Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The cup fell over.

Kiyoshiro closed his eyes and sighed deeply. He hadn't jumped that time, but that didn't mean he didn't have a terrible fright. His heart was instantly racing, his migraine was back, and life was a misery. Life had always been a misery.

For a second, he tugged on the bandages at his elbow. What could he do? The normal protections weren't working. He'd poured lines of salt. He'd burnt sage. He'd left several very nice offerings. A whole strawberry cake! What else could he do?!

His computer flickered, and the notepad app opened up. The cursor moved. Clicked.

His gaze dropped to the keyboard. Before his damned eyeballs, the keys began to dip and clack.

Hello Kiyoshiro. Do you want to play a game?

The door didn't even touch him as he dived out into the corridor.

<>

It was a ghost in the technology. No, it couldn't be a ghost in his technology, or the various ghost traps would have worked. This was something else. Something new. Something technical.

He paced up and down the corridor, clutching a packet of ketchup chips close to his chest.

Technical. But how could it follow him? Steal from him? Edison had theorised about utilising the ambient electric charge of the air to run machines, but what if something used that ambient charge to somehow create a field? A magnetic field could lift anything, positioned just right. Like his cup.

Or his chips!

No! He snatched just too late, and the packet went tumbling through the window into the night. He gripped the window ledge till his knuckles turned white. The packet floated off just naturally enough that someone who didn't understand would blame the wind.

It was stealing his fucking food! He almost hopped in absolute outrage, but he was 14 now and He Didn't Hop No More.

Stupid technical snack stealing gremlin.

Wait. Gremlin.

A bug in the system.

He turned the thought over twice. There might be a way to tangle this thing. A way to smooth the data. A simple deframenting array, combined with a firewall, and non broadcasting black spot.

<>

The first talisman sent the gremlin away for two whole days.

It was big mad when it got back.

Everything started rattling, and he glaced up from his game. Then it threw his pillow, then the blankets, then everything on the side table in one sweep. His favourite cup went flying and shattered into three neat pieces.

Something about the sound took Kiyoshiro back. Back to when he was ten, and that sound was a warning of much worse to come. He went quiet and far away in a way he couldn't help, eyes never leaving the smashed pieces. His emotions folded up, and his worries folded up, and there was nothing of him left over except for the other one.

The other one looked up, "That was very rude. How would you like it if I broke your favourite things?"

The pillow lifted up and flung onto the ground.

"I'm not talking to you anymore," and the other one turned his face away. There was more thrashing and throwing, but he ignored it all, and eventually fell asleep at his desk.

<>

But the thing about stress, constant scares, and sleep deprivation was that the resulting cortisol very simply turns off the immune system.

He woke up with scratchy eyes and throat.

Nevertheless, he had several chores to do that day, so he washed his face and put on a mask, and got the hell on with it.

That evening, he roughly shouldered open the door to his room while coughing into his elbow, stepped on a shard of porcelain, and only barely ovoided falling over.

Freaking ow. There's blood. Not deep, thankfully. He scrunched his whole face and hobbled over to the medical kit.

His phone beeped. A text from an unknown number: Why are you making that face?

"Because I'm hurt," he said to the empty air.

Beep: it's like the face you make when I scare you! XD.

"That's right." He must be exhausted. He was losing what was left of his mind.

Beep: and in the labs.

"Yeah." And then, "You've been following me that long?"

Beep: Don't you remember me?

"I don't remember much. Not since I got so sick a year ago." He carefully wrapped a sticky bandage around the cut, and stood up, "Am I supposed to know you?"

There's no answer. No texts or weird movement. Alright. He went to bed.

<>

There's nothing for a whole week.

No, that's not true. There's nothing from the texting gremlin for a whole week. The other horrors, however, are unending.

On Monday, he's stalked on the way home from the shops by some horrible thing with a chattering cape that he barely avoided.

On Tuesday, the vending machine sparked out and asked him if it could die, to which he just turned around and walked away.

On Wednesday, he saw a ghost procession but managed to pretend he did not.

On Thursday, he found a sword, or rather a sword found him and tried to make him pick it up, and he did not.

On Friday, nothing particularly unnatural happened, but he did get 54 emails from some dude about a geothermal plant who would Not Accept that Kiyoshiro was taking a break and begged him to help. Kind of an interesting problem too, because the plant was meant to be fully automated and basically manned by a tiny four person team, and- no no no he was on a break! He had a mental breakdown!! He was 14!!! He needed to be a kid while he still had the time!!!!

On Saturday, he watched an entire anime and then an streamed concert for D☆Topics and Something Weird floated across the screen and bugged out the transmission. He said "oh that's a shame," and went to bed instead of acknowledging it in any way possible.

On Sunday, a hideous and frankly deeply disturbing giant geko thing crawled over his window at 9pm. He put down another talisman, and then 20 more in a protective circle around the school.

This seemed to help, and on Monday everything was normal. Which is not normal for him. Even the slightly sapient vending machine was back to normal. This was nice. This lasted about 24 hours and 42 minutes.

<>

The bracelet floated in the air, and dropped into his hands.

Beep: put it on.

He didn't want to. This was the thing that had been tormenting him for so many weeks, the thing that had apparently stalked him for several years, from the original nightmare that he had never been truly free from.

The bracelet bounced up, wrapped around his right wrist, and clicked closed.

Despite the bandages, the curse on his right arm activated. His whole body cooled as it drew energy, lights flickering underneath the fabric. A spike of metal pierced through and onto the device: he knew what it was and its every function. Ow. That was attached now.

"Wow, I've never seen it do that!" said a strange voice.

It was a jellyfish.

Oh shit. It was That Jellyfish.

"I'm dying," he said matter of factly to himself.

"Don't be stupid. You know me!"

"You're a thing that doesn't exist!"

"I'm a thing that you'll respect, you rude walnut!" And it flaired its stingers, sparking.

"Oh shit!" He flung up his hands and backed away, "Sorry! But the last I say you I was dying as a building collapsed can you blame me?!"

"That's because I was there! You freed me!"

"That." He tried to remember. "That had been a person."

The jellyfish swam a cheerful circle in the air, and then changed. Not a girl, but girl shaped.

"Oh. It was you." He beamed at her, suddenly not scared at all. "You're alright!"

"Better than perfect!" And she pulled a silly pose, a D☆Topics special.

There was loud knocking on the door.

"Oh!" said the jellyfish, "That'll be the person I stole the device from! Haha!"

<>

"Yeah, that's not moving." Hiro sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose, "and you know what? I don't want to know."

Kiyoshiro, who had been frantically vising and revising his story in his head as Hiro and Ruli tried to pry the device off him, could only say, "huh?"

"Besides, we needed more people on the team!" said Ruli cheerfully, "And you have some skills, senior. You'll be an asset!"

"What team? Doing what?" he asked faintly.

Hiro shrugged and bounced Gammamon, "There's more digimon in the city than you think. They seem to come to us for help." He turned sternly to Kiyoshiro, "If you help us, I'll consider it appropriate repayment for the theft of my late fathers work."

Kiyoshiro almost melted from embarrassment. Late father! His late father's work, no! "Yes of course." He tapped his shaking fingers together. He wasn't the one who stole it! Why did he have to apologise?!

This was terrible.

Jellymon settled on his neck like a scarf, sparking faintly. She was uncomfortably wet and cold. He couldn't push her off.

"Can you please get off, Jellymon?"

"Lady Jellymon."

"Can you please get off, Lady Jellymon?"

"No."

Chapter Text

A series of snap shots in rapid succession

<>

That night, after persistently torturing him for three weeks and passively stalking him for three years, Jellymon disappeared. She was just gone, and Kiyoshiro was left stunned. Was this all it took? Put on the bracelet, and she'd go? What would he do with the time? Whole hours of his life returned to him, and he only had so much extra homework or interesting clubs to join. He could. Rewatch some anime?

How long would she be gone for?

One day. Then two. He may as do some self care.

He makes a cup of tea, and lights a fancy candle. He puts on D☆Topics latest album. Sets out a fresh roll of bandages. Water in a bowl, a sterilised pad. Antiseptic cream. Tweezers. Medical scissors. And, with the practice of several years, undos the knot of the bandages with one hand.

It was all half unravelled when someone knocked on his door twice: "Senior." It was Hiro. Should he tell anything to Hiro?

Nope, not today. "Come back lat-"

"I'll get it!" Jellymon sang out as she swished through the wall and to the door.

"No, wait -"

The door opened. Hiro half stepped through. He noticed the medical equipment, Kiyoshiro desperately trying to cover one arm with the other, and turned on his heel to leave because he could read a room AND had basic decency.

Unfortunately Gammamon was a baby. And babies can nither read the room nor have basic decency (both skills, as it turns out, are learned and not inate). And so Gammamon bounded through the door, "Kiyoshiro!" And then sniffed, "There's a weird smell!!" And then he jumped on the table, poked at the still bandaged arm and tilted his head in a winning way, "What's wrong with you?"

Kiyoshiro stared in horror.

Hiro gasped, "Gammamon, you can't just ask people that!"

At the same time as Jellymon said, "He's got a janky arm."

Kiyoshiro widened his eyes as he looked at his digimon partner, portraying his absolute betrayal.

"What?!" She screeched, in the defensive way of someone who knows exactly what line they crossed, "It's true, isn't it?"

"It's not your secret, and it's not your arm!"

"It is, and I don't care!" she snapped. Then she paused. "People are coming," and she pushed the door closed.

Hiro carefully lifted up Gammamon, so as not to knock over anything, and wagged a finger at him, "It is rude to barge into rooms! Wait for permission!" Then he helf turned to Kiyoshiro, without looking, "We all know about your arm already, Senior. It's a make-believe curse, right? Like a lucky charm." At which point he actually saw the arm.

Kiyoshiro could pin point it exactly: a quiet intake of breath, followed by turning away.

And why wouldn't he? From elbow to mid forearm, Kiyoshiro arm was exposed: deeply burned red skin and twisted, rope like scars crossed with the shadow of long removed stitches. Embedded in the scars was something thin and black and glassy.

He covered it with his left hand, "Yeah," said Kiyoshiro, smile wavering, "It's a curse. The mark of some demon I sealed away."

Hiro caught the topic, "I thought it was a magical tattoo that granted you extreme intelligence?"

He would kiss this boy, if he were into kissing. "The grandmaster is no longer taking questions." Kiyoshiro gestured imperiously, making Gammamon giggle.

"Well grandmaster, we'll leave you to it. I just wanted to stop by and let you know Ruli and Angoramon are investing this karaoke thing tomorrow and we're joining them."

"We could always not do that," said Kiyoshiro, "We can all stay home. That's always an option."

Hiro laughed like he made the most hilarious joke and then said over his shoulder as he goes, "So we'll see you tomorrow! Unless you need help with your. Um." And he nodded at Kiyoshiro's arm.

Jellymon huffed, "I'm here, aren't I? See you tomorrow."

"Alright then."

And it was the two of them.

Jellymon floated to the table and flicked a stinger like this was a normal occurrence, "So what's it doing today?"

"Um. Copying the pair device." He tugged off the rest of the fabric, carefully unwinding it from around the spike attaching to the bracelet and stretched out his hand. "Do we have to investigate the haunted karaoke bar?"

"You know about it?" Jellymon made an almost emoji like wide smile. "You are curious, I knew it!"

"I'm NOT!" He flailed at her, "I am AVOIDING more bad luck!"

She pulled a face at him, "As if you could."

Which is rude! But also true. Hard to escape your own body. The only way to avoid his arm would be to cut it off.

From the middle of his forearm, down his hand, there was more and more black till his fingers were completely glass. They clinked sharply against the table. He couldn't feel sensation through the glass, only a vague pressure if something touched it. He often smashed the hand on door frames as his brain had no idea where the arm was. It didn't feel like it belonged to him.

Then the glass flickered. Multi-coloured beads of light began to run from fingertip to elbow, like the luminescence of a deep sea fish or thread jelly.

Then, all the once, several threads of glass uncoiled and speared through the face of the device. The colours pulsed twice, and then the threads pulled out, down into his wrist, twisting into a knot. The device clattered to the table.

His flesh bubbled around it, covering it, a new burn on a patchwork of burns. And the lump smoothed out in a wave. The threads of black crawled further up his arm, digging through the skin, slicing it open, up to his bicep.

Kiyoshiro exhaled raggedly, covered in sweat. That was awful. Top three discomforts for sure. He shivered, completely chilled.

There was blood beading along the black, and he mindlessly dipped the pad in the water and began wiping it away.

"Let me," said Jellymon. She was sure in her movements, even though she hadn't done it before. "I saw, remember? I was with you last year." She frowned slightly, "It shouldn’t grow that much for such little technology. You haven't lost more memory now, have you?"

He blinked, "Last year was just a regular old mental breakdown, Lady Jellymon."

"Hm," Deeply unsatisfying answer, apparently, "What next?"

"Antiseptic on the new growth. Then we'll wrap it."

"Ew, growth." Jellymon lightly zapped the arm, "Stop it! Stop growing! So unfashionable!?"

It was so silly that he laughed without meaning to, "What do you mean, unfashionable? Don't know a cursed arm is the Height (TM) of fashion?"

"It's not even pink! It doesn't have cute swirls or patterns!"

"It's a curse! It's functional!" This was most hilariously stupid conversation he'd had in his life, "form over beauty. That's a rule."

"Huh!" she lifted her chin and rolled her eyes.

"Thank you, by the way."

She startled.

He flicked his left hand at all of the. Well, mess. "It's actually really scary dealing with this thing by myself. It's good to have you here."

The face Jellymon made was half horrified and half teary before it was smoothed away, and she smiled brilliantly, "Well, of course! You're lucky to have me!"

<> it's time to zoom through episodes hold on <>

He flexed his right hand as he waited for the train to meet Ruli and Angoramon. It wasn't working properly, he'd favour his left hand heavily today.

At least the pair device's features had integrated fully. He flipped his hand: a zone circled out. And off. Just like that.

<>

He sat down heavily. He was home. His dorm room was quiet, except for the gentle hum of the air conditioner and the air purifier, glowing green in the corner.

"So the whole, singing at people, was a loop?"

"Yeah, it's pretty common," Jellymon lazily swirled in a circle, "something about going from being made from data to earth stuff -"

"Atoms."

"Atoms makes a digimon get stuck doing the same thing again and again, till they've had a fight or a shook, or get hungry enough. Hence: loopy" she loop de looped several times, and then cackled in Kiyoshiro's face, "You were so scared you almost fainted."

"Thank you Lady Jellymon," he said blandly, "it's so hilarious when I'm terrified."

"It sure is!"

<>

Clockmon was terrifying. Clockmon was a repeat offender. Clockmon had apparently had a change of heart and was going to be kind now! The power of friendship!

Kiyoshiro did not believe it.

"That guy is for sure going to eat another human," Jellymon said blandly.

"Yeah, I know."

But he supposed they could all join together and beat the guy up if he decided to eat more human time, so at least there's brute force to fall back on?

<>

Changing his zone so there's only water in one spot was the work of a few seconds. His arm powered on, flickered, and remains flickering.

"Jellymon," he said briskly, "You're going to be a target, so stay intangible until we have the situation under control."

She nodded rapidly, and zipped away to safety.

He would have to rely on Gammamon and Angoramon for this fight.

<>

The second time the Weedmon took over in droves, the other digimon of the city joined in on beating them down. Elder Weedmon was pruned until there was only the one left, and then very sternly warned. Shape up. Or ship out. Airdramon was extremely happy to drop him in the ocean and let the salt do its job. Think about it. Okay?

<>

Why did he agree to this. Play a game where people were actual for real dying. He had a policy for a reason! No death games!!

Jellymon was losing. Against a thing that had eaten humans. Well, drunk them, but that was seriously not an important distinction at the moment.

He wanted to run away.

No. He wanted all of this to stop, and right now, there was only one way that was going to happen. There was only one clear path forward.

Why did it have to be him? Why couldn't he have been born a potato?

But it was him. Snd he was here. And someone else would bear the burden of his failure if he didn't figure something out. He was looking at her now.

He unwrapped the thumb of his right hand, placing the pad over the tower of his computer. The connection was instant and effortless, and the pair program engaged. Human emotion converted to pure digital energy, and Jellymon evolved.

<>

GullusGammamon was right to kill him.

That's what Kiyoshiro thought, as Hiro confronted his brother. Hiro hated killing. All killing, for any reason. Kiyoshiro was not so brave. Sometimes, someone won't stop, and it was either you or them.

The dark digimon made brief eye contact with him. For a second, Kiyoshiro felt a link take, the possibility of sharing energy, of fighting together. He would, if there was an enemy.

But there isn't.

TeslaJellymon shifted to put herself between them, breaking the connection.

"It's time to stop now," said Hiro, voice and body trembling.

"I suppose it is," GullusGammamon sneered. He turned his back on them all.

Angoramon blocked the way, "Where are you going?"

"GullusGammamon," Kiyoshiro was also surprised to hear himself speak, "Don't go."

"Why? None of you want me." He shifted to attack.

