The Ties that Bind
Scene: The Digi-Destined have returned from the dream-like revelations of the Digi-World's creators, and find a wasteland as well as a world-threatening challenge from an unlikely foe.
"Kari!" Tai held his little sister gently in his arms. "Are you all right?"
The other Digi-Destined huddled around the young brunette, helping her back to her feet.
"Say, what happened to the forest?" Biyomon chirped as she surveyed the land around the group.
"Huh? It's gone!" Sora exclaimed. "It's completely destroyed!"
They were in a zone of death. It was as if a meteor had hit or a volcano erupted, leveling the trees, incinerating the forest, reducing the land to soot and cinders that crumbled underfoot and blew away in the breezes.
"There's still forest out there, maybe half a mile away." Palmon said, the cactus Digimon's affinity for plants informing her of their continued presence outside the sterile wastes.
Tai pulled out his pocket telescope and looked into the forest. "The trees out there seem fine, not a burn mark on 'em, and..." He stopped, and shivered. "That's eerie... I could have sworn I saw two glowing red eyes, but they're gone now..."
The instant Tai put the telescope away, a keening wail of despair rose into the air, filling the land with a scream of anguish. The cry echoed about the Digi-Destined with bone-chilling clarity, even though the source couldn't be seen.
"Speaking of eerie..." Joe shuddered.
"That's not eerie!" Mimi corrected, holding Joe's arm tightly, "That's positively chilling!"
"How sad." Kari murmured as the noise continued, lament and loss threaded through the howling.
"What's that, Kari?" TK asked, moving close as the whole group bunched together, anxiously watching the forest for motion, light...Anything that could tell them what was happening.
"Can't you hear the pain?" the ever-empathic Kari asked. "It's lost something...Or someone-very close to it."
Gatomon regarded her Digi-Destined, her large blue eyes quizzical. "You're weird, Kari." She said. "Not that that's a bad thing."
The mournful wailing ceased; in the distance, loud bass groans and creaks rumbled, sounding like a collapsing building. At the forest's edge, four large trees swayed, then toppled over heavily, the sounds of their descent delayed from the sight of their fall. When they crashed to the ground, great columns of ash billowed up like mushroom clouds, hiding what lay beyond.
"I don't like being out in the open, Matt." Gabumon stated, rubbing up against Matt's leg for security.
"Me either." Matt began. "It's too..." Whatever Matt said was lost in a bone-chilling howl of animalistic rage.
"No need to translate that, Kari!" Izzy exclaimed, staring at the blooming soot clouds. "Let's get out of here!"
Apparently, everyone thought this was an excellent idea, as no one objected and ran (or flew) off over the decimated land.
The snarling grew in volume, and when Tai risked a glance over his shoulder, something was chasing them! In the boiling dust storms kicked up by their feet, knowing exactly what it was became impossible, except to see that it was moving fast and kicking up a large ash cloud of its own.
"It's gaining on us!" Tai yelled, causing a massive surge of adrenaline in the Digi-Destined that pushed them into the forest, puffing and staggering farther into the trees.
"Gabumon!" Matt rasped as he caught his breath, "Can you fight?"
"Sure thing... Matt." Gabumon panted, turning around to face...whatever it was that pursued them.
The creature entered the forest, snarling. "PuPPeTMoN!" it grated, slashing at an unoffending tree. "PuPPeTMoN WiLL Die!!"
There was a moment of silence, then the tree slid along the cut, crashing into the dirt.
"What?" Sora gaped, staring back at the red eyes in the silhouetted shape.
Moving slowly forward, the mysterious Digimon entered a patch of sunlight.
It was squat and compact, heavily muscled, and solid red. It looked and moved like a hairless gorilla, knuckling along on all fours, standing occasionally on its hind legs to glare around the wood with the baleful red eyes like searchlights. There were no fingers or toes; rather, three long, blade-like claws adorned the end of each appendage, biting deep into the earth with every step. Jagged silver spikes were scattered thickly across the broad red back, and the wolfish muzzle perpetually exhibited its knife-like metal teeth. Triangular red eyes glowed malevolently, sunken under a heavy, jutting brow. Scars in rows of three looked self-inflicted, some still bled, oozing black liquid.
