The door opened a few hours after Tentomon flew back to pick up Izzy's lunch and bring it to where the Digidestined sat perched on one of the consoles that was only in sleep mode instead of off, accessing it… with his crest, really, even if he'd attempted to give them an explanation.
Millenniummon came in, flanked by four of the Gigadramon that brought dinner and refilled the water.
Izzy was still working: he'd told them not to worry about planning how to get him back from there, it would just waste time and he wanted to keep working as long as he could. Sound carried pretty far in here, with all those metal walls, especially with most of the humming equipment off. Something had caused him to exclaim a lot, so Ryo and the others were hopeful he'd found something useful. Now if only it was something Millenniummon couldn't keep him from taking advantage of, they might be set.
Other than Izzy and Tentomon, the rest of them were on their table. Millenniummon looked them over as he stepped through the door, letting it close behind him. "You didn't have any of the flying Digimon ready to make a break for it? Or perhaps Myotismon's sneaky little pet."
Matt wasn't the only one to snort. "And let you make an example of one of our partners?"
"Perhaps I should pick a random one to kill and observe their return as a digi-egg. Or perhaps I'll make an example of the Child of Knowledge and his partner, for trying to worm their way into my files," he said, turning towards where Izzy sat as one of his lower hands was placed on the table, palm facing up.
Ryo stared at it, then looked up. "I'm not going with you just to watch you hurt him."
"Oh? So you're no longer trying to stop me?"
Ryo looked back at the others to see Gatomon waving her paw to motion him forward, under her body so Millenniummon wouldn't be able to see it. He gulped and walked forwards to step into the monster's grasp.
"What does it feel like to you?" Millenniummon wondered, as he lifted that hand and took a ponderous step towards Izzy.
"I don't have to come when you call," Ryo said angrily, stepping onto Millenniumon's shoulder to get out of the Digimon's grasp. "But, the more I talk to the others and their partners… I wish you were a partner like theirs, so I could want to be your partner instead of just having to go with you to try to keep you from hurting people. I… I want to want to ride on your shoulder like this," he confessed, not sure who he was angry at.
"I would kill anyone who tried to keep you from me. What would you do to have that partner you're beginning to dream of? When I doubt you ever dreamed of one before."
"…Digimon come back to life," Ryo said. "I wish you were like Gatomon, and you only were this way because someone else hurt you."
He felt a low chuckle vibrating in the mammoth chest beneath him. "I haven't cared about pathetic Digimon enough it was possible for them to hurt me in a very long time. Why should I let insignificant beings affect me… Child of Miracles."
"Child of Miracles?"
"The box." Millenniummon ordered, and one of the Gigadramon flew over. Millenniummon gestured curtly towards Ryo, and it flew up to hold a box in front of him. "You may have the tag and crest, but leave the Digivice. It's programmed to upload certain programming into the Digidestined, along the link between them and their Digimon, and although I've looked over that programming I want to examine it more thoroughly before you're exposed any further."
Ryo had already used Tai's digivice to digivolve Agumon and the other two that helped him. He didn't even know what had happened to them.
If he had a digivice, maybe Tai and the others could borrow it the way Ryo borrowed Tai's. That way, their partners could digivolve.
He took the digivice as well as the necklace with its little bit of colored… not plastic, or even glass, with a symbol marked on it. Kind of an elaborate M, with diamond shapes above and below it and triangles at the bottom corners. It made him think of either some kind of fancy helmet or the top of a monk's staff, for some reason.
"Are you really sure you want to disobey me?" Millenniummon asked, gloating.
Ryo froze, staring at the crest but not looking at it, aware of the digivice in his hand. Why had Millenniummon let him have the chance to pick it up? "…You think these strengthen bonds between partners," he remembered.
"You knew that was what it would do to you, and you still picked it up."
"I, I took it because you're not the boss of me, and I wanted to help the others," Ryo said, feeling desperate somehow. Like he was trying, and failing, to lie to himself.
"And I took you from File City to kill you as a possible threat to me. But, if that was my real motivation, I would have crushed you where you stood. If you truly wished not to be bound to me, you would have tried to keep that device as far away from you as possible."
The flick of a claw dismissed the Gigadramon and its box.
