A/N: Whilst ignorance is bliss, knowledge eliminates the need for bliss. However, bliss in knowledge can conversely lead to even deeper ignorance.
IZZY
'Joe, where are we?'
There she went, yet again, with such an intrepidly stupid question – how was he supposed to know?
Joe stood there, his face screwed up in thought, hand stroking his chin as he looked up at the castle before them, unlike any of its kind, Izzy had to note.
'This isn't exactly like anything I've seen before, Mimi,' Joe reprimanded in that gentle, polite manner he had. 'My guess is that we're in the Digital World, but Gomamon never told me of anything like this.'
'Tentomon didn't mention it either.'
Mimi must have not heard him, continuing to question Joe. 'Palmon's never talked about any, and she said that the Geckomon Castle was the first she'd actually seen. I think this might be a part of the Digital World we haven't seen before.'
Izzy felt like slapping his forehead, wanting to call her a genius. A noise must have escaped through his nose, because she flashed him a very dark, very red and quite pouty look indeed. Even then, she had the charisma and look of someone you just couldn't affix blame to. He found it deeply intriguing, personally. Yet all too soon, she returned her eyes to Reliable Joe.
'Maybe we should go in and get the help of the Digimon,' she was saying in a tone that played her clumsiness to its limits on what Izzy knew had to be on purpose. 'But what do you think?'
Was he being a nuisance, he wondered, withdrawing into his own thoughts to dull out conversation of the two. Be it arguing or unwanted chatter, he couldn't hear them, thinking of the binary code for a Digimon in his head. It was a useful trick he had picked up when he reached high school and his status as a genius earned him scorn from the more… dullard of his classmates. They could not disturb him now, and Mimi's looks would not catch him out – he was too happy in his thoughts. Let her make a mule of herself, he thought.
Yet he still had to see her, talking to him… what was this? It was strange…
To distract himself, he looked up at the castle itself; shrouded with mystery was how such a thing could stand with many turrets standing from the walls like mere protrusions on a wall or vines growing beside a wall. Then there was the castle, embossed with a gargantuan insignia, carved into the otherwise mechanical castle, complete with piping: a heart insignia with two sprouting tails. The castle seemed twisted by large, serpentine pipes and a horrid colour of rust.
Yet Izzy had the feeling the castle was not welcoming, even without these signs.
Behind him, a pulley and large cart waited like an ancient elevator down to a rushing waterfall, shaped like a crater beneath the castle. He could see this with the briefest of glances over the edge. Mimi and Joe took no heed of this, the older boy either lost in thought or oblivious to Mimi's questions.
'Maybe we should go inside,' Izzy felt like suggesting, if not to just get somewhere away from where he had fallen into the Digital World. 'We're not getting anywhere out here, Joe, Mimi.'
Two years seemed intolerable, but now that he was actually there, he just felt empty, apathetic and even lethargic; the disaster in the restaurant made one thing clear, and that was that his childhood was fading away, and all of those magical years he had never thought possible would be swept away when he went to university and began teaching in Kyoto – it was his one dream that still seemed real. The other had been his friends forgiving each other for silent grudges, but that hope was lost to ash – the restaurant debacle made that resoundingly clear to him.
Clearing his head and escaping his brief reverie, Izzy led on toward the large gates that allowed entrance into the old, mechanised castle. Approaching hesitantly despite how long-since abandoned it appeared, Izzy placed a hand upon the gates, which opened by themselves, revealing a grand foyer to him and Joe, Mimi trailing behind, quiet for some reason.
'Well, these people weren't hard for money,' Izzy commented in his poor attempt at humour.
'It is a castle,' Mimi responded a little forcibly. 'This is nothing – Joe, you remember, right? The Geckomon Castle?'
'Yeah,' Joe mumbled, Izzy looking back to find a very distant look upon the elder's face, intent focus in those eyes, seemingly magnified by his glasses. 'Say… I know this is supposed to be abandoned and all, but don't you think it's a little… well-kept?'
