Chapter 29: The Unification Wave
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Disclaimer: I don't own Digimon.
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He didn't like sleeping on park benches, but he did because he had nowhere else to go after being kicked out of his house for being a Tamer. He really missed his warm bed and seeing his parents, but he couldn't go back to that now. Instead, he was on the bench, waking up sore from a restless night.
Perhaps he should have taken up the offers of his teammates to stay at their houses. After all, it wasn't as if he had anywhere else to go.
He stretched out as he sat up, trying to get rid of a cramp in his back. "Okay, so anything go on?" he asked his partner, a samurai-like digimon that was standing next to his bench.
"No. Some hoodlums approached your bench, but they didn't try anything," Kotemon responded.
His partner, a black male of about thirteen smiled at him. "Good to hear, buddy," he responded, pulling out his backpack from under the seat and putting his blue hat on.
"So, what are we going to do today, master?" Kotemon inquired.
"Today? Well, I was just thinking of finding a place to cool off, maybe go swimming." The black kid wiped the sweat off his brow. "Yeah, we got to get out of this heat, man!" He also felt his stomach gurgle. It was time to head to a fast food place for some breakfast.
That was when his partner stopped for a second before turning around. Kotemon's Tamer just looked back to see a really muscular blond man walking toward him with a red, dragon-like digimon close behind. "Hi, you must be Matthias!" the blond greeted.
"Call me Matt," the black kid responded, his hand reaching toward his digivice.
"Oh, okay, Matt. The name's Mr. Immortal and I'm the he…" The blond was interrupted by Matt.
"No way, man! That's insane! I didn't know that I was even important enough for Mr. Immortal to even notice me!" The black boy's smile was extremely wide. "Don't tell me you're here to rescue me from being homeless or something."
The blond chuckled for a second before speaking again. "Uh, yeah, in a way. I'm recruiting people to help with something called the Tamers' Brigade. It's just a little side-project."
"Yeah, you can join if you want," Shoutmon added.
"Sounds cool. So, where's this Tamer Brigade meet, anyway?" Matt inquired.
"Um, master, are you sure this is a good idea?" Kotemon asked, pulling onto his partner's sleeve.
"Oh, heck yeah, it is!" Matt exclaimed, overjoyed at the prospect of getting out of this heat.
Mr. Immortal grinned back. "I have a way of getting to the Brigade Compound instantaneously," the blond said, pulling out his digivice and pressing a few buttons. "Just hold on tight."
In an instant, they were gone.
###
"I can't believe it. He had a list with a hundred names on it and he only got twenty," Katarina complained angrily to Muchomon as she watched the Tamer of Forever play a game of basketball with some of the kids he gathered together.
"Well, he can't win them all. Plus, it's their choice," the red bird replied. He was bored out of his skull waiting alongside his partner of eight years.
"But still, how could they refuse him?" the Greek woman objected. "He's smart, he's cool and he's considered the number one Tamer according to Echelon."
Muchomon found that hard to believe. "He hasn't even reached Champion again yet," he objected.
"But he got to Mega before," the twenty-seven year-old responded. "Still, that doesn't change the fact that a lot of those kids that turned him down were all homeless."
The woman shut up when she saw Antonio walk up to the doorway where she was leaning against a bulkhead. He was wearing a light-blue dress-shirt and a dark-blue tie along with some black pants and dress shoes.
"So, who's winning?" the curly-haired Chilean inquired before biting into a protein bar. The Greek woman just shrugged.
"I honestly have no idea. I've never really even paid attention to basketball that much," Katarina replied. "I would assume Mr. Immortal would have to be the one winning, though."
Antonio chuckled a little bit in disbelief. "You really worship him, don't you?"
The brown-skinned woman glanced over at the Chilean in surprise. "Well, I don't really."
"Okay, I'll have to tell you that although Al's 4000 years old, he's never really been a sports person," Antonio explained to her. "In fact, he looks like he's just hanging around on the sidelines."
Katarina was surprised. The fat man was right. "And you are?"
Antonio shook his head. "I play a game from time to time and I'm a bit more involved, but I've always been more of a soccer guy than a basketball guy." Then the heavy man chuckled a bit. "Now, it's definitely a sight to see when he's playing that one. He's always lazily playing defender." At one point, he accidentally let Mr. Immortal's real name slip instead of a pronoun.
The woman rolled her eyes. "And you call yourself his friend…"
Antonio smirked before laughing. "Hey, just 'cause I'm his friend doesn't mean I don't notice his faults. He's a quirky guy and he's definitely not perfect despite living for 4000 years."
"And his name's …?" the woman inquired, surprised at that one.