Ryo hesitated. He could drop the digivice. It was so small Millenniummon might even step on it. No. He had to try to help the others escape.
Millenniummon had to want him to think that, that… He took a deep breath, slipped the digivice into a pocket and put the Crest in there with it. "Don't hurt Izzy," he said.
"How do you think I located your Crest so easily? It was Gatomon that found the Crest of Light for Myotismon, so I knew it would reveal itself to me if I could only find the proper place. Where would you have looked, Child?"
Like it was a title. Child of Miracles would be the title, wouldn't it? If Child was a shorter version, wouldn't that make it the informal version? You used informal language with people you didn't respect, the way Millenniummon still saw Mimi as beneath him… or as a sign of affection.
"For a Crest of Miracles?" Ryo wondered.
"For your crest," Millenniummon corrected him.
"Well, you'd think something like that would be in some ancient temple. I've played enough computer games to know that."
"One that wasn't built to accommodate Mega Digimon. Quite disrespectful, don't you think? For a temple built to honor the Sovereign to not admit their presence without losing its roof, and several walls." Millenniummon loomed over Izzy. "And I have you to thank for finding me the correct temple."
"I knew you were tracking my searches," Izzy said. "I haven't forgotten how you traced my access to your network when I was trying to find the others."
"You put one more Digivice, and one of the Crests, into my claws."
"You've already got all of our Digivices, and Gennai needs our crests to break the seal you put on the Sovereign, and any more power would have to come from us. So we're not any worse off than when I started," Izzy said, and winced. "At least the rest of us aren't. Sorry, Ryo. I wanted to find out more about the Crests, and that one wanted to be found. I didn't think the Tag and Digivice would be there with it."
"I ama God. Of course the power of Miracles is on my side." Millenniummon didn't gloat: he said it as though it was obvious.
Ryo stared at him.
"Actually, he's technically right. The Sovereign are considered gods in the Digital World, and he was able to seal them away even before he achieved godhood himself. He's not the first god we've met," Izzy said.
"I don't need to overstate my power. I'm not the only God you've met either, Ryo."
"…You mean Gennai?"
"Gennai? No, he's merely a priest. Your priest. The Artificial Humans were created to bridge the gap between God and Mon, to intercede for the faithful with the other world. You are one of the Chosen Children. The greatest among the Eight Billion Gods from another dimension that created the Digital World. You are summoned to bless the chosen Digimon with your power and purify the Digital World of evil. The Sovereign ascended to lesser godhood by the favor of their partners." One of Millenniummon's two immaterial hands, edged in flickering blue flame, reached up to touch him and passed through both the aura of Millenniummon's second head and shoulders and Ryo's body. He was literally in the palm of Millennium's hand-thing.
He felt something when it did, or was it only that he'd expected to feel something?
Bracing himself with a hand on the side of Millenniummon's neck, he shuddered.
"Are you okay?" Izzy asked, sounding guilty.
"I'm fine."
Buzzing, coming closer, and Ryo opened his eyes to see Tentomon hovering just outside the edge of the aura, looking at it warily, wondering if it was safe to go in to check on Ryo.
"You don't look fine," the green-eyed ladybug said, moving forward. Light flashed, a strangled "Erk!" and a pink blob slid down the outside of that orange glow.
"Tentomon!" Izzy cried, running to the edge of the console.
"Catch him!" Ryo ordered, moving forward himself but not daring to jump off that armored shoulder onto the hard metal below. Very far below.
Amazingly, impossibly, one of those great hands moved.
It shouldn't have been amazing, that was what made it hurt. It shouldn't take a miracle for someone to want to keep a poor little thing that just wanted to help Ryo from going splat.
"After the Chosen Children ruined my plan to become the god of Creation and Destruction, Death, Rebirth and Digivolution, I considered becoming the God of Knowledge, but the position was already taken," Millenniummon said, tilting his hand and letting the now-pink Digimon drop a meter onto the console. "Those two seconds of divine intervention ruined all my centuries of planning… so I became a god of time instead. As of yet I am a weak god of time, but I still have enough power to deal with that 'homeostasis.' All I have to do is ensure enough Digimon die struggling in despair at their own weakness, and Apocalymon will reform and I will take his power for myself and become the god of the cycle of death and rebirth that gives the endless millennia their rhythm."
