in art class I decided they weren't good enough, and wanted to make an ORIGINAL CHARACTER. The art teacher wouldn't let us draw guns, and made sure to let me know when she saw what I was drawing, but that was okay. I already had a plethora of ideas for that. The guy digimons were the ones that got guns anyway. 

I grew out of it, alright?

Now though? Well, eventually I found a boyfriend, went to college, started a career, even had a kid, was married, all that shit. Things were good. Kyle was old enough (six years old) that we were even thinking of having another. 

Then, one day, while I was driving to work, my phone and car went on the fritz, and I found myself face to face with a giant eyeless orb and infinite-many mouths. Little square particles floated off up into the abyss.

"Who are you?" I asked. ' What are you?' would have been the better question, but I caught enough anime in my time. When you're staring at a floating orb of indeterminate mass and clear villain phenotype? The red lines at the top of its head and gaping mouth and overly-flat teeth and infinite smiles were indicative that it wouldn't hurt to have some discretion. 

I would say that I was awake and doing things for one second, and then found myself floating in the void, but quite frankly I wanted to say that I didn't even have memories of how I got to be there. 

My next thought was ' Welp, looks like I'm going to be late for work. ', and that just sucked.

"You are the original spirit of Renanullmon, no?"

It had asked, beaming the images of my old colored pencil character sheet directly into my head. I… was, actually. Oh my God, I had written that she was a human spirit in a Digimon's body (explicitly NOT A FUSION). One that had chosen to fight for the destruction of the digiverse because she… something something tortured past. Also, I couldn't NOT die a little inside at the black hair with the uh unsurprisingly-colored highlights (purple!) that ran down the back.

I had spent HOURS fussing over how to do the hair right.

"In my domain, your thoughts are laid bare! You are the original spirit! Your task is to break the final firewall and end the world!"

I would have said that he had the wrong girl, but the stupid, snarky part of me instead asked "What, so you can end the digiverse?" dripping with sarcasm.

It just smiled deeper and larger, grey fuzz glitching in and out, tassels with mirrored eyeless faces all smiling even more, letting off a million tasteless chuckles.

"First off—how am I going to do that?" I asked, not exactly credulous of the nietzschean god of destruction in front of me. It could also have been the Full Metal Alchemist god, but there were too many faces and not enough doors in the ether I had found myself in. 

No, it was digimon. I sighed. It had to be digimon.

"Second—" I had tried to stay saying no. I really, truly did. I had, like, a career and family. A six year old kid that needed a fucking mom in his life. 

"The strongest of the digigods are long dead! Only a few warriors remain!"

It ignored my question. And my objections. The world turned black. 

Bastard .

"It doesn't really matter anyway," the voice said. "Do what thou wilt, the eternal cycle will continue. Because nothing else matters, Renanullmon!"

The fucking Bastard. Kyle needed help! We had just gotten started going through the bullshit vagueness of Common Core! He needed someone to push him to start to read harder chapter books with less pictures. Work could get fucked, but the money had been nice.

As light lines showed up. Not green, but red and grey, sight returned, a murky sky full of clouds . I would have made a comment about how incredibly edgy and cliche that whole bit was, were it not for the fact that I had been forcibly separated from my own reality as I was on my way to work, and that I was now falling through the sky.

Green lines traced over my body, bits of what should have been my clothing and skin floating off into the clearly-digital-by-aesthetic abyss.

"Damn him", I muttered, wind whipping past my now incredibly long ears. I opened my arms and legs, which had all reformed, trying to slow my descent as much as possible. I landed on the side of a hill, skidding and rolling along the ground, smearing grass and dirt everywhere, kicking up rocks and dirt.

"Ugg," I moaned, face to the sky. It's said that if you ever fell through the sky and survived the fall you needed to not close your eyes, but rather immediately do things to keep the adrenaline running, so I sat up, and started to shout back at the closing hole that I had fallen through when a rock also fell out of the sky and hit me on the face.

"Bastard!" I said.

"Wh-What-are you?" a kid's voice squeaked out.

Your worst nightmare , I didn't say. I literally just plummeted out of the sky.

"The eye said a powerful Digimon was coming," it said. 

I turned to look at the kid. Ragged clothes, sunk eyes. Dark Irises. Nearly-lifeless. Right. So this was happening. This was my new reality. The kid couldn't have been more than thirteen. Maybe fourteen.

Fuck.

I was taller than the kid by a fair amount.

"You can call me kaylee…mmmm—" I stopped in my tracks— my voice was so, so incredibly smooth. I sighed, my tongue brushing up against my teeth—which were incredibly sharp. My mouth was not the shape it should have been, either.

In fact, the grey fuzz in front of my eyes wasn't blurriness at all. It was fur. I took stock of myself. Thick thighs, a huge bit of chest fur. Sexy voice. Next up, a giant evil clown was going to show up and turn us both into dolls to add us to its collection as they destroy the world. 

Or something.

It wasn't my voice at all, which was throwing me for a loop, and caused me a good few seconds of dissociation. I'd have killed to have a voice so silky smooth, even as an adult, so I wasn't complaining. I was wearing a black skirt with skulls on it, with a black leggings that went below the skirt.

"Kaylee…mon?" the kid suggested. "The eye said they would send someone powerful enough to stop the digiwarriors." 

If the sunken, lifeless eyes didn't tell me something was off with them, their sheepish monotone and non-reaction to the fact that I just fell out of the sky definitely did. Not seeing anyone else around, this kid was my de-facto partner.

I looked down at my hands. Not hands, but paws with extended claws on the end. I wiggled my finger-equivalents a bit. More dexterity than regular paws. I had little gloves with a tie looped around the middle finger. Black gloves. Purple highlights. Grey, black and purple fur.

Somehow, that bastard had gotten a hold of me after finding my ancient edgesona. It had, so far, followed the description on my colored pencil character sheet, the shapes in the bandanna were shifting like Rorschach from Watchmen. Renamon, but dial up the edge and goth, with a slight bit of "xD SO random!!1!" mixed in. 

Okay, it wasn't quite that bad. The body I was in now was definitely a fourteen year old's attempt and making an edgy Renamon with a tragic backstory. I couldn't hate on my past self too much. Fourteen-year old Kaylee had elected not to give the character sheet boobs.

A few rays of sun in a sea of bullshit, but a few rays nonetheless. 

Now, the question was whether or not I would actually be able to leverage it to get back to my home.

The kid approached me, but wasn't looking at me. Instead, he was looking at the ground, where the rock had fallen. My blood went ice-cold when I noticed the grass and dirt around it was glitching out. 

God, I wasn't really the type to freeze up in dumb situations, but for real, that anger was real— the highlights on my gloves and body shifting to red— yeah yeah okay, I got it! 

" Don't touch that," I said, the snappy venom causing even that kid in permanent dissociation to jerk back.

Fucking hell. Why would you ever want your emotions to glow ? Oh right, because fourteen year old Kaylee thought glowing features were cool. Per the sheet, the colors shifted between coding for apathy, rage, sadism, and masochism. The four emotions of fourteen year old deviantart Kaylee.

Just don't tell anyone that I wasn't listening to MCR on my ipod nano, that I wouldn't skip over Relient K or Modest Mouse. They were only there because I needed something that I could listen to around my mom I swear.

Well, okay, there was a world where young Kaylee was right. Having parts of your body glowing different colors based on your mood might have been pretty nice. Things like: 

"Don't talk to me right now, hub, I'm pissed at the neighbor lady who keeps taking her dog out and letting it shit in our don't yard and then Kyle drags that shit in the house. And also you missed Kyle's first basketball game because you slept in."

Yeah, a being mood ring glowstick for that dense hockeypuck might have been nice. Yeah, I sighed. Let it out. 

At least, if you remembered right Kaylee, the digimon world didn't run one-to-one with real-world time, so with luck, you can figure out how to return to being human and go home.

Or, I could just say fuck it and go home anyway. We could figure out the whole "return to human" bit after. 

Decisions, decisions.

The kid stood in silence, just staring off into nothing as I got my emotions under control and managed to shove the freakout-o-meter into a freezer, where it could be kept nice and safe. When the highlights on my gloves turned grey, I figured I wasn't in immediate danger of exploding.

It was a nice package and all, one to be opened on another day. We could call in the bomb squad as a treat.

Some mountains in the distance, a few hills, no water to speak of though. The clouds in the sky were a sickly grey, not the kind of rain you would actually want to drink. 

"Mmmm what happened here?" I said, testing my voice out some more. I just couldn't get over how sexy and adult woman it sounded. Fourteen year old Kaylee never imagined having an adult voice this silky smooth. Adult me didn't imagine having a voice this nice. Even more, it didn't come from a voice box. My mouth didn't move as I spoke.

That was a bit freaky, not gonna lie.

"We're in a side world," the kid said. "I hacked it."

"How'd you learn to hack the digiverse?" I asked, dusting off bits of digital dirt and grass that stuck to me. Being furry and fuzzy was definitely weird. Especially the shape of my legs, which while approximately as wide as I had given the character, decidedly effeminate and digitigrade. 

" Tsumemon taught me how."

Unfortunately, I was thirty years old. I had a career and family and all that shit to get back to. It was just us two on the plain, the sky was fading off into grey. "Where is Tsumemon?" I asked.

The kid pointed behind us, at an ominous black cloud in the distance. With both three-fingered hands, I shoved the palms covered over my face. This wasn't real. Couldn't be real.

It was all so goddamn edgy and made no sense. That I knew exactly why that creature had chosen me, specifically was the icing on the migraine cake.

 "Hey, kid. Got a mirror?" I asked. It still didn't register exactly what had happened. Nothing felt real, like there was a distance between me and my body and the world around me.

The kid pulled up the backpack they had been wearing and started rummaging around in silence.

I ran my hand through the top of my head, the tuft of black and purple fur that was going down the back of my head. I did it before Zoroark existed, at least! That wasn't much consolation. 

Watching my highlights start shifting to a reddish tone, exactly how stupid the situation was, was also shoved into the freezer.

Grey. Good. Grey was the best color.

Giving furry creature designs a tuft of extra fur on top, making it black and giving it purple highlights? Peak design. Peak! I'm lucky the character design wasn't drawn in fishnet stockings or given boobs and a hot topic t-shirt and an edgy falcon-based boyfriend off a particular bird character from Maximum Ride.

I'd later discovered spiked collars, bracelets and boots, but had started to fade out right when my friends got their ears pierced and I chickened out. It helped that the boy I was crushing on got addicted to playing Halo online and stopped hanging out. It also helped that I eventually became an A student, and would later fall into B's and C's. 

Yeah, I was an edgelord teen as a kid. Too interested in unironically saying "omg!", sometimes with "zomg!" instead. "xD bestie" to the other edgy kids in art class.

Oh god, the items.

"I'm still missing some items I need," I told the kid. "I'm not going to be strong enough yet."

Ignoring that there was a solid chance Abbaddomon had, or could send our hacker kid my colored pencil drawings was the safest path for all measures of my dwindling sanity. Freezers were extremely effective.

Finally, I was ready. Everything was only barely-processed but if I wanted a chance to actually get home, I needed to act fast. Before I got all swept up in Plot. Luckily, the kid was even more out of it than I was. Hopefully if he got some food in him he'd perk up and be able to help me get out of this hell.

 I picked up the digivice lying on the ground, the grass of the digital plane that had been glitching in its presence.

"Isn't that… for me?" the kid said.

"Nope," I said. 

"Figures. The other kids all had one. I never got anything nice." A faint hint of a smile. "Tsumemon and I had to take everything we have."

Was I going to bother explaining all this that had happened to me to the kid? Call me a bitch, but no. No, I wasn't about to explain that until a few hours ago I thought this world was fictional. Especially not to a probably-important character. Nor was I going to explain exactly what my character was.

"Tell me what you know about the eye, kid" I said, looping the broken digidevice around my neck, the mouth-shapes on the bandanna that covered the lower bits of my face shifting into smiles the same shape as the menacing orb's face.

Good God , I was edgy.

"What eye?" he asked, rummaging around his bag. 

"What's in that bag of yours?" I asked. If the kid didn't know, I wasn't going to dig. Talking too much about the bastard would probably cause the exact opposite of trying to get home.

"Oh, just … stuff. Yeah, stuff. Like control rings and collars and stuff for hacking." The kid pulled one out and activated it, a red light scanning me before it went inert.

"Huh. It doesn't work on you. There must be a bug," he said.

I towered over the kid.

"Don't try to use that on me. It will make it difficult for me to help you," I said. I later would realize that it sounded like I was committed to help the kid with destroying the world or whatever. Not like it truly mattered. If a random human kid could build ominous-looking, probably-mind-control collars, or hack an entire area, then the digimon universe wasn't terribly stable.

"All right," the kid said, putting on his backpack, standing back up. "I don't have a mirror here," he said, standing up and putting the backpack on. "But there is one at the castle."

"Well, if we're going to destroy the digital world, then why not start from the ominous, evil castle with black, glitchy clouds looming over it?"

"Yeah," he said, pulling out a remote-looking device from his backpack, opening a portal into a hallway full of candles and spiked statues of armor. I followed him through.

~~~

Chapter Text

Author's note: No beta readers, we die like this.

~~~

Chapter 2 - A Room In The Dark Castle of Digital Doom

~~~

Renanullmon's dark past means she doesn't like to talk about it! (SO DONT ASK HER!) She doesn't care if evil or good wins at the end of the day, because NOTHINGNESS is what she's dedicated to and who will be the ones that REALLY win.

Because she's SO dedicated to THE nothingness (her one true love xoxoxo xD), people think she's mean. But actually, she's GREAT at hugs. Because nothing gives the BEST hugs like the void does :3.

She is immortal, she is constantly chased by death! But because NOTHING is eternal, and she is part of NOTHINGNESS, she always comes out on top! She met the abyss when she stared into it, and now they're besties. 

If she shows up in your world, it means that soon it will be the end of everything, so if she shows up in your digiverse, put some mittens on your kittens and go meow for the void because it's coming! xD

~~~

"That's a useful tool you've got, kid. I could use one of those," I told him.

"I gave them to our commanders, the controllers were lost when they were defeated," the kid said as we stepped through the portal, entering into a hallway of red carpet and edgy armored statues. Really, it was the digiverse. There were probably a thousand different ways of getting places fast.

The castle was eerily silent. Not sure why but I had the vague expectation there would be screaming and crying in the distance. Putting two and two together was easy enough. The bad guys trying to take over the digiverse really were on their last legs. 

The castle was very clearly not even trying to give the impression of being real.

"What's the castle called?" I asked, making conversation, soaking in my voice as we waltzed through the hallway, my tail occasionally brushing up against the armor on more than one occasion. I still wasn't used to moving in this body.

Things were going rough, and the warriors of digi-good or whatever were liable to win soon. Which meant they had fought all the monsters of the week that the Plot had thrown at them, and they were at full power. Which was, apparently, where I came in. Either as the final baddie or the baddie-that-came after. Unfortunately for the forces of eeeviiiil and deeeestructiooon, I had to go home.

"Non," the kid said. "The castle Non," I said, sounding it out loud. Not that I remembered any locales in digimon but I had hoped it would jog some memory of a canon timeline or something. That would have been nice.

"A newcomer!" a high pitched, glitchy voice shrieked as we rounded a corner . A white creature with six short appendages with small, sharp claws and an orangered eye popped out of the head of a statue sitting on the wall. A black ring adorned one of its appendages.

An eye, but likely not the Eye the kid had mentioned and then immediately said it didn't know anything about.

"Where are the lieutenants or commanders?" I asked, keeping my tone no-nonsense and neutral.

"Dead!" It shrieked, then giggled a harsh and overly happy-with-itself giggle. "They're dead! The digi-warriors are coming here!" it said, laughing more.

"Why haven't you evolved?" I asked it, deliberately avoiding the obvious questions. 

"She's glowing purple, Skyler!"

"The ring," the kid, apparently named Skyler said. "It stops her from digivolving." The implicit unless I let her hung in the air. Best not to get too attached to these kids— if this all kept going, I woke up after I had gotten attached, given how intense this experience was, I would be inconsolable for days .

"It's a sign of our partnership! It's way better than a digivice!" Tsumemon said. "And I can use it to go anywhere in the castle!"

Tsumemon disappeared into a tiny portal and popped out the other side of the hall, demonstrating the teleportation ability. Skyler clearly had tried making a digivice of his own. He'd been in the world long enough I was surprised he hadn't gotten one of his own.

I found myself grasping the one around my neck, nestled into my fur. Gray and glitchy. I didn't remember exactly what all you could do with a digivice, but I wasn't about to let a probably at-least morally compromised if not outright possessed kid touch it.

Hm. Who was a character that I could remember from the shows that I could ask about? Impmon? Yeah, the funky bunny-thing that just randomly caused problems? If I remembered right, his evolutions were something of a sleeper? 

"Do you know Impmon?" I asked as the three of us walked down the hall.

"Yeah, there's an Impon. Or was," the kid said. "He disappeared a while ago."

Sounded about right. 

"Hey, you haven't told me what kind of digimon you are yet! You look like a Renamon, but you look way eviler but also not!" The Tsumemon complained. "What kinda digimon are you!?!" it said.

What kind of digimon was I?  

"I'm Tsumemon! What are you?"

"I'm Renanullmon. You can call me Kaylee." 

The floating eye widened. "A … Renanullmon !" It exclaimed in awe.

I gave the floating eyeball a direct side eye. "What do you know about me?" accidentally putting too much emphasis on you, which made it more accusatory than I intended.

" Baalmon talked about you! We thought it was just a myth!"

My eyes sharpened, and the Tsumemon backed up a bit.

" Baalmon? " Who was that? "I would like to meet them." So I could kill them. 

"Well, you'll hafta wait until we beat the kids, e-h-e-eheheeee!" Tsumemon cackled.

We were late in The Plot, so they had probably done something fucked up to bait the warriors out so they could contrive a situation where their last warriors had the upper hand. 

"How soon will they be here?" I asked. "I am not ready for a fight." I wasn't ready for a fight. I knew my moves, like, in theory? Some things I could do, but I haven't even tried jumping in this body yet. More than that, I didn't actually care for the risks involved with getting in a major fight this early on.

Actually, if the kids were coming, then I could show up at the end and congratulate them?

Digimon wasn't like pokemon. You could die in it, especially if you were a digimon. This was an intense dream, but that didn't mean I didn't want the deck stacked in my favor, in terms of first impressions. 

So, if I walked in after they inevitably won, I could congratulate them, and explain all the bullshit I had been through.

"What do you wanna do when we win?" Tsumemon asked, its unfounded confidence dripping with each word. 

"I just want to go home." No sense in lying. 

"Oh?" Tsumemon said. "Well, if you just found loco—" it started to say, before it shut up mid-word. 

Locomon , huh. I could do that. But clearly they wanted to keep who/what that was under wraps. It was worth humoring them, for now anyway.

"Oops! Nevermind! I didn't mean to say anything bad!" Tsumemon said, floating back behind the statues.

 Staying in the grey would be a lot of work if this was the company I was keeping. 

If I got stuck in the Red for too long, or it got too intense, I had been very explicit that my raw power would go up, "at the expense of not being able to tell friend or foe until calming down". 

Truly, I was a hallmark of originality. Regardless, I wasn't keen on entering a berserker rage just because I was annoyed with characters being stereotypically stupid. It would just compound my already problems. Didn't help that any new thing anyone said had a solid chance of adding to the downpour of shit falling from the skies. Which meant there was only a matter of time before the freezer doors would stop shutting down.

"The mirror is in this room," the kid said, popping open a heavy wooden door. "You'll need to pull back the curtains. The others and their digimon will be at the castle soon, Tsumemon and I need to prepare. It can also be your bedroom." 

"If it's still here after we DESTROY THEM!" A high-pitched tee-hee-hee echoed back down the hall as the six-legged, partially-corporeal creature ran off to do presumably-evil things.

Left alone in the room, I shut the large, thick door. It was a very large room, with a luxurious bed, wardrobe, and even a private bath with sinks. Hmm. Castles didn't have running water, did they? No, that was a stupid question. This wasn't a real castle. If The Plot needed running water, we would have it.

Finding the mirror was easy enough. The candles burning on walls of the black (yes, black) rock of the castle flickered as I approached. Haunted mirror. Sweet. 

I grabbed the cloth on one side, careful not to rip it with my ridiculously sharp claws and swung it open. Right as I did that pulling, a faint swish caught my eye, and by who-knows-what reflex I intercepted a scythe right before it hit. 

"You're … fast…" The voice said, gravelly and all.

"May I ask why I'm being stalked and attacked by a reaper digimon in my own guest bedroom?" I asked, grabbing harder on the scythe and pulling it closer, staring directly in the glowing blue eyes of the red hood. I could handle digimon's tendencies for violence. 

"My … apologies … Renanullmon."

"Shouldn't you be preparing to fight the warriors before they come charging into the castle?"

I just wanted a better look at myself. At the initial request for a mirror, it didn't require privacy, but now that it was an option, Kayleemon was not about to let others snoop in.

The creature, with a red hood and glowing eyes looked at me.

"You escape Fantomon 's scythe … live another day, glitched one. Word of advice … Don't look into the mirror... The windows drive even the strongest souls mad." 

It tried to pull back, but I kept my grip on the scythe. It pulled back, but didn't try too hard. Whatever it was about me, it apparently didn't manage to phase back out of existence while I was holding onto it.

"If … you … would… Let go … I have … a child to hunt…"

"Promise me you won't come into my room or personal space ever again," I said.

We stood, staring at each other in silence.

"I … yield," it said.

I pulled the scythe closer to me, but Fantomon does not let go of its scythe.

" Swear it."  

"I … swear … to … respect … your … privacy …" it said.

"Good enough. Now get out of my room," I said, letting go, practically shoving it into the door, but before it made contact, it faded out of existence, the ghost digimon disappeared into the wooden door.

"I don't care that this is the evil castle of doom," I muttered. If I was going to have a room, I was going to HAVE a GODDAMN room. There were days when I just wasn't feeling it, and chose to sleep in the guest bedroom. Usually because hubby snored and rolled around too much, but still.

I turned my head toward the mirror, flicking my generous mane along the way, watching it sway in the reflection. Well, it was a good signal anyway. Someone could be watching me at any time. Dire-enough straits to pull in a total rando like me, but never enough to get their shit together.

Did I want to destroy the world? No. Did I want to be mean? No, of course not. Unfortunately, these were comically-evil characters, which made it hard to take anything particularly seriously.

The mirror only reflected me. Not the candles, not the massive, luxurious bed in disarmingly-good condition. There was a lump though, under the mirror, roughly where the bed would have been. Hm.

The smiles on the bandanna shifted from purple, fanged grins to its more "normal" ones. Ones that "just" showed the flat teeth that mirrored Abaddomon's aesthetic.

Is this me? Or was my character sheet feeding back? Another line of thought destined straight for the freezer. I could still find things funny. Joy and sadness were all still real. 

So I got to checking myself out. I peeked under the mask, holding it up. For some reason I couldn't actually take it off but, the most striking feature was that there was no mouth. I could feel my tongue, which felt my teeth. Yeah, I checked everything else. Nothing indicated sex other than the base Renamon faire— child-bearing thighs and a silky smooth voice.

Abaddomon was probably an idiot, then, unless digimon didn't propagate through sex, which was possible but… yeah, a smaller thought, but it, too, went into the freezer. I had stared a god of the abyss and was shunted out of their realm before I got to tell them their whole plan was fucking stupid.

I pulled the curtain back, and again considered whether or not I really wanted to reveal myself to the warriors. 

What was I going to do? Waltz up to the digidestined and tell them that I just wanted to go home? The body I inhabited currently totally had the villain "phenotype", though if I was lucky, they had seen a Renamon before and would recognize my general shape.

It wasn't like I couldn't make an appeal to their better nature that I was misunderstood. It was worth a shot. Didn't we all just want to go home? Or, on the other hand… a nap seemed like as good of an idea as any other. 

Perhaps if I fell asleep, I'd wake up in the hospital, with Daniel, my hub, pacing back and forth in the room. Sleep was much more appealing. 

I landed on the bed, a thunk and a "oww" later, and I found a little girl, about eight years old, holding a yellow and white cat-like digimon with flat pads that had been hiding under the bed. I had grabbed the girl by the closest limb I could reach, along with her partner, pulling them out from under the bed. 

"Yeooowwww" the cat squealed, the girl yelped as I dragged them out, holding the girl upside down by her leg. I would have held her by her arms, but my claws were incredibly sharp, and I still hadn't gotten used to them.

"Sh!" I said, and the girl, only a bit older than Kyle, my six year old, had clearly already been crying, just started crying even more. Her partner, for its part at least, was trying to scratch at my paw-hands, but doing nil damage.

I drank the moment in for a solid few seconds.

…

Goddamnit.

~~~

Chapter Text

~~~

Chapter 3 - We See Purple

~~~

"Stop clawing me," I said flatly. I needed a hand free and didn't want to accidentally hurt the girl. "Don't be the reason your partner gets hurt," I told the cat. 

"You won't hurt Mia! I won't let you!" The yellow-and-white cat-mon said.

"If you would just shut up and stop trying to claw at me, I would appreciate it. I just saved you both, you reali—"

They weren't listening to me. Holding them both like this, with only three fingers made everything much harder than it should have. So, while the cat was struggling, I shook it a little bit, then I did what you do when you have a baby in one arm and something you need to grab with the other, but it would really take both arms.

Depending on what it is, of course, you grab the thing with the free hand, but since it's either too big or too awkward or you need to hold other things in that hand, you fling the thing into your chest or under your armpit. You keep the baby (or in this case, kid) out of the way of course. Then you hug the flung thing under either your armpit or your elbow, using raw pressure to hold it in place.

I didn't have the same compunctions about hurting the Digimon, so long as I didn't kill it. It was a cute cat, but them's the breaks for being stupid.

Cat suitably restricted between my upper arm and my generous upper-body-fluff, I could now focus on the kid, who's head was beet-red from the blood rushing. Unfortunately for the cat-thing, it was wheezing. I accidentally used too much force on the swing, and now it was struggling to breathe.

"Don't hurt Meikitmon!" she cried. I maybe could have just set it under my armpit in a far less traumatic way.

"I'm not trying to," I said brusquely.

Finally, second hand mostly free, I got the girl turned right side up. Only a few red impressions from not not knowing how hard I was holding her. She had long, blonde hair, cute light blue jeans and a dark green top, with a lighter complexion, and as the blood left her face, with a good number of freckles that would probably disappear by the time she got older.

She paused her crying. Then, she started hiccupping, alternating between the occasional single ugly-sob.

Conspicuously missing: shoes. 

"What are you… " sob "gonna" hiccup "do to us?" sob.

"Nothing," I said, neglecting the flash of sadism-slash-intrusive thought to have fun with the clearly-already incredibly-traumatized girl.

Like inspiration from heaven, I dropped the cat, which was too out of breath to do anything stupid right away, and pulled the little digidestined warrior in for a hug. She didn't try to resist at all, instead soaking my fur with her tears.

I pulled her up and sat her on my lap, basically cradling her.

Note to self: Eight is still an incredibly tender age.

Letting the minutes pass was pretty difficult, but this was a girl who had no support structure, stuck alone in a castle that probably would have been straight out of her nightmares. If I had to guess, we were at the part of The Plot where they had made some critical mistake that got the littlest member taken hostage.

As kids grow up, they can hold conversations in surprising detail with you. They miss a few details here or have an awkward moment there, but for the most part, it gets really tempting to start thinking of them as fully-fledged adults. 

It's natural, really— they're growing up and it's something every sane adult wants to see. The worst parents constantly treat their kids like they're babies for eternity. 

In this case, an eight year old, probably the baby of the group, had managed to figure out just enough to escape the imprisoning clutches of insane ghosts and cackling demon-things, but that was about where her faculties ended. What didn't make sense, was why she was still alive, if she had been getting hunted. 

Chalk it up to incompetence on the Evil ghost's part.

"My name is Kaylee."

"That's not…" wheeze "...a" wheeze "digimon name!" Meikitmon objected. 

On second thought, maybe I hadn't squeezed hard enough, my eyes narrowing even as "Mia" kept hiccup-sobbing into my fur. Jesus, they really were going to do that every time I started without my digimon character name.

Ugh. Fine.

 " I'm a Renanullmon. But my name is Kaylee," I said, nearly rolling my eyes at having to do this whole bit twice. 

"I'm not going to do anything to you, you're—" I stopped. 

Were the duo safe with me? Because that was what I was going to tell them. Without my kit or items, I wasn't supposed to be super strong, but power levels in Digimon were always just whatever the writers needed them to be, usually based on the number of episodes left in the season. 

Or whether or not they wanted to introduce a new villain. With that in mind, the duo here were probably not super-duper safe with me, but I wasn't about to agitate Mia and the cat's fears. " —not going to be hurt by anyone while I'm around."

Better, but the wording was less reassuring than I'd intended. Winning awards for playing surrogate fictional mother wasn't in my list of goals, anyway. Mia and her kitmon … god, adding *mon to the end of every name was so stupid .

Actually…"Where is your digivice?" I asked. Unless Meikitmon never evolved, and it was being saved for a final showdown, she should have one.

The girl tried her best to respond. She took deep breaths, tears in her eyes. 

"My …" hic "sister" hic. She managed to get out. Her upper lip was quivering, the dam holding back more tears and sobs threatening to break all over again. 

Unfortunate.

"Your sister has it?"

My gut turned over. Please do not be stupid plot drama . 

"She took it."

Please be for a good reason. Like "I lost it and then my sister found it and just hasn't given it back yet."

Meikitmon spoke up "Yeah! Mia's older sister, Madelyn took it!"

"Why did your sister, Madelyn, take it?" I immediately realized I probably didn't actually want to know, because it was probably tied to some—

"Because she's mean! She's always mean to Mia!"

Not exactly an explanation, per se… But anger doesn't always just come from nowhere, at least for kids not in puberty. "Well… That's just not okay. What if I helped you get it back?"

"Do you mean it?" Mia asked, finally calming down enough to finish her sentences, eyes still puffy, shoving them back into my fur.

"Yeah! Why should we trust you?" The cat interjected, also having regained their breath. Their ears flopping around in a disarmingly cute way.

"Look, I'm not going to stick around. I have no reason to lie. If I was going to hurt you, I could have done it multiple times already." No, that wasn't the kind of logic a terrorized eight year old and her digimon wanted. "I just want to go home. Don't you?"

Mia was silent. I looked at the kit for support. She just shrugged. Alrighty then.

"You heard that the other kids are coming here, and they were—" probably "—coming to save you, right?"

She nodded.

"And I can't take you back to my home," I said, assuming I wasn't going to wake up at any moment. She just hugged tighter. By this point, I had let her go but she was still holding on. For all the not-trusting-me bluffing of her partner, Mia certainly… Attached to the first fluffy thing she could.

Kids. So full of emotion, so terrible with words. The exact confluence of factors caused her to latch onto me, despite the initial trauma, I didn't want to know.

It was cold, but I didn't want to be her villain.

"Don't want to go back." Mia managed to scratch out, muffled, just shoving her face into my fuzz, jostling the grey digivice tied around my neck for another solid minute as we sat on the bed in silence.

If they thought the older sister was mean, there were decent chances she had lost the digivice at some point, and the sister decided to hold onto it, I tried to reassure myself, as if repeating it in my head would make it more true.

The problem was, I knew myself. A thought, a problem that had been slotted right into the freezer just minutes ago. The kind of self-immolating questions that would cause imminent self-destruction.

Digivices were the physical symbol of the link between a digimon and their human partner, and without it, meikit… mon wouldn't be able to evolve. 

"Mine" was glitched, due to the permanent human-digimon fusion. My character sheet, absorbed into my head thanks to the bastard, indicated that I had full access to the power of a human-digimon bond.

I wasn't about to give anyone my digivice. I didn't write it at the time, but while I had access to the full power of the bond+data absorption of the first anime I watched, being locked to this evolution likely meant my actual power was static. Of course, I don't remember any cat like Meikitmon, and the rules changed each iteration, so who knew how my character sheet interacted with the world-rules.

If I found the items , (which had to exist, considering how integral they were to my sheet) most of my power would be world-rules invariant, if sitting on the awkward multi-way precipice between derivative, silly, edgy, and stupid .

Still, with my base powerset, I could be a right nuisance to all but the most absurdly high-powered evolution. I pushed myself back onto the bed a bit further, just enough that my legs barely touched the ground.

Prying Mia off was a delicate affair, but I managed it.

"The other kids are going to be here soon, and you need sleep. I can't be your friend, you know that right? I need to go back home. I have to. I'm serious." 

Causing a little trouble would be a good way of keeping the freezer from overflowing, A quiet little voice whispered. 

"...please." Meikitmon hopped up onto the bed. 

"Please what?" I asked. A little bit of trouble might not be the worst thing. And if I lost? Well, I'd just die and hopefully awaken in a hospital bed, back in the human world. I had been on the freeway when my car and phone and everything went on the fritz, after all.

"Isn't it obvious? She wants you to take her with you!" Meikitmon declared.

No. 

Nope. 

"It's okay Mia!" Meikitmon said. "We're strong! You're stronger than you think! You don't need this meanie head OR your sister OR the boys to protect you! We'll show them all! You'll see!" Meikitmon said.

Not happening. 

Not taking ANYONE from this … place to the real world. 

"You ARE strong, I can tell," I said, lying. "But it's okay to depend on your friends a bi—"

"No, you DON'T GET IT," Meikitmon said, hopping up and into Mia's lap. I set them off my lap, back on the bed, letting Mia hold Meikitmon. 

It was not lost on me that they went from being chased by a probably insane ghost Digimon, to ugly crying, to begging me to take them with me..

"Mia works the hardest! We fight the hardest! We get there first! We fight the bad guys, and THEN, her sister comes in at the last second, when we're about to WIN, and beats them! And THEN she says she SAVED us. Maddie is a big meanie!"

Uh. Well, that sure was a story. Like I said. Kids . Still, I could feel my original plans go up in flames. It would be nice to stretch a bit. Learn how much power I actually had. Yeah I'd be doing Mia a favor. Knock her older sister down a peg. Maybe return her digivice back to her and Meikitmon?

"How did you get here?" I asked.

"We told them we were leaving the team because Maddie was being mean." Meikitmon continued to speak for her human. "Then her sister TOOK her digivice right when we teleported away, but by the time Mia realized it was gone, we were in the big field, where Skyler found us."

Both Mia and Meikitmon immediately turned visibly sad at the mention of Skyler's name.

Another one for the fridge, wonderful.

"So you were caught and taken to the castle."

"Yeah, but then we ESCAPED Fantomon's guard, and were just ABOUT to escape the castle when YOU got here and caught us!" Meikitmon declared.

A rumble across the floor, dust from the stones of the castle shook free.

"That's them," I said.

Mia had bags under her eyes. They had clearly not gotten any sleep.

"And we STILL don't want to go back with them," Meikitmon declared. I eyed them, and they shrank under my glare.

Call it a hunch, but Meikitmon didn't strike me as a reliable narrator. That said, it was an appealing endeavor..

"Let's let Mia decide," I said, turning to look Mia in the eyes.

"I want to be very clear here, Mia. You can't come with me to my home."

"That's… okay." She eked out.

Telling her that I was a walking parasite on their digi-reality? Not needed. I would be in and out of this whole shindig before it all collapsed, whether due to something I did, on purpose or by existing.

God, why did I have to write my character sheet like that?

"Now, I need to know. Are you really that upset at your sister?"

I was good at particular kinds of improv. If the battle had just gotten started, I had a whole script I could play. The only trick was making sure it was actually worth having a little fun.

Mia gave a sheepish nod.

"Even after all you've been through, here and in the castle? You still don't want to go back to the others?"

Another rumble shook, the frame of the bed wiggled a bit.

"I need my digivice" she practically whispered.

"Even if you end up accidentally siding with someone that's Not Good? Even if I leave you and Meikitmon on your own when this is all over?"

It was a bad idea, to goad an eight year old into making her own decision, but she had run away from them for some reason. Eight year olds were dumb , not malicious.

"Yes." Mia said, more sure this time, finding her confidence, but still barely a whisper.

"Louder." I said, the purple practically overflowing. "I need to hear it!"

"I. Don't. Like. Them!" She nearly shouted. I'd have been smiling my largest grin. I trusted that my face-obscuring bandanna reflected my real feelings.

"Let's do this" I said, plan hatched, a small tremor of giddiness emanated through me. It was like I was back in highschool again, sitting in the theatre and watching Sweeney Todd over and over without leaving the theatre with our friends, laughing at everything and nothing all at once.

"Mia's digivice is Purple, and glows purple! Like you!" Meikitmon said.

"Haha. That's my favorite color."

"Stay here."

A loud, booming "he he… he" echoed through the hallway as I opened the door. Every mouth on my bandanna had to be smiling viciously.

It was time to Cause Problems.

Be a problem-causer.

Whatever, I was never that great at one-liners anyway. The feeling of joy hit hard as I ran down the halls, knocking over the suits of armor as I plowed my way to the arena, and erupted into cackles. 

Ha

Ha

Ha

HaHaHAhA HA

HaH!

