ᴅ ᴀ ɴ ᴛ ᴇ ᴊ ᴏ ɴ ᴇ s - ʏ ᴀ s ᴜ ʀ ᴀ ɢ ɪ + ʀ ᴜ ʙ ᴀ ɴ ɪ ʟ ɪ ᴇ ɴ ᴇ s + ʀ ʏ ᴀ ɴ ᴍ ᴀ ʏ ᴇ ᴢ + ʙ ᴀ ʀ ᴛ ᴍ ᴀ ᴛ ʜ ᴇ ʀ s :

---

Time seemed to slow down to a crawl. The invisible grip around Dante’s body didn’t quite exert the pressure needed to cut off his circulation or push his bones from their proper place. Nonetheless the sensation of helplessness sent his head reeling and his blood beating in his ears, his expression frozen in its prior horror.

Coherent thoughts were as beyond his reach as the others were: he watched them move about, their words as garbled as the thoughts running through his own head. As the sounds coming from their midst grew louder and more aggressive, however, something began to spark off at last in his head. Fear was one thing, but anger was another: it was infectious, and for better or worse, it began to creep its way into Dante’s head, furrowing out his terror in favour of raw frustration.

When the other boy rose from the dirt and shoved back at the girl who’d grabbed him, it was just about enough to complete the reaction. Beginning to breathe again, slowly and then increasingly quick and shallow, he filled his lungs with air and prepared to call out-

“Well, I think I gave you guys a fair chance.”

And his words caught in his chest as the crystal plunged through it

The next few moments passed in an incomprehensible blur. At the exact moment the crystal was pushed into him, his mind went blank: not so much from pain as from the curious sensation of having something pass through you as easily as you would pass your hand through water. Shock claimed him, and he was all but dead to the world as he was thrown to the ground, as he felt his insides vibrate unpleasantly from the crystal dispersing and spreading throughout him.

He stared upwards, frozen in premature rigor mortis as the horrifying scene continued. As his consciousness wavered, the last things he heard were the terrified, stammered whispers of one of the girls, the stuttered horror of the other boy, and the sounds of footsteps as Rubani moved to defend them the best she could. Moments later, and he-

“...” Light returning to his eyes, he blinked and moved his hand to his chest. The unpleasant liquid sensation of before was still present, and kept him on the ground as he recovered from his fall: but at the crystal’s apparent point of entry, there was no wound. No no gaping wound, no blood, and not even a hole in his shirt. His sternum seemed entirely undamaged, and there wasn't a hint of pain as he moved to tap it.

He blinked again. His mind began to move once more, and blank panic and shock was replaced with abject disbelief.

“What the hell.”



Unfortunately for Rubani, the floating child shook his head. “Nuh-uh!” And raising his hand, the earth followed, creating a short, muddy wall. Not enough to really block any of their fields of visions, but certainly high enough to catch Rubani in the midsection. He giggled, floating down and sitting on the wall’s top. “Oh, so close!” Even with the mask’s unchanging stare, there was a hint of a mocking grin on that covered face.

Rubani nearly tripped over her own feet as she tried to come to a sliding stop. Even so, she somehow managed to stumble into the wall. She had fallen backwards when the demon child mocked her from the wall. Her mind was past caring, however. She had already accepted her death at the hands of the monster; her only concern was making sure as many people as possible got out alive. If she couldn't get past the wall, there was an easier way to get their attention.

“RUN!!!” she shouted to the two kids. If that couldn't get their attention, there wasn't much else she could do.

Rubani really did not have to yell, RUN!!! Ryan knew what to do even in her horror stricken state, her adrenaline took over, and in a vain and clumsy attempt to take flight, her hand pressed rudely against Bart, fingers twisting into his shirt and skin for better friction and shoving him further into the ground. As her body began to make movements for sprinting, Ryan hesitated and quickly turned his attention to Bart, miffed in the ground. A spare movement to help him up registered through her mind. However, the thought did not follow through into her nerves, and the rest of the moment became a black blur as she shoved one boot in front of the other, shoveling her heels into the Digital World’s floor.

Bart detected the immense pressure from Ryan’s coarse and rough palms as he attempted to rise and make a run for it. “S-stop! You’re crushing me! Ow!” The pain was enough to paralyse him as Ryan took flight-- a pin cushion to her needle-like fingers that pierced his skin and nerves all the way through to the ground.

As the two ran for their lives, Rubani's worries were still plenty. If they ran, the demon child could still catch him. She just couldn't let that happen. From the ground, she clumsily leapt towards the demon. Her arms reached outward; her goal was clear. If she could grab the demon and distract it for a moment, Ryan and Bart would have a few more seconds to get away.

Rubani was too close for the little demon to move off the wall and out of her reach. The fleeing of the other two also captured his attention - muttering something that sounded a lot like “Not again” as he raised an arm, likely to manipulate the ground around the two and entrap them. That was before he noticed Rubani-

And before he could react, she reached through him.

The moment hung in the air - Rubani’s arms plunged through something that felt like lukewarm water before connecting with the top of the muddy wall the child sat upon. It seemed to stare at her through the mask, his midsection fuzzing around the arms that were halfway through it.

“....whoopsie.” He darted upwards as if Rubani’s arms weren’t even there. He casually flung an arm outward as he stared down at Rubani, and a smattering of violet crystals landed, points jabbing skyward, by Ryan and Bart’s feet.