"Well, you don't want me either," snapped Hiro, "so I guess we both know how that feels."

There was a pause and then a dark chuckle. "I suppose so."

Ruli jumps in, "Bokomon's funeral!" She caught her breath, "We all. We need to go home and drink a toast or something. Together."

The memory of their friend was enough. GullusGammamon froze, turned to light, and was Gammamon again.

Hiro instantly lunged forward to catch and cradle his brother close.

Ruli spoke for them all, "What the fuck was that?!"

Hiro shook his head. "Let's go home."

<>

Home turned out to be Ruli's place. She explained that she'd been out on family business, and her parents asked no more questions.

"Mum's from a miko family," she said quietly, "We're always getting mixed up in strang happenings. You can all become solid. It's safe here."

To eat and drink together, quietly, seemed the only thing to be done. To sleep and end this terrible day, the only way forward.

Tomorrow, Bakumon would tell them about eggs and digimon and the circle of digital life. They'd morn, and organise a funeral, and wonder about Gammamon, and the things he was sealing away.

For now they slept in a pile.

<>

Chapter Text

<>

A few days later, they gathered close to the veggie gardens of the dorms, sitting underneath a tree on a handy seat installed by maintenance.

"We should ask Gammamon," said Ruli quietly.

Hiro's face turned blank, "No."

"Either he knows something," she persisted, "Or he doesn't, in which case he deserves to know."

Kiyoshiro glanced over to the child in question, who was quietly pulling up weeds and admiring bugs. "He's just a kid, Ruli. Does he really need to know he killed someone?"

Angoramon cleared his throat, "I see this is point of contention for you humans," he spread his hands, "But digimon fight. All digimon fight. Fighting and defeating opponents or being defeated is how we grow. The strongest digimon rules, and the strongest digimon's ideology with them."

Jellymon floated upside down, "The idea of a person who doesn't fight is weird."

"A civilian," Angoramon nodded, "The idea that a peaceful life is a right, that all have the right to never kill, and one ought to only experience violence if they chose to by becoming a knight or ninja."

"You read too many books," said Ruli fondly, "we don't have knights or ninjas anymore; we have soldiers and policemen."

"Guilty as charged!" Angoramon smiled, "but my point remains: Gammamon has a controled sapient dark evolution. This is not, to us, a bad thing."

"Right!" said Jellymon, "He could save our lives against a terrible enemy. He's a trump card."

Kiyoshiro felt a prickle of anger, "But he's still a kid. And it is seriously messed to expect a kid to fight like that."

Jellymon looked away.

Angoramon ducked his head, "Digimon do not have the concept of childhood that humans do."

"I don't care," said Hiro brittlely, "Dad sent Gammamon to me, and I'm his brother. He's a kid, he deserves to be safe, and we are not bothering him with this." Kiyoshiro didn't know much of Hiro's past, but he'd had to grow up fast too, and he recognised the protectiveness.

"I agree," said Kiyoshiro. And then, trying to catch Jellymon's eye, "It's not fair that any of us had to deal with the stuff we did. At least we can do better here and now."

Ruli shrugged, "Up to you if you want to leave a primary source of information alone, I guess." And then she clapped her hands and turned the subject, "Maybe your dad has more information?"

This was a great idea. Hiro's dad was a scientist and engineer. A damn good one, given the devices.

Except that Hiro was at Hazakura Academy, the school especially set up for Orphans of the State, whose parents had died or disappeared or other mysteriously been incapacitated by hologram ghosts. So there was a slight hitch in the plan.

"So your dad isn't dead, probably?"

"No," Hiro wasn't offended at the question, so Kiyoshiro would guess there wasn't a huge horrible trauma there. "No, he just disappeared one day and has been leaving cryptic letters that don't tell me anything. I'm hope he's having a great holiday. It might even make up for losing the house."

"Why did-"

"It's protocol," Kiyoshiro answered for him, "the government seizes almost family assets in order to fund the care of state orphans, there's simply too many of us for taxes to cover it all."

Hiro smiled, and the smile was a lie, "that's a problem for future dad."

"Did he leave anything behind then?" Kiyoshiro asked, "Anything about digimon, or why they're here? Do know what he was working on, before. Well." You know, Kiyoshiro didn't actually know when anything had happened, let alone how.

Hiro's sholders relaxed, "I think it was about dimensions."

Ruli whipped out her phone, "Did he release any studies? What was his name?"

"Amanokawa Hokuto."

Kiyoshiro startled, rapidly paling to a slugy grey.

Ruli looked at him, "You know him?"

Kiyoshiro nodded, and then lay down on the ground for good measure. "He worked on the Inter Dimensional Doorways project, in Osaka, three years ago. In the Moriyama Labs."

"He did." Hiro frowned, "how did you know that?"

"I was there too."

The ground swayed dangerously under Kiyoshiro's head. This was not something he expected to talk about today; it scrapped him raw.

"The Moriyama labs." Ruli hummed to herself, "they were in the news about a year ago," and she turned the phone around to show a news article: Human Experimentation? Local Government Claims Ignorance. "Though it seems it wasn't the Doors Project."

Kiyoshiro tried to keep his breathing steady. Everything narrowed onto the feeling. Breath in. Breath put.

It was at that point Gammamon came over, "All good Hiro?"

"We're talking about something scary, but we're fine."

Gammamon nodded, "And is Kiyoshiro alright?" He was obviously very proud to ask the question politely and grinned widely.

Kiyoshiro held onto his nerves by his nails, "I'm perfectly alright."

Gammamon gave him a look, the look all children give when they know they're being lied to, but they won't call out the adult because they like them. It can be their secret. "Would you like a hug?"

"I would love a hug, actually."

The weight of the little digimon was very grounding, and Kiyoshiro was able to say with the all the appearance of calmness, "There's usually several projects running concurrently in one lab. The one in the news was an old one, the UO Benefit Extraction program."

"UO?"

Jellymon laughter without humour, a brittle breaking sound. "Unidentified Organisms." She swirled around and bowed, "Meet UO 23, jellyfish adjacent."

Kiyoshiro reached up and squeezed her hand, "I was UO 22. Our cells were next to each other. We couldn't see each other, but we could talk."

"What the actual fuck," said Ruli.

Angoramon made a noise of agreement. "They had digimon?"

"Digimon." Jellymon said quietly, "Some humans. Some other things from completely different worlds. Black water that could turn anything into something like a zombie. Other things."

Kiyoshiro closed his eyes as she spoke. He folded up the memories and would not look at them. "When they had sufficient proof that these creatures came from other worlds, they tried to open a door. That's where your dad came in."

"My dad would never stand for this."

"And he didn't. I don't know for sure, but he was taking a lot of photos and videos when I saw him, that were used for the case. He was documenting. If it wasn't for him, they wouldn't have been able to prosecute the team so completely." And now Kiyoshiro had lined up the timeline, and also the list of deceased, "But Hiro, your dad wasn't caught in the building collapse three years ago. Wasn't he alright?"

Hiro's smile never reached his eyes, "He didn't stop his research. About a year ago, he found a way into the digital world."

Angoramon wrinkled his nose, "Why?"

"I don't know. Maybe he wanted to find a way to send all the UO's home."

"But if that's the case," Ruli jumped in, "Then why did he send Gammamon here to the human world?"

To the place where digimon couldn't touch anything, at first. Where many starved to death or went insane. Where those that managed to make a life for themselves crept along the outskirts of humanity, picking at crumbs, or turned to violence.

Gammamon raised a hand, "I know! I know!"

"Oh?" said Ruli, "What do you know, Gammamon?" She ignored Hiro's pointed glare.

"Gammamon was sent here to learn to be a brother!" He leaned forward and fondly patted Hiro's knee. "To learn the rules!"

"The rules of what?"

"Family."

Simple enough answer. But in light of what Angoramon and Jellymon had said about childhood and safety...

"Lady Jellymon," Kiyoshiro asked carefully, "Do digimon have family?"

She frowned and shrugged.

"Now that is an interesting question," murmered Angoramon.

Jellymon thought hard, hesitated, "Not quite? Similar digimon stick together to help meet the group's needs," she tapped her chin, "but way more common is swearing alliance to a stronger fighter."

"Lords, allies, friends and rivals." Angoramon counted off his fingers.

"And enemies!" Jellymon grinned sharply, "A good enemy is a very valuable relationship. A souce of growth and strength!"

It was so weird how the digimon bore no ill will towards past enemies. No hatred at all, only satisfaction at the victory. Kiyoshiro did admire that. It seemed, paradoxically, a much more peaceful way of thinking. Even if if it wasn't, strictly speaking, a peaceful way of living.

"I like having a brother," Gammamon declared, "It's like having a friend, but you stay in the same house and go camping!"

"It's pretty great," said Angoramon.

Now, possibly because Kiyoshiro read a lot of novels, and watched a lot of shows, something jumped out at him, "So you didn't have any friends or allies in the digital world, did you Gammamon?"

Gammamon hunched, "Not really. Hokuto was my first friend."

Kiyoshiro opened his mouth to ask why, and then didn't. He was many things, but he wasn't an asshole, and asking a kid why they didn't have friends was basically bullying. Instead, he smiled and patted Gammamon on the head, "Well, look at you! And now you have a whole brother and," he counted around the circle, "Four friends!"

Hiro gave him a look of pure relief, and Gammamon perked up, "That's right!"

Hiro held out his arms, and Gammamon bounced into them, "And you'll make make many more friends, won't you?"

"Yeah!" And he went quiet, "even if they go on travels, like Bokomon."

"Especially then," said Hiro, without hesitation, "We must love our friends as much as we can in the time that we have them."

<>

Chapter Text

Kiyoshiro was walking home from the store when the dark-haired young woman with glasses waved him down, "Higashimitarai! Hello!"

It was Meru Soma, one of the lab techs from the Moriyama Labs.

"Meru!" He hadn't seen her in ages, not since the trial a year ago, "how goes it?"

She pulled a face, "Not great, actually. If you have the brain space for it, I need to talk to about That Thing From Three Years Ago." She gestured significantly while tipping her head and managed to look more conspicuous than if she'd just spoken bluntly. One child stared at them openly.

Kiyoshiro sagged, "Do I have to?"

"Well, maybe not you specifically, but your. Uh." She leaned forward, "Your special friends, you know?" And she winked.

The child and their parent were now staring at them.

Get out get out get OUT of this situation- "Alright, fine! Just come with me." And he grabbed her hand and started power walking down the sidewalk. "How do you know about my friends?" What do you know?! WHY do you know?!

"You're on Instagram!" she huffed from the quick pacing, "Hold up!" And as she caught her breath, she flicked open her phone and turned it to show him.

Oh damn it. He closed his eyes and resisted the urge to claw his own face off. Lirurun. Not only was he himself in some of the photos, but Jellymon was in several. They were very cute photos of yukatas and nice cafes, and the digimon definitely looked like a cute model companion hologram. Nevertheless.

"I'd know UO 23 anywhere," Meru said quietly. "I'm glad she got out. I'd love to say hello if it isn't an imposition."

"I'll ask her," Kiyoshiro said. "Let's keep moving."

<>

"I'm in several conspiracy adjacent cryptid sighting discords," Meru settled on his computer chair as he sat on the bed, "Just to keep an eye on things. Most of the UO's disappeared after the collapse but have been sighted by various folks, so I can like, kind of keep an eye on them? That's not the problem, though. This is the problem." And she showed a blurry photo of what was clearly a digimon, something like an coelecanth, strapped to the top of a car like a hunted animal.

Kiyoshiro wasn't sure what gave him away. Whether he was too calm or if he widened his eyes in a particular way.

But Meru sat up, "You do know what it is."

"I don't actually know who it is," he said nervously.

"I didn't say who. I said what."

Damn, she had him. "Meru, I don't want to overstate what we can do here. We're fairly limited. There are some groups, but like. We don't know everyone."

"I know," she said earnestly, "But these creatures are whos to you. You know them. You can tell their friends. You can warn the community."

Alright. He could do that. That was a very reasonable and achievable goal. He felt his nerves settle into something ice cold in his gut. "Send me the photo and anything else you got."

<>

Location data embedded in the image lead them to the middle of freaking nowhere halfway up a mountain to the south of the city. It was wet and rainy, and the rain coat didn't stop all the dampness.

"I hate my life," Kiyoshiro grumbled to himself. All of them could be in bed right now. But no. This was an 'emergency', and they needed to act 'right away'.

Ugh. Stupid heroic friends trying to look after people. He couldn't even ditch them without feeling awful.

Ruli hummed to herself, extremely excited, "I asked my followers for any particular information on this area, and oh my gosh, it is so well known."

Oh no.

She does a lil dance on the spot, "It's known as monster forest, and there's a bizarre sighting almost every week. But, local investigations detected natural gas leaks, and it's assumed to be hallucinations. Just in case!" And she handed out gas masks. "I have a sensor and it'll beep when we need to put them on."

What was his life. He clipped it over his belt, and the digimon turned incorporeal and invisible. The only reason Kiyoshiro even knew they were there was sheer experience and a strange buzzy warmth he could feel from them.

"Let's go."

Hiro led the way. He shone his torch over the scrub and somehow divined from some old broken branches and scooped mud, which way the car had gone.

After several hundred metres, the path became more clear, the twin grooves of the tires winding through the only space between the trees that could fit a car through. There was something like a road, formed by driving the same way over and over again.

Hiro crouched down and lifted a leaf, "Could be a week, could be a day, since they came through."

Jellymon spoke from the aether, "Let's keep going."

<>

It was a good two hours trek through the forest, mostly heading along the mountain and not decending or acending. The clouds cleared, and the moon rose, so Hiro had them turn off the torches.

And then, through the trees, a light.

They slowed down, creeping along.

"I'll check it out from the air," whispered Angoramon. A gust of air rattled the branches around them and scattered drops of water.

They waited.

Ruli jerked, "Something's wrong!"

"I have a bad feeling!" Gammamon added.

Two seconds later, there were distinct voices shouting, and more lights turned on. There was the reving of an engine, and they all piled into a bush to hide. Moments later, the same car from the photo came crashing through and barrelled along.

Ruli made a small noise of distress, "He can't get back to us."

"They have some way of catching a digimon," said Hiro. "Do we have any idea how?"

Kiyoshiro looked into memory, "The morphmon we helped free the other day was caught in an infinite array. You remember?"

The others stared at him without comprehension, but that was fine. They didn't need to understand the finer points of the insanity of maths; that's what Kiyoshiro was for.

"There's a particular way of running an infinite calculation that will trap an incorporeal digimon," he quickly reviewed a couple pdfs on his phone to refresh his memory, "because of their integration with the static electric fields in the air. It's a dummed down version of what they used to contain the UO's,"

Ruli peaked over his shoulder and definitely saw writing in Japanese that she could read. But not understand, "Can't we just turn on a zone?"

"The array binds the digimon to the server; they won't move into the zone with us. What we need is an EMP." He smiled at the place he knew Jellymon to be, "And thankfully, we have the most electric digimon on our side."

<>

The zone washed over the mountain, turning trees and shrubs into rocks and piles of sand. Standing starkly, without the forest to hide it, was a rotting house built in the traditional style.

They ran towards it quickly, leaping over rocks and springing onto the deck that circled the house.

Inside, overgrown with grass, was a crude lab set up from folding tables and about five gaming computers cobbled together.

Ruli circled the room a few times, and then stopped, "This one," she said, placing her hand on a tower.

Hiro nodded, looked around, and pointed upwards at the exposed beams of the roof. Gammamon evolved to BetelGammamon and helped everyone hide.

Okay. Kiyoshiro took a deep breath and then another. Nope, he wasn't going to stop being terrified. Might as well just get on with it.

Jellymon evolved to TeslaJellymon. She started a thunder. And held it. And held it. She grinned.

Hiro dropped the zone. Immediately, there two humans crouched around a screen. Immediately, TeslaJellymon loosed the charge in a huge hissing wave. All the technology died, computers, phones, lights, everything.

"What the hell?!"

And then, something huge in the dark slammed upwards. The kids were all thrown into the air, and the roof cracked open like an egg. Out of the corner of his eye, Kiyoshiro saw BetelGammamon snatch Hiro, and he himself was able to wrap around Ruli as they fell.

The impact smashed all the air out of his lungs. He couldn't hear anything except ringing; he couldn't breathe.

A huge coelecanth covered in armour shook apart the rest of the house. As debris rained down, it turned around, clubbed the two humans so they ragdolled, and threw the bodies into the trees.

It turned on them. There was a flash: SymbareAngoramon leapt next to Betelgammamon and Teslajellymon.

The three of them attacked together. Fire, and then wind to feed it, and the wall of flames pushed the coelecanth back. Then lighting crashed to the side, and Kiyoshiro felt the drain of the attack in his guts. Blocked off on two sides, the digimon fled. Away from them.

It started to rain.

Ruli helped him sit up, "We need to go," she said.

"The fire!" shouted Hiro.

"The rain is already extinguishing it," she said briskly, "We need to leave now."

"Wait," Kiyoshiro wheezed. He couldn't get any more words out.