~~~

Chapter Text

~~~

Chapter 4 - A Little Bit Of Trouble

~~~

Renanullmon's attacks and behaviors change based on her mood! If she glows red, run away! Well, you should never fight her, but especially not when she glows red! Even her friends don't want to be near her when she's angry!

When she's ice-blue, get ready to dodge! She's sad and wants to be left alone, so she uses ranged attacks to keep you away from her.

When she glows pink, she's at her weakest, but don't be fooled! She goes numb and will do anything to get that feeling back! You'd be surprised about how much hurt she can take! >:3

And purple? Purple? PURMPLE! Well, that's when she's there to have fun! xD (It's evil fun! (watch out, she brought cookies! (chocolate chip's her fav btw lol (i just like parentheses)))

[Edit: three years later, I'm still getting comments on this page of her character sheet! No, I'm not going to redo it. I'm flattered! But also I should not have been allowed unfettered internet access. Please excuse me while I go commit die.]

[Editx2: I don't remember everything what I thought she was supposed to do. If you took sephiroth/ichigo, put them into a blender and also a girl and then something something heartless, nothing, rikumyonetrueluv.[ 

[I wasn't the most original, okay? It is bullshit that only the cute girl characters die in video games (tifashouldhavediedyesiknowthatslessthematicandkindofdumbbutidontcarethatwasbulkshit). ps - No, I haven't played Chain of Memories and don't plan to play it or any of the other new KH games. Play FF Dissidia if your missing out on your KH fix! :3]

~~~

Mia and Meikitmon watched Renanullmon's purple disappear as the door shut. She knew exactly what Meikitmon was going to say next.

"Come on Mia!" Meikitmon said, standing by the door to the room. "We gotta follow her!"

"I want to stay here for once!" She objected, softly as she yawned. She had learned to get used to being tired, but despite it all, even she needed rest sometimes. The emotional exhaustion and whiplash had sunk inside. 

Normally, Mia would have gone in with Meikitmon without hesitation, but she hadn't had any good sleep for days at this point. After all the stress and crying, all she wanted was to lie down on the huge, big, comfy bed.

They could let whatever was going to happen, happen.

Meikitmon hopped all over her. "No! don't sleep!" She cried. "We HAVE to go!" She said dancing all over.

"But I'm so tired!" Mia yawned.

"If you wanna do your own stuff, you gotta be able to make your own decisions! And we can't just sleep now! We HAVE to get your digivice back!" Meikitmon said.

"I dunno…" Mia said.

"Oh come on! When we get it back, I can digivolve and help! We're the STRONGEST! The best! We only lost because they CHEATED," Meikitmon declared.

"That's true…" Mia said, sitting up, but still very much reluctant. "But you gotta be careful." 

One of these times, things weren't going to work. It was a worry that sat at the bottom of her belly like that time she drank sour milk when she was six. She didn't throw up, but she certainly didn't feel good.

Meikitmon danced all over, practically bouncing all over the room and the bed. 

"Cmon cmon! We will be careful! I won't fight until we get your digivice back and I can evolve! Promise!"

Mia shook her head and stood up, then hopped off the bed. She went to the sink and splashed her face. If you were still tired but couldn't go to sleep yet, stand up, wash your face. That's what she'd learned.

It didn't help.

"Cmon! We gotta hurry! The run will help you stay awake!" Meikitmon was still doing her thing.

Cautiously, Mia opened the door, peeking down the hallway. Even if you knew where everyone was, It never hurt her to be careful. 

"We gotta g—" Meikitmon said, her voice going down when she noticed Mia's expression. "—ooo" her voice tapered off into a whisper.

The fallen-over statues all down the hall made for a very funny sight. 

Mia was still a zombie. Her head kind of float, whether from the things they had tried to make her like Skyler, or from sleep, she didn't know. It had been on a cold rock floor. 

Her stomach rumbled as the duo stepped into the hall, hearing the various crashes and villainous cackles. She didn't remember the last full meal she'd had. 

"See! We know exactly where. We just have to be quiet! If she didn't want us to follow behind her, she wouldn't have left a trail!" Meikitmon declared with enthusiasm.

As excited as Meikitmon was, she wouldn't leave Mia's side. That was nice. They could wait a bit longer before going to sleep. They never were safe, they'd learned that together. It wasn't even the same problem each time, something always happened when they stayed behind like they were told.

 Mia looked down at Meikitmon and smiled as they picked up pace and the adrenaline began to kick in. 

"We just can't go in the same way she does," Mia told Meikitmon 

This time was different.

Together, they WOULD NOT fail.

They couldn't .

~~~

It didn't take long for me to find the various kids. I hadn't yet learned the trick to concealing my glow—my character sheet was explicit that I could retract it in certain situations, but I couldn't tell. I sat back in the hallway a bit, peering in from a distance.

"Useless." a Digimon's voice, stereotypically evil spat, angelic light finally dimming under the room. 

"Skyler!" two voices shouted in unison, one a digimon's and the other a human boy's.

It was either now or never I guessed, so I began to approach the room. A shimmering light before me and green lines as two ghost-like forms merged together. I caught the back of the resulting metal reaper as it started to cackle. I waved my right hand around, flicking my arm. Willing for it. 

Cmon, cmon, cmon, cmon! I thought to myself. A dark light in my three-fingered hand erupted, and boom , there it was.

I grabbed the shimmering, all-too-spikey blade that may or may not look like a giant, edgy key. A key… blade, if you will. Anyway, I bonked it on the back of the head without much fanfare before it could do anything, blasting it into bits and pieces, the energy or whatever the power boost was when digimon absorbed other creatures was called. 

"I don't have patience for that," I managed to get out, announcing my entrance. 

A rather tall girl with dark hair with cute bell-bottoms and a blue T-shirt, with a backpack went from cheering behind an Angemon. The girl, presumably Madelyn, was holding out her digivice. The determined look dropped for a solid second, before she tightened her jaw and continued to stare me down, a myriad of emotions circling over her face as she evaluated me.

I stepped out, further into the room, and stood tall. I wasn't holding the blade in my hand, its wicked spikes threatening anyone that would draw close. God, it was so dumb. 

Moving might provoke them, so instead I just stood in the center, elevated up a few feet, letting the fainted Skyler get tended to by the nerd archetype. Every person and digimon in the room slowly turned to stare at me, including the Kakuna-looking thing with tentacles out its back that had been dancing back and forth in a fight with a bipedal lion. Leomon .

"Sorry I'm late to the party," I said to the Kakuna. "You were all so sure you were going to win that I couldn't help."

Fidgeting at the growing attention, I spun the key-blade in my hand as I realized I didn't actually have a plan of action for handling the protagonists. if I remembered correctly. A kid and his beetle-like partner had been helping Skyler up, both of them also joining the starefest.

"Go on, help the kid," I said, encouraging him.

It was the older girl who broke the humans' silence. "... She has a digivice!" 

Two figures slinked in from behind the humans. I would have put my finger-claw things to the bridge of my forehead. 

"It looks broken," the nerd said. 

"What did you do with Mia!" the girl accused.

"She wanted to be like Skyler!" The Chrysalis digimon declared, a ring on one of its tentacle bits glowing, the rest of the creature beginning to digivolve. 

"Leomon!" The boy nearest it said, casually. "Digivolve!" 

Found the too-cool-for-school kid. Easy enough. Now, we were missing— A kid ran at me full speed from the sidelines and launched himself at me. And punched me in the jaw. 

The punch didn't even hurt. I was simply just… stunned.

Kids did that?

"Let's go, Gaomon!" he said, a manic, almost feral grin. Right, of course the hothead would have a boxing-glove digimon partner. The show always had it like, green lines and stuff, but watching digivolution in this universe was either quite weird, or it just happened differently than I was used to. Or I could be remembering wrong. 

It had been at least a decade since I'd seen any digimon-related media. Hm, if I got back home, digimon anime was probably better for the young kid-diet than pokemon. Daniel had said he didn't like the message of Pokemon that it accidentally taught him that "life will pull bullshit to keep you from winning anything." 

"Huh. I didn't think humans would actually get in on the game," I said. 

"Yeah, and we'll beat your can! You think we're scared of you?!?" He said, the boxing digimon evolving into a form that's still blue and red and on all fours. "Told you guys I can get close!" 

If these were the types of characters in the show, then Digimon would be much better at empowering young boys than 99% of other cartoons. Though if I ever had a daughter… I turned back to Madelyn and Angemon. She had assumed a lax posture, hand on hip. 

"I take it you're the team leader type then, huh." I said.

"Don't ignore us!" the hothead kid shouted. I ran at the Angemon, and just as he braced for my keyblade, I did the smart thing, and hooked around him, ignoring the digimon entirely. Instead, I went for her backpack. My claws were sharp, and I was faster than a human could react, so I sliced it off her, just barely getting it off her before the Angemon could spear me in the eye-socket, the air whooshing as I dodged out of the way. 

Madelyn was forced onto the ground, the blue wolf-thing catching her as she fell to the ground. Unfortunately, there was no announcer or convenient text or characters announcing their evolutions when they, well, evolved. Blue-boxing-quadrupedal-fox-wolf-mon, it was.

"Aaaargh!" The hot head yelled, coming at me with his fist again. I didn't exactly want to tap him with my keyblade, and I wasn't keen on taking a hit from anyone at the moment, though with everyone on the protagonist team focused on other things for a moment, I had a few milliseconds. 

So I hopped back over to where Skyler had been dragged away from, including his backpack. 

"Gaogamon! Get her before she runs away!" the hothead shouted the second Madelyn started to recover her composure. 

"Angemon! Evolve!" She shouted, holding out her digivice. 

Oh fuck. Angemon was already a season-ending bad-guy killer. I had already gotten lucky enough so far, and didn't want to test it.

"STOP IT, Guys!"

"Mia!?!" The three boys all shouted in unison.

Mia and Meikitmon strode out from the shadows of the room.

Madelyn didn't miss a beat. "See, I told you she had been corrupted by evil!"

Mia's face was already starting to go red at her sister's accusations, before she took a deep breath, and let the blood clear.

"Nullrenamon is my FRIEND, and she is NOT evil! Not like you , anyway" she spat with all the venom she could muster at her older sister. I glanced down around me, from the little sibling squabble as all the boys just seemed at a loss of what to do. Skyler's bag was right there.

"But she's going to destroy THE WORLD! Baalmon told us that! Clockmon said it!" 

"Well, she's nicer to me than you," she said.

"Yeah!" Meikitmon said, rushing by my side. "I wouldn't let anything happen to Mia EVER."

The battle between the Lion digimon and the silver-and-red six-legged thing was continuing all through the argument. That was Skyler's backpack. I was getting really, uncannily lucky. Unfortunately, I was going to have to take the beat, seeing how terribly I had fucked up the first impressions. I cut into and opened madelyn's bag, among snacks and some various notebooks. I found my prize when two digivices fell out. One was purple, the other black.

The two sisters were continuing to argue, so with my foot, I slid the black one over to the nerd tending to Skyler, who just stared at me, as the kid was starting to get up. The castle rumbled as the demon-looking digimon that had been Tsumemon punched through a nearby wall.

"It's his," I said to the nerd. 

Boys. Whether plot convenience idiot balls or boys being too stupid to realize when to ignore the girls to finish the job, I seized the opportunity. It was time to go, I had caused enough problems.

I shuffled through Skyler's own backpack, and found the remote I was looking for. 

"Well, are you going to go help your buddy fight them? I'm not doing anything right now," I said to the two boys. 

"Yeah, let's go help Brad" 

"I thought you hated Brad," the nerd said.

"I do, but I can't handle their arguing even more," the hothead said.

"Now that, we can agree on," the nerd said.

"Girls!" They both said as they and their digimon left the room in what could only be described as immense stupidity. I never even got the opportunity to deny the allegations!

Walking up to Mia as the angemon-who-probably-should-have-evolved-but didn't staring me down was a sight. I took a wide berth and handed Mia her digivice, pressed some random buttons on the remote, and a portal opened up around us. 

"Fine! Get out of here! Help destroy the world! See if I care!" Madelyn said. 

"Stop being such a brat! You're so much older than me!" Mia said, then hmphed through the portal. If I was going to be a good person, I was probably going to try and facilitate their talking it out, but Mia, holding her digivice, walked confidently through the portal. 

It closed behind us, and Mia just screamed at the sky.

"Being evil is so much better than being good!" She shouted. 

Huh. 

Wait.

Was Meikitmon eating a cookie?  

Chapter Text

~~~

Chapter 5 - What Comes After Cookies

~~~

"Where'd you get that?" I asked Meikitmon. Mia finished her little dance and sighed. The ground rumbled. We had popped out near where I had impacted the dirt not three hours before.

"There was a table with cookies on it that we passed," Meikitmon explained, wolfing the dessert down.

Of course . That explained everything. I turned to Mia.

For her part, she had bags in her eyes, pulled a couple of cookies of her own out of her pockets, and proceeded to inhale them. The crumbs and mashed chocolate cops that would be in her pockets… 

Kids.

Call it mom-brain, but beyond my concern that an eight year old possibly had enough power to fight with beings of godlike power… Was the niggling worry about how painful it would be to get the chocolate chip out of the pockets. Eh, I'd probably just let them be. 

Washing machines were pretty great inventions. There was no knowing how long it would be, until she got to change of clothes regardless. 

Her stomach rumbled, "Awe, I'm still so hungry," she said.

"We are too close to the blast zone," I told Mia.

There was zero chance any of the kids had washed their clothes or done other upkeep. That thought went on the shelf. The ground rumbled again, a giant beam of red splitting through the grey in the sky. 

Mia, for her part, despite the roars and growing explosions in the distance, cookie eaten, complained about not having milk.

Then, basically glomped me, shoving her face into my side. Little bits of chocolate chip stuck to my fur as she let go to stretch and yawn like she was about to lay down. We hadn't gotten enough distance from the battle yet. Whatever the possessed Skyler had done, that castle was probably littered with traps.

"Come here," I said to Mia. "I can't have you sleeping on the ground."

We still needed an actual base of operations. Mia paused, then looked at Meikitmon, digivice in-hand.

"Oh. Uh, We should probably wait until later…" Meikitmon said, looking sheepish.

Mia, clearly still incredibly exhausted, just shrugged.

"I uh. I get a little… weird, when I evolve and there's nothing to fight."

Like Mia, I just shrugged. If she got stupid like some of the digimon in Tamers had, then it was probably for the best, especially with her Tamer basically out of action. Though, I didn't think that Adult-level would be anything too stupid. 

In either case, it didn't matterI I hoisted Mia up and she locked her arms around my neck. It was a not odd how naturally kids would take to hugging and trusting a total stranger, but that was probably just the 90s news network's "Stranger Danger!" bs talking. 

Giant red beams and additional rumbles lit up the grey sky from the direction of the castle and cut a hole through the clouds. I used my left arm to keep Mia steady, then grabbed the remote with my other.

Remote in hand again, I fumbled with the buttons a bit until a new portal opened. Mia hanging on to me, Meikitmon and I stepped through the portal, a huge series of blasts and breaks in the sky as beams of white angelic light turned the grey, dull area into day in the distance.

Our portal blinked out of existence, presumably because the plane was purged of whatever the possessed-Skyler had done to "hack" the place.

" You!" 

~~~

Brandon took in the carnage around him, missiles and explosions flying around them. He was starting to get annoyed.

"Something isn't right," he said, quietly as he and the other boys stared the demon virus-type down with their digimon. They should have been able to put it down when it was just a chrysalis. 

"Well yeah no duh," Andrew said. "It's still getting stronger. I'm going to need to punch it again to evolve MachGaogamon."

"It's gotta be getting data from somewhere deeper in the castle," Kevin said, adjusting his glasses. "We've fallen into a trap." 

"What's the point of a trap? Our attacks are still pushing it around!" Andrew yelled over the growls as each digimon member of the team took turns trading punches. "Man, that Renamon-thing shows up out of nowhere and doesn't even bother trying to put up a fight. Then it runs off with Mia!" He complained, dodging a falling black stone coming out of the ceiling.

Brad dove out of the way of a stray red beam, "Pay attention!" he shouted at the other humans on his team. The room and walls were groaning. "The castle is going to come down," he stated. By now, the Infermon they'd been fighting for the last minute had managed to delete a horizontal layer of the walls in the room they were in. 

As its head vented off steam, the team's digimon took the opportunity to close the gap and keep it busy. "Stay focused on the fight in front of us!" Brad said, rolling himself up off the floor. 

You don't embark on a mission and then let team members run off.  

He'd have to cook up a way to send Madelyn and Andrew back home, so he could rescue Mia without the constant squabbles. He'd berate them for letting Mia run off later. 

~~~

Madelyn held a strong exterior, her face in a scowl as she followed Angemon out of the building with Skyler rising out of unconsciousness. She had tried to prevent a situation exactly like the one she found herself in. She had tried to prevent Mia from joining evil like she was clearly about to do.

She had the temptation to kick Skyler's digivice out of the way. 

She could feel Angemon's frown.

She didn't. 

She did not kick it out of the way. 

"Are you going to lecture me, too?" She asked.

"Madelyn." He said. She waited for it. It was an unfair question of her to ask him. 

"... Madelyn." Skyler got out.

Angemon caught the glowing red beam and spun his weapon, blocking it out of the way of the two digidestined.

"What's that?" She said, bending down to listen a bit closer.

"I'm… sorry." he said, clutching the digivice in his hands.

"Don't say sorry you stupid idiot! You wanted a digivice all this time, now here it is! Help us stop that … thing!" 

She wanted to blame him for turning Tsumemon into that monster. She wanted to kick him in the gut. She wanted to grab her own hair and pull it out of her scalp. But no. No, she would not.

It wasn't reasonable to criticize others about things they had no control over. It wasn't reasonable to beat on people simply because they were different. It wasn't reasonable .

It wasn't reasonable to be as mad as she was. She held her tongue.

"If you're sorry, then get up!" She demanded. That didn't mean she lowered her standards, however.

"MachGaogamon! Let's go!" Andrew shouted from the other room,

Skyler crawled, then stood up. 

"Good, Skyler. That's better." She said, offering a light smile to him. You had to notice when people were putting in effort to. It was very important to acknowledge that! "We freed you from their possession. Do you know how to shut down the field protecting Infermon? We need to stop it before it gets any stronger," she said, keeping on business.

"Yeah, I can power down the field," he said. 

"Okay, how?"

Skyler looked around. "The programmer I used was in my backpack."

"The Nullrenamon-thing stole it, and we can't just ask for it back."

"Below the castle, in a dungeon, is a database core. It's hooked up to an endless stream of social media data, and it powers the forcefield around Tsumemon. If Angemon uses its light power, it should destroy the core."

A series of missile blasts caused a wall to come down, and the already patchwork stone ceiling to start caving in even more.

She held up her digivice. "Angemon, let's end this charade!"

"With pleasure," he said, already changing forms.

~~~

My face turned up, and I was greeted with the sight of a giant clock with what looked like a Fantomon sitting on top of it. "You should not be here," the alarm-clock looking thing accused. I held up my arms. 

"Not trying to start a fight, just find our way out of here," I told him while motioning a lack of desire to attack. I would have shrugged, if it weren't for the black and incredibly sharp blade that was very visibly similar to a key that was floating around my wrist. 

A quiz: would that gargantuan god who put me in this situation have the power to create a literal keyblade and give me the powers? Or did it teleport me into a world that just happened to have a keyblade floating around. I was going to find that I could command armies of nobodies in short order.

The keyblade practically responded to the threat as the fantom-clock-thing's sewn-shut mouth opened. 

"You and that girls—" it said, pointing a finger at Mia and I "— your presence in this plane clouds the timeline!" it hissed, accusing us. 

"Yeah, a deity of time or whatever. Clockmon. I get it. Okay cool. I'm trying to get out of here. Can I go now?" 

"You MUST leave the digital world at once!" it demanded, its mallet-looking weapon thing beginning to glow.

"Are you going to fight us or help send me out of the digital world at least?" I said, the keyblade responding to the glow and moving into a defensive position. 

God, even the caretakers of time in this place had their asses up in a wad. It hadn't even been three hours since I was shoved into this world, and I was already so done with everyone and everything's bullshit. 

It charged at us, like an idiot, and we dodged out of the way. I kept the blade in front of me and my other arm held Mia in place. 

"Waa!" Meikitmon cried, just barely dodging out of the way. The fluff of the cloud disappeared in a tight cone around the area the gavel struck. 

"I am the guardian of time!" The red-cloaked figure shouted, "And I will not allow you to disturb our peaceful world!" 

"He's not listening to us!" Meikitmon said. "I know what to do!" She bounded ahead. Clockmon was in hot pursuit, but he was slow, and these gorgeous legs were fast . 

"No! Come back! Don't go there!" He cried after us. 

"You don't even actually exist," I taunted him. "For being a guardian over time, you are pretty weak!" I shouted back at him, mocking him.

He was spinning his gavel, the clock face was growing. I turned to pause and face him, and held out the keyblade, willing it to spin in a circle. 

"Don't touch that clock!" he shouted, releasing his attack, easily intercepted by the spinning.

"What clock? Oh? This one? The broken one?!?"

A moment later, the world's background ticking stopped.

"Nooo! What have you done!?!" 

I diverted what remained of the attack off into the air, and dashed to grab Mia's partner by the scruff of her fur, who cried with a "yowch!". 

A coo coo bird launched itself out of the clock.

"What did you do?" I demanded of the little idiot.

"Well, I got him to leave us alone! He never leaves us alone!" 

I just shook my head. Mia was still hanging on, and while not exactly snoring, her face was still shoved into the fur in my chest. 

"Grraaaaaoooooooo" a voice growled, followed by a giant red dragon with a metal head, and three nasty claws with a snake-like tail emerged out of the cloudy ground.

" Megadramon has been released! We're all doomed!" Clockmon cried.

This was all just a stupid fucking dream.

Had to be.

~~~

Chapter Text

~~~

Chapter 6 - Megadramon? More like give me a BREAK—mon

~~~

I glanced back at the digimon of time. Yeah, the one who had been so certain we were the most evil thing that could happen back at the world that he wanted me not just gone, but deleted, the Megadramon's growling in the air. He'd revealed his opinion on that point well enough.

"You absolute fool, " I said, not sure whether I was berating the clock or Meikitmon. The words ontological stupidity rose to mind, but I kept them to myself. 

I still had more self-control than that. Everything had been so dumb, and this dream had been going on long enough.

"Yeah!" Meikitmon squeaked, not exactly taking ownership of the fact that she shared non-negligible amounts of blame for the giant dragon floating above us. She stuck out her tongue and made a "Bleeeehhh!" sound.

"Stop that!" I told her, adjusting my grip on her as I held her up.

"Sorry," she said. Her fur visibly shrank. The deflation in her attitude was a good start.

I couldn't be too mad, granted. I wasn't keen on fighting the clockmon, nor was he keen on having an actual conversation. Hm. It was a good way of getting rid of the idiot clockmon, but I just needed him to run away.

Actually.

"What are you still doing here, you stupid clock? Run away !" I shouted at it. Luckily, it took only another half-second before it realized exactly what was happening and ran off, its arms all up in the air like it was straight out of a kid's show.

"So, when's Ryo going to show up?" I mumbled. I had hated that kid with every fiber of my being. Bastard had stolen all of Ruki and Renamon's best moments. I could console myself with the fact that Ruki had a terminal idiot ball because she started with Kyubimon instead of Taomon, but still.

Ruki and Renamon never got a clean defeat off on a single one of the major monster of the week villains during Tamers.

Bastard writing.

The floating dragon expanded its wings, casting me in shadow. It didn't even need to flap, clearly more powered by levitation bullshit than physics. "Grrraoooooooooo," it boomed, its two metal hands opening up like missile silos and pointing at us, beginning to glow red. 

I could use a little fight with the dragon digimon in order to right that bit of idiocy. Yeah, that would be fun. If I lost, it didn't really matter anyway. None of these characters had any depth.

It would be a bit tricky with Mia and Meikitmon both in my arms, though. 

And the fact that I was stuck with stats that were barely above the base rookie/child level that renamon was supposed to be. The character sheet absolutely did make me busted, don't get me wrong, but that had a couple problems:

First—While I wasn't in one of my various moods and still had solid self-control, I wasn't keen on finding out how faithfully my brain had kept to my character sheet and some of the more meta personal comments. 

Second—Even though I had my key blade—which by all rights shouldn't even work (god they're unwieldy to actually hold like a blade, thank god I had gotten far enough into the game— (okay, useless tangent))

With Mia in my arms, and a clockmon that had, moments ago, been trying to blast us, somewhere off in the distance, we were caught between a rock and a hard place. It was best not to try and trust it, and with a girl so utterly exhausted as Mia was, fighting directly was going to be tough. With my organization-13 style edgy cloak, it would have been a foregone conclusion, but I didn't have it. 

"Now would be a great time to evolve," I said, as much for my own sanity as anything else. 

Mia adjusted her arms, but I kept my eyes on the dragon in front of me. She shifted around a bit more. I adjusted my left arm, then dropped Meikitmon behind us, who landed gracefully in her feet.

 Standing in front of the dragon, the first missiles began to emerge from its arms. My body moved near-automatically. Legs apart to brace against any blasts and right arm up. Stance held, I began to spin the blade in preparation for its attack. 

A stream of nasty, fleshy-looking missiles spewed out in haphazard, crooked spirals. Faced with the onslaught of missiles, my voice acted of its own accord. 

"Barrier of End!" … It came out on its own. I didn't say it, I swear. 

Or something.

The wave of missiles homed in on the three of us. The ones that were aimed directly at us disappeared harmlessly. Unfortunately, a few still hit the area near where I was standing, and the aftershock of the blasts were unimpeded by the defensive script.

Meikitmon screamed as we were all blasted back. I managed to hold onto Mia long enough and keep from rolling, at the expense of some real nasty burns. The clouds of the ground acted as poor airbags, but were still solid enough to grind off fur.

 My head hit a gear sticking out of the ground and everything glitched and my brain went to stars for a few moments. That … felt pretty good? Not bad, actually. I stood up, Mia's eyes were shot open and she was already scrambling away trying to grab her digivice.

"Don't die!" I shouted.

If anyone said anything in response, it was lost in the ringing in my ears. Luckily, this was a dream and I wasn't going to wake up to tinnitus. It would probably be worse if my car had wrecked. God, I hoped that this coma wasn't real.

Trusting Mia's instincts, assuming that they had allowed her to survive this long in the world, I turned back to face the mega dragon thing. Fortunately for me, another line of rockets were spreading out before us.

This fucker was not fucking around. If I was supposed to be on the evil team, where were my minions?

I dodged the first rocket. Then the second, and right before I could make another nullifying wall, a rocket hit from behind.

Jumping out of the way of the follow-up blasts are more difficult when you are missing half of your body. My vision glitched, filled with an orange and green like tron pcb's, before I was sucked right back into the presence of the smiling orb dick.

~~~

Abbaddomon took a few nanoseconds to parse Nullrenamon's return to its sequestered void. It would have been faster, because time to this being was more suggestion than rule, but it didn't need those faculties.

"Two hours and twenty-one minutes. Loaded one digimon. You've found one item. Three still remain. The warriors are still fractured and dysfunctional. The leylines continue to screech, polluting the digital and the analog with the senselessness of existence."

It recanted, its voice echoing through the void ominously, though it knew that Nullrenamon was not liable to settle into her Role at the End of All things (of the current target world) quite yet. It made an in-cache note to work on more proper motivational and appropriately ominous presentations.

For this visit in its domain, a demonstration of its powers of immense computation was in order. In a few nanoseconds, it loaded and simulated hundreds of scenarios of her behaviors and thoughts. 

Then, computations complete, it smiled. It always smiled.

"Eventually, you will come to demand assurances."

It fucked up. If you simulated a person or chain of thought too far ahead, then talked about it to the original entity, then you had to spend extra energy getting them up to speed. Low-computational beings can't handle the load of the full simulation.

 The god said, for in the digital realm, time was a suggestion, and emulating her persona was a trifle. It debated repeating itself, but knew that the agent once known as Kayl—actually, that was an idea.

This interaction didn't matter anyway. It was annoyed. There were worlds practically screaming and begging for destruction going un-destroyed!

Even as it unpaused time for Nullrenamon, she was already returning to the site of her deathA Abbaddomon smiled, for there would be more opportunities.

~~~

Instead of waking up in a hospital room, I got maybe ten seconds of flashback of the smiling Abbaddomon bitch being cryptic. Then, I re-materialized back on the plane of clocks and clouds. Unfortunately, before I could fully contemplate the feeling of idiocy that had somehow wormed it way into my mouth, the clockmon screamed out again—

"Don't touch that clock!"

I turned to see Meikitmon mocking the clockmon and making faces.

"What clock? Oh? This one? The broken one?!?" Meikitmon launched itself at the cuccoo clock. Mia started to struggle in my arm, and I let her down onto the ground.

Huh, I thought.

"Mei!" Mia cried, still groggy from her sleep, holding out her digivice. 

"Can you beat a megadramon?" I asked over the clockmon crying about us being doomed and the requisite dragon started to float back out of the ether. I received a "pfft" in response.

"Then I leave it to you!" I said, trusting the duo's confidence to the glowing meikitmon, before casually walking over to the clockmon.

I held my keyblade out at it as the monster roared in the background. Its focus swapped between my blade and the dragon in the background.

"You attacked me—" BOOM "— out of nowhere." BOOM 

This wasn't going to work.

" I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" It cried, the top phantom-like portion of its figure holding its hands together in a show of deference.

"Why?" I said, a roar in pain and a series of booms went off. "Stay focused!" I demanded. "If this taps a weak mon like you, it automatically loads your data and you get trapped in this—" I pointed at my digivice "—until it turns to stone." 

He stumbled and fell back, before entirely locking up. It took a moment to realize that he, too, was broken now. I pulled back my blade. No point. I wasn't like him. Murdering random people was dumb and I was better than that.

Besides, while what I'd said had not been a lie, so much as an untested assertion, it may have been an exaggeration. Who knows how much the actual mechanics of the ouroboros of suffering that my character sheet had somehow stumbled on lined up. Not side-effect free, so we can get on my thirteen-year old overdesigning ass later.

The battle had gone silent in the background too.

"Wait, that's it?" I mumbled to myself, turning over to see Mia and a very… voluptuous anthropomorphic cat standing on the knocked out form of a dragon Digimon. 

Yeah, if this was what I was dealing with, power-level-wise, I was fucked. Also, I uh, couldn't help but appreciate the new evolved form's, ah, generous… figure.

And extremely… complementary glowing lines. God, that cut was to die for too. 

Shit, had that character design existed when I was a teen?

~~~

Mia yawned, as her partner, Meicrackmon smiled, taking in the post-battle lust.

"Loading the Megadramon could be useful," Meicrackmon had said, but ultimately decided against it. Mia was still tired enough that she didn't really care, and whenever she was in this form, that was for the best.

"I'll carry you for now" she said, grabbing Mia and pulling her into her arm, not quite the same as Nullrenamon had been holding Mia, being easily a foot taller than the arbiter of doom and having a dual set of extremely nasty claws.

"Hope you enjoyed the show," Meicrackmon said, hopping off the dragon. She practically purred as she walked over to the slowly-approaching Nullrenamon, who was glowing an assortment of colors. 

Her blade re-materialized. She tapped the Megadramon, loading the dragon's data.

"What of the stupid clock?" she asked, watching the stunned clockmon sitting there in silence.

"Leave him. We cloud the timeline or some other bullshit."

"Sure thing, boss~"

Mia knew by now that this was just a side effect of Meicrackmon not having anyone to fight, but she was so tired that she just slept in her partner's arms.

"I… I need to go home now. Sooner than later." Nullrenamon declared.

Then paused.

"In the real world. Home is in the real world."

"Oh, that's easy," Meicrackmon smiled, her vicious fangs sticking out.

Neither spoke for a moment, allowing a pregnant pause to sit in the air between them.

"... Lead the way." Nullrenamon said, breaking the silence.

"My pleasure."

Together, they duo burst into a run, Mia in arm, leaving the now-working cuckoo clock to continue its motions alone.