The feeling of something that wasn't where she thought it was be wasn't a feeling that Rubani felt all too often. Her hands phased through the demon and she found herself falling over the wall and landing back on the ground face first. It took a moment for her to register what just happened. No, I'm sure I didn't miss, she thought.

Ryan stopped sprinting the second her body was about to barge into the crystal barriers charging at her feet. Her arms spread-out, trying to stop the momentum and found herself tumbling over, cheek rubbing burns of dirt in her skin. Her eyes closed in pain as she held back tears; fists clenched themselves as her muscles flexed to push herself upwards. It wasn’t until that moment that she realized how weak and exhausted she was from everything they had just done -- predominately chasing Bart and getting into a failed wrestling match with him. She was tired; but her mind wouldn’t let her give up; and all she could do was helplessly whimper Bart’s name.

His hand clutched and raked the grass by his palm and rose from his grounded position and propelled himself forward as if a feline had met its match. A flustered and exhausted look bequeathed Bart’s complexion; beads of sweat slithered by the plateau of his forehead and crevices of his cheeks. A sharp, cleanly dissected crystal implanted itself into the ground in front of him and the grip of his shoes managed to stop him from advancing further forward prior to momentum following through his body. There’s a look of surprise. The glasses had unbalanced -- quickly adjusted by with a natural flick of his fingers and scoured around him until he saw that tomboy struggling. Corpse tumbling over.

What ensued next probably wouldn’t be good. Rubani’s attempt at distracting the monster had failed, Bart had only milliseconds to think and react as the ground shifts for Bart; breaking him into a sprint with determination and ran to Ryan’s side as he hoisted her up around his shoulder but silent. “Not today. Nooope,” He continued his advance, albeit slower away and further away from the monster (hopefully).

Bart’s grasp pulling Ryan over his shoulder caused her mind to try and retract from the disorientation. She wanted to push herself from Bart like he had some type of cooties, but logically that was an unreasonable decision. Her body relaxed as it would -- perhaps, selfishly, now, as her heart pounded through her chest, echoing into her eardrums. The boy was breathing deeply, but all she could hear was her own breaths as her eyes strained to glance around the area. They were not going to get far anytime soon.

Though essentially unharmed, Dante’s fall kept him on the ground for a few moments more before he was able to climb back to his feet. Now that his blood had stopped beating in his ears from panic and he was able to distract himself from the sheer bizarrity of what had happened, he could see what was going on around him.

The thing that had ‘impaled’ him was still here. That almost made him want to get back on the ground and play dead, but fear wasn’t going to claim him just yet. It didn’t seem to be paying him any mind: instead darting about in the air, sending down more of those crystals to strike at the others. The two children who had ran into the woods ahead of him and Rubani before were at the fringe of the commotion, one carrying the other. Minor panic set in again. Had he just been lucky? Had they lost one of them already? How long was it before they lost another?

Indecision had taken over Rubani. She could only kneel, paralyzed where she had fallen. No matter what she decided to do, it seemed as if the monster child would be unstoppable. Even with her best efforts, she couldn't protect anyone. In her dazed state, her eyes drifted over to the first corpse of the day.

Poor Dante. She had told him to stay behind, but it might have been better for a little boy like him not to have been left alone, no matter what the circumstances. Now, there was nothing she could do to help him. “I'm sorry, Dante” she said almost to herself.

“Don’t be sorry, just get moving!” Rubani may not have expected a response, but it came clear as day. After a few moments of standing around in shock and near-panic, Dante had made his mind up. Whatever the hell was going on, staying here to find out was without a doubt the worst way to go about it.

The girl’s eyes snapped open in surprise. Her previous mood of sadness was forgotten by one of both shock and confusion. “You're alive!?” she asked, “B-but what about… that thing… he stabbed you in your back!” her shaking finger pointed to where the crystal impaled Dante.

It took a moment for Dante to respond. On the one hand, the best thing they could all do now was make a break for it and hope for the best. On the other, it was incredibly suspicious that he was alive, and he himself wasn’t sure how that was possible.

“I… I don’t know.” There was no time to waste theorizing, nor to wait around. As he answered, he was quick to run over towards her, anxious and aware that it wouldn’t be long until the child turned his attention back to them. But it wasn’t so easy to banish the possibilities from his mind: “I felt it, but there isn’t a wound or anything. It’s like it went right through me.”

This was all starting to look a little strange. That's twice now that what Rubani thought was there actually wasn't. She'd start questioning how much of what they saw was actually there if she didn't just fall over a wall that popped out of the ground. There was also the fact that the monster made Dante float in the air, or at least she thinks so. The more she thought about it, the more it confused her. “What's going on here?” she wondered out loud, “And why exactly is that thing toying with us?”

“Let’s not stick around to find out.” Whatever was happening with the child and his seemingly fruitless attempts to kill them, Dante had a gut feeling that this was more than just some kind of practical joke. He remembered the awful smell from earlier, and the sensation of being lifted into the air: the crystal may have been nothing in the end, but those definitely weren’t. Once again, self-preservation won out over curiosity. “I’m not hurt, at least not enough to slow me down. How about you?”

“I'm okay,” she replied. The shock was starting to wear off; she could at least stand up. What she wanted to do next was go after the other two, but what then? She was just leaving Dante behind again, and he was almost killed. Then again, he might be killed by the creature after it realizes that he isn't dead yet.

Maybe, just this once, she could let him decide where he wants to go? It isn't as if she knew how to keep him alive in this strange place. She cleared her throat nervously. “So… I think we should go after the other two. might still be able to help them.” She'd feel even worse if Dante didn't get to decide what he risked his life for, so the least she could do was to let him decide where he wants to go.