"Motimon, are you okay?" Izzy asked, picking up his partner instead of getting back to his unguarded laptop.
"It was horrible, Izzy," the little blob whined. "Like running into a bug zapper."
Red eyes watched Izzy holding Motimon. "Before," Millenniummon mused, "I would have found this pathetic. It still is pathetic, of course." Of course. "Yet also… proper."
"How is hurting someone proper?" Ryo demanded.
"He was trying to get through me to reach you. What is improper is that he still lives." An edge of savagery could be heard, just barely, through the normal tone of utterly uncaring cruelty. "I wonder how this programming would make me react to some Digimon daring to – No," Millenniummon said, and now he gloated. "I don't need to wonder. Just the thought of it… Much stronger now than when I considered ordering one of my drones to terminate you for me, since I couldn't bring myself to harm you. If my dormant programming is waking up, then what effect is yours having on you, when it has been affecting you from the moment you saw me, and we are only growing more connected by the hour?"
Even before Ryo picked up the digivice.
Eyes darting around looking for an answer, for something to say, he saw that Izzy was looking up at him – that Izzy was rolling his eyes. "He wants you to think it's worse than it is," Izzy said. "We didn't want to leave our partners behind when we left the Digital world, but we didn't try to stay here or smuggle them with us. We missed them, but… like we missed our parents while we were here, or Matt misses TK in the real world. Tentomon – Motimon, right now – is the best friend I could ever have, even though I have some great ones, but that didn't mean we don't have disagreements."
"He is your Blessed Protector, his egg found and reprogrammed to make him a worthy and loyal servant for the God of Knowledge." Millenniummon's tone was smug, taunting. Like the crest, like Ryo taking the digivice, Izzy had played into his hands somehow and Millenniummon knew it.
"…" Izzy's red head bent over the pink blob in his arms. "Gennai doesn't see us the way the Order saw us. If that's even the truth about the Order. This is your database after all, of course you think in terms of mind control and seeing other people as things to be used."
"The species of supercomputers that created the supercomputer that formed the foundation of the Digital World. Digimon have been trying to make contact with your kind since decades before Apocalymon began to warp time. The artificial humans possess minds and bodies something like yours, but they are powerless beings, not gods."
"It's funny. That Digimon think of us that way, when Digimon come back to life and humans… we die all the time, and aren't ever coming back. This world was created from our data, but to the people who live here… It's our data that shapes your world, not your own data."
"Not until I programmed the Digital World into the form of Spiral Mountain."
"At first I thought that Digimon were aliens, but… we're the aliens here, to you. The Precursors. At first most humans would have been older than Digimon. Even though Digimon are digital intelligences, we had more scientific understanding, so your species' first impression of their creators would have been that we were older and wiser than Digimon. Then Apocalymon warped time, and thousands of years have passed in the Digital World since we were born, and the time difference made it difficult for Digimon to contact humans anymore. So even though you were older than us now, all you had to go on were the stories that said we were the ancients. I can see how a mythology about beings from another world, much more ancient and powerful than those early Digimon, would have come into existence from the stories of Digimon encounters with humans in the early days. Now, the Digital World is more than eighteen thousand years old. That's what, three the length of our species' recorded history? When they prepared our digivices and crests based on data from the Heighton View Terrace incident… Gennai's Order was fulfilling a prophecy made thousands of years ago, but we're still just kids."
"Weak, pathetic beings. Your technology is thousands of years behind mine. It will be easy to conquer your world and enslave your kind to build more computers and servers to expand my Digital domain. Before I sent scouts into the human world I thought you might pose a threat – an entire world of Digidestined? But in your own realm, you have no power and no protectors." Millenniummon's head, the one formed of energy, bent to look at Ryo with one of its eyes. No, watch him, even as his red eyes remained focused on Izzy. "Such a disappointment, to find that the human world was populated by creatures even weaker and more worthless than Digimon. I had thought I might find something of value there… I thought I made a mistake by sending scouts to the human world: it gave Homeostasis the ability to observe more humans and select more powerful ones. If only I had kept looking…
"Your theory of my origin was incorrect, by the way. Well, at least partially incorrect. I was already several millennia old when the first Digidestined were summoned to the Digital World to fight the Machine Emperor. The crests and Digivices did not exist yet: instead, they were able to use the 'digimentals,' devices created by the Machine Emperor to control his digivolution and that of his forces. The power those humans possessed altered the digimentals for their own use, attuned them to the power of those humans, and eventually the Order's study of those altered digimentals produced the crests. It was the study of the technology that linked minds together into a network that created digivices.
