Saberdramon lay crumpled in the sandy crater her fall had gouged into the earth.
One of her wings was in tatters below her, and she could feel what little energy she still had draining with every breath. The last time she felt this drained she had reverted to Pyocomon, but she knew it wasn't going to happen that way this time. This time, it was over.
Despite knowing she would return, the idea brought tears to her eyes. What if Tailmon couldn't find her at Primary Village? She would live her life as an entirely different digimon. All her hopes and dreams, her likes and dislikes, and her overarching love for Sora... All of it would be forgotten. Wiped clean to form a new digimon that certainly would be born as a Nyokimon, but wouldn't necessarily become a Piyomon.
If it weren't for the circumstances she would never have been able to face this possibility with any sort of resolve, and even still, the air was thick with smoke, and what light filtered through was instantly swallowed by the darkness of the flames. She was waiting in in near-total darkness to either run out of energy or be burned to death by her own fire, without a soul to see her off. It was a cold, bitter, and lonely end. She told herself to be brave, but it only made her more aware of her terror.
She curled up as best she could, her damaged wing sending spikes of sharp pain through her. I'm scared, Sora… She closed her eyes, and sniffled quietly into her feathers.
"Saberdramooooon!"
Her ears twitched, listening for some proof that she wasn't delirious. After a short pause, the voice called for her again, and Saberdramon's heart jumped so high she had to fight a wave of dizziness. She shook the giddiness from herself, and remained silent instead of answering. Hope was flooding her body like a cool breeze rustling through her feathers. She couldn't call a friend to such a dark place for her own peace. It would be selfish. But she quietly prayed to be found anyway; to not spend her last moments alone.
Light was the first thing she saw. Tailmon had something in her hand, and it was shining brightly and returning the flames to either side of her back to their natural coloration. The orange glow and the bright cinders rising on the wind, as hellish as they should have been, were incredibly comforting.
Soon the cat digimon was standing beside Saberdramon's neck, the flames and the shining digivice in her hand lending their light to the bitter frown on her face.
"It's bad, huh?" Saberdramon rasped.
Tailmon's eyes and ears dropped. She nodded.
"Haha...thought so. Don't be sad. With you and the light…this is a much more pleasant way to go than it was a moment ago." She tried to move, so that she could at least face Tailmon, but all her body would give her was a feeble shudder. "…You promise you'll find me at Primary Village?"
The cat digimon laid a hand on Saberdramon's cheek. "I swear it to you. I won't let you forget your promise…or Sora."
A content smile curved the corners of Saberdramon's beak, but it was quickly replaced by a grimace. "What's that smell?"
Vines shot across the red-hued flowers, trapping Tailmon. Palmon appeared on the other end of them, her face contorted by anger and made hideous by the shadows as she approached them.
"I gave you Sora," she growled. "I went to the real world and got the digivice for you, and look what you've done!"
Saberdramon's eyes rolled, and her head twitched in Palmon's direction. Her body wouldn't give her more than that. "You can't keep her forever, Palmon. She's unhappy and you know it."
"She could have been happy if you didn't send Sora away! All four of us could have been happy!"
Genuine outrage lent its cast to Saberdramon's face, and gave her the last spark of life. With a quiver, she raised her head from the dust, and faced her old friend. "I would never keep Sora prisoner just to make me happy. I wouldn't have done it when she was alive, and I certainly wouldn't keep her soul! Mimi is dead, Palmon! She's not bound to you anymore! The garden is burning and you can't save it! Just let her go!"
Vines shot out from Palmon's free hand and encircled Saberdramon's neck, digging into her feathers and strangling her.
Her beak gaped as she tried futilely to gasp for air. Her eyes felt to Tailmon, and she pushed the words out in short, near soundless croaks. "T…ail…mo…ave her…Sa..ve..!"
A muted snap interrupted her last message.
In a burst of data that lit up the area as brilliantly and briefly as fireworks, Saberdramon was gone.
Tailmon stared up in disbelief. "You killed her." She looked down, across the burning field. "She was our friend..."
Palmon snorted. "She said it herself. Mimi is my partner. The one I was born for. Friendship isn't worth the dirt under my roots compared to that. As far as I'm concerned, Piyomon, and anyone else who tries to hurt Mimi is the enemy."
Tailmon let out a fierce hiss. She went to turn her claws and cut her way out of the vines...only to find her body wouldn't respond. She tried again, but her limbs felt like distantly humming parts that had nothing to do with her.
"Oh, you're paralyzed," Palmon said matter-of-factly. She held up her free hand, slowly extending her vines. "I never did it before, but secreting a paralyzing toxin is natural for a Palmon. It's not called 'poison ivy' for nothing. Since I was always grabbing Mimi or swinging someplace with someone in my vines, it wouldn't have been very practical to learn to control this back then. But since I had a lot of time on my hands and I knew I might have to fight an adult like you...Levels the playing field a lot, doesn't it?"