But TeslaJellymon understood,
"SymbareAngoramon, take Kiyoshiro along with Ruli," and then she grabbed a tower in each arm. BetelGammamon slide evolved to KausGammamon, and they all took to the air.

It was a frantic, flailing journey with icy drops flinging into their eyes and ears and down their necks. Kiyoshiro covered his head with his hands and tried to focus on breathing. Half an hour later, they reached the dorms, and all the digimon collapsed in exhaustion. Each and every one of them had sprinted the whole way.

<>

They settled in Kiyoshiro's room for two reasons. Firstly, Hiro and Ruli were very insistent that he got to bed. Secondly, Kiyoshiro had the most extensive hot drink collection and a microwave, and a kettle. Hiro made hot chocolate for everyone using full cream milk, and it was genuinely healing for the soul.

Kiyoshiro was warm and dry, with a heat pack behind his shoulder blades. He could still see the shattering house under cloud light when he closed his eyes, but it was as though the memory was behind a thick layer of glass.

Half asleep, he listened to Angoramon tell what happened, how there was a strange WiFi connection, and when he interacted with it, it immediately trapped him. He'd been able to communicate with Coelamon, but the other digimon was so claustrophobic and panicked that it was no surprise she'd lashed out.

"She killed two people though," said Hiro coolly.

Kiyoshiro roused himself, "How much of the setup did you bring?"

Three towers, in total.

"Why'd you need em?" asked Gammamon.

"They used a type of trap that other bad humans have used," Kiyoshiro said, "I want to see what I can find out from their computers," He glaced at the others, "Like if they're in communication with the head scientist of the UO Benefit Extraction program."

"There are no coincidences," said Ruli, "I'll also keep an eye out."

Angoramon added, "I'll spread the word in our community's."

"I'll trade for info," said Jellymon.

"Kiyoshiro," said Hiro, "It sounds like you expect this to happen again."

"I do." He didn't look at his bandaged arm, "For me personally, it's now the second time I've encountered this specific tech. And you saw those guys out there. Someone either supplied them or talked them through what they had to do."

"This is like an episode of doctor who," said Ruli ruefully, "Don't connect to weird WiFis and always let your friends know where you are. Thanks for saving me, by the way."

Kiyoshiro smiled, "You'd do the same for me."

<>

Chapter Text

To scrape the data from the (extremely stolen) towers would be reasonably simple; it was the set-up that was tricky and involved. First, he took an older laptop and wiped it, only downloading exactly the programs he'd need to for the scrape. Then, he physically removed its connecting ability. As in, opened it up and removed the hardware. No broadcasting, no blue tooth, no WiFi, no nothing. He did the same to the towers.

This was damage control. Should the towers prove to be a mess of viruses, the laptop had nothing to steal or corrupt. Should the tower contain some kind of auto connecting SOS, there'd be nothing to connect to.

He was quite proud of himself. He was almost distracted from the news.

The bodies had been found, along with the burnt house. The police were asking witnesses to come forward.

"Hoo," said Jellymon, "Darling, do you think they're asking because they have no info at all, or because they've already identified one of us and are just giving a criminal a chance to come forward?"

"Stop talking about it." He pointed at her while she giggled, "I'm having enough nightmares already."

Besides, he'd rather overheat his own arm again than deal with the police again. He wasn't sure how it worked in other countries, but in Japan? Guilty until proven innocent. The officers didn't actually care about justice, just pinning the blame on someone.

"Alright. Lady Jellymon, you might have to transform and destroy all this if everything goes wrong. Wait." He flicked on a zone. As always, the world became utterly silent and covered in those strange flickering lines of light. Like the luminescence of a deep sea fish or thread jelly.

The laptop powered on and connected without issue. He scrapped the data, a half an hours worth of copying.

Half was the digimon trap, as he guessed, recycled from the Moriyama Labs, and a handful of miscellaneous documents.

Half of it was written in some incomprehensible cipher. Fantastic.

<>

"- and at this point I'm contemplating letting Ruli post a snippet just to get some kind of lead. This is not a human derived language!"

"Let's see," said Hiro, and everyone leaned back as Kiyoshiro unrolled a scroll of butchers paper, which he'd used to transcrib the code.

"Oh?" hummed Angoramon, "This is a digimon language."

"You can read it?"

"Not well. It's like your Latin. Technically, a dead language, but commonly used by researchers for recording." He bent over the paper and was quiet and contemplative for half an hour, chewing on a pencil.

The rest of them were having tea when he finally spoke up. "Alright, I have something."

The paragraph was scratched out in some places and underlined in others.

"Just this bit here. It's something like this: for movement to be true, then pair traveller with home-beginning plus intention to aid."

"You might need to work on your translation a bit," said Hiro.

"Wait," said Jellymon, "Isn't that coding? If x then y and all that?"

Angoramon nodded, "Like the living codex back home." And before anyone could ask, he clarified, "In the digital world, a program does not need anything but the code to exist and run. The world itself is the hardware and power supply. So you often see code like this, on rocks or trees or even some creatures, just cycling through their function again and agian."

"A digimon wrote this?" said Ruli.

At that, Gammamon jumped onto the table and sniffed the paper. "Ah!" he suddenly laughed. He pointed to two symbols from an untranslated segment, "Hokuto!"

There was a group intake of breath. Everyone turned to look at Hiro, who had turned grey.

He smiled grimly, "Hate to think my dad's caught up in all of this."

Ruli immediately jumped up and grabbed his hands, "Absolutely not!" She gestured at the paper, "This doesn't mean anything. This could be stolen. This could be based on old work of his. Someone could be imitating him. We need more info right now. No conclusions! None!"

Hiro nodded slowly. And then, as he regained his confidence in his father, nodded faster. "We need to get a message to him. When was the last time we saw that black cat?"

"Like a month ago?"

"When it delivered Hokuto's message. He did promise more to come." Hiro was calmer now, "I'll write a letter. More letter, I mean."

"Do we trust the cat?" asked Jellymon, "The fact they can go between worlds is a bit suspicious."

"Not to be a stereotype, but we don't have a choice," Hiro was already pulling out paper and a pen, "He can get to dad. That's the beginning and end of it."

<>

When Angoramon had translated all the cipher into incredibly literal clunky Japanese, there was no denying it.

"That's the program my dad wrote."

The one that took him to the digital world.

"But why specifically-"

The whole building shook. Cups rattled, windows hummed, and outside, skyscrapers swayed like trees in the wind.

They all evacuated outside, Hiro holding Gammamon, Ruli clutching her phone with both hands, and Kiyoshiro carefully and protectively cradling his highly curated box of custom-made key chains and pins.

But it wasn't an earthquake. In the direction of the town centre, the low over hanging clouds were painted red, and rolls of black smoke rose like towers into the sky. The wind blew and carried with it a sharp chemical smell.

Something was burning. Something had exploded, and then started burning.

And then Bakumon appeared at the top of the fence that circled the dorms, motioning for them to follow.

Looks like it was going to be one of those running too damn much nights. Kiyoshiro hugged the box, and settled it in his backpack.

Airdramon was waiting with Bakumon just outside the school, "I regret to pull you from your homes at this hour, but a digimon is rampaging. They are, at this moment, fully realised."

Shit. And therefore at full power.

"That's nothing for all of us," said Jellymon. She flicked her stingers like hair and managed to look kind of intimidating.

"We'll take them on!" said Ruli, already clambering onto Airdramon.

Crazy. They were all crazy. Without even trying to hide his nerves, Kiyoshiro joined them.

<>

Approaching from the sky was the most tactical way. Even digimon forget to look up most of the time, and many can't fly.

Hiro flicked on a zone, and in the sudden silence they could hear the bone shaking screeching.

A warehouse was furiously burning, and part of it suddenly collapsed inwards, rocketing flames, ash, and whole chunks of roof into the air. A humongous blade as large as a car flashed through the smoke, and the building shuddered again.

Metal Seadramon loomed from the wreckage. She shed sheets of corrugated iron as she lifted into the air, her head swinging left and right till she spotted them.

Her voice seemed to come from all around them, "I know it was you that hid the humans from me. They have taken my servants. I will have them back. I am being patient in this moment as you have aided many. I will not be patient for long."

Hiro stood on Airdramon's back, "Give us a chance to go in on your behalf. We'll find them."

Metal Seadramon sighed, and it buffeted them backwards, "Twenty minutes."

<>

Kiyoshiro slid off Airdramon and wheezed, "Twenty minutes?!" How? Why? HOW??

"Technically nineteen now," said Jellymon cheerfully, and Kiyoshiro winced.

"We can't go in," Ruli shook her head, "Smoke inhalation will kill us in minutes."

"Then stay out here, but remain linked," Angoramon said.

They all evolved, and Hiro turned off the zone. They raced in. The flames quickly swallowed them. Seventeen minutes.

Another part of the building collapsed. Sixteen minutes.

There were sirens, shouting, a fire truck setting up. Twelve minutes.

Overhead swooped a helicopter for some TV station. Eight minutes.

SymbareAngoramon lunged out of the fire, soot black, a Betamon under each arm. BetelGammamon followed, using a modified attack to pull the fire out of the way. And finally, TeslaJellymon. Hauling a human.

The young man in the lab coat coughed, saw the monsters around him, and nearly choked.

"Metal Seadramon!" called SymbareAngoramon.

The Leviathan creature manifested all at once, partially coiled around the flaming ruin. She dropped her head low to the ground.

Sobbing, the Betamon threw themselves at her and climbed on.

"But there should be three," she said. And turned her gaze to the young man. "I saw you capture all three. Where is the third?"

He shuddered, but he didn't seem to comprehend that she was talking to him. He didn't respond to her words, only murmered to himself, "Why didn't the trap work?"

Kiyoshiro stepped forward, and crouched in front of the man, "The UO traps are limited, you know that. Once the total energy of the lifeform exceeds the array, it simply can't hold them. So tell me. Where is the other one?"

The man shook his head.

"You know this thing is looking for her young," said Ruli nonchalantly, "You know what mother bears do to people who get between them and their cubs?"

The man paled.

Hiro smiled. It was a gentle, friendly smile, full of understanding, "I can see your boss has left you take the fall! They never told you have dangerous this job was going to be, did they?"

The first crack. The young man's eyes went shiny.

"Now that they have what they want, they don't care if you live or die. But we do."

"Tell us where the UO was uploaded to," said Kiyoshiro.

Ruli spread her hands, "and it not like they'll know it's you. Look at this place."

The last part of the building, just behind them, collapsed in a shower of sparks and a dull roaring.

The man closed his eyes. And without moving his mouth, he muttered, "It's the westside red warehouses, the third and fourth buildings. They're trying to get this computer to run, and it only lights up around these things," and he kicked dirt at TeslaJellymon.

Hiro immediately spun and placed himself between the man and Metal Seadramon, "We will go right now and free your servant," he said, "Don't kill him."

"As long as my Betamon is returned to me," she replied, with an elegant snake bow.

Chapter Text

They booked it to the warehouses, and honestly, Kiyoshiro did not remember how they got there. His brain had already thrown away the memory of the journey because he needed more room to properly contemplate re: the mounting anxiety.

Metal Seadramon followed behind them; silently, a massive river of metal that curved from horizon to horizon. Intangible for now. Patient for now. So absolutely enormous thay he couldn't properly comprehend it. She was one part of the anxiety.

The red warehouse was before them, very obviously occupied. Lighted windows, a full carpark, a reinforced door with a keypad. People, walking or talking with purpose. That was another part of the anxiety.

And Hiro was frantically jigging his device trying to open a zone, and it wasn't. That was probably the majority of the anxiety, actually.

Click- beep!

"I don't understand why," Hiro muttered, "Guys, it's not working. You try."

It wouldn't work for Ruli. It wouldn't work for Kiyoshiro.

But in Kiyoshiro's case, he had a good idea why. When he flicked his right hand, he felt the program engage. There were five steps.

Load zone. Scan for spacial anomalies. Scale zone to local space. Twist space. Render zone. Issue at step 2. Huge issue at step 3.

"There's something really off about space, really space-time, here," he said, "The pseudo digital zone can't render." He glanced at TeslaJellymon as he said it.

She was watching the building quietly. "There's more space per space," she said, and leaned forward in the air, "It feels like...it would take me twice as long to swim across."

"Okay," said Ruli with infinite pragmatism, flicking her hair behind her ear, "what are we going to do about it? How are we going to get in?"

Metal Seadramon arched over them, "Perhaps a distraction?"

Ruli nodded before anyone could disagree, "Especially if that distraction involves a nice large hole in a wall."

"Done."

And immediately, she turned and fired a laser beam through several of the cars and back through a corner of the building. The metal glowed cherry red and exploded, shrapnel raining down on the carpark. There was a millisecond of silence, and then alarms blared over the crackling of burning metal.

"Let's go!"

Kiyoshiro sucked in a breath and tasted oily smoke. They didn't have a plan. Nothing. They didn't have to run into the building!

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw TeslaJellymon square her sholders and swim after Ruli. She didn't look excited, the way she normally was when they were solving mysteries. But she was grimly determined; he could feel it through their link like ice.

After all, they knew these people.

Damn. They had to get Betamon out of there, and hitting hard now, before anyone had time to prepare, was the best way. Yes, they didn't have a plan. But neither had the adults.

He ran forward, the last one just behind Hiro.

Through the glowing hole in the wall was a lobby and a passage deeper into the building.

"What is happening?"

"Grab those kids!"

And a person trying to close off the space with orange tap lunged at them as they raced past.

Lights flashed red and white, and an alarm blared: emergency emergency. Please evacuate now.

The walls were unpainted. The carpet was purple. There were closed doors lining the corridor. Were they offices? Storage cupboards? Labs? The doors were all the same. Grey, locked with a keypad.

SymbareAngoramon flicked an ear at Ruli, who caught Hiro's eye, who skidded to a stop.

"Breaking stream!" called Ruli, and SymbareAngoramon blasted back anyone following them, as BetelGammamon tore a door off its hinges, and he and TeslaJellymon used the contents of the room to form a barricade.

"We need a map," said Hiro.

TeslaJellymon looked at Kiyoshiro. Well, she didn't have eyes that anyone could see, but she turned her whole self to face him and crossed her arms. "You can make a map," she said to him.

He pulled a face.

She wasn't having it, "You and I, we were like Betamon. What were you saying the other day about children and childhoods?" She leaned forward, nose to nose, "You gonna let these assholes steal another one?"

Fuck it. He'd rather die.

He slammed his hand over a keypad. Even through the bandages, the building opened up, the network of electricity cables twisting together to form a very complete 3D picture.

But it wasn't the right system.

"I need to connect to a computer," he said, and took off down the corridor, everyone close on his heels. He skidded into a door that had stood out on the map: an almost impenetrable wall of wires around it, that had called to the arm. Like to like.

BetelGammamon blasted open the ordinary looking door and through it, on the far wall, was a heavily fortified metal portal.

Through that was a large circular room, lined in what looked like pistons, with a huge computer embedded in one wall. Silvery metal walls, and floor, and ceiling.

And as they entered, the room woke up. Lights flashed in a quick pattern. Behind the walls, machinery began to hum. The largest screen flashed. A line of cypher flicked across it. SymbareAngoramon frowned and brushed a hand over it as he recognised it. Hokuto's work.

Ruli took put her phone and started videoing; "looks like we found the computer that guy was talking about. Do your thing, senior."

Okay. Okay, okay. He crushed one hand with the other. It wasn’t that bravery wasn't coming. Bravery never came. It was that reluctant resignation wasn't coming. He just didn't want to do this. He should take off the bandage to do this.

He stepped up the dias, with all its buttons and touch screens, and laid his hand on it.

The glass of his fingers deformed and melted into the console with a snapping sound, the plastic warping and popping. There was a wisp of steam.

He closed his eyes. And opened them: two hundred and twenty three cameras set up around the warehouse. They twitched. Swivelled around. Visual established.

And he simply remembered where the UO trap was with the computer's memory. "I have the location. It is unfortunately on the other side of the building." He pulled up a map on one of the many many monitors, and neatly plotted the way in red.

"Guess we'll run," said Ruli ruefully as Hiro made note of the room and directions.

"Let's go!"

"Go with them, TeslaJellymon." She nodded, and he watched them all out the room.

Then he locked the door.

<>

They ran down the corridor, which reverberated with their steps through the flimsy temporary walls. Except for when it didn't, when they ran over reinforced floors and knew they were running past something Important. Cameras turned to follow them.

"Take a left!" called Hiro. Immediately, the door clicked open before them. And locked behind them when they were through.

Left. Past a kitchen filled with mugs on hooks, and a small lounge with black sofas, cups of coffee abandoned on the table.

The trap was in a large dusty store room, not even locked at all. It was also, very slightly, on fire.

There was a dull explosion from outside, and the metal pillars grumbled. They all glanced up and down again.

TeslaJellymon cackled, "Guess Metal Seadramon is getting impatient!" And she smacked her fists together. Electricity sparked, and she smashed the trap.

A bright light jumped out and resolved into a Betamon.

