Note: I do not own digimon, nor RAMMSTEIN. This fanfiction plays three years after the digidestineds beat the shit out of Apocalymon. You could say, at the beginning of Season 2, but we will never come across the kids from AV02. But the gates are open again!

WARNING! This story is very... I'd say Kafkaesque... I barely understand my own thoughts here. It is no comedy nor a parody! It is rather sort of science fiction or horror but with a barely understandable plot... especially at the end. It is about Myotismon and even though he appears, you will barley read his name so you have to find out what it is about with him... If someone knows 'Hitchikers guide to the galaxy' you will understand what I mean when I say this story was made by using the 'improbability drive' and it reaches indefinite improbability! THIS STORY MAY BE HIGHLY DISTURBING! And I mean this in a negative way... (especially in the second chapter)

So if you are still brave enough to read on...

Let me ask: "What if?"

Mother

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Chapter one: What if?

"Hey Gatomon. What's wrong with you?" Kari asked, now three years after they had defeated Apocalymon. The cat stood on the balcony and watched the stars in the ebony sky.

"Oh nothing... I just thought..." She said and stopped as Tai popped his head through the door and asked whether he could help them.

"No everything's fine, thanks!" Kari motioned smiling then turned to Gatomon again. "Thought about what?"

Gatomon drew circles onto the floor with her paws. "I wonder... now that everything is restored in the digiworld... whether Nightmare Castle is standing, too..." Confused Kari looked at her, asking why she would like to know that.

"Oh... you see, though it was terrible, but I spent half of my life there... it still is somehow... my home." And in this moment Kari felt what her partner wanted to suggest. "I'll ask Tai and the others and then we'll head to the digiworld, ok?" Kari smiled at the cat and dashed into the kitchen to her brother.

Even though the others did not quite understand why Gatomon wanted to revisit the place of her torture, they agreed to be their company. Five days later, when everything was settled, they returned to the digiworld. And really, Myotismon's old castle was standing on the top of the hill as if there had never been a fight with Dokugumon that had destroyed it. "Hey folks..." Joe suddenly whispered. "If that castle is renewed... What if Myotismon is reborn, too?" He shivered fearful but Tai told him that they certainly would have heard of the old bat if something like this was happening.

Without any effort they entered Nightmare Castle... it was creepy... especially as not a single digimon was to be seen. The castle seemed to be completely deserted. The mysterious labyrinths that had violated every single law of physics had returned to normal staircases and floors, now that their master did not cast his spells on them. The teens and their digimon walked through empty halls and empty corridors. And Gatomon acted like a tourist-guided in a haunted villa, though half as funny, as the stories she knew to tell were her own of ordeal and fear.

They entered a huge hall and even though it was dusty and murky and uncanny, one could still notice a sort of long forgotten splendour. It was evening already and despite of the fact that Joe protested categorically, they decided to spend the night in this hall. One fire shot of Agumon later, the candles on a chandelier that Gatomon could not remember to be used just once, spread their friendly light onto the children. And suddenly the Nightmare Castle lost a bit of its grisly atmosphere.

"I don't understand it..." Mimi said as they were lying in a circle in their sleeping bags. "What!" Tai asked choking on a hamburger they had brought with them.

"I don't understand what Myotismon wanted in the human world!" She mused, slightly disgusted about the half chewed meat falling out of Tai's mouth.

"He wanted to kill Kari!" Joe said as if this was something obvious but nothing of importance. Tai glared at him, but before he could say something Mimi spoke on.

"No, that's not what I mean...You see... He was living in this really posh castle... Ok it could need a bit of cleaning and new curtains but it is soooo stylish! And he had his servants who did everything he ordered! And he was one of the mightiest digimon in the digiworld. Not to mention one of the most handsome we ever ran across..." Everyone stared at her and she shrugged. "Oh come on! Yes I am certain he was a jerk... but you can't deny that he was an attractive jerk!" Slightly Sora nodded, Kari would have, too, but she was too young to really understand what Mimi meant.

