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.