It lurched toward Gabumon a step, then wailed and fell to the ground. "FaiLeD!" it sobbed, scarlet tears flowing down its snout. "MaTT DeaD! SoRa DeaD! aLL DeaD!"
"WHAT?!!" Matt exclaimed, stepping out from behind the tree that kept him from view. Gasps from behind other trees suggested that everyone had pretty much the same reaction to the statement of the crying hulk that beat the ground, crying.
"FaiLeD! FaiLeD!" it whimpered, then stood up, voice instantly changing to an enraged bellow. "PuPPeTMoN... PuPPeTMoN FauLT!"
"Matt!" TK cried, running toward his brother with Patamon in his arms, "Be careful!"
"Stay back, TK!" Matt shouted back, raising a clenched fist. "We don't know what we're dealing with!"
The red Digimon looked toward the commotion. "MaTT?" it asked dazedly, shambling nearer. "No... MaTT DeaD! PuPPeTMoN KiLL!" stopping, the strange Digimon cried again. "WHY ToRMeNT BeRSeRKeRMoN WiTH MaTT iMaGe?!" Berserkermon sniveled, wiping away bloody tears with the back of one bladed paw.
"Berserkermon?" Izzy said, bringing up the profile.
Digimon Analyzer:
Berserkermon: Final solution Digimon.
Level: Champion.
Type: Vaccine.
In the event that the Digi-Destined should be destroyed, Benjamon Digivolves into Berserkermon, the most powerful champion it is possible to create, with the express purpose of avenging the Digi-Destined. His 'Fires of Hate' attack acts as a conduit for the combined anger and hate of the Internet, channeling and focusing them into a powerful fireball capable of leveling mountains. This power comes with a price: Massive mental instability. This makes for dangerously unpredictable behavior, confusion, incredible aggressiveness, and the unusual side effect of invincibility to attack.
The chaos of Berserkermon's mind is such that he cannot recognize damage, and this incapacity is so strong, it prevents his algorithms from being damaged. Tremble, evil, for Judgement approacheth thee!
-Drowzee1
Izzy froze, trembling. "If this is true..." he whispered in a quavering voice...
"Then the Digi-world is doomed!" Joe finished gloomily, wrapping his arms about Mimi.
Berserkermon lumbered toward Gabumon. "PuPPeTMoN!"
"No! Gabumon!" the reptile Digimon with a fur coat shot back, holding his ground.
Berserkermon shook his read head, as if to shake the haze of confusion away. "Ga...Ga-Bu-MoN?" he said, slowly. "No! GaBuMoN DeaD! SaW Die!"
Berserkermon lunged, claws flashing in the dappled light filtering through the forest canopy.
"Gabumon WARP Digivolve to...METALGARURUMON!"
"Agumon WARP Digivolve to... WARGREYMON!"
Berserkermon crashed into Metalgarurumon's left wing, and tried to chew it off, grinding the blades of his teeth against the armor.
"What?" Metalgarurumon blinked, craning his neck to look. "Well, This is handy." Turning towards a large oak tree, the metal wolf slammed the red champion into the trunk, embedding his back spikes in the wood. When Metalgarurumon pulled back, Berserkermon remained attached to the tree, his arms and legs flailing like saw blades, slicing the trees to the left and right and causing them to fall, letting more light through the thick leaves of the canopy.
"All right!" Matt cheered. "Now, finish him off!"
"Wait!" Kari cried out, but Metalgarurumon was already firing.
"GIGA MISSILE!" he yelled, a large, high-yield warhead blasting out of his chest cavity.
"Get down!" Tai screamed, and everyone dropped to the forest floor as the explosive hit Berserkermon in the chest, unleashing its destructive fury.
After the ground had stopped shaking and the air had cleared outside the blast radius, the Digi-Destined got to their feet slowly in the new clearing.
"You got him!" Wargreymon roared, "And we thought he was invin..."
In the crater, the settling dust turned an angry crimson.
"FiReS oF HaTe!" Berserkermon bellowed, leaping out of the crater with a churning red sphere in his claws. Leaning back on one foot, Berserkermon cocked his arm, then launched the fireball into the sky, rolling it off of his slightly curved claws.
"He survived?" Matt said, incredulous.
"He missed?" Tai asked in the same tone.