"To reach Ultimate level, and later Mega, the first Digidestined needed to combine two of their partners using DNA Digivolution. Kill a human, and their partner would lose the will to live and permanently combine with one of the others. It was unfortunate that all the surviving partners were already permanently able to remain at Champion instead of rookie before I succeeded in smashing the last of the Digimentals. Other Digimon were also willing to sacrifice their very cores to lend the Chosen Children their strength. Sixteen Digidestined were summoned, but by the end of the war, only four humans and their partners still survived. Knowing that before long they would also be slain, those humans decided to sacrifice themselves to merge with their partners and create Digimon with the power of Gods to defeat the Emperor. That is why the Sovereign each have twelve Digicores but only one self, even if Ebonwumon acts as though there are still two minds in there." Millenniummon chuckled. "I'm not certain if he's fooling himself or not."
"You were the Machine Emperor!" Izzy realized. "That's why that factory on File Island… The dark gears, the Dark Network… That's why it's all so alike on so many fundamental levels! It's not just that the technology of Dark Digimon came out of the same tech tree, or form following function! It's all your technology, and you've been making sure that all your work is backwards-compatible. You…" He blanched. "The base operating system all technology in the Digital World runs… You created it, and it actually is evil! Those were your backdoors I was using!"
"It hasn't been hard to prevent anyone else from developing their own programming languages, compilers and operating systems. My technology alerts me if it's tampered with beyond the surface level, and the ignorant inhabitants of the Digital World associate technology with evil even though they only exist because of technology. That is one of the reasons for the creation of the artificial humans: the Digital World needed technology, but the Sovereign decided that technology was the sole province of humans. That only the gods and their servants should be allowed to possess knowledge of how to alter the Digital World. So the firewall that I programmed to contain the Sovereign is called a seal."
"By trying to stop Digimon like you from discovering programming and using it to control the Digital world, the Sovereign have enforced your monopoly!"
"Of course they have, when 'copycats' keep showing up, when they keep seeing technology used for evil purposes, of course it all seems alike to them. When despite all their efforts, the Machine Emperor's technology keeps showing up in the hands of evil Digimon after evil Digimon. Not lost to the ages but refined. Always some ambitious fool without the sense to question their good fortune when they find a cache of 'ancient' technology, volunteering to do my beta testing for me. Devimon, Etemon, Myotismon, Piedmon… All of them simply assumed that they could use my technology, never realizing that it was using them in return."
"Devimon absorbed Black Gears to grow more powerful, Etemon merged with the Dark Network… They let your coding into their systems! They installed back doors into their minds for you! The same method of emotional data transfer we use to digivolve our Digimon, they had to enable it in order for your creations to upload the power they wanted! That's how you were able to revive them under your control! Piedmon's a mega and thought he was your boss, he shouldn't have been so happy to follow your orders!"
Ryo felt Millenniummon's body shake with laughter. "And that is the technology the Order used to create those sacred artifacts they call Digivices. Why merely pray to the Gods when you have spent centuries failing to answer the calls of the faithful? Why beg you when they could compel?"
"Gennai wouldn't do something like that to Izzy!" Motimon protested, turning around in Izzy's arms.
"You didn't read the files the Child of Knowledge accessed? I see you're wasted as his partner."
"You're right: Gennai wouldn't," Izzy said solemnly, looking down at the in-training, "but the artificial humans are a lot like real humans, not like Digimon. No, that's wrong: Digimon have individual personalities too. Not all Motimon are alike – there's only one that's my partner. So there were good artificial humans and bad artificial humans. And desperate ones."
"You think he's telling the truth? Izzy, he's an evil Digimon."