"I take it you were expecting something more exotic like En Sabah Nur?" the heavy man joked. Katarina was just confused since she didn't understand the reference. Noting this, Antonio decided to explain himself. "It's the birth name of Apocalypse from X-Men."
"You're a comic book person?" the woman asked. Maybe that's why you're not married.
"Not really. Just caught the 90's cartoon," Antonio explained to her and she chuckled a bit.
"Well, they do say that we nerds will take over the world someday," Katarina joked, causing Antonio to smile.
"I guess. So, what do you do at Saxum?" the heavy man asked.
"This and that. Mainly I monitor the skies of Barcelona for digital anomalies as well as write up various programs while I do that to help with the workload," the Greek woman explained.
"Hmm… interesting. My friend Gorou actually monitors activities in Tokyo part of the time and that's what he said he does," Antonio confirmed.
Katarina was surprised. "Isn't he the one who woke up from a coma just before the D-Reaper invasion began?" she inquired, her mouth open in amazement. She could not believe that Antonio could possibly know Shibumi.
"Oh yeah, we were actually roommates in college. He encouraged me to major in Computer Science," the curly-haired man explained. "After all, having that wrestling scholarship only got me so far."
The woman looked dumbfounded. "You wrestled?"
"Oh yeah, though I don't really fit into my old wrestling uniform anymore," Antonio admitted, clenching his teeth. "Believe me; you wouldn't want to see me in one anyway."
"No, you wouldn't." The duo glanced over at Mr. Immortal who was sweating like a pig and panting. "I hate basketball."
"You barely did anything," the heavy man remarked with a scowl on his face before switching to a smile. "Well, it's good to know that despite you having lived so long, there's something I'm definitely better at."
The blond's eyes widened. "Alright. Well, I guess I'll start training these kids a bit more tomorrow and hopefully even get Shoutmon to Champion… finally."
"You go do that," Muchomon said from on the ground.
"Well, I'll see you around, Katarina," the heavy man told the dark-skinned woman with a smile.
"Yeah, see you later," she responded, smiling slightly herself. She and Muchomon watched as the duo walked off, apparently about to discuss something related to the Brigade.
"Why don't you get with him? You're never going to get Mr. Immortal to marry you, anyway?" the plump red bird asked, getting a shudder from the Greek girl.
"Um, look at him. He's not what I call attractive," Katarina replied to her digimon. Then again, the digimon probably didn't know too much about what humans found attractive.
"But you get along, right? Plus, who knows, maybe he'll actually ask you out," Muchomon responded suavely.
###
"By the way, man, I found something while looking through the files to translate," Antonio told the man as soon as he reached the locker where he kept his normal clothes. The blond immortal glanced at his friend with a curious look.
"What did you find?" Mr. Immortal inquired. He hadn't looked at the files for the Regeneration program for thousands of years, so he had very little idea about what the heavy Chilean was talking about. There were so many sub-programs that he'd forgotten about them.
"What does the program named do?" Antonio asked. Mr. Immortal's eyes widened at the revelation.
"That…" The man took off his shirt and paused for a brief second. "That's something you shouldn't translate. It was an idea I had for in case I didn't have my partner with me, but it's incredibly dangerous. Spirit Evolution's by far a safer alternative."
Antonio wasn't too surprised. His friend actually explained to him what Spirit Evolution was one time so he already knew about that. "The comments said that testing the program revealed a number of faults that needed to be corrected."
"Yeah, and I didn't have time to correct them," the blond replied. "I developed that program during my last days traveling with the Watchmaker." He chuckled a bit. "Wow, and to think I tested it."
"What does it do?" the black-haired man inquired, frowning.
"It gives you the strength of a Mega-level digimon but at the same time it causes massive cellular decay due to the power output. The one time I tested it, I had to turn it off after two minutes once I realized the arm that I was using had gone numb and was starting to turn grey." The blond shuddered at the long-suppressed memory before taking off the rest of his clothes and heading into the shower. Antonio decided that was time to exit the locker-room.
At least he knew not to translate that program from Python to DevScript.
###
Outside the locker-room, Antonio ran into Katarina again. The woman was obviously hoping for Mr. Immortal, but that didn't happen. "Is he coming out soon?"
"Give him at least five minutes," the heavy man responded. "Have you seen my partner anywhere?"
The dark woman shook her head. "No, I haven't."
"I think Veemon was playing with the other digimon," Muchomon informed.
"Oh, okay." The man then hurried off before stopping partway down the hall. He then turned around and asked a question. "Are you doing anything tonight?"
The woman was surprised. "Um, no, why?"
"Ι'm going to a friend's house for dinner, if you'd like to come," Antonio responded.
"Sorry, I'd rather not," Katarina replied.
