The fic should probably be considered pre-canon-slash.

This is an entirely indulgent Tag Tamers AU, written because the muses have been effing rabid; Ken, Wormmon and V-mon are adorable; and the idea of some poor bastard ending up with their actual nemesis as their bond creature is fascinating. The Wonderswan games address a lot of the things I liked Digimon Tamers for addressing.

Tag Tamers is the second Wonderswan game, the one that introduced Ken and explained where the Dark Seed, Diablomon and the Digimentals came from.

The fic starts around the scene in Ken's flashback in 02 where Ken pushed Ryo out of the way of the Dark Seed. Since the flashback shows Millenniummon instead of MoonMillenniummon, one of the ways this is AU of the game is that the Dark Seeds were thrown out after the first battle with Millenniummon instead of the final boss battle.

In case you don't like Ryo based on Digimon Tamers, don't worry: Ryo was OOC as heck in Digimon Tamers. When an interviewer asked if that was even the same person, they had to justify how he doesn't act like he did at any point in his four-game-long Break The Cutie by claiming he had amnesia.

The second game is Ryo when he's Been Here, Done This – having to fight a god that just keeps respawning isn't exactly a cheerful prospect, but the real trauma hasn't even started yet.

Also the Adventure Chosen Children are themselves (and their partners), so try to keep them out of this kind of thing. Just try.

"Wow, Ken, we did it!" Wormmon rejoiced, battered but happy, as Millenniumon's body fell apart into data in front of them.

Ryo would have liked to celebrate with them, but he didn't want to either set Ken up for disappointment by reassuring him that it was over or burst his bubble by telling him that there was no way Millenniummon wouldn't come back to life. That was the downside about Digimon always coming back from the dead: it was a relief for the Digimon who died either fighting Millenniummon or fighting for him, 'thanks' to his mind control, but not such a good thing when it meant the bad guy would be back in a few months.

If they were lucky.

Then there was the Digimon Millenniummon created and sent into the internet to find the other Chosen Children and nuke them, along with Ryo, Ken, their families and the rest of Tokyo. Taichi and Yamato's partners had defeated Diablomon, but its remnants had escaped into the Digital World. Since it died here, according to Gennai it would definitely come back to life too. He'd said it was an artificial Digimon, so it might be weird enough even in baby form they could spot it when it hatched at Primary Village, but keeping a Digimon locked up and too starved to Digivolve for the rest of its life… Ryo didn't like it, it wasn't like that Digimon asked for Millenniummon to create it and it might not really have known what it was doing when it tried to nuke Tokyo – it might have been mind-controlled, for all Ryo knew – but it wasn't like there were a lot of alternatives.

Sure, Digimon could be sealed away, but according to Gennai Millenniummon was the one who messed up the seal on the Digimon called Apocalymon that was the reason the Digital World appeared in the sky after the Odaiba Incident, and put the seal on the Four Holy Beasts that Gennai needed to use up the other Digidestined's crests breaking, so seals weren't something they could count on to stop Diablomon, much less his creator.

So yeah, let Ken and Wormmon celebrate while they could, they'd really worked hard for it. At least they'd learned a lot, so Ryo wouldn't have to be quite as worried about them the next time they got called in?

He looked around. Wormmon was here, Ryo had seen two of the Digimon who came with Ken to fight Millenniummon go up in data, Valkyrimon and Vikemon were easy to spot – where was V-mon? Ryo had sent him to use one of the floppies with healing data on Vikemon before running over here to check that Ken was staying safely out of the way instead of helping Wormmon hand out items – the good thing about being a child, human or Digimon, was that once a battlefield had a few craters, it wasn't hard to move from cover to cover and hand out healing items while the Ultimates kept each other occupied. Running around on a busted knee was a stupid thing to do, but Ryo needed to get the fight over with before he had even more injuries to deal with, and Ken needed to get home.

