“It’s like I’m all alone. I can’t hear Alphamon either.”

In spite of his sudden melancholy mood, Examon couldn’t help but flinch as Dorugoramon mentioned the other Digimon.

“Hold on.” Examon paused, blinking a few times as his eyes flashed back to his own yellow hue, “When was the last time you heard anything- and I mean anything at all- from Alphamon?”

“Hrmm…” A soft growl later, Dorugoramon, sounding as unsure as she had been until now, replied, “Pretty sure it’s just before we took a leap of faith back into the Human World. She pretty much just wished us luck.”

”She’s telling the truth, actually.”

There was no plausible way Examon could have missed that familiar, feminine voice within the sphere of consciousness shared by him and his human partner, one that definitely didn’t belong to any of the physically fused parties inside the form of the draconic Royal Knight.

“...” All Dorugoramon would be able to make out was Examon suddenly flinching again, and then going completely still. A slight twitch of his yellow eyes, perhaps, and maybe the sound of his teeth grinding against each-other.

Inside the sphere of consciousness, however-

“I swear to Yggdrasil, to the Sovereigns, to Shakamon- to whatever else fucking else claims it’s a God,” Examon started, the mindscape warping as his sheer indignation forced the form of Alphamon’s consciousness to phase into focus within it, “You are such a goddamned-”

----

“Yeah, I’m tuning out of this one,” MagnaGarurumon grumbled as Examon erupted into a inferno of colourful language at Alphamon over the other end of the Hazard link.

Hey, you wanted to know what happened to Alphamon too, didn’t you?

“Consider my curiosity satisfied,” The Knight grumbled at the Hazard, tuning him out too. Too much had gone off the deep end today for him to put up with that spectral creep for any longer than he had to.

At least with Millenniummon torn to shreds and sinking deep into the depths of Tokyo Bay, he could catch his breath for the moment. Having doubled back before the vicious triple assault of Parasimon, Dorugoramon and Dynasmon had blown the abomination away, he’d set down on one of the roads overlooking the bay, and was now watching as the other combatants made their way away from the field of battle.

Guilmon, meanwhile, cringed as his fellow draconic brother pretty much let his pent-up frustration loose with an array of words he deemed not befitting of a Royal Knight, but he could hardly blame him; even he felt that Alphamon’s actions could be very incredulous and brash at times, to put it lightly. This might just be the most incredulous stunt she had pulled as of now.

While he was trying to pick vital intel, or any intel for that matter, from the string of curses, Ranamon could do nothing but stare as the red Digimon suddenly started cringing, then clasping one ‘ear’ and rubbing his snout, almost as if he was shielding his ‘innocent’ hearing from something she couldn’t perceive. “Hey, hey! Don’t tell me you’re starting to hear things,” she said, giving the former Royal Knight a stare of disbelief.

“T-That’s not it, Ranamon. I merely received ‘words’ from our allies, is all.” Guilmon, not wanting to further worry the one Digimon he was in charge of, tried to assuage her, but before he could get a coherent explanation across, Hazard popped in in his spectral wholesome, offering some ‘juicy details’ to them both about how Alphamon came to be within Examon’s sphere of consciousness, certainly not a place where she belonged. This was a particular offer Ranamon felt too good to miss… even though she couldn’t exactly make heads or tails of whatever was happening to Guilmon.

“Well, duh! I would surely love to know why the former leader of the Royal Pain in The Ass is… well, not leading,” Ranamon replied, already eager to simply shift through whatever intel she could get in her boredom.

“At this point, I would very much love to know what is happening to her and Examon,” Guilmon grumbled under his breath, wanting to know as much as the other Digimon about his former leader.

----

“- after everything we went through, after everything we talked about, you still go and pull this bullshit without so much as a by-your-leave! What the hell?”

Throughout Examon’s frustrated tirade, of which she felt herself deserving, Alphamon didn’t utter a single word and simply let the dragon vent as much as he would. She was neither offended by his language at her nor bothered by everything he was saying about her. Having taken a deal behind closed doors with the Digital Hazard, she had guessed that she had it coming.

“And besides that, would it kill you to finally take some goddamned responsibility for yourself? I know I’m not innocent, but you really put me to shame here- first you run off, then you take control of Zei, and now THIS. You’re supposed to be the First Knight, how about you damn well act like it?”

Patiently waiting until Examon no longer felt the need to give her a piece, or pieces to be precise, of his mind, Alphamon quietly nodded and replied with calm, almost bemused tone, “I will admit, everything you say are very justifiable. Once again, I have done something without consulting you and I apologize. For the last time.”

“I somehow doubt that.” After the initial firestorm of pent-up frustration, Examon seemed to have reached a deadly calm in berating Alphamon. Perhaps he’d gotten everything off his chest, or perhaps he’d simply accepted that ranting at the Knight wasn’t going to get her to leave his body. “But for your sake and mine, out with it- the hell are you playing at jumping over here? Dorumon and Zei finally get tired of you?”

“Perhaps. I know for sure Dorumon doesn’t always like me,” Alphamon replied with a soft chuckle, the memories of the grumpy Digimon bringing some levity to her somber mood, but her tone soon became serious. “Dorumon has lived under my shadow long enough. As long as I'm around, she will always be a remnant of myself. She deserves to be her own Digimon and I sincerely believe that she is a far better partner for Zei than I could ever be.” Pausing for a moment, she then continued, “That said, this is just one way to resolve this quandary. If you prefer, there is another option.”

“Out with it, then.” Examon’s harsh glare had softened as Alphamon explained herself, but grew harsher still as she continued. “I’m done with all this cryptic bullshit from everyone. You had the Hazard bring you into my body because you wanted Dorumon to be free, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and guess the other option’s even worse than this one?”

“Given that the other option is to subsume Dorumon back into my being and be whole once more while erasing any and all traces of her existence, I will leave that to you to consider.” Alphamon’s voice was stone cold, making it very clear that she was perfectly capable of doing what she had just said regardless of how she and Examon felt about it. “Would you prefer that instead, Examon?”

“How about you go fuck yourself?” Examon was anything but stone cold. “The hell kind of choice is that? You jump over here uninvited and then tell me that’s your only other option?” Examon’s glare and voice weren’t all that grew harsh; the world of the mindscape began to shake on its axis, a low grumble filling the atmosphere as it grew oppressive and dark.

Perhaps most striking and shocking of all was the one green eye that glared at Alphamon alongside Examon’s yellow in the other.

“I’ve half a mind to throw you out and let you take your chances without a body,” he snarled, his voice becoming a synthesis of Siggy’s and his own.

If Alphamon was smiling, she certainly wasn't showing it, but the gleam in her eyes seemed to speak of the fact that she appeared to be pleased and, for some reason, very relieved to hear such harsh words from her own ally. “Thank you for confirming my decision to do this, Examon and Siggy. I owe you both a debt I can never repay,” she said to him, her voice now shifting to the previously gentle and calm tone she had when she first materialized in the mindscape. “I only ask that you look after and care for Dorumon and Zei as you have in the Digital World. Do that and you both are free to do to me as you will.”

For a few dreadful moments, the world around them continued to shake as if a giant hand was trying to crush it, and Examon only continued to glare. The sound of glass cracking could be heard, and then the shaking stopped.

“If this really is the only way, we’ll do it.” When Examon spoke again, it was still his and Siggy’s voices together, and the odd colours of his eyes remained. Anger was still clear in their voices, but now it was calmer, more subdued. “But let’s get something clear. We’re not doing it because we want to. We’re doing it for their sake. We’re doing it so that they have something less to worry about. And the moment you try anything like you pulled with them with as much warning, you can get out and tough it on your own.”

With a great, laboured sigh, the dark atmosphere quelled in the mindscape. The dark, oppressive aura faded slowly, leaving Alphamon and Examon to stare each-other down as their greatest and hopefully final confrontation came to an end.

With a quiet nod, Alphamon replied, “You have my word. Now then, I believe there is still one more person you need to speak to. Especially you, young Siggy. She needs you more than anyone else right now.”

----

If Dorumon wasn’t at a loss before, she certainly was now. Here she was all in her lonesome, mentally speaking, as she stared at the dragon in front of her, wondering if she had accidentally snapped something inside his head with her words. For a moment, she thought of ditching Examon and leaving to find out what was going on, but for one reason and another, she stayed with him without so much as a grumble, patiently waiting until he regained his bearings.

After a few moments, a quiet grumble announced Examon’s return to attention. He blinked a few times, his eyes flashing from yellow to chartreuse to finally green after a few turns.

“Right. Sorry, was a million miles away, there.” Appropriately enough, Siggy’s voice was clear and audible over Examon’s own; between that and the green eyes, it seemed that his partner had taken the back seat for the moment. “As it turns out, so was Alphamon.”

“... I don’t get it,” Dorumon replied, sounding more perplexed than shocked to hear that Examon, including Siggy, knew where Alphamon was. “Still, at least she’s around, but why did she ditch us?”

“Taking it straight from her own mouth, she wanted to stop being such a pain for you and Zei.” Examon sighed, rubbing his armoured temple. “If you wanna know exactly where she is, let me put it like this- apparently giving up being a pain for you two means doubling up on being a pain for us.”

It took Dorumon a moment to digest the new information and another to react to it in the form of a low, angry grumble. “If her idea is to let me do shit myself, I’ve certainly fucked up. I don’t even know what’s happening to me, let alone Zei.” The way she clenched her claws, gritted her fangs and flicked her tail suggested that she was more than agitated, but at the very least, she was trying to keep a calm head, or one as calm as she could muster. “Would be nice if she could tell me where Zei is before leaving.”

At that, Examon stalled.

If Alphamon was right, Zei wasn’t gone; just lost in the horror and darkness of all that had happened. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to pull her back, and perhaps Alphamon was two for two; with a push from behind by the two Digimon in the union of minds, he called up all the strength he could as he pressed on.

“I don’t think she’s gone anywhere, Dorumon.” Examon’s- no, Siggy’s voice was firm as he placed a hand on Dorugoramon’s shoulder. “Even if you can’t feel her right now, I’m sure she’s in there with you- and I’m sure there’s something we can do to bring her back.”

An anxious Dorumon wasn’t quite sure of what to make of Examon’s, or rather, his human partner’s, explanation to where her own human ally was, but she was quite sure of one thing: The suffocating torrent of chaotic emotions was still there, deep inside her head. She realized the implication of it, but felt powerless at the same time, unable to simply dispel the mental chaos.

“I just want Zei back,” Dorumon replied, her tough demeanor starting to crack and her voice took a more bestial turn reminiscent of the incoherent monster she once was. She was trying to stay strong, mainly because the last thing she wanted was pity from Examon, of all Digimon, but she was having a hard time keeping her composure intact. “I’m nothing but a big, sick joke. I couldn’t be my own Digimon for the longest time and, now, I can’t even do half a decent job to keep my human buddy safe.” In her fit of fury- or perhaps desperation, Dorumon slammed her tail hard against the road, leaving a gash in the asphalt. “I’m done being fucked up and fucking up! I’m tired of not knowing what’s going on! Just tell me what I have to do to bring her back!”

Dorumon’s desperate attempt to stay strong might have worked to fool another member of the group, but she wouldn’t have any such luck with Siggy; though he only nodded and patted her on the shoulder again as her furious desperation took hold. “I don’t think you’ve ever been the joke you say you are, and I’m sure Zei would let you know as much herself.” Perhaps Dorumon was stuck in the darkness, too; unsure of who she was and how to escape Alphamon’s shadow.

And perhaps that was the key.

“Look, idiot.” The next word from the great dragon knight’s mouth was his own, and his yellow eyes blinked back over Siggy’s. “You think you’re a joke? I spent years doing nothing to stop the other Knights just because I felt helpless without Alphamon and Ulforce around. Then when she comes back, turns out she’s just as much of a joke as I am. You’ve been there for Zei ever since you met, and you’ve done just fine protecting her- you’ve never been a joke, and anyone here would tell you that. But right now, everything that’s happened to you is feeding into her, and everything that’s happened to her is feeding into you; one of you has to break the chain.”

While Dorumon struggled to understand what Examon was trying to tell her, she gradually grasped the essence of his words, though only with a good deal of effort. Those words could have been spoken by her other allies without changing the core message, but Examon had a special way to speak directly to her in a way that resonated strongly with the otherwise desperate Digimon. She became silent as she tried to accept the fact that, for all her weakness and shortcoming, the fact that Zei hadn’t died until this day proved that she had done a decent job.

“”Break the chain”?” she muttered, having somewhat calmed down after Examon’s talk. “You made it sound so easy… but if that’s what it takes to bring Zei back, maybe I should start trying.”