"But he took it right in the..."
"It was at point-blank..."
"I don't think he missed." Izzy stated, looking up... "Hey, what's strange about that red ball?"
Tai and Sora, soccer players, noticed at once. "It's going up, but it's not getting smaller!"
"What does that mean, Joe?" Gomamon asked his Digi-Destined, who had started to tremble anew.
"It's getting bigger!" Joe exclaimed. "We've got to get out of here!"
Sora and Biyomon were already moving, Digivolving to Birdramon, then Garudamon. "Climb in!" The giant bird woman bellowed, collecting the Digi-Destined and Digimon. She launched into the air, flying swiftly away from the expanding fireball.
"I think we're safe, now..." Sora breathed, looking back.
"I hope so, if he's even stronger than Angemon!" Patamon squeaked as his ears accidentally tickled TK, making him giggle despite the seriousness of the situation.
Izzy mumbled his agreement as he worked at his pineapple.
Garudamon turned pi radians around (180 degrees) and watched as the pulsing sphere, now a mile across, hit the ground, enveloping the forest in a dome of red and orange flames that striped the hemisphere from top to bottom.
"So THAT'S what happened to the forest!" Mimi said, on the verge of tears. "What if there were some good Digimon in there?"
"I don't think they survived, Mimi...Berserkermon's just trying to stop the Dark Masters, even though he'll turn the whole Digi-World into a lifeless husk doing it." Kari said sadly, hugging Gatomon close.
"We are in serious trouble!" Matt yelled from Metalgarurumon's back as they flew beside Garudamon.
"That's an understatement if I ever heard one." Izzy commented, sitting back. "There."
"What did you do, Izzy?" Sora asked, hoping that the most computer savvy of the group could come up with an answer.
"Since we can't stop Berserkermon, the only chance we have is that Drowzee1 wrote in a termination code, some trigger that would halt the program. If he's worth his salt as a programmer, he should have one. So, I sent him an e-mail." Izzy answered smoothly.
"You're saying you can't stop him?" TK asked, worried.
"There's no shame in asking for help in a life or death situation." Izzy replied sagely.
"I can agree with that." Tai said, earnestly.
"Look!" Tentomon cried, pointing to the forest below.
From the now incinerated impact zone, a steady line of trees were falling directly under the path that Garudamon flew. As they watched, two more trees groaned and toppled.
"He's following us!" Gomamon yelled.
"I hope that this Drowzee1 has an answer, and soon." Gatomon whispered from Kari's arms.
In the analog world, on the West Coast of America, it was midnight. Not that that stopped some people, specifically Internet junkies, programmers, and hackers, from being online. The eccentric computer geek Drowzee1 sat in a plush executive style chair, reading reviews on Slashdot, when...
"Huh? Who's writing me at this hour?" He mutters to himself, turning his chair to face the mail server that hummed away next to him, a layover from an unsuccessful attempt to become an ISP.
Drowzee1 fell out of the chair with a crash, losing his glasses on the floor. "Benjamon!" he exclaimed, groping around for his eyewear. "And the Digi-Destined!" he looked over blearily at a towering stack of printouts that contained the hardcopy coding for Benjamon and all his Digivolutions. His hand closed about his spectacles, and he threw them on, replying to Izzy's request as fast as he could, fingers flying across the keys.
"Oh, Dear!" he muttered, too polite to swear. "I just hope they can hold out!"
Drowzee1 hit enter and sent the reply on its way. Less than a minute had passed; would the reply be in time?
"Oh, no!" Izzy groaned. "I forgot the time difference!"
Tentomon looked shaken at this. "You forgot something?"
"Even if Drowzee1 replied instantly it will take a while to get here, at one minute analog time equaling one day Digi-time, we could be waiting all day, maybe even several!"
"WHAT?" Tai yelled, grabbing Izzy's collar and jerking him to his feet.
"Tai, he's trying!" Kari interceded, and Tai sighed, letting go.
"Sorry." He apologized.
"It's no problem. You're just panicked because of a distressing situation." Unflappable as ever, Izzy readily accepted the apology.
"So what do we do now?" Sora asked, looking up at Garudamon. "Just fly around until Garudamon tires and drops us into Berserkermon's path?"