Fortunately, it seemed as if Dante was on the same page as her. “The best thing we can do is to help each-other,” he said, with a nod. He’d seen the other two struggling to get away: with his and Rubani’s help, maybe escape would be a possibility rather than a fledgling hope.

Maybe the situation wasn’t entirely unsalvageable. At the very least, they were all still alive. Maybe it was the adrenaline talking, but that itself was encouraging enough to keep him going.

Rubani nodded in agreement. “Then it's settled,” she said. “We should hurry if we want to catch up” Without another word, she turned to chase after the masked creature. Her legs were still unsteady under her, but she told herself she could at least keep going long enough to catch up to it.

Dante wasn’t far behind her, only slightly delayed by the remaining stiffness in his body. “What do we do about him?” He didn’t want to rely on the possibility that he couldn’t hurt them: it could have been dumb luck or the child toying with him that had him still breathing right now.

---

“So, why in a hurry to leave anyways? Where do you got to go?” The little demon laughed and then almost seemed to freeze - color rushed out, rushed forward in front of Bart and Ryan, leaving behind a transparent outline hanging in the air that rapidly vanished as the colors reassembled back into their proper places. “Why can’t we all play for a bit? Last guys don’t seem interested anymore, and, sure you guys cheat, but beats boredom, right?” He flexed his fingers, and the dirt under him seemed to twitch in response, the dead trees trembling.

“Why do you want to go so soon?” His voice almost seemed to be distorting.

---

In the clearing, one of the figures began to stir.

He hadn't fully lost consciousness after what had happened. He was too used to pain, too desensitized against it for it to send his mind completely reeling into the indistinct white. Perhaps miraculously, too, he hadn't lost enough blood to force him along.

That was small comfort, however, when that meant he was awake to experience the sensation of the splinter driven all the way through his chest.

His face had regenerated enough from the child's curious experimentation that he could see again. His vision was blurry, but clear enough to make out the now-blunt point jutting out from his torso, stained red and a variety of other unspeakably vivid colours from his blood and organs. His qi had manifested as a searing heat running through his body, cauterizing the wound before it could drag him under. That, however, only made the pain more intense.

There was no time to disable his receptors. He raised his head. The three retainers who had fought alongside him were in similarly dire straits. Two of them, he could only make out as dark shapes lying prone on the ground. The remaining one, right besides one of the others and similarly indistinct, was now starting to move as he was.

He couldn’t wait to gauge their ability to fight. His gun was nowhere near at hand, and neither was it in any state to fire. That left one sure-fire way of continuing the fight.

The qi running through his body was forced into overdrive. A black aura highlighted his form and forced strength back into him, and he reached down to the holster at the side of his broken right leg.

A hint of silver caught the sun, a small light amongst the black of its owner's energy and the gruesome earthy reds of his mangled body. Squinting as the aura helped his vision recover and focus, his line of sight passed the clearing and into its surroundings. A moment later, his target appeared in his vision. He was small. He was a distance away. He was floating in the air as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

None of that mattered one bit.

In an instant, the dark energy swallowed the knife up entirely. Pulling his arm back, Astamon flicked his wrist as hard as he could. With the qi coursing through both him and his knife, the blade fired forth with the speed and power of an anti-tank round on a direct course to a single target.

---

It all happened almost too fast to process.

The shiny object flew through the air, and only now was it clear how much the childish monster had been holding back. The object glinted for only a second in the vision of the group, and the child still managed to respond, arm raising and catching the glowing dagger in its black skin. The color almost seemed to ooze out of the wound. The group could then hear the pounding footsteps - something tall and vaguely humanoid had rushed from the clearing, red lines trailing from about hip height. It pushed off the ground, momentum carrying it through the air, and gave the group a better look at its snarling cat-like face and the massive claws pushed forward to strike the child-

Who abruptly moved about two feet to the right and let the cat being crash with a loud crack and a scream.

The child shook his head, pulling the dagger out of his arm. The hole sealed up even as the group watched, covering up glowing letters and characters, and the child looked back at the clearing - the other two were staggering back to their feet as well, the lion-like monster clearly trying to hold its innards in and the multi-faced being still bleeding terribly. The cat-like being tried to get up, but it was clear its lower legs no longer responded to its will.

“Is that all you’ve got?” The child sighed. “One set of playmates don’t know when they’re done, the other cheats...” The child trailed off. While the mask remained impassive, his posture relaxed as he spread his fingers.

“But I think I can fix that!” His fingers curled to his palms. None of the other monsters had time for a chance to stop the act or even for final words. As if tethered by strings, a glowing orb burst out of each their chest, flying to the being’s hands, and all four burst into white pixels, dissipating into the ether. The child flicked his fingers outward-

And a core flew into each person.

Digital code detected. Digivolution initiated.

Each one glowed, the human forms growing, altering into beastial appearances. The child chuckled.

“Now this is where it gets fun!”

ʀ ʏ ᴀ ɴ ᴍ ᴀ ʏ ᴇ ᴢ + ʙ ᴀ ʀ ᴛ ᴍ ᴀ ᴛ ʜ ᴇ ʀ s :

---

G-game?

The still air, cool and firm drifted over Ryan’s body, flushed with exhausted adrenaline. The pixelated movements in front of Bart and her scattered and dispersed, only to re-converge colors back into concrete shapes and figures, again. Th-this wasn’t a game… An exasperated quiver squeezed from Ryan as she nudged her body. She wanted off of Bart, now. She wanted to go. She needed to go. It was a freak show and a half, and she wanted nothing to do with it, anymore. Her body’s nudge turned more into a squirm while the omen taunted them in a childish manner.