With that intent alone, Dorumon began to feel more light-headed. She stumbled slightly as she struggled to keep herself upright.

“I guess I’m just scared. Between this whole shitstorm and what happened back in the Digital World, I’m just not sure where I stand amongst all of you,” the dragon growled. Suddenly, her voice began to split as if there was another person talking at the same time. “I don’t know what to do or where to go.” In a split second, Dorumon’s voice disappeared entirely and another fully took her place, one belonging to none other than Zei herself. Dorugoramon’s eyes, previously a shade of bright gold, now took a dull, brown hue.

“It’s dark… I... can’t see...”

Once again, Examon’s eyes changed colour. But you wouldn’t need to see them to realize the change had taken place- the way in which the dragon pulled the smaller digimon before him into a tight hug at the sound of her voice was all the indication anyone who knew them would need to know who was in control now.

“Just follow my voice. I’m here for you,” Siggy reassured Zei, his usually-calm voice almost cracking with the emotion dwelling beneath it.

“... Siggy…?” Zei’s voice sounded disoriented and disjointed, a glimpse into her rather fragile mental state. “Where… to go? I can’t see you. I… don’t want… to go… Scared...”

“Don’t be scared, just let go.” The embrace grew tighter for a moment, out of both worry and relief; but not even a moment later, it grew softer. “You can do it, I believe in you.”

To Zei, it felt as if she was listening to a faint echo, but there was a deep warmth in it. She wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, or everything around her for that matter, but that kind voice roused the weakened and battered spirit within her. She couldn’t see where it came from and she couldn’t tell how far it was due to the darkness that seemed to cover her entire vision, but she needed- no, she wanted to reach that voice.

“Let go…” A soft murmur as Dorugoramon’s eyes began to regain their gleam. “Siggy…” After what seemed like the longest time, Dorugoramon’s body relaxed as one shaky claw held onto Examon’s arm in an ultimately futile attempt to steady herself, the dragon eventually crumpling in the larger Digimon’s arms.

Scared and scarred as she was, Zei was back.

Biomerging had gone smoothly, and would be much faster than trying to navigate the crater-covered Tokyo roads. BanchoLeomon leapt from ruined tower to tower - business offices, apartments, a hospital. MirageGaogamon had done a good job clearing people out of the paths of destruction - while he still couldn’t count the number of corpses on both hands, there were still far fewer dead than there should’ve been. Than Takeda probably would’ve planned for.

Seriously, fuck that guy.

Finally moving past the bulk of the destruction, BanchoLeomon caught sight of a familiar gigantic figure in the distance. A burst of speed and a few moments later, he touched down next to Examon, raising an eyebrow at the strange figure he was talking to before shrugging it off and presenting an emptied pistol.

“It’s done. Lucas put two bullets in his brain. And didn’t learn anything that we didn’t already assume. Just some ultranationalist nutjob that was trying to harness Digimon for profit.” He spat on the ground. “Dirk died for that. Stupid bastard...if he’d just stayed home, this would have been over by now.” He shook his head sadly.

With Dorugoramon slumped forwards onto him, Examon first carefully moved into a crouch as he lowered the smaller dragon to rest on the ground, before he offered his friend a nod that was somewhere between relieved and weary.

Before he could open his mouth to talk, however, the earth rumbled as waves emanated from the harbor. An unearthly howl roared from the depths of the water as BanchoLeomon whirled around, snarling.

“Oh, what now?!”

---

Millenniummon was no more. Rodendramon had begun the ascent towards the surface of the water.

Jordan breached the surface, shaking the water from his hair. A Chrysalimon lowered a towel to him from its perch high on the wall and informed him in its typical monotone voice that the prisoner was refusing to talk, would he like to deal with her personally? She kept asking for him anyways. He grinned, opened the door-

Dukemon stood there, lance aimed at his head - it was time to finally punish the boy for the crimes he had committed against the Digital World. His assistance against Imperialdramon and Parasimon did nothing to mitigate his crimes, and with the final Digimon to threaten the world put to rest, there was only one threat left to deal with. Shrewmon was trying to push past, begging him to run as Dukemon's shield began to glow. The light threatened to burn Jordan's eyes, but he couldn't run, no. He turned away from the light-

Lucas was looking at him like he’d lost his mind. He shook his head, muttering that the younger teen needed to stop spacing out so damn much, and then asked again what his thoughts were about going back to the Digital World to finish clean-up. The others chatted quietly, their knightly partners discussing replacing their fallen ex-comrades or dissolving the Royal Knights altogether. Jordan closed his eyes, just for a moment to think-

He opened them. Suichi stared at him in horror, Liamon's muscles tense and the digimon clearly unsure of how to act. Stammering, how could he. How could he do this? They'll help him though, they just need him to let them help. Jordan shook his head-

A different team of humans and digimon. Each stared at him with nothing short of pure hatred, the digimon at their Mega stages and flexing their claws to fight. He could feel Shrewmon behind him - reluctant, but unwilling to abandon. Not when Jordan's own students threatened to tear him apart. He braced himself as they lunged forth-

The hooded digimon's claws sunk in, tore open his stomach. He didn't die. The digimon jerked his claws upwards - did he really think he was ever special or worth anything? He didn't die. No, and Jordan was lucky he was feeling generous; he could be far, far worse, he mused as the ribs snapped apart. Jordan lowered his head-

He raised his head from his desk, feeling the paper peel away from his forehead. Shrewmon chuckled - of course Jordan had fallen asleep at his desk. When closing time had passed and Jordan still hadn't come home, he had to come check. Good thing one of his friends was also working - or maybe drinking - a bit late and had been fine letting Shrewmon in to check on Jordan and make sure he was fine.

What was going on?

---

Millenniummon’s parts dissolved into the water, mixed the data particles with the real world molecules, slipping through each other like wind in a cracked foundation. The water and the digimon had done much to tear the threat to reality to particles. The particles floated in the water, scattered to the ends of the earth. Not even a handful remained.

That was enough. The particles began reconnecting, linearly, hexagonally, deliberately, growing into a seed.

Millenniummon could not be done yet. There was so much left to do.

The seed grew, the structure grew. It collapsed, sprang anew even tighter before the water currents and gravity could scatter it apart. Growing slowly, growing larger, assembling behind the departing Mega-level. It was still invisible even on a microscopic level. Millenniummon was gone. Millenniummon remained. The crystal solidified.

And from its core, a wave pulsed outward.

Rodendramon froze, halfway to the surface. The crystal paid him no mind. Millenniummon did not care. Threat level was minimal. It could be contained. The crystal grew. The macroscopic level reached and it did not relent. Hexagons grew lean and jagged, their organized structures collapsing upon themselves in favor of speed. Linear expansion shot out, faster than even the crystal could form, pulling water together until the crystal could take its place-

Rodendramon burst through the surface of the bay, a chunk of blue crystal lodged through his lower jaw, his eyes still unseeing. UlforceVeedramon, who had yet to depart, heard the sound and recoiled at the sight of the digimon who had been working alongside them.

Even worse, he still breathed. His form shimmered before pulling back together, the crystal still visible.

UlforceVeedramon prepared to shoot down and break the earthen warrior free before going to re-gather the others. The plan had worked, he’d seen it. This wasn’t his fault; there was a factor clearly none of them had known about. No way the others would have left if anyone had an inkling there was something now waiting down in the inky water for them-

Duftmon had done much to improve the speed of his thinking. Duftmon had not done the same for his reflexes.

“MILLENNIUMMON EVOLVE.”

“MOON=MILLENNIUMON.”

The water in the harbor shot up in a torrent, enveloping UlforceVeedramon in midair before dragging him down towards the bay with the force of gravity.

From the water emerged a massive crystal, a speck of red glowing from inside. An outline of twin dragon heads glared balefully from inside, promising death on all it gazed upon.

---

Far out at the docks, Parasimon first froze as UlforceVeedramon was sucked down into the bay by the erupting pillar of water, before he shot bolt upright at the sight of the structure rising from the mist and spray. He called his lance back into his hands as he prepared to fight-

But as the crystal became fully visible floating over the waters of the bay, his many eyes clouded over at the very sight of it.

His head filling with screaming voices, he blinked and looked down at the scene before him. Almost a hundred dead at his own hands, whilst the survivors cowered before him, one more attempted uprising put to rest. Not for the first time in the last few days, he began to feel sick, but it seemed to do nothing to affect him; Susanoomon merely floated over the battered, broken army, the winds howling and screaming around him as all thought was drowned out by the voices and the thought of upholding Yggdrasil’s will.

Further away yet, miles from the bay and what rose from the depths, a dark mist began to rise from the ground- and outside that mist, it was as if the world had stopped moving altogether. The smoke from the earlier destruction stopped moving through the air and held its shape like a great nebula, the ocean’s waters stood as still as if they’d been frozen through, and fleeing civilians seemed like dolls stuck in place.

Over the ocean, the mist was a dusky red, whilst over the land to the north, the mist was dark grey. And soon, within the space enveloped by it, the air was filled with a deafening roar of accelerating winds as the two mists began to twine around each-other.

The soft, labored breathing of the stone-still did not belie the chaos within. The short breaths and punctuated exhales, much like that of a large sleeping dog, mirrored the sounds of the rising and fading surf from which he had been hurled not so long ago- not that the ocean was in a calm, with a devil's geometry rising from its depths, drawing in to it a profane mist.
A dark golden ichor seeped from Rodendramon's pierced jaw as another hot breath washed out between the edge of the beach and the start of the city, where the crystal of rage had sent him. The muted sound of shifting flesh and clattering armor were soon overcome as a surge of ichor stained with red flowed from the comatose Mega's throat.

---

'When was I in the water?'
Jordan mused as he reached the surface. Odd. It was cool. Comfortable. Why was he here? A sensation in his jaw made him look up. Sickening terror filled his soul as a spined tendril reached for him. He recognized the vile form before him. He fought to get away, to reach for his Digivice, but he was unable to change his course, to stop his hand from accepting the creature's presence. And then it spoke. Its words made his heart drop. 'No. No no no NO!' It couldn't be? Why? He couldn't be here! It had to be a lie! And then-

"Desist, or I shall lay thee low."
A shimmering form before him.- Doors opened to reveal Gallantmon. The aggression in his stance was startling. Had he not assisted against the Orci Swarm? No, this was-
-Before a sea of fire, cape billowing in the wind, stood a grand figure, ornate armor shining with rage. In his hand, a sacred Halberd. Behind him, within the flames, a pair of- He was found out. But how? And why Gallantmon? He had no way to know. Was it-
The Sacred Halberd Wyvern was lowered to him- Gram was pointed at his head. The shine from Agies was blinding. He couldn't move. He didn't move. Jordan chose not to move.

Then, everything was back to- wait, no. No it wasn't. Jordan remembered being in an alley with Zei and Dorugamon. They took off and then... nothing. He was standing in front of the others, but Shrewmon wasn't there. Then, Lucas scoffed, and Jordan had enough. The air gathered around him, fluttering about, grasping at his jacket and hair as the shadows seemed to intensify.
"Damnable uncouth upstart..." he growled behind gritted teeth.

---

Rodendramon lay still, the pool of ichor having spread onto cracked concrete. A seagull, which somehow escaped the carnage, settled itself behind the armored body of the Digimon, letting out an alerting squawk. However, there came no response.

While BanchoLeomon and Examon were making heads or tails of what just happened, a soft growl escaped Dorugoramon’s metallic maw as the dragon slowly, if not shakily, pushed herself back up again by digging her feet into the asphalt. The beast showed no signs of wanting to back down in spite of her clearly weakened condition, her feral thirst palpable in the air around her. That said, it didn’t seem to act purely on instinct or bloodlust anymore, a sign that she was no longer the feral Digimon she once was.

Fangs gritted and claws clenched, she looked at the two silently, as if acknowledging their presence and re-affirming their status as allies, then turned to the sky, brown eyes scanning for any threat in their sights, muzzle pointed towards the sky and a deep snarl signalling her alertness.

“I smell a threat,” Zei said to the two. Her voice, normally gentle, if not a tad stoic, was gnarly and simmering with feral backdrop, as if a wild animal was pretending to be the normally-composed woman. “It smells of the ocean… Of prey.” Her steel claws began to burn with a light ember, sparks of fire coating every digit of her fingers. Her snarls grew louder like a revved up engine and her brown eyes brightened, its earthly hue seemingly shifting back to a lustrous, yet savage gold.

------
“So...this is happening.” BanchoLeomon muttered to Examon while raising an eyebrow at his draconic companion. “Who’s your friend? Another one of your subordinates? Didn’t see them back in the Digital World.”