"Okay, suit yourself. Have a good evening," the heavy man said, turning around and running off. As he ran, Katarina found her partner elbowing her leg, prompting a glare from the dark-skinned Greek woman.
"You should have gone," the bird teased her and she rolled her eyes.
"Katarina?" The woman turned around to see Mr. Immortal who had a worried expression on his face. "I got a message from Jeri Katou. Kurita got arrested and is now in Hypnos custody."
The woman had a look of shock on her face. "What? Why?"
"Apparently his brother told them he was helping me," the ancient man explained. He had a decision to make. "Did you see Antonio?"
"Yeah, he's headed off to pick up Veemon and go home," the woman explained. She didn't know Kurita, but she figured that the eighteen-year-old was important to the team. "You want me to come with?"
"Sure," Mr. Immortal responded. Despite their tension, he actually liked having the woman around, though he'd prefer that she stop pursuing him. "And Antonio's good friends with Mizuno, so he should be able to help as well."
The woman nodded. This was going to be interesting.
The duo headed straight for where Antonio's partner was supposed to be, namely the courtyard which had a playground built for the digimon as well as any poor kids who were young enough to want to play on them. Then again, the teenagers didn't seem to mind messing around on the jungle gyms either.
However, Antonio wasn't there. Instead, the duo encountered Matt who stopped them. "Hey, what up, you guys?" he asked, smiling widely.
"Not much, we're just here to pick up Antonio," Mr. Immortal explained, somewhat in a hurry.
"Antonio? I'm not sure if I met him yet," the black kid remarked, scratching his chin. "What does he look like?"
"He's a big heavy guy with curly black hair," the Forever Tamer responded and Matt's eyes lit up.
"Oh, him, yeah, he just left by teleport. Man, I swear I've seen him before. So, when can I get one of those?" the black kid asked with a pleading smile. "Come on, it'll be great. First stop: Amsterdam!"
The two adults rolled their eyes at the kid. "Okay, we need to catch up with him because there's an emergency in Japan," Mr. Immortal explained.
"Emergency? Japan? Can I come?" Matt inquired, ecstatic. He had always wanted to go to Japan.
"Yes, it will be good training," the kid's partner Kotemon added in a stereotypical samurai voice.
The digimon had a point though Mr. Immortal had an idea for a first mission for the Brigade that didn't involve fighting, but rather entailed helping out people dealing with floods in India.
Then again, Matt seemed kind of antsy. "Okay, you can come along. First stop is Chile, though," Mr. Immortal replied, getting a smile from Katarina.
"Chile? That's pretty cool. I wonder if I'll see my old buddy Eddy over there," the black kid told himself. Mr. Immortal wondered if he was talking about Antonio's son, but he didn't push it.
###
Unfortunately for the duo, by the time the attempted to contact Antonio, he had apparently went straight home and left, leaving his digivice behind for Veemon to answer it. It only took the heavy man about ten minutes to travel to his friend's house by motorcycle.
Strangely, the man couldn't keep his mind off of Katarina's rejection. He didn't intend to ask her out. In fact, he just asked the girl to come with him as a friend.
Soon, he reached the house, a simple two-story building in a somewhat better-off section of Santiago. The man then proceeded to walk up to the front of the house and knock. After hearing the words "Come in!" from inside in Spanish, he opened the door and spotted the friend he was visiting.
"How's it going?" Antonio greeted with a big smile. His friend was a lanky man with thinning, light-brown hair, blue eyes and a big nose who smiled back equally as wide.
"As good as can be," the man responded. "Come on, let's sit down and talk for a few minutes. Rosa's still making dinner." The man led Antonio into the living room; walking with a bit of a limp due to a gunshot wound he suffered a month and a half earlier. The man then plopped onto the couch.
"You recovering alright, Rafael?" the black-haired man inquired, getting a shrug.
"More or less. I feel more sorry for you," Rafael responded. "You lost your son that day."
"Lost track of him. Last I checked, he was in the digital world," Antonio responded. "It had to be worse for you, getting shot at like that."
"Right in the leg!" the man complained before grinning like crazy again and speaking rapidly. "Can you imagine my boss's reaction when he heard that I had to go to the hospital for it? Thankfully he was understanding and gave me paid leave."
Antonio nodded. "How's Gustavo doing?" he inquired.
Rafael smiled back at him. "Gus's doing well. Oh, that's something I wanted to talk to you about." The man then got up and walked over to the stairs that were in the entryway. "Gustavo! Come down here and bring your friend too!"
Antonio thought at first that the man was talking about Mario, but the blond Chilean kid game down with a different sort of friend. This one was pink with wings and claws, but despite those small appendages it was the definition of cute. "Oh, hey, Tonio, how are you doing today, sir?" the kid asked, using the formal form of address, usted.