"Then that smell...?"
"Is also me, yes. Palmon can do so many things I never even thought of trying."
"So what now? Are you going to kill me too?"
The vines loosened ever so slightly. "No..." She whipped the digivice from Tailmon's paw, and brought it to her side. "Hikari isn't as good a match for Mimi as Sora was, but she'll do. If you let me keep her, I'll let you go."
"You don't know what you're messing with, Palmon. You have no idea."
Palmon scowled. "I have Mimi. That's all I care about."
"But you don't, do you?" She flexed her paws, but just barely. "She isn't quite all of Mimi. Sure, it's cool that she'll never be the old, dying Mimi...but she'll also never be the mature motherly Mimi, or the perky, energetic Mimi who taught you to cook. She's not a ghost who knows about all the things you shared."
Palmon hesitated, but only for a moment. "You're calm, for a digimon who's about to die."
"Whether or not I die, Mimi and this garden will be gone soon. Very soon."
"What?" She tightened her vines, nearly crushing her victim. "What are you talking about? What have you done!"
The remaining flowers opened their petals wide, and sang a sweet tune, even as patches of them suddenly burst into data without the help of the flame. The smoke that blackened the sky was blown apart, allowing a single ray of light filled with glittering butterflies to touch down elsewhere in the vast garden.
Tailmon looked to the sky. "All I did was provide a beacon."
Mimi huddled beneath a giant leaf she'd manifested in the garden just to hide herself. She had managed to get far enough away that the tiger lilies surrounding her were intact and the blaze was far off in the distance. The sky was clouded with greasy black smoke, but she could have still made out her surroundings if she wanted.
But she had turned her back on the world outside. She wept into her knees, frightened by what she had done to Sora, and by the horrible digivolution she'd caused in Sora's partner; and even more by her mind. She wanted to want to go home. She knew the idea of returning to her mother and father should be comforting, but the idea of them flat and factual, devoid of the bond she knew must be there. She wanted to want her friends, but they were mere facts as well, names on a spreadsheet that meant terribly little to her.
Sora had given her the first real feeling that there was something in her life other than Palmon. No matter how she had expanded the garden in the past few years, she could not escape the sensation that she was only half what a person should be. Something she could not name had been missing; some form of experience or all the sets of experiences that made a person a person. She had feared that feeling, and instinctively reached out to prevents Sora from leaving. She didn't know what happened, but for just a moment, it felt as though she had smothered the girl with her own hands.
Now all Mimi wanted was the deep sleep she was promised. The dreamless state that came so infrequently these days, promising her a reprieve from everything. She wanted to go there, and never return.
"Are you hiding, Mimi?"
She jumped from her hiding place, instinctively afraid of who it would be...but to her shock, it was only Hikari, small and smiling with a whistle around her neck.
"How did you get here?"
"This is the digital world, Mimi." She grinned. "Everything here is data, and it's all connected if you know where to go."
"So you're...planted right now?"
"I was once. But the digivice isn't what lets us be here. It's what keeps us in one place for our partners. Without it connected to one location, we're free. Well, not you and I, since our digivices are still intact. I'm only here because my digivice is within your garden's limit."
Mimi's face crinkled, and fat tears rolled down her cheeks. "You should go, then. Sora..."
"Is fine," Hikari finished. She took Mimi's hand in hers. "Take us to your digivice."
Mimi hesitated, but eventually closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The garden shifted beneath them, and she felt her feet alight on the ground. A cutesy wooden sign inscribed with the words 'Tachikawa' hung from a stuffed animal Mimi's father had gotten her. Right beneath it, her digivice was buried.
"Why did we come here...?"
Hikari squeezed Mimi's hand reassuringly. "Because it's time for you to leave here, Mimi. Do you remember Oikawa-san?"
Mimi's eyes clouded for a moment, before the fact that there had been such a person came to her. "Yes... But what does he have to do with this?"
"Oikawa-san was the very first of us to die...but because of what he became, he was acutely aware of the effect human death has on a digimon partner. Part of what he gave the Digital World...was our memory. Or rather, what little of it our digivices hold from the times when we used them. It was for them to say goodbye to us...and for so much more. But some digimon have difficulty letting go, and can't face the life after. Unfortunately, Palmon is one such digimon...so you will have to destroy your digivice yourself."
"But...but I can't!"
The young girl stepped back to face Mimi. A glittering butterfly had lighted on her shoulder. "Trust me, Mimi. I can't explain it to you, but trust me. If you won't do it for yourself, do it because of that."