“Not exactly. In fact, I think she’d be offended if you asked her that.” Examon paused for a moment, contemplating exactly how to broker his little discovery to BanchoLeomon. A few moments more and he supposed that if anyone would be able to take it in without doing or saying something stupid, it would be BanchoLeomon; and thus, any elaborate method of explanation went out of the window.

“That’s Dorumon and Zei in there. Alphamon hopped out of their body, what happened to D- what happened in the Tokugawa Building before everything went to hell triggered something.”

“We’re missing Alphamon? Shit. So that DNA Digivolution you used against Imperialdramon is off the table, then?”

“Well. You get one guess as to where she jumped.”

“You? That’s convenient.” BanchoLeomon scoffed, twirling his sword around as he gazed up at the massive crystal in frustration.

“We clearly have very different ideas of ‘convenient’,” Examon grumbled, before his lance appeared in his hands in tandem to BanchoLeomon’s swordplay. “But if it gives me- gives us any kind of edge against this thing, I’ll take it.”

“Going to get on with it, then? I’d like to not die today, thank you.”

As it turned out, BanchoLeomon wasn’t the only one keen on not having to be at Death’s doorstep. Glancing from the corner of her eyes, Zei stopped snarling and turned to the two, golden eyes looking back and forth between the two. “Be quick, Siggy. I want to kill.” As if to emphasize her newly-gained bloodlust, she let her tongue slip out and licked the edge of her metallic maw.

“By all means, after you,” Examon grumbled, as he produced his lance again. The jab was more to lighten the mood than anything; he had as much intent to kill whatever the crystal was as they did, but something about it sent a horrid chill through his body. It wasn’t only the sheer power it was giving off; there was something else in the sight of the thing that produced some kind of dread. As if the very sight of it reminded him of everything horrible that had happened in his life.

Taking his remark as an invitation, Zei growled and spread her wings open before, with a quiet sweeping motion, took to the skies and, once again, turned her sights towards the crystal. There was an unmistakable air that sent her basic feral instincts into high gear, but that feeling was overshadowed by the rage now flowing without restraints. With a loud roar, the angry beast took the woman’s place again as she made a beeline for her floating target, claws blazing and golden eyes glimmering with bloodlust.

“You always were an asshole, BanchoLeomon.” And with that last one-liner of vitriolic friendship, Examon blasted forwards as fast as his wings and power could carry him. Calling up every ounce of power he could pull from out of his body as he joined Dorugoramon in sounding his war cry, a strange and new golden light beginning to radiate from his body as he prepared to join the fight once again.

“So…” BanchoLeomon noted to himself as two dragons flew off. “Still can’t fly. So there’s that.” He clicked his tongue, starting to search for an alternate way to reach the abomination in the sky.

As Examon and Dorugoramon closed in on the massive crystal in the sky, two glowing eyes glared balefully down at the duo. An otherworldly screech emanated from Moon=Millenniummon as it glowed, crescents of energy whirling down at the dragons. The eldritch creature followed up with laser beams flying from its eyes, trying to pin Examon and Dorugoramon with sheer volume of fire.

The barrage rained down on the already battle-damaged harbor, destroying any buildings still left standing after the previous battle with Millenniummon. BanchoLeomon cursed as he dashed left and right, trying to dodge the incoming attacks as best he could.

"Damn it, where the hell is everyone else?" He cursed under his breath, rolling to the side as he finally made it out of Moon=Millenniummon's zone of fire. This was getting ridiculous. Millenniummon had already strained them enough, and then it just HAD to evolve to another form? Hell, unless MagnaGarurumon or someone else that could fly managed to throw him into the air again, BanchoLeomon didn't even have any way of reaching this one to attack. "Come on...someone, anyone, where are you people?"

Looking back up at Moon=Millenniummon, BanchoLeomon's glare eventually clouded over and he blinked, only for the creature in the sky to be replaced with something else.

Lucas stared balefully at his grandmother's ceiling as he realized that both of his parents had handed him off without a care. And now he was stuck in a foreign country, away from everything he'd ever known, having to speak a language he could barely understand.

Leomon gazed up at the moon with no one else alongside him for the first time. His tribe slain in battle, with him the sole survivor.

BanchoLeomon looked up into the sky, loneliness overtaking him.

In the face of the incoming fire, Dorugoramon snarled and abruptly changed her flight maneuver to navigate herself amidst the torrent of lasers, the sound of the harbor being obliterated behind her lost in the back of her mind.

She could see Examon making similar adjustments to dodge the barrage and he appeared to find few difficulties, so Dorugoramon, eager for blood, followed him close by, but the moment she then aligned her focus back onto Moon=Millenniummon, haze suddenly began to cover her intended target, causing it to seemingly vanish from her sight.

With an angry growl, Dorugoramon blinked.

---
Dorumon blinked. There was nothing but thick foliage in front of her and dirt under her tired, furry body. The pit of Earth she had dug in and was now sleeping in was cool; barely comfortable, but cool enough. At least the forest’s climate was a tad pleasant tonight. It made it easier for her to ignore the hunger from her subpar sustenance.

Wandering aimlessly for as long as she could remember, Dorumon hadn’t found a single Digimon who knew her. They would either wonder if she was far from home, wherever they thought it was, or pick on her for her strange appearance. A few would even try to pry the strange, orange interface on her forehead before eating a face full of iron. She had yet to meet another Digimon like her at all. At times, she even wondered why she knew her name and nothing else about herself.

Glancing up at the canopy roof, Dorumon gazed at the stars visible from gaps in the canopy, then forlornly tucked her bushy tail between her legs before holding onto it with her small paws as she forced herself to dip into another quiet night.

At least the stars had company in the sky, each of them having a definite place in the black expanse.

She, on the other hand, was alone, still not knowing who she was and why she was here.

---
Zei blinked. And yelped as a loud thud and a grunt signaled the end of the spar. She watched as her father extended his hand to another man, the latter grabbing onto it and pulling himself up. A bow to one another and then it was over.

“Superb demonstration as usual, Master Yasuragi,” the man spoke with a grin. “I have a lot of catching up to do, don’t I?”

“I’m sure you will get there in time. Your stance has improved immensely,” the Yasuragi patriarch replied with a smile, then turned to look at his only child, her presence hidden well amongst that of his other students. She was smaller and younger, having just started eighth grade, yet her presence seamlessly blended with the other, more mature students. “Zei, did you watch that? I hope you can practice that stance when we get home.”

“Yes, father,” Zei nodded, quietly nodding with a faint smile. Her father was strong and she admired him. After all, she owed him much of the skills that he had generously passed on to her. He was about to say more when another student approached him with questions of his own, leaving her father to turn his attention away from her.

“Hey, Zei-chan,” one of her father’s students gently nudged her. “Do you want to be as strong as your dad?”

“Of course. A Yasuragi must be strong,” Zei replied politely. “It’s what father taught me.”

“I’m sure you’d be a great martial artist once you’ve grown up, just like your old man,” he replied with a grin. “I still remember how you take down Yamada like a sack of rice and that was a year ago!”

“That’s a Yasuragi for you. They’re pretty much the powerhouse around here, literally. I’m sure you’d make your family even more famous someday.”

“Considering he pretty much teaches her everything he knows, she might even be his successor once she grows up. She’s both cute and strong! Talk about a premium package!”

“Well, I honestly wouldn’t mind being beat by a Yasuragi as cute as her~!”

While the male students were busy fantasizing about what she would look like as a grown-up, Zei quietly stood up and walked towards a nearby window of the dojo.

She thought back to how often her classmates would introduce her to new people as a martial artist, even though she was far away from being a proper one, and sometimes egged her to demonstrate some moves she knew. She thought back to how people seem pleasantly surprised to know she was a Yasuragi, as if a demure child like her should have belonged to some other family. She thought back to how her father and her family were always a go-to topic when speaking to her.

Zei Yasuragi was a girl trained in martial arts. She was the child of Master Yasuragi and that was what mattered in the eyes of many.

She might as well be nothing more than a shadow, clinging onto the brightest thing she could find to be recognized. Right now, it was her father whom she loved and respected.

Who would it be next?

---
Dorugoramon felt lost. The haze was now all around her. She couldn’t even see Examon anymore, let alone Moon=Millenniummon. In fact, the haze had covered even herself from her sights, so much that she couldn’t see her own claws, the blaze cloaking her metallic arms seemingly swallowed away into nothing.

Confusion gave way to panic, then from panic sprung fear.

Like a lost chick, Dorugoramon chirped and screeched, her already distorted sense of self, barely rebuilt, now gone again.

Examon threw himself to the side on instinct as the otherworldly screech of Moon=Millenniummon cut above the roaring winds it was calling forth; and found his caution immediately rewarded as the airspace he’d occupied previously was lit up with powerful discharges of energy and light, immeasurable quantities of destructive force bearing towards him as the initial assault failed.

If the worst came to the worst, Avalon would hold off the attacks long enough for him to recover and get back into the air, so he just spat out a curse and kept moving forwards towards the gigantic crystal in the sky. With a powerful beat of his wings, he beat back the smoke and fog that closed in on his field of view, coming within range of the docks overlooking the bay. He saw Parasimon standing just out of the range of Moon=Millenniummon’s barrage, his own Avalon deflecting whatever stray shots fired low enough to endanger him; for whatever reason, the abomination seemed to have no interest in attacking the Hazard Knight, and neither did the Hazard Knight seem to want to take up arms against the abomination.

“What are you doing?” Examon roared out to be heard over the chaos, but the volume of his voice couldn’t mask the true feelings beneath it; he was confused. Whatever his past, Parasimon had proved in the last day that there was legitimate- no, in fact absolutely terrifying resolve lurking beneath his unstable surface, and he’d sworn to fight tooth and nail alongside them to beat back this final threat to both of their worlds.

Parasimon didn’t respond. Examon snarled in frustration and tucked his wings in to pick up speed and fly under a particularly vicious torrent of firepower-

“Examon, get up! We don’t have long before they come back with reinforcements!”

And as his eyes clouded over and he came crashing down to the ground, he saw exactly why Parasimon had been frozen in place.
---
As the assailants all stopped or turned away as they came within range, the rain of destruction stopped; the air growing silent but for the screaming and howling winds and churning of the waters in the bay.

At the center of the vortex, the red lights within the crystal- the eyes of a silhouette forming within- narrowed and intensified as they glared about the entire area enclosed within the maelstrom.

In no uncertain terms, time had come grinding to a stop everywhere but within the enclosed space. The very moment the being at the heart of the chaos willed it, the regular flow of time would resume; and it would seem as if something indescribably terrible had emerged from the ruined heart of Tokyo in less than an attosecond.

Cast into unfathomable, all-encompassing pain by the very nature of its patchwork body, and released too soon, Millenniummon had been a mere beast. Dreadful power that outstripped the Sovereigns themselves, power that could have been shackled to bring both worlds to their knees; but placed in the control of a mindless, frenzied brute that soon fell to the teamwork of lesser beings.

Within the crystal, two new lights emerged from the silhouette, blinking and glaring out as the other two eyes finished their sweep of the surroundings.

Even whilst it had yet to achieve its true form, Moon=Millenniummon was everything that its previous form could have only hoped to be; all the dreadful power of Millenniummon and more, and the intelligence to make use of it. A true consciousness had formed within the spectral mass, neither human or digimon; rather, an amalgam of both that would have both worlds at its disposal.

But until the Proud Destroyer took form, that goal could not be achieved. The gathered humans and Digimon, weak as they were individually, remained a threat united; without the power to strand them in time, Moon=Millenniummon had to play a different card. Their consciousnesses would be set adrift within their own personal timelines; before them, every moment of their life and every possibility for their future would be laid bare before them, stretching out into infinity like a sea of memories. No human mind would withstand such a deluge of information for long without warping into madness; and equally, no human would be able to see the countless futures where they failed both worlds and countless others without slowly succumbing to the hopeless despair of their situation.

So, both eyes closing as the final obstacles it would face were swallowed up by their own minds, the crystal began to suck in the scattered data and power from the gigantic area of reality it had claimed for its cocoon. And the terrible red and black mists spread out over Tokyo, swallowing up everyone and everything that could only watch in fear as the waking nightmare proceeded.