Hiro bowed over, hands on knees, and let out a long, drawn breath, "Can't believe this actually worked. BetelGammamon! Sorshot!"

BetelGammamon nodded, lept backwards while gathering flames, and blew out a chunk of wall. Outside, it was dark.

The wind rushed in, and all at once, the fire doubled in size, roaring loudly.

"Go go go!" Ruli flung her arm, and they all piled out of the building and kept running.

"TeslaJellymon! Go get Kiyoshiro! We'll handle MetalSeadramon!"

She briefly flicked a salute and dived back through the building.

But when Hiro turned around, Metal Seadramon was already there. He skidded to a stop, took a deep breath, and waved his arms, "We have your servant! You can stop now!"

And SymbareAngoramon came forward, hoisting up the Betamon.

Metal Seadramon, very quietly, very carefully, touched the tip of her snout to the Betamon's. "Are you alright?"

The little creature burst into tears and clung to her. They were definitely saying words, but it was hard to understand them. The other Betamon appeared, murmered comforting things.

And just like that, Metal Seadramon didn't care about anything. Completely ignoring the people who had just saved her servant and the carnage of the warehouse, she lifted up and away and left.

They watched her go.

"Huh," said BetelGammamon, "She could at least say thanks." He shrugged at Hiro, who rolled his eyes as he nodded.

"In the digital world, we'd be thanking her for limiting her destruction," said SymbareAngoramon placidly.

"That is stupid!" BetelGammamon declared, "What about all the people who had nothing to do with any of this? What about the bakery down the street?"

"You're not going without bread just because someone else had a crisis!" said Ruli with a laugh.

"Exactly -"

"Guys," said TeslaJellymon, "Kiyoshiro is stuck."

She was quiet in a way she never was.

Behind them, several black cars and two fire trucks were pulling into the carpark as the fires spread.

"He's not with you?"

"He's back in the control room. I can't." She snapped her teeth, "His arm is being stupid." She curled up for a second. And then, moment of despair over, she stretched out again, "You'd better get out of here. I'll figure something out."

"No." said Ruli, "We'll all go."

They turned back into the flames.

Chapter Text

They retraced their steps, doors unlocking and locking for them the whole way. The alarm had been shut off, and in the silence, they heard muffled voices and banging. The warping of walls as the fire burns out of control. Once, they briefly spotted a person with a torch down a long corridor. Smoke covered the floor, and everything smelt of burnt plastic.

The fortified door swung open.

The computer was awake. A bright white light threw all the equipment in sharp relief, a fan churning to keep the computer cool. The room was warm. Humid. The only space that didn't smell of burning.

"What's that smell?" BetelGammamon stopped short, throwing out his tail to block the others. "The floor is red."

There was a puddle of blood about the base of the console.

There was a body slumped over the puddle, kneeling, one arm dragging in the blood, head hanging down. It couldn't fall because its other arm was fused to computer, up to the shoulder.

The fan whirred. It sounded like breathing.

Hiro steadied his nerves, "is he alive?"

TeslaJellymon nodded; "link remains." She drifted over. "Wake up now, darling!" and she tugged on a lock of hair.

Ow.

Wait. How.

His vision doubled. One: the crisp clear network of cameras that had followed the others out of the warehouse and back in again. Two: blurred, grey, and black, a tiny painful square.

Was that himself?

TeslaJellymon jumped, "Almost!"

But it couldn't be.

"Damn it!" She punches a screen, "He's right here, but I can't reach him. The link- " and she sighed, "They're meant to work one way, I can't get enough energy back to him."

"Let's help then!" smiled BetelGammamon.

"Even a little more should do it," SymbareAngoramon stepped forward.

Something hooked into him. Hot, and also cold. A balance was shifting, tipping. He fell.

Kiyoshiro slammed his head into the edge of the console, bit his tongue, and yanked his still very stuck arm just so, twisting the joint. Ow. Very ow. He gingerly lifted himself up.

He blinked several times, blinded by the light. Ah, specifically, the light of de evolving digimon.

Jellymon slammed into him, wrapping arms and stingers around his face and squeezing. Then she pulled back and shook him. No words were necessary: scare me like that again, and I am killing you myself and it will hurt and then I will paint your bones blue do not test me I swear to you and me and also your future dead self.

"You back with us, senior?"

"Yes," he tried to pull his arm out, "mostly. Uh."

Hiro came up and very respectfully asked to check with a dip of his head. When he peeled back the ramins of Kiyoshiro's shirt, they all winced.

The skin that could be seen was bubbled with blisters and a raw pink. The black glass was firmly buried. And had spread. New growth curled over his shoulder onto his back. Lines of black followed nerves to his spine.

Shit he was looking through the cameras again. He needed to dial it back. "Don't drop the link," he said to Jellymon.

"Never."

Ruli leaned over as Hiro attempted first aid. "Do we like, hack at it with a screw driver? I have a multi knife."

"That might -"

Movement.

Movement? Kiyoshiro froze and glanced to the side. No, through the cameras.

Entering the warehouse. A squad of private police, dressed in black body armour and carrying guns. Behind them, fire-fighters wresting the fire under control with water and foam.

"Kill the intruders! They look human, but they're not." The grim man with the grey glasses was disturbingly familiar. "If anything gets out, I'll take the fall." Dr Noruma, presumed deceased in the Moriyama Labs explosion, straightened the collar of his shirt and looked grim.

That. Was very, very bad.

Kiyoshiro hooked up the feed to the monitors and replayed the last twenty seconds.

Hiro went emotionless, with a tightness by his eyes, "...can anyone evolve?"

No. No one says it, but bringing Kiyoshiro back took everything they had. Gammamon's stomach grumbled and he hunched over.

"Can we run the other way?" asked Jellymon.

Kiyoshiro flicked through the cameras. They were surrounded. He sighed. "You shouldn't have come back for me."

"No." says Angoramon, "We are a clan. We don't leave anyone behind. Let's look for another way."

"A vent," said Hiro, "Or another door."

"And I'll do something else," said Ruli, quietly dangerous. And she started to livestream.

Gammamon drifted upwards to check the ceiling, while Jellymon phased through the walls to check from the other side. Angoramon slammed into wall panels. Hiro checked seams. And Ruli smiled brittlely, turning her phone to record it all, "Good evening, lovelies, sorry to wake you all at midnight, but tonight we might be in the kind of trouble no one can actually recover from." She turned the camera back to herself, still smiling, with a dark dead look in her eyes, "I know some of my followers are clever enough to rip the location data from this video, and I need you to do it ASAP."

There was a series of muffled cracks. On the screens, the private police turned their guns on one of the doors.

"We're going die here. Make sure they find our bodies."

She ended the video. "Any luck?"

"None," said Angoramon.

"There is one," said Kiyoshiro. "Escape to the digital world."

They all looked at him, and he wiggled his remaining hand, "I've got control of, well, everything in this room, and we meet the parameters. We want to go, we have digimon with us who also want to go, and those digimon trust us."

"Pair traveller with home-beginning," said Angoramon, tapping his chin, "We are the travellers. And this place is the beginning of the movement."

"Will there be chocolate?" asked Gammamon in a small voice.

"I don't know," says Hiro, "but I think-" He looks around at everyone, "I think we're going anyway."

"Take us away, darling."

The room dims and the lights turns red. The pistons behind them hum and, very very slowly, begin to churn.

There's another flurry of cracks from outside.

A screen flicks up a counter. 30 seconds.

Ruli calls her mum. Who picks up after a single ring, "Sweetheart."

"Mum, we screwed up. We're going to die unless we go to another world."

Her mother sucked in a breath, "It wouldn't be the first time for our family," she said, voice artificially even, "we'll find a way to you. Just stay alive. You there, Rabbit?"

Angoramon leaned towards the phone, "I am."

"You take care of each other. And I love you Ruli. Wherever you go, whatever happens, whatever you do."

15 seconds.

"I love you too. Dad too. If. If you leave a message at the park down the road, at the bamboo, for Ruli. You should be able to find some digimon."

10

"I will."

9

"And the hospital!"

8

"Ask for mummymon!"

7

"Don't sell my keyboard."

6

"I might give it to your cousin."

4

"Don't you dare!"

3

"Bye mum."

2

"Love you, Ruli."

0

The world blasts into fragments, multicoloured shards overlayed with static, that swirls in on itself. All sound smears in one long drone. They fall.

But not like, very far.

Like tripping over a step, Kiyoshiro stumbles. His knees find the ground first. Then he smells damp ground and grass. Then, before his open eyes, the static resolves into a field. All blues under the moonlight of a full moon, no clouds or light pollution or mountains to block it.

There's a beep, and without a thought, Kiyoshiro checks his phone. New notification.

... new notification?

He checks again. He has full reception?!

Chapter Text

He has. What?

He turned the phone upside down and shook it and checked a third time. Full reception. WiFi.

He. What?

"Darling. Lie down."

He looked around and startled when Jellymon bobbed up. She was hard to see: blue on purple, merging with the twilight darkness. She put a stinger on each shoulder and pushed him backwards.

The earth rolled up to meet him. Above him, the stars were wrong. And the sky was a dark, deep magenta. And the face of the full moon was marked with squares. Almost like roads. Like a city. There were yellow lights on the moon.

"Darling. Close your eyes." Jellymon had always felt strange. Like water beads. Always cooler than the ambient temperature. It’s nice over his eyes.

<>

Something shook him awake, and he sat up and screamed, and then Jellymon screamed and shoved him. He bashed his head on the root bundle of a bunch of grass. "Ow ow, why?!" Grass in his hair! It's spiky!

"I'm hungry," Jellymon whined, "There's nothing to eat, I've looked!" She floated upwards and checked the area again.

Still clutching his head, he scrunched his forehead and conveyed with watery eyes that something she wants not being around had never stopped her before.

She narrowed her eyes scornfully without looking away from the horizon, "Shall I look further and leave you alllll by yourself in a completely different world?"

Oh. Hm. Yeah, he might not enjoy that. He knew nothing about this place. It's looked like his world, sure, but did it act like it?

He glanced down at the ground. Was the grass poisonous? Would the rocks bite? Would the clouds rain acid?

It cast a gloom over the area, and he tried to sit without, like, actually touching any earth.

"What are you freaking out about?" Jellymon put her hands in her hips, "Stop it."

"I am trying my best," He said fretfully, "does the ground ever spit poison?"

"Doesn't the ground at home sometimes spit fire?"

"We know where all the volcanos are! They can't sneak-." Then he remembered, "they don't normally sneak up on us." Paricutín was an outlier and should not be counted!

Jellymon cackled, "and here, the ground normally doesn't crack up like a digitamamon and spew fumes."

Poison was not fumes! Ohgosh somethingstunghisshoulder- He shoot to his feet so fast that black spots danced before his eyes and he spun to face it - and it's Jellymon. She waved the long stinger languidly and grined.

He pulled a face at her. Mean to him.

"That makes me feel bad."

"That's the intent."

He straightened up as much as possible and looked around. Where were the others?

He checked to the left and the right. Nothing but this field from horizon to horizon, tussocks almost as tall as he is.

The wind howled and the grass bowed before it. It smelt burnt and peppery.

Was that a boom gate? No, it was! Several, actually, now that he looked properly. And, half hidden to side, a brightly painted road barrier. And more behind it. And there, on the horizon! Powerlines? Without the lines?

No, focus. The others.

He couldn't see anything. And. And if Jellymon had seen anything, she would've said. Or even gone to get them.

"Did we get separated somehow?"

"I did see them in the vortex," said Jellymon, "just for a second! But we got pushed in different directions."

He did not remember that. But wherever they were, Ruli had Angoramon, who was arguably the only sensible one among them; and Gammamon had Hiro, who could make a campsite with two twigs and a single acorn. They would be alright. They would see each other again.

Unless Kiyoshiro was wrong, and they were all dead or died before then. Kiyoshiro had been very wrong very often before.

Putting that thought to the side!

He ran his left hand through his hair, dislodging several bits of grass and a distressing amount of sand. Yep, and there's even more sand stuck on his scalp. He could Feel the Bits raining down on his neck and down his shirt. Ew.

He lifted his arm to look down at himself. He could smell arid smoke, and his clothers are still soot stained, except for where they’re bloodstained, the blood dried to a dark brown.

He was no longer bleeding. But the edges of the new growth were scabbed and red beyond the scabs. Beginning of an infection. He had probably two, maybe three days before it got serious enough to take him down.

His right arm was still a mess. It's not quite arm shaped, the glass bubbled and fused to plastic and metal. When he ran his fingers over it, he felt nothing through it. It was slightly warm to touch. Processing everything it managed to steal, no doubt. He can't move it. It was more heavy than an arm ought to be. That's going to be an issue. Carrying extra weight would exhaust him faster. Walking lopsided will wench his back.

Alright, focus on what they had.

He had a backpack.

In the backpack was half a bottle of water, his wallet, and a box of custom pins and key chains. And a packet each of paracetamol, ibuprofen, and aspirin.

He popped two ibuprofen and apologised to his future self for the stomach ache.

"We should move," said Jellymon. She morphed and floated in a circle.

She spoke too flatly.

"Are you alright?"

"I'm fine."

She hadn't looked away from the horizon. Especially one specific direction, toward the power poles.

He scrambled up a road block and squinted. He couldn't see anything. But. The sky in that direction was a little greyer.

"Do you see anything?"

"I dunno." She huffed, "I just have a bad feeling."

He nodded thoughtfully, "We are going to die, aren't we?"

"Oh, come on!"

"You went out shopping when there was a serial killer on the loose! You don't do 'bad feelings' or whatever!" Why were they arguing? They needed to move!

He slid down the barrier and started in the opposite direction of the greyness. Not running, there's too much stuff for that, but scrambling as fast as possible through grass, past concrete chunks and railway crossings.

"How close is it?"

"I dunno."

"Is it coming for us?"

"I don't. Know."

"Jellymon, I need something to work with!"

"Kiyoshiro, I am trying!" Her voice broke before she covered it with sass, "I'd like to see you do better with an enemy we can’t see or hear or touch! Oh shit it's getting closer -"

She evolved. The sudden energy drain had Kiyoshiro stumbling mid step, but TeslaJellymon grabbed his hand before he could fall and pulled him along behind. Still staying below the tops of the grass, half hidden.

He looked behind them. There's a dark speck. A long way off.

All of a sudden, they stumbled into a circular clearing. In the middle was a flat stone the size of a car. It had a golden band wrapped around it, the band stamped with a strange cipher.

He understood it.

In the language of the program that sent them here, he read: -and may the holy anchor point hold true, against the dark-. The rest of the words are buried as the band circled the stone into dirt.

There's a burst of wind that kicked dust into his eyes, and something hit him.

TeslaJellymon tackled him out of the slash of the claws.

An enormous skeleton demon thing loomed over them, bones dyed red. It tipped back quietly, lifted its mace, swung!

TeslaJellymon arced over it. Kiyoshiro sprung backwards. And he was thrown off his feet by the mere impact, skin shredded by flying stone.

TeslaJellymon zapped it, but it didn't even notice her attack. It lifted the mace again, "Nail bone," and brought it down on the stone.

The world shattered, like glass, but then resolved again.

"Nail bone." The shattering was worse, more, and Kiyoshiro clutched at his head.

It's like the vortex that brought them here. It's like the portals that had opened up all over the earth, dumping digimon and swallowing humans. They have to stop this thing. There has to be something. Kiyoshiro was absolutely certain, in a way that went beyond thinking, beyond nerves, straight into the blood, that this was going to break the world. Both worlds. All worlds, maybe.

He ground out, "Punischone." TeslaJellymon flung a line of electricity that crackled against bones. The skeleton immediately struck out at her. She made like a jellyfish and allowed the push of air to swish her out of the way, curving around the mace.

It doesn't slow down the skeleton. It doesn’t have organs to shock.

That dark core, underneath the ribes. "Vorsprite." She charged up and at it, ramming it. The impact created a black flash. A black fire ringed around TeslaJellymon, flinging her to the ground. The skeleton stepped backwards.

Kiyoshiro felt something strange and heavy take to the link between them. Something despairing. Melting. Like ice flowing away under water.

Absolutely fucking not, "Vorsprite!" And TeslaJellymon electrified her whole body, the cold light snuffing out the black fire.

This wasn't working. He wished the others were here, because he couldn't do this. Together they could figure something out, they could take down enemies much stronger than them. But it was just him and TeslaJellymon and she could NOT touch that black orb again, whatever the hell it was.

She looked at him from across the battlefield. This thing would either kill them, or it would destroy the stone, which would kill them.

So. He dragged his eyes back to the skeleton. He would think of something. Maybe if they got the mace away from it? It's getting ready to hit the stone again. They had to try.

The stone flashed.

And TeslaJellymon evolved.

Chapter Text

Thetismon was three metres tall, a giant of women, with iron gauntlets that shook the ground as she pounded them together. And she was so cool. She was the most epic force of nature Kiyoshiro had ever clapped eyes on, and that included multiple dragons and one angel like thing.

She flashed him a grin and slugged the skeleton with the weight of a de-railing train, sending it tailbone over skull. The ground jumped when it slammed into it. It gouged out a strip of field, sending up dust like smoke.