"You don't have to be so formal," the heavy man responded, inviting the kid to use the tú form instead. "That's a digimon, isn't he?"
"Certainly," the pink thing responded. "Piximon at your service!"
Antonio recognized the thing as an Ultimate level. How come Saxum didn't detect him? "When did you meet this little guy?" the heavy man asked.
"Two days ago. I was walking home from school when this weird guy just handed him to me," Gus explained. The heavy man had a look of dread on his face.
"So, what do you think?" Rafael inquired. The look on the face gave the impression that the man was thinking: Get this thing out of my house right now.
"Well, he seems friendly enough," Antonio responded to his friend of ten years. "Maybe your son can keep him but not fight enemy digimon. Does he have a digivice?"
"Oh, sure, I keep it on me all the time!" the kid exclaimed, going into his pocket and pulling out a pink digivice with a yellow ring in the middle. Antonio had to chuckle at that. "Don't like the color? Me neither. I was thinking of painting it red or something."
It was then that there was a knock at the door. The head of the household got up and headed for the door, despite his visible limp. The man opened it up to reveal a dark-skinned woman who he just guessed was a Mestizo, a blond man and a dark-haired kid of African descent that was about his son's age, something that wasn't seen often in Chile. The woman was holding up a badge identifying her as a Saxum operative.
"Oh, Saxum. You come here because you detected my son's digivice?" the man inquired, smiling but feeling like they were going to take his kid away.
"No, we're here for Antonio Urrutía. Have you seen him?" the woman asked in a Castilian accent.
"Oh, yes! Antonio, a beautiful Spanish woman's here for you!" Rafael called into the house and Antonio walked up to the front door.
"Katarina?" he asked.
"It turns out there's a bit of an emergency," Mr. Immortal said in a Mexican accent. "Kurita got arrested by Hypnos."
The heavyset man was shocked. Crap, and it was probably because I gave him Mr. Immortal's address. "Alright. I guess this mean's I'll have to take a rain check, Rafael," Antonio told the man, disappointed.
"And by the way, I'm actually Greek, not Spanish. I just happen to live in Spain," the woman informed the brown-haired man with a smile.
"You two dating?" Rafael inquired, pointing at Antonio and Katarina, getting negatives from the two of them.
"He did ask me out earlier, but I politely declined," the woman replied, getting a bit of a dirty look from Antonio.
Antonio was taken aback by that. "I didn't ask you out. I just wanted to know if you wanted to hang out with me and some friends," the heavy man corrected.
"Oh, it seemed like you were asking me out to me," she responded.
"Can't we just get going?" Mr. Immortal requested, in a hurry. "I got Veemon with me along with your digivice." The group then walked out and away from Rafael's house.
"So, what's the plan, exactly?" Antonio inquired.
"Simple: I'm going to turn myself in," Mr. Immortal responded, adjusting his goggles, giving a determined smile and then punching in the coordinates on his digivice and teleporting the group to Japan.
###
An alarm got his attention during class, showing up as a vibration on his digivice. Ultimately, the program was a slight modification of one of Taizou's newest ones that was designed to notify any of the Tamers of a Rogue Tamer close by. Instead, Tadashi modified it slightly, with the unwitting help of Taizou, so that it searched for Antonio Urrutía's presence as well. All it took was adding his name to a list variable inside the program.
Upon seeing what his digivice said, the blond asked to go to the bathroom and then headed straight out the school's front doors, running past a hall monitor who yelled out after him as he did so. He hoped that his plan worked and that he could finally get rid of the idiot that blighted his path to the digital world and to Takato and the others.
He checked the location of the Tamers and smiled.
###
It was late morning in Japan when Mr. Immortal and the three other Tamers and their partners arrived in front of the Hypnos building. The quartet immediately walked up to the front desk and, after getting directions from the startled receptionist up front, went up the elevator to the floor where Hypnos was located.
After it stopped, they walked out, determined. Luckily, Mizuno was the one in charge at that hour and he seemed to be up to very little other than designing a couple of new programs for the digivice.
The man noticed when the others came in. "Oh, hey," he greeted them with a smile. "Antonio! It's great to see you!"
The large man smiled back as well before embracing the man in a bear hug. "How's it going, Gorou?"
"Alright. So you heard about Kurita?" the man inquired, losing his smile.
"Yeah," Mr. Immortal said. "And I'm willing to turn myself in in exchange for his freedom." The man heard the door open behind him and turned slightly.
Mizuno nodded. "Unfortunately, something has happened. It turns out that…"
"Antonio! Watch out!" Katarina shouted and the heavy man barely got out of the way of the fire blast that nearly hit him. Soon after though, another fire blast headed straight for him, causing Antonio to brace himself. The attack never came. Instead, Mr. Immortal blocked it, destroying a large part of his right arm in the process, up to about half way between the elbow and the shoulder. Katarina screamed and so did Matt. The group looked over at the culprit and saw Tadashi, looking angry.