Elle groggily, somehow, opened her eyes and looked around. With a start she recognised instantly where she was and pushed all memory of the events that had happened to her in the past few weeks as she saw the face of her brother again. She was back. With great effort Elle looked around, tearing her gaze from Sam. Sam. Her brother. The thought almost made her cry but she managed to pull herself together. With a start, Elle saw herself. She looked so young, so innocent and without any cares in the world. Except that right now she was arguing with another child over who got to play with the toy cars. The younger Elle lost, causing the older to smile ruefully, she had been a brat the whole time then? She wondered as she saw herself storm off towards her parents, crying.

It was here that it all began to happen. She remembered this part clearly, clearer than any memory she had ever had since or before. As her younger self approached her parents, she was distracted by a toy ball bouncing past her and towards the road. She followed, toddling along happily, without a care in the world. The fight she had had was forgotten, her attention was now entirely on the rolling ball. Luckily she managed to avoid the first car by inches as she stepped on to the road. Everyone in the park heard the car’s horn as it drove past but few took notice, being used to such sounds every so often. It was Sam, and Sam alone that perked his head up and saw his younger sister walking into traffic. He saw the car approaching, it’s occupants arguing instead of paying attention to the road.

Sam got up and sprinted as fast as he could towards Elle, but here things became oddly fuzzy. It almost looked as if there were several of him. All occupying almost exactly the same space. A heavy weight settled on her chest, an odd sensation in her dream as she watched a car come towards her young form and hit her… yet while also hitting Sam. More confusing than this was the impression that she had seen both herself /and/ Sam survive. But as she tried to re-focus, the dream slipped from her mind and she awoke.

Or had she? Something was different, she couldn’t move her own body. She could see, yet she wasn’t the one moving. Most confusing was the great burst of orange light that burst from her digivice. What was happening? Was she still asleep? Elle supposed that she must be, as the orange light coalesced into a form, the form of her lost partner, Wizardmon. Her friend and companion. He was dead. It was all a dream. She felt her head move to the right and saw something entirely unnatural forming, something incomprehensible to her. Wizardmon stepped up beside her and smiled.

“Come on, Elle. You’ve slept long enough. Let’s kill this thing once and for all. Everyone is waiting on us. It’s time we did something.” Elle, within her own mind felt great sadness and loss as she looked at him smiling, she never wanted to forget that voice.

“Okay, Wizardmon, like old times.” She felt herself speak. She sounded odd, older even? But that was unlikely and impossible. Though nothing was really impossible in a dream, she reasoned, as she felt herself pulled away. In this moment, she was on the beach, she remembered this moment well as she saw Candlemon move up the dune and shortly after, a Devimon was charging at her from the other side, only to be stopped by Dirk. Who was shortly joined by the rest of the group. This moment again changed as she was ripped from herself in the past. What was happening? Nothing made sense. She remembered seeing the creature as she again woke in herself. But now she felt old. Really old. She saw people she didn’t recognise, though there was a young lady who bore a striking resemblance to herself.

Wizardmon walked into the room at this moment, a fierce look on his face “I only just arrived. Elle, you must fight it. Wake up!” He said, walking up to her and shaking her. She felt an odd sensation. He had called her Elle. What dream was this? Was it a dream? “You’re starting to see, Elle. Come on, you’re so close.” He whispered as she felt the familiar sensation of herself being torn back to being young, it was by her brother’s bedside in the hospital. She was crying. Her parents had left to get some coffee, and it was lucky that they did so because Wizardmon again stepped out of the wall and grabbed her shoulders “Elle, come on. Please. I need you to wake up, we need to fight.”

With his statement, she remembered, the creature. She was going to fight it. But how? She was being thrown around. Elle had very little idea what was happening but she didn’t know how she would overcome this power. If that was what it was. She wasn’t convinced that this wasn’t still a dream.

A brief glimpse of the great creature, an eldritch form, incomprehensible and incomplete. It was growing and changing. She needed to get it. To move. The next moment she was back with MagnaAngemon, feeling anguished as she rediscovered that not all digimon were inherently evil “It’s not our place to question him, Elle” Said Wizardmon. Whose expression suddenly changed and he spoke in her mind “Elle! Come on, just a little more, come with me.” and he held out his hand. She tried to reach out her own. She wanted to, so much. Elle felt that this was no longer a dream. Something was very very wrong here. With a small gasp she managed to move her arm, it was her doing it this time, not herself in this point in time. It felt odd. Unnatural.

Space and time warped again and Elle was back in the ruins of the city, with Wizardmon “Good, Elle, you’ve almost done it.”

“Come on, one push!” This was said by a doctor, which confused her. Where was she? She felt a great pain and screamed, Wizardmon was by her side though and she was crushing his hand, as well as the hand of Leon, though he looked older. Wizardmon leaned towards her and whispered in her ear

“Elle, break free, I can only do so much. We all need you.” and she was gone again. It wasn’t working. She couldn’t break free. Something was keeping her down. Shifting her through time and space so fast she could barely even comprehend her own being anymore. It was like she was being torn apart. She briefly stopped at her fifth birthday before being steered away to a new memory. This one not from too long ago.

Crusadermon was dying. He was lying in Dynasmon’s arms. Elle felt a little remorse for the digimon, he had been friends with the old Dynasmon in the past. With both Dynasmon, in fact. Though the circumstances were strange. But it was here that her remorse ended as the pink digimon moved quickly and kissed them. It was a shock, but she barely had a chance to register what had happened before the creature dissipated. With great rage at the memory, alongside the feeling of anger at being so helpless, she pulled herself free, finally travelling back to the moment she had left.

With a deep breath and great struggle. Elle had dragged her own consciousness to the top, that memory had spurred her with such emotion she had barely managed to break free of the great power and confusion brought on by the beast. Wizardmon smiled at her “Welcome home.” he said.

“I missed you” She managed to say, tears falling from her face as she grabbed him and hugged him tightly.

“I don’t know if you know this, Elle. But dying hurts.” He said, gasping for air. Elle couldn’t help but laugh, she let him go and wiped her face with her sleeve. A mistake as it instead made her face even dirtier.

“Let’s do this.” They said in unison. Standing together, looking for the other digidestined. Hopefully they would be alive, and would be able to help. She was ready. It was time.

Alphamon gazed at the fleeing Digimon, sighing softly as she watched them hightail it down the road. For a Royal Knight, petty criminals posed no challenge whatsoever. They just had the misfortune of trying to cause trouble while she was in town and, foolishly enough, attempted to gang up on a group of Rookies and In-Training who were just enjoying the day. She didn’t even have to call upon her trusted blade; a sight of her was enough to send the sane packing and the foolish up for the pickings. No matter how big or small, she felt it was her duty to stop evil where it stood. This was no exception, even if it didn’t trouble her in the slightest.

Glancing to the town behind her, Alphamon recalled how she had hoped she could have a peaceful time away from the castle and see how the other Digimon were doing. They were having a festival of sorts and the Knight, curious and hoping to enjoy the short festivities, had come while disguised, hoping that the other Digimon wouldn’t be too intrigued about her identity. Then again, considering she came while looking like a walking mound of cloak and clothes, she admitted in hindsight that she didn’t exactly think of her disguise too thoroughly and it was later proven after she had to shed it to attack the thugs.

The Royal Knights played their part in keeping peace as a bigger picture and many did so with the noblest intentions, but they were mostly legends to the eyes of common folk, their names being bearer of shining myths and legends. Strange as her habit was to her comrades, she still liked to go incognito and see how the Digimon they protected were doing. Examon and Imperialdramon had often voiced objections to her, the former more vocally so. She could hardly blame them, of course, but she trusted the other Knights to be able to handle matters in her occasional absence.

Looking at the Rookies and In-Training, Alphamon could see that they were scared. Perhaps the bandits’ presence left more of a mark on the young ones than she had originally thought. Turning to them, she crouched down and extended her hand. “It’s alright. They won’t bother you anymore,” she said to them, her voice gentle, yet deep and brimming with authority.

However, instead of being reassured, an Upamon among the group squeaked and shirked away from her hand. The other In-Training were less nervous, but just as scared. The Rookies seemed to handle her presence better, but they way they looked at her…

Alphamon felt a deep sting inside her chest.

Why did they fear her? Had she done something wrong?

“T-Thank you!” Alphamon’s attention turned to a Biyomon who had mustered the courage to approach her, clearly trying to break the ice. “Thank you, Alphamon!”

The sting subsided, if just a little bit.

“You’re welcome,” she replied, gently patting the Rookie’s shoulder with all the care in the world. She then watched as the others took the Biyomon’s lead and finally let their voices out, her attitude towards the pink Rookie certainly helping her case. A hidden smile as she heard them laugh and watched them look up to her adoringly, but there was an unmistakable nervousness that she couldn’t help but notice. As she watched them leave, a nagging thought she had been having crept up to her, one that had haunted her for quite some time.

“Who are we to those we protect?” she asked herself. “Are we truly nothing more than authority? A name spoken to pave way to obedience? A name announced to strike fear?”

She tried asking the same questions to her fellow Knights, but she herself couldn’t come up with an answer.

And a forlorn emptiness filled her armored chest.

---
Zei blinked again. And found herself staring the plain mirror in front of her, along with ivory white tile wall of her apartment bathroom. She was home in a blink of an eye, once again seeing a familiar surroundings. However, looking at her reflection brought a painful reminder of her current state: bloodshot eyes, black bags, and pale skin.

She didn’t recognize the red stains on the edges of the sink, however.

She also didn’t recall keeping a small translucent orange container anywhere on her sink either. It’s filled with capsules. Were those medicines? Why did she keep them here?

For some reason, Zei felt numb. Her entire head felt empty, but there was an unmistakable sting of pain somewhere on her body. Without her willing to, she cast her eyes down.

While Zei was no stranger to cuts and bruises, she had mostly received them from another party, be it from her enemies or by accidentally bumping into things.

Yet here she was, right hand holding a bloody cutter, the other clutching onto the sink, blood slowly trickling out of the wound on her arm, one that was implied to be self-inflicted. It didn’t appear to be an isolated incident either; multiple scars adorned said arm with the freshest one adding another tally.

Her vision wavered again just as she heard Dorumon yell at her. She turned to see her running towards her, her eyes wide with shock and worry. Just before her vision faded, she noticed a male figure racing towards the bathroom as well, his voice bearing an unmistakably familiar British accent.

---
Dorugoramon blinked again. This time, her vision was finally cleared.

In fact, it was more than just her vision that had been cleared. The horizon in front of her had also been cleared.

Cleared of life. Cleared of signs of civilization. Cleared of existence.

It was a dark vision of finality, one that Moon=Millenniummon would ideally bring upon the human world. Nothing but dirt and ash remained in her sight and the air was still and suffocating, even for a Mega Digimon born partially out of a Dark Digivolution. Reflecting the desolate Earth, the sky above was a shade of charred black, lacking the beauty or even the solace of a true night’s sky. Dorugoramon looked around, hoping to find something, anything she could recognize.

But nothing appeared.

Seeing nothing but an empty land, she let out a loud roar, trying to find someone. Enemies, bystanders, allies, Examon. Anyone.

But nobody came.

She was alone, confused and alone once again.

Fear led to grief and that grief found the loneliness buried underneath the dragon’s scales.

Dorugoramon let out a soft, high-pitched cry. Already disoriented by the fog and confused by the sudden change in environment, relieving the loneliness inherent to her components reignited the rage that codified her early stages of existence. In a maelstrom of fury and gripping primal will, she then let out a loud roar, the sound akin to steel blades being ground against one another.

The breathing of the injured titan slowed ever closer to a halt. For an instant Rodendramon's body flickered, as the pool of Petrichor spread farther from the wound.

---

I forgot it rained that day.

A spring drizzle came and went in the old growth forest where two small children were playing. One stumbled over the dewy moss, prompting the other to offer a hand of support. A sudden breeze, followed by a sparkling in the distance caught their attention, causing them to raise their heads simultaneously. One began to laugh, and ran off to the source of the light, the other following close behind.

---

Do you remember the day we first met?

Soil slid from a loamy hole in the ground as a large being walked by. The large cone like chasm underground was bustling with shaggy furred Digimon, digging at the walls, passing food around, or changing spots for various other duties. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of Shrewmon within the colony, and all were milling about in one of the main rooms and central passages. All save one- for this Shrewmon felt something in the air. He wasn't sure if it was a scent or a sound, but something was different, and it was calling to him.
The curious Shrewmon nosed his way out of the short tunnel in which he slept, and passed one of his brethren who was holding a Togarimon Egg precariously in his paws, waddling slightly as he took it towards a warmer room. Heading towards the streams of light that poured from the various holes in the underground dirt mound's roof, he passed a crew of Shrewmon who mournfully patched a tunnel back into the wall, tapping the back-fill with their tails to prevent a collapse of the wall.
In the distance, a subtly buzzing began to rise.