And then it got up.

It wasn't taking any damage.

Hm. Kiyoshiro darted to the side and clambered up the flat rock to get a better view. It was a skeleton, after all. There wasn't anything to take damage, except for bones. How does one kill undead?

Traditionally, fire. Or you'd have to bring it back to life to kill it properly.

Thetismon jumped backwards and spread her hands.

Kiyoshiro breathed, "Dokutease."

She flung out her stingers and began to glow. Then it began to rain: golden lines of light. It's cool, refreshing. The light hitting the ground sounded like wind chimes waving in the breeze.

The skeleton shuddered to a stop, frozen in the rain, haloed in the light. Then it burst into bits. Then it resolved into a vaguely man shaped winged humanoid. Then it burst into bits again. It resolved into alternating rings and eyes, and rings and eyes. Burst into bits again. And, finally, resolved into a melted black tombstone that trembled every few seconds.

The wind blew through the sudden silence.

Oh good, they're both alive. Kiyoshiro sat down. His mangled arm scrapped along the stone. And that was weird. Still no sensation through it, so he could feel it sort of tug on his shoulder blade and collar bone. He propped it up on the stone, using his good hand to lift and manoeuvre the bad.

Thetismon crouched next to him. She took the arm in one hand. It was a relief. The arm was heavy, and he sighed as the weight was taken off him.

Thetismon tipped her head as she looked it, and then she neatly snapped it off at the upper arm.

"Thetismon!? That's my entire arm!"

"You're not using it!" She said defensively, waving said arm back and forth to demonstrate how much it resembled a stick and not an arm.

He tried to grab it, "It's MY arm!"

She lifted it up higher, "Do you want this thing to screw up your back, or don't you? Those are you two options! Um." She carefully didn't smile. "Well, your one option."

"On account of the fact that you made the decision for me."

"It's fine. You're fine."

"It's not fine!" He stood up - and then tested his balance, "Oh, that's so much better."

"See? You should let me make all the decisions." She tucked the arm into the backpack, pinching the zipper between two fingers.

"Ha. I'm taking that as a joke."

"Because you're so well known for your humour."

He pointed up at her, directly at her nose, "That's rude!"

Her grin was entirely un repentant. Thetismon was much taller and more elegant than TeslaJellymon- but she was just as cheeky.

"I'm glad you’re feeling better," she said, still crouched over and almost face to face. Then she stood up, suddenly embarrassed, and brushed the dirt from her dress.

He hadn't noticed, but the full body ache had gone, with it the palpable exhaustion. Even the beginning of the infection had calmed. He felt as good as he could, considering he'd slept in a field with no mattress, hadn't had breakfast, and was missing an arm.

"Useful stuff, Dokutease." He said, sliding down the flat stone. Killed things. Healed things. He wondered how the attack could tell friend from foe.

"I was regenerating. The thing that was healing to you was destructive to the other. Exhausting though," she said. She didn't have to finish the thought. Kiyoshiro could tell she was beginning to get tired - he could feel it like it's his own.

There was a flash. Then Jellymon drifted down in jelly form and settled on his head.

"Good job, Lady Jellymon," he said and patted her head.

Which left the tombstone.

It's huge, as tall as Kiyoshiro. He couldn't bring himself to touch it.

"It's a Ohakadamon," Jellymon said sleepily, "I'd heard of them, but never seen one before."

It's like glass. Like obsidian. "What's the significance?"

"Digimon are meant to return to egg form when they die. But Ohakadamon don't. They are inert, unaffected by time."

That seemed. Extreme? The skeleton thing was terrifying, and had been trying to break the universe, but still. To be removed from your species's afterlife, reincarnation cycle, with no chance of change or future joy.

Perhaps the pity was misplaced. But he did pity it. Maybe it's the adrenalin wearing off. He wiped away at stinging eyes.

Then he shrugged off the backpack and dug around the arm for the box of pins. There's one that's a circle of red spider lillies around a sparkling crescent moon; he found it.

"You're too soft," Jellymon murmured.

Yeah, probably. Always a bit of a dice roll to be kind. "But it works out most of the time," and he laid the pin in a shallow carved groove.

It sunk into the stone, which wobbled like jelly, and swirled together into an egg, with a crescent moon pattern on the shell.

Hm.

"I think we should leave," said Jellymon, sounding completely awake, "Like, right now."

"Yep!" He's going! He turned on his heel.

There was a giant dragon. A slightly see through blue dragon, who lay in a huge coil around the clearing. It bowed its great fluffy head at the two of them, "You have my thanks." And it reached out and nudged the egg towards Kiyoshiro, "A reward for your bravery."

"Um." Could Kiyoshiro say no. Was that an option here.

Jellymon drifted up and then curtseyed in the air, "We are honoured, o lord," and dived down and scooped up the egg.

"I hope you will meet up with the others that were summoned." It said.

"The others?" asked Jellymon.

"Summoned?" asked Kiyoshiro.

"The other tamers, yes." said the dragon. "The heros of legend who have tamed the great darkness. You are welcome here."

It stared at Kiyoshiro like it expected an answer, "uh, thank you. We'll. Um. We'll try our best."

"Try? Have you not already succeeded?"

What the actual hell was the big lizard talking about. "I mean. Darkness lives in every heart. We'll never truly tame it."

There was a vague lifting of fluffy eyebrows that implied astonishment and satisfaction in equal measures, "Excellent. You were well chosen."

Chosen? Jellymon STOLE the pair device. And Hiro's dad had dumped Gammamon on Hiro, so if anyone had been recruited to do anything, it was him, and he'd wiggled out of it!

Jellymon caught Kiyoshiro's eye, and winked, "Of course we take our role very very seriously. But we'll be needing better compensation than a baby," she held up the egg.

"Well...he'll be a valuable soldier."

"Against what?" she replied, "Can't you see we need as much information as possible?"

"Fate will place you where necessary," the old dragon said placidly. "Trust your tamer, Jellymon, and do what you've done before."

It was like talking to a fortune cookie.

Kiyoshiro grinned like a maniac, "Well! We'd better keep moving. Thanks for the egg." And he grabbed Jellymon's elbow and pulled her along behind him as he powder walked away. The dragon obligingly lifted its coils so they didn’t have to walk through them.

After like half an hour of hard walking, Kiyoshiro looked back over his shoulder.

It was still there! Fuck off enormous slightly transparent dragon chilling in the field. Watching them.

"It's still there!" he whisper screamed to Jellymon.

"The old nut jobs are so so so annoying," Jellymon grumbled back.

"Who is that guy anyway?"

"Do I look like Angoramon? Not a clue. He's one of the lord what's-its who tell the knights what to do." She pulled out his phone, "Take a photo and send it to Ruli."

He stopped. And turned, and looked at Jellymon. Say what now?

"You said you had reception last night."

"Oh I thought I had hallucinated that." Funny what being flung to another world would do to you. Other injuries not withstanding.

Wow, he has 137 notifications! That was the most he's ever had, with second place going to time he was playing phone tag with his meal delivery for a zesty 5 unanswered texts!

Some of them were calls from Hiro, and then texts from Hiro, with a couple of photos of him and Gammamon taking a what seemed to be a lovely stroll through a purple coloured forest. There's a little jellyfish in the tree behind them.

Three of them are from Ruli, who was posting status updates to the group chat on the bi hourly.

The vast majority were from people he only vaguely knew trying to reach him. Because apparently the video went kind of viral in the cryptid community, and then got connected to the trials and wow. The conspiracy folks were going to have a great time. He'd got an email from his lawyer checking in on him. Amazing.

He didn’t have any social media, except for an anonymous tumblr account where he screamed about anime.

He had an ancient LinkedIn? He settled for changing the profile to: currently still alive! And changing the profile picture to him out in the field

And then posting a picture of the dragon @ Angoramon on the group chat. There. That was two whole signs of life. That should be enough.

Chapter Text

The phone rang, and Kiyoshiro answered.

"Are you alright, senior? It's been a while since we got here and we didn’t hear from you."

It feels really dumb to say, "Sorry, I was asleep. Except for the last, uh, forty minutes? There was a skeleton. Then a dragon. The dragon is worse than the skeleton."

"I see," said Hiro politely, and then he changed the subject, "You seem alright?"

"Well, I don’t have an arm. I do have an arm, but it’s in my backpack at the moment," he sounded unhinged even to himself, "I'm fine. I took some ibuprofen."

"I see," said Hiro who very clearly meant the opposite.

"How are you?" asked Kiyoshiro with a desperate forced cheerfulness, "do you have any ideas on how to get back together?"

"We're good. Local Piyomon says we're in the South Amethyst Forest, close to Soup City."

"Soup City."

"They mine it, apparently. Do you want to meet there?"

"Sure. We're in the middle of a whole lot of grass. But we can ask around."

"Any other defining features of the area you're in? I'll ask the folks here if they recognise it."

"Um. There are a lot of train tracks and gates and things?" He looks around. "A giant transparent dragon? A flat rock with a gold band around it?"

"...you know what, just message me some photos."

"I'll do that," Kiyoshiro said with relief.

They said their goodbyes. Dang, he missed the others. It's just him and Jellymon in the middle of nowhere.

"Darling, my arms are getting tired." Jellymon hoisted up the egg, "I don't want to carry it anymore."

It took a few moments, but he managed to fit the egg next to the arm in the backpack by squishing the pin box a bit and leaving half the arm hanging out. He shrugged it on, using his shoulder and smacking his stump into the side of the bag to knock it onto his back- thunk.

"Shall we follow the sun, Lady Jellymon?" It's the only way he could think of to keep in one direction.

Jellymon settled on his head again, "You're the one that's walking."

<><><><>

Kiyoshiro was neither decently fit nor well rested. After four hours (the change from mid-morning to afternoon) he was actually pretty wrecked. He was sunburnt, his throat was sore from the dry air, and they were still in a field. There was still a dragon on the horizon, gazing soulfully at the sun. They'd barely moved.

And he was so hungry, he'd actually overshot into nausea, which was now encroaching faintness. Life was a misery.

Jellymon blissfully drifted on the breeze, "We should find something to eat."

Where? How? Where they going to eat the grass? "I don't think I'm going to be able to make anything, Lady Jellymon," he said quietly.

Jellymon immediately zipped up to his face and paused there, holding his cheeks with her stingers. She squinted at him. "You're not going to fall over or some dumb human thing, are you?"

"I'll try not to?"

"Good," she flipped backwards, "so we're looking for a vending machine or the corner of a building or something like that."

"...why?"

"Cause that's where the food is, dummy."

Right. This world made no sense.

"Why are there vending machines out here?" He asked as he scrounged through the grass.

"I dunno. They grow here, same as back home." Jellymon floated up a few metres to have a better view as she spoke, and shaded her eyes with a stinger.

"We don’t grow them, Jellymon." This was absolutely baffling to him, "we mine the ore to refine it to metal to beat it into shape; and then we have to farm the goods we make into food; and then someone has to stock the machine."

She leaned forward, face hidden, "That sounds like a lot of work." And pointed, "I see something!" She flew off in the same direction.

He scrambled after, "But that’s not how it happens here?"

"Nope. Stuff just appears."

He frowned, "Like those. Rabbit guys?" He was losing his breath from the running.

"Yep. They can make it happen on demand, rather than just waiting around and hoping you get lucky. Aha!"

He suddenly rounded on a fridge, the bottom freezer bit mostly buried in the ground.

"What the heck." It was a fridge. It wasn't rusted out or dented. It was a fridge. It hummed quietly as it ran. "It's not plugged in," he said aloud to himself. And he opened it. Cool air spilt out as he stared at milk and cheese and eggs and three giant, furious green snails. He closed it.

The fridge burst open, green snails shrieking and flailing. Kiyoshiro didn't wait, he spun on his heel and booked it, back the way they came. Pink mush smashed into the grass next to his head. Behind him the shrieking suddenly doubled, and then Jellymon zipped by holding a plastic bag.

It was a mad scramble, round a boulder, under a boom gate, up a small hill and down the other side, and into the shadow of a husk of a building that only had two walls and a bit of roof remaining.

As Kiyoshiro gasped for air, he distantly recognised the building as a ticket booth.

Jellymon held a finger to her lips, dropping the bag, and silently phased through the roof. She was back almost immediately, "we're good."

He sunk to the ground and tried to ignore his burning sinuses.

Jellymon cackled to herself as she unpacked the bag: 10 oranges, a bottle of milk, and a whole cling wrapped raw chicken. Well then. She gestured to the whole lot and threw a pose.

Kiyoshiro dutifully clapped, tapping his hand on his leg to make up the difference. She, after bowing, benevolently handed him an orange.

Now how to peel it? Bit by bit with his teeth, holding it with his good hand. He offered it to Jellymon first. She took half.

He wanted to say something about stealing from the molluscs. But, he was eating the food, so he couldn't say that much.

"Will the slugs be alright?".

"The Numemon? They'll be fine," Jellymon chewed a slice, "food-stops replenish like one a week. Nobody likes sharing, though. We would’ve had to trade."

"Is that why you trades things back home?"

"Kinda. It's also because I could, you know? Digimon could touch stuff I handled, no matter how realised they weren't. I got a lot of favours from it to cash in later."

Huh. "Wait. Is that why Clockmon stopped eating people? He owed a favour?"

"Yep. He owed Hiro his whole life, Hiro could've asked for anything. You too, you know."

He looked up at her, "hm?"

She was putting on a contrived nonchalance, as though they were talking about something glib, "I owe you one from the labs. Think of something."

He peeled another orange. "Well, you have saved my life, so I feel we're even."

"Those don't count," she said imperiously. "Fighting together is a different thing."

"Right," he stared down at the slice he's eating. A difference between the circle of favours and fighting. Trading seemed to be the thing most similar to the human concept of civilian life. It seemed significant that Jellymon traded so enthusiastically. She loved both a good fight and to connect with others. "It's worth saying that I didn't help you back then for the payback."

"I know. You didn’t even know if I could, you just did." She smiled, "I've always been impressed by that."

"Which is why you tormented me by haunting the shit out of my apartment."

She scowled, "I apologised for that!"

"No, you didn't!" He waved the bit of orange, "you just stopped! That's not the same thing!"

"How do you even know that."

"I studied communication, Jellymon, you were there."

She couldn't roll her eyes on account of not having any pupils, but she did an excellent impression of it, "Why you gotta be such a know it all!"

Ha! That's funny. "Excuse you, I had a mental breakdown for that knowledge. Being a know it all is all I got!"

She shook her head at him, "We gotta get you some better stuff, darling. Anime. Cos playing. Something else can be your thing."

"Like my arm. Oh wait-"

She threw the peels at his head.

<><><><>

Chapter Text

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After this, he had just a little teeny tiny nap, and woke up in the wee hours of the morning with Jellymon smothering his face like a wet cat. That's not what waked him, though. There was a loud high pitched sound- the phone was ringing!

He grabbed it, dropt it, sat up and grabbed it again, realised he couldn't reach the part of the screen with his thumb and placed it on his knee to push the green spot. He was so laser focused on actually answering that he didn't check who it was.

He half sat up, "Hey-"

"Senior, please, I need some help. Advice. Anything." It was Ruli.

She was rasping, hitched breathing, maybe she was running? In the background of her call, he could hear a wailing raucous, like tires screeching. The speakers of his phone fuzzed out at an explosion, over Ruli's muffled "oh shit-"

Jellymon took the phone in two stingers, as he struggled up to his knees, "What's going on over there?!" she yelled.

"It's Angoramon, he evolved after evolving, and gone crazy like-" she was cut off, there was more screeching, and Kiyoshiro's ears suddenly clicked. Oh wait. That wasn't a car. That wasn't some hooning driver tearing up tires and stuffing up their gearbox. That was a very large, very, very angry animal. Who was Angoramon.

Okay. He flicked his hand as he desperately tried to think. How could he help? Something, something. He had to remember something. Hold up, "uncontrolled dark evolution," he said, pulling the phrase out of his memory.

Jellymon's eyes widened, a glint in the moonlight, aha! She lifted up the phone, "That's it! What emotion did he evolve on!?"

"What?" Ruli shouted.

"Were you sad? Scared? What emotion, Ruli?"

"I don't- stop that!" She broke off. Then she ran, hard, breath coming in short bursts. After a moment, she slowed, "I think. I was angry. Am angry."

Jellymon whooped, "Go Ruli! Be mad for all of us! You know my darling can't manage it, such a shame."

Ruli laughed once. "Okay," she wheezed.

"And remember that Angoramon won't hurt you. He can’t, you know."

"Okay."

"But you need, absolutely need, to add another emotion into that power cocktail or your boy is going to continue to lose it."

"How do I even-" the background sounds went muffled, maybe she ducked behind a rock or into a cave, "do that? I can't just. What? Stop being angry?"

Kiyoshiro chewed his lip, "no, you're right. That's not a possibility, from a mental landscape perspective." He ran the hem of his shirt between two fingers, paying particular attention to the rough texture, "But it is possible to feel more than one thing at once. I can, uh, talk you through a grounding exercise, and then we can aim for some serenity, or perhaps mild curiosity of the future?" Would that work? His therapy had been more of a trauma based understanding with a focus on anxiety. Anger wasn't something he struggled with, rather the opposite. Ruli might not respond the same way.

