Foreign keystrokes echoed off the once welcoming walls of the Izumi apartment.
The nauseating sense of déja vu I felt as I spied, slightly crouched, through a crack in the door was only surpassed by the images of Koushiro slumped at his computer that kept springing unbidden into my head.
I tried to concentrate on the differences. The person in the chair in the scene before me was alive, he was working at the same computer but today it was also connected to a laptop, and it was Sora cautiously approaching him with a bottle of sake, not Takeru or Iori trying to get an imaginary confession out of Koushiro.
"Taichi, are you… is it…"
The dark wings seated at Koushiro's computer twitched at Sora's voice.
The constant tapping stopped and my brother's voice broke the momentary silence.
"What are you doing here?"
He still sounded like himself. I wasn't sure if this was a good thing or not.
"You're all I have left…" she said reluctantly.
"What? I don't…" he moved to massage his temples as he swivelled the chair toward Sora and I saw that his hands were now dreadfully clawed and had broken out in a thick matting of dark hair. He was obviously still getting used to his transformation, because instead of actually massaging his temples, all he managed to do was poke himself in the side of the head.
Cursing like the brother I knew, he took a couple of deep breaths and balled up his fists as best he could before he continued. "I'm sorry, you're going to have to help me understand… I've been trying to type all night with these–" he sprung his claws out, "–things, and it's been doing my head in. I can't reconcile what you just said with where we left things two days ago… you shouldn't even be able to be in the same room as me, let alone…"
She leant against the edge of the desk beside him. My heart was hammering inside my chest, I could only imagine what hers was doing.
"It's okay, I can–" she sighed, "I can explain"
I readied myself. This could go wrong at any moment.
"Earlier tonight I felt like the most broken person in the world, like there had never been anyone feeling as awful and hopeless as I did–"
"Is that why you dyed your hair?" he interrupted.
"What? No, that happened before… Do you mind? I'm trying to bare my soul here…" she said, gripping the bottle a bit tighter.
Don't let him get you angry, I thought at her, remember what I told you after I gave you that bottle.
He apologised and she took a deep breath before continuing.
"So I figured that if I truly was feeling that way, what was the point in going on? What you…" she stopped to correct herself, "what that thing inside you did to me, by doing what it did to Yamato – I could not think of anything worse for someone to have to go on living with for the rest of their lives. You broke more than just his neck, my heart and any chance of getting back together with us – you tainted the memory of all the good times we ever had together before that.
"Do you remember the first time all three of us slept in the same bed? Because now I can't even think about how happy I was waking up next to the two people I loved most, knowing they loved me and each other just as much as I loved them without wondering if that happiness was worth the pain it's caused me. After we lost everything else three years ago, the three of us being together was supposed to fix that hurt but now it's just made everything so, so much worse.
"Last night, it was all I could think about. I felt like it was not possible for anyone in the world to be living in any more pain than I was. So, I decided that I shouldn't have to. Lying there next to Jou as he tried to wordlessly tell me that everything would be alright, I decided that I would kill myself."
I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. I had thought that she would be stronger than this. I had even used that exact thought to get me out of my own hell, without a doubt in my mind that she would be fine. I wanted to go to her, to tell her that I could help her, that I had been going through these same feelings myself, that I could see the light at the end of the tunnel and that with time, she would too.
I would never have let her in there if I'd known just how deeply broken she was. And I should have known. It was stupid of me and I hated myself for it, but there was nothing I could do now without screwing her plan up even worse.
All of this ran through my head in an instant before she continued.
"But something in me knew that those feelings were selfish, and that there had to be someone out there feeling worse than I was. I decided that I was going to search until I found them, so I could see what it was that kept them going, so that I too could keep on keeping on,"
I could hear in her voice that she was on the verge of tears, and considering the depths of the emotion she was expressing, I could not blame her.
"And then I had this crazy thought. What if that person was you? What if while it was in control, you were conscious? I imagined you watching as your own hands moved toward my neck, as powerless to stop it from hurting me as you had been seconds before when your foot came down and, and…"
There was no stopping the tears now, from her or me. I had not even considered the waking hellscape my own brother must have been going through. What kind of a sister did that make me?
"And then I remembered the way you had reacted when you came to," she continued through her sobs, "and I knew it had to be true, and I felt awful about how much I had been pitying my lot, when what you had to have been going through was so much worse. I knew then that I had to see you and try to help you through this nightmare… or die trying,"
The two of them lapsed into a natural silence. A tear ran down Taichi's downcast face and Sora leant down and wiped it away, the edges of her mouth twitching upward briefly as she did so.