"Don't worry, Sora." Garudamon said reassuringly. "I won't get tired for a while yet."
"I think he's turning!" Gomamon called, still tracking Berserkermon's path, which now veered at right angles to their flight path. Over the wind, the Digi-Destined heard:
"PuPPeTMoN!"
"Wha? Who are you?"
"PuPPeTMoN Die!"
"We'll see about that! PUPPET PUMMEL!"
Garudamon circled and hovered over the impromptu battlefield.
"This should be good." Matt said from Metalgarurumon's back.
Berserkermon deflected Puppetmon's multi-shot attack with his claws, the little light balls scattering about the trees. He advanced, step by heavy step. "PuPPeTMoN KiLL TK!" Berserkermon raged.
"I never did that!" the small Dark Master screeched, holding his mallet to keep the red fury at bay. "Sure, I tried, but... PUPPET PUMMEL!"
Striking the ground, Puppetmon sent up a firewall to engulf and destroy Berserkermon in the same way that he had deleted Cherrimon.
"FiReS oF HaTe!" Berserkermon howled, unscathed. The devastating orb leapt from his claws, barreling towards Puppetmon.
"PUPPET PUMMEL!" Puppetmon swung his mallet like a baseball bat, connecting with the fireball beautifully. However, hate is difficult to redirect once started, and instead of knocking the oscillating red and orange sphere back, Puppetmon ruptured the ball like a popped balloon, and the resulting backlash caught the Dark Master's hammer in an explosive vortex of fire that picked up both hammer and owner, tossing them high over the trees as easily as a child threw a pebble.
"I'll get youuuuuu!" Puppetmon promised as he became a speck in the sky.
"Anything yet, Izzy?" Tentomon whispered.
Izzy shook his head, not wanting to bring Berserkermon's attention upon them.
"FaiLeD! FaiLeD PRoTeCT!" Berserkermon gibbered, bawling again. "DiViDe BY ZeRo, FaiLeD!"
"Divide by zero?" Palmon wondered, standing on tip-roots to peer down at the insane champion. "That can't be done, can it?"
Joe nodded. "It's impossible." He paused. "My math teacher once asked me to try, and I went nuts trying to do it."
"Of course!" Izzy exclaimed.
Berserkermon looked up mournfully, scarlet tears dripping over silver teeth.
"What do you mean, Izzy?" Mimi asked, who was, like Palmon, looking over Garudamon's fingers at the forest below.
"I think he uses the number of Digi-Destined to decide who to protect. For instance, if we broke into two groups of three and five, he'd go with the group of three, because they'd need more protection."
"Yeah, so?" Tai grumped, trying to keep up.
"So when we all disappeared, he had no way to make a ratio! The result would be zero Digi-Destined in a group divided by zero total Digi-Destined."
"And because he's so literal and protective, he couldn't avoid the instruction." Kari said with her usual insight.
"Precisely!"
"This doesn't help us at all, though." Matt yelled. "We know he's nuts, knowing why he's nuts is beside the point!"
"It tells us what has to be done to stop him!" Izzy shouted back. "If we can make him accept that even one of us is alive, then the balance becomes one over one, and then he won't be subject to dividing by zero!"
"We need to make Berserkermon see us?" TK asked, watching the ape-like Digimon alternate between intense sorrow and frightful anger, his own eyes tearing up with sympathy.
Izzy nodded firmly. "Remember how he hesitated when he saw Matt? His initial coding was trying to reassert itself."
Tai snapped his fingers. "Then why don't we all go down at once? Make sure he recognizes us!"
"I don't know, Tai." Mimi said dubiously. "I don't really know if he'll stay calm long enough for us to approach him safely..."
"What have we got to lose?"
"Our lives, for one thing!" Sora snapped, irritated at Tai's lack of common sense.
"We can't just fly around all day." Wargreymon rumbled. "I'm getting bored."
"Do we want to try?" Tai asked rhetorically, "Or do we want to wait around for an answer that might not exist, or ever come?" he looked at the startled faces of his friends.
"Well," Izzy began, scratching his head nervously. "When you put it that way..."
Slowly, Joe swallowed and nodded. "If we have to, I'd rather face him in daylight than at night." He admitted.