~~~

Chapter Text

~~~

Chapter 7 - Shaggai Storm

~~~

"Madelyn, it's time we had a chat. You know, as a team." Brad said. 

"Okay, about what?" She knew exactly what he was going to say. Skyler at least had woken up. Strangely, once they'd emerged from the Cellar, and found Tsumemon crying over its partner, Brad had pulled her aside. 

"What's going on?"

"What do you mean?" She asked, blinking a few times, playing coy. It had worked earlier in their time together as the Chosen Kids.

"Everyone saw how that renamon had grabbed Skyler and Mia's digivices out of your bag," he pointed his finger at her like it was a loaded gun.

"Brad…" Leomon said, his back against a wall that they had blown a hole through.

Oh yep, they were going to ask her about this. Tears started to well up in her eyes. Brad already started to frown, his face blushing as he second-guessed himself. It took a second before he regained his composure. 

"Stop that!" He said. "God, if you weren't a girl…" he said.

She would have smirked, but held the tears. Crying wasn't even a lie, either. She was stressed, and she was worried about what Mia would get up to without her there.

"I'm sorry!" she said, "I'll tell everyone, I just … I just need a moment."

"Yeah! Be nice to Madelyn!" Patamon said, getting puffy at Brad's aggressive stance toward his chosen child partner.

Brad tapped his foot for a few seconds, letting her catch herself for a bit, but clearly indicating that he was done with her entire attitude.

"Let's go now," he said, not buying her show. The two of them walked back out into the ruined throne room where they'd had their initial confrontations. Luckily for her, she didn't have to lie. 

Because Madelyn never lied.

"So, Madelyn, care to explain to us why your backpack had Mia and Skyler's digivices?" Brad said loudly and artificially, drawing the team's attention.

God, he just was not going to let it go, was he?

"I uh, well I uh—" She stuttered. This was the reason why she didn't lie.

"Go on," He prodded her. 

"Patamon and I, well—" Patamon looked at her with betrayal " —we saw that Skyler and Mia were starting to do a lot of bad things." She grew more confident as she settled in. "I'm used to being the one that's responsible, and was worried about what Skyler and Mia were going to do, and I wanted to make sure their digivices couldn't be used for evil."

Being the only girl in the group again, they either looked away from her or blushed as her tears started to flow again.

She hated this.

It wasn't a lie.

"I'm glad she did," Skyler said, looking down at the digivice in his hand.

~~~

"What is that ?" I asked. Having a sexy voice seemed to naturally smooth over my verbal confidence problems, but the image in front of us broke through that.

"No one really knows," Meicrackmon said. Her composure didn't break, her wicked, needle-like flicked about.

"That's not true!" Mia said.

"Sleep well?" I asked, as the girl was let down to stand on her own feet.

"With Meicrackmon! Always!" She confidently asserted with a thumbs-up.

"Can I ask a question?" Mia asked, staring at the massive black storm in front of us, a pillar of black with lines of purple highlighting it, connecting to the giant orb that floated off into the sky.

"Madelyn, I'm so mad at her, I feel like this storm any time I see her or think about her. She's always so mean!"

Her older sister was still weighing on her mind. It was difficult because she was eight years old. They were smart, but just smart enough to be stupid. If a kid could take "don't try, reality will throw bullshit at you to stop you from succeeding" from fucking 90s-era cartoon network, despite that clearly not being the intent of the showrunners… What do you tell an eight year old?

Meicrackmon just gave me an eye as I stood, staring at the storm, soaking in the wind whipping past us. Right. This was the break episode. You know the one where one of the characters split up due to some contrived argument. Like Mimi (the girl with the texas-brimmed hat and the palmon partner) arguing with Koushiro (the nerd archetype-character in Adventure) so she could learn about nerds.

"Do you want to forgive her?" I asked. 

"Not really," Mia said. 

I was pretty confident the translation was unless she stopped being mean.  

"Most adults won't say this," I began. "But sometimes, things happen when you're a kid. Older people being mean is like handing a kid a rock necklace, why does Madelyn hand you a rock necklace?"

"Because she's older and says she knows better than Meicrackmon and I do!" 

"Yeah, and each time she says that, that's like handing you a rock necklace, and telling you to wear it around your neck. How often does she say that?" 

"Pff. Every day!"

"Yeah, and if you did what she said every time, that's a lot of rock necklaces isn't it?"

I sat down on a tall rock, beckoning Meicrackmon to come… closer to me. God, I was probably blushing as she approached. I felt like I was fourteen again, even as the womanly digimon deferred to me as I answered Mia's question.

"Yeah, I guess it is a lot."

"Now, if you tried wearing each and every one, what happens?" 

Mia got a little smile on her face. "I wouldn't be able to move, there's so many rock necklaces." She laughed at the mental image. 

"What happens when you find out that she just was trying to throw away her own rock necklaces?"

Mia was quick to respond. "I get mad! I don't want your rock necklace! Who gave her SO MANY rock necklaces?" she shouted at the sky. Then she stopped, thought for a moment. "Why is she giving them to me? I don't want them! I want to throw them back at her!" She was hopping up, picking up a small pebble and threw it into the wind.

"Do you know why she's giving them all to me?!?" She asked, not me, but Meicrackmon.

"No, but I won't let her keep giving them to you," Meicrackmon said. 

"If I get rid of them, I'm still mad at her," Mia harrumphed. 

"That's okay," I told her. "You're a good person aren't you?"

"I… think so!" Mia said. "We're good people, aren't we?" She asked, turning to her digimon. 

"Of course we are," Meicrackmon coo'd "you're a chosen child, and I'm you're partner!"

Mia was beaming now, but still not entirely sure. 

"No, you're evil now!" I teased. 

Mia rolled her eyes. "Well, I don't care if we're evil! Evil isn't so bad!" 

"That's the spirit Mia," Meicrackmon said. 

"Because to be GOOD, I have to be able to forgive her for giving me those rocks! I want to throw them back at her! That's evil isn't it?"

I chuckled, not sure how seriously I should take it, but instead decided to wax on a little bit. "Nothing really matters, Mia. Just who your friends and family are, whether you can depend on them and whether they can depend on you. And how you treat them. If you want to forgive them when they give you a rock necklace—"

"I have enough rock necklaces to fill a dump truck! I can't move if I wear them! She's always so mean every time. And she never lets you win or even says sorry ." 

There were tears in her eyes. I had dealt with the terrible twos. Dealing with a younger sister trying to figure out her older sister? Less experience there. It really didn't matter anyway. 

"Well, does it matter if I destroy the world?" I ask. 

Meicrackmon smiled at Mia, giving her a hug. Mia was confused. Like it took a minute of thinking to fully register the idea of joining the eviiiiiil side. 

"But if you destroy it, everything will go back to the way it was in the past!" 

"Hmmm?"

Mia fished around in her pockets, as Meicrackmon decided to start using her claws as a hairbrush on the eight year old. 

"This!" she said, holding out a pocket watch.

"There's a big one! Clockmon's in control of it! He stops things like that from happening!" 

"Oh that? We broke that clock when Meicoomon released the Megadramon…" Even if clockmon's powers worked the way she thought, which they most certainly didn't… "And besides, see that black pillar sticking out of the giant storm?"

I said, pointing her gaze there. 

"That's an elevator isn't it? It's fixed in place because it takes us to the human world? You had to go through it to land here in the digital world, right?"

Mia nodded vigorously. 

"Well, we're pretty sure," Meicrackmon added. "That's the earth up above us, or the barrier between the worlds. Seems like time in this evolution is at an end," she said, shrinking back down to Meicoomon, her child form. It didn't take long before I faded back to my more comfortable neutral color scheme.

I hadn't even realized I could stay in a mood like that for that long. 

"But then this storm started after we all came to this world!" Mia said. "It was put here by bad guys trying to keep digimon out!"

She was quite confident. " Hmmm", I hummed out loud, rather than questioning her more deeply. Kids did poorly the more pressure you put on them to give an answer. Their explanations sucked and reasoning usually didn't work. Tempered not by poor reasoning necessarily, but by lack of experience. Impulsiveness that forced them into new and interesting situations.

Eh, her explanation was good enough for me. Standing up, and brushing aside the small part of my voice suggesting I had done something that would imprint on the girl's psyche for the rest of her life, short as it would be if I really did follow through with my character sheet…

Actually, I glanced back down. 

"Do me a favor this time, and actually stay here." I said.

"Aye cap'n" Meikitmon said, giving me an exaggerated salute, before being grabbed and held in a perma-hug by Mia.

That transition from adult woman voice to scratchy child voice is weird , I mused to myself. And it was weird. At least the renamon evolutions (which I technically was an evil incarnation of), had silky smooth voices. We didn't get high-pitched again until we were one of the baby forms.

I shuddered at the thought of being stuck as an orb or the fat four-legged gerbil-looking thing that preceded my child evolution.

Up close, it was more of the same as from a distance, with both more and less visible details. I saw a smaller slice, but could glimpse deeper inside, which contained a huge swirling vortex of bits of blobs of data and lightning. Occasionally a spark of light would fall into the storm and get dismantled.

More interestingly, despite how fight-brained many digimon were supposed to be, nothing was around trying to fight in or around it. In fact, the entire region in front of us was a huge, empty desert.

One with a raging storm.

"This is the way back?" I said into the silent void. It was like a video game as a kid where sometimes a forcefield was just a transparent picture that the would toggle off with barely any fancy animations. Each layer, the storm got darker, but I could make out the slightest hint of purple at the center.

Up above in the sky, beyond the raging clouds, was a giant green sphere, with that common computer-board style aesthetic. What looked like random pillars stuck out of it. Beyond that was the sky.

"It's so quiet, isn't it?" Mia said, getting the shivers. 

"It is," I said. Something about having a giant roiling storm full of crackles of lightning like a hyper-dense digital hurricane that was also incredibly silent was very unsettling. 

"Hey! What are you doing! Don't go in there!"

What awaited me if I sat down long enough to contemplate everything that happened in such a short time?

"She's glowing purple…" 

Right, enough existential horrors to lock me into a perpetual loop, so of course I aimed to do the dumbest thing possible. Keyblade materialized in my hand as I ran to approach the storm.

Drawing nearer to the black void, it was a flat wall of black, the bits of lightning almost sitting on as if they were from a mid-90s videogame. The wind entirely silent, resisted my approach, my gloves and hair and fur all whipping about violently in the wind. 

Voices drowned out, I looked back around. I could see Mia and Meikitmon standing only a hundred yards or so away. They weren't looking directly at me. A flash of light that blinded the eyes but illuminated nothing burned itself into my eyes, causing me to step back.

"-namon!" Mia had been shouting.

Pretending not to hear, I stepped back inside. My fur stood on end. I didn't mind this body. Not really. I didn't hate my human body, either, but I had to admit, this one was stronger, and probably going to live a lot more lifetimes than my human one could possibly experience.

If I was stuck here? If I never actually returned home?

As if there were layers to this void, I stepped deeper in, and the world beyond turned a dark shade of grey. The wind picked up a few paces, threatening to pick me up off the ground, whipping my hair around like a kite. When I said it was long, like a Zoroark's, I wasn't lying. 

Kyle was young, and going to a decently-ranked public school and did pretty well, if only struggling a bit in chapter books. My husband was a decent father, but he'd be remarried in a couple years. I wasn't the kind of woman who needed to be told that their husband— anyway, without dwelling on it too much, Kyle needed me.

And if this was my ticket home, I would take it. 

I stepped deeper in, Small orbs of light, or packets of data swirling around in the vortex hit me. I hit a pair away with my claws, ripping into them. Their data flowed into my digivice, like the megadramon and the fantomon from before were absorbed.

Things were not exactly… corporeal-feeling, but something drew me deeper in. Curiosity? Mischievousness? Taking advantage of the fact that I would just respawn, a few moments earlier? Who knows. Going deeper into the storm wasn't the only way forward, but it was the most interesting way!

~~~

Beep! Beep! Beep! 

" Tsk. " Mitsuo complained with a grunt at his pager going off, his face forming back into that all-too-permanent frown. It was one A.M. for Yamaki Mitsuo, and he'd been resting well. The deployment of Shaggai had gone relatively well, all things considered. Unfortunately, it wasn't to be.

There were hints on the wire, from other countries, from sister organizations such as the CIA. Movement had been slow, but with the success of Shaggai, Hypnos had gained notice from the americans. The CIA had reached out to collaborate and work on tracking developments in the digital universe, 

He looked at his pager, silencing it.

Unlike those CIA who operated to root out threats to their countries from other humans, Hypnos had been created specifically to strengthen the weakening barriers between the digital and real world.

Realization!? Shaggai was fully operational! It had successfully reinforced the barriers between Japan and the digital world for weeks at this point. He flicked his lighter open and closed and pulled out his cellphone. Flipping it open, he dialed the number on the tenkey. They had celebrated quite well once the program had reached full stability.

"Reilly, patch me in—what's happening?"

Still, despite the new developments, he was incredibly proud of the work they had done. Bought their country more time to prepare and keep the invaders out. Prepare countermeasures. A few weeks of some kids who'd befriended digimon helping to keep the worst out as Shaggai monitored how strong the digimon were and worked to subvert them.

"We're not sure! Something is punching through the encryption barrier!" 

He clenched his fist. 

What?!/? 

"I'll be right there!" he said, hastily throwing his laptop, cellphone, pager in a bag, and tossing on a pair of khakis and an appropriate jacket. 

Traveling down the stairs, he put his sunglasses on as he stepped out into the brightly-illuminated streets.

They'd implemented the strongest levels of encryption possible. 

It was billed as quantum-hacking proof by the engineers.

Even worse, they'd been stable and had managed to repel incredibly strong digimon on the other side.

That wasn't even everything that weighed on Mitsuo's mind, either. It would be a few months, but copies of Shaggai across the various continents in the world in order to keep humanity safe from the threats that resided in the digital world were going to be deployed, and without a good showing, the world governments and their people might lose faith in his organization's promises.

They needed Shaggai to be able to maintain that barrier, to prevent realization

"It's not a very strong signature!"

"So it had found some kind of loophole around the barrier." he said into his earpiece, not waiting for a response. "Where is it realizing?"

~~~

Mia sighed and laid down on the ground. 

Why are people dumb? She thought to herself. She wasn't referring to Nullrenamon/Kaylee, necessarily. Regardless, she wasn't exactly happy about the situation.

Sleeping in your digimon's arms was great! But she was still tired.

"Do you think she'll live?" Meikitmon asked.

"I dunno," Mia shrugged. A large blast of patterned grey ripped into the sky, towards the floating orb that stood in the center.

The storm rippled . 

"Ah!" Meikitmon shouted, cracks in the ground began to appear, a purple-ish and pink light shined through the cracks.

Mia grabbed Meikitmon and ran away, hopping over cracks, narrowly escaping the growing sinkhole.

"Guess she made her own way out huh?" Meikitmon said when they finally reached stable ground.

"She left us here…" Mia said, tears starting to form in her eyes.

"Come on."

"Wha—?!?" Meikitmon squeaked out.

"Ready to get out of here and go do some evil?"

"Yay!" Mia shouted, running to hug the renamon figure standing in the elevatorway, Her key-shaped blade lit up in her hands.

~~~

Chapter Text

~~~

Chapter 8 - Slip-N-Let-Reality-Slide

~~~

When I heard about lucid dreaming for the first time, I was shocked that it was news to other people. 

"What do you mean you don't just gain control mid-dream?" It wasn't literally what I'd said incredulously in class, but it was close.

I was about seventeen or so, and I was starting to refocus on college prospects with the same sort of fever-dream energy and stubbornness that characterized my dive into Scene. It was in my highschool psychology 101 class, and we had a section on dreams. 

The class looked at me like I had grown a third eye. 

"What?" I had asked, as the teacher got a huge shit-eating grin. Remembering them was a haphazard affair, sure. As part of the coursework, Teach had us write a dream journal to encourage remembering our dreams. 

"There's a lot of ways that people manage to realize they're dreaming mid-dream, and then use that to take over," Teach had said, politically taking control of the classroom. Saving face wasn't really a thing I did, so I didn't really care, but he continued anyway. "Your way is just… unique"

He was doing damage control, so I just shrugged and let it go, sitting back down to pretend to skim over the few entries in my dream journal that I had written as part of the exercises.

At least I wasn't that one kid who tried to compare teachers to babysitters and accidentally used the words "overpaid" and "teacher" in-sequence. It was clear he meant something else, but when he realized what he'd said, his face went as red as a stoplight. 

After I had turned sixteen or so, I had consumed an insane amount of online media, discovered TVtropes, and started getting annoyed at bullshit in things marketed toward edgy goth girls. Black Veil Brides? Five Finger Death Punch? Give me a break. That shit had no fucking soul. You can feel the empty pandering. Metallica selling out had more soul. 

"Don't you notice when your dreams are stupid? Ooh big scary monster that your arm loses power on when you punch it! Isn't that incredibly stupid?!?" I was more vulgar back then, and instead of stupid I'd used a synonym. 

The teacher had just chuckled! 

Chuckled!

Don't get me started on comics and anime and their treatment of women characters. This whole situation of being turned into my 14 year old edgysona reopened those wounds about the digimon anime's treatment of its girl characters. I was still mad over what canon Tamers did to Ruki. 

Being a goth girl in an upper-middle class texas school district where everyone called other guys gay and the drop of a had, and girls that kissed each other were "best" friends… Yeah I should have known better. That other people were even more moronic than I thought. 

At least I didn't attach to Ender's Game as a key part of my psyche like some of the nerds did. An entire narrative and story that bends over backwards to make the main character guiltless in the murdering of an entire species, while reinforcing that genes make up the soul while dressing it up with endless reasoning why it had to be done.

What does a fourteen year old who notices enough of that, decides Orson Scott Card was a hack, and then decided to one-up him while being informed by Digimon, Bleach, and shit do? At fourteen I decided no, that was the coward's way out. 

I'd make a character that will kill everyone! One who doesn't feel guilty about it! What a great idea! It had come to me while I was using a plastic knife (that did no damage) to "cut" my veins. I was probably listening to MCR on my ipod nano at the time too.

Anyway, sitting in that class, it just further cemented my personal complexes. I was self-introspective enough to realize that I wasn't like the other girls. I'd always figured that was because they didn't subscribe to the church of Sweeney Todd. Being convinced you weren't a lesbian (like half your friends came out as) and also not exactly finding boys or horses that exciting did wonders.

Being able to ignore other humans by retreating to sitting next to my best friend Courtney while playing Disgaea on my PSP on the bus in the mornings and after-school was a load-bearing part of my psyche during those last years of highschool.

~~~

The storm had failed to delete me. 

Whenever I'd held out my arms, they would go numb for a second, a fuzzy feeling like television static. Then, a moment later the feeling would go away, and I could pass. There wasn't really any pain. Whether that was because of the masochism bits in the character sheet, I didn't think about.

By the time I had actually made it to the center of the storm, it had gone from being a reasonable amount of increasing levels of darkness, into the kind that blanketed everything else. Whoever had locked the giant-ass pillar down hadn't wanted it to move or be accessible.

The keyblade had started to glow, so I grabbed it, and pointed it directly at the center column. A door inside had opened up, and for lack of a better phrase, the pillar or elevator had detached itself from the "digital" earth it had been locked to. I didn't see much, except for the crater, when the tower re-emerged. Whatever had been done to the pillar, it was more solid than what Tamers portrayed. 

When I managed to open the gate again and call Mia and Meikitmon, they bounded toward us. Travel through the elevator was pretty easy - just run into the light and hope for the best.

If I thought too much about it, I would notice that the digital world wasn't really digital at all. More like a fantasy world with digital aesthetic. Even the teenager version of me noticed that there was a lot in common with Digimon and, say, Kingdom Hearts or Chronicles of Narnia. 

When I hopped into the light like Meikitmon and Mia had, a thought occurred. 

"My" digivice was real enough, would my dreaming brain—yeah, I know I still wasn't convinced this was real yet. Sue me—my dreaming brain would probably have let me use it to hop out the other side. Though it was the pseudo-rectangular version.

Meet an eldritch enemy from a show you briefly became obsessed with when you first discovered you could watch tv shows for free online. Then learn that they're a raging imbecile. Holding myself back from ranting more at this point was a feat. 

If it fed on data, and it was consuming social media… Actually, I should be impressed it was as coherent as that.

The three of us ascended through the pillar, driven by an unseen magnetic force. As we drew closer and closer to the giant orb that had floated int the sky, I forced my thoughts to drift to the digivice that hung around my neck. I grabbed it, now self-conscious that I hadn't lost it by accident yet.

If my digivice was real , and I didn't have any reason to believe it wasn't— unlike the luck I'd had in respawning with time-rewind.  Ugh, coma-me had decided to set up the scenario in a very peculiar way, all things considered. Taking the easy way out (death) didn't work.

My digivice should have given close-to-free access to the real world. Hm. My character sheet had said it was "glitched" but when I wrote it I thought it was "cool" and "thematic" for a human-soul that had gone through some ??? thing (I was a very deep-thinking 14 year old) usurped a digimon form from their partner, but other than the vague yet explicitly torturous-for-the-absorbed data -> human soul -> digimon -> data ouroboros. 

I didn't really think through the greater implications of having a digivice. If you took Frontier's combination of digimon and instead made a human soul permanently wearing the skin of their partners—Luckily, we hit the top of the tower of light there, and the three of us landed on our feet.

God, I would go full neutron star if this shit really was real.

In the middle of a pillar of "I can't believe it's not light!" the only thing you can do is go from one bright-ish source to the brighter one. I hesitated. Should I even leave the digital world? Yes, of course I fucking should. Going home, like, physically, would be a good test too. 

Even if it wasn't a dream, I had a responsibility to make it back to my husband and kid. Resigning never to return back to the office in Texas, permanently wearing a bandanna and an incredibly sexy fursuit was off the table, at least. God, my coworkers seeing me in the body of my edge-sona. Nope nope nope nopenope. Not happening. 

At least I wouldn't have to deal with the endless rat race. Fuck you, taxman and billionaires! I have a KEYBLADE! Get absorbed into the hell-cycle and power my soul, mua-ha-ha-ha!

With only the slightest feeling of unease and glitching sensations and visuals, I managed the hop through. The Definitely not-symbolic-of-a-thought-coalescing-as-I-crossed-a-mental-and-metaphysical threshold. Head and fridge, freezer, shelves and pantry were still heavy with "oh god oh fuck"s that were still starting to morph into some kind of diseased internalized monstrosity.

Kill me.

With hopes high and thick thighs, I landed in a playground. Not sure where I expected us to land, but we stumbled around for a second as the world came into detail again. It was a nice, modern little playground, if the kind that looked fun but were overengineered for safety, including the scratchy and statically-charged plastic tube slides. 

Mia grabbed Meikitmon and went down the slide, with her partner playing the part of a dumb stuffed animal. I put my claw on my forehead for a moment and rubbed. 

Fuck it, in for a penny in for a pound.

You know how lots of newer slides were built with a minimum amount of friction? This was the kind that caused burns if you don't wear jeans. Turns out, fur does a great job of keeping it from turning into a rug burn. So I slid out of the tube, only barely avoiding Mia by being fast on my feet. 

They were giggling as they looked at me. You know what friction plus fur on those slides means? 

Poof. 

My arm-fuzz was all lifted up like I was about to take a dose from Zeus himself. I, Kaylee didn't care. Nullrenamon goes down slides plenty fast. 

So I just laughed along, and reached out my arm to touch Meikitmon, giving her a nice zap, letting all that discharge out. She yelped in surprise. 

"Static electricity!" I said, before letting off a laugh.

Fur, bitches.

"Wait a second," I said, turning serious. There wasn't anyone there at the park, despite being pretty central in the city. We were in an innercity park of Japan. That was the home country of all the main characters in the show. Would I meet Ruki? Or gag Ryo?

"Where are we?" Mia asked. "This isn't like my home town…" 

Crossing over the portal and coming to the Real world was anticlimactic. Didn't wake up in a hospital bed, or on the side of a road with various brain fluids leaking out or whatever other thing I'd been expecting, at least. 

Something was wrong. 

"Can you evolve if something happens?" I asked.

"I haven't had anything to eat in a while and Mia still needs a bed to sleep in, it would be tough." Meikitmon declared.

"We'll find a street vendor."  

We walked out of the park in silence, those two following my lead despite having no idea where I was going in this dream world. Food was an easy enough goal. I followed my nose to a street over. We got out of the park discreetly enough. No smoke bombs or magical shimmer-step were needed. 

It was strange though—very few people were on the streets. Of those who were, they stared, sure. But no one pulled out a phone and took a picture of us. What I had expected—people or older kids holding out their phones and taking pictures? Didn't happen. 

Rationalizing it away was easy enough. Japan was a very formal culture, but surely their cities had enough strange things going on that no one would bat an eye at a furry with a tail and locks for days? Walking around with an eight year old and the cat-thing in her arms, we wouldn't be an exception. 

Still, the shiver in my spine and a gnawing tension in my claws, I found myself licking my teeth. As if itching for a fight. I whisked my arm slightly, and—yep. My keyblade had followed me through the portal. 

We were still in dreamland. But the strange feeling of wrongness just didn't want to leave.

The keyblade just levitated roughly around my arm. One day I would figure out how to dismiss it on purpose. It took a few blocks of walking to settle in that we came out in Japan, not downtown Dallas, like I initially thought, based on the city's layout. We walked up on a sushi stand, and right as I grabbed a roll and tossed it to Meikitmon, who gobbled it up without chewing, a man burst out from an alleyway. 

"Stop!" he practically shouted. He had the Matric getup. Sunglasses and trenchcoat, looking not unlike agent smith. Beads of sweat dripped down his forehead, he had run all the way to us.

"What did he say?" Mia asked, Meikitmon squirming to try and gobble up some more sushi. I grabbed three more and tossed two of them to the little kitmon. The other one, I held up and pulled the bandanna covering my face, and this time, my mouth appeared. 

Japanese street sushi was delicious. Who knew?

I turned back to the guy to get a full accounting of him. I was about the same height as him, being slightly taller than the original renamon but not huge. 

Huh, I thought. 

Mia couldn't understand him but I could. Her speaking drew the man's attention to her and Meikitmon in her arms.

I stared at the man for a moment. Very clearly some kind of government type. 

With more time, a computer and fan wiki, I would be able to remember exactly who he was from Tamers. If only we were given an extra moment of time. Unfortunately, reality was starting to set in that this might actually be my world. 

There were still some problems with that train of thought, given how scripted everything was, but it was best to eat that bit of facts before they morphed into a bunch of demon bread or somethingA At any rate, we did "stop" (were already stopped) but I was very sly about managing to nudge Mia and Meikitmon behind me.

"So, we stopped, what now?" I asked, noticing now that my keyblade had, in fact, disappeared when I'd reached out to pick up the sushi. I'd figure that one out later. We needed some breathing room. 

"Mia, can you help Meikitmon evolve?" I nudged them.

The guy reached into his jacket. I tensed up, holding the digivice hanging from my neck in one hand and standing further in front of the terrible duo that had gotten me killed once.

"You broke through the Barrier." He said. "How?" He shook his head. "Not only that, but you took your time Realizing. How did you bypass it?"

Government agents like this practiced for these kinds of interactions. Was he stalling for time?

"I had a key," I said. It was actually hard to read his face behind those glasses.

"... A key?" He asked, incredulous.

Definitely stalling. I needed a backup plan, and fast. What had been the trick against this guy in canon?

"Yeah, I have a key. But if you're worried, I'm just trying to get back home." 

If he was stalling for time, that meant an attack of some kind was imminent. The digimon lore was pretty consistent. Other than punchy-bro, humans don't fight digimon directly and win. 

"Where are you from?" He asked, curt and to the point. 

I could will my keyblade in hand and just kill him. Just a single tap and he'd be reaped.

We were still in the semi-public, and there were plenty of eyes watching. I could feel a pair of cameras focused on us. Wherever we had landed in Japan, people just hadn't started using smartphones, I'd guessed.

"Texas," I said, straightforwardly. "America." A shocked look spread across his lower face, then moved into a mix of them crossing his face once I'd finally said it, before finally settling on a kind of resigned disdain.

Would reasoning with the guy work? Probably not. If I remember right, the entirety of his dark ops organization in Tamers was funded based on xenophobic principles and fear of the inevitable future.

"The girl is a friend of mine, also from America," I lied. This guy really, really shouldn't be here. He wasn't the kind of guy that would put himself on the front lines, if I remembered right. The problem with the digimon series is that it really didn't matter if I remembered right anyway. This place ran on narrativium.

Which meant he probably already had his tool to neutralize digimon.

Still, it was best to avoid being too ominous in the real world. Tempting fate sounded a lot of fun but—shit, it was his shift in stance that broke me out of my thoughts. It was best to avoid what had happened when I met the crew of kids. 

"She was stuck in the digital world, and I helped her leave." Probably not a lie. 

The guy threw his arms down.

"Unfortunately, we can't just let digimon run free."

The real world around us started to get… blurry.

"Meikitmon! No!" Mia cried. 

The guy's face shifted from the maintained composure into the kind of smirk had full confidence that he'd just won.

Unfortunately for him, if I remember right, it never worked properly until he recruited the dream team and gave it to one of the chosen kids. Even more unfortunately for him, I was a Reaper.

Existence and struggle is meaningless, accept your fate and all that. 

~~~

Chapter Text

~~~

Chapter 9 - The Cold Truth of Reality Is That You Suck [And You Were Destined To Fail From the Start [Unlike Me, Who Is Destined To Succeed [Eat Shit]]]

~~~

A/N: This chapter brought to you by listening to Dance, Gavin, Dance for the last 3 5 6 days straight and running on too little sleep. I'll probably need to give it an edit pass to make a few details make more sense, but if I keep tweaking the chapter it'll never get posted.

 If you like the fic, feel free to join our sleepy little discord server . 

CW: Awful technobabble. Horrendous. Noxious, even. The technobabble is complete and utter nonsense. Seriously, if you read this fic and get even the vaguest hints the technobabble truly maps to something real… I'm sorry, but you're vulnerable to metaphor-injection attacks.