Scanning the foyer, Izzy saw that he was right – compared to the dismal upkeep of the castle's exterior, stone steps curved about to the second story rather neatly, a fountain between the steps flowing with pure water – not an everyday feature of abandoned castles, and something which bite coldly at the nape of his neck; could it be that the castle had Digimon in it?
In particular, a rather large insect that spoke relentlessly about how he travelled the Digital World frequently?
Mimi beat him to calling out, 'PALMON!'
Her voice echoed, and once it faded, Izzy heard muffled struggles behind him. Worried, he spun around; he was rather disappointed to see Mimi struggling against Joe's silencing hand over her mouth. He looked rather worried, much like how Izzy felt.
'Mimi – Myotismon had a castle, remember?' he whispered cautiously, eyeing the ceiling in a paranoid manner. 'Let's not make a fuss in case we're in a bad guy's castle, alright?'
Izzy couldn't help but agree, having considered the same thing – not that silencing her was something he would really, truly do. Then again, it was intriguing that Joe would suddenly be so brave. Almost as intriguing as the thing Izzy looked into the year gone by, both seemingly impossible and unlikely.
And just like the test, Joe disappointed, his face red and eyes on the floor, taking Mimi's heated scolding quietly. Izzy smiled and let a single note of laughter leave him. It felt so strange and forced, coming out more as a grunt. Frowning, he realised that he needed to practice laughing, if only to avoid feeling as awkward as he did now.
Mimi looked across to him, apparently taking his attempt at laughter as he feared. He turned instead to whistling to himself until at last Joe managed to recollect himself.
Walking across to the fountain, Joe slipped his fingers into the water, flicking it for some reason.
'It's so clear and so light – this is the cleanest water I've ever seen.'
'The viscosity of the water would suggest that its being pumped fresh and purified from those waterfalls we saw below,' Izzy said, believing he had simplified it enough, but Mimi made a face. 'I – er… well, pretty much the pipes gather water from below, Mimi. That means that someone must be keeping them clean and drinking the water – so in short, we're not alone here.'
Then she showed signs of understanding. How she managed to be academically borderline in the sciences, he didn't know. Why she couldn't have nodded and asked Joe as he knew she probably would, he didn't know; Mimi wasn't subtle or greatly clever, but Izzy had come to respect that in the Digidestined as much as Tai for his courage and Joe for his responsibility. Quietly, he knew that she wasn't as sincere as he crest would suggest.
'This is making my head hurt…' she moaned, thin fingers rubbing at her temples. 'Joe, tell Izzy to stop with the riddles and just tell us what he means.'
'Sorry, Mimi, but we need to find out where we are and if we can last here,' Izzy felt a strange pull inside of him, like he was nervous without knowing. 'Remember our first few months here? Joe and I rationed the food, so I can tell you now that we nearly starved. This time needs to be different.'
'He's got a point,' Joe said over to her from the fountain. 'We never told, but it got bad at times. Especially before that Yokomon village.'
Mimi put a finger to her lips, 'Hold on… Sora and I got food. It couldn't have been that bad.'
Joe focussed solely into the fountain's pool of water, his ears and neck bright red, not that Mimi noticed with her attempt to figure it out. Izzy felt a rise of amusement inside him, remembering how Joe insisted his food should go to the girls because of his moral maturity. Izzy considered it vanity back then, but now he was happy to say he knew Joe better than such simple thought processes.
'Hey, Joe – why don't we search this place?'
Joe grabbed to the offer like a lifeline, still hiding his face.
'That's a great idea – Mimi, are you coming?'
'Well… if you say so then I guess we might as well…'
Joe led the way with Mimi asking questions of him in rapid succession before the poor guy could answer any single one. Izzy shook his head as they reached the top of the steps, one large opening before them leading to a dark corridor, and doors to their immediate left. With a consenting nod, Izzy led onward to the doors, not liking the cold chill coming from the shrouded corridor.