She did not have time for this.

But suddenly, Ryan felt her body drift from Bart. There was no real words to describe the motion, but it was confusing and painful. No, it was very painful. It was a pain she had never felt before, now. It was like the stitches of her being were torn apart, ripping the muscles from her bones -- unweaving her as the cool air needled and cricked into her pale skin. Agony. It was agony she was feeling. A torturous agony -- it was all she knew in this moment. The pull of her body was being dissected and invaded, stretched and pulled, redirect and construed. Ryan so desperately wanted to scream or cry out, but not even a peep came from her.

She could hear her voice, though, clawing at the choke of her throat, squeezed in silence and throbbing like it was ready to burst from her neck while the twists of her baste plucked apart, and although her wailing was noiseless and mute, she was still deafened by the intangible sound. And soon, her vision was also blinded by the pain aching in large pulsating tremors, not even the color black was discernible to her. All she knew was the misery of the pain being inflicted upon her.

“Aah!” The youngster’s eyes widened as sweat shrilled along the surface of his domed forehead, body tensing and shivering with his palm grasping the grass of the forest in search of a grip as he saw the masked monster apparated erratically in nightmarish cubes and waves diluted in colour in front of Ryan and Bart. He filled his lungs with air, a futile attempt at calming his nerves as he saw the creature simply eviscerated the other monster-like beings by ripping its lifeforce with a vile clasp of the masked boy’s hand. Whatever spheres that would be the heart of those things that tried to help them… Gone. As if they weren’t worth to bat.

Amidst all of these deaths... Bart wouldn’t’ve not know. He didn’t see the core enter into him. He wasn’t able to comprehend the words which read ‘DIGIVOLUTION’ as he was sent into an abyss of excruciating pain that convulsed him flat onto the grass floor… His back arching as he yelped out in a crazed uproar of screams which eventually crawled deeply into his mind and his brain induced a comatose upon itself, rendering Bart silent and unconscious as data began to replace or alter DNA.

As the core shot through her heart, Rubani stumbled to a stop. A panicked hand clutched her heart in fear.

A few seconds passed, and nothing had happened. For a moment, she thought she was unharmed. The only thing that she could see as any different was the dull itch in her left arm. In fact, that itching was becoming more noticable by the second. Rubani tried scratching it, but it was actually starting to hurt. Sparing a moment to look away from the monster child, she looked down at her arm and gasped.

Black, white, and orange hairs were rising from her skin and covering her arm in a thick coat of fur. She could feel each follicle growing out from her skin. They grew together, until her arm was almost completely unrecognizable.

"What?!" Rubani exclaimed, before her the bones in her arm suddenly snapped. She screamed. Her arm wasThe pain was spreading through her arm and past her shoulder. Panic washed over her as she realized what the core was doing to her. It was forcefully twisting her body in to some sort of creature. Within an instant, it seemed as if her entire body was burning in agony.

Her spine snapped, her legs grew weak, and she found herself on the ground, screaming and writhing in agony. She couldn't think, breathe, or anything. There was only the pain of her bones shifting, her limbs stretching, and her entire sense of self being torn apart.

As the gunfire-esque sound split the air and shook his eardrums, Dante stopped in his tracks, falling behind Rubani.

The child hadn’t noticed the two of them yet. Dante, however, was quick to notice the glint of silver that suddenly appeared next to him as the ground shook slightly, as if a great deal of force had suddenly been buffered into the ground through his body.

What was that? Where had it come from? Now that he got a chance to take a look, he could make out that it wasn’t a bullet, but some kind of knife: and judging by the fact that it was sticking out of the child’s arm, it most likely didn’t belong to him. That led to one clear conclusion-

“We’re not alone.” Dante’s voice was quiet, a whisper too low to be heard, but it carried a palpable sense of hope. Whether the child was playing or actually unable to directly hurt them, their chances of successful escape against his powers seemed slim. But a powerful distraction, if not an outright ally coming their way; that was a different question entirely. For a moment, Dante allowed himself to hope for the best.

That sense of hope grew as the sound of increasingly heavy footsteps rang out from the clearing, shaking the ground as the impact of the dagger had done before.

And then, in a single moment, that hope fell apart. The creature that emerged from the clearing- the blindingly fast humanoid feline- was almost laughably futile in its charge towards the child. A brief but ill-fated struggle might have provided a moment’s opening: instead, the child sidestepped the creature’s attack as if it was no more threatening or pressing a concern than a fly buzzing around his head.

“... Let’s get out of here.” Reduced to stating the obvious at no-one in particular, Dante’s voice would have sounded entirely flat with despair if not for the undercurrent of fear that cracked it. With his sinking heart beating out in increasing panic, he began to move after Rubani again: with all hope of rescue dashed in a mere instant, the only choice that presented itself was to bank on the possibility that the child couldn’t hurt them, and all the terrifying uncertainty that it offered.
---
Unable to articulate beyond growls of frustration, Astamon clenched his jaw as he saw NecroWisemon effortlessly block his attack.

This was it, then. After years of clawing his way up from the gutter, after all he’d forced himself to endure, this was how it ended. Dying with empty hands and a mangled body, unable to defend himself. Unable to fight to his last breath.

Unable to protect his allies or avenge the one who’d taken him in in the end.