"It's scary, but we have to be brave!" TK stated as firmly as he could, clutching Patamon to his chest.
"I guess I make a majority." Sora sighed. "Let's go down and meet our misguided avenger."
Garudamon and Metalgarurumon sailed down to the ground, letting the Digi-Destined off, but staying close, just in case.
"Hey, Berserkermon!" Tai shouted, waving his hands. "We're okay! You can stop now!"
The other children face-faulted, falling to the ground with a thud.
"I don't think it's that simple, Tai," Said Mimi, who was well acquainted with being simple before her adventures forced her to grow.
"Well, what did you want?" Tai demanded. "A speech?"
"Sure, if you have one." Gomamon replied.
Tai gritted his teeth, and advanced on the seal Digimon, who was now staring at Tai, open-mouthed. "Yeah, that's right, Gomamon." Tai sneered. "You think you're so funny, but..."
"TAI! LOOK OUT!" Wargreymon yelled, leaping toward his Digi-Destined with Dramon destroyers extended.
"Wha...AIEE!" Tai screamed as a pair of stocky red arms with foot-long blades wrapped about him from behind and jerked him away from Wargreymon.
The blades of the Dramon Destroyers punched deep into the ground directly behind where Tai had stood mere picoseconds before.
A cold nose pressed into Tai's back, and he yelped loudly, spinning around in the scarlet arms.
Berserkermon disengaged his grip, and stepped back, sniffing. "SMeLL LiKe Tai." Berserkermon grumbled, sauntering over to smell each Digi-Destined in turn.
Sniff. "So...Ra." Sniff. "J...Joe."
Berserkermon's eyes turned lighter shades of red as he smelled each child.
Sniff... Sniffle... "M...MMMM..." he halted, making strange faces, nose twitching.
"Mimi?" Mimi supplied helpfully.
"N..." Berserkermon said hesitantly, then turned away, exposing the metallic spikes of his back to her.
"Well, I never!"
Berserkermon sneezed noisily, ripping up a large divot to wipe his muzzle.
"Oh! Bless you!" Mimi exclaimed, freezing suddenly as Berserkermon turned and smelled her again.
Sniff. "MiMi"
Snort. "iS iS... iZZY"
Sniff. "Tee...KaY"
Sniffle... "KaRi"
And finally, after a long, drawn-out smell... "MaTT!" clawed paws swept about the Digi-Destined instantly, catching Matt in an enormous bear hug, lifting the startled blond from the ground and stamping with delight. "MaTT! MaTT! MaTT!" Berserkermon nearly sang, eyes now glowing a radiant pink as he tenderly returned Matt to his feet.
"I think it's working!" Matt whispered hoarsely.
"I think he likes you!" Tai jeered, smiling as Matt gave him a look that spoke eloquently of long, sharp daggers.
Pink eyes flicked back to red. "BuT DeaD?"
"We're alive!" Kari assured him, stepping carefully over and placing one small hand on the meaty shoulder.
"aLiVe?" Berserkermon asked, eyes pink again.
"Yes!" Gatomon exclaimed. "Alive!"
"BuT SaW Die!" Berserkermon's triangular eyes returned to a baleful red. "SaW Die, BeRSeRKeRMoN CHaNGe To FiGHT FoR DeaD?" A shake of the head, paws going up to hold the thick skull. "BuT DeaD aLiVe! No! DeaD DeaD! No! DeaD aLiVe!" Berserkermon screamed in pain, and jerked away from Kari's hand. He staggered off, clawing at the trees and weeping.
"Can someone tell me what just happened?" Matt asked quietly as another screech filtered through the wood. "And why was he smelling us?"
"What about his eyes?" Sora added, puzzled as she looked where Berserkermon had disappeared.
"Animals have great senses of smell." Gatomon explained. "He was identifying you by your scent."
"As for the eyes, maybe a show of internal conflict?" Joe suggested.
"Yeah! His eyes were that horrible red while he claimed we were dead, and that rosy pink when he said we weren't!" Mimi happily declared.
"That's as good a guess as any," Tai said.
"It didn't work, did it?" TK said sadly.
"No, It didn't work." Izzy said in a similar tone. "We scared him pretty bad, I don't think he'll be back for a while. Why don't we stay here, and see if Drowzee1 responds."
