FILE 2. "Merry Mashimo"
Daughter of Hideaki Mashimo and Rina/Rock Shinomiya. Age 16. Trained in the PawnChessmon Brigades on AINCRAD for Six years, starting at the age of Ten. Present occupation is as Kyoryuger Blue: "The Armored Heroine."
What happened with Merry?
"Do you really want me to do her next?" Rei Ayanami asked. "Wouldn't you rather know more about Kuuko or Mahiro?"
She is one of the kids now entrusted with the protection of the Earth...and since you brought her up...?
"Ugh, fine fine...Alright, I'll tell you, but I was seriously wanting to put this off for a bit. It's kind of weird..."
I think I can handle weird, Miss Ayanami.
"Alright well...it was just before Merry's Seventh Birthday... Her parents were upset by a couple a ghosts that had been popping up during travel on SpaceTrailmon, and-"
Ghosts?
"Yes. Ghosts. Blue zappy things that made the time engines stall out."
Are they still a threat?
"Eh? Have you HEARD of ghosts attacking time ships since then? No, they vanished after those passengers tried freeing them. So it obviously worked."
So what happened?
"So Rina and Hideaki were trying to find those passengers disappeared trying to free the ghosts from whatever was trapping them. They'd been going out on scouting trips in that general area of time space trying to find those kids, but they left Merry behind so she didn't get scared, or worse."
So you were watching her?
"Yeah, just a bit before her birthday... I'd done it before a lot of times before. Longer time trips and missions kept Rina and Hideaki away alot when Merry was a kid. But usually I'd group watch her with the other kids. Nyarko and Callie, usually, for example."
Callie Grey, correct? One of the Blue Flare twins?
"Yeah. Her. You know, it's really Nyarko's fault that I got Callie and Merry into jokes...although it's my fault Nyarko got the impression that I liked those kinds of jokes. See, she got me this joke book for my birthday after an ill-advised attempt at comunicating and-"
How does this relate to what happened on Merry's birthday?
"It does, trust me."
Okay. As you were saying before my interruption?
"Right well... Merry was a normal kid before that night. Well...You know...More normal than she became after that. Liked those corny jokes from that joke book, loved swimming, slept in about every chance she got... No supernatural powers to speak of. Even Yumeji at that age was less normal than she was- and you know how their parents rank in terms of wackiness."
Merry's parents are from two separate universes, and her mother happens to have her soul split in two.
"Exactly, and Merry ended up being about as powerless as she possibly could be. An absolute Zero on the power ranking scale. But she was wide eyed then. Willing to believe just about anything. Merry doesn't into the Digital World's SBURB Power system you know? Even bring it up and she'll scoff it off as something that doesn't make sense. Well, this incident? That's what got her into that."
...I...See...
"Yeah, I'll bet you do."
So what happened on that night?
"Well, it'd been a normal night up to that point. I picked her up from kindergarten, we played a board game, read from that joke book for a bit, ate dinner, took a bath- usual routine, ya know?"
Right.
"Well, right after I'd gotten Merry out of the tub, and I was drying her off with the towel..."
NINE YEARS AGO_ _ _|
The world changed around them- from the bathroom of Rei's apartment to an expansive, dark and gloomy checkerboard wasteland- and not just the world, but their own bodies as well.
Merry was suddenly clothed in this white dress and a white jacket that seemed to roll around like fluffy sheep's fur...and she had a hat on.
Rei found herself several years younger, and also wearing her original Unit-00 Plug Suit. "What the-?"
Wait. You were suddenly years younger and wearing different clothes?
"Yeah, It was weird. It was like...reliving a memory? Yeah, that fits."
So what happened next?
"We walked for a little while, but at the same time it was like we weren't walking at all, just like a dream, you know? And then..."
A Wild Tapirmon appeared!
"Woah!" Rei did a double take as the floating ghost Digimon appeared before them. "Who're you?"
"My name is Tapirmon!" The Digimon said with a small bow, "You've stumbled into my Daydream quite accidentally, I'm afraid!" Her arm ring glittered in an unseen light. "Please, follow me, I'll lead you out of here to safety."
Tapirmon are usually tame, aren't they? They eat nightmares, not cause them...?
"Yeah, and this girl was just as much of a victim as we were...a bit more so, though."
Why's that?
"Before we could get out of there, we were attacked."
A giant metal scythe hit the ground- blocking their path as the giant metal gloves that had tossed the weapon floated down to grab hold of it.
"Aunt Rei!" Merry squealed as she hid behind Rei's leg.
"Oh no!" The Tapirmon gasped, "I was hoping I could get you out of here before he showed up!"
"What is that thing!?" Rei asked as a giant hooded, skeletal, metallic body faded into view- shoulders connecting to the metal gauntlets with sudden bursts of blue lightning.