The thought, and the knot of anger that it tightened where his stomach should have been, spurred him into action. The aura that he had pooled into his dagger, the dark qi that gave him his terrible might, flared into life again and enveloped his whole body. Like black fire, it hissed and ate at his myriad wounds, once again making him wish for an opportunity to disable his pain receptors: but he knew that there was no time to waste.

An arm of qi reached out like incendiary lightning and dived down at the splinter that Astamon was skewered on. With a single fluid motion, the black energy ate through the wood, scorching either side of the wound the same dark colour as itself as the splinter broke and sent him falling gracelessly to the hard ground below.

Failing to land on his shaky feet but preventing himself from collapsing entirely with an aura-empowered arm against the forest floor, Astamon looked around him. Besides reinforcing his body, the qi had allowed his vision to regain focus. Now, he could clearly see Baalmon and Flaremon in the clearing with him: and like him, they were struggling back to their feet, however precariously. Baalmon seemed the most stable of the two: there was no mistaking the poor state that Flaremon was in, organs barely remaining in their proper place despite his attempts to stand.

More importantly, however, Meicrackmon was nowhere to be seen. Either she’d already passed or, more likely, she’d been the one he’d seen moving whilst impaled and had already leapt back into action. More than wanting to assume the latter, Astamon banked on it: if Meicrackmon was capable of fighting alongside him and making good on her cantankerous behaviour, maybe they could turn this around and buy time for Baalmon and Flaremon to withdraw.

Strength returning to his legs as he pushed himself up with his arm, Astamon rose back to his feet. His gun was still broken, and now even his dagger was out of the question. All he had left was the strength in his body and whatever was left of his aura. Without a moment’s hesitation, he dived forwards-

And barely a second later, ground to a sudden stop as he got a better look at what laid beyond the mouth of the clearing. Meicrackmon was down again, seemingly for the count this time. That was chilling enough to chip into his resolve by itself, but then he dared to look to the side.

Astamon had heard stories of these beings, but only now was he able to see one with his own eyes. At a glance, they could have passed for a Digimon akin to himself or Baalmon. But with the otherworldly sensation that filled the air about them as if they’d been superimposed onto the space that their bodies inhabited, and the way in which their outlines fizzed and hissed at a scarcely perceptible level, there was no mistaking that they were anything but: nor was there any mistaking what they actually were. Humans. Honest to God humans.

And they’d been drawn right into the line of fire along with their doomed selves. The last obstacles to NecroWisemon’s rampage, all gathered like eggs in a basket and ready to be smashed. Thoughts of fighting to the death abandoned Astamon in that moment, and black flame swarmed and raged around the chunk of wood still stuck in his chest as he opened his mouth to scream out at them.

But he didn’t get the chance. He felt himself burning: not from the flames, but from his core’s exposure to the world around it as it was torn from his body, his senses degenerating into a black miasma of pain and terror as his gutted body collapsed into countless fragments.
---
Dante didn’t get a chance to react as everything went to hell. Mere moments after he picked up his feet to go and help Rubani and the others, the child made his next move: at first, all he could comprehend was the feline creature seeming to disappear from his peripheral vision. And then, from the other side of that vision, something came flying towards him.

And as it entered his body, the world around him seemed to give way.

The sensation wasn’t quite as before, when he’d woken up. Rather than the dreary, inebriated state he’d awakened into, he now felt as if he was falling in place, completely weightless against an intangible rush from below. A strange sense of calm overcame him and his prior terror, anxiety floating away as if it were as weightless as himself.

His senses weren’t quite absent. Whilst his vision was blurred beyond any ability to see what was happening to him, and his hearing was overwhelmed by sound of screaming winds assaulting him from every side. He felt nothing of those winds, however. Instead, as the weightlessness began to abate, he felt as if he’d been hollowed out: and as if his body and limbs were being pulled at either end by extreme force. Yet it felt nothing like it should have. Rather than stress as bones readied to break and joints threatened to dislocate, Dante only felt discomfort creep up on him as his form seemed to adopt the consistency of rubber, stretching along with the force pulling it rather than being torn apart by it.

It was only when whatever was happening claimed his head that that discomfort blossomed into pain, and the pain back into renewed terror. This time, he couldn’t help but cry out in a harsh shriek of pain as something erupted from his skull, the bone warping and taking on a new form unlike the familiar humanoid build that Dante’s body had been stretched out into. The process seemed to be nearing completion, and he felt something pour into his body as his head continued its painful distortion: Dante may well have thrown up at that very moment, if not for the seeming absence of organs to respond to the nauseating panic he was experiencing.

Of course, throwing up wasn’t all that may have happened as the sounds of wind abated to give way to the unfamiliar, roaring screams of pain that rattled his body from within.

The shrieks of agony and the burning light did nothing to faze the demonic child, silently watching, mask unchanging in the face of the tortures his ‘playmates’ were enduring. As the light faded, however, and heat and smoke wafted from the forms lying on the ground, he laughed and clapped his hands together. Baalmon, Meicrackmon, Flaremon, and Astamon. They were all back!

"Welcome back, guys! Who's up for Round Two?" It was as if the humans had never even been there. "Glad you're all here to play today." It was time to brush off that earlier hiccup and go back to their earlier playtime. "And I think I know just how to keep things going. Who's up for tag?" He teleported back to the edge of the clearing - Piximon visibly flinched at his arrival, even if he wasn't facing her. "It'll be something different! Won't that be great? You know, in the human world, sometimes they play it with a few extras. I've even seen them use metal pipes." He spread his arms wide. "I think I've got something a little more interesting - but you guys saw this coming, didn't you?"