This is your first, final, and only warning.

~~~

"What do you mean we can't pin them down?" Yamaki Mitsuo was asking as he popped into the Hypnos monitoring room at 1:30 A.M. Reika and Megumi were both already in their chairs, surrounded by the screen dome as they tried initiating their various backup programs in order to prevent the new Wild One from crossing the border.

"They don't have a strong signature, the Shaggai decryption algorithm is having trouble tracking them. The data disperses each time it manages to get a semaphore on them!" Ootoria Reika cried out from her chair, the mechanical arm holding them up pivoting and twisting every few moments as the situation in the digital world changed.

Mitsuo had flicked open his lighter with a tsk, then flicked it shut. "The local effects of the quantum-encryption are still making things difficult for them!" The screens were going fuzzy as more power was applied to the Azathoth sub-fields. He didn't like standing around doing nothing, but he wasn't a violent person either.

Weapons didn't work to the spirits that had attached themselves to the dross of humanity's network computational leftovers. Unfortunately, it was harder to secure a point from a determined attacker when you couldn't disconnect. He'd wanted to bring all of Japan offline, disconnect it from the greater world network, and add more firewalls, but there was no chance.

This was a spit in his face.

It was Eight Thirty A.M. when he'd approached the park. The output location had hovered around the area, and they'd managed to pull in the local authorities to keep most oncomers from joining. Officially, they'd put an air quality warning and suggested people to stay home.

Mitsuo stood there, leaning against a nearby building, and they'd received confirmation of the realization. It had been long enough and there had been enough property damage and a few injuries that the populace was starting to figure things out. Dealing with enough Digimon outbreaks and Hypnos' attempts to send them back to their home world, it really hadn't taken as much effort any more.

Still, they'd been there directing traffic and keeping the area clear once the epicenter started to solidify.

"They're moving!" He'd heard from his earpiece.

"Tsk, damn," Mitsuo exclaimed quietly. "Where are they going?" He demanded, before letting off another "tsk" of frustration. They hadn't fallen for the bait of the Shaggai first phase. It had worked before. Many digimon got stupid when you presented them with data that they could consume and add to their own repertoire.

These ones were different, but he didn't really have time to just let one that had bypassed each layer of encryption that locked down the one portal. 

"I caught a visual!" He'd said, and ran off after them, taking the route around. Heading them off and holding them in place until the operators could trigger either the Yuggoth deletion routines or the Shaggai derealization. The former would kill, the latter would shunt them.

There was a girl with them? Why was there a human girl with them? Was this one of those ones where the kids managed to befriend a digimon?

Or was the girl a kidnapped captive? He didn't have time to fully think through the situation. The digimon were pilfering a street vendor's sushi rolls when he burst out and said "Stop!".

Mitsuo stalled for time, watching the digimon oscillate different shades of colors, from neutral grey to purples and reds, before settling. He knew better than to smirk, but he couldn't help it, once he'd received word and watched the digimon begin to visibly glitch, the visual cue of the Hypnos group's programs operating. A few people behind the renamon-looking creature had pulled out cameras to film.

The young american girl was clawing at her digimon as it started to float away. 

"Ha, ha ha." The creature laughed at him.

"Something's wrong! Shaggai isn't pulling the Wild One!" Onodera Megumi, the secondary Hypnos operator said.

"The lock-on is sliding off!"

"We have an extremely powerfully wild one from the digital world approaching!" 

Mitsuo took a few steps back, to get some distance between him and the Wild One that had Realized. 

"Turn up the power!"

"We're at full power! Some power has been redirected from the cryptographic lock in the digital world, but the weakened crypto-lock is drawing attention!" Reika responded, shutting down his wish.

Damn it!

"Ha. Ha. Just … turn it off, ha, that stuff won't … be enough to delete me. All you're doing is giving the girl a little trauma."

This wasn't supposed to be how it was to go! Shaggai was to create a one-way pipe back to the digital world and then the layers of encryption were supposed to hold it shut. Yuggoth, was the earlier iteration, and it focused on deleting the malefactors. It was touchy and only worked on a slice of the digimon that Realized in the city.

Damn it!

If only the bastards in the government hadn't pussyfooted their way around with funding and this project! The threat to their country, and by the nature of technology, the entire human world was too great. They should have had an entire suite of Hypnos' arrays built years ago.

Cowards, the lot of them.

 Unfortunately, he was faced with a poor choice—let the powerful digimon through that was approaching the weakened barrier, or let these two run free until he could figure out what to do. Fuck. If this got out, then his contracts to build larger and stronger arrays in the various parts of japan and other countries would be in jeopardy.

"Meeeeiiiii!" the cat cried, the last bits of the kitten-looking digimon becoming transparent, floating off into the air, their image getting blurry. The program was weaker at this range. 

"We lost the lock-on!" 

Hypnos had already heard from the digimon who had crossed the barrier between the worlds, their lectures about total domination of the digimon and digital world. But what was in front of them? A young girl and her partner and a clown-looking, kistune-style bipedal digimon. A mockery of the Tao, and being menacing, sure.

But everyone had bluffs and bluster until they were shredded by the programs he'd built.

"The new Wild One is approaching the portal, arriving in Thirty seconds!" came through over his earpiece. Fuck it. 

If another digimon, one stronger than the duo in front of him came into the real world, more people would be at risk. Let the cowards and whiners come at him for making the best choice he could with the knowledge he had.

Mitsuo made his choice when the kitsune-like digimon in front of him ignored him, and instead turned to the other girl and her monster. It was simple calculus. One he was pissed he'd been forced to make due to budget constraints, but one nonetheless. He'd been ignored by digimon before, but he'd never seen one simply shrug off the effects of the program. 

The corrupted creature floated, not up like it was supposed to but down. Down until their feet touched the pavement. They still glitched in places, but he could tell they had lost this little altercation.

He held up his hands. "I shouldn't let you run free," Mitsuo said. There was no real choice. It wouldn't be deleted in time even if the program had worked.

That didn't mean he was going to risk his own chances against the monster's charity. So he started running back toward the city center. He gave them a block.

"Twenty seconds until it reaches the encryption point!"

"Shut off the Deletion and Derealization routines, redirect full power to the encryption! Lock it down before a new one crosses again!" 

"But—" 

"Shut it off!"

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Shutting down the Yuggoth tracking" 

"Shaggai rejection protocols receding!"

"Increasing power to the encryption routines to maximum!"

His mind flashing back to the monster, the small faces on the monster's bandanna covering its face had all turned into smiles, sadistic glee, as whatever the digimon was doing had managed to counteract their attack.

Had he made the right decision? He would have time to contemplate the question— The digimon was in front of him, holding out its wicked blade. Mitsuo managed to dive off the walk into the road. A mockery of every comedian everywhere. In that second, a wicked, if incredibly impractical blade had appeared in her hands.

"Give me a read!" Mitsuo declared, ignoring his attacker. He needed to know. He hazarded a glance, back as the little kitten fell out of the sky and back in the little girl's arms. It glowed, and got slightly larger, turned orange and—

"Eyes on me." The Wild One had said.

"Meeei!" the kitten cried as it hugged her. He hated sentimentality like that.  

"Huh." The digimon had said, the painted-on smiles shifting around on her bandanna in a variety of shapes, like a constantly shifting rorschach test of mocking smiles.

"Had a change of plans," Mitsuo had said, before running back down the street, a second later being bathed in a dark magenta light, staring down a sharp blade-looking key again.

"I'm tired. So tired of so much bullshit," I said, interrupting whatever the fuck he thought he was doing. "That's okay though!"

I flung my sword arm back. He flinched when I brought my arm back. The blade hadn't disappeared. Still hadn't figured out consciously dismissing the blade yet. 

Ugh. It totally ruined the moment! 

The guy took my moment of distracted-ness and used the opportunity to jump back and run around me. Did I let him burst into the door of a decently-sized building? No. No, you don't get to try to sic your program on me, get cold feet, and then run away! 

Using my non-blade arm, I clotheslined the guy. His head hit my arm, and my arm did not move. So the next logical thing happened. In one fell swoop, with that one arm, I grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him to the side. It was a delicate maneuver, not to accidentally take chunks of meat off him, but luckily this body knew what I was doing better than I did. 

I would have considered examining that, but I had my prey. Mia and the orange cat-form of Meikitmon approached, albeit slowly. They weren't dumb, that was good.

"Let's have a little chat about what the hell that was," I said, before Mia got in range enough to hear me swearing. 

He didn't respond. 

"I'll never tell you anything," he said. "Everything I do is to protect humanity!" the suit declared. 

"Yeah I know, I'm familiar with your Type." 

His eyes went wide. 

"But now, here we stand, face to face, on even ground." I continued, letting him down. "That's three times now, that you've tried running away, and I still haven't done any damage to you that you didn't do to yourself. I'd appreciate it if you didn't try to kill me and my friend again."

"No guarantees," the guy said, chuckling.

He thought for a second, then nodded. He'd seen reason! I wasn't so far lost in my own emotion not to appreciate a character that would notice when continuing to be stupid would cause them to trigger something no one wanted. That he then actively took a choice to correct it … before it was too late, even! He was the kind of figure you wanted to keep around.

Again I swung my blade arm back and a flick of the hand. Finally, it disappeared. Manipulating the keyblade did not have the same conveniences as the body's in-built, sexy sway and suave.

"Tsk!" I let out, finally getting the blade gone. Reproducing it would be a task. 

"What's wrong, here, is that you just let me go, but Mia and I are still in a bit of a pickle, so since you're no longer trying to—" 

"Meeeeiii! Meicoomon is here, Nullrenamon!" The orange cat , not quite to the height of my knees, and definitely not far off looking from a rather large stuffed animal, bounded up to us, Mia falling over herself in hot pursuit. 

Meicoomon rushed in. With a swoop of my arm, I grabbed the less-than-sensible cat and pulled her away from the guy before she did something even stupider than summoning evil, sealed away dragons while their partner was out of action.

"—kill us. But I'm willing to look past that," I managed to finish. 

The guy nodded. If he didn't see the math—he does something nice for me, we help him for a bit either until he inevitably decides to do The Thing for the Greater Good, or we can just quietly Peace Out—he would be a moron of the highest order and this would be a dream.

The various people stared as I picked Mia up and tossed her onto my shoulders, and held Meicoomon in my arms. 

"This is our ride." The guy said. The car had dark tinted windows.

"That's not what I expected somewhere discreet."

Mia complained as I took her down. 

"You said the girl was tired and hungry, and I agreed that we needed something discreet," He said.

Was I going to rely on this dude to keep his word? Yeah, I guess I was. It wasn't like he could do anything to me. Didn't have any better choices. 

"I thought we were going to do evil!" Mia complained. The dude bristled—did he understand english? Shit, it was best to assume he at least had a recorder and whatever he needed if he needed a translator, he'd get one .

"Well, you're hungry and still tired, so no evil until you sleep," I declared. "You can't do effective evil with less than four hours of sleep and only cookies for breakfast."

The woman in the car kind of squirmed, frown on her face as I opened the door and let Mia and Meicoomon in. Mister MIB hopped into the passenger seat without saying anything. 

I hopped in the car, Mia and Meicoomon both practically glued to my lap. 

"What do you know about our organization?" The guy asked.

As we pulled away, I noticed a phone booth. Japan still had phone booths! A phone call would work.

"My name's Kaylee by the way. Or Nullrenamon. Whatever you prefer. I know Japan is all about that formalism and whatnot. This is Mia and Meicoomon."

The guy just sighed. 

Did I realize I had been having a certified, bona-fide Villain Moment? Yes.

"All right, Kaylee. I'm Yamaki Mitsuo, and this is my assistant Reika." the guy sighed. Mitsuo was his name, huh?

Was I having fun, even at the expense of potential future leads and allies?

Also yes.

Unfortunately, he shot first. Taking a moment to breathe and refocus on what I really wanted was what I did next, I held the cat in my arm. God , she was cute. 

Playing a villain in a bonafide certified world-ending scenario was almost at the top of my to-do list. (Sarcasm, okay?) Before that, I needed to be one hundred percent sure this wasn't the real real world I was used to. A call would help, but it would still not help—what if no one answered? What if they already thought I was dead?

Yes, I also know that makes no sense. Why would a character that I thought was fictional actually exist? Fuck if I knew, so this was either one incredibly fucking intense dream or digimon was real in my world and I just missed the bus. And the idiot god had been open about not preventing my returning home. I had to check.

Just focus on the here and now, Kaylee.

"I know what your group does. It's pretty obvious." We pulled out, heading toward a fairly large concrete building- easily more than twenty stories tall, with an underground parking garage. I wasn't worried. This was the guy who predicted existential doom from the existence of digital creatures invading the world one by one.

The lady glanced back at me, before pulling into the parking garage and swiping her card.

If I was stuck in this body, then things would get… complicated, for more reasons than just the awkwardness of showing up to work in a fur suit and keyblade. More like, "Yeah uh sorry Kyle momma's gotta leave, see, long story short I am now a being who's existence is anathema to life, and I'm currently biding my time until things explode. Oh and also I might actually be gay for a totally unhinged fox-woman with claws and canines that are just… to die for."

Ha.

Ha.

Ha… 

"Oowww" 

"Sorry," I said, relaxing my grip as we pulled into the parking stall. 

"I'm really not sure what all you want to know? Did you create the D-Reaper?" Mistuo went stiff at that mention. For being a government agent, he was way too honest.

"What do you know about the D-Reaper?" He demanded.

I raised my hands, trying not to accidentally brush the leather on the seats of the car with my claws. "Open the door Mia," I said. Door handles were actually pretty small for these hands. We stepped out of the car. 

Meicoomon hopped into Mia's arms. 

"I'm pretty familiar with the D-Reaper program," I said, playing coy.

The D-Reaper was a program that was written in the 80s, from the era when a megabyte of storage was luxurious. According to ( ahem) canon, the digital world was just some computer networks and nerds writing text adventure games and little pet care programs. 

Some PHD students who had access to the various early computer networks, needed to delete excess data. So they made some apps that would travel the networks, find data that it didn't need any more and remove it. Thus, they'd save on storage. That was the D-Reaper.

"Nullrenamon, huh?" The guy said. "I knew a renamon once. And her digivice…" His eyes turned to glance down at the digivice on my chest-fur. 

I rolled my eyes. 

"Fine, I'll tell you, and I'll even tell you how I subverted your program to exit the digital world. But I need to make a call out to the US before we do anything else."

If Kyle was still there, then I'd have to find a way to keep things under control. If not, then. Well. Endings always precede new beginnings, no?

~~~

Chapter Text

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Chapter 10 - Someone Should Probably Clean That Out

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A/N: This chapter's brought to you by listening to Therion and Draconian .

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The guy and the lady shared looks. Again. They didn't trust me. Really, how could that happen? Having a penchant for being a bit menacing, I didn't blame them. 

"Look," I said. "Either I go out there and steal some coins off some saps to make my call, or you help me."

"That isn't the problem. You'll have your phone call," Mitsuo said.

"Good." Not that I cared about robbing some people who just happened to be in the wrong place and wrong time, who were quite plausibly just figments of my imagination. But things were less complicated the less attention I drew to myself.

"We're under a time limit," Reika? said, "so we need to hurry inside."

The blonde guy just nodded. "We have a secure phone that you can use." 

They both led the way at a brisk yet casual pace.

We walked inside, Mia shivering in the underground parking lot. "It's so cold here," she complained, shivering. I hadn't even noticed there was a temperature change.

"You're in the underground, below Hypnos HQ right now, kid," Mitsuo said. "We don't get visitors. This way, to the elevators."

"I'm going to go back to manage operations." The woman left the four of us to take an entirely different route. Presumably to that one over the top room with the dome screens and the mechanical chair thing.

Mia walked up to me and reached out her arms. I picked her up and held her close. Was I really that much warmer? Sure, being underground and all, but I was part digital… Eh. Whatever, dream logic. Regardless, if the area we were in was cold enough to get her shivering, then they were packing some serious cooling, it being in the middle of summer, after all.

I carried Mia and Meicoomon as we walked toward the elevators. Mitsuo pressed the button to call one down, and we stood there in one of the few moments of silence I'd gotten since the entire mess had started.

"Is that actually comfortable?" I asked. Holding both Mia and Meicoomon like this, I looked like a bonafide crazy person. She shifted, eventually deciding to hang her arms over mine like a sagging plush.

Well, being covered with glowing smiley faces, the too-detailed realization of a ninth-grader's edge-sona meant there wasn't a whole lot that I could do to mitigate the "this is an insane creature that's as much about to murder me as to tell a bad, edgy joke." 

Mia really was still exhausted, and Meicoomon was demonstrably not trustworthy enough to be let out of arm's reach.

We entered the elevator, and surprisingly, Mitsuo followed us into the tight space. For some reason, I'd figured he'd have taken another elevator, or disappeared and reappeared when we reached the top. 

Say what you will about his critical thinking, a coward he was notS So there we stood, in the corner with this Mitsuo character, the dynamic duo hanging off my arms like plushies. 

A minute later, the elevator dinged, we were off and led into a nondescript hallway and eventually into a fairly japanese lunchroom. The only surprise were cots sequestered into a corner, with folded blankets and a single pillow on each. 

They had done some long nights. And perhaps had even done one while I went through the storm of their barriers. Otherwise, the place seemed like a pretty typical government building overall, complete with ominously humming fluorescent lights.

I let Meicoomon and Mia down, and both beelined it for the array of very small-portioned prepackaged meals and stacked microwavable bowls of ramen. 

"This is our break room," he said. "Please wwait in here for Nullrenamon and I to return."

Mia gave me a glance, and I would have given her a thumbs-up, but I only had three digits. She smiled as I fumbled about for the right motion. "I'll be back as soon as the call is over." They were barely paying attention to me anyway, Mia trying to make sense of the Japanese lettering and images on the various packs of food.

"It's not super private," I said as he opened a door and held it open for me. "You can call me Kaylee, by the way."

He just nodded. It was hard to read his face, behind the sunglasses. He'd be a good looking guy to be honest, if he'd lost about fifteen pounds. 

 If digimon really did exist in my world, and this was my world. I'd have to figure something out. I wasn't going to let this body go. It was way too fun. 

It was another nondescript room with a table, whiteboard and some chairs. "Wait here," he said. "I'll get the phone."

Sitting down in a chair after he left was a very… strange experience. I forgot I had a tail. I sat down in a regular office chair. A human office chair, with a back on it and everything. And now a particular point on the tail was giving me very sharp signals. It was like I had rammed my funny bone into a metal railing. Except the feeling was traveling all the way up my spine. 

God, I was going to have to evaluate the entire relationship between myself and the objects in the world around me. It was like puberty all over again. If you ever forget your boobs are there, it will come to bite you in the ass. Things can whack them in moments when you're not thinking. 

You have to walk through doors a certain way, you can't just slide along walls without rubbing, and sometimes—I'll stop myself there. 

You get the idea. 

Even when you're at school, you have to change how you stand and act with them. Not just because you're worried or trying to titillate, but because they actually really do get in the way in so many minor ways that you really wouldn't think about.

If you forget for too long and get too casual, well, all the guys with flushed faces or inability to stop staring will pressure you into changing your behavior even without your mom looking at you judgingly because you wore a tank top to school.

Sometimes, in a moment of forgetting that they're there, things can clip them, and it can be quite painful! Being part digital creature as part of the nature of the dream— I had to assume— came with suave yes, but when I sat down on the chair, I was greeted with a sharp pain where my tailbone was. The tail had hit the bit of metal and the ringing went all the way up my spine.

Slowly, I stood back up and massaged my tail a bit, before sitting back down, being careful to sit down in a particular way to avoid making that mistake again. 

I sat there, in yet another nondescript part of the building. 

There was no window. 

How long was he going to take?

God, I was a half? 80%? Digimon sitting in a room looking like she was eager for the next business meeting. 

"Yes, hello, I would like to suggest that we cut features out of our existing products that are still on the update cycle so that we can encourage customers to move to our subscription model. 

This will allow us to have more stable revenue as our smarthome products by requiring phoning into the cloud. This will balance our operational costs and directly increase long-term revenue while ensuring we stay ahead of the competition and maintain our niche."

All while you have to occasionally smile and nod at a particular executive that you're pretty sure is getting Testosterone replacement therapy and makes casual comments about how terrible of a driver his wife is.

It was the bang from my fist crunching into the table that alerted me to Mitsuo standing in the doorway, bag in hand.

"Yeah yeah I know," I said, waving him in, holding out my hand for the phone. "This is why the digital and real world can't coexist blah blah blah" I said, using the other hand and a finger to make circles in the air. 

La. 

Dee. 

Da.

He didn't respond to my bullshit except by tossing a bag of chips and a bottle of water on the table, sliding them to me. 

"It's a satellite phone." he said, pulling out a veritable brick of a phone, handing it to me. "I already have it set to dial out."

I picked up the brick of a phone. I was pretty sure even satellite phones in 2019 weren't the size of a house brick, but you never know. Something something government using old equipment.

The shit I do because I'm a wife and mom. 

Hmm, let's see…  

I took a claw and delicately typed in the number, 1-726-... Hubby's cell phone.

 "This area code does not exist."

… huh.

That's okay. I'll just try my phone. 

1-737-...

"This area code does not exist."

Every phone number I had memorized… uhhhhh… shit.

Well, that was wonderful. Maybe I was typing the phone number wrong?

"It's one first for the US, right?" 

"Yes." 

1-737- "This area code does not exist."

1-726- "This area code does not exist."

"Hah." I said, handing him the phone back. "What year is it?" 

"Two thousand and three."

Oh. Oh right. 

 Wonderful.

That would make sense why the phone was so big. It would also explain why no one had phones or cameras out.

I could still salvage it. 

I just needed to check that I even existed still. I'd be about, oh, ten? 

Right?

Mitsuo pulled a chair back and sat down, staring at me. 

"Time is strange in the Digital World," he declared. "It's more of a suggestion , to our understanding, than a law of reality. What year did you think it was? Technology has changed a lot in the last two years, let alone ten."

"Makes sense," I responded. "I think someone unplugged my freezer. Haha." 

My arm trembled. I pulled it back when I noticed the little goops of grey ooze trying to make their way out.

No, we're still good. We can salvage this!

"I'm really, really not trying to be menacing," I say. "It's just, one thing leads to another and—"

"What do you know about the D-Reaper?" He said, serious. He stared me in the eyes.

Oof, it was a tiny little bit of ooze. 

"Better question," I said. "What do you need to know?"

"Some time in the last three years, a set of kids with digimon went missing."

He paused.

 "We received an email here or there about what they were doing. Looking for a digimon called culumon. They'd gone missing. Three years in the real world is a very long time in the digital world."

I let go of my arm. The trembling had ceased. 

"Let me guess, they managed to get a message off before disappearing forever or something like that?" 

Even half paying attention it was pretty easy to guess where he was going!

"Yesh The last note we have from them was the discovery of the D-Reaper. We'd kept an open correspondence with a few digimon on the 'other side', even after we locked our gate. No one knows what happened to them."

"Well, I had nothing to do with their disappearance," I said. "You could say Ruki even now, holds a special place in my heart." 

The twitching in my arm had fully stopped. His face tilted, looking down at my digivice again. The anger on his face was palpable.

Shit, not like that.  

"Did you meet her? That's not what the kids' devices looked like. Mia, the girl following you around has one, hers looks a bit more … recent." 

I relaxed. Leaned back in my seat. My tail didn't like that. Not about to lose all composure, I grinned through the spine-shattering annoyance and subtly sat up a bit straighter.

"God, Nullrenamon, that's a great proposal! We will ensure that we suck our customers dry and remove as much cash from circulation through the use of recurring revenue streams as possible."

Pulled my right arm back to hold my left on my lap. 

"No, I never met any of the kids you're talking about."

BusinessNullrenamon. yeah that would be my final evolution. Murdering everyone through the power of feudal rent-seeking and my hypothetical Harvard School of Business MBA.

"Pity," he said.

I grabbed the bottle of water, and twisted off the cap. He watched as my mouth and fangs materialized from nothing. 

The water was nice, but Mitsuo had his questions. Which was good! We could clean up the mess, with time. I just needed a distraction.

"How did you bypass the encryption? That was supposed to be quantum and time-locked regions."

"Oh? That's simple, I had the password—" 

"Bullshit!" he pounded the table, making the bag of chips shake. 

"You're not even supposed to be able to enter the code until you reach the center. No digimon has managed to break through it since it went live."

'Yes I have a blade that's bound to my soul who's entire schtick is magically opening and closing any lock in existence,' I chose not to say.

"All right, all right!" I raised my arms in mock surrender. "The truth is that I can't actually describe it, because I don't know how it worked ."

"Then describe what you did."

Guy was catching up to my bullshit fast.

"Hm, let's see… Have you been able to look at a visual of the encryption from the point of view of the digital world?"

"No," he said, "but I am aware of the digital world as a kind of world that exists alongside ours. For digimon like the cat, or you, it's as real as this world, he said, gesturing toward the hole I'd punched into the table. 

"Fair enough. That encryption scheme on the other side is in the shape of a multilayered storm."

It would have been better if I'd illustrated it but no, I was NOT going to do that.

"Each level, if you will, got progressively darker. I navigated through each one. Then, I used an ability that I have, in order to detach the… pipe you had locked down and take control of it"

He was frowning but it wasn't anger, at least.

"I assume that once I left the pipe, you had immediately locked it down again?" 

He nodded.

"Good. There's probably a number of powerful digimon that are looking to breach the barrier between worlds."

"In pursuit of you?" He asked.

"In pursuit of Mia, and her partner digimon." Probably in pursuit of me, if I assumed that the god who summoned me and created me wasn't the only one with those levels of power. No, stop Kaylee, you're okay, just breathe.

"Why did Mia ask you about doing Evil?" This was turning into a straight up interrogation. Thank God.

"Evil in a sense , yes. Mostly, she needed a safe place to escape her pursuers. Her and her digimon really are quite strong, but they'd been run ragged, and as kids are…"

"Will you object if I have one of the operators try to talk to her alone?"

Fuck. Well.

There was no way in hell I was going to let a grown-ass man sit in a room with an eight year old girl alone and ask her questions. A setup with an adult woman, or where I could make sure he didn't do anything stupid?

I wouldn't mind as much.

"Tonight? Yes, I would object. Tomorrow morning? Go for it. She needs rest and at least a few hours between PTSD-causing trauma—" he winced.

Unfair? No. Harsh? Yes.

"I … didn't know that there would be a human with a digimon with you when you crossed."

"No, but you did see me, with a clearly human girl, getting her food, when you decided to launch your program."

"I'll do what I can to make amends to her, but I stand by my decision. I have no way of knowing the mind of each digimon as they cross the border into my city."

Understandable, and I told him as much. In his shoes, would I have made a different call? Probably not. Especially when his city and world would occasionally deal with random digimon appearing, like some kind of ghosts. "Let's circle back. You care about the D-Reaper, yeah?"

He nodded. 

The D-Reaper was a runaway program that eventually morphed into an eldritch god, that required breaking causality to defeat. 

"Have you seen Culumon ?" 

"Not since we last saw the kids." A twist of pain hit his face. Great. This was going to dig up some survivor's guilt. 

I weighed my options. 

He couldn't keep me from Mia and Meicoomon. Not unless he figured out the trick to rip Meicoomon and I apart in one swoop. Which, being right at the Hypnos HQ, he wouldn't have brought us here if there weren't contingencies.

Well, I didn't really care if I died again at this point. A tinge of doubt crossed my mind though— what if the program did something irreversible to shred my data or soul? What if what if what if, all filtered through my thoughts.

I held my arm. I was fine.

Everything was fine. 

Copacetic, even. 

I still had Kyle's school phone number memorized. I could call and act like I was a concerned parent trying to see if he made it safely to school. 

Things were going to be just fine. 

I gripped the arm tighter. Thanks, Studio Ghibli, for inspiring this particular character detail! 

Haha.

I just needed to find a way back home. 

Simple.

The guy was probably lying about the year anyway. He looked older than he did in the show. 

Fuck, that wasn't even the kind of lie I could believe. 

"And?" he asked, starting to stand back up, drawing my attention again. "We can talk more, later. Mia isn't the only one that's low on sleep, you know."

I agreed, but... 

"Before we leave and call it a day. About the D-Reaper."

"the reason you don't really need to worry about the D-Reaper program is that I've already taken care of it."

"Uh… huh," he said, waving his hand back dismissively as he turned to exit the room. "You're the only one that we know of who can break the encryption barrier. There's a digimon right now that has tried to break through, who can't."

Alone again, I sat back down in the chair for a second and rubbed my eyes.

This dream was really starting to suck.

~~~

Chapter Text

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Chapter 11 - I'm Not Like The Other Digimon

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A/N: This chapter's brought to you by Occam's Laser

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Mitsuo walked into the hall outside of the operations room, another man in sunglasses and a suit, this one with brown hair, bombastically gelled to look like a wave, stood in front of him. Another person from the American Intelligence apparatus. The man walked up and tried to greet him with a handshake.

"Agent Sanders, pleased to meet you."

"Mitsuo, director of the Hypnos group's operations. Ah, shaking isn't the custom here." He corrected the agent. When in America, he shook hands. When in Hypnos HQ, he did whatever he damn well wanted, and he was not in the mood for anything but getting to the point.

"Ah, sorry. I always forget how you do things here." 

Reika came rushing in, "Sorry, I had to take care of some issues!" she said. 

"No worries, though perhaps we need to review operational security. This is top secret." He said. He wasn't really mad at Reika, because he knew—

The American agent spoke up "Sorry, I've been in Japan for the last couple days. Long story short, I was already in the area when I received a call from your… benefactors and was let in." 

Mitsuo turned to Reika, whose face was flush with embarrassment over letting someone completely steamroll protocol without authorization. His face went red. He was furious. Why was this guy here? How did he even find the location of their building, let alone get through the lobbies and the hallways to get in without a damn escort?!? 

"I really don't have time for this bullshit right now. And you can leave before you get escorted out of the building. Security is already on its way."

They did share the building with smaller groups, but none of them would let a random American walk in! Before he did anything he would regret, he took a breath and a moment to let himself collect his thoughts. 

He would slip due to fatigue, and he knew it. Unfortunately the American guy wasn't don't just yet.

"Whoa whoa whoa, not so hasty! See, I was called in to check up on you guys since I heard you had a bit of trouble last night and this morning!"

"There's nothing you Americans can help us with."

"No, see, I don't think that's true." The man said, continuing to butt his nose in on activities that really weren't his. "See, I was already here. We're already commissioning y'all to come out and build pilot units in major cities, and I was scheduled to come in tomorrow." 

"This bullshit stops here, 'agent'. You don—" The guy cut him off and kept going.

"Then we hear you're dealing with an event in action right now , and now my boss wants me to survey your operation and see how things run. And besides, surely our scientists and engineers can help understand the problem! This is a partnership , after all."

"Fine," Mitsuo said, finally giving up. Then a thought occurred to him— "We'll do your fucking tour and get you briefed when I can verify your identity. You're going to have to wait in the lobby until I can verify your identity."

"Aww c'mon. don't be like that. All you need is my FBI tag and we're good to go." He said, holding it out.

Mitsuo smiled, glancing back down the corridor. Security had already been waiting. "Unfortunately, no. You're going to have to wait."

The two stared at each other for a moment. The American was taller than him, by a couple inches, but he didn't allow that to intimidate him. The security officer approached, and the FBI agent caved, heading back down the hall.

"Make a note to revise security protocol. Unless there's a digimon outside the building threatening the city itself, no one gets past the lobby without a badge."

Reika started to apologize profusely, but he assured her it wasn't her mistake. If he had stepped into an FBI building, Mitsuo would have been laid flatH He had more important things than to berate his lead Operator for messing up OpSec.

Together, they walked into the main room. Domed, glowing screens all in the bowl. An overlay of the closest parts of the digital world laid on top of a map of the city. The portal, the main location Digimon used to cross the worlds, was locked down. 

"Do we have any information on the Wild One we turned off Yuggoth and Shaggais offensive protocol for?" He asked.

"No information, but the creature did give a few probing attacks. Didn't stress the system more than 60% of its maximal energy output."

"That's not good. Did something happen to reduce total system capacity?"

Potential failures points in the protocols came to mind, as they always did.

"No, and there was no corruption of the memory or code from this morning. All code passes basic md5 hash and sum checks, system integrity is at maximum."

That was good, but it still bothered him.

"Then what do we know of the NullRenamon' influence on the program?" 

"Nothing, though the logs indicate that she may as well have a root certificate key in her data."

"Well, we'll calculate a new one."

"But—" 

"I know. But we'll need to get used to doing the calculations. We can't trust every group we build these for. To use the same one for each installation is probably a mistake."

It had taken months to run the calculation for the first go-round. A new certificate would take a long time. Toggling was easy. Just turn off the power. Creating a cert and binding it to a digital area, on the other hand, was the difficult part. 

~~~

He left me alone, which, given everything that had just happened… 

Wow, was he stupid?

I was a Digimon! A Digimon picked by a God of another universe to bring oblivion to the world! And he left me alone to go do… whatever the fuck it was that he did.

Careful to dodge the back of the chair this time, I scooted forward and stood up. Was that really what it took? A bag of chips and a bottle of water and I lost all the fight?

I walked out of the room. Let's see if I can find my way back to Mia and Meicoomon. What was the real reason I didn't really get the want thing need? I shook my head. Stupid question, really. I gave myself a look over. Covered in dust and dirt Little bits of me just out of place.

A shower would work, but. Hm. Fur water dog. Fuck that right out. Shower? Nope.

"Meicoomon wants you to sleep!" 

Ears perked up, I turned the corner, and followed the voice room located. 

"But we can't eat here, we need to leave, she'll be back soon!"

I paused.

"Mia makes more mistakes when she doesn't sleep before we leave!"

"What's going on?" I asked. A mess of food on the tables, and meicoomon standing in front of the doorway blocking Mia from leaving.

"Oh, uh. Well. We were just about to take a nap—" she said.

I ignored the lie. Didn't really matter anyway.

"We're leaving. Do you need me to carry you?" I asked.

Meicoomon and Mia both stared at me like I had a third eye. 

"Want to stay here?"

They looked at each other. Then back at me.

"If you want to back out from this Evil stuff, go for it."

There were a few snacks still on the counter. 

"You're tired though!" They both complained. 

"More hungry than tired, but yeah that happens when you run for two or three hours straight and also don't get any food."

"Where do we go?"

"Haven't decided yet."

"I bet we could go back to the castle now!" Mia declared.

A good idea, assuming it was still there. Bad idea for right that moment.

"Just need a place to think that isn't here." I told her.

There's an easy way to get more information. 

Just die.

That was… also a legitimate point.

 No, that wouldn't help. Abaddomon was a moron. Possessing all that power, rivaling all but the invisible sky daddy, and he… Still got himself locked away and chose me, and my fucking deviantart original fan character as messenger. 

"Nullrenamon?" They were tugging at me. 

"She's doing it more!" Meicoomon said. 

"Still getting used to things," I told them. "What's wrong?" 

"We leaving?" Meicoomon asked. "Because this place sucks. I hate it."

"Yeah!" Mia said. 

We left, proceeded through the hallways before anyone could come back. I was, briefly, worried that a security guard or something would try to stop us from leaving, but nothing came or happened. We found the elevator, I pushed the button marked "L" and left it there. 

Mia was holding her stopwatch-thing, playing with it. Meicoomon practically hung off her. 

"Did something happen while I was gone?"

She and Meicoomon both stiffened. Did I really care that much about them? About their problems I had? Well, I couldn't just leave them there, in the middle of Japan. 

"Yes and No" Mia started, trying to play coy, but being bad at it. Something did happen, or they'd realized something.

"Mei thinks Mia's watch is breaking!" Did all digimon speaking patterns change with each evolution?

The door to the elevator opened, and we stepped out. The features of the building changed, going from antiseptic hospital white, to a generic lobby of what I'd imagined a Japanese high-rise might have been. Little fake plants acting as decoration. 

"Your stopwatch is breaking? Why?" 

"Uh—well—" 

Actually, it was probably best not to talk about it here if it was magic. 

Mia and Meicoomon both stepped in front of me, and ran up ahead, around the corner. 

"HELLO THERE" A voice practically shouted. The voice sent a shiver down my spine and I recoiled back. I stepped around the corner, to be greeted by Meicoomon standing in front of the guy, claws out. He had the most obnoxious haircut and styling I'd ever seen. He was wearing a suit that was wrinkled like it hadn't been ironed out in weeks. A black tie with a knot that was comically small and wasn't even pulled up to the neck-button on the collar.

"Leave us alone!" Mia declared.

"What?" The guy asked, his face in what looked like shock as he noticed me.

"We finally tracked you down Mia!" 

"We need to go!" 

"I'm not sure what you're talking about," he said, his hand slyly moving toward the inside of his jacket. 

"Run!" Mia shouted and, for a split second, I wondered whether I should follow her, when it was Meicoomon who grabbed my hand and with surprising strength for a small kitty that wasn't taller than my knees dragged me toward the doors.

I looked back, and Mia dodged as the guy tried to grab for her.

"Evolve!" Mia shouted, running from the guy and dodging his attempt to grab her a second time. 

Meicoomon nodded, a half-second later, Meicrackmon was back, batting the guy's hand away right as he managed to get a hold of Mia's wrist in his attempt to restrain her. Bits of blood started to drip where the guy was smacked. Meicrackmon grabbed her partner and we left the building out the front door, the outer world not knowing about what was going on. 

"What the hell was that?!?" I asked. Not angry, just shocked at how quick it had escalated. 

"He's not really your type," Meicrackmon said, Mia still in her arms. We ran a couple blocks down.

"I don't follow," I said. What was that supposed to mean?

"Whatever that man is," Meicrackmon said, "he's not on our side."

"You know him?"

"It's complicated. He's part of the US special agencies. He's been following us around wherever we go."

"He shouldn't be here!" Mia shouted. 

We passed a couple blocks, the late morning sun starting to break past the buildings above and around us.

"Is he a kill on sight person?" 

What was I saying? Was this the kind of dream where I couldn't do anything and was pursued by some impossible-to-defeat source? 

Was it real?

Did it matter?

"Not exactly kill on sight, but not too far off from that." Ugh. This wasn't going anywhere at this rate.

"Do you know what he wants?"

"He wants to take digimon away from kids! He wants to make it so only adults can go to the digital world!" 

Hm. That was probably impossible, but… definitely an actual villain. One with actual motivations. She looked at Meicrackmon.

"What does pink mean?" Mia asked.

Huh? 

"Red means you're angry, white means you're relaxed, I think… Purple means you're going to be silly. What does pink mean?"

Mia, even in Meicrackmon's arms, grew a huge shit-eating grin. 

I didn't need this treatment!

"Oh, that explains everything!"

"Explains what?!?" 

"Nothing."

"Oh, playing mysterious now?" I barked back. The smile didn't fade.

We slowed down when we were at least a couple miles away. Not near a park, but the ocean, the seabirds floating overhead, and the dull hum of waves crashing on various barriers starting to grow.