"So why did he give all this up? I mean if he would have been just a sort of... minor villain... and remained in his castle without bothering about us and the crests and megalomaniac things and so on... We wouldn't have to kill him... If I had the choice between having his life or fighting against a bunch of digidestined like us and eventually dying... We'll I would have stayed in my chic and cosy castle!" She said crossing her arms in front of her chest. "But then I never would have met Gatomon..." Kari pronounced petting her catlike digimon's head. "Yes, sure..." Mimi admitted. "But if he had been just a minor villain or just a... grumpy eccentric vampire... he probably hadn't tortured Gatomon that much…"

It was strange. They had not talked about Myotismon for more then three years and now, they mused about what would have been. "Gatomon... You were his servant... What was that all about with him? Why did he wanted to take over our world? The same reason as Pinky and the Brain or something special?" Tai now asked and Gatomon let her eyes wander through the giant hall. She remembered it. It was here were she awoke after Myotismon had took her with him from the forest... "I... don't really know... he... I think he told me once that..." She seemed to remember something and went silent. Everyone stared at her with curiosity. "One night... when I was a little Salamon... he came home from one of his, like DemiDevimon called it: 'jaunts'. He was... very inebriated of blood and wine and he was in one of his most atrocious moods... And smacked me... it was the night I received this scar..." She said, carefully removing one glove. The kids could see a cross-shaped scar on the back of her left paw. "Later that night, when he slowly got tired... he became quite friendly... even depressive then... and conversational..."

Even though it was hard for Gatomon to remember the time with Myotismon, the tension she had created nearly killed the teens and she had to continue. "He told me... that he hated to be a humanoid digimon..." Tai burst out in laughter and scared the life out of Joe who had been taken aback by Gatomon's report. "Oh sure! I remember his smug grin! He was a fucking hell of a conceited and narcissistic fucker!" Sora rebuked Tai for his coarse language. Izzy asked him where the hell HE knew a word like narcissistic from, but Gatomon shook her head. "Someone said that children and inebriates always speak the truth... He hated it... because... he said he looked like a human but was not born as one... I don't know what he meant with that... And I think... he wanted to take over the human world, to kill all of them... he hated the humans... because... I think he envied them for whatever he thought they would have and he hadn't..." Everyone was quiet now, even Tai. That sounded somehow depressing. And not to imagine what had happened if they had not managed to stop Myotismon... Would he really have killed all humans?

Finally they all were tired and slowly one after another slept in... It was past midnight when Kari woke up. Normally at this time she sneaked out of her bet and got herself a glass of warm milk. She carefully opened her thermos flask and wanted to pour the milk into the little cup when she heard something... She listened up, but then thought it was one of her friends sighing or speaking in sleep. "Must have been my imagination..." She whispered, but when the milk slowly warmed her... she heard it again... some sort of sobbing or crying. She listened closer but it was gone again... "Surely just the wind...It's an old spooky castle... ah... that must not mean that there's a spook, too..." She told herself, shivering and crawled into her sleeping bag. But she could not sleep in... the sound reappeared, this time a bit louder... And now Tai awoke, too. Though rather drowsy, trying to knock out his alarm clock as always, but instead hitting Matt's head. Matt growled, turned away from him and slept on. Before Tai fell asleep again, too, the sound reappeared again. "Uhm... Kari... yawn... Why are you crying?" He asked turning to his sister and rubbed his sleepy eyes. "I'm not crying." Said a fearful voice out of the depth of Kari's sleeping bag.

And now, that the sobbing grew loud enough, everyone else awoke too. "Hey Gatomon... did this happen when you lived here, too?" Joe asked with a facial expression as if he already knew the answer. "I'm afraid no..." The feline-digimon whispered. And suddenly Sora hearkened up... "It sounds as if a child is crying..." She said and now the others noticed that too. It did not really sound creepy, rather despairing... And really not like a ghost but like a small child that got lost... "Maybe it's a rookie digimon that went astray..." Kari said slightly delighted that the others were awake now. As no one could sleep anymore and they did not want a small digimon to be alone in Myotismon's former castle, they decided to follow the sobbing and take care of the rookie. They left their sleeping bags and provisions in the hall and walked on through the corridors. It took them a lot of turns and forks and stairs down until they came to a large door. The sobbing was now as loud as if the rookie was directly behind the door. Tai was almost pulling the door-handle, when Gatomon suddenly screamed. "STOP!" Everyone twirled to the heavy shaking digimon. "What now!" Tai asked a bit impatient as the sobbing went even more touching. "I... I can't go in there..." She whispered and her voice was trembling in fear.