Ken's partner was a proverbially weak Digimon, so Wormmon had learned to get darn good at moving fast without attracting attention, and while V-mon would rather be fighting, he caught on pretty quick for someone who had just hatched for the first time – he'd been sealed to await his destined partner until Gennai needed someone to fetch Ryo. Then Agumon got turned to stone.

Maybe V-mon was still over by Vikemon? That Vikemon had digivolved from Armadimon, not Gomamon, or else Ryo would have had to tell him to leave no matter how helpful Joe's partner Vikemon was last time. Gennai had found Hawkmon and Armadimon along with V-mon and Wormmon when he was trying to find Ryo's partner. After what happened to Taichi and Agumon, it just wasn't safe for any of the other Digidestined's partners to get involved, but except for Wormmon they didn't have partners yet. Huh, it was strange, come to think of it: Vikemon reminded him of Takeru's partner Seraphimon if anything, even if they looked nothing alike.

Mentally writing an apology to V-mon's future partner in case he'd gotten the little dinosaur stepped on by Millenniummon and dying left him traumatized – not likely, V-mon was pretty irrepressible, but apparently dying actually was kind of a big deal in the Digital world if you weren't Millenniummon – Ryo suppressed a sigh (right, didn't want to depress Ken with reality just yet), scanned the horizon over to the right and tried to pick out a clear path over to Vikemon to start looking for V-mon. That was the problem with fire attacks on sand: of course Ryo had running shoes with good thick soles on, but glass…

"Hey, get down!" Ken shouted, and pushed him to the ground. A moment later the kid cried out.

Oh no! Ryo pushed himself up as quickly as he could, frantically checking over the younger kid. Not now, there was a chance Ken could have stayed safe back in town after this battle! With the dimensions rejoined in one spot, anyway, there might not have needed to be two Chosen Children with Digivices fighting anymore! "Ken, are you okay?"

"Ken!" Wormmon said, worried, climbing onto his partner's chest to nudge at him.

The light wasn't good, Ryo noticed as he tried to check over Ken. Had it gone dark? A sandstorm? Debris kicked up by Millenniummon's fall or some attack?

Something hit him.

A sharp, piercing pain that made his neck arch and mouth open as though he was about to cry out, but instead of a scream there was a startled gasp, like Ken's, because it wasn't quite pain but something… strange.

It left him shuddering, fallen over Ken and Wormmon. He lay there, able to do nothing but feel something happening to him. Something was inside him, sliding into him like a key into a lock. He could barely even contemplate resisting, still not sure what this was, but he felt something in him click, and yes. Not a knife, cutting him open, but a key made to open this lock.

A lock made to open for this key. He was made for this.

As he thought that, he felt himself go limp. He could feel himself opening, not being pried open but swinging open, and he arched as something cool and soothing poured into him. Something that belonged there.

Something he had been waiting for, all this time, and he was so close to realizing what it was, what it had to be…

A clawed fingertip was poking his side. "Hey, Ryo?" V-mon asked, worried.

He must have been too focused on what was happening to him to hear the little dinosaur's footsteps crunching towards them in the sand.

Ryo pried open his eyes, glad to see V-mon looked alright. Some scrapes, unless that was dirt, but nothing major. He sounded worried, not pained. Ryo closed his eyes again, still conscious of the weight within him, a soothing contrast to the heat of the desert and the frantic effort of battle, needing to coordinate the Digimon and keep an eye on Ken after the dimensions merged. He felt tired, but not exhausted. He'd expected to feel exhausted after the battle, judging from the last time he fought Millenniumon. He wanted to curl up and just rest, but he didn't ache with the need to even if he'd been run ragged for weeks now. "Can you ask one of the others to carry us back to Gennai's?" he asked, because a desert was not a place for a nap, especially when some of Millenniummon's minions might come to see what happened to their master.

He felt Ken's body shudder, and pushed himself up with one arm. Ken's face was drawn in pain. Yeah. He had to get the kid to safety.

"Right!" V-mon said, and rushed away across the sand as fast as he could on short, stubby legs.