As the crystal at the eye of the storm in time and space set itself to its metamorphosis, each of those consigned to their mental prisons before it took to their situation differently.
___
Helplessness was what ate away at Examon.

He found himself collapsed onto the ground, wounded and unable to move. Above him, the sun was setting, the darkening orange sky above almost seeming to join with the scorched, bloodstained ground around him. The corpses from the battle had dispersed into data long before then, but that only served to make the scene more nightmarish; he could see for himself how few of them remained.

Besides a handful of Knightmon and other troops, many missing limbs or more, the only survivors on his side were Gallantmon and MachGaogamon, who themselves seemed worn down and battered. The Armoured Duke seemed to have a broken arm and several punctures in his armour, whilst Examon’s Captain was carefully nursing a long and jagged open wound in his chest that was plainly visible through his destroyed makeshift breastplate; Examon himself didn’t need to look at himself to know what had him down on the ground, as the sensation of the giant spear rammed through his abdomen spoke for itself.

The other survivors were not of their own ranks; a gaggle of Angels and Demons, too wounded and outnumbered to put up a fight against the Knight survivors as they were taken prisoner.

But they wouldn’t stay outnumbered for long.

“I know how you feel, but we can’t stay and mourn, even for a second.” MachGaogamon’s voice was little more than a growl as he abandoned formality to talk directly to Gallantmon; not from frustration or impudence, but from the sheer pain of the opening in his chest. “The only reason we won is that they didn’t have any of their leaders with them, and with the racket we kicked up, I doubt that’ll go for whatever comes to finish us off. Gankoomon and Hackmon’s sacrifice won’t mean anything if we don’t move and get the rest of the men back at camp out of here as soon as possible!”

Gallantmon began to respond, but Examon’s focus was already fading; both the Examon at that point in time and the one who felt chills cut through him as he remembered how this ended. He survived, as did Gallantmon and MachGaogamon when the situation pushed him to a miraculous Digivolution; but their hesitation and his wounds cost their men dearly, and mere tens of men escaped with their lives out of the thousands who’d ventured out to try and attack an apparent weak point of the enemy stronghold.

Gankoomon and the bright young Digimon he’d had so many hopes for had given their lives to buy them time and the chance to make it back to base. And because he’d been unable to fight alongside Gallantmon and MirageGaogamon, that sacrifice had gone to waste as far too many good men died to the savage monster that served as Captain under one of the rebel Seraphimon.

He wanted to scream, to get up and yell at himself and the others to run and stop the horrors that were coming: but it was hopeless. He felt even less control over his body than he had then; and he felt even more helpless as he realized what would soon result of the bloody battles with the rebel celestials.

This is where it all began. Old, deep wounds were opened once more, and Examon realized how little their victory over Imperialdramon had mattered.

The Knights had become worse than the rebels that would become the Demon Lords, and he’d been helpless to stop it.
___
Rank despair and terror was what met Siggy.

Unlike Examon, he wasn’t dragged towards any one place in time, or even a single continuity of events. No, what he saw as his mind’s connection to time unravelled around him was of countless futures, each one worse than the last.

He hadn’t realized it at the time, but Dirk’s death had affected him greatly. One wound amongst countless others, going untreated until it was too late. Now that was the cornerstone of what he saw. Once the initial thousand visions of Moon=Millenniummon’s victory and the wiping of his consciousness faded away, the thousand visions that came next offered nothing better. With Dirk gone, their numbers and morale were down: and so defeating the abomination came at too high a price.

One after another, he saw his friends cut down. BanchoLeomon was the most vulnerable to attack once he was deprived of his power: the Gakuran he wore prevented the crystals from making it all the way through his body, but did nothing to prevent them from effortlessly puncturing his chest, smashing through his sternum and killing him instantly as his organs were shredded. UlforceVeedramon was hardly any safer: though his armour protected him on all sides, a single well-timed crescent at a moment of mental vulnerability shattered his consciousness beyond repair, and a rain of countless crystal spires similarly rent his body. Rodendramon risked all in a life-or-death charge against the monster; and found himself rewarded with something far worse as it ripped open a window to a distant hellscape, banishing him to a place beyond words where he would be lucky to starve. Dynasmon’s vicious assaults on Moon=Millenniummon warranted particular attention; once he was finally depleted of the strength to use the Wyvern, the monster turned his sight upon him and gave him a slow and painful death, dissolving his entire body byte by byte beneath the harsh light of his spectral glare until only a red core remained, only to be similarly immolated. Dorugoramon was granted perhaps the worst deaths of all; fighting to her very last, Millenniummon blasted her from the sky with sheer overwhelming firepower, ruining her wings and body and sending her crashing down into the waters of the bay to drown and die in the panicked despair of a broken bird as it turned its attention back to the others. He and Examon died too many times to count; whether it was through being blasted into atoms, shredded beneath a rain of crystal or left to bleed out from myriad wounds, more often than not he was catapulted to the next timeline by a premature demise.

But it was not just the toll of lives that was terrible. The toll taken on their minds was worse. Timelines seemed to exist where Moon=Millenniummon fell. Whatever relief that fact may have offered was reduced to nothing as he saw what those worlds had waiting for the survivors of the battle.

Loss stripped Lucas of whatever was left of his restraint. The only survivor besides his friend, Siggy could do nothing to stop him as he threw himself with self-destructive abandon towards the cause of stopping continuing conflict between the two worlds. Even the interventions and efforts of the Sovereigns failed to save him from himself. Within a few years, he and Leomon fell down on another battlefield, fighting yet another group of humans who exploited Digimon for their own purposes.

Broken at last, Elle seemed to waste away as slowly and painfully as she did in the timelines where she died in battle with Moon=Millenniummon. When the dust cleared and all but Siggy and her were left as mutilated corpses in the ruins of Tokyo, crippling survivor’s guilt developed into outright psychosis and shut her out of the world around her. This time, Wizardmon’s words could do nothing to rouse her; and once again Siggy could do nothing to help as she spent the rest of her life locked up in her own mind.

Leon’s passions turned on the other survivors after the battle concluded. The same sense of responsibility that had nearly turned him on the others after the early incidents in Tokyo returned with a vengeance. As the awful wreckage of the battle saw the death toll reach into the hundreds of thousands, and as Elle and Dynasmon gave up their lives to protect him and the wounded UlforceVeedramon from the final attacks of Moon=Millenniummon, he cursed out and swore off the other survivors, and the Digimon whose powers had led to this outcome. When the next war came, and the Digimon left in the other world found their lives at risk, a broken Leon ranked amongst those who fought to imprison and destroy them.

Jordan seemed to undergo the most drastic transformation of all. The feelings of responsibility and survivor’s guilt brought him low as they did Lucas, Elle and Leon in the other worlds, but seemed to drive him almost wholly mad. Disappearing into the aether mere hours after the conclusion of the disaster, Jordan returned to the world several weeks later in the visage of a man possessed by a demon of conquest; with the Digital World itself as his prize. This time, the Sovereigns were as blindsided as Siggy himself; Shrewmon was nowhere to be found, and Jordan’s conquest seemed hinged on some external force. But despite his best efforts to discover and come to terms with what had happened to Jordan and his pleas to the Sovereigns to detain him rather than kill him, the sheer body count and number of captives that Jordan racked up in his mad crusade to obtain the Digital World and its secrets twisted their hand. Siggy could do nothing as Jordan was put down by the Sovereigns, judgement rendered beneath the wrath of Baihumon.

But perhaps worst of all was how it affected Zei.

Siggy had seen for himself how badly Dirk’s death at the hands at Takada had affected her, how it transformed Dorumon and her into a rampaging engine of destruction. But when the dust cleared and she was returned to her individual form from the biomerge, things only worsened.

He found himself sitting in a hospital waiting room, frozen in place by helpless fatigue. “We won’t be able to release her for a while,” he heard someone say. He was stuck looking at the floor, unable to even look up. “Besides the fact she lost a lot of blood, we can’t risk her being left to her own devices again.”

At this point, Siggy wasn’t even certain what had happened to Zei. At this point, it was far too much to bear thinking about, possibilities too horrible to entertain. His mind, however, connected the dots: an attempt at suicide seemed like the obvious conclusion, the inevitable endpoint of their awful journey. And as before, he’d been completely helpless to stop it. Unable to help her. Unable to keep their victory alive as their worlds fell apart around them even with Moon=Millenniummon defeated.

He didn’t know how many of them had survived in this world. In a way, he didn’t want to know. Regardless of what happened, they were all doomed; whether by the hands of Moon=Millenniummon, their own demons or their sheer futile helplessness, inevitability coming rolling down like a boulder to crush them.
___
Parasimon, however, felt something else.

The visions of his past did little to set doubt in his mind. For better or worse, he’d accepted his path, resolving himself to doing what he could to make amends by fulfilling the duty he’d long claimed to carry out. Those visions did little but reassure him of that resolve.

But as those long, dark years faded away, the future was laid bare before him.

He saw himself cut down in one well-placed attack by the fully-formed abomination that emerged from Moon=Millenniummon. The single strike painlessly rendered him down into atoms and bytes of data that were scattered across the universe in an instant, and the world of that timeline went dark.

Some amount of time passed as he reeled from the shock. His senses were suddenly restored to him as he was catapulted into another world. Even before he could comprehend what this one bid for him, his senses told him all he needed to know. The all-encompassing, icy void of space was all around him, and he looked down to see the whole of the earth beyond ruined, split apart like a glass orb that had had a hammer brought down upon it. The oceans and seas had been vaporized and the atmosphere blown apart by the sheer power that had torn it asunder. Worse yet, the red-hot glowing innards of the planet spilled out into the vacuum, illuminating all kinds of nightmarish debris as it spread out across the void; and behind the ruined world, the sight of his own torn asunder was visible through a wound in space and time, the escape route of an abomination starved for destruction.

The sight was enough to make even his stomach fill with ice-cold dread, and the sheer horror sent him catapulting into another timeline. This time, he felt himself stretched out across the ground; and also felt his entire body burning as if it had been devoured by the flames of the Lord of Wrath. His vision failed him- his eyes were clouding over and all he could perceive was the light of the sun pressing down on him- but his hearing worked well enough to inform him of the situation.

“If this is a victory-”

“It’s all our fault- if only we’d given the operation more time-”

“Damn it, you can’t go now! Come on, stay with us, you bastard!”

His senses cut out, and he felt darkness overcome him and his body waste away down to nothing once more.

The experience continued, and much as before. Timeline after timeline, it was the same over and over. In some worlds, Parasimon died in an instant against Moon=Millenniummon or the monstrosity that emerged from the terrible cocoon it had formed. In others, efforts against Moon=Millenniummon cost him his life, but seemed to clinch the victory that spared both worlds. But most terrifyingly, all the ones where he survived to see what lay beyond the battle bore the same result.

Both worlds in ruin, and countless billions dead. An abomination of unfathomable power let loose on the various worlds that lay beyond theirs, leaving a pitch-black, desolate void with all but a few survivors left to starve or die of the cold.

His comrades and their futures boasted countless terrible outcomes, an unfolding kaleidoscope of death and despair. For Parasimon, however, there were only two possibilities: and the conclusion that they offered was clear.

It was him or the world.

In every iteration of the timeline shown by Moon=Millenniummon, Lucas and Leomon found themselves alone. Isolated, whether by choice or by circumstance. The timelines where they found themselves the sole survivors of the group were the worst. Bereft of anyone else to relate to or aid, Lucas sunk deeper and deeper into depression and shell shock until, in a few years’ time, he ate the pistol he’d been carrying ever since Beelzemon’s first rampage. Without even a Tamer to give the solitary Leomon any sort of meaning in his life, the last remaining partner Digimon of the group followed Lucas soon after, returning to the Digital World to enact a suicidal charge, fighting aimlessly until he found himself overwhelmed.

But even the timelines where Lucas found himself with fellow survivors didn’t end well in any sense.

Faced with the utter mental wreck that was Elle, Lucas simply abandoned her to asylum after dubbing her beyond any possible help.

Lucas had never had any particular reason to keep tabs on Zei. Thus, when she attempted to kill herself, the attempt succeeded.

These tragedies hardened Lucas even further, pushing him to ensure that any further conflict between the real and Digital worlds would never occur again. He dedicated the next few years to stopping anyone who would interfere with the Digital World. But the trauma unhinged him, and his methods grew ever more extreme. Eventually, he was exposed and deemed an international terrorist, and fled to the Digital World in exile.

Timelines in which either Leon or Jordan survived were even more tragic. Lucas and Leomon found themselves forced to kill their former friends with their own hands upon witnessing how they turned on everything they’d fought and sacrificed to protect.