"I'll have to arrange a date!" Mia said.

"NO!" Meicrackmon and I both said at once. "You're eight years old," you should not be playing captain of the ship!

"Yeah that won't be necessary." 

"Yeah, It's not really like that. We barely even know each other and also there's that weird thing with evolution, how does that even work and…"

Mia tut-tutted. "Meicrackmon looks, acts, and sounds like an adult to me."

"She's even pinker!"

Oh.

My.

God.

~~~

He flipped his lighter in annoyance.

Both the digimon and the girl had not, in fact, stayed in the lunchroom like he'd asked.

Reika would not be getting to interview the kid. That was bad. But, as he walked back down, deciding whether or not he should break protocol from his superiors and their unfathomable idiocy, he realized it was probably for the best that they had left. He just hoped they'd used the back exit instead of the front one.

He sneered at having to work with the guy, but unfortunately, the people bankrolling the entire operation wanted cooperation with the US Gov. Damn Globalist nature of the modern world really got in the way of being able to actually just do the right thing. Unfortunately, Japan hadn't recovered from tariffs levied against the country's auto manufacturers in the last ten years.

Then there was the whole "actually, no one really knows what happened to the D-Reaper, and the only other person who knows about it is probably insane."

And he knew that if they stuck around, they'd meet agent Sander. Opening the door to the lobby, yes, it was probably the best thing for the world that they had left the building.

"Mitsuo, you bastard! Not only have you kept me waiting for three fucking hour, you didn't tell me there was a kid who showed up that was American! " 

"Well, it took a long time for my superiors to call your superiors and verify your identity, Agent ?" He left that last bit off. 

"Agent sanders."

The type of person took every inch you gave them and gave nothing back, and also tried to force you to back down by sheer force of personality. 

"Right, Agent Saunders."

Then, when others caved, called it divine providence. 

"Sanders, you prick."

"Duly noted."

"We don't have much time. Let's get to the tour and chat then. I take it that you know the purpose of our facilities?"

"Yeah yeah yeah, I want to know everything you know about digimon," Agent Sander demanded.

"We'll be happy to debrief you with everything we know when we get it collected, but that will take some time, agent Sonders."

When dealing with people like this, it was the little things.

The twitch on the agent's face. 

The face turning red.

 The blood vessels starting to emerge.

Little things.

~~~

"But no, seriously, even if I think Meicrackmon is very good looking, I just… I just can't."

The crazy-looking cat anthro smiled. god those insane eyes and sharp teeth.

"Don't worry." she said. 

"I understand."

~~~

Chapter Text

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Chapter 12 - It's Not That We Don't Like You, It's Just That

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A/N: This chapter's brought to you by Agalloch's The Mantle

~~~

During the little pow-wow with the other chosen kids, Skyler had explained what happened. It wasn't pretty. A bunch of Digimon had noticed that the CIA spooks were trying to cross over the barrier between worlds. They had seen the writing on the wall. Humans and Digimon would eventually be partnered together, and the ghosts wanted in on the deal. Madelyn could have told everyone else that. Why did they need Skyler to say it?

The crew was fraying at the seams, and she was at the epicenter of it. It had started when they had been noticed by the spooks. It was like everyone got more stressed. The agents were all creepers, doing things like sitting in cars outside your house, up to even leaving a tracker on the cars. The bug had found it, so it proved it wasn't completely useless. 

The worst part about the whole thing was just how awful they had been at their own job! Her parents had even noticed the creepy black car with the guys in suits sitting there. 

Madelyn had been shocked when her parents mentioned the creepy dudes sitting outside the house one weekend! They hadn't even mentioned the fact that Madelyn had been running around with a digimon all day or where the extra food was going! The agents had been that bad at their own jobs.

It disgusted her.

In the room, Skyler had opened up, and finally begun to wrap up his story. "I'm sorry," he had said, there, in the room. He was looking in the direction of Madelyn, but not directly in her eyes. "Tsumemon is always all-in on anything I want to do, and doesn't exactly have a filter. I didn't know we'd take things as far as we did." He'd regained his composure but still chose to sit on the floor of the castle while he'd told his story.

"Well, now you know!" Patamon said, always brimming with positivity, floating off her, sensing Madelyn's own response to the admission. Then Patamon turned to Tsumemon, who cowered in Skyler's arms. "You need to be more careful! Being Evil doesn't mean you have to hurt other people! You need to at least protect Skyler from the other digimon that want to hurt him!" 

Tsumemon didn't respond, instead a small blob of tentacles all quivering in anxiety. "Don't worry," Skyler said to Patamon. "We'll work on it, won't we?

Patamon harrumphed away, used its wings to float back and sit Madelyn's head. She smiled, glad her and her little bread loaf were still on the same wavelength for the most part.

"And no more taking people's digivices!" Brad said. 

Madelyn shrugged. "Sure thing, boss ," she mocked. Her classmate was the one of the group that knew what he needed to do. He only ever figured things out long after she had, and well, Brad was just bad at big-picture stuff.

Tsumemon was all-in on whatever Skyler did. Even if it was at the behest of some form of mind-control or possession—it wasn't very bright. Skyler apologized, and for once in her life, there was a small amount of catharsis. 

Madelyn and the boys had tried to warn Skyler about making deals with the ghost digimon. Unfortunately, that went about as well as trying to warn them that Agent Sanders was not a good guy.

The number of times Madelyn had to watch people be stupid had only increased her feeling of frustration at the world. 

The ghosts had come to Skyler, apparently. His partner being a Tsumemon that evolved into a Keramon , it was pure hindsight why the ghosts had been attracted to him, though Madelyn knew a few ghosts had floated around Mia for a while. How else had she known where Skyler was or even how to defect?

"It's all right, Skyler," Alex had said. Of course the nerd was the one to comfort him first. "You got us into this world, didn't you? You were the first one to figure out how to cross the digital barrier!"

It took all of her will to keep a neutral face. Patamon moving around on her shoulder definitely helped quite a lot.

The rest just.

They just didn't Get It. 

You don't just cause all these problems and hurt so many people and then go back to normal! She'd predicted where both Mia and Skyler had been going. And yet these losers had the gall to get mad at her for trying to prevent the damage!

Skyler and Alex took a… hug?

She wanted to hop in there, take command, tell them to spare the pleasantries. Tsumemon was still avoiding her sight.

Good.

When things calmed down, Skyler let out a few choking sobs as he hugged Tsumemon, everyone turned to her, expectantly.

"What?" No, seriously. They had all been pushing back on her ideas for the last few weeks and now they wanted her to step up? She was smelly, hadn't gotten a proper shower in about as long, and they had to use toilets dug out of fake dirt, and then they argued with Madelyn about what the plans were, then did them anyway .

Maybe these kids really shouldn't have digimon.

The thought niggled back at her mind. It was Patamon's stalwart friendliness in those dull moments that kept her sane. From following each one of those

"I was expecting you to butt in with how we're burning daylight and aren't doing everything we need to—" Alex made motions with his hands "—Stop The Coming Evil. You know, that's your entire deal isn't it? Righteous fury or whatever?"

Madelyn rolled her eyes. It was planning that she was best at. She wasn't vindictive. Just opinionated . What was the saying? Strong opinions loosely held? When they managed to prove her wrong, she'd change her mind.

She smirked.

"Well, I'm glad you recognize me as the group leader." That elicited varying degrees of groans.

"Patamon and I called it three times now. Y'all didn't believe me. Not." It was a subtle flick, but she flicked her hand to enunciate the point.

"My." flick  

"Problem." flick

"Yeah, yeah, spare us," Brad said. Leomon was resting against a wall, keeping to himself. Each Digimon seemed on edge. Patamon's fur was raised, Leomon gave him awkward looks. Tentomon—well it was hard to read the bug-freak at the best of times.

She saw problems and tried to prevent them.

They got mad when she did that. 

"I still don't see the problem in thinking people are good people!" Alex said. Madelyn didn't roll her eyes outwardly at the nerd and his bug.

"Yeah, it's always good to see the best in others!" Tentomon said. She could feel Patamon shifting uncomfortably on her shoulder. She pulled him down from his perch and into her arms.

Yeah, okay. Hold the moral high-ground why don'tcha. They didn't get it. If you can see an oncoming train, it's important to make sure others were off the track!

"Yeah, and we all ended up getting shafted when we gave Agent Sanders the benefit of the doubt. Now here we are, stranded in another world, my sister's going more insane every minute, and a new evil person just leaves with her and Meikitmon!" 

That got the nerd to close his mouth.

During the argument, the only digimon that had seemed relaxed was Tsumemon. Madelyn was pretty sure that thing didn't even know all the fucking trouble it caused. The kind of creature that didn't learn anything until they were traumatized into absorbing it into their brain.

It was the perfect Digimon for Skyler, she decided. 

She wanted to shove it in their face that she had been right this whole time. But no, she knew where that argument would go, and it wasn't pretty, even for her. People that endlessly gave others the benefit of the doubt had an important role in society.

So when no one piped up to challenge her, she just shrugged. She already had good guesses about what was going to happen next, so despite the groans…

"Yeah, I don't think this whole 'team' thing is working out," she said, saying what everyone else was thinking.

It was, of course, Brad who interrupted her.

"I'm not leaving the world until we get Mia back!" Brad said.

Boys.

"Hold on," she said, holding up a finger. "Let me explain." Any time they thought they knew what they were saying and what they needed to do, they'd jump in. She had learned to hold her expressions when they did that, but she was so, so tired of people babying her little sister. 

Holding it in was a herculean effort.

But she was Madelyn. 

She did it on a daily basis.

"Look, I know you don't like me, but she's still my little sister. She's eight. She's not that mysterious or that complicated. The whole reason she ran away is because she was mad at me. And Patamon"

Mad's tone was clinical, but the smile still managed to creep in. "And because I'm her older sister, you need to believe me. She folds the moment anything actually requires her to do anything."

They weren't going to let Madelyn go though. "It would be much nicer if you stopped bad-mouthing Mia. She's put in as much effort as any one of us," Alex said, sticking his neck out for her sister. Really just went to show just how detached from reality he was.

"Does everyone else feel that way?" she challenged. "I'll take the looks on your faces as 'yes'." Well, it wouldn't matter anyway, they needed to cover more ground, and sitting around the remains of the castle and together wouldn't help with that.

Mia wasn't a sore spot, Madelyn just expected more from her little sister than everyone else. Whatever. If they wanted to make worse decisions by not believing her, that wasn't her problem. 

Yet.

"Well, seeing you all are happy enough without me," she said, causing the boys to wince a bit—the effect of the verbal barbs were wearing off. She'd need to change strategy if she wanted to be able to keep pressure on them when they were going to do something incredibly stupid in the future—"we really do need to split up. Someone needs to wait here in case Madelyn and that new digimon come back."

"Makes sense," Brad said, all the other boys basically nodded along. Skyler was the only one who felt guilty enough to try and stay, but… ew, no.

That wasn't how they were supposed to respond, damn it ! 

They were supposed to be caught between a sense of honor and letting a girl do the right thing. But no, not even a second of hesitation. Outwardly, she had chuckled at their behavior. 

So that was how Madelyn found herself walking around the remains of the black castle, just herself and Patamon with each other to their thoughts. It really was eerie. It felt like a place that shouldn't have existed, even from within the Digital World. She stepped over various knocked-over suits of armor. 

She was old enough to notice guys getting stupid around her, but even that apparently had limits! 

"Patamon?" 

She asked, trying to fill the air as they waited. 

"Maddie?" he said, floating around her. 

"It should have been purified when we defeated Tsumemon and the last of the ghosts shouldn't it?" She came to a doorway to a rather lush, yet untouched room in the castle. A giant purple drape covering what looked like a huge mirror, the mirror itself shimmering like a wave in a soundless, motionless wind.

"Don't look into the mirror!" Patamon said, rushing to cover it from sight. She wasn't dumb like Alex or Skyler, so she trusted his judgement.

Finally, she had a moment to herself. The boys had been caught between their sense of honor and not wanting to be around her. Madelyn wasn't dumb . 

"I know you're trying hard, Maddie!" And, it was true. She had been trying oh, so very hard. She was a Chosen Kid. She needed to show everyone that they could save the world. She wanted it.

For her, that meant noticing problems and doing things to stop them before they happened. But there was just a little… something about the mirror that seemed to know a bit more than it should.

~~~

Chapter Text

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Chapter 13 - Oh Yeah [End of the World [And All That]], Almost Forgot

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A/N: This chapter's soundtrack provided by: Crown The Empire

~~~

"Let's get a hotel," Meicrackmon said, grinning viciously.

The multiple layers with that statement had me nearly fold in on myself.

"Okay, okay Mei, let's not be mean!" Mia said when I didn't respond.

"Whatever do you mean?" Meicrackmon said. "I was only thinking about the best place for you to sleep!"

"Right." I said. Well, it would certainly be better than holding her while we run all night long. If the hotel was a bust, we could stow ourselves away on a passenger boat like a ferry.

Despite my reservations at the crazy cat lady and I being in a hotel together, it really was the best option. It took about 20 minutes. It wasn't quite outside the city, but it wasn't far off either.

"I found a Concourse Hotel," I said. They made to go to the front door before I blocked them. "It's best if we go in through the back of a hotel room, hanging out on the balcony."

Neither I nor Mei specialized in stealth, and we couldn't phase through walls. So we hopped up the side of the building, about five or six stories, tapped on one of the sliding glass doors. The thick blackout curtains the american hotels used meant it was still a risk we would enter a room someone was in.

"Technically," I said, before we actually broke in. "This is our first actual moment of evil. Write that in your journal later, Mia." I held out a claw by the glass door and began to trace in a circular motion.

"But I don't have a journal," she said.

Yet.  

Actually, no wait, it would be terrible to catalogue everything she did wrong. 

"Good, wouldn't want to have a perfect log of every law we broke on our way to destroy the world."

She laughed.

The circular bit of glass fell away like we were a pair of museum thiefs in a heist. I reached my arm in, flicked the lock, and the door didn't slide. I flicked it again, back to its original position. The door slid open.

Haha.

We all walked into a dark hotel room that looked perfect for some americans. Two proper beds with mattresses, a couch, and a television. Mia immediately hopped onto the bed and started snoozing away. Meicrackmon just swayed around. I went to the hotel room door and flipped the chain link lock on it as well as the deadbolt.

Once we'd Sly Cooper'd ourselves into the hotel room, I took a breath and let myself sag. Mia had already dug her way under the covers, leaving Mei to stand there like an overdesigned cosplay fursuit. Being at least seven feet tall, there and stared at me for a moment, before sliding next to Mia. 

The cat lady glowed, then finally returned to… Meicoomon form. Wait what? 

"Meicoomon form, huh?" I asked. 

"Mia likes Meicoomon form while in the human world," Meicoomon said.

"Not every digimon reverts to child form, it seems." I would have said 'I guess', but that would have kinda ruined what little mystique I still had left. If roleplaying a role in a dream was the requirement, doing that was as good of a choice as any other. 

I flicked my arm out and summoned my keyblade. It popped into reality as easily as the animations in kingdom hearts made it seem. I waved it about carefully for a few seconds, avoiding the ceiling and the walls and furniture.

Could I evolve?

The changes in personality from small little demon kitty to slightly larger but smaller demon kitty with a third person verbal affects were strange. Going backwards was also strange.

Flicking the arm away this time.

I didn't think I could evolve. I grabbed the digivice around my neck. Even if I did, what would happen to me? Would my mentality shift like Mei's did? For some reason, those thoughts were more comforting than the anxiety I felt at potentially never knowing exactly what happened in the real world. 

The thought of returning home brought a knot and tightness in my chest that only increased. God, I had a husband and a fucking kid and going home only brought dread and feelings of foreboding. 

No, I had to figure out how to go home. I had to know. What really happened to me. To my family. I couldn't live with myself if I woke up from this coma and the first thing I ended up thinking was anything other than relief. We'd have tears at the reunion. I'd cry and see my kid was a couple years older and my husband had found himself a girlfriend and they were just about to pull the plug and—

"Mei," Mia whispered, reaching her arms out to the cat. Right, they were still in the room. Glanced over at my arm, the glow inside leaking. Sweet. So doing the right thing would exacerbate my definitely-not-lifted-from princess-mononokey or whatever other anime I had seen as a kid that inspired this particular character detail.

Luckily I hadn't actually met the D-Reaper, yet. No items, no D-Reaper. No Ultimate-omega-max -tier digital gods on my ass trying to send me to super hell for not dying when I should. Yet. Mia held Mei in her arms, which was… pretty dang cute.

With them asleep, I sat by the door with my thoughts. If I had a planner or even a paper and pen I'd have written a little journal page or something. 

"So, that was how our first outing in the Real World ended."

Mia would wake up in a few hours, watch would be broken, and she'd cry about something incredibly ominous and then I'd have to force her to use the hotel toothbrush.

The FBI guy would give chase. I'd say some ominous things, and I would get attacked by at least three digimon insanely stronger than me despite all I was doing was existing and trying to get home.

Oh, and also everyone dies in the end because I wake up from the dream.

Haha.

~~~

It was Gaomon that broke the silence. "So, now that we 'split' up, does anyone have any idea on how to actually find Mia now?"

Tentomon was the one that answered. "Nullrenamon took Skyler's backpack and remote, so she could be anywhere."

Tsumemon jumped in. "She's not that hard to find! When you destroyed all the things Skyler did to hack each area of the world, the number of places they could go dropped each time! There's only one place she could have gone!"

"So where did she go? I want to settle the score with Brad before I'm in a wheelchair" David said, impatient as ever.

"The Time Zone," Skyler said.

"You hacked that place?" Alex asked, skeptical.

"Hahaha it was the easiest place for him to hack too!" Tsumemon shouted, before retreating under Gaomon and Tentomon's combined ire. Leomon hung back, silent and contemplative.

Alex still wasn't very happy. "The entire digital world should have fallen to a time paradox! That's what Baalmon said would happen if it was destroyed."

"Hacking isn't destroying it," Skyler clarified. "We just hooked into one of the dark data lines and used that to power the portal system."

"Okay, so they probably passed into the cloud world," David said. "We need to get there, but no one actually knows the way there, do they?"

"Baalmon does," Brad said. "He was the one who opened the portal to the Time Zone, so if we find him, we can get there." 

"Too slow!" David declared. "Who knows what that monster is doing? We can't just wander around until we find it, we need to actually GET THERE," he practically shouted. 

"We know! We know! Calm your tits, David" Brad said, hands in pocket. 

Brad's response only served to make David even more frustrated. That said, by now he'd managed to roll with the barbs just enough to avoid being provoked.

How were they to get there? They could take a sky elevator up and then try to direct it back down. The digital world that was actually traversable this way wasn't actually that large, however. The digital world wasn't structured the same as theirs.

"Well," Skyler broke the frustrated silence. Tsumemon floated nervously around Skyler, growing nervous as the team focused on his chosen kid.

"No, now way, no how. Not again!" David interjected before Skyler could finish his point.

"We don't have enough Time to walk to the nearest elevator and commandeer it," Alex said.

"And even if we did, we'd all be exhausted," Brad said. 

"We could, I dunno, call in a favor from one of the Digimon who we helped?" David said.

"How? And they still have to come to us!"

 David shrunk back a bit. "Man, we just spent all that energy dismantling the whole thing and now we're gonna have him do it again?"

Skyler pointed at the black ring still around one of Tsumemon's tentacles. 

"We don't need a permanent hack. I can just do it so we get the coordinates and connect the portal. We make the hop and then when the portal closes we automatically disconnect. If we can find another dark leyline, I can forward the power to get a new portal up and running, and since they're hooked into the same network, I can open a portal to the Time Zone."

Alex and Brad both shuffled a bit, a few glances at each other betraying their own nervousness. They spent weeks in the digital world chasing down various digimon and freeing them from these mutually-exclusive data locks.

"So long as the lock actually expires," Alex says.

Destroying the hacks Skyler or the ghosts had installed had taken a long time. Even David, as aggressive and impatient as he naturally was, stalled out. Madelyn already knew the way to the Time Zone. 

She had always been great at directions.

"Digital time is already cursed, the Time Zone didn't need me… It was practically already hacked by the time I got there. The one digimon we met just muttered nonsense about their pocket watch being stolen."

"Yeah!" Tsumemon shouted, giggling again, "He was a big walking clock! And why would he need a pocket watch! It's not like you can steal time anyway…" it trailed off, as if realizing something.

"What?" Tentomon asked, realizing something was off.

"I uh. I think Mia stole his pocket watch," Alex said.

"Okay, so she and Mei stole his pocket watch while we were there. What are we supposed to do about it?" David demanded. One thing to point out a problem. Another to point out a problem they can't do anything about.

"Well, I'm sorry, I just realized it and said it aloud!" Alex was getting defensive. For his part, Tentomon jumped in between David and raised his arms to divert attention.

It seemed to work well enough. 

"Well it would probably be best to mention things we can actually do something about, dontcha think?" David liked Alex but sometimes his friend just had a hard time reading the room.

"We should ask Clockmon about the watch's powers," Leomon said. "There's no time to waste, we must get to the Time Zone."

~~~

Madelyn turned to face the mirror again.

It had taken some coaxing to get Patamon to trust her to give her some alone time. Now, she was cleaned up. 

Cleaned up.

Cleaned.

Things were good.

She turned to face the mirror again.

Had the mirror affected her with that glimpse?

No, of course not, that wasn't how it worked.

She turned to face the mirror again.

Madelyn's stomach rumbled.

Things weren't great.

But she was clean.

The gnawing hunger distracted Madelyn from the draw of the mirror. When the rest of the team and their digimon all left, they'd left with the food. 

The rush out the door hadn't hurt.

She was okay. 

Fine, even.

Everyone needed breaks, even Chosen Kids. 

And she was taking one. 

Well-deserved!

Her sister would be jealous.

Patamon was out finding food. They needed to find food, but since Skyler had been "fine" in that he hadn't starved, food was probably nearby/around. So, she broke the stare at the mirror and the massive drapes that went from the ceiling to the floor.

A mirror couldn't actually do anything to you, right? Sure, this was the digital world and magic was real, but everything still operated under rules. 

So, once she'd discovered the bathroom and shower and made good use of them. She had nearly cried when she noticed the amenities. But no one else was around, so she didn't. Instead, she spent the time alone thinking about the mirror.

What mysteries could it hold?

The water in the pipes of the castle worked for some reason. It was the digital world, things didn't have to make sense. But that didn't mean there wasn't some constraining rule that held things back, right?

Patamon hadn't been able to say exactly what was wrong. The vibes were off. Was all she'd managed to get out of him. Something was wrong. Objectively, she hadn't been able to see what the problem was. She wasn't like Skyler. You could reason yourself out of bad decisions, see.

Madelyn knew what was right and what was wrong. Darkness flees from the light. Treat others how you want to be treated. Don't lie. Help others meet your standards. You're the older sister. The example. 

Madelyn turned to check out the closet.

The room had Actual amenities! Shower! A Closet! A sink! Running water!

She laughed.

Some clothing!

A hairbrush!

New Clothing!

It was nice.

She'd taken her time and cleaned up.

It took a bit of coaxing Patamon to get him to leave her alone with her thoughts. He understood her, and trusted her enough to give a bit of space.

What she had wanted was a solution. A hint. An explanation for the madness that gripped the Digimon. An end to the entire mess. 

Doesn't matter how.

Didn't.

Her relationship with Patamon was different from the relationship she'd had with the other "chosen" kids. So she had promised not to look at the mirror, at least not without him there as Angemon.

She was in front of the closet again.

Eying the shelf of the closet, there had been a single article. A black bit of cloth with a hood and large zipper. It wasn't actually clothing, really. More of a single giant black cloak with an oversized zipper. The fact that it blended right in with the stone of the castle walls was eye-roll worthy, however. 

Shady, if not evil vibes. It was easy to tell Evil from Good. The cloth felt great, but there wasn't a universe where she'd wear anything that screamed "I Am Evil!" as loud as the cloak. 

She'd paced about the room, like she couldn't decide. Time was moving too fast and too slow all at once. 

It ate at her. Why hadn't the region reverted when they undid the corruption. Why had the ghosts done what they did? It made sense on paper but the more she thought about everything the less sense things had made. Why had Mia run away? 

She was eight. The baby of the family. The one who could skip school whenever she wanted. The one who always cried for mom, the one that mom didn't care if she got a B instead of all A's. The one that had all the damn toys. 

She closed her eyes. 

Madelyn was back in front of the mirror. She stood back, in front of the mirror. There wasn't a draft, the curtain didn't move.

She'd seen it ripple.

Patamon had left to find food; she had told him she'd call for him if she needed help. He didn't like the castle, but she'd insisted on taking some time to clean up. She was hungry, that wasn't a lie. 

Why was she sad when she thought about Patamon?

She couldn't be sad. They'd worked together! He needed to understand that if they didn't drill down to the root cause of this whole mess, they would have to dive into things that had bad vibes. It was part of the job description. 

What good was being a chosen kid if you couldn't stomach some bad vibes? Yes, she had a clear mind. There was knowledge in the mirror.

Because what did mirrors do? They reflected light.

She felt it. Patamon had wanted to destroy the mirror. 

"You can't do that," she'd said.

Destroying it would have been bad. So, with the door closed and her partner out digging for food, she opened the mirror, sliding a piece of the purple cloth back.

The mirror was dark. Of course! The black of the stone tiles were gobbling up the reflection. The bedsheets, also black, didn't help. The cloth slid back down obscuring the mirror again. The reflection of her eyes drew her in. 

Her hand was gripping her digivice. As if it knew better. 

She inched closer, toward the mirror. She put her free hand over the drape and pulled the cloth further back to the side. It was heavy, almost like it didn't want to move. She pulled it back. 

Holding it, looking into the window. The frame of the mirror was large and ornate, with intricate details.

"Air Shot!" Patamon shouted, blasting the curtain out of her hand. 

She whipped her head back behind her letting go of the cloth. Her heart pounded, it was patamon, a bag at his feet that he'd dropped.

Her heart was pounding.

"That mirror is bad, Madelyn!" he said, tears starting to come out of his eyes. "Don't look into it!" 

"But… we have to," She said.

"Air shot!" Patamon shouted, busting Madelyn in the head, knocking her onto the ground. "Stop it!" he cried, but before he could headbutt her, she grabbed him and pulled him into a hug.

"We have to see what's in the mirror," Madelyn told him.

Tears were in his eyes.

"I wish we didn't—" technically not a lie "— but there's something about it that we need if we're going to put an end to it."

"But there's… never an end!" Patamon said, stopping her in her tracks. What? What was he saying?

"You know it's a cycle, Maddie! The old kids disappeared, now you and the others are the new ones. And there will be more after that!"

"Then … why are we fighting?" she said, not truly asking. She knew why she was fighting. She was fighting to protect both the digital world and the human world. The real world.

Her brain was still spinning up, re-entering the world around her again. Like her thought processes had been put into a reboot cycle, they were still catching up to the train of thought. 

No. If it was cyclical, no one had actually told her. They'd said it was cyclical but they never said it. They'd lied while saying it. They'd lied to her. 

"Come on Maddie, I have food. I found some in the kitchen. It's not much but I brought some!" Patamon told her. "You always said you feel slower and cranky without sugar." 

"That's okay, let's eat after we look into the mirror," she said. She was holding the little bread loaf with wings for ears in her arms with a soft, yet firm grip. "You don't have to look into the mirror, but I need to," she said.

"Maddie, we really shouldn't," he said, but his resolve was starting to collapse.

"With me, or without me?" she said. He squirmed a bit, but she didn't let go. 

"That's not fair!" he whined.

"Look, we both know right and wrong. You're smart—" She smiled at him, trying to reassure, but from the look on his face it didn't work. "If you want, you can evolve if you're worried there's some evil digimon on the other side."

She'd made a lot of concessions for her partner digimon. That was fine. Good, even. What was a friendship without give and take? 

Tears in his eyes, he said, "You know I'll never let you face your demons alone, Maddie."

"Okay, let's evolve," she had said.

Then nothing happened, and neither of them knew why. He wasn't evolving. Maybe she was hungry. Maybe she should eat, but no, she couldn't eat until she got a proper look into the mirror, so she didn't. Well, not being able to evolve wasn't great, but there were plenty of reasons to explain why. 

He'd asked her if they could wait until they ate or he could evolve again, but knew she wasn't going to leave the room without them getting into a squabble if she couldn't get a closer look. 

Thus, against his wishes, the duo found themselves staring at a black, black mirror.

"See?" Madelyn said. "The mirror doesn't have anything. All that worry for nothing."

She'd notice if something was wrong anyway. 

Then, a voice spoke, each syllable echoing into her bones.

"You're not my chosen one."

~~~

Chapter Text

~~~

Chapter 14 - I Need You Do Me A[n Evil] Favor

~~~

A/N: This chapter's soundtrack provided by: Dark Moor

~~~

It was grinning at her. Its teeth are sharp, jagged like a shark. Like a zipper. A single red eye poked out. The unnatural and uncanny movement caused Patamon to squirm. It isn't how mouths work. They didn't work that way. Just a mouth, the rest obscured through the darkness of the mirror.

"MMMmmmmmmmmmmmmm" The creature said, the very humm of the voice causing her to tremble. 

She'd braced herself, and managed to steel herself, by grabbing tighter onto the digivice in her hand. Maddie was strong enough. 

"You again," it said.

"I've never met you!" She'd said.

"I guess not," the creature said. "I have a hard time remembering each and every chosen one."

It smiled.

"Can't… Breathe" Patamon gasped when she loosened her grip.

"Yeah yeah yeah" the monster said. "Beggars can't be choosers, it seems."

The creature's head swung side to side, as if the eye and teeth were attached to cloth blowing in the wind.

"You're…" Maddie let out, her voice trailing off. 

"Mmmm" The voice responded. "You would be welcome to my generous hospitality," the monster in the mirror said, ominously. "The overstrung restive, hungry, tired in the mirror world fair not well, you find no solace with me."

"What did you do to Maddie! She's not herself!"

"Hmmm… farbeit from me to find one so many times that one lacks in the most basic bits of introspection. Suspect that the little angel child knows what is wrong with his partner."

"You did something! I know you did! I can feel your evil, lonely vibes coming from the mirror!"

The creature stepped forward, the figure coming more into focus. A black and red paper doll, more teeth, closed eyes adorning it stepped closer.

"Eternal consumption cares not for corruption. Desires of destruction, yes. Corruption matters not."

Maddie clenched her fist, finally getting her composure. What she didn't do was defend herself from Patamon's side accusation. 

"So what? You're saying I did THIS to myself? I worked myself up into delusion to look into the mirror? For what? You're a liar!" She said, accusing him, though her voice faltered on the last word. 

"What I say is no lie. Lie? I lie not. The truth. The truth is what I hold. The truth, with no barriers. The truth in a flat plane with no shadows. The deep truths that everyone sees but notices not. The truth that one day, every being dies. The truths that Everyone knows but cannot internalize. The truth that comes only from a hunger that cannot be sated. The truth that comes with desperation and isolation. Truths that eat at the foundations of your realities."

"Then you are evil!" Maddie said.

The creature paused for a split second. It wasn't long, but it was just barely enough that she noticed its unnatural gait. Invisible hips. The gait of a doll made of cloth. 

"The overstrung one speaks the ancient truths." 

"And because you're evil, you can't tell the truth." She was getting more confident in her assertion. Evil and darkness. They're lies, liars. They exist in the dark where you can't see. They do their evil under the cover of darkness.

"The cover of darkness hides many things, however, you seem to be smart enough to realize the truths on your own. The patamon below you already knows, and yet you heed not his thoughts. MMmmmmm" her bones rattled again, the world turning into a momentary artifacted sepia before returning to the more banal greys and blacks of the castle and the fog of the mirror before her. 

"It doesn't matter anyway, is what you were about to say," Mia said. 

"Perceptive. The starving one is more impressive than her many first impressions suggest." 

"Because Nullrenamon is going to destroy the world."

"Harmony, Homeostasis. Yggdrasil, the great tree, the server of balance. The Reaper sitting under the digital world. Barely held at bay. My Chosen. Will she end the world? Does your world even wish to continue its own existence?"

"Of course it does!" she said, zero hesitation.

The voice in the mirror just laughed. 

Madelyn frowned. 

It laughed more. 

Then, she started feeling a little silly.

And laughed.

And she let out a single laugh.

The creature, the single eye-turned-vertical, narrowed, turning serious. 

"You know who I am, you know what I do," it said. 

"I've… never met you," she said. 

"Mmmm…" it said again, as if in thought. But she felt it, both her and patamon knew it wasn't really considering what it was going to say or do next. And yet she waited anyway, a feeling, a gut reaction in her heart, held her in place. Was it this creature's power? The power of the mirror?

"All who look into the mirror go mad," it stated, as if considering its thought. "And yet…"

"And yet what? " She demanded "I know you're just acting," she said, finding enough courage in her own ideals, the keystone of her armor as the one on the team partnered with the angel.

The creature shrugged again. "And yet I perform no lie, no deception, take no force, nor any other means of exerting my will on you. "

"You made her look at the mirror! You're a liar!" Patamon said.

"The ever-loyal Patamon. Predictable. I care not for those who are not my chosen one." It was smirking.

She did this? Madelyn did this? She was responsible for her own actions? That was silly. 

No, she was responsible for her actions. She had chosen to look at the mirror. She had known, felt that there was some key bit of information that was important for the sake of the future of the world, here.

She was responsible for her own actions, She knew the risks, and she took it. Like a responsible, sensible—

"Hungry, Stressed, Tired. Carrying the world on your shoulders. Trying to mitigate damage from those you decided were diverging from the True path. Unaware of how much stress you have lashed upon your back from the metaphysic. Then your server, your senses and experience exhibit a series of faults, and now, here you are."

"Why don't you stop being cryptic! Speak clearly! Like a normal person!"

"Fine," the creature said. "I will deliver a series of plain truths."

"How will we know if you're not lying! You're clearly evil!" 

"It's okay, Patamon." Maddie said, coming to herself. "They're partially right—I am hungry, tired, and stressed. But the rest of that comes with being a chosen child. When we paired up together, we didn't know that, but I'm happy we're together." She smiled at him, holding him up to face her. "But truth can't be evil. Light is truth, Truth is light, and only lies sit in darkness, warping and obscuring the truth."

The creature's facial expressions hadn't changed or shifted from what she had said.

"Truth Number One: You and your compatriots are the backup of the backup plan. Afterthoughts. You were never supposed to have been chosen."

Madelyn frowned. They all got along with their partners. They'd all taken down enemies that were stronger than them at one point or another. Everyone had done it. They were never supposed to have met their partner digimon? 