Taichi raised his eyes to meet hers and they shared a look that communicated so much that I could not begin to imagine. I saw the bottle in her hands and realised that she did not even need it, she had managed to quell the demon inside him without letting his defences down at all. The fact that I thought getting him drunk first was even necessary was proof I would not have been up to the task.
I heard footsteps approaching from behind and instantly forgot my self-pity in favour of startled panic. I whipped around to see Mimi striding towards me with fists balled in fury. She was followed by Wallace with a look of ill-suited determination.
In contrast, Alice skipped down the short hallway and positively beamed at the sight of me. It was an image so out of place with everything I had seen of her in our limited meetings that even though I had a strong sense that Mimi was about to berate me for ditching them earlier, I did not manage the necessary sign language to get her to keep quiet in time.
I will never know what it was that made Sora speak at that exact moment. Whether she also heard their footsteps and sought to retain Taichi's focus so that the interests of his inner demon would not be piqued, or whether it was just logically the next step she had planned to get him on-side – her query of 'So where do we go from here?' perfectly overlapped Mimi's 'What the hell was that back there?' to me. Thankfully, Sora's voice also caused Mimi to heed the finger I raised to my lips.
I turned back toward the slit in the door, staying in my half-crouched position, and saw that Taichi was not completely oblivious to the commotion. He was squinting in my direction. I knew he should not be able to see me from where I was, but I also knew that that did not mean he did not know I was there.
I froze. If he had sensed me through a hacked webcam feed before, what was stopping him from knowing where I was right now?
Acting with the impulses of someone super jacked on energy drinks, as she was at the moment, Sora jumped off the side of the table and turned Taichi's body back towards the computer to ask him what he was doing on there.
Danger averted for another moment, I breathed an internal sigh of relief as he began explaining that her two questions had related answers.
"Despite what you always say, I'm not completely stupid…" he began as Mimi bent down and squeezed her head into the gap between my stomach and the door to see what was going on. Wallace leant over the top of me to do the same. I was vaguely aware of his junk being a little too close to my chest for someone I'd only met once nine years ago, but I tried to ignore it as Taichi continued, "… I know I have to do something about all this," he twitched his wings and gestured to the horns sticking out of his head with his clawed mitts, "because even after all the binge drinking to get him out of my head, all the force of my stupid human sized will and determination, and all the attempts at trying to reconnect with my humanity; he is still here. And nothing I have tried yet has made any difference.
"So this is my last shot, if I can't get this program to open the gate to the digital world, I think I may just kill us all… and if I can go back, I'm never going to see another human being for the rest of my life,"
Mimi stifled a gasp from below me. I had never heard my brother sound so beaten, or so distraught. I wanted to go to him and tell him everything would be okay, but I knew it would not. Even if his plan worked, now that I had broken the seal on the two worlds there was nothing stopping him from breaking back out once his alter-ego took back control. If only I had ignored Jackie and stayed put, his plan might have succeeded.
"But Sora, if there's nothing left here for you but me," he continued, "and if the fact that I'm not trying to kill you anymore is anything to go by…"
"Of course I'll go with you," she pre-empted, lightly grasping his wicked hands, "how could I do anything less?"
Another tear rolled down Taichi's cheek, but this time it came to rest on the edge of a hopeful half-smile.
Despite my misgivings about his plan, and the weirdness I felt spying on yet another intimate moment between the two of them, I actually had a sense of something warm spreading through me. It started between my shoulder blades at about the size of a one-yen coin and spread wider as it moved out towards my chest until I felt like I was bursting with joy for the two of them being able to share this moment together, especially after all they had been through.
Their special moment was interrupted by the strange dan-dun of the computer's notification system, and suddenly the warmth I was feeling turned to ice as many very strange things happened all in succession.
"Eh!?" came the voice from below, and I looked down, expecting to see Mimi, but instead getting a face full of Alice's back, her lower torso seemingly sharing the same space as mine and her head occupying space on the other side of the ninety-nine percent closed door, as if she had wondered what the fuss was all about and just popped herself through me and the door to find out..
I prayed that Mimi's voice had been misheard once again and looked back up through the crack to see Sora transfixed by the screen. Her hand reaching out to touch it almost in slow motion as Taichi turned toward us and the glaring giveaway that was Alice's shockingly blonde head. A head which – even as I tried in vain to pull the weightless ghost of a girl back through to our side of the door; my hands slipping through her just as her entire body had slipped through me – began spurting forth nonsense at high volume.
「REBOOT INTERRUPTED」
Shit shit shit! I saw my brother's eyes glaze over into a solid neon blue and the fear from three years ago came flooding back.
「ERROR. SOURCE 1 CORRUPTED」
There was no hiding now. No hope for a passive solution.