Soon enough, early the next day...
"Hey, It's a message from Gennai!" Izzy called, bringing over the others as the wizened attribute-less Digimon appeared on the screen.
"Greetings!" he said, holding up an envelope. "I bring a message from the outside world."
"What, you read all the mail sent to me?" Izzy said, startled.
"Sure, I live on Server, everything comes through there."
"But that's PRIVATE!" Izzy sputtered furiously.
"Oh? By the way, there are a great deal of missives from women here for you."
"Women?"
"Sure! Lola, Babs, Chesty..."
"Gennai, that's spam! Advertisements and come ons!"
"Really?" Gennai looked saddened, and tossed a list away. "And I got so many phone numbers, too..."
"What's the message?!" Matt grated, glowering at the ancient Digimon.
"Hold your horses! It's from Drowzee1, whoever that is..." an e-mail message appeared on the screen.
Greetings, Digi-Destined!
I have left this message vague to avoid meaning to interception.
It's a pleasure to meet you all, and extend an electronic hand in friendship. I make this offer with utmost sincerity, as I would love to be there and share my knowledge, but I fear I would lack the courage to have enough reliability in this situation. I hope you understand. The way to stop Berserkermon is to make him see the light. I trust you know what to do now, it's the only way you'll be able to achieve your goal.
Good luck,
Drowzee1.
"That's it?" Tai asked quietly, then snarled. "SHOW HIM THE LIGHT? THAT'S ALL?"
"That's it." Gennai smiled and disappeared, leaving the message.
Joe laughed so hard he began to cry. "How old is Drowzee1, anyway? Five?"
Sora mouthed the message... "Have enough reliability?" She muttered, "That's awkward."
"About as subtle as a sledgehammer to the head, wouldn't you say?" Joe grinned, wiping his eyes.
"Well, it was meant for us, so it should be." Izzy tried to keep his normal poker face, but started smiling himself. "I don't know why I didn't think of it myself. Of course if we were dead, our crests wouldn't work."
"So all he's saying is use the crests?" Tai said incredulously.
"Yup." Matt answered, rolling his eyes.
"That, and Kari's should be the final crest to activate. The rest of us can go all at once, but Kari needs to make him see the light." Izzy clarified.
"So now we wait?" Agumon queried.
"Looks that way." Palmon shrugged, "And I'd rather stay here in the sun."
They didn't have long to wait. Perhaps an hour later, a harsh spitting and snarling bounced about the clearing.
"Everybody ready to save the Digi-World?" Tai called, confident in an easy victory.
"YEAH!" the others cheered, pulling out their crests.
Agumon gently tapped Tai's shoulder. "Umm. I don't want to rain on your parade, but you mind if I warp Digivolved to Wargreymon?" He said timidly, pressing his stubby claws together.
"Go ahead, Agumon! But you're right, I don't think we'll need you."
"Agumon WARP Digivolve to... WARGREYMON!"
Now standing as tall as the trees, Wargreymon flexed, brandishing the tri-clawed Dramon Destroyers ominously. "Let Berserkermon come! I'm ready!"
Berserkermon flashed out from the trees, snarling. "LieS!" he thundered. His eyes were so deep of a red as to appear black, but still glowing insanely. "aLL DeaD! You... TRiCKS! DeSTRoY!"
With that, Berserkermon launched himself at Sora, howling a battle cry.
Just as sudden as the attack, Wargreymon sidled in front of Sora using his armor to deflect the attack in a shower of sparks. "Nice try!" Wargreymon delivered a powerful backhand to the champion that was shorter than his arm. "But not on my watch!"
"Now!" Tai shouted, holding his crest to the sky. The sun-like symbol of courage shone brilliantly and lanced out, joined by the light of the six original Digi-Destined's crests.
Snorting contemptuously, Berserkermon slashed at the seven radiant beams, severing the connection. "No! No!" Berserkermon raged, stomping and tearing at the grass. "FiGHT! FiGHT PuPPeTMoN!" he gestured to Wargreymon with a swipe of his claws.
"He brushed them away like cobwebs!" Tentomon wailed, buzzing around behind Izzy. "Now what do we do?"
Garudamon bent over, ready to grab everyone and take off again. "We may have to retreat, Sora."
