14. A New World
The Crest of Light is a powerful thing.
It has the power to rewrite reality itself, to break the laws of nature. Or to be precise, of a Digital nature. There are no limits in a world that desires the light, that yearns for the darkness.
So when Hikari, Child of Light, of a kin to the small child bleeding from a wound that closes like the winking of an eye, calls for something, for anything, the world answers and it answers with joy and offerings.
Offerings to a god.
In irony a fallen angel rises from the depths of the cliffs and Mugendramon is cut to pieces like someone's ugly doll with a toddler holding scissors. The comparison is not entertaining.
But its source, a beautiful, fallen woman, dives down and rises up, continuing. Gash after gash wrecks the land.
The Chosen, in terror, make to flee.
Hikari stands alone in the chaos, alone in the destruction and chaos, staring up with clenched fists and bloodred eyes.
Then, wrists first, Daigo watches Maki rise. Her head lolls on its shoulders for a moment, snapping up and then showing eyes glowing with a contented rainbow of light. She doesn't look at him, not once. She doesn't call for Bakumon, not once.
This is wrong. This is completely wrong.
"This is what you wanted, isn't it?"
She's not speaking to him. She is looking at Hikari. She can't be speaking to him, to them. It's not possible. It's not right.
But then she turns and looks his way, haunting iridescence. "You called for me didn't you?" she said. Her voice is soft and sweet and low. She knows who she is talking to in a way she couldn't have known in life. There was so much more happiness to be found here. So much more relief, delight. "You wanted me to live, didn't you?" Her eyes flick above Daigo's messy hair and blistered feet to Bakumon's small frozen form emitting heavy white clouds of smoke.
"Hime..." Bakumon's blue eyes water with tears, watching the bloody wound close and stitch up without any awareness whatsoever..
"Niji." She looks at him, then up to Bakumon. "Bakumon."
Maki smiles, a small, youthful smile. Then the tears brush her eyes like eye shadow. "Why?" she whispers. "Why?"
…
Hikari doesn't understand.
This happens to her very often, her lack of understanding blinds her, not so much to reality. It just makes it harder for her to see possibilities. She has no reason to, in the end. Not really. She is just too tired to try. She doesn't want to try. Why bother?
Because while she is not Taichi and does not know this teacher like he, Yamato-san, and Sora-san do, she understands that this is a betrayal to everything that makes the Chosen who they are. She understands this much. Daigo-san caused this reboot for one person's sake. She understands this. She feels this, as the crest allows. The Crest makes her see why it all feels so necessary.
She cannot forgive it.