Ryo stretched, and the movement felt better than it normally did. It made him aware of something cool flowing through him, coating his nerves, distancing him from the aches and pains and banged-up knee he'd accumulated trying to get out of the way when they were attacked while still being in range to give orders, even with V-mon to help look after him. Wow, he'd wished he had an ice pack for his knee… Thinking about it, though, reminded him that if he was this banged up, after having done this before and knowing what not to do? Ken was younger than he was, too.

"Ryo, Ken won't answer me!"

Poor Wormmon, so scared for his partner…

"There was some junk flying around," Ryo told him. "He's not bleeding, and his breathing sounds fine, so he should be okay if we get him back to Gennai's." He touched the orange messenger bag at his hip, but everything in there was for Digimon – if he had anything left he knew was safe on humans, he wouldn't have gone into that fight with his knee acting up.

V-mon returned with Valkyrimon, riding on his shoulder, and Ryo picked up Ken so the Valkyrimon could scoop them both up. He sat down, settling Ken against his side and letting Wormmon jump into Ken's lap before saying, "Alright, ready for take-off."

Vikemon was much slower than Valkyrimon, so he'd have to walk back to town on his own. Ryo wished they could wait for him, not just for his sake but because if Valkyrimon was ambushed while weighed down with two humans, without any backup except two rookies? The other two Ultimates were… he wished they had families to apologize to, or something. He knew they'd come back as digi-eggs, that they'd wanted to fight the monster that enslaved them after Ken freed them from his control, but it still hurt, to see people die right in front of his eyes because even if he'd taken an extra week to train to try to be sure they were good enough to protect themselves and look after Ken… Ken's protectors had taken the brunt of the attacks.

You'd think that if Millenniummon didn't like one of them, it would be Ryo, when Ryo fought him before, but Millenniummon had 'invited' Ryo into the digital world by sending that thing to try to nuke Tokyo and the Chosen Children. Maybe he'd resented Taichi and Ken showing up to their private grudge match?

Ryo let his eyes slide closed. He could hear the wind around them, Valkyrimon's heavy wingbeats. Thankfully, it would take them a lot less time to get back then it took them to get this far, even if he wasn't sure how much less time. He and the Digimon helping him needed to clear out Millenniummon's bases on the way instead of striking on past so they didn't end up surrounded.

He felt so relaxed, open, the tension in his shoulders from… closer to three months than two now of being constantly braced for attack just gone. He was already half a year older than he should be given when he was born, so it was a really good thing humans didn't age in the Digital World. He wasn't sure how much older than they looked the other kids were, but he'd bet at least a year.

The first time he fought Millenniummon was easy to remember: New Year's Eve. He wasn't sure what day today was, you were supposed to lose track of time during vacation, but he thought it was still March, if not for long. Not even three months since the last time. With Millenniummon coming back that fast – if he didn't figure out how to make it faster – then the time spent in the Digital World would add up pretty fast. He wondered if he'd lose track of how old he was. It would be pretty easy to do: since the Digital World had spent so long disconnected from time in the human world, it didn't really have years, and if it had seasons at all they were regional, according to Gennai. They had a thirty-day sort-of-month, but even in File City things weren't really organized enough yet for people to be planning things for specific days much further ahead than that. Would File City even still be there this day next year?

Millenniummon liked to rewind time to undo all the damage the Digimon fighting for Ryo (and Ken, this time) had managed to do to the evil god. Had some kind of desperation attack or healing spell misfired, like the way 'final attack' could be linked to the Phoenix summon in Final Fantasy VII?

Ryo groaned, knowing that Millenniummon had probably survived again. If he'd pulled off something powerful enough to affect him and Ken at that kind of range, then he probably wasn't 'dead.' Well, either way he wouldn't be dead dead, but not even reduced to a digi-egg. Even if he was too good an actor for the people who took care of Primary Village to catch him unless they got really lucky, it still took him some time to get to Ultimate… even if it was three months, when a lot of other Digimon couldn't even reach Ultimate if they lived for thousands of years. Being a God of Time probably let him cheat, and he'd also made Diablomon and rounded up an army again in those three months, so it probably didn't take him even that long to reach Ultimate.