"No!" Matt exclaimed. "We have to hold the line if we want to live!"
"Maybe he's rested." Tai said. "Wear him down, Wargreymon!"
"You got it, Tai! NOVA FORCE!" Wargreymon roared, spinning faster and faster until he was just a blur of dinosaur and armor.
"Tai!" Izzy yelled. "Benjamon's Digivolutions take energy from their surroundings! Berserkermon can't be worn down, only distracted!"
Wargreymon dove at the howling Berserkermon, who had begun to foam at the mouth, spraying flecks of spittle as he screeched and screamed his defiance to a cloud. Nevertheless, his own claws flicked upwards and caught Wargreymon's attack on the six tines of his fingerless paws. The Nova Force continued as the orange Mega kept rotating, but the force of his dive was stopped cold! The scene was ludicrous; a five-foot champion not even sliding as it halted the forward momentum of a twenty-foot Mega Digimon.
The Digi-Destined couldn't gape, as the rending scream of metal on metal, at least fifty times louder than a stopping train forced them to drop to the ground, clutching their ears in pain.
Berserkermon tightened his grip, laughing madly as he brought Wargreymon to a complete stop before slamming 'PuPPeTMoN' into the ground.
"Wargreymon!" Tai yelled, climbing to his feet.
"I'm okay, just surprised." Wargreymon said as nonchalantly as he could, jumping into the air while he blinked his emerald green eyes and stretched.
Berserkermon cackled a hollow, hooting laugh. "aLL You HaVe? WeaK! WeaK PuPPeTMoN!"
"Shouldn't we do anything?" Patamon asked Gatomon.
"How much can we do?" Gatomon replied, depressed, tail drooping.
"TERRA FORCE!" Wargreymon cried, pulling together his signature energy attack and hurling at Berserkermon.
"FiRe...FiReS oF HaTe!" Berserkermon gibbered, tears running from his eyes and down his chest. Between six foreclaws, the bloody crimson light of the sterilizing fireball ignited, and shot up at Wargreymon.
The red fireball grew, swelling with human hate and anger. Inflating like a balloon, it met the Orange Terra Force sphere as an equal; however, after the two attacks bulged outwards in their attempts to break each other, Wargreymon's attack burst like a bubble, dissipating back into the environment as the pulsing fireball raced on to hit Wargreymon dead center.
The attack erupted around the Mega, sheathing him in the radiant flames of emotion. Fire and shockwave obliterated his armor by melting metal, then blasting it off the spread-eagled Digimon. Breastplate, shin and arm guards, even helmet disintegrated in the superheated, hate-fueled combustion.
"WARGREYMON!" Tai cried, "NO!"
Out of the blossoming field of incineration, Agumon fell to the ground in a smoking heap. Berserkermon was instantly there, pinning the helpless rookie with his knees. Mouth twisted into a terrible smile as red tears dripped off his teeth onto the weakly struggling Agumon, Berserkermon raised one arm to the sky, light glinting off the blades as he prepared to deliver the coup de grace, the finishing blow, the final strike, the...
-Whap!-
Oh, sorry.
Anyway...
"NO!" All the Digi-Destined and Digimon shouted in unison as the scythe-like claws swept down...
Freeze-frame and understand:
(Camera rotates around the scene, creating a Matrix-esqe 3D effect)
In times of extreme distress, say, the impending death of a friend, emotions can warp reality to the point where previously impossible events can occur.
Well, not really, but in this story it's a good way to justify what happens next.
Mere nanometers from Agumon's fear-dilated eyes, the lethal claws jerked to a halt. Berserkermon stared dumbly at his arm, immobilized by a ray of blue light.
"Agumon, get out of there!" Tai yelled, adding the beam of courage to hold the other thick arm.
As Agumon rolled and dragged himself out from under the befuddled champion, the light of sincerity, love, knowledge, reliability and hope reached out and ensnared Berserkermon, binding the insane Digimon's arms and legs to his stumpy, squat body.
"LeT Go!" he pleaded, "MuST FiGHT, DeSTRoY FoR DeaD!"
"Your turn, Kari." Sora said, her voice detached, almost apathetic.
