Words: 11,666/12,691||Chapters: 11/12

In between one breath and the next, all the pain stopped. Yamato drew in gasping gouts of air, trying to think and not succeeding very well at it. He was with Piemon. He didn't want to be. Piemon had Takeru and Patamon. Patamon was an egg. Piemon threatened Takeru with something Yamato didn't want to consider even in the slightest.

Piemon threw him around like a rag doll. All the power that he could just touch on the edges of now wasn't enough to protect him.

And then… all that pain. Piemon did something.

Yamato breathed again. Someone was there. Someone other than him, someone other than Piemon.

His first thought was that somehow Takeru was awake and free and he brought his head up sharply in the hopes of seeing his brother.

What he saw wasn't Takeru. Who it was dawned on him in a heartbeat but he couldn't believe his own eyes. What he saw couldn't have been, and yet there it was.

Exactly his height. The hair was different – coal-black – the eyes were different – scarlet red like Piemon's – but they stood exactly the same and every feature Yamato knew on his own face he saw on this one.

Only there were differences there too. This person, this face, smirked as Piemon did, contemptuous and mocking, and he stood wrapped in armor as black as his hair, tinted scarlet and gold.

"So we meet at last," the other said, and even his voice sounded like Yamato's. "I've been looking forward to this."

Yamato stared. He wasn't sure of what else he could do. Words stumbled their way from his lips. "Who are you?"

"I'm you. Or you're me. Frankly, I don't know how to describe it myself and I don't think it matters. But if you want a name, then the one I prefer is Anbumon."

Yamato shook his head, trying to catch up and not doing a very good job of it. "I thought -"

"That was your name? It is. I told you that I'm you and you're me. The difference is that I'm the part of you that's completely Piemon's son." Anbumon smiled a dangerous smile and between his armored hands there suddenly played a long, slim knife. The embossing on the edge wasn't the Crest of Friendship. Yamato didn't know what it was. "The part of you that you don't want to exist. I've been asleep all this time, but when Father called to us, I started to wake up. And now..." He raised his head with that smile growing madder by the moment. "Now it's my turn."

Yamato shook his head even harder. He didn't understand this and he didn't care to. He wasn't sure if he needed to. "You're not going to do anything."

"I'm going to do everything that I want to do. Quite a few things that you've wanted to and never did." Anbumon leaned over. "I'm going to definitely enjoy meeting Yagami Taichi. How long have you wanted him? Weeks? Months?" He chuckled, scarlet eyes mocking. "Years?"

Yamato didn't wait another moment. He charged forward, his own blades appearing in his hands, and drove them towards Anbumon.

His doppelganger dodged out of the way, twice as graceful as he was, and brought one hand up to shove at Yamato, sending him stumbling. A quick blow to his stomach sent the wind flying out of Yamato and he stumbled, pulling himself away.

Can't let him win. Can't let him hurt anyone. Taichi...

What would happen if this monster and Piemon joined forces? No. That couldn't happen. He wouldn't let that happen.

Another dragged in gulp of air and he pelted forward one more time. Anbumon didn't move this time. This time, his armored fist landed right in Yamato's solar plexus and Yamato forgot how to breathe for a crucial few seconds.

When his vision cleared and he could see what was going on around him again, he saw bars. Everywhere he looked prison bars surrounded him. He grabbed them and yelped as pain shot through him at the touch, falling backwards. He had only a few paced that he could move in this prison, wherever he was. He reached for that power he'd only just begun to tap into and found it wasn't there. All there was, was emptiness.

"As long as you're behind those bars, you can't do anything," Anbumon said, standing almost within arm's reach, if there'd been room enough for him to put his arm between the bars. "And you're going to stay behind those..." Anbumon tapped his fingers on the bars. They didn't seem to harm him at all. "I think forever will be a very good time-frame."

"You won't get away with this," Yamato hissed. "What, you think that you can … take my place? That people won't know?"

Anbumon threw his head back and laughed, the sound echoing back and forth in a way that bid fair to drive Yamato mad from it alone.

"Do you think I care if they know? I want them to know who I am – what I am. Because I am you. I'm not a copy. I'm not something you can ever get rid of. I was born when you were born. I won't die until you die." He started to turn around. "If you don't believe me, just watch. You'll learn soon enough. I'm the part of you that you never wanted to acknowledge, and now I'm going to have all the fun you never did."

He took a few steps, then looked back over his shoulder. "Don't worry. You'll see me again. But you'll always see me from that side of the bars. I spent my entire existence there. Get used to it."

Yamato snarled, too furious to even articular, as the other laughed again, then turned and walked away. He vanished a heartbeat later, there one moment and gone the next. Yamato stared at the place where he'd been and growled, reaching again for the bars and again being repulsed by them.

Takeru. Taichi. Koushirou. Sora. Mimi. Jou. Hikari. His friends. Daisuke. Miyako. Iori. The ones that trusted them, that looked up to them. Younger friends, but friends all the same.

Ken. His brother? He still wasn't sure. But to deal with what he'd done as the Kaiser and then this turned up?

I have to get out of here. Somehow.

To Be Continued

Notes: All right. One more chapter.