Siggy had been the closest friend his own age that Lucas had ever made. It only took a weeklong journey through a digital desert for the two to cement their brotherhood, and Lucas had been forever grateful that he’d met one of the most reasonable and reliable people he’d ever known. So when Siggy managed to hold himself together through the aftermath of Moon=Millenniummon, Lucas had been relieved. But circumstances changed. Lucas had ended up as the one to grow ever more unhinged in his attempts to keep peace as the years passed, and when Siggy had stepped in, saying he’d gone too far, Lucas saw red. The ensuing battle resulted in a mutual kill, BanchoLeomon and Examon’s forms dissipating into data as Lucas and Siggy slowly bled out next to each other.

In the outside world, BanchoLeomon sank to his knees, catatonic.

As the timelines before him continued to expand outwards into infinity, Parasimon was left with his thoughts.

After a while, the visions and sensations bombarding him ceased to bother him; the conclusion he’d come to stuck with him, numbing him and trapping him deeper in his own thoughts than Moon=Millenniummon ever could have by itself.

This was it, then. Either death or an absolute failure that would condemn countless lives in his place; emotion escaped him, and he found himself fading out into oblivion as the infinite futures before him finally seemed to give way-

“Rho Aias!”

But then something cut through. He felt warmth surround him. And, as he came to from his mental stupour, he realized why.

Before him, he saw the events of the previous day; his almost-final stand against BanchoLeomon, the clash of Apocalypse and Brahmastra Kundala that had almost turned the grounds of the Knight’s castle into a gigantic salted wound in the earth.

Once again, he felt incomprehensible levels of pain as his eyes bubbled from their sockets and his vile black flesh began to burn up in the infernally hot air around him. But above all else, what he felt were the feelings that had been going through his head at that moment.

Accepting his fate; not resignation, but resolution.
---
Amidst the frozen figures assembled around Moon=Millenniummon, one joined several others in beginning to stir.

It was only slight at first; Parasimon’s many eyes, at first as clouded as any of the others still trapped, began to shake violently in their sockets. Even as the screaming, debris-filled winds around him viciously blasted over them, they continued to move about furiously-

And with a single pained blink of all those eyes at once, Parasimon let loose a scream of rage that seemed to cut right over the infernal sounds around him.
---
For a moment, Parasimon found himself returned to control of his body; and even as he was returned to the alien sensation of the timelines laid out before him, he felt the world begin to shake around him.

The epiphany hit him hard, his mind once again sparking off into a sudden wildfire that ravaged his temporal prison. So, it was him or the world? There was no other way that this could have ended! It hadn’t taken long after he’d been returned to lucidity from the screaming chaos of the Spirits bound to his body for him to realize the monster he’d become; even his violent mutation into his current form had only reinforced his resolve to serve Yggdrasil rather than cloud that realization. With a master to fight for, he had no choice other to fight on and live for his sake; but with Yggdrasil gone, what master could be greater than the salvation of the universe itself?

Him or the world? Even if he’d only achieve his own destruction, he’d gladly offer it up if it stalled Moon=Millenniummon for even a moment! He’d accepted his death already, but that didn’t mean he would go gentle into the night!

The world continued to shake. The visions of the future at first froze, and then began to crumble into static, burning away before him. Visions of the past came rushing in to replace them; the awful life he’d lead would haunt him to his final moments, but now they could do nothing to beat back his burning resolve.

Rather, it was the few spots of light in them that gave him the final push he needed.

He saw himself find his very first Spirit; and whilst it bode for terrible things to come, he remembered his joy as he shifted from his pathetic, parasitic form to the glorious body of Ardhamon, Warrior of the Sun.

He remembered the oath he’d sworn to Yggdrasil, to take up the duty of protecting the Digital World; and even as he realized what it had led to, he remembered his elation at having risen to join the ranks of the Knights themselves.

And finally, as gigantic cracks blasted through the static, he saw himself amongst new company. The people he’d struggled against with all of his might, regardless of their feelings towards him, accepted his help for this final task. He stood not only with the few remaining loyal Knights and the child of his that had stayed the course until the end, but with the foes that he had forged a mutual respect with.

With a triumphant, resolved battle-cry, Parasimon broke his prison wide-open. His eyes opened wide once more, full of fire as his vision cleared of the crumbling timelines that fell away in defeat, static shattering into pitch black and fading into silence as if he was finally awakening from a long dream.
---
Catapulted back into control of his body, sensation returned to Parasimon all at once as his mind reeled from its return to reality.

He found himself ready to fall, stopping his descent by grasping his spear and driving it into the ground. The sensation of control over his body almost overwhelmed him after what felt like an eternity trapped in his own mind; almost, as a moment later, he found his strength as surely as he’d found his answer, and rose to stand tall and defiant once more.

The screaming winds from before still raged, and his surroundings were smothered by red and black fog. But his mind was clear, and his eyes pierced through the thick veil to look around him. He could see no other shapes moving, only dark silhouettes lying or standing prone as they remained trapped. There was no time to wake them, no time to waste. All he could do was protect them the best that he could whilst they remained trapped; and so he turned to glare at the shape floating over the water in the distance. His resolve bidding him onwards for the final time, he returned to the world full of strength and with a single thought in his head.

If he was going to hell, he was going to do his best to drag Moon=Millenniummon down there with him.

As the petrichor scent of his own blood wafted into his nose, the memories continued. A small boy in a soft jacket came sliding into the earthen mound, having stepped against the brushy edge of a small vent hole. The warm, clumpy soil stuck to him in patches, as he sniffled from how startled he had been. The young Jordan became distracted from his own crying, however, by a smooth object before him. Curiosity took hold, and he slowly placed his hands on the object, lifting it. There was a dull shimmer in the air as the egg hatched.

---

The ocean began to swell in the distorted chaos caused by Moon-Millenniummon, causing the tide to rush over the battered form of Rodendramon. The salty smell caused another memory to rush to their collective mind, one of vials, tanks, and banks of Datamon. Curdling anger covered his face, as the forced somnolence began to crack and falter.
"No..." an almost silent growl rumbled under the din.

"No! Not this time. Not again!"

With an uproarious inhale, the beast began to stir. Gouts of flame began to billow from his open jaw, his eye snapping open with a deep fury, a blue flame writhing about his form. The crystalline shard in his jaw crumbled, earthy colored wings spreading as he rose again. A roar of fury was ushered forth from his restored maw, as a glare as heated as the Earth's steely heart was thrown at the abominable spirit. The earth rose to greet his feet, causing sand to yield to spreading stone. He knew that none could withstand the twisted horror's might for long, but perhaps, if its attentions were divided, some weakness could be exploited. His arm stretched out, metallized claws grasping, as a cloud of ash gathered to form a hilt in his hand, sand blackening and breaking apart, creating a bastard sword of dark iron and obsidian. The blade was leveled, and pointed at the glowing red crystal.

"Get. Back. Here. You. Are. MINE!"

With a furious growl, he slammed his foot into the ground, the plates of his armor shifting and glowing with power.

At his behest, pyroclastic jets rocketed forth, soaring towards the monstrosity in the sky. The sheer heat caused the ocean to recoil, as if a shock wave were erupting from the shore, raking it back in a spheroid shape. The blasts of flame gained mass as they traveled, throwing off blazing heat, roaring as they flew. However, with the great distance between them, and a significant amount of wind resistance, the attack began to arc downwards, and head towards the ground. About ten meters out from their target, near the ground now though they were, the missiles burst over the waste, transforming into verminous shapes, clawing and gnashing their teeth. Realizing his miscalculation, the burning fury within the Digimon subsided, at least enough to allow him to think properly.
With the pack of pyrotechnic rats to serve as a distraction, Rodendramon then began slinking along the destruction at a rather rapid pace, deflecting any falling debris with his blade, and smashing any obstructing metal debris. The falling stone and crunched pavement seemed to not dare impede his movement, and crumbled before him in the wind. The Mega was seeking his nearest ally, hoping to remove them from their stupor, as was evident had happened to all of them, with the massive form of Examon standing eerily still. Being the most obvious destination, the Beast of Earth began to make his way towards the mighty Dragon King, in hopes of waking him, and possibly finding some more allies along the way. His wings beat nervously, not wanting to be caught, but knowing that flying, while it would make his trip shorter, would inevitably make him an easy target without support.

Lucas and Leomon grit their teeth. No. NO. This was not to be their future. They could fix this. They HAD to. They had finally found companions after years of loneliness and solitude. People they could relate to, bond with. It couldn’t end like this. The thought of averting the shattered futures they’d seen filled them with a strength born of desperation, and black flames filled their vision. No matter what, they would avert this. Whatever the cost.

The flames ate through the illusions brought on by Moon=Millenniummon, burning them away and replacing them with clarity. Purpose. Kill Moon=Millenniummon. Keep the others alive. The threshold had been crossed. Any other collateral damage was secondary. What was property damage or the lives of those he’d never known or met compared to the lives of those he actually cared about?

With a vicious roar, BanchoLeomon Ruin Mode awoke, howling his fury up towards the skies.

The dark skies seemed to stretch endlessly into a dark infinity with the howling winds around him echoing all along that great distance, Parasimon observed as he set to work.

The thick, obscuring veil of fog prevented him from seeing more than perhaps a hundred meters in front of him: even with his power focused on strengthening his vision, it remained a near-impenetrable curtain. With the baleful deadlights of Moon=Millenniummon floating over the bay in the distance being all that he could see from where he’d awoken, it seemed it was up to him to clue out his surroundings again.

And, as he weaved out to find the others, it seemed it was up to him not to attract unwanted attention from the aberration in the skies.

“God damn it, wake up!” Lying prostrate with his wings still stretched out from when he’d come crashing down, Examon was the first of his allies that he found still-trapped in Moon=Millenniummon’s temporal prison. It seemed that his early escape from that hell wasn’t going to be of much help to the others: though Parasimon could sense vital signs from the Dragon Emperor, there wasn’t even an instinctive reaction on his part as the last of the Knights yelled and prodded at him. Even the Hazard link seemed to prove less than worthless as he fired off numerous messages over it, with Examon remaining prone and helpless as the winds screamed and raged.

“Shit.” Remaining crouched as he gave up on waking Examon, Parasimon contemplated what to do. Resolution or no resolution, rushing Moon=Millenniummon seemed an utterly unappealing option. He remembered enough of what he’d lived through in the timequake to know that would end up with him dead for nothing and the others even more helpless.
---
Fortunately, however, it didn’t seem that that helplessness was universal.

Elle, was having slightly better luck with sight, and with a relatively clearer head in terms of temporal distortion as it seemed that Wizardmon’s unique abilities staved off a miniscule amount of Millenniummon’s awful, reality-destroying, powers. With his help, though feeling as though she was moving through honey, Dynasmon began to move. Launching himself with his greatest speed towards Rodendramon, He was the first one that the pair had noticed. Not that it was difficult to hear or see him as he had thrown a large attack upwards, only for it to miss and fall to the ground.
Dynasmon watched the rodent rush towards Examon, who as of yet wasn’t moving, and altered his course to attempt to meet him at that point. It seemed that slowly, but surely, the group of tamers were awakening. But they needed to be a little faster, they didn’t have much time. Or did they? Dynasmon shook his head, time was a mess, as was reality itself and he was no physicist.

Elle made a mental note, if she survived this she would go to university to try and better understand everything about what was happening. Hey maybe she could even teach it? She didn’t let herself get her hopes up, but it was a pleasant thought. Keeping an eye on Rodendramon, who was fairly fast and Dynasmon did wonder if he had speed comparable, though he remembered that he had fought alongside Ulforce for a long time and though horribly outpaced, he had enough to keep up with a rat. Out of nowhere, Dynasmon heard BanchoLeomon’s roar and it made him smile. Though internally, Elle felt a chill run down her spine, she had seen many of her team, almost all of them. One important person was missing… where was Ulforce? Where was Leon? She wondered to herself.

When she threw this question inwards to Wizardmon, it took him a moment to respond. The fact that he was from another time, existing in this time and space for the second time. It was disorienting. He took a breath and spoke;

“I wish I knew where he was. With everything as it is, I can’t remember much of anything about anything before this moment.” Elle grimaced, things must have been worse than she thought

“Let’s just get to Examon then, shall we? We’ll work it out then.” They nodded to each other and picked up speed, flapping their wings and gliding through the air and what felt like time itself. It took a while (or did it just seem that way?) but eventually Dynasmon reached his old companion Examon.