Piximon blinked, looking from the four once-humans to the little demon, and then back to the humans before shaking her head and scooping up her brother's still-limp form. It was tempting to yell after them - they had tried to warn them, he had tried to leave them far behind from all this - but that wasn't going to work and it didn't matter anymore. Marineangemon's attempts to spare them had failed, and all she could do was try to spare him from the little demon he cared so much about.

Then there was a crack, and she paled. No... had he really gotten that far since they left? She turned to see the child raise both arms - and the massive tree cracked once more. Her jaw dropped, and she hugged her brother close to her before pushing off of the ground. There was nothing she could do for them. Not if he had truly destroyed the Server Tree.

--

It was like a glitching video playing in their minds -

'WehavetosavethemWehavetosavethemWehavetosavethem-'

'HehastobestoppedHehastobestoppedHehastobestopped-'

'I'vefailedI'vefailedI'vefailed-'

'WhatdowedoWhatdowedoWhatdowedo-'

-endlessly looping, unable to quite move on to the next part. The voices roses above their pain, echoing in their skulls as if trying to push out their own thoughts and fill their heads instead with the repeated words.

Then there was the cracking noise. The voices stilled.

The child had both hands lifted above his head and, behind him, the massive tree rose several yards off the ground. Bark and root broke, exposing wires and cables under the surface, the remains hanging uselessly in place. Piximon was flying out of the way as fast as her gossamer wings would allow with her brother's weight dragging her down. The tree loomed above the five of them.

"Well, guys-" The child's grin was practically audible. "Just try to stop this if you can!" He flung his hands forward and warped away as the tree toppled down in their direction. Too wide to run to the side, too much pain and noise to focus on a plan-

And then everything stopped.

Piximon's wings had come to a complete stop in midair and yet she did not fall. The child's colors had stopped as a smear to the side of the tree. The tree's leaves still bent back from the force of falling but did not move.

Footsteps came from their right - uneven, a hollow thunk followed by a metallic clank, thunk-clank, thunk-clank - and a dead bush rustled before a pair of hands parted the bare branches. Staring at them was a figure in a red hood, wire stitched along the hood's seam to a hole for the mouth - also stitched shut by wire. The green eyes were wide, the mouth dropping open as far as the seams allowed it. Both hands were gloved in red; the left hand held a mallet taller than the being was, held as if it were a walking stick instead of a potential weapon. Beyond the red cloth, the being was garbed in grey with nothing else particularly distinguishing about its humanoid appearance.

"Oh my stars." It - no, she - also sounded like a young child as she stared at the four. "I - I know there's a lot going on right now and I'm sure you have a lot of questions, but you four - please, this way." She pointed behind her with the mallet, lurching forward and catching herself on the shrub. "I can't keep this up for much longer, and that tree's going to hurt if it lands on you."

ʀ ʏ ᴀ ɴ ᴍ ᴀ ʏ ᴇ ᴢ :

---

Nothing was making sense. Any hope for sanity was frantically losing itself as her mind tried to grab onto something, anything. A word; an emotion; a sound; a memory; anything. But, there was nothing that she could mentally find or ascertain. She was lost in some void or space of existence and suddenly...

Suddenly, the agony stopped.

But the memories of it were still crawling shivers through Ryan’s body, which… felt disparate and --

She raised her hand to touch her head as if her emotions were feeling some faintness. The silver hints of light glinted in the daytime, taking her aback as she opened her deformed hand. There was a fear she was supposed to illicit, but her body felt stronger than the faintness she thought she felt she was obliged to be exhibiting, if the previous courses of action had not shown some ultimate weakness in her. As her arm stretched closer, the muscles molded and moved in a strange manner, and the scent of foreign cloth muffled against her gaped mouth, concealing her state of perplexity in a comforting manner.

As comforting as the sensation was, a spike of surprise jetted through her, interweaving its nature through the horrors of the pain and suffering she had just endured. She was no longer in her human form. She was some sort of -- monster. Narrow eyes quickly shut and opened, deducing what could have happened while her mind wrapped around the size of the silver hand flexed in front of her. I am one of those omen things, now?

It very well came to her knowledge that there was something warm wrapped around her head, and these flushed emotions were not physical at all. They were some made-up emotion she had prescribed herself out of some habit. She was not in her body, anymore. She enjoyed this feeling as her other arm, more modestly dressed, streamed for symmetrical perspective while she examined her new suit. The initial shock began melting into some form of energy... much to her liking.

And, huffing in the warmth wrapped around her jaw, full breaths weaved to-and-from Ryan’s form. They were larger but quieter than she was expecting them to be, and by casting a calmness through the cloud of confusion, a clearness was overcoming her recollection of the pain that had distraught her before the wretched destitution had taken her hostage. It had been a necessary escape, it seemed for whatever thoughts began commandeering around in her head to feel so altered, antithetic, like her previous physique had been some fantasy or lie. This version could not help but be superior and solidified.

Her body slowly lifted, hearing the rough panic of the little omens panting litanies of syllables after syllables of warning. There was a robust muscle inside her chest pounding at the commotion. She knew there was danger, but the over-awareness seemed less frightening, now, especially as her sturdy body continued to uncurl and move upwards into a straightened posture. In fact, the firm airiness of her body gliding taller and taller as she stood in a pompous disposition caused her gaped mouth to close and smirk in secret contempt beneath her white ashen scarf.