He and Joe pressed their hands against both of the doors, pushing with all their might. Despite his effort, Izzy rued not being as strong as Tai, Matt, TK or Davis, seeing what the price of genius and constant development of his knowledge had left him as. Mimi cheered them both, but only used Joe's name in her supportive chants. She switched between Japanese and English chants, Izzy's ears perking up when the doors creaked slowly open.
She was chanting in English, 'Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate? Joe and Koushiro!'
He was touched a little that his name was finally used, but it was not the one he would have preferred. The sudden rush from her chant gave him the boost he needed to fully push the door open with Joe managing the same. He panted, tired and hating the heavy doors.
'See, that wasn't so bad!' Mimi said sweetly, patting Joe on the back when he began coughing from the effort. 'There, there – I'm fine, see?'
'Y-you,' Izzy coughed himself, 'you didn't do anything…'
She braced her hands upon her hips, 'Excuse me – whose cheering let you open those doors? I should be charging, Izzy.'
'That's better,' Izzy took a deep breath, composing himself slowly. 'I hate it when people call me 'Koushiro'.'
'You – you heard that?' she actually sounded impressed.
'You do know that I'm good at more than science, right?'
'Yeah, but Joe's good at the science that helps people with medicine, so isn't that more impressive? Even gym seems more interesting than that stuff.'
He didn't know precisely what, but something bitter flashed within his chest.
'It's biology – now can we get moving-'
He stopped dead in his tracks. It was like he had walked into a fountain of knowledge, becoming enlightened in a divine light – for what he believed was the first time, he found a library in the Digital World. All else flooded from him. He had dreamed about such a reservoir of information, so unlike Earth's…
He hurried inside, bookshelves stacked impressively high and filled with books and tomes thick enough to act as substitute cement blocks, all colour coded, the bookshelves forming a sort of path from the door, like a maze…
'Oh boy… of all things you don't want,' Mimi was saying behind him, 'a library. There's no way Palmon would be in a place like this.'
'How do you know that?' Joe queried while Izzy struggled to tug one of the heavy books from its shelf.
'I taught her better – princesses don't have to read,' she stated obnoxiously.
'That's… I… if that's what you think, Mimi, then… well…'
Izzy flipped the book's cover and looked at the first blank page, with some writing and annotations within it. 'Joe – you won't believe what's in here.'
Joe and Mimi now peering over his shoulder, he looked over the drawings and neat little notes written beside it. Mimi made the cutesy noise he had feared she would make.
'That's so cute! Drawing a little heart in a book – I take back what I said about libraries – they're nice!'
'Mimi!' Joe hissed urgently over Izzy's shoulder. 'Remember, inside-voices only!'
'Lighten up, Joe!' she giggled mischievously. 'This place is like a ghost town!'
'Castle,' Izzy corrected snappily, feeling the book's weight upon one hand while he pointed at the text with the other and read. '"And so it is time for me to recognise that the heart is too complicated for a simple research project. I must become an active force to comprehend the workings of its power, if not to sate my curiosity, then to learn more of this tale, this Kingdom Hearts".'
Joe adjusted his glasses beside Izzy's face, squinting at the notes. 'How do you read that… isn't it in English?'
'You can read it too, Izzy?'
'Like I said, science isn't the only thing I study,' he said up to Mimi, feeling a strange pulling at his navel with her face so close to his. Cursing, he realised that his face was burning, squinting and hurrying on with turning the page. 'Well, well… what's this?'
From the book came a small, torn page of something. It resembled a report of some sort, stained and worn, but still legible.
I have been a fool.
I have sought out the heart and studied its nature, and yet it still is not enough.
Knowledge sustains my interest in this world, but now it is like a dulling tonic, leaving me to
lament my narrowness…
This world, this Hollow Bastion is all but lost. Surrounding towns and villages of my master's once
great civilisation has fallen to the darkness. Only the castle repudiates with the darkness that had
wrought hearts to be lost to the chains of the blackest pit.