Hikari pointed toward the pillars of smoke in the distance, and Mimi looked up in time to see a brilliant burst of data dissipating into the sky.
"What...?"
"Palmon just killed Sora's partner. For you. Because she can't deal with a life where she can't be with you."
Mimi dropped to her knees. "For...me?"
She turned her eyes to the ground, and began to dig desperately. Her fingers scratched and scraped at the dirt in frenzy as she thought of her beloved partner. How much pain must Mimi have been causing her for her to do something like that? The flowers around her curled and twisted, screaming hysterically.
I hate this…I hate this! I don't want her to do this for me! I don't want to live like this anymore!
The gray screen of her digivice appeared in the dirt. It looked like it had sprouted wires that trailed under the earth. The idea that she and her garden were nothing but a giant hologram seemed very plausible all of the sudden. If not for the tingling in her fingers where her gloves have rubbed her raw, she would have believed it.
She looked around, and soon she found what she was wanted. Her fingers wrapped around a small but heavy stone.
She looked at Hikari.
Hikari nodded.
She brought the rock down against the familiar face of her digivice, and felt the world shift around her. Light surrounded her from seemingly every side, and an endless number of glittering butterflies fluttered over and around her. Hikari faded out, and a whole crowd of other children were suddenly visible. Sora, Takeru, and even Yamato were among them, and they were smiling.
Hikari's voice, distant but luminous and sounding vaguely of whistles, crossed the divide, whispering something sad but sweet.
A slow, dazed smile crossed Mimi's lips. She hadn't felt like this in ages…not since the first time she opened her eyes and saw Palmon weeping against her.
She raised the rock again.
Palmon ran toward the shaft of light, where she knew Mimi must be. She kept her grip on Hikari's digivice, using it to light her way and avoid the flames that would certainly burn her to death if she took a wrong step. In her haste, she kept tangling her roots and tripping, but she got back up immediately ever time. Around her, entire patches of the garden were disappearing, leaving behind the flames that quickly sputtered out on the savannah sands.
Behind her, Tailmon's voice called out calmly over the roar of the flames. "Mimi was one of the few of our partners who never used their digivice after becoming an adult. She doesn't even remember all the wonderful things you cooked together, does she?"
"Shut up!"
"I know the appeal, Palmon. When I planted Hikari's digivice, the girl I got was definitely Hikari."
"Then why are you trying to take her away from me?"
"Because what you're doing is wrong, Palmon. Everything in the digital world is data, and that includes the feelings that passed through the digivice every time we digivolved. The digital world is very responsive to new data, you know. The memories in the digivice are meant to be released, to change the digital world."
"I don't care!"
Her roots tangled again, sending her flying head over tail into a wall of flames. She scarcely had the time to scream before Tailmon snatched her and began patting out the places where she was smoldering.
"Don't be so stubborn! The memory is perfect, I know! But you can't keep her here like this. In the real world, she had school and friends and her family, and all those things that human children concern themselves with! But the Mimi from the digivice is flat! She knows of those things, but the only thing that meant anything to her for a long time was you. But that's changed! The memory held inside the digivice is so pure and so perfect that given all this time, she has matured like a real human!"
Palmon shivered. "I don't care if she's just a memory!" She swung her vines heavily, slapping the cat digimon away from her. "Mimi is Mimi! That's all I care about! If she's scared, I'll stay by her side! If she's lonely, I'll do whatever it takes to make her happy! If she's missing the memories we used to share, that's fine! We'll make new ones!"
Tailmon stood, holding her stiffening arm where the thorns had gouged her. "Do you really think that Mimi would want you to do all this for her? Wasn't the crest of Purity about...shedding those kind of selfish feelings?"
"You don't get it…" Her face crumpled, and she quickly covered it, even dropping Hikari's digivice to do so. She was terrified of being seen so weak by someone who understood what she'd done. "You don't understand… Without her I…!" She turned and ran, leaving Tailmon behind. "I just want to stay with her!"
She sped through the dark smoke and the flames, ignorant of the burns she sustained. Palmon's only concern was getting to that ray of light before it took Mimi away. Even if this Mimi was a ghost or a shade or just some lingering thought left in the digivices like Tailmon said, she was still Mimi. The Mimi that Palmon had waited what felt like an eternity for, through tens of thousands snows and rains and sunny days, and the Digital World centuries that used to pass in the space of mere days for the real world. How could she ever be content to just say goodbye to such a precious existence? She had done it once, but she had gripped tightly to the idea that they would meet again someday, and they had. How was she supposed to cope with that life of waiting knowing that the day she met Mimi again would never come?
That just..wasn't a life.