"He's still a scientist, and he knows that I can find information a lot easier than most people. It would be disadvantageous for me to catch him in a lie. Maybe it's because he's an evil Digimon that he's arrogant enough to think that he doesn't have to lie about anything, that all the data supports his conclusions, and we'd have to be stupid not to agree with him. However, he's absolutely letting his view of the world and what he wants to be true shape his perception of the facts," which Izzy deeply disapproved of.
"But… Izzy, he's saying you're only my friend because…"
"No. You're only my friend because after I was chosen as a Digidestined, they could identify my partner's egg the next time it appeared in Primary Village, and they had thousands of years to wait for you to die. Most Digimon don't have very good odds of retaining all that much in the way of clear memories from previous incarnations, but you should absolutely have at least some memories of the time that passed in the Digital World between my birth and the Heighton View Terrace Incident, instead of thinking this incarnation was the first time you ever hatched. Gennai thought our partners were just made from scratch, but artificial Digimon wouldn't have been our partners. It makes me very worried about how much they modified your data, if they were even telling some of the scientists, or priests, that worked on you that it was just making you a more worthy offering so I'd accept you as my partner instead of some kind of blasphemy to tamper with the Digimon already chosen by the Child of Knowledge." Izzy shuddered. "It explains Agumon."
"Agumon?"
"…and maybe Biyomon. There's no way to be sure, unless Homeostasis knows."
"What do you mean?" Tentomon asked.
"According to Tai, Kari recognized Koromon as the Koromon from the Heighton View Terrace Incident. I didn't think anything of it at first, because there are lots of Koromon and they all look alike, but Kari possesses extrasensory perception, and if I can acquire data that logically I shouldn't be able to acquire, then I have to examine the hypothesis that Tai's sister can recognize her brother's partner. And if that's true, then it explains that Koromon's rapid digivolution during the Heighton View Terrace incident. Also, Gennai reminded me that Machinedramon preferred to use dragon-type Digimon." Izzy looked up at Millenniummon. "You turn your victims' ultimate levels into cyborgs, and Agumon's ultimate level is Metalgreymon. If you remember the scouts you sent into the real world, were any of them Parrotmon?" Izzy asked hopefully.
"No. Your real theory is correct: I did dispatch several Metalgreymon to scout the human world for me. Since humans were rumored to be powerful beings, there wasn't any point in sending anything less than an Ultimate. Parrotmon is like Wizardmon and Witchmon – certain types of Digimon have an aptitude for passing through dimensional barriers. A Parrotmon would have been a logical choice for the Chosen Children's resistance to send to attack my scouts."
"But something happened to free Koromon from your control – probably Tai and Kari's doing somehow – and Koromon couldn't let his partner get hurt…"
"I wiped their minds of everything but their instructions before sending them over there. Humans were legendary programmers – if you captured my scouts, I didn't want you to be able to extract data on my forces from them."
"So Koromon wouldn't have known why Parrotmon was attacking him any more than Tai and Kari did." Izzy looked pensive. "Tai proved he could digivolve Koromon, so he was a logical choice for a Digidestined, but his partner was one of the Digimon brainwashed by the Machine Emperor. It must have seemed reasonable to try to be certain they had erased any potential remaining brainwashing, or loyalty to his master. I'm certain that you've tried to find ways to install programming into Digimon that will remain intact even after they've died and been reborn at Primary Village."
"Yes, they did reprogram Agumon. The original Metalgreymon I designed was a virus-type. A vaccine-type Metalgreymon evolution is not my handwork."
"So it would only occur if someone else tampered with Agumon's programming in order to create a new version of Metalgreymon. So it wasn't a coincidence that none of our partners had virus evolutions. Why didn't they remove your fake evolution from Agumon's programming instead of trying to reprogram it, though? Except Agumon's dark digivolution…"
"Skullgreymon is Greymon's natural Ultimate form."
"An ultimate that can bomb the enemy from range: I bet you liked Skullgreymon, given your tactics as Machinedramon, but metal is more effective armor than bone…"
"And Skullgreymon are terrible at maintaining military discipline. They'll destroy a city's walls with pleasing eagerness, but between battles they would often amuse themselves by killing the rookie and champion-level slaves in my forces, or they'd just slaughter the entire city, leaving that army without prisoners it could use to replace those slaves. My SkullGreymon servants didn't need more loyalty programming: they needed off buttons."