“I could get used to this,” she muttered. Her voice was now muffled, distinctively low. A surge of confidence struck her at the sound with a tightened fist of admiration. It even comes with a sword, she mentally noted, having somehow missed the blade’s appearance during her initial reaction to her shape-shifting. Things were looking up, for once.

The toes in her boots curled with excitement at all the new sensations coursing through her as she moved her body with ease at the caution of the little monsters, so small in comparison to her, now. She even watched in vain apathy as the large tree lifted, and its roots grabbed the soil, desperately trying to cling to the forest floor in an anxious manner. Ryan braced herself, unaware of her own lack of strength, “I’m ready for Round Two,” Her feet shifted with the rumbling growl of her voice, and her now red eyes narrowed in pursuit. Her knees were bent, and even then, her height was tremendous than before the distortion -- or whatever it was. This was a definite game changer, and clearly, there something powerful on her side. Call it a glitch -- a cheat -- or something just part of the rules -- Ryan was suddenly interested in playing.

There was no way she could lose, but suddenly...

Suddenly, everything stopped.

Just like her pain had.

A small disappointment waved over Ryan as the large tree, ominous in size froze in midair. She wanted to try out this new thing and attempt catching the oversized plant, reckless as it as. Her back, which had been slightly arched forward in anticipation was now retracting hesitantly at the sense of another powerful force paving its way into the game. The stillness quickly jerked Ryan’s Adrenalin, and her body tensed. She liked this brute feeling as she awaited for her next challenge. Her ears perked automatically to the sounds of metal stomping its own clearing in the forest. Sensorium was tapping trickles of impatience into her as she stood still, feeling all the differences of this world begin to unfold unusual to what her human body had experienced.

"Oh my stars." It - no, she - also sounded like a young child as she stared at the four. "I - I know there's a lot going on right now and I'm sure you have a lot of questions, but you four - please, this way." She pointed behind her with the mallet, lurching forward and catching herself on the shrub. "I can't keep this up for much longer, and that tree's going to hurt if it lands on you."

There was an agitation towards the young child’s suggestion, despite any struggles resting in her aid. Ryan’s boot dug its heel into the soil as her eyes quickly glanced at her comrades, “Last one out is a rotten egg,” she scoffed competitively before turning her body and swiftly sprinting in the opposite direction. The strides of her legs were long and muscular, and the pensive accuracy of each footstep was exhilarating for her, regardless of current circumstances.

The white haze was slowly fading from Rubani's vision. Even then, the blurry world around her was still coming in to focus. The agonizing pain from before had rendered her unconscious; it almost gelt like the third time in one day that she had been to pick herself up off of the ground. This time around, though, her body felt... different. She felt a lot heavier than before, but the weight didn't feel the same either. In fact, she felt better than ever! She looked down to admire her surprisingly sturdy body, but her admiration was cut short when she realized what had happened.

When she looked down, she expected to find her normal body, a little worse for wear, but functional nonetheless. What she hadn't expected to find was a bright coat of orange and white fur all over her body.

She screamed. "Wha- what happened to me!?" she asked herself, "What is this!?" Not even her voice seemed all that normal. It almost sounded like she was growling, like some sort of animal! Wait, maybe that's what happened! The monster must have turned her in to whatever creature this was! This must be his doing!

As if she was thinking of the devil himself, a loud crack sounded out, and a huge shadow fell around the group. The monster wasn't finished with them yet.

"Well, guys-" Its grin was practically audible. "Just try to stop this if you can!" He flung his hands forward and warped away as the tree toppled down in their direction. It was too wide to run to the side, too much pain and noise to focus on a plan-

And then everything stopped.

The wind suddenly grew still, the forest grew silent, and even the falling tree had stopped in mid air just above them. Of everything around them, only the four newly transformed humans were moving. That was, until a nearby bush began rustling, and another strange creature emerged from within.

"Oh my stars." It - no, she - also sounded like a young child as she stared at the four. "I - I know there's a lot going on right now and I'm sure you have a lot of questions, but you four - please, this way." She pointed behind her with the mallet, lurching forward and catching herself on the shrub. "I can't keep this up for much longer, and that tree's going to hurt if it lands on you."

Rubani wasted no time in figuring out the motives of this new creature, seeing as there want much of a choice. A blanket of relief was shining across her face. "Thank you!" she exclaimed as she started towards where the creature in the hood had pointed. "Thank you so muuooooaaah- oof!"

Unfortunately, she wasn't used to her body's new larger feet, and she wasn't able to keep from tripping over them. Her face crashed in to the ground with a heavy thud. Embarrassed, she quickly picked herself off of the ground and decided to sheepishly walk a little more carefully for the time being. This was going to take some getting used to.

By contrast to the agony that had wracked his body moments before, and the fluid discomfort that had washed over him before that, Dante felt a total numbness as whatever was happening to him seemed to draw to a close.

His vision was still blurry, but was clearing fast, with more and more details of his surroundings reappearing from within the borderless, incoherent shapes dominating his limited sight. His hearing, meanwhile, was still shot to hell. The sound of wind was gone, but had left painful ringing behind in his ears to continue blocking out all sound. Perhaps most pressingly, he felt the full sum of his weight returned to him despite the lack of feeling in his body. The full sum and then some, it seemed, as no sooner had he realized he no longer felt weightless, his footing gave way beneath his fatigue and the return of his mass.

He felt the shock of his fall course through his body, but it only served to jolt him further back to awareness as his body’s lack of feeling shielded him from the pain. With his limbs already against the ground after the fall, it wasn’t hard to at least push himself upwards into a sitting position. It seemed that the lasting numbness wasn’t the most immediate of his concerns at the very least.