"MetalPhantomon! He's a Nightmare gone wrong!" Tapirmon explained as she began tugging on Rei's arm, "Come on! We've got to run before he eats us!"
"But what about the exit!?" Rei asked as she scooped Merry up and began running away after Tapirmon.
"That one's compromised! If we let MetalPhantomon through, he'll wreak havoc on the waking world!"
I'm not really seeing how any of this is your fault, Miss Ayanami.
"Trust me, it is."
It seems more like to me that the entire thing was an accident that couldn't have been avoided.
"You don't understand. That Tapirmon? He was there hunting MetalPhantomon. That MetalPhantomon? He was there trying to hunt Me. Merry? She wasn't supposed to be there at all!"
"He wants ME!?" Rei asked in horror as they quickly ducked behind a large wall.
"Yes!" Tapirmon shouted over the rushing roar of an energy attack exploding just behind them, "By possessing you and using your body as his vessel!"
"What about Merry?" Rei asked as she held the young girl tightly in a hug.
"She wasn't meant to be here!" Tapirmon said, "I only meant to pull you in, Miss Ayanami, so that way you could help fight him inside your own mental landscape without being caught unaware! But I miscalculated! He grew exponentially when you were brought in! Your own latent psychic potential must have magnified his powers!"
"So what do we do now!?" Rei asked as another energy blast hit their cover.
"RUN!" Tapirmon shouted as a crack filled the air.
And then what?
"The wall exploded- I went flying. Hit the dirt hard, and when I came to my senses, Merry was a few yards away from me, holding a dying Tapirmon. MetalPhantomon was leaning over them menacingly...And then..."
And then?
"And then Merry took Tapirmon's data into herself."
She did What!?
The poor Tapirmon exploded into data- and then- those golden particles immediately flowed down into the young girl who had been holding the unfortunate digimon.
Rei and MetalPhantomon both watched in horror as this happened- and then the later felt fear as the tiny girl suddenly sprung up from the ground- sailing through the air like a rocket straight at the metal skull that the beast called a face.
"There was a crack...then a flash of light...then the next thing I knew, Merry and I were back where we were, and I was still drying her hair off. But...that whole experience wasn't the worst thing. At first, for a moment, I'd thought I'd just dozed off, but then Merry started crying, and..."
And?
"And then I noticed that her eyes had changed."
Changed?
"You've seen them, haven't you?"
I'd never noticed, to be honest.
"Before all of that, Merry's eyes had been normal. Round irises. But after that...? They're what they are now. Rectangular."
So the Tapirmon's data...?
"Might have been a part of her to begin with."
Huh?
"Merry's mom- Rina Shinomiya- came from a world where souls were split across a divide. A Human- waking- side, and a Digital- dreaming- side. Rina and Rock- two sides of the same coin. They could fuse together though, through a Xros Loader, but it wasn't a natural fusion. Never was. Those two always ended up staying fused together for longer and longer periods of time. Merry was born just before they split apart for the third to last time- the first time in a whole nine months, you see..."
So you think that the Tapirmon was another half of Merry's soul?
"I don't think any of us could have realized it until then, but it was the only thing that could have explained the timing of it. The MetalPhantomon was coming after me, and Merry's other half saw it coming and tried to protect us. Tapirmon ended up dying in the process of doing that, but then again...she may have simply just merged with Merry entirely like what I heard happened with Taiki and the Denizen Hephaestus."
That's a hell of a fusion.
"You're telling me that? Merry was crying for the entire night after that! She wouldn't even go to sleep after that. The entire month after that was just one entire all nighter for her before the exhaustion finally caught up to her."
Seriously? An entire month?
"Do you See why I say I did a bad job as a sitter?"
That doesn't seem fair to you. It's not like you could have known the MetalPhantomon was-
"Yeah, I know that I couldn't have known. But seriously, I screwed her up bad just by being around her. That entire incident wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been baby sitting her. She started mangling her shirts about two months after that! Then when she got into grade-school, she started getting into fights with other kids... and don't get me started on that time she and Yumeji got into a fight over her height!"
Her height?
"Seriously? You're asking me about the thing I just told you not to ask me about!"
I-I'm S-So- I'm Sorry! Um...Could you...stop staring...? please?
"..."
Please!?
"Yeah, fine. Next question?"
Um...right...What else...'changed' with Merry following this night?
"She switched dominant hands. Right to Left. Almost seamlessly. That just doesn't happen normally."
Right.
"And then there's a bunch of other stuff I'm not comfortable with talking about, since that ties right into that height thing again."
Why are you staring at meAGAIN?
"Because it's amusing! Heee~hee..."
Um...Maybe we could move on to another kid now?
"Sure thing!"
A.N.: Some exposition on Merry, especially following the latest Vamola! Kyoryuger chapter! I don't got much to say on the subject. ^u^