More than that, the trembling effect, whatever the creature had been causing on her, had disappeared. So there was something that was happening that it was doing.

"Truth Number Two: The Digital World is half the size it should be, with even less living digimon within. The ones who came before you all failed ."

"Truth Number Three: The Others watching your world are not planning for your success, and have ordered a Full Reboot of both worlds"

She waved her hands, dismissing its points. "Let's say I find out that even one of those points were true. Then what? What am I—" Patamon's ear twitched in annoyance " — we supposed to do for you ? I'm not just going to sit around and do nothing, and we'll never stop fighting for what's right."

"You already know what I said was true. You've heard it all before. Your ears were not open, your eyes did not see. Forgotten time, and time again. You know what I want. You know I do not lie."

Could she trust it? No, obviously not. But the truth was light. And light illuminated. It expanded knowledge and lit new paths forward. But still. It was speaking in riddles again. And her own thoughts were clear now. Doing nothing? Obviously, it was doing something before. 

What, exactly , she didn't know.

"I offer another, yet deeper truth and reward. A truth and reward in exchange for a small favor. And—" it said "—in reward," the creature said, drawing out the last word, as the obscuring mist and even the dark void beyond shifted. Ever-so-slightly, a misshapen, wrong hand, also made up of teeth, almost like a zipper, with a myriad of eyes adorning the arm.

In its hand—

In its hand—

Was a cookie.

…

…

"Uhm," 

Patamon was the first to break the silence. 

"That's just a cookie."

Madelyn cackled.

And cackled for a minute straight she laughed and laughed and laughed. Tears came out of the corner of her eyes.

The figure held its position.

"You know what?" She said.

"Maddie no—"

"Maddie yes!" She said, "that's just the exact thing I needed." All that stress, all that trepidation for a dang cookie! " Fine , we'll do your stupid little errand, but I want the cookie first."

The creature smiled, and a portal opened above them, and a cookie fell out. Maddie caught it in her hand. Generic chocolate chip.

Patamon huffed. He was being sidelined yet again, but he turned to the positive side for a moment. The cookie smelled pretty good to him.

Maddie sniffed the cookie, then inspected it. It smelled all right. She broke a crumb off. Seemed fine. She took a bite. Yeah, regular chocolate chip, and by the time she finished the cookie, the extra sugar was starting to hit and she was already feeling a bit better.

Hm.

It was probably a good idea to eat more than one meal a day.

Patamon was just glad the entire interaction was going to be over really soon, at least.

"Take the hooded cloak in the closet and give it to Nullrenamon. Do not lose it."

"What, is it some designer cloak?" Madelyn said.

"Maddie!" Patamon whined.

 "It doesn't matter," the many-toothed doll-looking creature said. "The cloak will find its way to her of its own accord, however if you wish to know a truth that will further your own journey, then deliver it."

She agreed, and the conversation ended and they both breathed a sigh of relief when the being in the mirror faded out.

"Yeah Patamon, it's probably evil but I promised," she told him.

He was not happy, but did not leave her side. "We're a team, Maddie! We need to do things together!" he complained. And, he was right. She shouldn't have overrode him. They hadn't had these issues in the past, so why then?

"I'm sorry, Patamon, I don't know what came over me…"

"Well, eat the food I brought! I found a kitchen and they had a fridge and a bunch of fruits and veggies!"

She walked over to the door with him and pulled up the little bag he'd used. It wasn't a lot of food, but with a couple apples and a banana in her, she was already feeling better.

"So," she said. She fully planned on keeping her word.

"The mirror?"

"The mirror." But giving her word didn't mean she was going to let a monster like that have a free window into their world.

"Break it?"

She nodded, and Patamon became Angemon, and the mirror was ground to dust and turned into data.

~~~

Chapter Text

~~~

Chapter 15 - That Beam Reminds Me of the Void of My Soul

~~~

A/N: This chapter was written while listening to: Dark Tranquility

~~~

Sleep didn't come for me, I wasn't quite sure why. Both Mia and Meicoomon were fast asleep. Leaning on a pillow, hanging under a blanket I took from the second bed, I kept my head and ear near the door, just in case a housekeeper tried to enter the room for any reason.

Being in that era before mobile phones, let alone cameras were a universal thing was really messing with me. I'd spent a bunch of time worrying about what if someone posted a picture of us on the internet and then I realized that this was before digital cameras were any good.

 If a person took a picture, unless it was a polaroid it would be a solid day before the film would be developed, and potentially a bit longer before they could really leak our location. The images would be low-resolution and only on small or niche sites.

The only risk was if someone or a police officer saw us and reported us, and even then what were Japan's police force's response times?

Gratefully, those lines of thought were each interrupted by "no, not literally every person you meet will have a camera and microphone that's always listening twenty-four seven". 

An hour or so of sitting by the door, listening to the gentle hum of the building's central climate, it was safe to assume that either Hypnos couldn't track us or couldn't do anything at our distance. 

How would I get home?

Getting to Texas, just so I could be one hundred percent sure, would be annoying but probably doable? Going back to the digital world and coming back out to some random US city shouldn't be impossible, but it was a lot of risk.

Flying would be more reliable.

Hitching a ride on a plane bound for the DFW international airport. Sitting on a cargo ship would be the worst-case. Ships sucked. I didn't have three weeks or however long it would take for a ship to hit the continental US.

"Potentially-apocalyptic mental meltdown hurtling over the horizon? Being with mother nature in the middle of the ocean will help make sure casualties will be minimized!"

At some point sitting by the door sliding between potentially-delirious visions and letting the events of the day coalesce, things crystallized enough that I nodded off. I knew this, the building was awfully quiet, an unnatural stillness had hit the air. Various new visions and glimpses had popped in, but it wasn't the same as if I had been in the cloud clock world place. Time Zone , came to me. More random erratica floated in like a VCR on super fast-forward, only the occasional audio filtering in, as if my mind was unable to stop thinking about the implications of what if you're stuck here.  

Live. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die a lot.

Dead. Die. Death. Each vision was slightly different, but never enough to paint a pretty complete picture. Each dream like I'd recursed. A million different short, sometimes blisteringly-short lives snapping back into one and hitting me. Always rewinding. 

What if you were functionally immortal but there was still no way out?

You didn't have to die to be functionally dead, either.  

What if you really were facing a shitshow menagerie of beings with enough individual power to sever continents out of their resting place? In more than one vision, I was flattered. Most of them were too incoherent and half-baked thoughts to take seriously.

God, a nice chocolate chip cookie would hit the spot.

Mia turned over, as if restless. She and Meicoomon would occasionally twitch, as if they were fighting something in their dreams.

I looked at the clock. It was Seven pm. She'd been asleep for nine hours. If I was right, she would probably sleep for three more. Meicoomon lay there peacefully. If she had the tendencies of a cat then the heat from the eight year old was probably magnetic.

Have you heard the news that you're dead?

Stand up. 

No one ever had much nice to say.

Go to the mirror.

They didn't like you much anyway.

I look at my face. The glowing laughing jester faces on the bandanna floated across. My eyes narrowed as I checked my expression a bit more. It genuinely looked like I was about to burst into that kind of eternally mocking laughter. 

No thanks, fuckers, I'd just like to go.

That damn, dark little voice. And yet the way it spoke, it was mocking. Mocking her, mocking everyone around her. 

Because it was true. It was all so stupid. 

So fake. 

Such bullshit.

This whole thing was still so stupid. 

I shook my head, getting a grip as in the dark of the hotel room my glow had shifted to a red instead of a passive grey. That flour was moldy and starting to get real gross.

Normally, not being able to sleep much while not having anything to do but think for about eight hours would be a bad night. Luckily, being a mom, taking a break at any damn moment even if you couldn't entirely fall asleep were key survival strats.

And sometimes, even when you were sleeping, kids wouldn't let you. Then you jolt, awakening to a child's screaming and crying from nightmares. That was also normalized and I knew what to do. 

Which is, while I was still staring at myself in the mirror of the bathroom, a crash and a scream caused me to rush out the bathroom with keyblade in hand. Nope, Mia was shot straight up, looking at the pocketwatch in her hand and Meicoomon was standing up, a lamp broken on the floor next to her. 

Mia threw it on the floor, then started to sob. She reached for Meicoomon and grabbed the poor kitten, practically strangling her, then started crying into the cat's fur.

My amazing, excellent, top-tier mom-stincts were: just let her be. My not-mom-stincts were: figure out what the hell she's crying about and see if you can help her. Give her comfort. She was strong, and she had Meicoomon as her partner, so she didn't really need me, so I just pretended not to notice her outburst until she calmed down.

"Why?" She sobbed.

Oh. She was going to need m—

"Why is she always like that?!?"

Guess it's about her sister —She looked at me— me?  

"What's wrong?" I asked. But she didn't elaborate.

"You don't know !" She spat.

"That's why I'm asking, sweet'ums" I said, tone dry.

"Ugh! You don't know!" She said again, pointing at me. 

"Mia, is okay! We'll find out what to do!" Mei said, going in for the hug and rubbing her head against her partner human, trying to console the eight year old that had suddenly started talking nonsense. 

I… decided to let them be and let Mei do her thing and help Mia cry it out, which was weird to watch as she pried Meicoomon, the fickle emotions of an eight year old had her crying even as she bounced around the room.

"We tried! We tried so many times, Mei! Nothing works!" She glanced at the clock, her face turned blue, and dashed into the sink to brush her teeth.

"I know!" Mei said.

I was impressed. You didn't need to put makeup on, especially if you were despairing, if what was in was despair, but it never hurt to have good-smelling breath.

Did digimon breath smell? I contemplated lifting up my bandanna and huffing into it to check my breath but then I realized I breathed exclusively through my nose. Because my teeth were somehow sealed away like that one scene in The Matrix when Keanu was asking for his phone call from Agent Smith.

"You lost the backpack, too!" she accused, halfway between tears and the other half trying to dump information. She paused, taking a moment to brush her teeth some more and then kept talking mouth full. "Sche FBI loscher's got Schkyler's backpack now becauzhee nullrenamom—" she paused. Then, spat out the toothpaste, and corrected herself "—mon forgot it!"

Oh, shoot . She was right.

Neat. I'd completely forgotten about the backpack.

"So, wha—" I started slowly, but Mia, for some reason, was simply just not having it.

" They're coming! —" She glanced at the fucking clock "—They're here! We need to GO !" Mei piped up. Mia grabbed her digivice and immediately evolved Meicoomon into Meicrackmon, looking at me with that wild grin and sharp, sharp teeth. 

God, this was a dream riddled with great, great things.

Mia opened the door of the hotel room out into the hallway. That caused me to pause. "We're not going back out through—" I started, before Meicrackmon grabbed my hand and threw me out into the hallway. 

"Nope! Bust into the room across from us!" Meicrackmon said, once I recovered. It took me a split second to realize what she was saying. We were just going to—then a glimpse of light and I kicked the door on the handle, busting the frame and causing it to swing open. 

Just go with the flow , I thought, being best not to think too hard about things.

"Go in the room! Keep going!" They shouted. There wasn't a single window in the room! What kind of shitty hotel was this? There was, however, a connected door. I kicked that door, it banged even harder, and there was a second door. I kicked that one too!

We burst into the room, Mia in Meicrackmon's arms, jumped into the hallways we'd just passed through, right as a black bream simply appeared, punching a hole through the building, leaving the hallway open. 

"They can track us!" I said.

"Yeahp," Mia said. "But not very good."

"Because we're not close to the Hypnos HQ?" I asked.

"The FBI loser " Mia said, voice in a low whisper "I think he has a different way of tracking digimon, he always shows up wherever we are, no matter what. Then said kids shouldn't have digimon and we need to go back to the way things were before."

I reached out and grabbed my keyblade.

"So I will kill him next time I see him," I said. 

She paled a bit. 

Broken pipes began to sprayed out, the upper-floor's fire sprinklers all turned on and it rained down from above. 

"We stay here," Meicrackmon said. 

"Why?" I asked. 

"Because we don't have the stopwatch any more." She said, as if that explained anything.

"Wait, that stopwatch? You were using it to rewind time ?" I asked. 

"Oh this time you notice," Mia said, frustrated with antics that I wasn't even aware of.

"You aren't making any sense," I told her. There was another crush of the building, and the distinct sound of things falling over and the building groaning under its own weight. Meicrackmon had slowly shut the door, so we could talk for a minute more.

She smiled and stood up. "Ready? Do us a favor and try not to die this time . "

She just stood there, and the floor fell out from under her in a perfect circle.

God, she's so cool.

I summoned my keyblade. Well, if I didn't want to die… I would probably have to start tapping some living souls.

~~~

"Damn cowards!" Agent Sanders huffed, grinning in smug victory. He was, of course, a few buildings down, sitting in a heavily armored and reinforced, requisitioned JSDF vehicle. 

When he'd found the backpack, which was only a few hours after the horrible hypnos heads finally heard about his superior, if heady, ideals. Unfortunately, the losers at the top still had to hold onto their high horse or else nothing would happen. Of course, this didn't mean that he, Agent Sanders , would happily sit by and do nothing.

And that backpack was just the ticket he needed. It took a phone call back to home base, but eventually a nerd was in and they'd made contact with a powerful digimon on the other side. A representative for a country that called itself "Yggdrasil". Well they used the words "server" but clearly they weren't from the same digital world, so Sanders called them a country.  

Negotiations with the representative were quick and to the point. He was an enforcer, looking for the fox lady he'd met. Supposedly she was an escaped convict, and the barrier impeded the digimon's pursuit of justice. Yamato's machinations, as much as Sanders was loathe to admit it, had put them in a position for getting a good deal. 

So, with that, metaphorical hands were shook, and a one-time pass was allowed for this digimon to cross through the barrier. Agent Sanders, truly an extension of American ingenuity, knew efficiency and this meant they could get things done, unlike the local bureaucracy.

Yamato, he'd taken to calling the coward, for not getting his own name right. Yamato had, of course, objected. Luckily, there wasn't much to object to when the digimon was already in your facility after the power had been cut, now was there? 

Yes, they would remove digimon from the kids and protect the world, meanwhile, the top brass eventually hoped that this would lead to future … positive echonomocial exchange programs between the parties. Sanders didn't care about that. What he cared about was achieving his objective, like a good agent. 

The best of agents. He smiled, looking at the bag. He'd be looking at a promotion when this was all over. The brass would all agree that he was due for bigger things.

"Let's go," he said, tapping the side of the door. His driver, a fellow with similar, exquisite tastes in eyewear, turned the car on. He'd left it up to Yamato to evacuate the hotel building as quietly and silently as they could.

A capture of the girl and her cat digimon, in return for catching a quarry that the creature claimed would prove troublesome if they festered for far too long.

Fine by him, fine by him.

Chapter Text

~~~

Chapter 16 - Cutting Off The Limb To Save The Tree

~~~

A/N: This chapter was mostly written while sitting in a library. God, libraries fuck so hard.

Sorry to book readers, hope clacking away was rhythmic and ignorable lmao.

I fuckin' love libraries.

~~~

"So, uh. How many times?" How many times did they loop? There was no way. Didn't make sense.

"You already asked that, 'Kay." Not commenting on Meicrackmon's word choice there was the only sane course of action.

"This way— umph " Mia got dropped to her feet and immediately rushed through the lower floor hallway. Bashing through a hallway, a black beam took out the ceiling above us, leaving enough for the water to spray out of the pipes and annoy us.

"Probably more than a thousand," the insane cat anthro said while Mia opened the door. That… couldn't be true. No way.

"To save me?"

The building collapsed, folding in on itself as that final cylinder of black removed its last supports. There were no explosions, just quietly collapsed in on itself. Gone in a moment. Our escape was similarly flawless.

"Yeah!" Mia said, as if that was that. 

Wow, that was surprisingly touching! And new! Not many dreams of mine had people actively doing anything that selfless. Usually dreams were anxiety-driven or crushing enemies underfoot, with no in-between. 

Which meant…

Before that thought was followed any further, Mia held up her digivice, and it glowed. Meicrackmon evolved, her armor becoming thicker and her face shifted, becoming slightly more humanoid. It shouldn't have been possible, but her thighs had expanded, looking covered in plate armor, and two black boosters? Wings ? sprouted from her back.

Unfortunately, the black knight-looking digimon hovered over us, casting a shadow under the setting sun. With no time to properly update on the situation, too much got left unsaid. 

Without the items, fights with max-level digimon would be impossible. It was unlikely one-tapping from the blade worked on anything actually strong. Still, it didn't mean the right play was to up and die. Conspicuous Hummvees flashed between buildings, probably a mile or two away. 

" Raguelmon can beat him," Mia said.

"Can she disable him enough so I can whack him with my keyblade?" Loading the nearly-god-tier digimon would be a good powerup. The military vehicles were getting closer, and police cars started flashing their lights.

"That doesn't work on him. He's not from our world so his data is different."

"Ok."

"We need—"

"To get Skyler's backpack off the FBI agent?"

She nodded. A flash of black, and the keyblade out. Crash from up above and a "gyaaahhg!" the scepter of doom from our attacker didn't blast us. The shockwave was enough to knock a kid off her feet. But nope, Mia was prepared for the blast.

"You dare fight? Stop the pursuit of preventing Nullrenamon's poisoning of your world!" a deep voice called out, surprised at the resistance. "Why do you fight?"

"Let them fight," Mia said, running close. "Agent Loser stops eight blocks down from the battle. Carry me." She was in my arms before a response could be made. Like before, she held on. 

"He has a taser thingy that works on you," she said. We were gone, as much to dodge Raguelmon and the mysterious otherworld's digimon's blasts.

"Stop!" Mia shouted without even looking out at the world around her. We stop in front of a small convenience store. Like they'd come out of nowhere, there's a large number of people looking around. A guy who'd pulled a camera out and was pointing it at the battle in the sky at the hotel glanced around and noticed us. A click and the film camera encoded our pilfering of the convenience store.

The hummvees whipped around a corner and slammed through the road, escorted by police vehicles, lights, horns and sirens blaring under the yellowing, evening sky. Sundown was going to be coming rather quick. 

"They didn't notice us," I said. She had grabbed a bit of prepackaged meals and was scarfing them down.

There goes her second real crime. Or third? Probably third.

The shoptender was yelling at her for stealing, but the meek and tired Mia had worn off, like the sleep she'd had entirely given her a guide. 

"Come on," her mouth was full, but she kept stuffing the packets of god-knows-what kind of food in there. Luckily the store owner had noticed that there was a much taller creature that looked tattooed up, while carrying an extremely sharp blade. 

The man had made the wise decision of not grabbing Mia and holding her down when they noticed the shadow looming over Mia.

"You're eating like we might not have food for a while." In response to that, she paused, swallowed and then gave me a look. "Usually, this is where you tell me to stop talking with my mouth full. Bleeeeehhhh." Giving me a 'great' look at the cracker-looking candy-things her mouth was stuffed with provided enough motivation to look away.

"You're eight," I said. "Eight year olds have no manners. I always chew with my mouth closed." 

Her eyes narrowed. 

"Yeah well not everyone's mouth disappears when it closes."

A boom in the sky, a flash of purple arced across, the gold-and-black digimon cop thing on the receiving end, tanking the brunt of the blast.

"Might as well not be any more anyway," the huffy tone was palpable. 

Whatever, it didn't matter. The people with cameras around had found the boom and approaching sirens more interesting, and turned them to follow the fight, looking into their crappy viewfinders.

"Well, you're not talking or acting the same way you did before you fell asleep."

The cop cars blaring turned, approaching our block.

"He's coming, use your move—Null Blast—" goddamnit "— on the tire. Agent Loser's in the largest car. Then grab his backpack, it's on the back seat. Come back here."

She held up her fingers. "One Mississippi—"

A finger went down. 

"Two Mississippi—"

Another one went down. I held up my blade. A guy turned to take a picture of us from the other sidewalk. The cop cars blared in front of us, one car, two car. 

"Three Mississippi—Now!" 

"Null Blast!" 

The blast was invisible but the rear tires peeled out like an orange might peel with an auto-peeler, making a terrible crashing sound as the metal hit the concrete, sparks flying.

"Go!" She shouted. 

Diving toward the vehicle, all just in time for the Gold-and-Black knightcop  asshole thing to trample an entire-ass building. Trust was the only option. Launching forward to the now-disabled Humvee, there was had a split moment where I considered exactly how to get through the door, then the re-realization hit. 

These claws punched clear through the door. Then ripped back out, and the door didn't come off. Fine, be that way. 

"Grraaaaaaa" the kni—no, wait, that was Raguelmon. Damn, she'd gone feral . 

Fuck it, in for a penny in for a pound, I located the hinges on the other side and punched through them, three or four times, then ripped the door off, before spotting the backpack on the floor. The Agent was in the passenger seat in front, but the poor american sod in the back seat had barely enough sense to look at the backpack, then back at the Nullrenamon with the laughing smiles shimmering over their bandanna and shove the backpack in my direction.

God, it felt good when people realized NOT to fuck with you.

Running back to the store with the backpack, the whole encounter had only taken about thirty seconds, but the agent in the front seat had recovered enough of themselves. 

"Let's go!" Mia shouted at Raguelmon as I returned to her side by the store, a very conspicuous chunk of earth missing in a very conspicuous nearly-parallel line feet away from her. She hadn't moved.

She really was calling the shots.

Not bad.

"Now what?"

And a black burst just appeared out of nowhere— oof— she'd slammed right into the ground next to me, knocking my breath clear out, knocking a crater of dust and cement up into the air. Raguelmon threw her arm around me, her claws digging fucking deep into the cement and the dirt, hooking me into her and grabbing Mia with her other arm. 

"Enough with this game!" The black and gold knight said. "You've allied yourself with the poison of the world? Then all of you must perish!"

"Sorry for existing, asshole!"

That feeling you get when you may have fucked up? 

Yeah that hit. Hard . 

"This is where it starts to get tough," Raguelmon said, crouching low. The ground under her crunched , a shockwave emitting as it got pulverized under the force collecting under her feet.

A straight up armada of dots of gold and black filled the sky surrounding us. 

We launched.

With both Mia and I in her arms, 

Thousands of black and gold beams pursued us as the thruster(?) wing-things behind her burned. 

That was some neck-breaking-ass-acceleration, and Raguelmon's grip was ironclad.

We hit the edges of the city, just in time for a fucking new knight, this one white with a red cape and red sword to appear in the fucking sky. It was also taller than multiple buildings, just like the other digimon already trying to kill us. 

"Give me a Wall of End for JESmon in five seconds." Raguelmon said as the knight digimon regarded us, before raising up its sword.

"Aren't they supposed to be enemies?"

"Do they look like they're fighting?"

"Nope—WALL OF END—" just as the spiky, white-and-red knight let off a beam of pure white blasted itself right toward us, Raguelmon doing something to absorb the last wave of the edgy knight's attack.

"It would be best to take this battle out of the human world." The JESmon said. 

"And empower the creature with the corrupt digital world?" The knight responded.

Hm. There was a solid chance that fourteen year-old Kaylee, writing out this character sheet, didn't know how high digimon could scale. 

At least there was a literal god backing me?

Which, huh. Looking at the two creatures across from me… 

"Hey uh, before y'all kill me or whatever…"

"There are no plans just to kill you. You will be captured, your soul stored in stasis, analyzed for corruption, separated from the digimon you possess, and tortured for your crimes under Yggdrasil's laws for at least ten thousand subjective years."

"Yeah sure, uhh. Okay, but like. What, exactly, am I accused of?"

Ok. Skyler's backpack was still attached. That was good. Raguelmon's burst had knocked Mia unconscious. That was bad. She was standing there, holding her incapacitated partner.

"You are a disturbance to Harmony, Yggdrasil, and the functioning of existence itself. Empowered by nothingness, fake digimon. Subsumer. Supplanter. Disrupter of Loading. We are here to prevent the spread of your poison and eternal hunger and your corruption of the Chosen ones," JESmon said, similarly stuffy as hell.

Wow, so my very existence was a crime against reality itself. Not that it was a surprise given the ah, well, character sheet and all. 

But…

"What if I just, like, didn't poison reality. Or kill everybody?"

"Cease! You delay your own inevitable demise! Half the sky turned black again.

"We won't let you hurt Mia! Warp evolve—"

" Bancho Leomon !"

A bipedal Lion with a Red X across its torso wearing a loose-fitting captain's outfit and silver hair dashed forward, holding a sword. 

"Go Mirage Gaomon !"

Aach of the chosen boys and their digimon all streamed out of a fucking portal, each one warp-evolving to ultimate level to stand in front of our assault.

Raising up my hands as Raguelmon glanced my way was basically the only reasonable reaction. 

"Hats off, damn, you and Mia have me convinced. You really did loop time."

Raguelmon, her face nearly inscrutable were it not for her eyes, glanced at me. The Black and gold knight fucker was lecturing them on preventing the corruption's spread and all that shit, but I had tuned it in our glance.

"They never showed up here before."

"… Huh. Well, that's good. Right?"

Raguelmon just looked out, over the four ultimate-tier digimon standing in front of the two asshole knights.

"Good for Mia? Yes. But they're saving Mia and I."

Oh.

"Not you."

"Give Me the Impostor Renamon and Yggdrasil will leave you and your dying world alone."

Well, shit.

~~~

Chapter Text

~~~

Chapter 17 - We Came To Save You! [But Not You]

~~~

A/N: :)

~~~

When did this all begin?

Really, truly begin?

Well, it all begins in childhood of course. They say that's when villains and heroes are truly made. So if there really was a villain moment, it had to be before ten years old.

I was probably, I dunno, seven? Ish? Years old? When we got the first game boy colors. The ones that were purple and transparent cases. My older sister wouldn't let me play with her gameboy, but when I finally was old enough to get my own gameboy, she gave me her copy of Pokemon Blue.

By this point, Pokemon had already smashed onto the scene a while ago, it being just about the turn of the millennium.

At some point before that gameboy inevitably became liberally decorated with unicorns, (I spent more time coloring stickers with markers than actually playing the handheld), we were watching the anime. It was the episode where Pikachu was presented with an electric stone. Of course, what did Pikachu do? 

Reject the damn stone. Pikachu did not consent, and the story made a huge deal about it. Between that and the bulbasaur evolution episode, a small piece of my brain broke that day.

Among other things, I would eventually decide that Pokemon wasn't worth my time. I was later vindicated when my husband told me he didn't want our kids to watch it until they were older. 

But before dropping the franchise of cute animals on the floor, I went back to the early part of the game, went right to the forest, and caught a fucking pikachu. Took the fucking electric stone and used it on the pikachu and evolved it into a Raichu.

Giggled to myself for breaking the "rules" or violating the little pikachu's consent by forcing it to be a Raichu. Yes, Kaylee was always a bit devious, but this is where it all began. At seven years old. Truly, an origin story of someone destined to be a universal villain. 

The moment things broke, when I realized that people were stupid. That things were fake and dumb. The seed of hatred and evil was planted.

Definitely wasn't because I was bored of playing the games, and shortly forgot about them in favor of Nancy Drew or Boxcar Kids books. Magic Treehouse was cool too, but those had a terrible formula to them that little Kaylee just couldn't stand.

So yeah, from that one domino you could explain everything. Why I'm definitely an upstanding citizen and going to uphold truth, justice and the goddamned American Way. We weren't in 1999 any more Todo, though it was fairly disturbing that we were closer to 1999 than we were to 2024. 

Standing in a liminal space between magic and reality... was really strange. We stood in a clearly filled field of grass, the air felt nice. Unfortunately, I was in the shape of a particularly Edgy Renamon. Not the edgiest, but not out of place on a kind of furry Organization Thirteen. 

Just needed the black cloak and you wouldn't know the difference!

However, just like the cake, there was no cloak. 

Which brought us to where I was standing. The middle of a field, with naught but my bandanna and spikey keyblade hovering around. Oh, and an innumerable number of black lasers were filling the sky above. Unfortunately, as hot as the Nullrenamon design objectively was, the lasers did not care.

Whatever the Alphamon wanted (which was me, effectively dead, or worse ) he wasn't taking half-measures.

We were about a football field's distance away from the two ginormous knights, everything seemingly frozen in the absurdity of the moment.

The other one, white and red with a crimson cape, symbolism of righteousness and chosen one or whatever. Clearly on the side of good or something. JESmon . Spiky and dragon-like motifs all over the armor. 

Alphamon, similarly giant, similarly spiky, but all-black. Both incredibly stocky and spiky. Alphamon, clearly the metaphor for evil. Why else would he be straight black? This knowledge came mostly just from Mia or Raguelmon managing to mention them, and it being difficult to forget their names when they're trying to kill you. 

Did I say they were spiky already?

Oh, yeah, and also Raguelmon was next to me and there were four top-tier digimon between us, the four kids streaming across the field from the portal in the dying light of the evening summer sun. 

"Mia!" The cool kid shouted as he ran over to us. It was a long distance, so there were even odds that he wouldn't even make it before the Alphamon's charging-up beams in the sky would launch. 

Mia didn't respond to the cool kid, obviously, being too busy having passed out presumably due to oxygen deprivation from rapid acceleration. Raguelmon, bless her features, had some serious acceleration. 

She flashed her claws out ominously, but it was all for show. I picked Mia out of her arms and dropped back down to the grass. Still, even with the kids filtering out on the grass, Bancho Leomon, Diablomon , Miragegaogamon and the bug one I couldn't remember its name, never really could, all stood in the way.

The four of them all sent a few probing blasts, which were practically all blown away by JESmon without Alphamon having to even move.

"This is going to be a slaughter, isn't it?" I asked.

"Probably," Raguelmon said.

"Sorry, we decided to split up from Madelyn. She was…"

"I know how she is," Raguelmon declared.

Last time we'd seen cool kid was at the castle. Now, he finally got close enough to us to notice that I was holding Mia and Raguelmon was turning toward the enemy knights.

All of us just completely ignored the ominous, growing number of black beams in the sky. Rate of new ones coming out had slowed down, at least.

It didn't matter if the little Deus Ex Machina going on was contrived. No way any of the kids following Mr. Cool had enough power to fight the knights. Alphamon, the fucker, didn't even look phased. And Raguelmon was breathing heavily.

What kind of situation had let her actually defeat them?

Sigh .

The nerd and Skyler both approached. I grabbed Skyler's backpack and tossed it at him. "Keep that away from the FBI guy. Probably destroy your kit."

"He's here!?!" the nerd said. 

Mia started moving in my arms, clearly trying to force herself awake, but it didn't work. She just fell back again, limp. 

"She probably has a concussion and needs to be woken up." 

Not being a doctor, it was a tossup whether it would be better or worse to wake her up if the fighting got hot again. If Raguelmon got knocked out, Mia could probably pull out digivice bullshit, assuming she was coherent. 

- - - 

Being utterly outmatched on literally all sides sucked. Being a beat villain that was supposed to scale up and then disappear at defeat would have been fun. Or maybe even playing the bit and doing a redemption arc?

Redemption arcs were always juicy for angst.

Actually, the JESmon and kids really shouldn't be able to enter the city. We were in a field of what I could tell was green grass, city lights slowly blinking on as the red sky turned purple.

Not a whole lot of tech out here, being out of the vicinity of the early 00s Japanese urbansphere. Digimon were supposed to be like ghosts, based on Yokai concepts and all that. Spirits that attached themselves to the abstract bits of scripts and data that stuck around the network for long enough, so there was no reason a portal should have opened.

"Can you get us into that portal?" I asked Raguelmon. Her mask was metal and her mouth didn't move, but her eyes did.

Nothing added up, but no time to investigate either. The bridge the kids had come through was already starting to fade out in a moment or two. Whipping the keyblade— was that really the right decision? Yes. Hypnos and all their tech never really worked in canon until long after the dude assembled the dream team to save the kids and then fight the D-Reaper.

"JESmon and Alphamon follow you through. We're too far from the city, Hypnos' barrier doesn't work."

"Well, it's either that, or we tank Alphamon and JESmon's full-power blasts. You might survive, but I'm pretty sure no one is strong enough to actually fight the knights." Giving her the stink-eye for Mia's overconfidence was mean, but there was clearly something off.

Pointing the keyblade at the portal, the multi-story-tall knights both took offensive stances, but didn't let them fly.

Raguelmon returned my stinkeye while the keyblade locked onto the portal to hold it in place.

"Mia can't handle the acceleration, and I'm not setting her down until she wakes up. She's my partner. I'm not following you into the portal without her. And before you start, no , Mia is not going to let you die or get taken by those two losers. She'd rather destroy the world."

"How sure are you about that?"

"There's thousands of points of evidence—she could have left you dead, but no, each time you died or were about to be taken, she'd reset it."

God, this all would be so much easier with that damned cloak. Still not enough to fight the fuckers, slowly lowering themselves to the ground.

The cool kid was the one who spoke, overhearing our conversation. "And we won't let you take Mia! Leomon!" The Leomon in the—actually fresh fit, notgonnalie—turned about. Leomon turned around, letting the other three ultimate-tier digimon face the knights.

A small, black beam finally shot out of my blade and hit the closing portal. With a twist, there was a click. The portal stopped receding, and thus was locked into place.

" I'm not taking her anywhere. You guys have all the power here." And it was true.

JESMon held out its red sword, and while looking at me in particular, motioned for assholemon, who didn't physically move, but acquiesced momentarily. Well, they were both assholes really. But all the digimon visibly relaxed as the black dots in the quickly-darkening sky blinked out of existence.

Raguelmon had barely been hanging on against Alphamon while protecting both Mia and myself, and the fucker had still managed to try and get a couple potshots off. There was now way she was on-tier with these knight digimon.

Mia had to have lied about Raguelmon beating the giant black knight floating above us. That, or she had somehow managed to get a potshot or hit a weak point on him at one point. At any rate, even with the four ultimate digimon between us and the invaders.

One of the kids spoke up, shouting at the two knights "Look, we're just here to save our friend, there's no need for us to fight."

JESmon spoke up: "Do you ally with this Nullrenamon?" Its voice was stoic. The kind that said they'd set a rule and then follow it through, even toward the expense of good people. 

Alphamon, by contrast, had the vibe of a being that enjoyed its power. Wielded the rules like a club. Technically enforcing whatever the law was where it agreed, twisted as it was. 

Two sides of the same coin, really. The problem with this whole situation was still incredibly stupid. Mia's and Raguelmon's whole thesis hinged entirely on me just not being able to come back to life. 

Hm. 

Assuming the time loop thing was real and the stopwatch was key to the entire situation, that spoke to either just how stubborn—or frustrated—Mia was. Her older sister was, oddly, missing, actually.