‘Ah, fuck, come on. I’ve been possessed before, what’s so different this time?’

That was the very angry and very real voice cursing away on full volume in his head.

Dante tried to rise from the ground back up to his feet, but only succeeded in bringing himself to a crouch. Though his body felt nothing, let alone any pain, the ringing in his ears combined with the increasingly incoherent ranting of the voice in his head was enough to make up for that several times over. Whilst feeling slowly returned to his body as he balanced himself on weightless feet, the torturous sensation claiming his head interfered with any attempt he made to bring himself back to full focus.

Then came an impossibly loud noise. Although at first, the sheer volume of the sound threatened to drown him into unconsciousness altogether, the voice in his head cut out was ultimately the one that ceased to be. The resulting moment of silence in his head was enough for Dante: although shaky, the sudden moment of clarity was sufficient to shakily climb back to his feet and gather his wits.

“... Oh. Oh fuck.” And that was when he almost wished he’d remained unable to tell what was going on.

The massive tree from the centre of the clearing had been ripped clean from its roots, and was suspended in the air by some unseen force: the same that had entrapped him minutes before. Directly beneath it, radiating absolute sadistic pleasure, was the child from before- NecroWisemon? Dante may have questioned how he suddenly knew what the horrible thing’s name was, if his thoughts hadn’t been sent into a fresh panic by the gigantic object that was about to be brought down on them.

‘... Yeah, not gonna lie, getting gored on that was bad enough. Getting crushed is going to be even worse.’ Once again, the voice in his head was definitely not helping.

There was nothing he could do, and both he and the voice knew it. Like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle, with his body and control over it too rattled to even hope to move out of the way of the tree in time, he froze stiff.

Seconds became minutes. Those minutes became hours. The sudden inevitability of death at the end of a rollercoaster ride of hope and despair stretched his last moments out into a painful eternity of suspense.

But the tree didn’t come down. Precarious movements upon an invisible access ground to a halt, as did everything else around it save Dante’s panicked breathing and the sounds of the other three humans who were about to die. The sudden cessation of movement from the imminent threat of his surroundings, and the resulting silence, once again gave Dante room to think: and that was what led him to the realization.

He wasn’t the one who’d frozen. It was the world around him.

“What’s going on? Is everyone alright?” In a mixture of confusion and relief, he blurted out the first two questions that came to mind. But if answers were coming, he wasn’t going to hear them: he hadn’t noticed before, caught up in the panic of the moment as he was, but his voice felt and sounded different. Deeper. Scratchier.

Identical to the one in his head.

Everything came together in that instant. The disorientation, the weightlessness, the sensation he’d felt as that mysterious object entered him: he raised his hands to his field of vision, and felt his eyes widen on instinct as he finally realized what had happened to him. The frame was similar enough that he hadn’t connected the dots, but everything else- his height, his garb, the few visible patches of flesh- was different enough that the revelation hit him like a freight train. Grabbing his face, he confirmed in an instant that it was more than a hallucination: where he’d felt the bone of his skull warp and erupt outwards moments before, horn-like structures had emerged and eye sockets had closed up.

‘Wow, you finally noticed. You really suck at possessing people.’ Dante was wordless from shock, but the voice- Astamon- had plenty to run off at him as he stared in horror at his transformed body. ‘Fuck’s sake, Wyrdmon is never going to let me live this one down.’

First was the footsteps, and then the rustling bush. Then the face, hooded in red, green eyes wide, appeared between the parted bush branches. Clockmon, he knew. "Oh my stars." It - no, she - also sounded like a young child as she stared at the four. "I - I know there's a lot going on right now and I'm sure you have a lot of questions, but you four - please, this way." She pointed behind her with her mallet and briefly lost her balance, legs stumbling in the shrubbery. "I can't keep this up for much longer, and that tree's going to hurt if it lands on you." She seemed pleased as two of them - humans, digimon, who knew any longer? - moved at her pleading. Even if the young woman - Rubani - Meicrackmon - fell at first.

Although absorbed in his horrified torpor, Dante’s attention found itself split between his state and Clockmon as she entered the clearing: and he lowered his face from his hands as he turned to look at her. Whether from registering her words or sheer frustration, he began to rouse from his mental paralysis as the reality of the situation kicked in. The newcomer seemed to be the source of the sudden lapse in time. The experiences of the last few minutes made Dante want to turn and run as far as he could from any mysterious childlike being that presented itself to him and the others, but something about this one seemed familiar and reassuring, somehow. As if his own instincts were telling him that he could trust her.

That was enough to let him think straight for a moment. Whatever had happened to him, he was already adjusting to it. Though he was still struggling to accept the transformation that had been thrust upon him, there was little physical component to his distress: the voice had quietened down, whether of its own accord or not, and he felt more and more strength and stability return to him as it did. Though he still had more questions than he could think to put together, whether or not he’d be able to move around in this new body didn’t seem to be one of them.

And, as the newcomer and the voice had so helpfully pointed out, the tree being held over their heads was probably the immediate concern. Looking from Clockmon to the three figures a short distance away, he saw the disturbing visage of NecroWisemon frozen in time, along with the horrified expressions of Piximon and MarineAngemon: steeling himself with a sigh, Dante turned to follow Clockmon and the two figures- Meicrackmon and Baalmon?- who’d made to leave the clearing while they could. He was going to have to take his chances and bank on his instincts being correct about Clockmon.