He hadn't expected the fat man to have allies and he hadn't expected Mr. Immortal to jump in front of him like that.
That made him angry. And his anger corrupted his crest of Hope into the crest of Rage.
"Flaremon digivolve to… Firamon Whispered!" Firamon had a blue hue instead of the orange hue of his normal vaccine counterpart. Also, his fire burned hotter and the digimon was completely feral and out of control.
And Mr. Immortal's digivice shined as well, causing his partner to digivolve.
DIGIVOLUTION_
"Shoutmon digivolve to… BlitzShoutmon!" The new form was yellow with a red stripe around his waist. Also, his V-Shaped ears changed slightly so that they resembled lightning bolts.
Matthias had never seen such a digimon before, so he took out his digivice to check out info on it. "BlitzShoutmon, Champion Level, Vaccine Attribute. Attacks: Flash Punch, Lightning Tornado. Far out, man!"
"No kidding," Antonio muttered as Mr. Immortal fell to the ground, passing out from the shock of having most of his arm blown off. In the meantime, the data inside his body worked to harvest massive amounts of muscle and fat cells, converting them into stem cells before rapidly regenerating the arm. Still, it took massive amounts of energy, so that meant that he was bound to be out for a while.
That gave BlitzShoutmon time to do his dirty work.
"So, you think that we should help? After all, he is only a Champion," Katarina inquired of Antonio.
"Sure, as long as your partner's higher forms aren't too big for this building," the heavy man responded. "It's alright with you, right Gorou?"
The strawberry blond turned to his old roommate and nodded. "Just try to take this battle out of the building. The whole incident means that Tadashi is to be classified as a Rogue Tamer."
"Alright, ready Kotemon? Super Digivolution Activate!" Matt yelled out, letting the crest of Tenacity to shine forth its white light from the orange and white digivice.
"Kotemon digivolve to… Asuramon!"
"Digivolution Activate!" Katarina shouted.
"Muchomon digivolve to… Flarerizamon!"
"It sucks that my forms are too big for this," Veemon commented.
"Don't worry, you'll get your turn," Antonio assured him. "By the way, Gorou, what did you want to tell us about Kurita?"
"He went missing. He just… disappeared and so did Rinchei," the man answered, disturbed.
Just then, BlitzShoutmon ran at Flaremon at an extremely high speed, arching his trajectory so that the humanoid lion was shot out the window and into the air. Then the dragon-man jumped back to the building, heading straight up as Flaremon followed him.
###
It took twelve hours for him to heal completely, though time passed far faster for him than anyone else around him. When he awoke, everyone was standing perfectly still. He knew exactly what was going on.
"Okay, Old Man, I know you're behind this," Mr. Immortal said. Unfortunately for him, he had lost most of his muscle mass and his shirt was now a couple sizes too big for him as well as his pants. He realized he'd need to stop by a store or at least put on a belt since his waist had gone down to 32 inches and he was having a hard time holding them up. He felt as if fifty years of working out and gaining muscle had gone to waste.
The Watchmaker showed up, seemingly out of thin air. Behind him was his partner's Ultimate form, Vremyamon. The digimon was a tall humanoid with copper armor and a small head that was barely visible above the shoulders and seemed to consist only of a couple of eyes underneath a small, brown helmet. The digimon was also holding a staff with a clock on the end and he was wearing a long, blue cape on his back.
"Oh, good, you're finally awake," the old man remarked.
"Yeah, you kind of helped with that, though I could really use a sandwich." The skinny blond tasted the inside of his mouth. "And a toothbrush."
"That will have to wait, unfortunately. I'm sure you deduced one of the reasons I had you set up the Tamers' Brigade."
"The Unification's coming, isn't it?" Mr. Immortal guessed, getting a nod from the old man.
"In fact, you're only about ten minutes away from it," the old man remarked, his face turning somber. "If you look closely, you can see shadows of the timeline that is about to be absorbed into this one."
He was right. Mr. Immortal noticed translucent ghosts of people walking around, mostly likely normal office workers working for an organization that simply scanned the net and looked at people's e-mails. "The other timeline doesn't have Tamers, does it?"
"It has three Digidestined, I guess you could say, along with the friends of one of the Digidestined, who I guess could be considered Tamers," the Watchmaker explained. "You realize that if you stay here during Unification, your alternate selves will all be absorbed into you as well, don't you?"
Mr. Immortal nodded somberly. "I was afraid of that."