Nevertheless, Ruli took a shaking breath, and audibly steeled herself. "Okay. What do I do?" As grim as a soldier facing the front line.

Okay. Um. "So. You're angry. Anger is the part of yourself that worries about you. So it's not our enemy here. I'm rambling, sorry. Can you feel where it's sitting in your body?"

"What?"

"Your neck? Or back maybe? Are you clenching your teeth? Are any of your muscles tense?"

"I. My jaw aches. I have a headache."

"Your heart?"

"It's racing. It's hard to breathe."

So not all that different from extreme anxiety. "Okay. Can you fold your arms over your chest so you can really feel your own breathing? And now, you mustn't breathe with your ribs, but with your diaphragm. Your stomach. Slowly."

Ruli breathed quietly. "Yeah, that's helping." She seemed surprised.

Kiyoshiro smiled, "It's the difference between panic breathing and restful breathing. We're trying to trick your brain a bit." He noticed, but didn't mention, that the animal screeching has stopped. "Now, I want you to describe what you can smell."

"Uh, dirt. Wet dirt. Salt breeze from the ocean. A spiciness?"

Good good good, "And what can you feel?"

She answered immediately, with more confidence, "The rocks behind me are cold and scratchy. The wind is also very cold. I can feel that negative zero thing Hiro was saying about the night sky."

Yeah. Kiyoshiro remembered that. Temperature gradient of the surface of the earth relative to space. Not important at the moment, "And what can you see?"

"I'm at the top of this crazy tall cliff. I can't even hear the waves you know? And I can see the ocean. All the way to the horizon. There's a cloud of birds- no, something else? Floating a way away."

She finally sounded calm, so Kiyoshiro took the opportunity, "And um, what are you thinking of doing tomorrow?" He asked as nonchalantly as he could manage, which was pretty darn nonchalant, all things considered.

"Well, we're heading to that city to meet up with Hiro and Gammamon."

"Us too!" Kiyoshiro says, "If we can get out of this field, ha ha! The grass is unending. Maybe we're stuck here forever." The wind howled over the grasses and he shivered.

Ruli snorted, "Yeah, maybe. But I'm really looking forward to seeing a digimon city. Angoramon tells me they have some famous restaurants."

"And you're going to post some damn aesthetic food?"

There's a crunching as she walked away from her hiding spot, possibly over dried grass. "Do you know who you're talking to? It's going to be aesthetic as fuck." she laughed. "Can you see the vision? The first digimon recipe live stream." And then, very quietly, "...there he is."

Kiyoshiro heard a low rumble.

"Hey Angoramon," Ruli said softly, like she was talking to a scared cat. She sounded a little far away from the microphone.

And Kiyoshiro realised she'd forgotten that she was still on the phone, let alone speaker phone, and he went to hang up, only Jellymon, infinitely curious and equally rude, flew upwards. Out of reach. They had a silent battle of wills. Kiyoshiro attempted to convey, with one hand and his eye brows, that so help me Jellymon you need to give them privacy! Right now!! Do not do what I see you doing come on what the heck!!! Jellymon, with a simultaneous flick of her stingers and a flick of her wrist, conveyed that she would not do any of that, actually, and would Kiyoshiro shut up for a second, they were getting right to the good part, please and thank you.

"Thanks for looking after me," Ruli said, "I'm okay now. We're going to town tomorrow, aren't we?"

A roughish panting. A blustery sigh.

"Yeah, I'm tired too."

The speakers fuzzed out again.

And Angoramon took a shaking breath.

And Kiyoshiro could not take it anymore. Nope. He was done. He cupped his hand around his mouth, "Jellymon! Hang up!!"

He yelled loud enough for Ruli to hear and answer, "you guys still here?"

"You need to hang up, Jellymon isn't-"

"Darling stop-"

"Isn't respecting your privacy," he said significantly, with clear pronunciation and significant eye contact, "So you need to cut contact on your side."

Jellymon pouted. "Spoilsport, darling. I'm curious. I want to knooooow."

Ruli sniggered, "I know the feeling Jellymon. But Kiyoshiro is right. I let everyone know how we're doing later." Then she hung up, before either of them could say goodbye properly.

He stares down at the screen. Six minutes, twelve seconds. It sure felt longer than that. Well. What now?

"I don't think I'm going back to sleep," he said to Jellymon, who nodded. They were both completely and utterly awake. Second hand adrenalin rushes could totally be thing, like a kind of contagious bad day.

He gathered their things by the too bright light of the moon. They were gonna do some more damn walking.

Chapter Text

<><><><>

It was freezing. There was ice forming in tiny lines at the roots; sparkling crystals rimming rocks. His breath came in silvery puffs under the moonlight. It was too dry for proper snow. Thankfully.

They walked in the direction of the moon, which was hopefully not the direction they came from before. Well, only Kiyoshiro was walking; Jellymon snoozed on his head.

Then the train track they were following along started to tremble. There was a long wild wail. He looked over his shoulder: train.

That definitely was train. It's headlights threw beams of blinding light across the field as it barrelled down on them. The light was warm, and some of the frost sublimated, throwing up wisps of steam.

Kiyoshiro squinted against the glare as he looked back at it. It was fast but everything's fast when you're travelling by leg. Kiyoshiro narrowed his eyes and tried to judge the speed of it. Faster than running or a bicycle, but much slower than a car. Maybe 30km/s? He's only kind of good at estimating speed, and it was nighttime, which further funked with his depth perception.

"We need to get on that," said Jellymon. She morphed from jellyfish to fey; and held out her hand.

He let her take his, and as she began to drag him along, he asked: "What's the plan here?"

She pointed with her other hand, "We're gonna run at that train and jump on it." She was grinning as she said it, he could hear it in her voice.

Wait. Wait no. This was Such A Bad Idea no. "We're going to fall between the carriags and get crushed under the wheels!" Trains are heavy!

"No, I got this! I used to do this all the time!"

That was not the comfort she supposed it to be!!! "It's rookies and experts that die on the field Lady Jellymon!" And she could fly? He could not fly!

He shrieked as she picked up speed, dragging him along the cleared land beside the track. The light was blinding.

"Here we go!" And for one heart stopping, brain melting micro second, as the train flashed by, he was flung up and around-

Jellymon used herself as the fulcrum point, latching on to the side of the shipping container, and swinging him up and back. To land, safely, on the little balcony just behind the container itself of the very last carriage.

Kiyoshiro sunk to his knees, wrapping his arm around the railing, and tried not to cry.

Jellymon cackled and smacked his shoulder, "You did great!"

"You're laughing at me," he said tearfully.

She gestured, holding two fingers just apart from each other, "only a little bit."

He pouted, and then shivered. It was so cold. The freezing wind was now buffeting him, and it didn't matter that they were in the lee of container, the wind curled round and bit him in the face.

"Wow, you're turning blue again," said Jellymon. She turned and pushed open the door and drifted through.

There was a door. It was human sized, and wasn't that weird? This wasn't even the human world but the fingerprints of his species where all over it. Did the digimon know? Did they care?

Inside, it was dark and warm. He tried to grab his phone, tucked in the bottle pocket of his bag, but couldn't quite reach. Without his right arm to steady it, the bag kept slipping just out of range.

Jellymon bobbed down and grabbed it, automatically turning on the torch and slowly shining it around the container.

It was full of eggs.

Just, absolute mounds of digimon eggs, all the size of a medium squishmellow, some with spots and some with splotches and some with stars and some with lines. Yellow, grey, white, blue.

A red and blue dog lizard snoozing in the middle of the container cringed as the beam crossed them, "Turn that off!" they grizzled, "Can't you see I'm sleeping?" They squinted against the blinding light, pulling the universal scrunched face of 'ow my eyes'.

"Ah," Jellymon immediately tried to, fumbling the phone and dropping it- clunk! She and Kiyoshiro winced in sync.

The dog lizard sighed, "well, I'm up now dear," and they knocked on the floor, "lights please!" With a soft click, star shaped fairy lights along the walls flickered on. There was a mural of rolling hills over the walls and the blue sky on the ceiling. They scrambled with a paw and placed a pair of glasses on the tip of their nose before sitting up. "Well now. Well well well. Lets see that egg."

Kiyoshiro gapped at them, and they laughed, "My dear, you could not get on this Trainmon without one, he's very discerning, you know." They held out both paws in a clear invitation: gimme.

"No way, what?" squeaked Jellymon, "is this the Trainmon to Kindergarten?" She looked at Kiyoshiro, eyes wide, "I didn't even know for sure it was- wait," she threaded her hands together in a plea and dropped down to same level as the dog lizard, "grandmother Elecmon, many times have I ridden?"

"Five," said Elecmon, without hesitation and with the easy confidence of a professional in their field, "but don't worry about such silly things. And you are?" They turned to Kiyoshiro, "I don't recognise you at all, this must be your first journey. No, more than that. What kind are you?" They peered over the rim of the glasses.

What kind? What does that mean?

And before he could answer, Jellymon zipped back to him and grabbed his arm, "ah haha, this is Shiromon!"

"Shiromon," hummed the Elecmon, and with their two paws they took Kiyoshiro's hand. They dragged a claw over his palm, without breaking skin, and a stange barcode type thing suddenly appeared, a halo around his hand.

"What an intriguing code," they said, turning his hand this way and that way, to look at the whole ring.

"Code?" Kiyoshiro lent forward to see more clearly in dim lighting, "Like dna?" An apt simile, he thought. Dna, after all, was the blueprint for all organelles in the cell. So the barcode was a short hand for the code, the code contained all the necessary programs, the program functions were like the organs of the body, each with their task and working together to maintain the whole.

"Dna? Now how would you know about a human thing like that?" asked the Elecmon.

"Um," Kiyoshiro glanced at Jellymon, who shook her head. "Read about it in a book! I don't know, really."

The Elecmon nodded, "Well, good. Between the prophecy that's been floating around, never mind the rips in reality, you really don't want to be mixed up with humans at the moment. You're pretty defenceless" And then, more somberly, "It appears you have no ability to attack, or even basic manifestation. And here," they pointed, "that's a decent amount of holy data, added just yesterday! You've been meddled with, my dear."

"What?" shouted Jellymon. She dropped Kiyoshiro's arm to grab his hand, "Show me!" And glared at the specified bit of barcode, muttering: "Stupid, stupid snake. Who does that?!"

The Elecmon patted her on the back, "Your friend will have to make the best of it."

"Excuse me," Kiyoshiro went to raise his hand, and instead sort of flapped his stump, "What is the significance here?" He needed to know what level of panic was appropriate here and whether it was time to sob uncontrollably in a corner or not.

"It makes you more powerful. In what way, I couldn't tell you."

"But a virus could eat you and incorporate it," said Jellymon, flatly. "So here's hoping that doesn’t happen."

Oh dear.

And yet. It may've been why TeslaJellymon was able to become Thetismon. And honestly, it was hard to be scared with her around. He simply couldn't imagine a world where she lost any battle. She was just too awesome for that.

"But it's not obvious it's there, right?" he said.

"No," said the Elecmon, "but keep it secret." Then they shook their long rabbit ears and turned to Jellymon, "Let me check you too, dear."

They turned her hand this way and that, "no issues, thankfully. But you're very strong for your kind. You ought to be an adult with this level of power."

"Not yet, grandmother. I have a reason for waiting."

As the old Elecmon nodded as though this made perfect sense, Kiyoshiro leant to the side and raised his shoulder: what's the reason?

Jellymon tapped her mouth with one finger and winked: it's a secret!

Well. What was a secret or two between friends anyway? He dropt it.

"And now, finally," the Elecmon gestured with both paws, "The egg."

Elecmon turned it over, this way and that way, and pulled out the code. They sat backwards, and then forwards, and frowned. "Ah dear. You poor thing."

"What?" Jellymon and Kiyoshiro said in unison.

"This is an egg of destiny," the Elecmon tutted and shook their head again. "Doomed to hatch in the midst of battle. We cannot in good conscience take this to the Kindergarten."

"Because it'll draw the battle there?" said Kiyoshiro.

"Nonsense! No, because it will never hatch. The Kindergarten is too peaceful. Tish. Poor thing."

Urgh. Dang it. "Lady Jellymon and I do tend to get into a lot of trouble," he said. He didn't want to be saying that. But. The Elecmon's 'poor thing' had got to him. "We could take it."

"Indeed," they handed it back to him. "It's a kind thing you are doing. And, once it hatches, you can make the journey to the Kindergarten yourself. All level 1 babies have a home there."

"Boring as hell tho," said Jellymon.

Elecmon laughed, "ah you Puyomon! Always drifting off in clouds as soon as you can!"

"We couldn't take the train? Trainmon," he corrects himself.

"No dear. You can't get on without an egg. You wouldn't even see it."

There was the wailing again, and the Trainmon slowed.

And through the door came a black Gatomon. It nodded hello to Kiyoshiro and Jellymon, popped an egg beside Elecmon, and then was out the door again.

"Wait, was that-?"

Another wail, and the Trainmon started up again.

<><><><>

Chapter Text

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Throughout the remaining hours of the night, the Trainmon made only one more stop: a black Agumon who dropped off two eggs. This was apparently quite impressive, since they had not died in the digital world.

"But if they died in the human world, how did Agumon get back to this one?"

"Not every digimon who goes away goes there, dear."

That was even more confusing, actually.

Elecmon tutted cheerfully, "Don't you know your myths and mysteries, young creature? The ocean of beginning? The connections of the worlds?" They rolled an egg from one pile to another and then leaned in close. "None of us were from this world originally. It's a very young world, a crossroads world to boot"

Kiyoshiro turns to Jellymon, who nodded him like, yeah, everyone knows that there's several worlds and dimensions. That's basic. Logic 101 really. Digimon daycare stuff.

And Kiyoshiro just had to sit there and take that, like this didn't blow all human science out of the water, utterly obliterating everything everyone ever knew. "Huh," he said. "I forgot."

<><><><>

As the sun rose, Kiyoshiro found himself on the little balcony. The grassland gave way to scrub: orangeish dirt showing between short bushes and small squat trees. It was almost like earth. Except for all the buildings half buried in the ground, and the clouds of jellyfish floating in the air instead of birds. Also the occasional giant bug. Good grief, that one was the size of a bus. Was it eating another digimon?! No no, it was half a car. Kiyoshiro sighed and leaned his head against the railings.

Jellymon cackled as she peeled an orange, "You were thinking of squaring up against the Kabuterimon, weren't cha?"

"No!" This was a lie.

And Jellymon knew it. "You want to punch the giant bug."

"I have enormous respect for insects and their role in the ecology of every environment, from far FAR away."

"I'd love to fight a giant bug," she said, and she tipped her head to make cute eyes at him, a calculated: but you'd do it for me, right? For lil old Jellymon?

He scrunched his eyebrows back: noooooo!

"You know Kabuterimon love a good fight, we'd just have to ask." She smacked one fist into the other to punctuate her sentence. "The giant bug WANTS to fight us for fun!"

Huh, "like the rivalry thing?"

"Yeah! You gotta have a friendly battle or two to make sure you're sharp!"

He nodded. Life was bizarre, sometimes. Often. Most of the time.

"What are you thinking about, darling? You've been musing all morning."

He tapped his cheek and then the railing. "It's just. You call yourself digimon, yeah?"

"Yeah?"

"And you call it the digital world."

She nodded.

"And I thought, yeah alright, a world based on digital principles, a binary code, programming. Statistically there'd be a world like that. But this world isn't just a world running on principles similar to computers. You have human inventions all over the place. So like. Is your world reflecting ours? Is our world reflecting yours? Are we both echoing a third world? Or are trains just THAT universal?" He sighed and leaned his head on his hand.

"Darling, I'm so glad you’re enjoying yourself," she patted his head, fluffing up his hair, "but! I have literally never thought about it, and I am not going to start now."

He snorted. Okay, fair, not everyone cared about this. He waved his hand at Jellymon and she obligingly handed him his phone, where he typed up all the questions he could think of in the notes app in an effort to keep them contained till he could talk to Angoramon. Who, as an archaeologist, was probably infected with the same kind of insanity as Kiyoshiro.

<><><><>

The Trainmon stopped for them at midday, and they got off.

Behind them, the railway curved away into, indeed over, the ocean, towards file island and the Kindergarten. Which is not the way they needed to go, Soup City was further along the coast. Before them, the beach turned cliff, that kept on rising to several metres high.

"But now it's like a day's walk away instead of like, three weeks," said Jellymon. She grinned smugly, "I know this area!"

They turned around to say thanks- and the train was gone. They just stepped off. There was no sound. Where did it go? Weirder still, when they'd walked a few steps, Kiyoshiro turned back again because what the heck. And the railway was gone too.

He looked to Jellymon, his shoulders hunched up by his ears, and silently asked if they were on a ghost train or some kind of near miss kidnapping or like that.