Daemon was well and truly in control.
「ATEMPTING TO EXTRAPOLATE SOURCE 1 FROM SOURCE 8」
Panicking, I stood abruptly, and a jolt of intense pain cracked into the top of my skull. In a daze, I stumbled through the door with Wallace, who I could just make out clutching his chin as he tripped forwards with me.
「ERROR. CANNOT EXTRAPOLATE SOURCE 1 FROM SOURCE 8 AT THIS TIME」
I regained focus and yelled at a bewildered Sora to get out of harm's way, but she seemed more interested in the hand she had reached out towards the computer – inspecting the back of it like it was something she thought she knew better.
But the demon was not interested in her at the moment. It still had its neon eyes trained on mine, now twisting my brother's mouth into a wicked, inhuman grin. But it was me who should have been smiling.
「RELIABILITY NOT YET CONFIRMED. FRIENDSHIP NOT REQUIRED」
Alice's megaphonic interruptions were just white noise now as I readied myself for that thing to make its move.
Bang!
An almighty crash rocked the building and again I found myself off balance, this time struggling to see what had blown a hole in the wall through the pieces of it that had been instantly turned to dust and were now obscuring my view.
「ERROR. SOURCE 1 CORRUPTED」
I glanced back over at the demon and saw Sora studying the bottle of sake in her other hand, as if she was trying to read it upside down – oblivious to the fact that with Daemon distracted, now was the perfect time to get away. The dust began to settle slightly, and I could just make out the silhouette of some sort of caped crusader, hovering outside the space where the Izumi's wall used to be. But before I, it, or the Lord of Wrath could mount an offensive, Sora struck.
「ATEMPTING TO EXTRAPOLATE SOURCE 1 FROM SOURCE 8」
Alcohol and shards of glass sprayed everywhere as the sake bottle splintered over the back of the demon's head. But despite using a similar weapon and (I assumed) a similar area of attack to Ichiro in her apartment couple of days ago, Sora's violent outburst proved to be far from a knockout blow.
In an instant Daemon had turned and backhanded her across the room, narrowly missing Wallace as she cannoned into the far wall.
「ERROR. CANNOT EXTRAPOLATE SOURCE 1 FROM SOURCE 8 AT THIS TIME」
In a flap of wings, the amalgam of data and chromosome was through the hole in the wall and out into the morning sky, sucking out the remaining airborne dust with it. I was vaguely aware of Mimi wailing at Wallace and I, and anyone else, to help her with Sora.
At the same time there was a voice at the back of my head calling out to me softly, saying my name like I should know what I must do, and Alice continuing on with her own vie for attention.
「ATTEMPTING FORCE REBOOT」
I turned around to see how bad Sora's injuries were; partly because I cared about her and was hoping against hope that she was not hurt, and partly to feed my own guilt.
When I saw her – unconscious and slumped forward, blood steadily dribbling out of her mouth – I felt like I was back in the dream world surrounded by that ever-rising snowdrift; frozen to the spot in the same surrounds.
Mimi's usually immaculate hands were slick with red as she tended to Sora. Her screams for help bringing a rush of footsteps only just discernible over the clamour of the battle outside.
The hurried footsteps sent an image of the terror from a couple of days ago back into my mind, and for a moment I even expected Ichiro to be the one pushing through the door to save her, but it was only a curiously dark haired Takeru.
He called out to me, wanting to know what was going on, but my attention was back on Mimi who was now cry-asking, "Why? Why is there so much blood?!"
And suddenly Jou was there to reassure her that everything was going to be fine, as Takeru kept asking me what was going on. I wanted to run, I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could. Away from what my inaction and hope for a pacifistic solution had wrought. But all I could manage was to stagger backwards, mortified, away from the gory scene.
There was no way Sora was getting out of here alive, was there? Jou's reassurances sounded hollow and fraudulent when juxtaposed with the scene before us and the sheer amount of blood that had poured out of her mouth.
I couldn't have done anything about Daisuke or Koushiro or Yamato, but it was my call to let Sora go into this room alone, and my fault for not stepping in sooner to save her.
Her death would be on my hands.
I stepped backwards in shock as Iori appeared from nowhere and handed Jou a bag of ice. Everyone but me was doing something, so why was the only action I felt I could take to back away?
Even Wallace was wrestling with a Japanese keyboard and user interface to try and… well, I could only guess he was doing something urgent on the two connected computers; considering there was a young woman bleeding to death behind him.
Scanning the room, it was only Takeru who seemed to be stuck in one spot doing nothing productive. I looked at him in my daze. He was still yelling something at me but it did not seem to be getting through. To avoid looking him directly in his eyes, I stared at his lips like I used to in another life. Wondering how they felt, wondering what they could do, wondering what they would say…
They seemed to be asking me what I was doing.