"That's why I'm taking you with me," the Watchmaker said. "Don't worry; you can bring Shoutmon as well. By the way, I have something else that I want to show you before I take you to the near future."
The blond turned to the old bearded man. "What is it? And why won't you take me just after the Unification?"
"You're holding them back, all of them. Pretty soon you'll be able to reach Mega and if you do that, the Triumvirate's armies won't stand a chance."
"But that's a good thing, right?" Mr. Immortal asked, getting a shaking of the head in response.
"No, because in a number of possible scenarios… You die." The blond looked at the old man in shock as if it were some sort of impossibility. The truth was that despite the sorrows he had accumulated over the years, he enjoyed life. He enjoyed collecting things, learning new things about the world around him and meeting new people. Now he saw that that wasn't going to happen.
He frowned at the thought. No matter how bad life got, death was worse. At the same time, he knew there was no hell, so there wasn't a possibility of going there. Still, he couldn't stand the thought of not existing.
"What do you want to show me?" he asked.
"Come with me," the old man beckoned, leading his former traveling companion into the shop that had materialized inside Hypnos HQ.
###
A few minutes later, the two men were at a house. Mr. Immortal walked down the driveway, not knowing what to expect, but he knocked. He had to guess that he was in a fairly tropical region, but he had no idea where.
The door opened up and a brown-skinned woman answered. Mr. Immortal instantly recognized her as Katarina despite the addition of thirteen years and a few pounds. The woman suddenly dropped her phone at the sight of the man and hugged him.
"Mr. Immortal… You're alive!" she exclaimed before pulling back. "Where have you been all these years?"
"The old man decided to take me to the future from just before the Unification," the blond explained. He was surprised to see everything like this. The woman nodded in understanding.
"I figured that was what happened," she responded, giving him a smile. "It's a shame I haven't amounted to much after the Triumvirate war ended."
"What… What have you been up to?" the blond inquired.
"Not much. I have a couple of kids from one of the timelines that merged into yours, two beautiful daughters and I had to take care of them. You remember Carlos, don't you?"
Mr. Immortal smiled. "Yeah, I remember how you broke up with him when he proposed to you."
"That was a regret that I may never let down, never mind that my parents wanted me to marry another Greek. Still, he left me in all those realities that I never met you in except for one where I married someone else." The woman was quite somber.
"You haven't married since then?" Mr. Immortal inquired, concerned for his friend.
She shook her head. "There was one man, but I simply couldn't let go of you, even though we had gotten so close. Last I checked on Facebook, he's still single too and he's a grandfather." She paused for a second. "That was probably my biggest regret, especially since we married in another reality and even had a son there. Now look at me. I'm old and you're still young."
Mr. Immortal snorted. "Forty is not old, Katarina. Now, if you asked me, I would tell you to call that man right now and tell him you want to start dating again."
The woman smiled. "I might try that, but I'm afraid." After a short pause, the woman took a deep breath and spoke to her friend. "You're traveling back in time, right?"
The blond nodded. "Why?"
"I want you to… to tell my past self to let go of you. Be tough with her. Tell her you hate her, even. I don't want her to make the same mistake I did."
Mr. Immortal didn't know what to think of that one, so he changed the subject. "How is everything between our world and the digital world?"
The woman's look became even more somber. "Not good. As far as we can tell, the digimon have gone almost completely extinct. It started after the end of the Triumvirate war when we all went back home. The anti-digimon groups had taken power and had gone as far as destroying as much of the digital world as possible."
Mr. Immortal stood in shock. After a couple seconds, he shook his head. "That's… that's genocide."
"They didn't care, especially not with that madman at the helm," the woman said. "They destroyed everything we accomplished."
"Hey, time's up!" the Watchmaker called out.
"Remember what I told you to do to my past self," the woman said, her face getting serious. "Tell her you don't want a relationship. Don't make her suffer the same fate I have."
Mr. Immortal nodded before heading back to the Clock Shop.
###
A few seconds later, he was back in his old time, standing where he was lying without an arm. Instantly, Katarina ran over and hugged him tightly.
He knew what to do, so he pushed her away. He was really hating this.
"Mr. Immortal, what's wrong?" she asked, taken aback.
"I'll tell you what's wrong: you've been pursuing me all these years, letting relationships fail because you loved me and yet I don't love you back. I hate you!" He was a good actor. He had to be after four thousand years.
"What?" Katarina was completely dumbfounded. She wondered what had to have happened to him that made him do this.
"I finally realize everything wrong. You are a psychotic, narcissistic stalker who won't take no for an answer even though I said it so many times. Just give it up! You're never going to be in a relationship with me, Katarina!" She stood there in shock.
And so did Antonio. "What the heck was that?" he asked, flabbergasted. "Did you get replaced by some duplicate or something? You're not acting yourself!"
