Work Text:
Time did not stand still, even after the D-Reaper incident.
The summer and autumn passed, Christmas came, and before Yamaki Mitsuo knew what had happened, the winter was drawing to a close, and the first signs of spring showed in the world outside.
The months following the incident had only meant new stress for him. There were still many unanswered questions, both for them and for the government. He had to explain what they knew – about D-Reaper and about the Digimon – to various ministers, judges, scientists summoned by the government and finally to the president. It was investigated whether Hypnos or Mitsuo himself could be held responsible for the incidents.
When the final verdict was that D-Reaper was a virtual force of nature that no one could have foreseen, Mitsuo blamed it on the fact that the investigating scientists lacked any understanding of that other world. Because he was sure of one thing: it would never have come to this if he hadn't used Shaggai. Because it had been Shaggai that had torn the gate between the worlds wide open.
Without Shaggai, D-Reaper would never have found a way into this world. Or would it?
“There's no point in thinking about it now,” Reika said every time she caught him brooding, and she was probably right, and yet he couldn't help but replay the various past scenarios over and over in his head.
What would have happened if…?
But every realization did nothing to change how it had really happened in the end. And the only comforting thing was that Doodlebug had restored all the buildings in the former D-Reaper zone.
The situation was different for the people who had been seriously injured or even lost their lives during the D-Reaper incident and also during past Digimon attacks. When D-Reaper had first spread, it had not been possible to evacuate all the humans in time and some soldiers had lost their lives when they had tried to fight the program with mundane weapons.
And the Digimon had disappeared…
That too had been an effect of Doodlebug, which had returned this world to the state before the border to the world that existed inside the network had become fragile.
So it had achieved exactly what he had wanted to achieve with Shaggai back then: There were no more Wild Ones in this world, no more foreign bodies from the network. And they hadn't even been wiped out, just sent back to their natural home. Everything was fine, wasn't it? There was no more danger.
But now Mitsuo doubted that this state was the right one.
Because there were the children. The children without whom they could not have driven D-Reaper back. The Digimon Tamers who had now lost their Digimon, their partners, and friends.
He saw them from time to time, especially Jenrya, Janyuu's son, and Shiuchon, the youngest child of the Lee family. He saw both of them more often when Janyuu invited him to dinner, which had happened more often than he would have liked in recent months, but the Chinese computer scientist was now working at his old company again and was interested in what would become of Hypnos. Mitsuo could tell quite well, that Janyuu also had a guilty conscience towards his two youngest children.
Mitsuo also sometimes saw Takato and his classmates playing in Shinjuku Central Park.
So he also knew that the first two weeks after the D-Reaper incident had been particularly difficult for the children. They had been separated from their partners and had hardly been able to say goodbye properly. What's more, some of them had probably found it harder than the others to find their feet again. Not only had they been in the digital world for several months – in Shiuchon's case, still close to two weeks – before being confronted with D-Reaper in the real world, just one day after their arrival. Not only had they, like many other people, been forced to leave their homes, they had also been unable to go to school, which had also been affected by the evacuation.
And after all that, they were supposed to return to their normal lives with the thought that they might never see their partners again.
Partners…
He still didn't quite understand what this meant. What made this connection between the children and the Digimon? How did it even come about?
Of course, he knew that all of this was somehow connected to the Wild Bunch project. When they had developed the Digimon in 1984, they had wanted to create virtual play partners – friends – for children, which had apparently become part of the code of these digital creatures. But how could the Digimon draw so much energy from this connection?
And – he was particularly concerned about this question – how could it be that a human and a Digimon had merged to form a completely new being? It contradicted all physics, all the laws of nature, and nobody knew the answer. It was fine that it had happened in the digital world, but here? Right here in the real world? In Tokyo?
Janyuu didn't know. Dolphin didn't know. Shibumi didn't know. Reika didn't know. And he himself, Mitsuo, wasn't even sure if he understood all of this. He certainly didn't know the answer to that question.
But by now, the children seemed to have settled back into their normal lives. They had come to terms with the fact that the digital world was now separate from their own and that this was the only possible way to ensure the safety of both worlds.
No, perhaps they hadn't resigned themselves to it, but had at least accepted it for now.