Ryo wasn't going to go back and check if Millenniummon dispersing into data had been some kind of trick and he was still there; they were not in shape for the second stage of a boss battle against that guy. He'd told Ken not to bring more than a couple of his allies (and his partner, of course) to the fight because if Millenniummon started throwing around AoEs there was too much risk Ken and Wormmon would get fried, so once they got back to town they could meet up with Ken's other allies and he could pick out a couple guards to stay with Ken and Gennai while Ryo went hunting for wherever Millenniummon was now.

Thank goodness the dimensions Millenniummon split the Digital World into had synced up again during the fight, here anyway, otherwise Ken would be in the other dimension where Ryo and his allies couldn't help him, with no one but Wormmon to protect him. Wormmon wasn't strong enough to drag Ken all the way out of the desert before collapsing from hunger, so Ken would have been stuck until Ryo could get back to town and send a message to Gennai in the other dimension to send Digimon out looking for Ken.

He heard Ken whimper softly and frowned. Why did Ken have to get hit with something that hurt him – probably just a rock, even a distance-weakened attack from an evil god as powerful as Millenniummon would have banged up a human kid really badly – while Ryo got a healing spell? Or maybe a buff. Or regen. Ryo flexed his knee. It didn't make him hiss, but still not good.

Well, that was a good thing. Regen this slow, involving such a tiny amount of data in the digital world, would take awhile to do much for Millenniummon. Unless he sped up time, of course.

Of course he would, if Ryo could think of doing it.

"Hey, you okay down there?" V-mon called.

Ryo looked up to see V-mon leaning dangerously far forward off Valkyrimon's shoulder to peer down at them. "I'm fine," he said. "Ken's still breathing and not bleeding. How far out are we from the digi-port?" He could have stood up to look over the edge of the hand and check if he could see for himself, but he'd have had to move Ken.

"We'll get there in a minute!"

"Oh, thank you V-mon," Wormmon said gratefully, rubbing his little feet-hands together and probably looking up at V-mon with those big eyes. Ken was lucky to have a partner like that, Ryo thought, frowning at the memory of someone asking what kind of Digidestined had one of the weakest, most pathetic Digimon in the digital world for a partner.

It was sad that Ken couldn't digivolve Wormmon past Child stage, though, when he didn't have any problem digivolving other Digimon to Ultimate.

Gennai had reassured Wormmon that if Ken needed him, he'd digivolve, and Wormmon had decided that he didn't want Ken to be in danger, and it was much better for Ken to have Ultimates to protect him than a Adult who might be really weak, but it still made Wormmon sad and sad Wormmon was a crime.

Ryo peeled an eye open again to put his hand on Wormmon's head. "He'll be okay," he promised the little bug.

Wormmon still couldn't help being worried, when he cared so much about Ken, but Ryo was the experienced big kid and Wormmon had faith in him, so he saw him look at least a little relieved.

Ryo wondered why he was so sure. There were internal injuries, and poisons and other things. It would be just like Millenniummon to do some kind of vindictive last minute thing to get the distraction out of the way before he came back to attack Ryo again, properly this time.

Taichi and Agumon had insisted on coming to help this time, but Millenniummon froze them in time and Gennai managed to warn the other Chosen Children before they could get here to be frozen. Tai was lucky he was only frozen, not dead, after Diablomon tried to nuke him.

That begged the question of why Ken wasn't frozen, but judging from what Ken said about what Millenniummon said to him, the evil god held him in too much contempt to take him seriously. Which was mean, but not as mean as stepping on him, and whatever kept the kid alive.

Everyone was okay last time – even the Digimon would come back to life.