He looked at his best friend. "Antonio, while you're in the Digital World, you're going to be running the Tamers' Brigade."
"I thought you said we weren't going to bring the Brigade with us!" the heavy man objected.
"We won't have much of a choice. As soon as you arrive, find the nearest shelter that you can use as a base and tell the other Brigade members to head straight there," the blond ordered before disappearing.
Katarina was crying. Antonio headed straight for her. "He didn't mean any of that."
"He's right, you know. I am a creepy, obsessive stalker and I have let relationships go by because of that, good ones too." She shook her head.
Antonio hugged her, letting her cry into his shoulder as he looked on.
###
On the roof, the battle continued. "V-Breath Arrow!" AeroVeedramon yelled, aiming straight at the enemy digimon. Flaremon simply dodged, but the attack distracted him just enough to receive a tackle from Flarerizamon and another attack from Asuramon.
"Asura God-Fist!" the four-armed digimon yelled, punching Flaremon all over with his powerful limbs.
Then the lion received another series of fist strikes from a certain yellow blur, BlitzShoutmon. "Flash Punch!" the yellow dragon yelled.
Flaremon fell to the ground after that one. "Why don't you use your Ultimate form?" AeroVeedramon inquired of Katarina's partner.
"Simple, that's because my Ultimate form is too slow and can't jump or dodge so easily," Flarerizamon. "Of course, if this digimon ends up grounded, I might use that form. Just gotta ask the missus for permission.
The lion-like Flaremon still got up before shooting more blue flames, despite the amount of damage he had already taken. "Can't this guy just give up?" AeroVeedramon asked, dodging a series of searing blue fireballs. "I'd hate to have to kill this guy."
"It almost seems like we don't have much of a choice," BlitzShoutmon commented as he dodged the attacks easily. "There's no way he's going to listen to reason."
"Shoutmon, we need to leave in just a couple minutes," the yellow digimon heard coming from inside his head.
"I guess my partner wants us to hurry up," the digimon commented before realizing what that meant: his partner was okay. Somehow he had recovered far quicker than he expected. "Let's end this! Worst comes to worst, somebody can try to resurrect him or something, but in my opinion Tadashi shouldn't be a Tamer in the first place."
AeroVeedramon nodded.
"Lightning Tornado!" BlitzShoutmon called out, spinning around his enemy at extremely high speeds before running headlong into him.
Flarerizamon immediately gave the enemy digimon an uppercut while AeroVeedramon prepared his ultimate attack.
"Dragon Impulse!" he yelled out, causing a blue ghost of a dragon to head straight into Flaremon's torso, damaging his armor all over the place.
"Asura Bakunenken!" Asuramon yelled out, unleashing all his flames against Flaremon's cracked torso, causing the enemy digimon's form to destabilize and disintegrate.
With that, BlitzShoutmon immediately headed down to where his partner was waiting along with the Watchmaker, not realizing that time had temporarily froze. The digimon was shocked by how much muscle his partner had lost in the healing process.
"What's going on?" the yellow Champion asked.
"We're going. Unification is coming," his partner said simply before heading into the small clock-shop that was there.
"Unification… You mean, the worlds are about to collide?" BlitzShoutmon asked, startled by the thought.
"Yes, exactly," the old man responded as the yellow digimon followed him into the shop. "Come on in already. We have only a couple minutes before the Unification Wave reaches us."
Mr. Immortal thought about something else. "Is there any way you can freeze time for a couple seconds longer?"
The Watchmaker nodded. "What are you going to do?"
"Well, I figured I'd make things easier on Antonio. I just need to see his digivice for just a second," the blond man explained, still down from what he had to do. He didn't like it, but he felt he could make it easier for his friends.
The old man smiled before directing his partner to freeze time.
###
The Tamer's universe's David Symanski looked at his alternate counterpart, the Emperor, in shock. "What is this?"
"This is a duplicate of you, David. Don't touch him, or else the universe will explode," Kurata joked, grinning widely.
"Yeah, right! So, you kill all my friends, kidnap me and then show me this?" David yelled. "You're a complete and utter nutcase! Why should I believe you?"
Kurata turned toward the brown-haired boy and grinned. "Oh, please, I'm trying to rid the universe of all Digimon. Or the multiverse, rather. I'm actually saner than any of you."
The Emperor was the one who spoke next. "No, you're insane. I have no idea who you are, Kurata, other than what you've told me, but I won't let you get away with this."
"That's easy for you to say when you're all tied up, boy," the mad scientist said, grinning wildly. "Oh, boy, this is just scrumptious. I should torture all Tamers like this when I get the chance!"