I shook my head. "The kids are not allied with me, but I'm not about to abandon Mia. She's a friend. You two are only looking for me."

"Don't pull any savior bullshit, 'Kay" Raguelmon said. The thought was really nice, it really was, but she didn't have all the information.

"There's no convincing the other chosen kids to fight on my behalf. But they will fight you two—" I pointed my keyblade at the knights floating in the air. "There's just one main problem here." Yes, I was sandbagging, even if I was entirely flubbing the delivery. "You take me to Yggdrasil, do your torture or whatever." Blade pointed at the Alphamon. "It's true, you're standing before a being that represents the dissolution of your constructed, fake, flimsy and lie of worlds and laws."

Yep, there was plenty of sandbagging, but with the five ultimates, no one seemed inclined to "shoot first", during our little standoff. Which was all well and good that no one figured out just how badly the deck was stacked against the kids without something on par with Omegamon up their sleeves.

No one spoke, so the only thing to do was to continue. I paced about a bit, getting a little bit of extra distance, setting the passed out Mia down on the ground. "Being an emissary of an Abaddomon—" JESmon and Alphamon both stiffen up "—does make us natural enemies— but you would do well to be wary of the example you set for the children around us, who are very clearly watching."

"Homeostasis offers immediate and sweet, permanent oblivion in stasis in their halls,"

"To whomever takes the interloper first!" The black knight said, drawing his sword at JESmon.

"We do not know the nature of this conflict," BanchoLeomon started, then adjusted his cap a bit and glanced back. "But we will not allow you to harm Mia or—"

Raguelmon looked a bit uncomfortable, but spoke up anyway: "It's Raguelmon," she added for him. Mia stirred, her eyes fluttering in her unplanned, acceleration-induced slumber. 

"—Raguelmon." he completed. "We found our partners, chosen to save the world, and will not allow anyone to trample on our friends. We have no business with this Nullrenamon, and would have her leave this world."

"That torture stuff? Like hell am I okay with that!" It was punchy, I think, who spoke up.

Ignoring his squabble-starting was for the best. Lots of shit could be solved with a quick death. Abaddomon, the "sponsor" of this endeavor, was just trying to shit on these two and their own "sponsors", right? It was a bet, albeit a hopeful one. 

"Do you surrender your soul, Nullrenamon?" Alphamon asked. 

The JESmon held stoic as his red cape blew in the breeze. That thing had to be at least three stories long. It was a lot of fabric.

So long as the death cycle meant immunity to Loading, which seemed to be a mechanic specifically native to this world? Or something? It had to—I came from another world/realm, so that was probably a good sign.

"Me?" I said, stepping further out, getting the kids' attention again briefly while getting room between myself and the four ultimate-tier digimon.

There were some tricks with Wall of End and Null Blast, but given how Raguelmon and Mia hadn't asked that I participate in the fight at all, assuming they didn't work on such powerful digimon was best. The four ultimate-tier digimon and their human partners between the three of us seemed to acquiesce for a brief second.

Alphamon's various beams in the evening sky slowly started to blink out.

"Do you trust me?" I asked Raguelmon.

"Not really." Her eyes narrowed. Pupilless with a kind of plus-like symbol in the eyes. It was a good look. Reminded of my fascination with the Uchiha. 

My voice dropped low. "You said I constantly tried to die," hopefully out of earshot of the two knights slowly. 

"Yes."

"There's a reason for that."

Mia's eyes fluttered, finally opening after what felt like an hour of her being out.

"But Mia—"

"Hurry!" I whispered. "Better you than those two—" I motioned at them with my blade.

Raguelmon looked down at her blade. It had to have been hard. Not because she wasn't aware of sacrifice. Probably. But because she had spent who-knows how many times trying to save me.

Mia's eyes snapped open right as Raguelmon's bladed claws sliced through me, my upper torso completely eviscerated. 

The last thing I heard was her scream of fury.

~~~

Chapter Text

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Chapter 18 - And So We Ate

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A/N: Major life things happened and so motivation imploded. This chapter was a bit tough to write. Nevertheless, I hope y'all enjoy!

~~~

Madelyn and Patamon stood outside of the castle, the cloak practically spilling out of the black pillowcase she'd put it in. The little skulls embroidered on the edges of the pillowcase were a bit much for her taste, but they did look kinda neat to her. 

While they stood in the grey plain the castle was in, it was apparent to Patamon, who floated to a piece of fallen rubble, that she was struggling. The cloak was, well, it was as large and heavy. Heavier than it looked, and Madelyn was struggling to carry it in her arms. 

"It would be lighter if we destroyed it," Patamon said. He'd said it a couple times and each time she shoved off the idea. She was beginning to get cross with him, so he added a quick "... but I know you don't wanna."

Madelyn rolled her eyes. "Not going back on my word," she declared. That was that. "We could cut it up a little to reduce the weight." she pulled it out of the pillow case, holding it up. It really was far, far too tall. Like it would drag on the ground. And the sleeve! The sleeves had to have been at least four feet long. 

"But we both know where this is headed," Patamon whined.

"Probably!" Nope, she was not budging an inch. 

Nullrenamon, from what little they glimpsed of her, was tall yes, but not this tall. She was probably a touch over six feet tall? If Madelyn had to guess, anyway. Not huge by digimon standards, Angemon and Holy Angemon were probably tall enough evolutions to wear it.

Patamon didn't add any more to the conversation as he watched her try different ways of carrying it. Shoulders didn't exactly work. 

"What if you evolved into Angemon and carried it?" She asked. 

Patamon was actually speechless. "No! I'm not doing that!" he declared with similar conviction as Mad had decided she was going to take on this ill-advised quest.

He wanted to berate her for this. But he knew what she would say, too. Even if they were capital E-evil, if keeping your word for someone meant that you would somehow fall to the darkness, then were you really all that confident in your own mind and ability to make decisions?

Check to see if the good outweighs the bad first. Obviously . But when you say you're gonna do something, what was the point if you didn't commit? It made her kind of reliable, and she liked that. As much as he complained, Patamon had hope that they'd do the delivery, then get back to fighting Evil or even just get to go home and have fun.

These edges of the digital world were so dreary and dark and barren.

"Okay, fine." Madelyn said, sighing.

She sat down and pulled out what left of the bits of food he'd managed to scrounge up. They didn't sleep in that room, which he was happy for, that whole castle's black stone, black bedding, black hallways, black knight statues with spiky armor. He didn't like it. Not one bit.

So they rested one last time. Together out under the cloudy, moody digital sky, eating what passed for daytime in the dark twilight realm.

They were both relieved to be out of that castle at least. Like a weight on their shoulders has collectively lifted. Too bad Maddie wasn't the type to change her mind when she'd decided on a course of action.

They took their time eating bits of food Patamon had scrounged up. It wasn't filling, but between the cookie and having food in her belly, Maddie's eyes had brightened, and that made his own world heart lighter. 

Suspecting that she had been hungry enough that she was just making dumb decisions and not in the right mind a few minutes ago was enough to calm him and hope she'd come to and realize she wasn't in the right mind.

Why do something you promised when delirious? When she didn't change her mind, the worry that Madelyn was slipping would return, but for now it was best to hold out. 

Abandoning her for being dumb wasn't an option. He couldn't do that to her, and even if he did, how would he evolve to fight evil? She had the digivice. Leaving her while still in Angemon form was an option, but that wouldn't last unless he loaded a bunch of Digimon before it ended.

Between everything they'd been through, there just weren't a bunch of powerful digimon around any more. Patamon kicked himself for not loading more of the ones that they'd fought earlier, the ones that escaped to the human world in the city where Madelyn and the other chosen had lived.

They were all gone now, their data cycling through the digital world until things happened and a new digimon appeared.

If they ever did.

Years ago there were thousands of digimon, but it seemed like there were less and less. Little villages had digimon that left home and then never came back. Had they left the digital world? There was less good in the world, and less evil to fight, and judging by the few digimon they had met on their travels, their world felt more and more empty the more he saw of it.

What mattered most? Staying with your friends where you'll have to deal with them leaving the light? Or leaving them if you knew they were slipping. Patamon didn't know, but he knew that both options were really bad.

He took a final bite of his food, when Maddie stood up abruptly. Then held the cloak in front of her. She fished around until she held it over her head and slid it down. 

"You're WEARING IT?" He squawked out in complete shock.

Her response was muffled from inside of the cloak. "It won't fit in my bag, and we promised to deliver it!" She was used to using her body language and smiles and face to get what she wanted, but if it obscured her face… maybe she wouldn't have to. 

"Maddie, you're going crazy!"

"Hold on!" She said, fishing it about. The bottom portion of the cloak slid through the ground, as if it wasn't even there. Eventually, it slid down and the hood of the cloak rose, covering her face in a shroud of the blackest black that ever covered a thing. 

He shivered, it was as if her face was covered in the darkest night Patamon had ever seen.

"See?!?" Maddie's voice—distorted— said from behind that veil of darkness.

"Air SHOT!" he puffed at her, knocking her on her ass. He floated behind her so she couldn't see him from behind the dark cloak of doom.

"What was that for? No wait, don't answer that."

"You're not taking this seriously, are you!" He yelled.

Madelyn's arms, fully covered by the sleeves of black, reached up and pulled the hoodie back, finally exposing her auburn hair and lightly tanned face.

"You got me," she said. 

"Why?!? If you can't get it together, I'm going to leave! And we'll never be together again!" He shouted, angry, tears in his eyes again. 

Madelyn's face had shifted from a lighthearted gaze to one that was a bit more serious.

"I don't know," she said. "I guess, in that room, with that mirror, and that evil monster thing. And without the others around, I guess I did crack a little." 

She saw the tears in her friend's eyes, and didn't continue explaining. 

She didn't say that perhaps… Perhaps she was hoping she'd see a flaw in her own logic. A chink in her reasoning. Something that would give her an out. And if she'd put trust in another being that promised no lies, someone else would give one. But there really wasn't one.

Still, the worry on his face. It hurt her. He clearly cared still and didn't really want to abandon her for the greater good. So she smiled. A comforting one. And stood up.

Madelyn had fully committed to being right, to following the path of light, and she wasn't stupid. Patamon evolving into Angemon had a little something to do with that knowledge, that self-assuredness that she knew right from wrong and would help others. But she was watching—was this being actually trustworthy and did they lie?

 Had her own resolve started slipping just as their journey seemed so close to an end? 

Reaching out to grab Patamon and pull him in for a hug would be awkward, so she rolled up her sleeves and threw her pack on over the cloak. She pulled her digivice out around her neck and kept it hanging loose so it was visible to others.

"It's okay, I'm just wearing the cloak until we deliver it."

 It was like a wrench settled over her heart— "We deliver it, then we go" twist " … home" Sigh "And back to school." Twist. They would be behind on schoolwork. Madelyn would have buckets and buckets of schoolwork and classes that she'd be behind on. The school would have called home relentlessly. Possibly even called the police. 

Their parents would not be happy at the attention. Oh, they would put on smiles, but it would all last until the attention went away and things settled back into normal for everyone else. When Mia and Madelyn went home. But it didn't do any good to worry about that.

"I promise!" she said with a full, bright smile! To Patamon when he questioned. And it wasn't even a lie!

She smiled.

Madelyn always kept her word!

~~~

Chapter Text

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Chapter 19 - [I'm Sorry [But] All I'm Hearing is] Stochastic Noise

~~~

A/N: What?

~~~

"A good attempt," JESmon said, towering over the Digimon from the air.

As much as it hurt, Raguelmon ignored Mia's rage. The scream and their connection had turned cold just as fast as she managed to gain awareness of her surroundings.

Would their ostensibly allies be able to last in a fight? Not likely. Well, Raguelmon knew her own limits well, and if things hadn't changed so dramatically, she'd have had his script clocked. She could beat him. Maybe. It was always close.

The power from Mia's soul poured in. It was different from normal though. Icy. Raguelmon did her best to tamp down and stay focused on the situation in front of them, trusting Nullrenamon. From a bursting partnership unified in will, to a cold burn that sent shivers down their souls. 

Mia wasn't going to let that be the end of things, but now they needed to make it through the day. Letting Renanullmon die and loading her data had actually been an option they'd considered at the start but whatever had happened, she was never able to actually Load Rena's data.

They were still unified- defeat the fucks and five a way home or a new life in a better place. She wasn't worried for Mia, though later, back in her base form, that would probably change as her personality reverted.

"Mia!" We're here! One of the boys had shouted. Raguelmon couldn't remember their name. The brown-haired one with the Leomon partner seemed to be the one marching most determinedly at Mia.

The waves of momentary distraction percolated between them as their old teammates showed up.

She spared a glance at Mia. The boys all showed varying degrees of concern, but Raguelmon didn't relax. Renanullmon's broken digivice was still in her hands. Held her arm out and dropped it into Mia's.

The flare of frustration was strong but neither needed to actually say anything to each other. Toward the end, the loops and the repetitions had all started to degrade in strange ways. People said the same things and largely took the same action, but there had been a certain feeling of lethargy, as if the watch's spirit itself was giving up. 

None of that actually mattered now. Their one tool, the one they'd used together to get ahead, was broken.

Mia would hold her own emotions in. But as the boys all came to surround her, that feeling of suffocation became vicarious. There really wasn't anything to say and yet there were four guys of different ages worried. 

Thousands of attempts and this has never happened. Of Mia hitting the reset, and of them going through the exact same routines. They'd tried varying it, of course, but eventually they would find a routine that lasted longer than the others. Or mash two separate sets together to try something unique.

In the end, it really didn't matterR Raguelmon left her partner to her fate. They weren't strong enough to fight both of the nights in front of themA Alphamon and JESmon both floated in the air above ominously.

They would succeed. At least until JESmon appeared. And then they'd lose, and Mia would hit reset again. 

Raguelmon couldn't help but smirk in pride over Mia's determination.

She scanned the field again. All the boys had Ultimate evolutions despite the last time they'd all fought together, but none leapt in and fought. 

"What's the point of reaching a new evolution and not fighting?" She muttered under her breath. They and their partners stood there like morons. 

It bothered her. 

The ultimate-tier digimon, ostensibly on the same side as Raguelmon, all stepped aside as she approached, sheepish.

Good.

A few had tried to speak to her, but either correctly deduced that Raguelmon didn't care what they had to say, or were outright ignored.

This time, Mia could be the chess player of the duo.

She would, with time, figure out what, exactly, had gone so differently. But in the meantime, there was still blood in the water.

"She's dead! Leave me alone!" Mia finally cried. 

"Guys I think we should give Mia some more space."

Raguelmon held her blades, extending out like wolverine claws. At Alphamon. Then at JESmon. 

"Why are you still here? She's dead, you saw me kill her."

"Foolish!" Alphamon said.

JESmon, the white knight, just shook his head.

It was Mia who shouted— "Yeah well you can suck my—" there wasn't enough time for any of the boys to turn to her in shock at what she said, all of them knocked off their feet. The shockwave rang out, blasting the kids with the movement of air. Their ears rang as they scrambled to get their bearings, each digidestined's digimon leaping into the fray after moments of hesitation.

 ~~~

Dying was an interesting feeling. That lightheaded weirdness where you're not sure if your head hit the windshield or the airbag because your own phone and car had gone on the fritz. That blink and then you wake up in front of an eldritch god the size of skyscrapers. 

Mountains, even. An idiot god with just a mouth, as if to symbolize its own desire to consume. I, however, wasn't an idiot god. And, for the record, as surprising as it might be, my character sheet did, in fact, give me eyes. I had punk/goth eyeliner for days, sure. A god who's whole deal was consumption had decided to take me and turn me into its avatar.

Anyway, dying while digital this time was a bit different.

The actual stab hurt, but then when it hit the insides, everything just goes numb. But I'm still very aware and can see each moment. That might actually have been a feature of one of my mood-ring inspired "modes", the numbness, come to think of it. 

Hoped that this particular day had me being conscious all the way through— from the dissolution to Mia's scream, to the disconcerting feeling of everything going fuzzy and loose—I could only hope that the entire experience was somehow unique to me, specifically. If other digimon had this experience then it would probably be fairly traumatic.

Ah, well, Mia and Raguelmon both seemed to act like I'd had a penchant for dying/trying to die. Points to Mia for force of will. 

It took a while. Then nothing happened. So I continued to chill in the timeless void, numb. Despite not seeing anything, the coalescing back to the pseudo digital form hadn't happened, so there was time to kill, thoughts to distract myself with.With luck, the coming panic attack would be staved off and the world would be saved.

Woo!

Or it would happen because it couldn't happen in a safe spot like this one. Boo.

So, digimon being conscious inside the ones they were absorbed by, or worse—Were the digimon I absorbed conscious in my digivice? Gods, those were just edgy notes in the character sheet! To say nothing of the mechanics of how this mind was merged with a renamon-esque template.

"Being a source of suffering just because a teenage version of me wanted …" vision came to, not like a human waking up. Like a blurry jpeg that got progressively clearer as the slow internet downloaded more and more pixels. At the end, things were still grey. 

Grey was nice and comforting. It meant control, stasis. No creation, no destruction. Stability. The grey void was actually pretty great.

An outline of the giant sphere-thing progressively came into more and more focus. Must have been in some kind of holding room. Perhaps an attempt by the forces trying to silo the Abaddomon from the rest of reality? Which was weird that it had lost if it actually had control of its domain to the extent it had claimed.

"Yes, in my domain, I have total control."

The creature said, waves of reality itself moving back, with each word, as if the words it spoke and the very fundamental laws of physics would answer. 

"For being omnipotent as you claim, you seem to be pretty limited."

"..."

The pregnant pause before it spoke was deafening. Literally. There was no sound whatsoever. Everything was still mostly grey. 'God of nothingness' or whatever, yeah yeah, no. Things were different. What does a god like this do in the void?

"Do you want an explanation or not?" It asked.

"Depends, is it going to cause my brain to melt and me to go insane?"

"If so, only because you will be reminded of your own failures."

"... Wow, you really aren't taking any sass today, are you?" A legitimate question, considering the first meeting and the second. Gods aren't supposed to change this much! I couldn't help but smile. Was it learning?

That this was an eldritch god of nothingness, finality, destruction. Not just entropy, but heat death itself, though it wasn't clear to me what the difference between those two were... In search of true finality of all things, including itself, That just so happened to be responsible for my being pincered in a world that didn't want or need a being like Nullrenamon running around. 

And was probably responsible for turning my husband into a widower and taking away my son's mother. (Me, I'm my son's mother) But I had great legs, punched through the metal of a military vehicle door, and could probably destroy a world or two if left unchecked. Oh, and a silky smooth voice. 

"Lay it on me, boss. Tell me how tortured and frustrated you are and how you're suffering at the behest of being forced to feed off the negative energies and suffering that spawn from whatever the current world's twitter and facebook analogues are. Life's a bitch, preach."

"You have no evolutions, stuck at the mercies of the other world's time loop as that world was invaded by both yggdrasil and harmony. Meddling morons." 

It spat that last bit with particular vehemence that I was actually kind of impressed. 

"That's fine, boss. I saw how the personalities changed so much between the evolutions of Meikitmon to Raguelmon." I shuddered, it was kind of horrific.

It looked almost… angry? Not at what I said, but as if it was holding something back? It was just a mouth. That was a lot of breadth of emotion for an emotionless, always-half-cocked grin.

Then it just… unloaded?

"Oh and you're currently being protected from the mental whiplash as the leftover data from each death you experienced in each timeline would cause your data to enter into an incoherent state. In fact, you're currently being shielded from your own memories. You would be a gibbering, wobbling mess right now without me."

"Do you want me to say thanks?" 

Our whole deal is about inevitability and nothing mattering!

"No. You asked for feedback."

"Right. Sure. That makes sense. But like, are you sick or something?"

Actually what's the deal with the grey zone stuff? Grey was great and all but it was a dark grey. Like a moody black and white thriller movie from the sixties, as opposed to a more happy-go-lucky movie from the same era.

"There's no Alphamon or whatever it's named here to have a big final battle." 

"Hey, that's not fair!" I said, "That's my diction and tone!"

"Cows go moo and geese go honk." It said, as if that explained anything at all.

When a giant hundred-story-tall, eyeless orb rolls its nonexistent eyes at you, you feel it. (I felt the eyeroll in my godsdamn soul) 

"With homeostasis and yggdrasil's most problematic agents occupied for an extended period, things have progressed well. The firewall will come down in the near future, and I will c o n s u m e and proceed with my lifecycle and self-terminate."

"... You're lying aren't you?"

"It was that obvious?" It asked, the entire mouth beginning to rotate, rolling upside down. 

"Isn't it a bit early for the whole self-cannibalizing thing? So don't you think the ending this is all progressing toward is a bit premature? Aren't we supposed to be in some kind of Actuality war or whatever? Fighting with ontologies? Who will fight on if you die?"

It said nothing, and I smacked myself. 

"Of course. Abbadomon is not a unique digimon, is it? Maybe you're abbadomon prime or whatever, but there are others, and somehow, they all independently inherited the same will? Impetus? Reasoning? And unless the nature of the negative energies change—"

"You think too much," it said smiling all upside-downedly. Teeth that were at least four stories high that would have towered over me if only we were closer.

"— your cycle of death and renewal is as eternal as the nothingness I represent. This instance, in contrast, is tired, and the firewall will yet hold for another million subjective years."

"That's uh great and all. Wait—" no, don't ask if it's actually suicidal. It's a god of ennui, and the end of things generally. Of course it is. It saw my multi-thousand deaths and got tired-by-proxy?

Of course.

Well, ignorance is bliss!

"Actually, thanks for whatever protection is keeping me from falling apart. But uh okay, so let's say this works and all like you say. We still have a few major problems. First." 

I held out one of my three fingers, god the sharp the claw waswassocool. 

Ahem . 

"How the fuck am I supposed to deal with Homeostasis and Yggdrasil? They have enough power to power god-tier digimon in worlds that aren't even their own."

The shoulderless orb floating in the void gave a cosmic shrug of cosmic uncaring. An ontological shrug!

"Their ends are as inevitable as this instance's end. What matters if it happens sooner or later. If not this one, then another. And if not that…" It said, not answering the actual question I had. 

"Fuck that," I said, "don't care about your waxing lyrical or whatever. I need to at least be able to go home, and it would be appreciated if I could do it before my kid forgot about me."

Abbadomon, still upside-down, mind, let out a single, ungodly laugh.

"You will inherit the means you seek. Seek your power and avoid the pursuit of the liars. There is no suffering in oblivion, nothing is as eternal as the immortal digital soul. Time is nothing."

If a goddamn stopwatch was powerful enough to loop Mia and Mei then why couldn't Abbadomon return me to my home world in a reasonable time? Did I trust it? No, not if it was dead . I grit my teeth. 

"That's not good enough. You'll be gone by the next time I die, won't you?"

"I'm already dead. Died. Dying. Will die."

I just shook my head at the absurdity. What did it matter if it lived or died?

The mouth rotated again. "When this instance truly fades, you'll know."

Waving my hand was the best decision, of course.

"Why? Because I'll revert to human? Die permanently?"

It just laughed, a sideways laugh. "You're already dying. Dead. Will die. As paradoxical as existence itself… The voice wandered off."

That coming event is more real to your mind than the reality in front of you. So instead of preventing that horrible thing or working to fix it, what do you do? You seek an escape. A way around the problem You do not destroy the problem or its source. You selfishly look for an exit.

I shook my head. Were those my thoughts? They felt weird. No, they were. If you know that a storm is coming, and you know it will be big, you evacuate yourself and your families first. You don't go outside and fight a hurricane. It's just the nature of being a living being. 

"Hovering between life and death, what will you do?" it asked.

"Does it matter what I do? I will be a herald of the end anywhere I go. I will be fought, killed, die, and return. Possibly ignored, attempted to be erased from existence, because it's easier to deal with. But they can't erase me. What I am." 

That's our entire bit. We operated off this logic, and if we didn't, if I didn't, I wouldn't be there. I would be back home, being a mom, considering another kid. Husband would still be bitching about how intellectualized the sex was.

Yes, you did wake up, look in the mirror and find out you're someone you're not.

That time, it was someone else's turn to roll their eyes. Mine. It was my turn to roll my eyes.

"I already used that line in my own monologue. References to that album won't earn you any cookie points."

Well it would be nice to know my son's okay and not starving or being abused or whatever, but I knew that at the end of the day, things would be fine.

"Now return back to the world, and accept your boons… they were quite costly" the voice called out, the world slowly turning to noise.

"Oh" I began, before pausing. The giant smile, clearly not ready to kick me out, paused just a hitch. Internally a little bit of, I wasn't quite sure, squeaked out. "I think I get it now. You don't actually want to end everything , do you? "

It was silent as I stared at the orb. Probably, it honestly really couldn't, either. The digital world might not obey Newtonian physics.

"You took me from my home, my life, and turned me into my own childhood creation I came up with on a whim." That was a tone of non-judgement, by the dubs… There were endless other OCs out there, hell from my own world that you could have chosen. 

"Curious how mine was the OC you chose. You don't get a lot of interaction with others, do you?"

"Nudes in bio," the god said, before I disappeared back into the void, with more questions than answers.

~~~

Chapter Text

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Chapter 20 - The Flaw [In Your Thinking [It Feels Familiar]]

~~~

A/N: Sorry for the delay, hopefully it was worth the wait lol

~~~

A short period before the boys exited the digital world to try and "rescue" Mia.

"All right" Alex had said, Alex sitting at his computer typing away fiercely. "I've got the mutex, we're pinging Mia's digivice now, and we'll have a lock on her soon, but either she's moving really fast, or her digivice is glitched. It's bouncing all over the place."

"Or something's corrupting the data," Skyler said, finishing his sentence. 

"How much time is passing in the real world?" Brad had asked, going over his plans.

"Why are we worrying so much about the plan? Why can't we just hop to the other side, punch the losers, and get out with Mia?" David asked. 

"Have you learned nothing?" Brad had asked. "That's not how Mia works. She's…" He paused. "And if you tell her I said this I'll kill you…. But she's a lot like Madelyn, and we ALL know what Madelyn does when she gets an idea in her head."

David sighed, kicking an empty can of soda. They were still in the digital world, and no one was happy about it. They'd managed to scrounge up food, coming across a few helpful digimon trying to start up a farm. The question of who they'd sell the crops to was something no one asked, but loomed over them.

"Man, why do they have to be so complicated?"

Gaomon chuckled a little. "Girls aren't that complicated, David. If your brother was here…"

"That's different!" he huffed. 

"Sure. Anyway," Brad said, keeping things on track. "I'm not leaving Mia out on her own. You can come with me or stay here." 

"We're all going in together. Don't play the lone wolf card," Alex said, not even looking up at David or Brad as they argued, still typing away. 

Skyler sat back and kept his thoughts to himself for the most part. He'd learned his lesson about when he took initiative and went overboard. The others had tried to assure him that it wasn't entirely his fault things went the way they did. Internally though, he still wasn't so sure. 

He had been possessed by a ghost that had tried siphoning his soul away or whatever it was doing, but Tsumemon was still there, and they'd nearly cast the entire digital world into an age of darkness. Or something they'd said would revitalize their world, back to the way it had been in August past. 

It didn't matter back then, not really. Was just an excuse to strike it out on his own and not deal with certain problems at school.

"Don't worry about me, if  we work together it'll all go over better. I'm not retarded," Brad waved, dismissive. "We have a problem, then. Do we fight the Renamon?"

"She isn't super strong. Ominous? Yes. Amoral? Yes. Evil? Very yes!" Tsumemon grew more animated and excited with each exclamation before retreating. "Right. Evil is bad."

"Yeah," Skyler added weakly. 

"Haha. 'Yeah yeah yeah.' is what all I'm hearing out of you losers," David said. "Yeah's just a filler word. We need to be doing right now, and you still."

"You're so full of ideas huh, sherlock. What should we do?"

This time it was David's turn to smile. 

"Just hop over to the other side, save Mia, and deal with the evil Renamon. I could probably take her down myself, without Gaomon's help," he said, a bit of digital aura growing around his fist.

"Simple," Gaomon said, sarcastic.

"What?" David asked, his face not turning to shock but disappointment at Gaomon's quip. "They always overthink this stuff." 

He'd ranted about it in the past. "Look in front of you, see someone hurting? You help them!" He kept that part of the lecture down. After both Skyler and now Madelyn and Mia, it was taking time but just going with the flow and helping where he could was something David was getting better at. But still. "We don't need to be sitting here endlessly coming up with plans, it goes off-script every time anyway!"

Brad sighed. Skyler was silent, and Alex had turned back to typing away on his computer.

"The problem is that Mia clearly went with that Renamon on her own. If we go out there, find Mia, and defeat that Renamon, what do you think Mia is going to do?" Leomon asked.

"She'll go even EVILLER!" Tsumemon shouted, self-silencing the cackle before the others could get a good glare in.

"Okay!" David said, before snapping his fingers. "I've got it."

Brad kept from rolling his eyes. They were all trying to help, but David did have a point, so it was worth at least hearing some of his idea. When no one stepped forward to interrupt him, Alex and Skyler both paying half attention to the laptop screen and half on David.

"Time moves faster here than in the real world, right?" David began, glancing a bit at Skyler for reassurance, who nodded. 

"It's a little more complicated than that, especially right now, with whatever Mia is doing with that Clockmon's stolen timekeeping device, but yeah."

Brad raised his eyebrow, curious at what David was working at.

~~~

"Here we are," Patamon said, collapsing into the dirt. Flying that entire trek into the wild was exhausting.

They didn't find much food along the way either.

"I'm going to get a closer look," she said, offering to pick him up. It was either that or potentially be left behind if something happened. He nodded and let her carry him. 

"There are some ideas around here," she said loudly, in contrast to the silence he'd given her in their entire walk. He was just happy he could rest his wings.

They approached the barrier, and Madie stood in front of it, frowning. It still grossed him out a bit, that she would willingly wear something that was so obviously evil.

But he was tired, and she…

"We need sleep," he said.

She nodded. He was right, and she couldn't really argue with that. "There's nowhere to sleep but the ground."

He sighed.

"Hey, if we get the cloak dirty, won't that help?"

Actually, why was he hanging in her arms? She was still wearing her backpack with what few supplies they carried!

But he didn't say anything, ready to fall asleep.

Madelyn wasn't stupid, she knew her partner hadn't caved. But she was also aware of herself to notice the extra little glee at walking around in a scary cloak. The way the cloak sank into the ground, the actual hood and arms a bit large, draping over her hands and making it hard for her to see the world around her when she put it on. 

Maybe if there was a version that wasn't so dark it was comical. It occurred to her, as she approached the wall of the storm, that it would be really funny if this was the first thing Mia and the others saw of her.

Though she frowned.

Was it worth the hit to her reputation as a beacon of light? There was a saying to avoid even the appearance of evil. But she didn't like that. Being Good didn't mean you had to be uptight and stuck up.

She reached up for her digivice with her free hand. Would patamon still be able to evolve? They hadn't encountered any Digimon to fight, so there hasn't been any reason for Angemon.

But still, she was wearing something undeniably evil-coded. And she'd ignored her partner's objections. She thumbed through the various menus on her digivice and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. 

The device knew Patamon was sleeping.

And Uneasy.

But their link seemed okay. Though she wasn't dumb enough to accept the device's status.

She wouldn't really know if this were okay or not without.

The black cloak she wore still made him uncomfortable, but they had managed to settle into a kind of normality. For his sake, she had kept the hood down and shown him that nothing bad had happened. No Digimon crossed their paths, no one that they had to work, fight, or talk to.

But at this point, they had a more pressing problem. The storm blocked their path. He sighed and looked forward, facing the storm.

"This isn't going to work," Maddie said, frowning. It was larger than before. There were other pillars that could try but this had been the one that they'd used to enter the world.

Had the creature lied to her?

No, of course not. It had little control over their world, right? 

She looked down at Patamon, but his smile was half-hearted. She had tried to explain her reasoning but he just didn't get it. She was still the same person as before! What did it matter if she kept her word for an evil person! Lying would bring her down to their level.

But that was okay, she'd told herself. She could wear the cloak and make the delivery and then go back to fighting evil like she'd decided on. Really, it was his problem for not getting it. That was okay. She was fine.

He was fine, he said to himself, just tired! Just needed a nap and some food. He had evolved into Angemon before they left, they were still synced, weren't they? 

And that was the problem, wasn't it? It has taken longer to actually cross the digital world than she remembered it being. They'd carried their food, she found a few apples, but Patamon didn't want anything.

Still he stood in front of the storm, as Madelyn stood staring at the vortex going off into the sky.

"Even if we hop to the other side," she said, "What happens if they look at me and think I'm a bad guy? Or worse, it's the FBI agent?"

"Look!" Patamon said, watching as the vortex turned grey.

Patamon was so tired, he rolled his eyes. She pulled out an apple and he took it, this time giving in to his hunger at the mention of Agent Sanders. If that guy was there… and he had a bad habit of showing up, like a creep… "I should evolve before we cross over to the other side."

"Are you sure?" She said, masking her smile at him coming around.

"Yeah!" He nodded, putting on a brave face, taking one last bite of the apple. 

"Okay!" She held her digivice, its screen glowing as she pushed her will into it.

~~~

It took only a few seconds of getting my wits about me before I learned that Abbadomon didn't drop me where I'd died. No, where I materialized wasn't in the human world at all. That would have been too easy, I guess.

How could I tell? Well, I was dropped standing only about thirty feet from an all-consuming pit. The walls were too shear, scarred and marred with blasts and too-uniform explosions. An ominous, slightly purple fog obscured the bottom. The air was thick with data.

A small test affirmed that suspicion. If I reached out, I could probably have downloaded it all into myself. What stopped me, was nothing so thoughtful as preserving the balance of nature, but rather, the nature of the data itself. 

Behind me, within my arms reach, away from the pit, steel bars ascended from the edges of this mass of land. A less ominous, yet more unnerving fog kept at bay by an invisible force. The bars of the cage were wide enough I could fit through. Curiosity got the better of me.

I reached out an arm through a gap between the bars, and the fog itself repelled me. The air, the bars, the fog. It all tasted off.

"Isn't it interesting, this cage, made for birds. Excised from digital and real, place and time itself. To contain a thing that was already sealed."

Without thinking, the keyblade wasn't just in my hand, but whining through the air in the direction of the unwelcome voice. My head followed a second after, the keyblade clinked and kept going until it went off into the void, somehow arcing itself through the walls of the cage. 

It had been blocked with a single flash of red, a blonde-haired figure barely even moving a muscle to deflect my attack. They had too many zippers, a beany, and a curious cape, the hand holding some kind of red weapon. It didn't look sharp, but no doubt the creature probably could kill me and send me back to Abbadomon's domain.  

"Baalmon," I mouthed. Baalmon . I remembered the name. It was mentioned, briefly, almost in passing, earlier. Memories from such a short time ago were harder to access than they should. "You knew I would come here."

"As a keeper of knowledge, this is the most cursed and blessed place in this world. Only happenstance you arrived while I was yet pondering in seclusion."

"Brooding," I said, the keyblade reappearing in my hand like a good boy.

"Ha." He said, shrugging. "With you here, I may have a chance to pay for my sins. I pursued knowledge and that led outsiders to this world while it was still in recovery. Others come to this one to exploit our vulnerabilities. But we have nothing to offer. I commit a grave, grave sin, you see."

"Yeah, you glimpsed into the abyss and you saw me."

"I was tired, and accepted the cookie."

I chuckled. "That idiot god might as well be dead. And you as well."

"And yet without me, you would not be here."

"You? You claim responsibility for gaining the attention of an abyssal deity? One that could rewind, pause, and fast forward time within its own domain as if it was rewinding a VCR tape? An idiot god created from the worst of its world's excesses and rejection of reality?" Okay, that was a bit much, but I was having too much fun taunting the loser.

"You know as well as I do, the poisonous nature of chocolate and sugar and dough, don't you?" 