Dimly, he registered going through the digi-port, and the thump as Valkyrimon landed. He didn't open his eyes, letting Wormmon rush up to Gennai and… sound of wings… yeah, that voice was Piccolomon's. So the dimensions were rejoined in the town too as well as the battle site? Maybe they actually had managed to weaken Millenniummon, for awhile anyway.

He heard Piccolomon fly over and felt him pick Ken up. "Ryo?" Gennai asked after Piccolomon flew off, probably towards the house.

"I'm awake," he said, "Just tired." Right. "A lot of stuff got kicked up when Millenniummon fell, I think he was trying something elaborate at the last-minute and it misfired. Or maybe Ken just got hit with a rock… He'll be okay, right? I promised Wormmon."

"If Millenniummon did something to him…" Ominous silence. "I'm sorry, I'm no match for Millenniummon when it comes to the dark arts of technology. If it's an ordinary injury, the best healers in town were already summoned, to help one of the Chosen Children."

"That's good."

"Do you need a healer?"

"I'm fine." Ken first, he'd buy something for his knee.

Gennai was probably giving him a look. "You weren't fine when you left, Ryo."

He and Ken had needed to simultaneously assault Millenniummon from both of the dimensions he'd separated the Digital world into (dimension god too? As though his time powers weren't unfair enough), because if he was severely damaged in one dimension and not the other, the part of him that was doing fine would just rewind time on the other part and it would be like they hadn't even fought him. Ryo hadn't wanted to delay the attack anymore once he thought Ken had a team that could handle it with Ryo to distract Millenniummon. (And that had worked so well.) Poor kid was getting homesick, even if with the time dilation up again, his family probably hadn't had enough time to get too worried.

No more than Ryo's did last time. They'd noticed that he'd changed, after that New Year's Eve, but he was there when they got home, wasn't he?

"Just tired," he said. "Any chance I could get a lift to bed too?"

Gennai chuckled. "I think we can manage that, for one of the saviors of the Digital World."

Gennai's tone was teasing, but Ryo wished he could find it funny. "Not saved yet," he warned the old man, since Ken wasn't here to hear it. "Keep an eye out, I bet we didn't finish him off this time either."

"It's not your fault, Ryo. All Digimon return from death, but to return with all his memories intact and regain his power so quickly… I've only heard of such a thing once, with the Child of Hope's partner, and that certainly can't be the case here. Until I can figure out what spell he cast and devise some counter, he'll just keep returning and I'll have to keep summoning you to the Digital World." The old man sighed.

"It's not your fault," Ryo said. "You're doing your best too."

"I appreciate your help: you've done so much for the digital world, but I'm old, and the oldest of you… You don't even have a partner to protect you. I asked Agumon to look after you again, but…"

"Hey, you found V-mon, and he's great."

"You bet I am!"

"Yeah," Ryo said, and smiled, eyes still closed. "Your partner's going to be really lucky someday…" Huh, the cool weight within him was warming. Probably wearing off? Felt nice, though. "I'd like to get to a bed before I really do fall asleep here." Before all the aches and pains could come back.

So easy to fall asleep, with every bit of him relaxed and wrapped around that soothing heat. Afterwards, he didn't even remember his head hitting the pillow.

He did remember getting up and walking out of Gennai's house, even if he wasn't aware of it while it was happening. Telling Piccolomon that he wanted to check up on his Digimon (his?).

He'd kept walking though, all the way to the digi-port. Looking at it, he'd known how to work it the way he knew how to work a telephone – no, better, he might be aware that telephones worked by electricity and stuff but he wouldn't know how to build one or hook it up to the network.

How to get here.

The door opened for him. Of course it wouldn't dare bar his path. Not when he belonged here. Not when he was finally so close to where he should have been all along.

A great crystal towered over him. In its purple depths, he could barely make out two pairs of eyes watching him. Pleased. They were pleased.

That was good, he knew, and smiled up at them as he walked into the insubstantial depths of the crystal.

The force that moved him laid the fragile human body down carefully before placing it into sleep mode and carefully freezing it in time… except for the darkness spreading through its nervous system.