David lunged forward and struck Kurata. He didn't have his partner with him, but he was going to try to get his alternate self out of Gizumon's grasp so he headed straight for it, striking it before trying to pull its tentacles off of the Emperor's arm.
It was just as Kurata had planned. The brown-haired boy didn't believe him. Still, he would have to think of something else for next time.
Just as he gave up getting the metallic tentacle off of his alternate self, David tried grabbing the bare arm, not paying any heed to what Kurata had told him. He didn't want to believe the man who killed his friends. He couldn't.
And yet, when he grabbed the Emperor's arm, the two of them exploded in light, causing a wave to head out from where they were. Kurata laughed wildly before turning toward the remaining David Symanski, the one from the Tamer's universe.
###
What none of them knew was that there was a failsafe on the digivice that caused every Tamer and former Tamer to go straight to the Digital World during Unification. This was because during the event all Digimon are automatically sent to the Digital World and all Humans to the Real World. However, all Digivices were designed with that failsafe from the basic digivice of Adventure 99 to the top-of-the-line D-Plus that Mr. Immortal carried around with him. The same applied to former Tamers and Digidestined that didn't have partners such as Jeri Katou or Takuya's Team when that world eventually got merged with the Tamers' world.
###
None of Tadashi's team knew what would happen when they were stuck by the Unification Wave. But the effects seemed to involve getting new memories, seemly out of nowhere.
Neither he nor Abby felt any effects, though. The others, on the other hand, felt effects immediately.
Tadashi had memories of being in the real world days after he was supposed to meet the Watchmaker, growing bitter and spiteful. He turned toward Ed with a bit of anger but suppressed it. We're friends now, he reminded himself. Then he remembered what he tried to do right before this thing did. His half that hadn't lived those weeks in the real world chastised the half that did for that.
Ayaka remembered reaching Ultimate earlier than Tadashi as well as seeing Yuji reach that level on his own. She also remembered a number of times she spent with her family.
Miki didn't reach Ultimate in the other timeline. Still, she had memories of her family like Ayaka.
Gunter gained memories of his counterpart from Abby's world. He remembered the trip to Paris when he met Ed going a lot differently and he thought about how he didn't have a partner in that world and how he spent most of his time studying. He also felt a slight physical change since he didn't lose as much weight in Abby's world as in his own world since it was mandatory for working for the German government that he have a personal trainer in the Tamers' world.
Abby and Ed didn't exist in their opposite worlds so they were confused. "Uh, what was that?" the brunette asked the group.
"It seems to me like…" Ayaka trailed off.
"Our worlds combined together," Gunter concluded. That was his only conclusion. He had no idea how it had happened.
Tadashi nodded to that, feeling a twinge of guilt. A dark woman screamed. A blond man lay on the ground, motionless and missing a limb. A heavyset man looked on with anger in his eyes. A black kid held out a digivice with determination. "Yeah…" was all he could say. He hated what his other self had done and he wasn't about to reveal it.
None of them noticed the small, black object on the ground that disintegrated nor that Samuel Krenzel was no longer with them.
###
Samuel Joseph Krenzel stood in shock, getting up and feeling utterly sick. He was in the middle of a meeting with the rest of Roger Volkmann's top generals, so this seemed like a non-sequitur to the others. The heavy kid was followed by his boss himself to the bathroom where he lost the contents of his lunch.
"What was that?" the American member of the triumvirate asked his underling. Joey got up and turned toward his boss.
"I… I had these weird memories, man," the heavy boy responded, his voice crackly.
"Weird memories? Yeah, right. So, are you going to let these things get to you or are you going to do your job?" Roger asked, angry.
"No, you're right, I need to get my job done," the heavy kid headed straight for the meeting room, followed by an irate Roger. To the triumvirate member, what the Joey did was utterly incomprehensible.
There was a murmuring at the table. Apparently some of the others had these strange memories as well. Roger just rolled his eyes and called for the meeting to continue.
It was time for their next stage of expansion. What he didn't notice was that the map of the planetary Digital World was far different than the one he had used before, almost as if it had merged with something else.
###
A/N: The crest of rage is not a canonical crest like Desire or Pride. In fact, I saw it in another fanfic. Heh.
So, if anybody's confused about where Matt came from, he's Ed's friend from Chapter 10. Also, Gustavo's another friend of Ed's. Also, whatever Mr. Immortal did to Antonio's digivice will be revealed in Chapter 31.
And as far as the whole Dimension Key storyline, this is what I had as an idea for a long time. Actually, my story Digimon Scammers: Ragnarok was going to have something happen like this too, same with World Tournament. As far as why it does that and why David Symanski meeting an alternate version of himself does that… Well, you'll find out later. I have a good reason for that, too. I guess I better change the genre of this story from Mystery to Sci-Fi.