The children didn't care how the existence of these digital beings was possible. Nor did they worry about whether merging with their partners to fight D-Reaper was against the rules of this world. They saw the Digimon with different eyes than Mitsuo had ever been able to.
He had discovered the digital monsters by chance when he had started running Hypnos as a Japanese SIGINT project in 2000. At first, it had just been data disappearing from the network and appearing in material form in the real Tokyo. But he soon discovered that they took the form of digital monsters, the shape of children's toys, and saw them as their own.
They contradicted everything he had thought possible. And then he had seen the children, the Digimon Tamers.
He had been angry with them because he thought they didn't understand what they were doing, that they thought it was all just a game. Yet it was he who had not understood and had therefore made so many mistakes.
When Yuggoth, which was connected to their tracer, was not enough to erase the digital beings and prevent them from materializing, he had written Shaggai and launched it for a test run, even though the ministers had forbidden him to do so. In doing so, he had made it possible for the Deva to enter the real world. But he hadn't wanted to give up on Shaggai, had called the Wild Bunch for help and had ended up making things even worse because he hadn't listened to Janyuu's warnings.
But what was the point of this realization now?
He sighed and looked at the half-empty beer can in his hand. He was almost surprised that it was there.
“Has anything important happened?” Janyuu asked, upon returning from a phone call.
Mitsuo looked up in surprise. He had long since forgotten about the television as he had been lost in his thoughts again.
He looked at the flickering screen, where he could see an athlete running along a line. Baseball. He hardly knew anything about the sport, didn't even know if the batter became a runner as soon as the ball was hit or if that had a different meaning again.
But Mayuri, Janyuu's wife, had a meeting, which was why Janyuu was home alone with the children and had invited him over. And Reika, who to have a nice “girl date” with Megumi, but didn't like it when he “moped around alone”, as she called it, had persuaded him to go.
And now he had been watching a game he barely understood for three quarters of an hour.
“You're brooding again, Yamaki-kun,” Janyuu said, sounding almost amused. “Reika warned me.”
Mitsuo said nothing to that. The only thing that came to his mind would have been “Of course”.
“What's done is done,” the older man said more seriously now. “It's already history. It may be regrettable, but we can't change it.” He sighed and glanced over at the television. “I also wish we had found another way. A way that wouldn't have separated the children from the Digimon… But we can't change that now. The only thing we can do is look for a way in the future that will allow the children to get their partners back in a safe way.”
Mitsuo still didn't say anything back and now fixed his gaze on the beer in his hand. “But I could have listened to you,” he murmured. “And to Reika.”
“Yeah.” The Chinese man shrugged his shoulders. “But you didn't. Things have happened now.” He paused for a moment, but then continued, “Do you know by now what will become of Hypnos?”
With a sigh, Mitsuo replied. “If all goes well, we'll be able to start our research soon. The government is more interested in the unanswered questions than worrying too much about there being another incident.”
“Maybe then we can...” Janyuu broke off as a door opened in the hallway.
It was Jenrya, who only glanced at them briefly and then continued into the kitchen, where they could hear him opening the fridge.
Then he appeared in the opening between the living room and the kitchen. “So, how's the game?” he asked politely.
“Not particularly eventful so far,” his father replied. “Have you helped Shiuchon with her homework yet?”
“Yes. It wasn't really a problem.” The sixth grader shrugged.
At that moment, the phone hanging on the wall in the kitchen, which Janyuu had hung up just a few minutes ago, rang.
“I'll get it,” Jenrya said and picked up the receiver. “Hello?” Although it was now covered by the wall, they could still hear it. “Takato?” He was silent for a moment. “What, are you sure?” Another short pause. “Really?” The other boy seemed to say something again, at least Jenrya was silent for a while. He looked into the living room again. “I don't know, Takato,” he finally said cautiously. “Maybe... Maybe we shouldn't tell the others yet.” Another pause. “Yes, I know. But... Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's talk about it tomorrow, yeah?” After another pause, he added, “Good night, Takato,” and hung up.
He came back into the living room and even Mitsuo could see that he was wondering whether he should tell them something or not.
“What's going on?” asked Janyuu after a short silence.
Jenrya was still hesitant. “It was Takato,” he then said, even though they had overheard so much. “In the park... He says a new gateway to the digital world has opened.”