If only he was in an actual state to do anything. Even in the dull, misty atmosphere of Moon=Millenniummon’s cocoon, it was clear as day that the spark of consciousness was gone from the Dragon Emperor: life signs persisted if one looked close enough, or tuned in to his palpable vitality, but faint enough that they might as well have not been present.

On the other hand, hunched in a crouch over the prone Digimon and giving up on trying to shake him back to reality-

“You’re up?” Parasimon didn’t mince his words: if Examon’s unconsciousness was plain as day, the terseness and tension in the other Knight’s voice and manner blazed through like the summer solstice.

“Kudos on not making as much noise as the rat.” Gently lowering Examon so that he now lay on his back rather than face down on the ground, Parasimon turned his attention fully to Dynasmon: a light emerging from behind him to light the murky air enough for them to see each-other clearly. “I guess we should count ourselves lucky that we’re in a timeline where that didn’t blow up in everyone’s faces.”

“I am up, yes.” Dynasmon flapped his wings a few times in order to slow down and allow him to land, “Quiet isn’t what I am known for but when necessary I can do it, and don’t talk to me about timelines, Wizardmon here is.. Different” this statement caused Dynasmon to shiver briefly as he eyed up Parasimon. Though the giant insect didn’t seem hostile, that did little to mitigate his grotesque appearance. Dark grey flesh with the consistency of a Raremon’s hide made up most of what Dynasmon could see of his body, throbbing and rippling as if it were more liquid than solid. Jagged, jet black crystal perforated that flesh at odd points all over; rather than the icy, glassy shell of Moon=Millenniummon, these crystals radiated an unpleasant heat and light, as if they were alive. The back of his upper body in particular was almost completely coated in them, stretching down in uneven intervals down his arms, lower torso, and even up his too-thin neck to brace and frame his face.

“If you don’t mind, I’m not going to ask.” Said face stared at Dynasmon with an odd number of eyes, reflective black with red and orange shooting through them, jaws not even moving as he spoke. “The less said about timelines, the better.”

“I’m glad we agree on that.” replied the dragon-esque digimon, who was busy folding his wings and ensuring that Examon was indeed, alive. He knelt down close, keeping his head low and placing where his ears would be near Examon’s body. He managed to catch a slow breathing pattern and a slow but steady pulse. Or whatever passed for that in Mega digimon. Why hadn’t the pair separated like he had when he’d died. So how was he here? Was he here?

“I wouldn’t even bother.” Once again, Parasimon cut straight to the point as Dynasmon examined Examon. “Whatever he’s seeing in there, it has him stuck fast. You can try all you want, but I’m sure you know what it boils down to. Either he makes his own way out, or he doesn’t.”

With that, Parasimon rose from his crouch back up to his feet. The light that had appeared moved with him: now it was clear that it was coming from the crystalline structure on his back. Something about the crystals and their pattern of growth seemed different from before: but Parasimon was too preoccupied and Dynasmon too unfamiliar with him to notice.

“Who else besides us is awake? The rat is obvious, and I’m sure I heard that damn cat making enough noise to wake the dead.” This elicited a small chuckle from Dynasmon, and within him Elle and Wizardmon both,

“I believe it is just us, we need to gather everyone we can, those awake and those asleep. We need a battle plan” he said, giving a very serious look to the crystalline entity and pointing upwards towards the near singularity “We need to take this thing down, and fast.” Dynasmon paused to get to his feet, stretching to his full height before continuing “Any ideas?”

“Nothing more than that.” The light on Parasimon’s back cut out. A moment later, it flared back up at a nearly blinding intensity for a brief instant before settling into a softer, yet still searing orange luminescence. Rather than a single burst of light emerging from the crystals on his back, it now formed into six seemingly-solid structures, each thrumming with a great concentration of power. As if the Knight had become weightless at their formation, he began to rise into the air; more than simple structures of light, they seemed to be a new set of wings. “As long as Examon’s alive, Avalon should protect him. Spread out, find who you can and bring them here. It won’t be easy, but I know full well that it’s possible to carve out a victory here.”

Parasimon’s jaws hadn’t moved an inch all the while he spoke to Dynamon, but for a moment as he spoke, the austere shape his mouth had twisted into smoothed out into an expression of rumination. “On my vows, I’ll make sure it’s possible.” And the very next moment, an even fiercer expression than before took its place.

Dynasmon gave the best grin he could considering the circumstances and with a quick, curt, nod he had launched himself into the air, feeling the pressure of Milleniummon and air ripple around him. Taking a breath, he began to look around for a glimpse of anyone or anything that could help them, besides those he already knew about.

One horrific vision upon another dragged Zei and Dorumon further away from the grip of reality into the calm sea of silence and despair. Each vision brought with it an outcome of emotional agony, crushing loneliness or agonizing death with not even a speck of respite in sight. Like phantom hands, they appear out of nowhere, wrapped themselves around the steel throat and slowly pulled the air out of her and, with that, the fight that was slowly leaving her being.

Where was the woman whose eyes burned with silent, cold fury over the loss of one of her own and the guilt over the role she had played in the past? Where was the beast that had withheld untold resentment and rage against the heavens for being relegated to the role of a mask, a false front of another being?

They were drowning.

They were being wiped out; not by blade or fire, but by nightmares that were eating away at everything they were and sinking them into the abyss.

Their rage was being extinguished, their spirits were being suffocated, and their already shaky sanity were being eroded in the worst possible way. Their roars of fury were silenced and their voices muffled by the cold, dark water, the piercing chill numbing all their senses.

After a while, the flow of visions began to twist and distort even further, then faded away as they sank even deeper. In their place, new visions began to appear like a blur of light, visions of painful past seemingly intended to remind them of their feeble existence.

Dorumon recalled her jealousy of other Digimons, of what they had and the life they led. She was different, unique, unknown, and, as a result, was consigned to a life of solitude as most wouldn’t accept her. It wasn’t her choice to be so different, yet she suffered the consequence anyway and could do little but stew in her misery. When Dorumon then found herself being ripped apart from her den in the forest to be thrown to a world unknown, the last thought that accompanied the final sight of her former home was that the entirety of Digital World was having so much fun at her expense.

Zei was forced to relieve her literal fear: the overwhelming cold water chocking the life out of her while she flailed helplessly in it not once, but twice. She, a child trained in martial arts and groomed to be strong physically and emotionally, nearly succumbed to water, her saving grace being the others who came to rescue her both times. The solution to her mortal problem seemed simple enough, yet she was unable to do so. The same happened when she confronted Takeda after Dirk’s death. A swing of her iaito was all she needed, but she couldn’t do it as well.

Helplessness. Regret. Moon=Millenniummon wanted them to feel only these, to let them take over and never again regain their resolve to challenge him. For a moment, the empty peace they seemingly provided was tempting.

They were certainly far more comfortable than struggling through the pains and agony of the reality they were facing now.

However, just as Moon=Millenniummon was on the cusp of victory over them, his temporal visions began to work against it.

Intermingled with the memories of the painful past was the entire battle against Yggdrasil’s loyalist Royal Knights from the beginning of their stand to their last push. The Royal Knight’s civil war had taken quite all manner of tolls from all of them. It ripped apart the existing law and order of the Digital World and carried precarious repercussions for the human world as well.

The battle had left Zei vulnerable to the gnawing anger and desperation that nearly consumed her during the Dark Digivolution and filled Dorumon with resentment over not only her own inability to meaningfully assist, but also her own incomplete existence which, until then, was merely a facade for Alphamon.

At the same time, the battle finally put an end to the divide that had ripped apart the Royal Knight to its core and finally gave the order, along with the rest of the Digital World, the chance to heal and rebuild. It brought the humans closer to their Digimon partners and to each other, and, for most, it gave both Zei and Dorumon the resolve they needed to push through despite the trauma they carried home with them.

A blink later, the scenes changed entirely. A platter of more past memories were served in front of them, yet what were brought to the table was a surprise none could expect.

Dorumon saw the slumbering figure of Ranamon as the latter practically used her as a pillow and body warmer to the former’s chagrin, then the flustered face of the Mushroomon left inside the pit he dug for them after he tried to backstab them during one of their heists, the crisp cold cabbage she pulled out after her first raid of Zei’s fridge and finally NeonGuilmon’s face during their private talk back in the Digital World that brought them closer together.

For Zei, her servings were the memories of the Digi-Egg that eventually hatched into Dodomon who then latched to her hand like a squishy teething puppy, the first meetings with the other humans that were now fighting by her side, Siggy’s face, flush with adrenaline, as he reached out to rescue her along with Dorumon, whose body was evidently not made for much swimming, and the shared resolve within Dorumon and Ranamon as they set out together on what could be their last battle.

It was as if the malevolent Digimon had exhausted all the hopeless futures it could show them, so it opted to torment them with visions of the past, perhaps desiring to break them with their past mistakes and regret.

Yet, it had neglected the fact that, while they might not have the most pleasant past, they were nonetheless shaped by what they had experienced and endured. Their past had molded their personalities, their views of the two worlds, and their resolve not to surrender to the festering whims of evil and selfishness.

Not only that, though their past pains were piercingly bitter, they were also accompanied by the bursting, delectable flavors of new experiences, new friendship and the accomplishment they managed to achieve in their life thus far. They left as much impression as the defeats and struggles.

In fact, because of those very defeats and struggles that Moon=Millenniummon had brought up, every victory they managed to savor was more meaningful, more impactful, more powerful, and this was something not even the artificial Digimon could hide from them no matter how far it dragged them away from reality.

Like pouring generous amount of pure oil into a dying ember, they re-ignited the rage that came forth from their union. The sorrow and loneliness inflicted by the bleak visions became a fuel for the raging inferno and the happiness and determination that came from their past became the wind that carried the flames to burn away the sea of despair and pierce the dark skies.
---

Dorugoramon, the raw essence of their will and their united desire, snarled back to life and clawed her way out of the sea of despair, churning the dark waters with her frantic move for the surface. No phantom hands could hold her back now, shredded by her fangs and claws, and no silence could hold against the loud, ear-piercing roar she let loose from her steel maw the moment she emerged out of the drowning despair.

The bad memories reminded them why they wanted to be strong.
The good memories reminded them why they wanted to remain strong.
They vowed to never forget them, yet not let the memories chain them down lest they drown them alive.
They would hold these memories for those who had departed and for those who were making their last stand against the unleashed horror, the friends and allies who needed every helping hand they could get.

No more.

As if reacting to the heat of the dragon’s fury, the multitude of visions began to crack, like a mirror shattering from exposure to intense temperature. Those cracks eventually widened until their entire field of visions resemble a kaleidoscope of fractured glass and distorted lights before, with one last crack, they shattered into fine dust that gradually cleared Dorugoramon’s view, allowing her to see the malevolent raging storm and thick dark veil in the distance along with the sights of her incapacitated allies, a few still in a prone position.

No more!

Having made a crash landing onto an office building below in her state of silent catatonia, it was Dorugoramon’s own steel-hard body that kept her from reeling too badly from the rushing pain. That, and the electrifying rush of her digital nervous systems coming back online overriding the pain in the first place.

NO MORE!!!

The shared minds within were still reeling, but they were free again. That was all that mattered.

Letting the world know that she was back in business, Dorugoramon rose up from where she was slumped, shook her body to clear the debris of the building that had taken the short end of the stick, then let out a roar of fury with all the breath she had, her claws enveloped by bright, raging fire. With a lash of her tail, she reduced the abandoned buildings around her into crumbling rubble as a fiery ring burned around her, the asphalt having melted and burned due to the intensity of the fire and leaking gas fueling the fire to form a burning ring around the steel dragon’s form.

In the ring of inferno, Dorugoramon made a roaring oath to the sky.

Moon=Millenniummon will PAY for what it did to them all.

Even with the intense light from his wings fighting back against the thick fog, Parasimon moved carefully as he spread out from where he and Dynasmon had left Examon. The two had separated to cover more ground; Dynasmon heading towards the bay whilst Parasimon circled around. He only hoped that the other Knight was having more luck on his end of the search for the others. After his early luck with Examon, it seemed that the rest of the Digimon were less concentrated by area. Of course, with the state that Moon=Millenniummon’s assault had left each of them in, it was entirely possible that he’d fly over an unconscious individual, completely unaware.

That said, it was entirely impossible to ignore the sudden commotion that exploded into life a few hundred meters away from him.