Izzy groaned. "A perfect Digidestined candidate, and his partner was one of your berserk shock troops? I bet you made sure people were terrified of your forces. Yeah. I don't think many of them would have had a program with reprogramming Agumon for lots of reasons. Even to help him, by making sure he forgot whatever you made him do. And once they were reprogramming one of our partners…" Izzy's arms tightened enough to force the air out of Motimon's soft body. "Oh," he said, and relaxed his grasp. "Sorry, Motimon."
A short-stubby arm poked Izzy's. "What about you, Izzy?"
Huh? "What about me?"
"And now do you see why I warned you not to touch that digivice?" Millenniummon asked Ryo, but he was frowning instead of gloating.
"Oh, your theory that the digivices installed mind-control programming into us, because the original mental link systems they would have been based on were your work and therefore designed for mental control instead of unaltered transfer of emotional power?" Izzy asked. "Not credible."
"Why are you so certain?"
"All the observed effects can be attributed to the emotional link. Humans are foreign to the digital world. The Digimon with the best chance to acquire test subjects would be you. Even if the Order of Azulongmon developed the technology independently, you would have made sure to get a copy of that technology, so if anyone in the Digital World had the technology to affect our brains it would be you, and if you had it, you'd have installed it already," Izzy said, and shrugged. "Q.E.D., the technology to do anything to us other than making sure we care about our partners – and are motivated to remain in a dangerous world to help them instead of returning to the 'other world' – does not exist yet."
That forced a devastated sound out of Motimon.
Izzy winced. "Motimon, that doesn't mean I only care about you because I'm forced to care, or anything. Humans are evolutionarily programmed to love our siblings, parents, children, that kind of thing. That doesn't mean Matt doesn't really love TK, or my parents don't really love me even though I'm adopted. We're connected, but that just means I love you because I know you, okay? The one I'm worried about is you. You were waiting for me before we even met, Motimon. What if I was a terrible person?" Izzy ignored it when Millenniummon turned and walked away, even if he had to notice the motion of something so big, and the heavy footsteps. "I wasn't a very good partner to you at first, but a lot of us really weren't. All of you could have gotten hurt!"
"Interesting," Millenniummon said, as quietly as something that large really could.
'You're just leaving him there, with his laptop?' Ryo could have asked, but he didn't want to remind Millenniummon if he'd just forgotten.
Not likely.
"'God of Knowledge…' You want to see what else he can find out, so you can use it," Ryo accused him.
That got him an approving chuckle. "What else?"
Would Millenniummon get out of this? What had he already gotten out of it, besides Ryo's crest? Someone intelligent to talk to? Ryo wished. What else was there about that conversation… "I trust him a lot more than I trust you."
"And he's intelligent enough to have some understanding of the facts, and too honest not to tell you the truth even when the truth benefits me instead of my enemies," Millenniummon agreed, and smirked, pleased. "And you're only the human version of a rookie. What will you be like, once you've had a few centuries to grow wiser and develop more cunning?"
Centuries. If four years passed here for every day in the real world, then twenty-five days would be a century. What would he become… what would Millenniummon make him into, if he stayed here that long?
In Adventure there's all this suspiciously similar ancient mind control tech, being used by people who dug it out of the ground and don't seem to have any actual idea of how it works. And then in some cases they use it to digivolve, letting data from it into their systems, and what do you know, the digimon who did that get revived as Millenniummon's slaves (incl Piedmon, who stuck something into Gennai).
The Dickensian explanation is 'they kept recycling the same plot bc the writers didn't care,' the Watsonian explanation... the Watsonian explanation is shiny.
Anyway, this fic has gone AU, and I'm doing some Arc Welding.
If only Adventure had better writers, we could have gotten 'after spending the first series showing how partner bonds are powerful, and using Tailmon's story as foreshadowing, now we're going to deconstruct that by showing how partner bonds can go horribly wrong and are, in fact, the reason for literally everything that has happened up to this point,' but by the time the Digimon franchise got a writer who, like, wanted to make a 50+ ep toy/game commercial have actual literary merit, he had his own plotbunny he wanted to write instead of trying to salvage the mess other writers made of Adventure timeline.