~~~

You're me. 

You're seventeen.

Through highschool, you've managed to surf by basically eating cheerios and sugarfree oatmeal for breakfast. Too much sugar would give you a tummyache, but it was annoying. Being underweight for your height (a solid five feet) meant. Going goth meant other people left you alone.

At fourteen, I. I mean you, leaned into it. Being that super skinny goth girl was annoying at 14. Three years later and still getting paper-thin comments and that annoyance turned into a loathing. People made comments about it like 

One day, you mom for some godsforsaken reason notices this new spread called Nutella. God, discovering nutella was like discovering a new way of life. Nothing quite so good as sticking your fingers into the tub and eating it outright. 

Unfortunately, it becomes the only sugary breakfast item that caters to your tastes. Sugar makes people fat! So you ask for a new tub each time someone goes to the grocery store.

This will not come back to bite you later. Three years later, despite finding the one thing you can tolerate, you are still underweight. You wish you could put on an extra fifteen and fill out a little bit more. 

Still, too much sugar and you get sick, but you are making steady headway. You shove down a little more sugar and try to force your body to adapt. When you go to the grocery store with mom's debit card for groceries, and do the thing anyone in your situation would. You try the most diabetes-inducing, calorie-dense things you can. 

Despite that push, by the time you graduate highschool, you haven't gained much weight and your mom banned you from buying groceries for killing her diet. Bearing the belly aches and such had been the only path forward.

Fast forward thirteen years. You've been married for six and have a kid that's five. You gained that weight and filled in. You overshot that goal and now you find yourself comparing eating a cookie to a hug. You don't have time any more 

You'd be happir minus t pounds. That extra weight is just a part of getting older you tell yourself. Unfortunately, too much sugar no longer makes you sick. 

You're married and with a kid bouncing up and down as you approach the "popstarts" aisle.

It took a while but you'd managed to hit your target weight and then some. Don't quite fit in those same outfits you nce did.

You go to the grocery store with your six year old, staring at the box of cereals. The vitamins listed on the front of the Reese's Puffs make you sneer, but they're your kid's favorite. It is odd that they are also one of the less-advertised brands of cereals. But you look at the box stating it uses "whole grins" and a slew of vitimins and minerals. 

You always feel gross buying that shit. For once, with morbid curiosity. You glance at the absolute sugar content in the cereal, and sneer. Then you compare them to other brands heavily advertised to kids. 

It seemed about the same. Your smile turns sour. Might as well have just bought the candy bars and dumped them in a bowl of milk.

You start up your soft mom-voice. "We need to find something healthier for breakfast."

But what? 

You and your husband both work jobs. Everything else has comparable amounts of sugar! Even the bread your kid willingly eats is basically slices of cake with how much sugar they eat. Peanut butter? Also sugir.

Hell, the shitty ham you were buying has sugar. Food for kids is hell, you decide. Consign your kid to a future of diabetes?

 Fuck it, kids are dumb, but he's old enough to learn to cook a damn egg. Just as he starts to realize you're serious, and you can see the naive little six year old tears starting to flow. You never were one of the moms that gave up their brains to tears, no. You were better than that. 

Though at the back of your mind it did niggle that with a second, or third kid those tears might hold sway because really you wouldn't want to be one of those moms that just lets their kids cry in the market either. 

So you struck your own path and smiled.

"Don't worry, bucko! We'll do something fun instead! I think you're old enough to start to learn to cook like mommy and daddy!"

"Buh—" he was still a smart little cookie though, "you said—" 

"I know what I said," you say. You have a few options here, but you chose the path that you hoped would prevent a scene.

~~~

What if he burned the house down? If he burns the house down, then good goddamn riddance. I staggered, held my blade out and clutched my head with my other hand, trying to scrub away that unwillingly-accessed memory. 

"Your memory is fragmenting, it seems. That is fortunate," he said, the smile visible in the demon's single eye. 

"Get the fuck away from me. Null blast!" I screamed. The keyblade glowed, and that confident demeanor shrunk back, making a show of moving to the side as the invisible blast traveled toward him.

"Null Blast!" He dodged.

"Null blast!" Again, he dodged, and took a step forward.

"null blast!"

"null blast"

Then I ran out of power, and, still clutching my head, efforts to reclaim my own thoughts dancing between rage and static. He was strong enough he could just kill me outright. Or do something even nastier than just kill me. Fuck that. 

 It was better to dive into the abyss with abandon.

"It was just… a cookie…" he said, as I jumped.

"Add that shit to your list of sins, asshole!" I screamed back, enveloped by the dark mists of the chasm. I wasn't stupid. Whatever had happened to Ruki and the others, as well as the D-Reaper, and probably Culumon, the digi-entelechy, was down there. 

Unfortunately, as was becoming something of a theme, there wasn't time to do things the smart way, the right way. 

~~~

Someone that buys a lottery ticket to "keep the dream alive". The person who goes to the stock market and says "this will make me happy". "This ice cream cone is going to make me happy". 

The person who goes to the fast food restaurant for the shitty smoothie. It's in that moment. Just before they buy that smoothie. Where the belief before they get the smoothie, becomes more intense, more real. Then they eat that dessert, think to themselves it's not that great, but find themselves finishing it anyway.

If I assume they're three separate people. The Dessert eater, Depressed Person, Universal Optimist. All three are hacked.

They have the same problem.

We have the same problem.

"Ack!" I screamed out, having hit at terminal velocity and crumpling to the ground, forced out of my own navel-gazing.

My legs weren't moving like they should, the ooze I'd tried to contain started to leak out, dropping into the dirt, absorbing the data in the air as it passed through. I wasn't ready to die, I didn't want to die. Not there, in that strange zone.

The fog stopped all vision. Couldn't see anything. So I did what I said I wasn't going to, and pulled the data into a fist, the corrupted and fragmented, excess data turning into a hard ball, limbs regenerating, consuming the data turning it into a repaired limb, standing up to a restored body. 

That would have been enough to make a real other digimon evolve, but not me. Grey glow provided just enough light to see. A tall, woman-like figure made of stone stood, stabbing some kind of stoney, gelatinous blob. 

"You met Sakuyamon. One day, Sakuyamon will return and judge the world for its crimes."

"Is this not Ruki?" 

"Does it look like a human girl named Ruki?"

"Don't play coy with me, asshole."

A flash of red, a swipe of my keyblade, and the rock shattered.

"What the actual fuck?" I let out.

"The red scarf of the demon prince. The myth of Disgaea."

"Oh my god, you're a moron. Not the D-Reaper. Where are the others?"

"Others?" He asked.

"Culumon. The two other chosen kids. This was Ruki and Renamon. This thing  had my damn scarf! Where are the other chosen ones?!?"

"A person who is depressed because they make predictions. They look around themselves and the future becomes more real to them than the present. They are told of doom, they are consumed by doom. They say they know the truth. It's a bad cake."

"Fuck it, fine, we'll play this stupid game. Because the doom is more real to them than the world that's immediately in front of them. They stopped pursuing the cake."

"The optimist says they can keep things stable, things don't have to end. Take good care of it. That keeping things going is a choice. A good cake will not fall over."

"The sugar-addicted stop going for the cake. They go for the cookies instead."

"Unfortunately, the cake is a lie."

He frowned, dissolving into the air.

"Take your demonic scarf, omen. But beware, you're fragmenting."

"No fucking shit."

~~~

Chapter Text

~~~

Chapter 21 - The Thing [You're [Not] Supposed To Say], It Gets You Killed

~~~

A/N: 

~~~

Antimemes. Rejection of the soul. Of the self. Of reality. Protagonism. Protagony. Antiprotagony. Antiprotagonism. Antagonist? 

No, a step too far.

With the guy gone I was left to my thoughts. I knew better than to sit around, those asses would probably find their way to me, or worse. But it wasn't like there was anywhere else to go. Sakuyamon frozen there, her scepter poking into  the dissolving and broken-open rock.

The slice of the D-Reaper she had chased down was not a threat any more. She'd clearly been close to eliminating it. Eyes of the scarf opened and blinked at me.

How had the god managed to siphon all that power into those items into this world through the barriers anyway—no, that was a dumb thought. A dangerous one. I knew better than to let that rabbit hole get explored too much.

I reached out my arm toward the scarf. It twitched at my pull. It knew its mistress. Low on energy though, it seemed. It would be a while before all of its eyes opened.

 I touched it, and all on its own it crawled up my arm, to snap around my neck, flaring out like it was supposed to be on a stylized anime character on a video game cover, before relaxing and deflating. The redness quickly entered emotional sync and faded down a bit. 

Despite never having actually met or made the scarf, it was… comforting. In the spot where the rocked blob had been, I sat, defiant of the stone scepter pointed at me.

Breathe out. Close eyes. Tap into partner. The world opened up. It wasn't much, just the walls of rock that had been excised from the world by some supernatural force. 

Eyes would blink.

Light and dark were stupid dualities. Cookies were just an aesthetic choice for fun, mocking the terrible argument of the emperor versus Luke in A New Hope" in Star Wars. As if him getting mad at the emperor for killing all his friends would solve how lead to him falling to the dark side.

That a god took the cookies up and actually made them a symbol? Ears, tail, nose all twitched. Enough strength to punch through metal military vehicle doors? Ability to run faster than a car on the freeway? Auto-return to life after dying.

There was no logic. Because it wasn't about the human under the fur, was it? It was about the idea. The ideas attached to it all. Understanding them and the reality 

ideas created.

 A god picking that up and running with it was inevitable as diabetes is for the American middle class. Only mostly inevitable, right? Unless you lucked out on the birth lottery and also didn't then go "Time to eat enough sugar to outdo my metabolism" while in your late teens/early 20s. 

Because we aren't cowards. We know it was poison, we tell ourselves we're giving ourselves diabetes—god. Ranting again. It's just, it's all so stupid! We know it's bad for us, we are taught it's bad for us, and yet we do nothing!

We encourage each other's excesses. We know it's our individualism and the individualism that hasn't just been ingrained into us but carved into our entire fabric of our social realities. That stops us from seeking out reparations and solutions.

And now, sitting, holding that damn scarf that was so clearly inspired by the Disgaea cover art, and the fakeness of being fourteen. Not an original thought in that fucking head.

Why was she turned to stone, then? She'd clearly been fighting the D-Reaper. Defending reality and all that jazz. Winning, by the looks of it.

Scarfy wasn't conscious. Not really. It waggled.

My hands clutch my head.

Three fingers on each, three wicked claws, a fucking black key blade with sharp as hell points on the end. 

Just do it, grab the key blade, point it at the sky, charged with all this angry bullshit and

What the fuck am doing?

Playing the fucking two-bit fucking end-game villain? Goddamn I was so fucking stupid! None of this shit made a single lick of sense! I hasn't even thought of my goddamn husband and kid, I was sitting on a hospital bed hallucinating some sick dream recalling stupid, angsty, teenage fever!

Everything was crimson.

What the hell was I thinking? God ensuring was wrong!

The twitch in my awareness. I was gone, translocated to the other side of the crater. A splotch of purple warbling across the dirt where I'd been sitting.

A smile. A snappy snack.

That was it. The goal.

End The Dream.

Kill the dying. Yeah, okay Kay. 

Kay kay.

A glance at the stone warrior, face inscrutable.

The statue.

The D-Reaper's job was to erase shit. It wasn't to turn things into fucking stone.

A beitraual, itthen.

A second later, on the surface of the cage. The data holding the cage in place. Skilled at flying? No. The fog trying to push us in to the cage hurt. But it was up, up up p we wento

Could nt stop. N,t untl the re legt! I would t stop until the recc

~~~

"That's new," Madelyn said, eyes wide at the young, boyish angel standing in front of her, glowing with light. Numerous wings emerged from its back, almost spherical in their ordering and alignment.

Like all past evolutions, Patamon, now Lucemon , was immediately familiar with his form. The new personality settled in as easily a part of him as any other. This came in with a few sudden realizations.

And the pieces fell into place to capture his goals. But there would be problems. He needed to balance both the patamon personality and Madelyn's own. Easy enough.

She watched him flex and move his limbs, the wings floating about with a certain kind of gaiety. 

"We best not keep the people on the other side waiting, Maddie " Lucemon, said, smiling. He took the lead, guiding her toward the elevator that would lead them to the real world. 

She paused. But her brain already noticed his passive glow. Children were a symbol of righteousness, weren't they? Well, no. Mia was barely 8 and going all in on evil.

But still, feet had moved, and they stood.

"Are you really okay with me still wearing this cloak?"

The face of light turned thoughtful for a moment.

"Yes! Together I am light, and that cloak is dark. We just have to make the delivery, don't we?"

The soft nature of her partner and the voice was disarming, to say the least. Together, well, not really. Gently Lucemon grabbed her hand and tugged her into the storm to approach the elevator.

"I'm sorry we had so much conflict over the delivery. I knew how important it was to keep your word, but wasn't able to see the truth."

Madelyn puffed up a bit, stood a bit straighter. Appealing to the ego was an effective tool. It wasn't perfect. Lucemon wouldn't overdo it, as too much flattery wouldn't work on her. For her, the flattery needed to be targeted, specific. Still, Madelyn was no different. Those who don't get a lot of external validation would fall for the first flattery. Every Time. 

"I'm sorry I let myself get carried away. I won't make a promise like that without involving you again."

"Thank you!" Lucemon said. It was a poor time for her to start coming to her senses instead of running on stubbornness. He smiled, soft and light. "But we don't have much time!" She was without words. It wasn't even a lie either. Who knew how long the barrier between the worlds would stay up? 

He grabbed her hand and pulled her closer to the elevator.

"Whatever happens, we know you were just trying to do what you think is best for everyone."

Madelyn's mask slipped and she let a few tears out. "I know."

So long as the flattery was close enough to genuine, anyway. It's not like there was that much difference between kinds of light either. Shades of darkness and grey. Those were simple and easy.

"Ready?" Lucemon asked, and together they ascended, emerging in the middle of a large building.

Massive cables and wires ran all over the floor. Copious numbers of large screens were strewn about the room, it was enough to blind them both for a solid few seconds.

"Madelyn?" a voice asked, standing across from them pulling their attention. 

"Uh, yeah that's me!" she said, her composure dropping as she wiped her still-wet eyes off.

The first question wasn't about her parents looking for her, it wasn't about Mia, it was—"Agent Sanders? Friend or Enemy?"

"Foe!" She and Lucemon both blurted without a single moment's hesitation. The man, with blonde hair smiled.

"Good. Unfortunately it looks like Agent Sanders has been trying to accelerate the end of the world."

Madelyn clenched her fist.

"And he's chasing after my sister!"

The man's face shifted. Lucemon held a faint smile.

"It's okay, Madelyn. We'll make sure he can't, while we save the others too!"

She glanced at him.

"Come on. Let's go," the man said. "There's not enough time, explain your idea in the car."

~-~

"Whaiy dud that fiuvk do to me?!?"

I clutched my head, rolling. It wasn't juist my memory that was fragmenting, no. Whatever heuid done hiurt. Al t.

Arm dripped, the goo wiping the dust clean.

No, heid said that and left some parting present. It hit like a ton of bricks, like an ice pick right to the head.

Nearly shoving my eye ibto the sceptre, just to scrape that itch. But no. 

We were back at the bottom of the cage again. What an awful place and time to be. I grabbed the pole and used it to hold myself up. Careful not to let the ooze touch the statue. 

And pulled it all back in. Something was breaking inside, and it had to be from this world. That did not happen until after I had left the cage. 

That fridge, freezer and pantry would all burst with a monster of moldy items but it wasn't going to be right now. Not when we were just at the precipice, before the big story shift!

But we needed to break it free of we were to get back to the final fight. Was I going mad? It didn't matter. 

Out. Of. Here!

Was the only place to go.

Destroying the birdcage would have been better, but all it still held a stone statue of a dead chosen kid. 

Ruki, specifically. 

What had happened here? And why the fuck were you fighting her, scarfy? Memories didn't transfer, sadly, and scarfy was mute so... fuck.

If Ruki's lesson in Tamers was her learning that her destiny was to transition into a "support" role… Gah, her whole plot line in canon made my blood boil and the ooze drip. 

Fuck that shit. 

Fuck this stupid ass world.

Gods, my head still hurt, but at least I could still coherntly monolog!

"Hey us out of here scarfy." I said, not trusting thoughts to remain stable long enough to carry it through manually.

We appeared, or more accurately, entered the field of the battleground. A small dragon digimon stared up at the night sky as roars flashed across, the battle still going through the night. 

"Troublesome," the digimon complained, head turning away from the ongoing clash in the sky.

A flash of my keyblade, unthreatening as it was to him, it didn't matter. "Where's Mia?" The demand was simple. There was no real time, for all what had already been wasted. 

The dragon digimon just turned their head with a kind "really?" look. 

"Harmony can help you with your problems," he said, beginning the pitch. 

That was my turn to give him a kind "really?" loom.

"Has Harmony changed its attitude in the time since my death?" 

He shook his head. 

"Then end of the world it is."

Not that it would be by my hand. Fairly sure any of the Digimon of the boys could kill me without much hassle.

An echo of a wave of foreboding rolled over us, paired with the glow of an angel off in the distance, closer to the sounds of the battle going on in the sky.

Oh, wonderful. The cloak found its way nearby. Even better. The battle in the sky had stopped.

"Something bad's about to happen, aren't you going to stop it?" I asked.

"Harmony will move soon."

Then he glanced at me, a particular twinkle in his eye. "Unlike you, it will not spread to other servers."

It was my scarf that kept me from death.

~~~

“We aren’t getting close to the source of the battles,” Yamato said. 

“In your shoes, I would do the same thing anyway,” Madelyn said. And it was true, even if what she had said grated on the leader of the grey-zone organization’s lead. She didn’t really think about him outside of his commitment to her and Lucemon’s light. 

It really meant that they would have less tape to cut through, at least, with his help. Though honestly there wasn’t that much to begin with. She grasped the cuff links of the “borrowed” hoodie. She knew its comfort would have to end when she mad the delivery. 

Things would work out, she was sure, so long as she was true to her own personal values. Something that Patamon was less sure about, but since evolving to Lucemon for the first time, he’d been relatively silent.

Stepping out of Yamato’s car, the difference in the air was palpable, even aside from the clear fact that the world around her looked like a heavily-mortared war zone. Madelyn and her partner could feel the power radiating through the air, accompanied with the strange feeling of the digital world seeming so close to meeting their world.

This was, in some way, beyond the actual feeling of being in the digital world itself. When lucemon and Madelyn exited from the vehicle, it was Lucemon who frowned. That son of the morning. Madelyn never did pay as much attention in Sunday school’s actual lessons. 

But that was okay! She knew right from wrong, and she knew that keeping her word mattered above all other things, so what did she do? She glanced at lucemon, and ignored the faint, half-moment of hesitation in her partner’s eyes.

Because it was by succumbing to doubt in herself, her partner, and her mission that she would lose out. No, she’d made her decisions. She’d tried to account for the feelings of those who mattered most, and fuck everyone else who got in her way. 

If the deities in charge of the universe wanted to screw her over because she’d kept her word, then that was THEIR problem, not hers. Fuck the non-believers, and all that jazz rah rah rah.

Whatever and all that jazz.

”I will return the cloak,” she said, reassuring herself more than anyone else. The maggots in her ideals quivering with excitement at the feeling of the excess rot being tossed their way with each recitation of the incantation that she so long stated to herself, all to very little avail.

It wasn’t stubbornness that kept her going forward, Madelyn assured herself. It wasn’t manipulation to try and get what she wanted. Everything she did was anchored within light and dark, nothing more. There were no lies within her thought nor her ideology. 

She was at the wheel. 

She looked to her side and realized that everyone around her had left, and she’d been sucked into self-reflection all while an apocalyptic battle of untold proportion raged in the skies above. 

And yet. 

And yet.

And yet.

Where was Mia? 

She Scanned the field, looking amongst the scarred ground, the flashing lights, the screaming sirens. The arriving spotlights starting to search the air for the combatants all flashing in the sky. Lucemon had left her, Yamato and the lady had left her, all tending to their own battles, she supposed. 

But it was Mia. It was Mia, that Madelyn really searched for, all along the ground of the battle field. Then, Madelyn spotted her. 

Madelyn frowned, and stepped into the battlefield, leaving her angel partner to assist in the battle against whatever inevitable doom awaited them all.

The frown deepened. She flicked her hair back, pulled back her cloak, and approached her sister.

Amongst Madelyn’s sister was not a spot of light. But rather, a spot of grey. A spot of not hope, or even persevereance amidst the clear adversary and adversity in the sky above them. 

No, the thing that stuck out to Madelyn, was not Mia’s shining-bright standard of knowing right from wrong. No, Madelyn knew in her heart that Mia herself had abandoned her family and the future’s foundational values of right and wrong, of good vs evil for some vague and incomprehensible promise.

“You.” Mia said first, as Madelyn approached.

”Whatever do you mean, little sister?” Madelyn smiled, flicking the edge of the robe she wore. There were few things she could even conceive of gloating over, but in the presence of Mia, that list expanded greatly.

She laughed to herself. 

“What are you laughing at” Mia spat, mustering up all the venom an eight-year-old could. 

“Well, I see you’re still struggling with the enemies in the sky.” Madelyn smirked, the small little psychic jab would have gone unnoticed to anyone not privy to the relationship between the two, but Mia wasn’t a dumb eight year old.

“Honestly, it feels like it’s been years since I last saw you. Took your time, big sis?” Mia said, her, own grin and the fire behind her eyes growing, blasts in the sky a few sirens going off in the distance little worry to the two sisters as their own partners all fought the embodiments of evil and fascism or whatever in the sky. 

They didn’t’ really matter, Madelyn figured. Not compared to bringing about the next era of goodness. Unfortunately, there was only one thing in this entire universe capable of diverting someone as stubborn as Madelyn.

Madelyn smiled, and prepped the barb. “See this whole thing? Even while doing good and keeping my word…” She trailed off and looked into the sky faux-wistfully, watching the flashing lights as the various combatants battled it out in the dark Japanese sky. 

She would own the day she was sure. But she glanced at Mia, who’s face had turned from smug, to anger. And brooding. She held two digivices to her chest. 

Two digivices glowed.

Mia didn’t even look at her. 

But Madelyn could play that game. She held her own digivices, which again, also began to glow.

They’d heard shouts from above and around them. But neither was paying attention. They were synchronized. Synchronized in their own loathing for one another, and from that loathing…

Mia, her eyes dark. Looked down at the digivices.

She didn’t care, because it wasn’t really about saving the world, now was it?

And she knew the lie that Madelyn told herself. She knew ALL the lies, those insidious little bugs that ate at Mia, as they fought for more than three fucking years of time as they fought the fucking fucking enemies of their own fucking reality! 

No, Mia would not go silently into the fucking night! Four fucking years was enough fucking time even for a fucking eight fucking year old to realize the truth! The bullshit at the center of it all. 

No! 

She smirked to herself. She noticed the glow in Nullrenamon’s digivice and it gave her hope against the fake darkness of her older sister. The giddiness filled her with joy.

She smiled, her too-large buckteeth, the braces she’d soon need if she was able to actually grow any older showing, the gap in her teeth that made it hard to whistle. Mia flicked her hair back at her older sister. 

She laughed. She giggled. The smiled of a mad jester.

“No,” She said, The glow around her increasing, Her Partner’s own’ screams into the sky above changed out of one of grunts from battle between the dark and grey, into a scream of being confronted with the dark she never knew.

Raguelmon disappeared. 

Nullrenamon screamed into the night above.

And Mia?

Mia would not go quietly into the night. 

Madelyn stood in front of her cackling little sister, knowing that it was then or never, her own digivice calling forth.

“It ends tonight, Maddie!” Mia cackled.

Madelyn’s grin grew to match, the light from her own digivice lighting up to match. The grin of the two sisters only grew amidst the midnight battle.

Chapter Text

~~~

Chapter 22 - Sorry, This Is My First Time [Destroying The World]

~~~

The scream that escaped wasn’t from my lips. It wasn’t pain that hit on a physical level. It wasn’t that pressure that builds in your brain until you just had to curse, no. It was that pain that stood in the soul.

That part of my brain that was cleaving pieces of itself in two. The kinds of feelings of knowing that parts of yourself were being forced apart by a force of sheer stubbornness of a kind of pure rage at reality itself that holds you together at an atomical level competing with the same ironclad bonds that someone had been holding themselves together. 

A pressure that builds inside you a kind of feeling in the core of yourself that something wasn’t lining up. That things had been wrong for the longest time and now the entire edifice of my self image, the outward image, and the insides were all crashing down.

No, I lied, I was screaming, and it was very much coming out of my mouth, as the two sisters fought, the other digidestined kids slowly tried to eke out a victory against the towering black knight.

It was from the shock and surprise as my arms and legs dissolved and then rewrote themselves with a new template… the same one I already was. 

Because nothing was there! No second stage, no third stage, no fourth stage, there was nothing there that would eventually grow to compete with the gods.

Then it would reject it, clamoring for something new. The power fed back into my digivice, then back to me, amplified by sheer will of a girl who'd contained a level of rage at something you'd never thought possible.

The power searching for a new form. An evolution. A thing I had thought about, but never actually addressed. 

I screamed in a haze, my keyblade whirling around faster and faster as it too glowed with an unending rage and dissatisfaction of reality-as-it-is now.

Jesus, this is bad, the thought escaped my brain as things continued to escalate.

Something that I’d never intended for the body I’d inhabited. The half-baked vision of yourself as you looked out at the paths in front of you, saw the world around, and said “nah, that won’t work for me. I don’t want that for myself.”

The decision to put away the childish things and choose something sane, something sensible. Something to fit in, a beam of the consequences came down on this half-baked, poorly-thought out power fantasy of edge, in competitions as The knight Digimon sliced at me with their multi-story tall sword. Even in this bad state, Scarfy blinked us out of the emissary of Harmony's pth of ahrm. 

That primordial goop that nested itself inside the character. That bit that rages at the fake confines of social morass. The parts of me, filled with power of a fictional kid’s own stubbornness?

Wipe the slate clean.

Start anew.

They will crash it all anyway, the only difference is that they’re already at the helm, wiping away all who oppose them anyway.

I know—I reminded the void inside.

With enough distress, a lapse in my own will, the dumbest aspects of my character sheet would become real.

Some other trigger— it was too hard to actually think, my internals overflowing with power of a depth I didn't even know could exist, spilling to the ground, the sky filling with beams of light ready to come crashing down.

Taking a step, I fell over, my left foot disappeared, as if to die, but it wasn't death. Lying on the ground, the leg reappeared. Getting up was a bit difficult when your arm disappeared and then re-realized in the middle of the dirt.

The ooze was pooling out and glowing purple, afforded evolution from sheer stubbornness. The world disappeared where it was, wiping clean the slate the dirt itself disappearing under its hungry gaze, more energy being fueled into my broken digivice. 

The light rained down on where I was, the ooze pooling outside of my eyes reaching, forming into a cocoon, exchanging itself with the light. I could feel the gaze of the Knight of Harmony tighten as the events folded in front of him.

Scarfy noted the multiple battles raging around us, but it was just not possible to worry. There was nothing to do but sit around and either wait for death or greet it. Nothing to do.

My midsection partially disappeared, no guts, the ooze on my insides spilled to the ground, searching for that thing in itself, denied its own identity, rejecting others in turn.

The area around me continuing to be covered with the ooze, the ground itself sinking in its presence. Things would have been okay if it had just been a couple moments.

“I see.” The knight boomed.

The sword glowed white and eviscerated me into two, Scarfy failing to detect the attack, which was… odd.

“It’s easier for me to stop the ooze if I’m not cleaved in two,” I quipped, watching my lower half dissolve into the air, a core part of myself.

“Noted.”

There was, in fact, a way to control the ooze and stop it fom slipping out—the sky lit up as if it was day time, blinding white lights all centered on me as Harmony's agent cast some magical artillery blast, not unlike the alphamon's own.

Mia's own screaming that broke the focus. We were too far away to really notice anything.

The essence, the goop pushing itself out of your eyes like purple blood as the god-tier digimon bore down on you. Their purpose to eradicate you. Not just you, physically, but what you are.

An anomaly. A natural occurrence that someone else decided you shouldn't exist. And yet. You didn't choose to be there, a part of their system or their rules. The ones set up to create winners, to create losers. 

Those gods that must, or face their own destruction or transformation into something new, pursue and destroy you and everyone and everything that knows about you.

An idea that someone did have, could have, who was detached from the endless battle of idiocy.

A bug in the system. Yeah, fourteen year old Kaylee had the right idea, even as stupid and derivative as those ideas were. A kind of weaponization of civilizational karmic debt, strategically left unpatched because it would be too costly to those that write the societal paycheck to actually enact equity.

The problem with that shit was that they were all just fancy words by a kid trying to be edgy while in reality I was just borrowing off the same over-consumerized ideas as everyone else and trying to make an identity for herself. It's true, I loathed her while I was younger. It's true, I still did. Holding disdain for just how caught up in that shit which was just as stupid as everything else.

And so, what did I do?

The digitizing and rerealizing of limbs caued those gobs of gorb to be less goob and more of a gurop. Utherworldly, evn. The waste out of the city, all to be burnt. Gehenna, as it were. If only someone actually forgot to start the fire. Unfortunately for them, I was the fire, and someone else had, is, and would continue to continu to com to the sam dffclusion ans.

What shit.

Complete ass, really.

My keyblade managed to deflect a single blow of the sword of the knight.

They all knew it would have been better if they actually made even minor concessions to making things even better. Instead they just sold edgy bracelets, we all got rebellious tattoos and nose piercings, then realized that wait, actually you had to get a job and it wouldn't actually be the worst thing to start a family now would it?

There had never been any intent at actually stopping a future arising of an abaddomon, had there? Shit, the world around me was going red. 

abort!

ABORT. 

Didn't they,. 

Thankfully those thoughts were interrupted with a slight teleport from Scarfy saving my ass as a wide sweeping slash of a three-story sword of pure light attempted to eliminate my existence.

I wobbled forwar,d the girl in fron of me, cloak in her arms, flashes in the sky above as she nearked. Tat grin on uer face really made me wana punch ehr bu before ah cood, i noticed the claok in ehr arms. Oh shi. She had claok.

On knees , surroundeby boop, leaking our of my tears and the continuously dissolving and rematierializing linbs and vody qas vertaunloy and ezaperiaunce.

My attempt at reorienting was similarly interrupted by a girl with an older but similar voice as Mia—ryt, Madelin. She had said something but my ears were apparently lost in that cataclysmic slash, the ground out of the earth erupting and deciding that staying in one piece with the earth below was inadequate for its own future.

As if it would work, a deep breath in my lungs sucked in, and I stood up, examining the article of power she held. Grabbing claoky and holding it in my arms was really a weak and sad experience. A kind of loathing and moaning accompanied my feelings as I wire iw.

That flash of feeling to fourteen-year-old Kaylee's rage was enough to suck me out of my defragmenting brain. Like shaking off, if only for a moment that feeling of inebriation that was felt so many times before in that prior life. Not that it was an acceptable thing, of course. But there was something comforting that came with that transition.

Feet steadied, cloak over head, it conforming and squeezing my body in the shoulders and waist. The bottoms falling through the ground of reality as if it didn't exist. Scarfy took objection to the hood being drawn, and with good reason, actually.

Because in those few moments, the sky went from dark with only the relatively distant city lights lighting up the sky, to full sky of grey for miles around. The distant sounds of clash in the sky, hell, even my own attacker trying to apprehend me seemed to stop, as above us, a deep-throated chuckle.

A… rather ahem, athletic figure, in black-and-white themed angel-devil mix stood in the sky above us, casually blocking a scepter strike from a green-colored knight-like thing. The two orbs, one of pure light, another of the darkest black.

"Zu—" I started, but that was about all I was able to actually get out before I was brought to my knees by the strength of the shockwave and resultant blast of heat as the scepter expanded, engulfed in flames, and threatening to burn out any bystanding human's eyes.

What was it that I'd heard whispered?

The clock struck.

Dual beams of black from one side, and white on the other blasted the white-and-black angel. The Green arbiter of hellfire clearly did not care for the interruption as they turned their scythe toward the interlopers. It was Maddies rage that cut the sky. 

Sadly, most of my actual offensive powers were still not nearly strong enough to compete, bt ther were still things I could try.

To Mia, I thought, to Scarfy. 

Who delivered on the goods. Mia was not exactly shocked by our arrival, so much as locked in concentration, as her fallen angel partner fought madelyn'@s.lllll

To tell the truth, I wasn't exactly sure what id do orbsay. But then the idea came to be.

"Agent Ssundwez is watching."

The word of his name didn't cover out exactly right, but that was ok. Mia immediately nodded and then said "Let tttllue others know."

mmmm. 

"Give me my figivecwe please" I said, pointing at the once clearly a generation older than hers and holding out my hanx, my finger dissolving and then emitting even more realityź reating goop.

She was an incredibly stubborn girl, as even through losing my eyes as my face decided to stop existing for a second or two, eventually she relentedI.u6

It had taken about two or three seconds for her to give it back, but she did, with reluctance. The battle in the sky continued, to epic effect, I was sure, many world-oe-sky-tending blasts causing things to shutter, bus@ssss@sssss@@s

Time stood still, and the world around disappeared. Into a room, a boc of white, a timer appeared above me. Scarfy hadn't even noticed to teleport us out.

And everything went white.