Yet, I am left with one question that both spares and brings me trouble – have I been the cause
for the castle's survival? Is the darkness testing me, or is this simply its way of liberating me of
my vexations – the people who disturbed my research and forced me into hiding it
as though it were shameful, something the master should have taken with him.
Perhaps my approach needs broadening. This Hollow Bastion is nothing but a heartless
shell, in a greater sense than any who come here will realise.
I must wonder, however, what will need to be given as payment for my journey. Expedition
or exodus for the world I theorise can be crafted into perfection, it is irrelevant.
Whatever the price, I am willing to pay it in order to see just why the hearts is moulded of darkness
and light.
Ansem
'Ansem?' Mimi repeated, eyeing the report with confusion. 'Isn't that… a person's name?'
'Well, it's certainly not Ansemon,' Joe added quickly, although Izzy doubted he could have read the report – it was penned in English. 'But… how can that be? Are their kids in the Digital World besides us? Another Digidestined, maybe?'
'No,' Izzy stated, closing the book and replacing it in the shelf carefully, the report still in his hand, 'there's about a million of us across the globe, true. But something feels off – all of us aren't adults yet – and this is written by someone very intelligent. Too intelligent to be our age – I could barely keep up with what they'd written, and not because of the language.'
'Mimi?'
She looked caught off-guard by Joe's sudden call, Izzy seeing something odd in her eyes, adding to his own unease.
'Sorry, I was just wondering.'
'About what?'
'Well, isn't it a little weird?' she pointed to Izzy's hand. 'From what I could actually get about it, it sounds like someone's been here for a long time. But, didn't Gennai say we were the first to come here?'
All three of them mulled on it, but something bit at Izzy's memory first.
'Wait, didn't he mention the Original Digidestined before we fought Apocalymon?' Izzy got a confused nod from the pair, seeing that he had to think on it alone. 'Well, in that case, could this 'Ansem' be one of them? It's the only real way I can see that someone else could have come to the Digital World. Maybe he was living here and got sealed inside when the worlds became separate.'
Mimi looked up at Joe pleadingly for an answer. 'Why do you think we're even in the Digital World if it's closed off to us?'
'Maybe it is,' Joe said suddenly, those uneasy feeling since arriving grabbing Izzy by the throat as he continued. 'Maybe this is another place entirely. Or maybe it is the Digital World. Whatever the case is, this Ansem should be able to tell us where we are.'
'Joe,' Mimi whispered sweetly, 'you do know that he would've notice us by now, right? Like you said, I was being loud…'
'Not loud enough for an entire castle,' Izzy pitched in, not wanting to accept the illogical idea that they were in a different world entirely. Yet, years ago, he would have denied the Digital World just as readily… he felt like an anchor was pulling his heart down into a black pit of despair at the idea. 'Joe… what about looking outside the castle?'
He felt stupid for asking it, but he needed something, anything, to use and think upon.
'Did you see anything outside?' Joe said logically, Izzy nodding even though he already knew the answer that was coming. 'Well, this Ansem person says that this castle's all that's left in there – going on that, shouldn't he be in this castle? You said that someone had to be here, taking care of the pipes; why not him?'
'Joe's got a good point,' Mimi said quietly, sounding a little nervous. 'Let's look around the castle for this Ansem person.'
'You can do that,' Izzy had already decided, placing the report delicately in his pocket. 'But I'm going to see if there are any more of his reports in here. It might give us a clue, at the very least.'
The pair looked at each other, but neither argued with him, Joe pointing out that there was a small terrace above where more shelves stood, saying that a door may await them up there. Izzy called for them before they disappeared into the maze of shelves, however, addressing that feeling he had since he and the others had arrived.
'Watch your backs – I don't think we're alone in this place, and I'm not talking about just this Ansem; there was enough water in that fountain for more than just one person, so be careful.'
He listened to their footsteps and voices disappear into the library-maze, his attention going on to another thick book that he pulled from the shelves.
