Season: Digimon Adventure 2
Story: Splitting Hairs
Author: Kuroikitsu
Summary: An evil person creating a false "good personality", or a good person whose darker half rages out of control. If the final result is wickedness, is the definition just splitting hairs? Who is the Digimon Kaiser and who is Ichijoji Ken? Are they one? If they aren't does that change the evil the Digimon Kaiser commits? Daisuke could have saved a lot of heartache if he never tried to find out.
Author's Note: Like an idiot I got the ragged beginnings of this like a year ago when I was watching 02 again and only vaguely sketched things out. I'm watching Digimon again, but started with season one so I'm watching this with hazy year ago memories of 02. So things won't be canon compliant. This is going to be my nano so I anti gave myself the time to research episodes. I hope I keep everyone's personalities decent though.
Prologue- The Name Ichijouji Ken
There was nothing the Digimon Kaiser hated more than the "real", or rather, the human world. The digital world, though created from data, was no less real or alive than this world. Its inhabitants still were born, lived, and then died pathetic little deaths without adding any significance to their lives. They had pointless identifications (really what more did any world need besides master and slave?) and stupid social constructs. The only true difference was that the Digital world made sense, when a digimon finished wasting its existence its data was used for something else. If one was smart enough to crack the code, you could change things in the digital world. The human world was not the same. No matter how intelligent or worthy you are, if you didn't have the right amount of luck, you fall to the wayside, having nothing to show for your effort. Petty little things like luck where so much more controllable in the digital world.
Even without how ridiculously unorganized and out of control the human world was, even if it had been structured like the digital world, the Kaiser would have abhorred it. This world grated on his very being, for one specific reason; the name Ichijoji Ken. The Digimon Kaiser was not that weak hearted, stupid, pathetic little boy. He had erased him, deleted him, replaced him, but that did not mean that he was him. And yet all these stupid humans insisted it was so. Now, the Kaiser wasn't stupid- far from it. He knew that if he did not want his plans interfered with, he needed to keep his cover. He had taken Ichijoji's body and his life; it was only par for the course that he took his name in this world as well. That did not mean that he liked it. He hated it. He couldn't stand it. And so far all of his efforts to distance the human persona had gone in vain.
There was nothing the Kaiser wanted to do more than to leave this world forever. The man and woman who were supposed to be his parents knew nothing of him and he hated them. He had wasted time, precious years giving them the studious son that they wanted in hopes that they would leave him alone. If they thought there was nothing more on his mind than his studies, they would no longer concern themselves with him and he'd have free reign. It didn't work. Instead they fawned him with more attention, constantly interfering, coming back even after he forcefully pushed them away. He should have left in the beginning. He… hadn't planned properly or he would have. There was no way the two mortals could get to the digital world. They were not digital nor were they destined. If he had left back then, they could have tried to find him but it would have been in vain. They never would have been able to find him and he'd have been so far back in the newspapers and the human data system that the digidestined would have never figured out who he was.
But now it was too late. Ichijoji Ken was in enough newspapers and articles that his disappearance might make the Digidestined suspicious. If only he had planned better…
Now was not the time to think of that. He had no way of knowing that new Chosen would appear. He had had plans, foolproof plans for the ones who had fought before. Old versus new and new had won. The original partners of the first digidestined could not digivolve. How could he have known about the new digimon and their ability to armor digvolve? Their ability irritated him and their presence ruined his orderly control. It ruined his plans and his schedules and because of stupid Ichijoji Ken, he could not stay there to fix it! After all, his mother would worry if he just disappeared.
The Digimon Kaiser shook his head. He didn't care about the human woman at all. She was a nuisance. This world, staying here, pretending to care about what happened here was wearing on him. He needed to leave. He needed to find a way to crush the Digidestined. He needed to think. With a frustrated sigh, the Digimon Kaiser retreated to his computer. He could plan better in the Digital world, where he had things arranged to his liking. He would crush the Digidestined, finish organizing the digital world and crush the human one. Both worlds would learn. He was the Digimon Kaiser and he was the one destined to rule the digital world and through it, the human one as well.