Chapter One

Golden armor boiled and peeled, where it had not already rotted-through or buckled and cracked apart. The last dregs of pale light-motes leaked free and were evaporated upon the terrible breezes gusting across the scoured land. Accompanying the steady destruction of his form were dozens of dewdrops of blood, dripping out of scratches and the rarer shallow cut beginning with his ears and ending at his toes. Even with all of the faded scars that he bore from throughout the years of combat and training, the mess of crisscrossing wounds presented from this one clash alone outnumbered them two-to-one. Inscribed into the flesh just beneath his belly, a dull symbol flickered with the same hue of light that he was supposed to invoke just by being, but despite his enduring upbeat attitude, he certainly did not feel very well protected by the power of Miracles at that moment.

Another great screech shook the air and shuddered the ground, and in a splatter of dissolving gold, the last shred of armor to his name broiled free and left him garbed in only his light azure flesh. It was very thick flesh, true, and with stubborn bones underneath that refused to crack so easily, but he couldn't suppress a wince that passed through his shoulders afterward, as he lowered both hands from over his ears and stared wryly across the channel of ocean water between himself and his foe.

"Why is it that I always get saddled up with the unattainable victories, huh?" The dragon-man retroactively questioned Yggdrasil, dashing aside and clamping his hands to his ears once more as the black-cloaked beast in the skies threw open its upper-mouth and trilled a noise to vaporize lesser-warriors. The landscape that he had just occupied was reduced to dust for a quarter of a mile down, if only scant feet wide, limiting his already diminished and precarious position to a diminishing few sections of steady plot here and there. He couldn't hover without the thrusters from his armor, let alone hope to fly.

"C'mon then, ugly! I've got other super-villains to eradicate before lunch!"

To his satisfaction and despite the distance between them, he saw Gulfmon's eyes thin to even further slits than they had been before. Immediately afterward the corrupted Ultimate screamed and unfurled the spiny teeth within its lower-maw, ejecting a trio of dark-matter meteorites toward his position.

Way to go, loudmouth! He thought as he tucked into a barrel roll and dove down into the very pit that had just been scoured open moments before. Unlike the noise, which he could ignore with a little effort of will, those burning projectiles were another matter all together. They pitched down and eroded the world in their wake, drilling through the dirt without relenting or slowing in the slightest. He suspected they would eventually come out the other side of the world and give some poor Adult a terrifying surprise for the few moments that he or she survived the radiation, but he intended to be over and done with his opponent well before that happened, which should deny the connection that kept them active.

And if that failed... well, he would just have to find a way to somehow pull apart the volatile energy without rendering the planet in half.Though I suppose even that isn't outside of Yggdrasil's capabilities to patch up.

The glow of his symbol flickered again and finally solidified in luminous gold as his convictions were reaffirmed.

"Looks like I've found my motivation," he said aloud, grinning widely as energy that had previously been diluted and drained away with the loss of his armor began to bubble up from within his veins anew. The rents in his flesh flickered and were sealed up in moments, adding to the horrific array of pale white-pink scars encompassing his blue flesh. With a thought he drew his armor back into manifestation and kept the brilliant sheen engrossed across it, shielding himself from Gulfmon's Dead Scream again.

"Now we're cooking with fire, baby," Magnamon cheered softly before turning his head up into the sky. He satisfaction lasted only as long as it took to find himself staring down the sight of the charging Ultimate. Another rush of dark-matter streaked down, and he leapt up into the air to meet it, feeling his aura gathering almost unconsciously. "Light Aura Barrier!" he ordered, and the glow amplified as it lifted free a quarter of an inch, lengthening out before solidifying into hard-light matter.

Neither slowed down. And inverse to what had happened prior, showers of black energy splintered and rained down, taking on a white-hot glow from within before flashing and evaporating as he blew through them like a molten pillar. The surface of his aura was hardly scuffed in passing. What minimal damage there was - a pockmarked surface less than a quarter inch down - repaired in the age-old dazzle of faint lightning as he carried onward.

Gulfmon's gaze thinned to almost-non existent slits as it roared in fury.

Magnamon screamed right back at it as blood drizzled out of his ruptured eardrums, but his boosters compensated for the abrupt loss of equilibrium and kept him on a straight-course toward the opponent. And in the throbbing silence he concentrated and yelled out his counter-stroke to finish the wretched Virus once and for all, flicking his blue gaze over one shoulder and thrusting a single hand back the way he had come in the same instance.

"Extreme Jihad!"

The light shrouded about his being released in an dual explosion of energy, speeding mostly ahead while a smaller surge erupted downward.

The former latched onto Gulfmon, bonding to the undead flesh and vaccinating it all but instantaneously; the fell thing barely had a moment to process what was happening as the last molecule that represented who and what Gulfmon was, to the last enzyme that gave him his power and form, was scanned and found lacking, and purged from the system. With a gurgling roar, his code flashed into view an instant before his form ceased to be, leaving behind a void in the air encased within the radiant glow. It pulsated, and expanded to double its initial size, but in a heartbeat it had shrunk back down and quadrupled again with a burning flash that nearly blinded Magnamon with the intensity and nearness. Heat emanated out of the hard-light that remained attached, scorching the air for a dozen feet around, but the last-ditch effort initiated as Gulfmon was instantaneously reduced backwards to Mephismon, and then to Apocalymon, the attempt to eradicate the known world with its Total Annihilation, was contained and shunted into the gap between time and space.

Exhausted almost beyond reason, Magnamon fell out of the sky and began to rocket after the first set of dark-matter meteors. Even if his attack failed to reach them in time, he would catch up eventually and ensure the threat was over before he blacked out from exhaustion.


/END Chapter One.

This chapter, when coupled with the prologue before it, are both the farthest-ahead and farthest-back segments to the story as it stands. Most chapters between will probably be as short as this, but others might actually make it to a few thousand words depending on the subject.