Making a sudden turn upon the axis of his flight to look in the direction of the roar that cut over the winds, Parasimon found his sight immediately assaulted by an infernal explosion of heat and light that blasted straight through a massive patch of the fog. Even at this range, the power of the blast might have blinded a human or weaker Digimon, or boiled their eyes straight from their sockets: but Parasimon’s tolerance to such things had grown a ridiculous amount in the past few days, and so he merely flinched and covered his eyes by reflex. Lowering his arms a moment later, he took advantage of the sudden clearing of the air to instead concentrate his vision and gaze through the flaming heat to look upon the source of the explosion.

The thing that had joined them in their assault on Millenniummon.

Questions ran wild through Parasimon’s head. He hadn’t the time to appraise the creature earlier, caught up in the heat of the moment as they were, but from what he could glean at a glance, the Digimon was quite unusual. A dragon a fraction of the size of Examon, yet radiatiating the aura of a far different kind of beast: and a powerful life force that seemed on par with both his and Parasimon’s own. And then there was the peculiar sense of familiarity about it.

Parasimon slowly moved in towards the creature, weighing up his course of action. A moment later, he came to hover over the molten concrete and asphalt produced by its awakening: and, cautiously landing a short distance from it, decided.

“Alright, who the fuck are you and how did you get here?”

For a moment, the metallic dragon flew without even a growl coming out of a slightly ajar steel maw and it looked as if Parasimon’s understandably terse inquiry would be met with silence until...

“I have no fucking clue how we got here, but we presumably flew here, in case your eyes can’t see the big, totally not-invisible wings.” The voice was deep, guttural and rough on the edges, but the feminine undertone and audibly barbaric vocabulary were unmistakably Dorumon’s.

Parasimon paused, the lights of his eyes narrowing. A moment later, realization hit him and they returned to norrmal.

“... Oh, it’s just you.” Even from their limited interactions, there was no mistaking the creature’s identity: the strange creature that was part of Examon’s party. “Never mind, I half-thought some rabid feral had picked up a taste for synthetic meat and decided to pitch in.” Not that there seemed to be much of a difference at present, Parasimon privately observed. Even restored to lucidity, there was as little mistaking Dorugoramon’s overwhelming bloodlust as there was mistaking her identity.

“Right now, that doesn’t seem like such a terrible idea: a false persona gone rogue eating an indecipherably eldritch, synthetic Digimon,” Dorugoramon replied with a distinctly feral growl. “And, to your credit, I don’t think any of us remembered anything before waking up with our body nicely nestled in rubble and partially melted roadway.”

“Trust me, if I didn’t care for the taste, you’d probably drop dead from it.” If Parasimon had any hair, it would have stood on end at the memory of Millenniummon’s awful data filling him up: instead, the crystals covering his body let out a low, groaning hum as as new growths breached the surface of his foul flesh. Once again, he didn’t seem to notice, instead turning his attention to the other Digimon present. “How did you end up in that deep a rage, anyway? I don’t think I’ve ever been in that deep, and- well, you know me. That really is saying something.”

To that, Dorumon simply let out a raspy chuckle, steam coming out of her metallic maw. “It’s a long story,” she replied with a guttural growl, “but to spare you the boredom, Zei and I Biomerged. We were pissed off before we did so. I’m sure you can guess the rest of the story.” Pausing for a moment, she then added with a tone that suggested this particular bit was something of an afterthought, “Examon said that we underwent a Dark Digivolution, whatever that is.”

“Just being angry did that?” Parasimon stared at Dorugoramon, a dubious look crossing his face. He didn’t have a lot of experience with Dark Digivolution, but secondhand accounts and his general experience with the Tamers was enough for him to question her explanation.

Nonetheless, he decided not to press it. It didn’t look like she was outright lying to him: just concealing some of the facts. From what he did know of Dark Digivolution, something more traumatic than simple anger would be necessary to trigger it: and dragging whatever it was back up to the surface wasn’t going to help in this situation.

“Good grief. I thought I had issues, and then you lot turned up,” Parasimon huffed, with a shrug. “You damn humans really are an order unto yourselves.”

For a moment, Dorugoramon responded with complete and utter silence - not even a growl - before a voice finally responded with a tempered tone.

“Perhaps we are,” Zei replied, her calm voice momentarily hiding the burning rage now wielded with some modicum of control, “but that doesn’t matter now. I will not stop until my - no, our prey makes it last breath.” A feral snarl escaped the dragon’s maw, a strangely eerie noise to be made by what should’ve been the saner one of the two. Right now, she wasn’t the saner one, however.

Once again, Parasimon stared at the half-mad Digimon. That near-feral savagery still radiated from her in droves, only growing more palpable as she swore death onto the abomination in the sky.

“It’s not quite a vow, but I’ll accept it.” But this time, he found solidarity with it. There was no doubt about it, humans were a special kind of dangerous, one that had only ever been embodied in a handful of Digimon. It was exactly the kind of dangerous that Parasimon could get behind: and perhaps it was exactly what they needed to bring Moon=Millenniummon crashing down once more.

Now that the two Digimons were reunited, Dorumon couldn’t help but wonder where the others were.

In particular, she wondered where a certain gargantuan dragon was.

“Are you the only one up aside from us?” Dorumon, retaking control without so much as a twitch of her claw, asked Parasimon as the dragon turned her sights to him. “Where is everyone? More importantly, where the fuck is Examon?” The way the metallic dragon’s head dart around as she tried to see anything other than the obscuring fog around her seemed to suggest that she was particularly concerned about the other dragon in question.

“Dynasmon, the cat and the rat are awake, last I checked. They should hopefully be all together by now.” Parasimon paused for a moment, doing a headcount. He knew that MirageGaogamon, Guilmon and Ranamon were about somewhere: but as much help as they could be, Parasimon couldn't be certain of their ability to shake off their temporal torpor. He’d have to ask Dynasmon about finding them when they joined back up, but finding capable fighters had to be their priority now. That just left: “The only one of you that I haven’t seen or heard somehow is that mouthy little blue shit. Me and Dynasmon found Examon pretty quickly after we came to, but-” Another pause, before Parasimon decided it was best she knew. “Examon is still unconscious. Avalon is still protecting him, so he’s not completely helpless, but if he doesn’t come to soon, I don’t know what good moving him is even going to accomplish.”

Examon was still out cold; with Avalon protecting him, yes, but still out cold nonetheless. That didn’t sound reassuring to her in the very least, even with most of the party accounted for.

“Where is his position now?” Dorugoramon’s wings unfurled with a faint gust as the dragon crouched, ready to bolt as soon as Parasimon revealed where he found Examon. “I can’t believe this,” Dorumon muttered, all visible body language pointing to agitation. “All the work he did to wake me up and now he’s the one still taking his beauty nap?!”

“Back the way I came round. It’s hard to make out details in this fog, and I don’t know enough about this city to guess.” Parasimon sighed. This time, it wasn’t the human in Dorugoramon that was getting riled up: even he could discern the nature of the Digimon half’s fury. “We’ll need to go back around that way to find Dynasmon and the others anyway. Come with me and we won’t be able to miss him.”

To say that Dorumon was reluctant to follow Parasimon instead of going off on her own was an understatement, but with all the fog obscuring anything past a mile of her position, she might as well be flying in circles if she insisted on heeding her admittedly prevalent stubbornness. “Fine,” the dragon growled, her tail flicking quickly as she stood up. “I won’t wait for that damned mess of a Digimon to harm anyone, least of all Examon!”

“Okay so Parasimon has buggered off to make the Dinosaurs extinct” Dynasmon muttered to himself as he watched the crystalline digimon take to the air and head out into the city. In all honesty, seeing even a glimpse of it made him shiver with trepidation, though he would not admit it. Hopefully it wasn’t actually an enemy. Well, more likely it may become an enemy once… Well once existence became just that again.

Shaking his head and leaving that whole situation to Parasimon, Dynasmon began his search again. The fog made directions difficult, not to mention the rubble and destruction. But, rising higher into the air to expand his field of vision, he caught sight of the crystalline structure at the heart of the chaos: and below that, the shimmering waters of the harbour.

Meanwhile, BanchoLeomon glanced up from the harbor, seeing Dynasmon hovering around in the air. Judging the knight to be too high up in the air to be able to hear him, BanchoLeomon resorted to flaring the aura of his Ruin Mode up high enough for Dynasmon to be able to see him.

Out of the corner of his eye, deep in the fog, at what Dynasmon assumed to be the edge of the harbour he saw a flash of light out of the corner of his eyes. Turning towards it and angling his wings in the air he launched himself towards it, it could have been a comrade or an enemy, either way he had to check. Once he was close, he opened his wings to catch the air and slow himself down. Better to have a little caution than attack recklessly just in case it was a friend.

“Though punching someone could be funny” thought Wizardmon, causing Elle to giggle and admonish him,

“Be serious, this is serious.” she said, while stifling a few more giggles “Let’s go find out who is behind fog number.. Infinity!” Elle added as they pushed Dynasmon through the last of the fog and to a landing roughly 50ft from where they last saw the light. It was clearer down at the ground, though only slightly, and they could make out the outline of BanchoLeomon a short distance away. Almost nothing to Digimon of their size.

“Hey, finally awake?” Dynasmon called to him with a grin, it would be good to have everyone together again for a start, though Elle decided that if she could help it, this would be her last fight. Though it was entirely possible it would actually be her last fight.

“No time for banter,” BanchoLeomon snarled, his usual demeanor soured by his Dark Digivolution. “We need to regroup. You find the others?”

This wiped the grin from Dynasmon’s face and he sighed before responding, “Yes, yes I found Parasimon and Examon, Examon is still comatose but alive and Parasimon went to hunt a Dinosaur. I thought I also saw something else a while back. Another Digimon, definitely.”

“Alright, alright.” BanchoLeomon murmured, rubbing his chin in thought. “You can get around faster than I can. I’ll go cover Examon while you get that other digimon back over to us. We can go after Parasimon and...whatever Dorumon turned into afterwards.”

With a nod Dynasmon pointed out the direction and rough distance as well as describing briefly the surrounding scenery so that BanchoLeomon could find the place easily before launching himself back into the air and beginning his search anew. From the air he tracked back to where he first saw that Digimon and began his search with care. After all though he had gotten lucky with finding BanchoLeomon there was no telling what else was here.

The blazing harbingers of the earth roamed aimlessly, their unfocused twitching mirroring the mental state of Rodendramon. Despite the bright burning form of the Pyro Raid's nodes, the fog quickly defused the light, only granting a minor refraction of light. Having not found anything, the projections of energy returned to their origin.
The Earth Beast Digimon snarled, the twisting embers of his attack being reabsorbed into his armor. The glowing red eyes of Rodendramon passed around the desolation. A resentful growl built, soon ripping into the air. Something about the destruction perturbed the Digimon, though in its own mind, it wasn't sure why. However, on the outside, it was rather obvious, should anyone know who was within the Mega Digimon. A baleful roar then filled the air as the beast beat its wings, trying to cut a swath in the fog.

---

Returning to the Digital World wasn't exactly ideal for Jordan. In fact, a large part of him had really and truly hoped he would never see nor hear of it again. So, as can be imagined, when objects from the Digital World began appearing in the real world, he was more than a little unnerved. The confusion and panic that gripped the majority of the populace were instead replaced with a looming sense of dread for Jordan.
When he heard about strange creatures appearing, to say the boy was on edge was an understatement. Jordan's behavior radically shifted at that point- to the extent that he barely left the family apartment. By the time his other would-be compatriots had met their Digimon partners, he had all but shut down. Most of his time was spent in the dark. He barely slept, and rarely ate. His stress had risen so high that he had stopped speaking. His interactions with the other tamers, and even Shrewmon to an extent, were out of necessity- more for them than for himself. He was glad to see his partner again, but at the same time, he would rather not relive any of their "adventures".
Having been done with the journey from the start, the events that transpired were far from welcome. And, honestly, they weren't entirely healthy for anyone involved. So, when they had finally returned to the Real World, he was more than ready to be done. So, this one last move was nearly the straw that broke the camel's back. Having to deal with a maniacal tyrant who used intimidation to get what he wanted, who created a horror of a synthetic Digimon, then unleashed to cause wanton destruction- it was as if all of his mistakes, the thoughts that twisted his stomach at night- all of it was thrown in his face. So, when the time came to finish this abomination, Jordan let go. He didn't want to have to think anymore, and the Biomerge that was called upon clearly obliged. His roiling emotions, combined with the energy of fighting off the forces of the Royal Knights and the escaping energy of the Earth- seeking a protector, any outlet to defend itself against the heinous threat that had been vomited upon it- forged the feral heart that was Rodendramon. The power that was born was outside of the control of both Shrewmon and Jordan. Therefore, though their minds were working in tandem, it was only in the background, their instincts laid bare against the torrent of evil they faced.