She escaped the darkness, and was nearly blinded. The ray of light was already gone, but the swarm of shining butterflies had lighted everywhere, and similarly bright objects she didn't recognize had appeared all over, blending in with Mimi's garden like they belonged there. Feathers and whistles. The sultry sound of a harmonica. Strange arrangements of flowers. A photo of a young man she didn't recognize. Those were not things of Mimi's garden, but when they sang, Mimi's garden sang along.
Her eyes adjusted, and she saw the crowd of human partners where the butterflies had been. Unlike the objects, they were not still. They were in motion, like small repetitive holographs that seemed to shift just a second into the future every time they replayed themselves. Watching them was like watching the same few seconds of a home video play and rewind over and over again, with an ever so slight deviation every time.
In the center of that shifting sea of partners who might as well have been memories trapped in the atmosphere, Hikari was solid. The digivice had apparently remembered her strange link to the light of the digital world, because she appeared to be basking in it. Beside her, Mimi was riding the thin line between being there and existing…wherever it was that the other partners were. She was there, but only barely, like a hastily scribbled afterthought that kept phasing in and out. She had a rock in her hand, and the damaged digivice lay defenseless on the ground in front of her.
Palmon made a final dash, putting herself between the digivice and the rock. Her mind was blank. In front of this person who meant everything to her, she could not find anything meaningful to say. So she begged like a child.
"Don't leave me!"
Mimi shifted. It seemed like her breath came from everywhere, and moved through her rather than into her. "Palmon…" She smiled, but it was a sad expression that made Palmon feel exposed. "No more digimon should die because of us. So we're stopping."
Something tugged unmercifully in Palmon's chest, and the flower on her head shriveled in dread. Her voice came out a harsh whisper. "No…"
"I don't want anyone to get hurt anymore. So I'll just…stay here."
"No…No, no, NO! Don't talk like that!" She touched Mimi's face, fruitlessly willing her back to the present. "You're young. You don't have that awful disease anymore, so don't make me listen to you talk like this!"
"Here..." Mimi took off her hat, and in an achingly slow motion, plopped it on Palmon's head. "You...need this more than I do."
Mimi blurred out, and Palmon desperately wrapped her arms around the girl, unaware that it was only her tear-drowned eyes that had caused the illusion that she was disappearing. "Please...I'm here. I'm right here, Mimi. I'm sorry. I won't do bad things anymore. Just don't leave me. Please don't leave me."
A single butterfly lighted on Mimi's hand. She wrapped it around Palmon, embracing her partner. "It's okay, Palmon."
Mimi's spare hand, still holding the rock, crashed down for the last time. The digivice came apart with an inappropriately terse series of cracks, its mysterious components spilling out of its shell.
The alien objects and blurred memories infesting Mimi's garden scattered. Without the garden, they were nothing but butterflies, swirling away into the sky.
Palmon tightened her arms, but she was left squeezing the empty air. Even the hat had vanished.
Mimi was gone with the rest of them.
Tailmon appeared mere seconds later, with Hikari's digivice in hand. She stood over Palmon, but she was looking up at the dispersing butterflies. "You kept her here for so long that she realized on her own that her presence was abnormal...and that she was hurting you by staying. Oikawa isn't quite sentient...so when I realized that Hikari's light attracted him the first time...I used her to call him here. So that Mimi would know she was going where she was meant to be from the moment you planted her...and so you would see it for yourself. She's a part of the Digital World now, Palmon. A lingering thought full of her hopes and dreams that lives all over our world, just like Oikawa."
She reached out a paw, and touched Palmon's back. "Live, Palmon. Live to see the effect she has on our world."
Palmon shivered, and extracted herself from the dusty sand. Completely ignoring Tailmon, she scooped up the pieces of Mimi's broken digivice.
"Mimi..."
At last, she cracked. She fell back to the sand, calling her partner's name over and over in long, braying sobs.
Tailmon shook her, called out to her, and tried to lift her, but the plant digimon's spirit was crushed beyond hope. She didn't resist Tailmon, but refused to lend herself to the effort of moving. She remained loud and inconsolable, despite Tailmon's effort to wait until she calmed down.
I knew this happened...Tailmon thought sadly. But I always thought we would be okay because of just how much waiting we did... We had made peace once, with the idea of never seeing our partners again, so I though we'd all get through this alright.
She knelt beside Palmon, and held her limp form up. With her so close, she could hear how raw the digimon had worn her throat just to cry.
Tailmon placed a paw over Palmon's eyes. "I've got you... I promise to find you, so let's try again. If it doesn't work, we'll leave you alone. We'll let you forget...forever."
A moment later, Palmon's cries were replaced by a barren wind, and Tailmon was alone on the sands of the Gear Savannah.