"That's... that's... Myotismon's private chamber..." And now as they looked closer at the ebony door, they noticed the bat symbol carved into the wood. Matt shrugged. "Tell me Gatomon. Did Myotismon sound like that when he was crying?" He asked pointing at the door. The cat shook her head. Though she never saw, nor heard Myotismon crying she doubted him to sound so pitiful... Kari took her paw and Tai pushed down the handle. Slowly but with no screeching the door opened... And the sobbing had disappeared... They looked around and Agumon spotted some candles which he enlightened. "Ok! Now this is creepy!" Joe said shivering when they discovered that they were completely alone in the room. There was no child nor a rookie digimon. Just a table with some old dusty books upon, a chest, a rack of shelving with more books and some bottles of red wine, and a four poster... in which was no mattress but a coffin. Pitch-black with golden ornamental fitting. Gatomon clawed into Kari's trousers. Carefully Tai opened the lid... He screamed fearful... everyone else screamed... Then he laughed. "Calm down! It's empty!" He sniggered while everyone else stared at him with loathing. He jumped into the coffin and laid down with his hands folded on his chest. Slowly he raised his upper body with an evil expression in his face. "Muahahahahah! I am Myotismon! Almighty flashiness and winner of the Miss-wet-shirt contest! Muahahaha!" Gatomon threw a book at him. "That's not funny, Tai!" And mostly everyone agreed.

"No one of you should touch anything here... Let's just go!" The cat said but Izzy and Joe had already pulled some books out of the shelves, while Sora now argued with Tai about the coffin joke and Mimi looked at the wine. Gatomon sighed and sat down at the rim of the coffin. Kari meanwhile stood in front of the chest made out of ebony with little black gems, almandine, embedded in the wood, forming a bat, it's eyes two sparkling rubies. Slowly and carefully she opened the heavy chest. There were strange things in it. Little vials with ethereal oils, different gems, red candles and white candles, one vial with something like fog in it, a small box that was ice-cold when Kari touched it, another box that gave her an electrical charge when she touched it, a small jar with bark of different trees in it, a strand of blond hair, was this Myotismon's? And a golden locket... Carefully Kari took the bat-shaped locket into her hand and opened it. She had not expected a photo in it, but there was nothing else, too. Simply a locket... When she put it back she noticed something... there was a little flap in the bottom of the chest. She put the other stuff aside and opened the flap.

There was a silver tag on which it said Nightmare Soldiers and pieces of paper. Words in a foreign language were scribbled upon them. One word appeared again and again. "Hey Izzy!" Kari asked turning her head to the highly intelligent boy who sat behind a heap of books. "What is an Emanuel?" Izzy looked up from his books. "Oh that's a name... German I think... There is an architectural style called emanuelistic, too. A mix between late gothic and early renaissance." That was more than Kari wanted to know. A name obviously...

And what was that other thing in the hidden place? Something wrapped into crimson velvet. Carefully Kari unwrapped it and discovered a silver dagger with a hilt out of garnet and a sheath out of onyx. Amazed she stared at the cold metal and watched the light of the candles reflecting on the fine material. But the blade was not completely silvery there were stains on it of a deepest red. Slowly and not knowing why, Kari let her finger glide over the blade and felt the tiny elevations. It was then when Gatomon looked around and saw her partner skimming over Myotismon's dagger. "Kari! Put that away!" The feline digimon screamed. But to late... thick red beads dropped to the floor. Kari did not even scream when she cut herself incidentally, but now she tumbled backwards and the dagger fell onto the floor. Everyone ran to her. While the others cared about Kari, Gatomon took up the dagger and smelled on it, afraid it could have been poisoned... It wasn't... but what she smelled did not cheer her up either... she knew that smell... even if it was only faintest... "Myotismon's blood..." She whispered to herself when suddenly Tai yelled at his little sister. "Kari! Kari! Wake up!" Kari felt dizzy, her head was spinning and her heart beat like a jackhammer. She felt like burning. What had happened? She only had cut into her fingertips... And with those bleeding fingertips she touched her brothers forehead, leaving a bloody mark on him... and then she fainted...

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