'Nothing' was the answer to that question, but even as that answer popped into my head something else was telling me that it was wrong.
Hikari, purred the voice at the back of my head and I turned around abruptly, suddenly remembering what it was that I was backing towards.
The open air greeted me with hostilities raging between my demonic brother and his shiny helmeted opponent. I paused on the edge of the apartment and watched the battle in my daze.
Where had this new hero come from?
There was no way the Digimon had only just come through from the digital world, no way it had followed me back. There were no conditioned fighters like this over there.
And yet, that only left the possibility that it had been here for a very long time – the partner of someone who did not know we were closing the gate for good.
A well-aimed slash from the newcomer cut into the side of its opponent as the demon made a double-fisted attempt on its head, and something liquid squirted out. Daemon faltered as its disguise became its weakness, but I found it hard to celebrate. Though its mind was all extra-dimensional evil, the damage had been done to the part that was still my brother. If he truly was already gone, at least his own relative fragility was helping to destroy his inner tormentor.
The question of what it meant if he was not truly gone was a bit trickier, and I did not want to have to deal with it. For a moment it looked like I would not have to as Daemon kept falling. The helmeted hero dived down after the villain, arm extended in the shape of a blaster, blue light growing brighter from its muzzle as the gap between the two fighters narrowed. But as the killing blow was about to be dealt – hand cannon inches from the back of the demon's head – the limp Lord twisted in an instant and planted a whirlwind fast kick to its assailant's jaw.
The blow sent the hero into a high parabolic arc.
Hikariii, came the voice from the back of my head again as Daemon readied an expanding ball of fire in its right claw. Still frozen by the craziness of the situation, all I felt I could do was will the downed fighter to wake up before the demon could end it.
But end it it did. Once loosed, the fireball was dart-like and exploded into the futuristic fighter just as it hit the top of its arc, the shockwave forcing me to avert my eyes. When I looked back up, I found myself watching as two figures fell through the sky, one a small tumbling ball of flickering data, the other a humanoid in a reverse swan dive.
My bag jolted backwards, as padded claws clutched at my head. That voice at the back of my head now coming from slightly higher, saying the things my brain was struggling to process, If he hits the ground he'll die, we have to move now!
There was no other option. Suddenly my hand was in my pocket, fishing out my device.
The young man kept falling, hair trailing his form. Long, black and veil-like.
A lightning fast blur of white jumped over me into the fifth storey air. I raised my arm and the dawn sky was lit up by a shining orb of light. Turning away from the brilliance, I saw Takeru's dumbstruck face and I knew I could not just stand idle.
The cat was quite literally out of the bag and he would be wanting answers.
Without a thought of the consequences, I followed my heart's desire, and jumped.
For a gorgeous moment there was nothing but wind.
The sound. The rush. The freedom.
Then I hit my target; scrabbling around for a fist-full of pink fur to stop from bouncing off. I held on tight, wrapping my legs around the enormous torso to steady myself as best I could as we set off immediately towards the flickering purple ball.
One hand anchoring me, I reached out with the other and clutched the little guy to my chest, scratching my chin with its nail-like horn in the process.
But the falling man was in more danger. He was below the level of the hole they'd blown in the side of the apartment building now and had not shown any signs of consciousness as he fell.
I held on for dear life as we careened down through the air. Floors of the apartment block whizzed past as we gained on his limp form and he involuntarily gained on his final destination.
We had almost reached him when I felt us pulling up. My heart in my mouth as increased g-forces forced me to flatten into my dragon's back, I had no idea if she'd caught him or not. There had been a sickening crunch before we rose, and I searched behind us to find its source. I glimpsed a depression and a rapidly dwindling flame and took it as both a relief and a warning.
Looking up I saw the demon readying another fireball, a hateful scowl distorting the last vestiges of my brother's features as the bastardised hybrid of data and DNA rocketed towards us.
It released its payload and suddenly I found myself upside down as Magnadramon jack-knifed back towards our pursuer. She twisted back level in an instant, but not before I felt the heat from the fireball as it powered under my unprotected back.
I barely had time to register my nausea or the fact that we had passed Daemon with our stomach-churning manoeuvre; when we turned around again to find ourselves aimed directly at the back of the defenceless demon.
Through my straining legs I felt the pulse twist through my partner's torso and then saw it spiral out of her mouth and slam into its intended target.
This time when I looked down at the pavement the depression bore no flames of warning. Just the twitching outline of a body that used to belong to my brother and the wings of the thing that had corrupted it.