"That is weird!" She agreed cheerfully, "but who cares? We survived to walk another day."

He reluctantly admitted that that was true. And it was a NICE walk. They clambered up to the top of the huge cliffs, the waves crashing on the rocks below- not that they walk close to the edge, oh no. That would be asking from trouble, specifically cliff collapse. Or rouge waves, or earthquakes, or sudden gusts of wind.

"We can't even see the waves," Jellymon whined.

"We can see the horizon," Kiyoshiro said defensively. He eyed the very edge, where grass grew over. Should they stay three away or four? He waved away a tiny floating jellyfish trying to land on his elbow and walked faster.

It bobbed after him.

"Oh I don't like that," he noticed Jellymon- who was calmly swirling in a cloud of little jellies. "Are they. You know. Safe?"

Jellymon shrugged, "They're fine. They're just curious."

"Oh." Then he frowned, "You said the Pillowmon would be safe too." Another tiny jellyfish landed on his sholder. "And those rabbits."

Jellymon pretended she did not hear him, and grew legs to sit cross legged in the air. There were tiny jellyfish on her arms and over her head and stingers, and swirling in long circles around her.

"It's good to see you again!" squeaked one.

They could talk?!?

"You were gone so long!"

"You're a Jellymon now!"

Jellymon smiled at them, a more indulgent, sisterly smile, and very carefully bounced the little jellyfish into the air. It swished up in an arc and then joined a vortex of more jellyfish that danced together on the cliff edge. And still more of them, in loops all around Kiyoshiro and Jellymon.

Suddenly there were more and more jellyfish, thousands of them, in a great cloud that rose over the edge of the cliff. Like a snow storm, or a flock of balloons.

For a second, Jellymon was hidden from him by the crowd, and when he caught sight of her again, she was talking to a taller figure. A TeslaJellymon, with a cage like skirt and pauldrons on her shoulders, so she had a more knight like look to her, compared to Jellymon's scrappy wrestling outfit when she evolved. He walked over and heard "- and you should've some back years ago, we gave you up for dead!"

"I didn't mean to get stuck!" Jellymon said harshly. She crossed her arms, "and everyone goes exploring but you only ever yell at me!"

"You are my successor! You will take care of your sisters if something happens to me, you should be taking care of them now!" The TeslaJellymon drew herself up as stiffly as a jellyfish could and looked important.

Unfortunately for her, Jellymon was irreverent at the best of times, and always deliberately defiant, and she just scoffed and turned away, "Too bad! Pick someone else!" As she turned, she saw Kiyoshiro and jumped onto his head.

There's was a crackling, and Jellymon pushed forward, knocking Kiyoshiro back with the movement so the lightning shot over him and under her.

"Volt knuckle," Kiyoshiro said, as Jellymon punched the TeslaJellymon as hard as she absolutely could. Which was actually pretty hard, if the way she went flying had anything to say about it. She went skidding through the grass to stop in a jelly heap, and several little jellies began landing on her.

"I'm fine," she grumbled, waving them away, before hauling herself up to her knees. Then she looked at Jellymon, cold and resigned, "You're stronger than me."

Jellymon shrugged with reckless indifference, with her whole body, as she held her mouth in a thin line to keep from crying.

The TeslaJellymon limped into the air again, "Do as you will, then. That is the right of the strong, after all," and she disappeared over the edge of the cliff.

Much of the cloud of jellyfish went with her, but a lot of them stayed and continued to float with Jellymon. They danced in long lines and said a lot of things in their high pitched voices. Kiyoshiro could only listen to some of them, most spoke in a decibel he couldn't hear.

They chattered with Jellymon. First telling her all the news, but then they asked her what she'd been up to. She told them about the mysteries they'd solved, and some of the fights they'd gotten into, and some of the hardest scrapes that very nearly killed them. But Jellymon had such a funny way of talking, Kiyoshiro realised. She told all these misfortunes as stories. They seemed like real adventures. Like heroes journeys, like all these things really mattered, and they'd really helped people.

"I'm not sure it happened like that!" He said, when she mentioned himself hacking into a satellite, "that implies some kind of security, literally anyone could used the system, several amateur groups do-"

"Silence in the peanut gallery!" She boomed, and he bowed out to let her have her way. The jellyfish were, he had to admit, a very good audience, they'd ooo and ahh at all the right moments, and even gasped in horror when she regaled them with the gory explosions of MetalSeadramon. But then she got to the bit where they came to the digital world, and she made it sound like he saved all their lives, and it felt wrong. Like too many people were looking at him.

Jellymon cut off her story to laugh at him, "Darling, now that I know you get so embarrassed when I talk about you, I'm absolutely going to keep doing it," she swirled around him, admiring the emotion, "I have never seen you turn so red before, this is amazing."

Kiyoshiro was dying. He covered his face with both hands and tried to ignore the hundreds of jellyfish landing on him like snow. Embarrassment felt like bathing in fire. Life was a misery.

<><><><>

After this, the jellyfish floated off, one by one till the last of them are blown away by a gust of wind.

And landing just behind them on that very wind, was Angoramon, whirring ears buffeting them backwards. Ruli jumped just before he touched down, running over to pull Jellymon into a hug, and then Kiyoshiro. She stopped short at the arm, well, lack of arm, looked him full in the face- and passed over it. "I'm glad you’re mostly okay."

"Me too," said Kiyoshiro, because really, he could've died. All of them could've. He hadn't really believed the others were okay, until he saw them just now, "How are you?"

Ruli wobbled a hand vaguely at everything and squinted: eh? We're here, and let's not examine that any further!

Kiyoshiro turned now to Angoramon. So what do you say to someone who turned into a raging beast creature in the middle of the night on the power of a different friends emotion that you then talked down with half baked kinda therapy techniques?

He curls his hand for a fist bump, "Good to see you, Angoramon. How are you travelling?"

Angoramon tapped back. "Been better. Been worse. Thanks for the wisdom last night."

"You've helped me in dumber situations-"

"Remember that time darling got stuck to a giant frog? To saaaaaave someone?"

"Jellymon!?" He is betrayed! She cackled like a banshee as he frantically tried to snatch her out of the air with one hand.

"And it was to save me," said Ruli. It weighted on her, a grey shroud hanging over her shoulders, made from regret.

"Hardly, Ruli," Angoramon said, as if he'd said it several times, equal amounts of patience and stubborn. "Marin Devimon is a death sentence, you and I both barely survived." His voice rasped on the last word, exhaustion seeping through.

"You too?" Kiyoshiro asked, "Was there a rock with code all around it? That the demon thing was attacking?" How does that happen twice?!

"Holy stone," said Angoramon, nodding, "A last ditch effort to stabilise the digital world against the portals."

"Yeah I've never heard of em," said Jellymon.

"They are very new. Construction finished just before I fell into the human world." Angoramon's mouth dropt in a grimace, his voice going quiet, "I don't know why anyone or anything would try to destroy them. This world is in peril."

Kiyoshiro remembered the words on the gold band, and the giant dragon, "They're an anchor?"

"A stabilising point. All this area is held together by it."

"That sounds...very serious."

"It is," Angoramon cracked a smile, "Earth, for all its struggles, was the safest I'd been in years. You don't know how much you miss waking up in the same place you went to sleep in, until the world starts shaking to pieces around you." He sat down in the grass and picked a flower, examining the petals, "I didn't think I would ever come back to this world."

"I didn't want to come back," said Jellymon petulantly.

"Neither did I. I will be glad when we find Hiro and Gammamon, and then return."

The prophecy went unspoken between them all, and Kiyoshiro was heartened by it. Of all of them, he assumed Angoramon would be the one to give it the most merit and try to fulfil it. But no! Once they were all together they would look for the next portal they could get through.

He paused. "Do you think the portals open randomly?"

Ruli blinked at him, "Maybe?"

"Just, most of earth is water." He stared at the ground as he fully imbibed this new overwhelming anxiety, "what if we're spit out into the ocean?!"

What if they were spit out into an active volcano? Into oncoming traffic?! Into the sky a hundred metres above the surface of the planet?!!

Angoramon shook his head in mild wonderment, "I suspect the digital world connects to yours along digital lines. Unless you active computers in the ocean?"

Oh. So that was fine, actually.

Chapter Text

<><><><>

Angoramon confirmed Jellymon. One day's walk to Soup, less if they flew some of it. He couldn't carry all of them all the way there, but he could manage a bit, and the view from that hight was nice.

Ruli sat on one arm, and Kiyoshiro gingerly clung to the other, and Jellymon tethered herself by one stinger so she could be tugged along and not left behind.

They were all in the air when it hit.

The temperature dropt.

There was a high pitched ringing, like tinnitus, as void circles formed and dissolved. One, and then two, and then ten and then fifty. Portals rent the air.

Angoramon pulled up, hovered for a blink.

"No."

And Kiyoshiro felt Angoramon take a deep breath through his fur. Go still. They fell. A portal opened where they just were. But gravity rapidly pulled them away.

At the last micro-second possible Angoramon thumped his ears down with all his strength, stalling the free fall. Dust flung everywhere. They landed hard: Kiyoshiro rolled to the ground, backpack launching a couple metres, and skidded to a stop on his back. None of his bones are broken though, so. Positive?

Looking up at where they'd just been, he watched the portals glitch and fade. After a few seconds the mircoburst, or maybe the storm, or the maybe the program, ended.

He was not prepared for this. He was not prepared to remember this. Kiyoshiro was young again, and he was cold. This was the way the walls buckled. That was the way the roof cracked open. The house yawned open and he saw his room from the outside. It had been the last time he had seen his room. The last time he saw his parents. What did they look like again?

The ringing stopped.

"What was that?!" screeched Jellymon. She pointed with all her stingers, "That was insane!!"

Angoramon shuffled to his knees to stand, "portal storm," he huffed, "same thing sent me to your world." He hadn't dropped Ruli, and she skipped down without her hand on his arm lifting. He smiled at her.

Jellymon swooped in a circle, "No no no, that's not what a portal opening is like." She made a wild circle with her hands, "you get like one portal! It stays there for like a day! Only idiots get trapped on the other side!"

"You must've crossed a while ago," said Angoramon quietly, "These days you hope."

"So you didn't go exploring in the human world?" Jellymon asked.

"No. My best friend and I fell. Less than a second. Didn't see it coming."

"Oh," she looked away, "I'm sorry."

"It is what it is," he said, voice carefully devoid of any particular emotion. "Some fates cannot be avoided." Not the words of someone who had truly made peace with what had happened, but rather the stoic quietness of someone holding still through a fatal wound.

Angoramon didn't see Ruli pull a particular face: half guilt and sadness, but Kiyoshiro did. He wanted to say something, to turn the conversation somehow, away from the day Angoramon killed his best friend for Ruli. But he couldn't. There was a layer of glass between him and the world. Between his brain and his body.

Jellymon caught his eye. And then, like she could read his mind, she asked the question for him, "So how long were you in the human world?"

"I arrived when the trees were pink. They're orange now."

"In spring, and now it's Autumn," said Ruli, "so maybe six or seven months? What about you, Jellymon?"

"Five years," she said flatly. "Oh look! A vending machine." And she flew off towards it.

<><><><>

Kiyoshiro had two modes. The normal him, which was trying but failing in equal amounts, and the other one. The other one was very competent and hardly felt any emotion at all, so he could make quick decisions and help without any kind of weird hand ups. But like, that's all the other him was. He was not great with talking unless it was to problem solve and didn't have any idea how to pass time

The fright of the portals pushed the other him to front, who then finds himself... just following behind the others, saying nothing, planning nothing, trailing behind Jellymon who was really far ahead, at the base of a vending machine half hidden in the beginning of a large of sprawling forest. That was purple.

Or at least she had been. He stopped and shadowed his eyes, peering intently in the direction he'd last seen her.

From behind him, descending from the bright spot of the sun, directly onto the spot between his shoulder blades, Jellymon pile drove him into the ground.

He skinned his chin. Ow. What the heck. Why? Kiyoshiro pushed up on his one elbow and twisted to give his dearly beloved digimon partner the strongest, wettest why-you-so-mean-to-me puppy eyes he could manage.

Without answering, she leant forward and, with a great flourish, set a can of soft drink on his head. Condensation dripped down into his eye.

Grape soda wasn't a comfort he was expecting, but it was what he needed. Six cans for one cling wrapped raw chicken, an absolute bargain. The little frog guys they all waved goodbye to seemed quite excited. He hoped they had a nice cookout.

The two last cans went in the plastic bag, saved for Hiro and Gammamon when they next met.

They walk.

As they walked, the forest grew thick. Roots tangled the ground, so it was incredibly uneven. Steps up and steps down and skip from root to root. Here and there, tangled among the roots were power cords, occasionally pluging into power sockets screwed onto trees or a power board. The branches grew together, making a night-like purple darkness. The occasional jellyfish bobbed along like they were underwater.

But if Kiyoshiro looked just to the left, there was the sky above the cliff. The smell of salt and dying seaweed. The sound of the waves. It was slow going, but also very pleasant. Kiyoshiro had to be honest with himself: maybe he liked hiking? Maybe he'd liked walking this whole time, and it was just the multiple dangerous situations in various forests he'd survived that had tainted his view of nature. And the sunburn. But really, the sun was also a strange and negligently dangerous creature as far as he was concerned, so he put that in the same category as a looping digimon.

Did he even know himself? Should he (and this was crazy thinking) go outside more often? Touch grass? Dial it back, he thought to himself, get home first and then make some radical changes to your lifestyle. Imagine if he made it out of this beautiful nightmare with the desire to purchase hiking boots. Hiro would absolutely take him camping. He would not be able to avoid it.

What a weird sticky feeling. Was it hope?

His phone started blipping. Not the ringing of a regular call, but the jingle of the message app, for a video call. Ruli's phone also started blipping at the same time, and they both unlock their phones; Ruli scans her thumb and Kiyoshiro taps out his eight number pass code.

It's Hiro.

Which is. Weird. He and Ruli shared a glance, Ruli shrugging. Hiro knew they were together. Why call them both?

Nevertheless, they both answer.

Gullusgammamon smiled at them. Snarled at them? Certainly a facial expression full of teeth and something in his eyes promised that they would be full of teeth soon if they didn't give him exactly what he wanted.

"Hiro's hurt," Gullusgammamon said conversationally, "and if he dies, I'm gonna start killing things. Until I can't anymore."

"That's unnecessary!" Kiyoshiro stammered.

"We'll get to you," Ruli said, "Also, Hiro's our friend, you really don't have to threaten us, you know?"

"I'm the fastest," said Angoramon, "where are you?"

And Kiyoshiro thought to himself: I wish I had my arm. It would be simple to extract the location data.

Granted, Jellymon could just use the app to travel through the phones, as a message herself. But then she would be by herself, with Gullusgammamon.

"Jellymon, could Thetismon reattach my arm?"

"Definitely,"

He turned to the little screen, "Give us ten minutes."

And something around Gullusgammamon's eyes shifted, "I don't know if he has that long."

Strangely, it was Angoramon who stepped forward, "if he hasn't dissolved yet, you can stabilise him. Catch any stray bits he's giving off-"

Kiyoshiro stopped focusing on it. The quiet murmur of first aid faded into the background as he and Jellymon tried to make Thetismon happen again.

It was different, compared to the first time they had fought together. Fighting together required a synchronised, or perhaps complimentary, mental state. Feeling the same thing, or caring about the same thing in different ways.

It's different to the first time Jellymon had evolved. Evolution to TeslaJellymon had been just straight up exhausting. Sheer physical energy.

Thetismon. Hm. Thetismon depended on Jellymon. Kiyoshiro might be the catalyst, but Jellymon had to provide the energy, the will to change.

Whatever it was, whatever mental switch or power phrase, it was no problem. She evolved easily, with a laugh like she loved to.

It was spectacular. Up close, Kiyoshiro had to close his eyes against mauve and gold light, and opened them to drifting sparkles haloing her dress. He had to lean backwards to look up at her, while she had to kneel and lean forward to fit under the branches. With the light filtering purple through the leaves and the tiny jellyfish floating about her head, it was like he was underwater.

She smiled. She tapped the stump of his arm with one finger, scanning it, and then picked up the arm and scanned it. And Kiyoshiro could feel that, because she was partly using his brain to run the calculations, his mind's eye automatically visualising data in an unfamiliar programming language.

She nodded to herself, "I guess we can confirm the arm is digimon in origin. It has its own code."

"I'm sorry, what does that mean?"

"Which is lucky, because it makes this much easier." She sprinkled gold on the arm for a couple of seconds, and it started to glow. Then on Kiyoshiro. And he didn't start glowing, but the bits of growth that remained on him did. Thetismon held the arm to the stump- and they merged together.

The ground fell out from under him. Sense upon sense, a map unfolding in his mind as the arm connected to the world connected to him: depth and breadth far beyond what his eyes could see.

Ah. That would be the other reason his anxiety had been quieter the last two days. This was. Really. Really overwhelming. Very bad. Functionally identical to a migraine.

Thetismon caught his attention with a careful gesture using the phone, and then she handing it him. Right. They needed to get to Hiro. His thumb sunk into the case as he took it.

<><><><>

It was dark. It was cold.

This world was a bubble on the underside of the surface of the water. It was not a reflection of the human world. It was a world within the human world. Somehow, between the forgotten edges of the internet and the boiling hot servers driving every program, there was just enough space and energy for life to creep in from somewhere else.

Kiyoshiro linked up to the phone, and changed everyone's location data to match Hiro's. One. Two. Three. Four. Five?

Everything around them blurred. Then they were on a grassy hill, overlooking woods overlooking city.

Something was calling him. Something had been calling him to come, come to the digital world, give up flesh and blood and come here, come and open the door.

He.

He couldn't do that yet. He needed to help Thetismon.

<><><><>

Holy shit he needed to help Thetismon, what the fuck was he doing?! Spacing out??

He smacked himself on the cheek, the sting grounding him, before spinning to face Hiro.

Hiro, who lay on the ground, flickering like a screen on the lowest frames per second and leaking tiny red squares which dissolved into tinier black 1s and 0s.

Thetismon was already there, and all he had to do was be a battery. They both cared for Hiro, they both didn't want Gullusgammamon to go on a bloody rampage; there was perfect concord between them. The Lady spread her hands and bathed Hiro in healing light.

The fraying slowed, stopped. His outline clarified. And he sat up. Looking remarkably good for being nearly dead like a second ago.

Gullusgammamon, a dark shadow behind them all, briefly knelt as he checked Hiro.

Hiro shifted. He didn't smile, but sort of turned toward Gullusgammamon, a half open, half trusting movement. "Thanks."

"I couldn't have you cark it, " said Gullusgammamon, "not before we get back to that other place."

"I'm homesick too," Hiro said.

"The only thing I'm sick of is this place," he said coolly.

And for a heartbeat, Kiyoshiro wondered if Gullusgammamon was going to run off, or fight them, or something equally terrifying. But he merely stood up and dusted himself off as he said to the rest of them, "It's still here."

"What is?" asked Angoramon, neutrality.

"The dickhead that injured my brother here. Demon."

The air chilled. Angoramon went still, and much of his careful diplomacy evaporated, "You shouldn't say their name," he said gruffly, "they can feel it. They know where you are when do."

"Normally, that would matter," Gullusgammamon stood up, and stretched his back; which is the moment Kiyoshiro's heart dropt out of his body. Because Gullusgammamon was tired.

The digimon continued, "but right now I know where he is and he knows where I am." He pointed down the hill towards the city.

Which, at that very moment, exploded.

Chapter Text

Thetismon raised her hands to either side of her face, snarling so you could see her teeth, "You're fighting DEMON?!"

"He started it," Gullusgammamon's slightly defensive reply would've been hilarious if they weren't talking about something on par with the red skeleton they fought the other day.

"No Darling, much worse than him."

Kiyoshiro had had a long day. He stood up straight and looked his digimon in the eyes, or at least were he assumed her eyes were, and communicated with his eyebrows and and one tiny gesture that he was going to goddamn explode. WHAT did she mean worse than the guy that tried to shatter this dimension?? So this was certain actual death for them???

She waved him off, "We might not die! That is always an option."

"We could also not fight him-"

"No," said Hiro. He pulled at his sleeve, hating the words as he spoke them, "He's trying to destroy the digital world."

Kiyoshiro looked helplessly from Hiro to Gullusgammamon, "...why? He lives here?"

"The digital world is guided by two principles," said Angoramon, "the principles are Homeostasis, and also evolution: which is Demon. He is driven to change this world, while Homeostasis is driven to preserve it."

Ruli pulled a face, "So he has to blow it all up, Couldn't he change it by like, inventing scones or something? Fast fashion?"

"You would think," said Angoramon, "But something has been lost. Gullusgammamon might know. Seeing as they used to be allies."

Everyone stared at Gullusgammamon, who stared back at all of them. It was a quiet, searching look. "You knew, Angoramon. When?"

Angoramon huffed, "You are called Gammamon."

"Why didn't you kill me?" Unspoken: I world have killed me.

"We all love the other world." And then, "Moreover, Gammamon is my friend."

There was a more worried and anxious pause after that as everyone tried to unobtrusively tell if Gullusgammamon had taken that well or if he was going to be edgier and dramatic, all without crowding the guy.

He sighed, "I don't give a fuck about the friendship bullshit."

Oh that's bad.

"But I've had ground soup for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the last three days and I'm pretty fucking sick of it. Lets kill this guy and get the hell out of here. Bleeding heart," He pointed at Hiro, "Are you going help this time?"

"I want to at least see if there's a way to stop him without killing."

"Make it worth my while."

Hiro shrugged, "I'll buy whatever you want that bakery just down the road from the school."

"You know what? I'll take take that." He stretched his right arm, rotating the joint, "at the moment we have him, I will pause. If you have nothing, we kill him. But if you have something, I'll do it."

"I don't ask anymore than that."

"Glad you got some sense after all."

"Do we maybe think that destroying a principle of the world is a bad idea," said Kiyoshiro nervously.

Ruli snorted, "if he didn't want to get killed he shouldn't be trying to destroy the world. Look!"

There was another distant explosion, and more and more fire, as the forest started to catch alight. Kiyoshiro felt a migraine begin, a wedge of ice behind his eyes.

Ruli took two steps to the highest point of the clearing, raising a hand to shade her eyes as she watched thoughtfully, "What do we know about this guy?"

"Hard to kill," said Thetismon.

"Lost a chunk of his power a while ago," said Gullusgammamon, "said it had been stolen, but he probably had it coming."

Angoramon hummed, "the power to evolve?"

Gullusgammamon looked surprised, "that's it. To quote 'seeing as they left me only destruction, then let me be destruction'. He's fucking pissed that any old digimon can evolve now without begging his permission like some kind of god-king and he's making that everyone else's problem. How'd you know?"

"A myth. I'll tell it another time."

The ice behind Kiyoshiro's eyes was growing.

"Refresh me on why you were working with him?" said Thetismon, "he doesn't seem like that great of a guy."

"He's the strongest and I like fucking shit up," he shrugged, "only now I like some other shit even more, so that's egg on my face for wanting something."

"Gullusgammamon, no offence, but you have terrible taste in allies."

"Looking at you lot, I have to agree."

"Gammamon! Rude!" said Hiro without thinking.

He made a small what-the-hell-is-my-life-now gesture, "Look, are we going to kill this asshole or not?"

Kiyoshiro's whole head was frozen. But his arm, his arm was boiling.

"Incoming," said Thetismon monotonously.

"Adieu world," said Kiyoshiro, without knowing why. He looked up to see a decending figure in a red cloak, the same moment that Thetismon stepped out beside him already holding Ruli. She touched his shoulder and Hiro's arm, and stepped again.

They appeared in the air, high up behind the cloaked figure, and Kiyoshiro watched it casually punch the place he'd just been.

The ground erupted in a vortex of flame and oily smoke, charred bits raining down to catch alight on purple leaves. The heat became an upward draft, sparks and ash alike thrown high into the air.

Thetismon teleported again, to the edge of the clearing. Again, Demon spewed flame at the place where they had just been- only for Gullusgammamon and a completely feral evolved Angoramon to simultaneously attack.

Said Ruli, "Kohabatto." Said Hiro, "Desdemona."

Demon was specifically targeting them. The humans. That digimon turned to track them, yellow eye gleaming maliciously under the red hood. "Thieves."

"Adieu world."

They flashed to other side of the clearing.

But Demon was already there. Thetismon dropt them all. By swinging her gauntlet, by striking with all her might, she managed to derail his attack. He was thrown back, but so was she.

Before he could recover, Gullusgammamon slashed his back with his tail, and Lamortmon slashed his front with his swords.

Demon staggered, but didn't fall. "If it wasn't for the power you'd taken from me, you'd all be dead where you stand."

Lamortmon scoffed. Gullusgammamon laughed.

Demon sucked in the air between his pointed teeth, a half strangled scream, and swept his arms back.

The ice in Kiyoshiro's head dropt to his stomach, his vision darkening.

This world was a bubble on the underside of the surface of the water. And the bubble could burst. Demon was a god. A law of this world. His substance was throughout this whole world. It was the skin of the bubble, the glimmering line between one world and another.

But now he was pulling together. All of himself from every corner of existence. They could all feel it, the very air they were breathing changed to something that burned. Something holy.

Demon grew mountain tall and sun bright.

There was nothing any of them could do. This was not a matter of power or even planning. What anyone do when an aspect of the world they were in stood against them?

In his backpack, unnoticed, the egg cracked.

The earth beneath them bucked and swayed as Demon grew. There was a hum in the air, in everything around them that Kiyoshiro recognised as holy data, the power of creation in this world given form.

On the horizon, beyond the mountain, he saw that blue dragon. And a black turtle, and a white tiger, and a red bird, each at a different cardinal direction.

And Kiyoshiro realised that Demon did not see this. He was too focused on them, on the humans and digimon right before him who just. Would. Not. Die.

This was a trap. They were not the heroes who would free this world, oh no- they were the bait.

"He's targeting us specifically!" Kiyoshiro yelled as he lept to his feet.

"Split up, stay moving!" directed Hiro, already running to the right.

Lamortmon screamed, and slashed out with his swords, "Fuga rekkanjin!" Kiyoshiro and Ruli together said, the swords slashing with both their power.

Demon tanked the hit- but it hurt. Shock twisted Demon's face when it did. "Tch," a sound of murderous annoyance, and he blasted putrid fire in a circle around, a volcanic flow of toxic ash and heat that flashed with purple lightning.

It rolled over Kiyoshiro as he pulled up his shirt to cover his nose, ash like dust coating him, burning his eyes more than his skin.

Gullusgammamon and Thetismon reached out to him.

"Desdemona," his mind thought without his imput, "Hammer thunder."

Golden lightning split the darkness. For a second Kiyoshiro saw through the swirling ash, saw all three digimon strike at Demon, saw them all be struck down in return.

There was something crawling on his neck. Kiyoshiro reached up to touch something small and furry crouched there. He gave It a small pat.

And he lite up as his barcode was pulled out of him. The small creature absorbed a segment, and evolved. It disappeared.

There was another burst of light in the ash cloud, where he last saw Ruli, and then again to right.

And clean air was blown in, sucked in, by a strong wind. The clearing was grey, every tree burnt to black carbon.

Before Demon was a new digimon: a black dog standing up like a human, in a witches robe and hat. It raised a sickle in one of Its three arms, rainbow light flashing in lines from shoulder to hand.

"Chains of ceasing," wheezed Kiyoshiro through the dust caking his mouth and throat.

Clacking golden chains bound Demon sholder to ankle and rooted to the ground.

All around them loomed the great gods of the digital world. They were the sky. The air was fragrant from their presence.

"Demon," toned the tiger, "You are judged as one who would murder the whole world."

Demon writhed in his chains, "As is my right as the strongest!"

"But you are not the strongest," said the red bird, in a voice much like a young child, "We are."

The dragon bowed his huge head, "be changed now. Take on a new name and a new role."

Demon spat at them, "I would rather die!"

"The die," said the black turtle in unison with its snake head, "become the whale fall that nourishes a new garden."

The black dog raised Its sickle. Demon's barcode burst out of him, and the dog cut it through and absorbed it. Demon himself fell to pieces- and where those piece fall the damage from the battle was restored. The ash became bending grass and flourishing trees. The burns coving Kiyoshiro's skin faded, and he could breathe again. Smell again. Taste again.

The others are restored as well. Ruli sat up from where she'd fallen, Hiro uncovered his eyes to look around.

And the digimon, completely exhausted, return to child stages. Angoramon sat down immediately, Gammamon flopped over in the grass, and Jellymon drifted upside with her eye closed.

The new god turned around then, lifting a paw to adjust the witches hat.

"Chosen children," said the tiger, "we thank you for your aid. There is nothing so perilous as the birth of a new law."

All four gods bowed then, and all four disappeared in a flash of light.

"Pay us," said Jellymon just a second too late into the silence. She bounced around in the air, "They ran away?!"

"This is wage theft," said Ruli.

"We should fight them," said Gammamon.

"Actually I'm going to lie down," said Kiyoshiro, doing exactly that, "and I'm never getting up again."

"Guys," said Hiro, in an odd tone of voice.

They all looked up.

The new god was still there. Who nodded to them. "Greetings," She said in very warm, deep voice, "I have not formed fully, not until I have a name. As the chosen, you must choose."

Chapter Text

"What are you the god of?" asked Angoramon cautiously.

"Gateways. Journeys. Going home and leaving again."

Oh? Kiyoshiro tapped his chin as he looked into memory, "So you're a travel god, like the dosojin that guarded the mountain roads back home? A god of liminal spaces."

Ruli picked some grass as she thought, "Hm, well. What about Dosomon?"

Gammamon raised a hand, "Roadmon!"

"What about Liminamon?" suggested Angoramon.

"Or Sainokamimon?"

Thetismon had her namesake Thetis. From the same tradition came a mysterious figure associated with cross roads, magic, and the moon. "Hecatemon?"

It was so.

Suddenly, it had always been so. Obviously Her name was Hecatemon, Her black robes embroidered with spider lillies in shimmering red thread and silver moons made of beaten metal. She extended a hand to each child, each one like black glass. "Thank you. I have now always been. But I will remember that you were there when I was not."

Oh THAT is some kind of time shenanigans, Kiyoshiro is sure of it.

"There remains only one last thing." She knelt in the grass, "My most difficult role is to guard the doorway from your world to my world. To hear when travellers knock on this door, to open it if I deem them worthy to come. But I do not know anything of your world."

"Do you need, like, memories or something?" asked Ruli, eyes narrowed either in suspicion or thought.

"No. I must go to your world, and I must experience it myself. Will one of you take me?"

Hiro answered quickly and easily, "Sure!"

She turns her full attention to him, "Consistently?"

Hiro paused then, and glanced at Gammamon, "No, not all the time. I have to look after my brother."

"You shouldn't hang out with me either," Ruli checked her phone, "unless you don't mind modelling some wedding dresses next week."

Kiyoshiro heard a swish and felt Jellymon land on his head, and give him a small squeeze. "I guess out of everyone, Lady Jellymon and I have the most free time," he waited till he felt her nod before continuing, "You're very welcome to come with us."

"I thank you," and She took up her sickle, and held it flat against his right arm, "I will now take back my arm."

The ground seemed to fall away. "What?"

"All time is past. You have already fulfilled your promise."

"I. This?" It was a strange horror. "My family died."

The goddess nodded.

"Jellymon and I were in cages."

She nodded.

She didn't understand, he realised. To something outside of time, all time has already passed. What does it matter which specific moment he promised and what specific time he fulfilled? Why would one have to follow the other? As long as both existed, nothing more was required.

He never had a choice. None of them did.

"No," She said, "I am not so powerful as that. Nor do I have that dominion. I merely looked over the shape of you life and saw where you would encounter the most variety of humanity. The most complicated clever excuses humans give to be cruel. And also the most simple. And I now know that those that do great kindnesses can still be unkind." She turned again to Hiro, "Your father wrote the code that I use to make and control the gateways. He has done this land a great service. And yet."

"And yet," Hiro echod. He looked down and then away. "Well. We can't change the past."

"You cannot and neither can I. It's is not my domain."

She held out the sickle and placed the flat of the blade against Kiyoshiro's right shoulder.

The arm warmed as she did and Kiyoshiro felt its longing, a long loneliness from being amongst strangers, tethered to decaying flesh that withered from its touch, unable to so what it was made to do, longing to go home.

It hadn't meant to hurt him.

Man. He was such a sucker wasn't he? Fine, whatever. Take the damned arm!

It untwisted, threads of black glass leaping to Hecatemon and attaching, weaving back together. She flexed her hand and stretched out the whole arm.

And for Kiyoshiro, the world went softer. The light was no longer so bright, and the sounds were no longer so loud. A part of his mind, co opted by an alien presence all these years, relaxed. His arm ached.

Kiyoshiro can not bring himself to look at it. Instead he groped blindly with his left hand. His shoulder was still there and much of his upper arm. But only part of the elbow. And only tiny stub of his forearm, a finger of bone.

At least it was all healed. He had wondered for a second if he'd be left skinless and bleeding. He wrapped his lefy hand around his right elbow and marvelled at being able to feel it.

He felt, more than saw, Hecatemon get to Her feet. Though She was not as tall as Demon was, She was just a weighty and the mountain side shuddered as she moved. For a second, She blocked out the sun with Her head. Then She went thin: the new law going throughout the world and everything shifting with it.

Left behind are three black labradors, each with a black scarf tied in a knot around its neck. They sniffed the ground with wagging tails, and then ran off together.

"Well," said Ruli, just for something to say.

"Who wants some ground soup?" said Hiro, as Gammamon groaned dramatically.

"No, no more soup!" and the young digimon flopped over very dramatically face first into the grass.

Ruli suddenly jumped up, "wait, we have something for you!" And she ran to the edge of the clearing were a plastic bag had been dropped in the shade, and pulled out the contents: two grape sodas.

They were still cold.