Kari nodded and walked out to the vainly struggling Berserkermon and held up her crest. White light spilled forth into the dark scarlet eyes, filling them with illumination.
Berserkermon's screams seared the air as the stunned Digimon looked on. His cries of agony grew increasingly shrill as Kari's light drove out the red madness, in much the same way a priest would exorcise a demon by ritual prayer.
Bands of lightning-like red energy arced across his body as the light filled his eyes, forcing the red into lighter and lighter shades; white lightning swirled about his wolfish muzzle, crackling over metal teeth and spreading down over his head, jumping between the silver spikes on his back as it continued to push out the red...
Fractures appeared in the pink of his eyes, the light of Kari's crest blazing out from the cracks. Then, as the purity filled Berserkermon completely, it shattered the last remnants of insanity, bursting out of his eyes and mouth with the same intensity as the white being forced inside.
With a final jerk and arch of his back to point his glowing eyes and gaping maw to the sky, Berserkermon ruptured, flying apart into black data bits, and was no more.
But still, the shimmering core was bound by the power of the crests... "Enough, enough!" it croaked hoarsely, weeping.
Kari looked to Tai, who nodded. "All right, but you promise not to hurt us first." She said, still holding her crest.
"I swear!" it rasped. "I swear by my honor, by my coding! By the Digi-world, STOP! I implore you!"
"That's good enough for me." Kari let her crest fall and dangle from the cord around her neck as she stopped the ray.
As the binding light of the crests fell away, the glowing shape dropped heavily to the ground and lay there, too bright to look at.
"Benjamon?" Izzy hazarded a guess. "Is that you?"
"No." the answer came back. "It's Queen Victoria the second, and we are not amused."
"What?" Palmon blinked, looking at Mimi. "Who's Queen Victoria?"
"Of course it's Benjamon!" the voice snapped. "Who else could it be?"
Slowly, the luminescence faded away.
"I'm not going to say 'What happened?' or 'Where am I?' because I fragging well knew what was happening, I was in there, too fighting the madness with will power." Benjamon groaned, trying unsuccessfully to sit up. "I guess I was the white, trying to keep Berserkermon from killing you all. But it was hard... So very hard."
The Digi-Destined relaxed somewhat, Garudamon and Metalgarurumon returning to rookie form as Tai, Kari, and Joe worked on Agumon's wounds.
"Berserkermon's gone now, right?" TK asked softly.
"Gone for good." Benjamon replied wearily. "You deleted him, and I can't feel that Digivolution option at all... Like something was ripped out of me." He closed his golden eyes in exhaustion. "I suppose you all hate me now." He sighed. "If you want to leave... I won't...can't stop you. I can't go on until I recover my strength; I need to sleep. I'll understand if I wake up alone..."
"We won't abandon anyone." Sora said, kneeling and running a gloved hand through his short brown hair. "Especially not a friend."
"A friend?" Benjamon smiled wanly as he whispered. "Thank you, Sora."
Matt dashed a tear from his eye and walked off into the forest, Gabumon trailing behind.
This was written during vacation, I just can't help it.
Hope you enjoyed it, I've had this thing planned for MONTHS. From here on out, it's touch and go, so my fanfics will come more slowly.
Write to you later,
Drowzee1
Scene: The Digi-Destined have returned from the dream-like revelations of the Digi-World's creators, and find a wasteland as well as a world-threatening challenge from an unlikely foe.
"Kari!" Tai held his little sister gently in his arms. "Are you all right?"
The other Digi-Destined huddled around the young brunette, helping her back to her feet.
"Say, what happened to the forest?" Biyomon chirped as she surveyed the land around the group.
"Huh? It's gone!" Sora exclaimed. "It's completely destroyed!"
They were in a zone of death. It was as if a meteor had hit or a volcano erupted, leveling the trees, incinerating the forest, reducing the land to soot and cinders that crumbled underfoot and blew away in the breezes.
"There's still forest out there, maybe half a mile away." Palmon said, the cactus Digimon's affinity for plants informing her of their continued presence outside the sterile wastes.
Tai pulled out his pocket telescope and looked into the forest. "The trees out there seem fine, not a burn mark on 'em, and..." He stopped, and shivered. "That's eerie... I could have sworn I saw two glowing red eyes, but they're gone now..."
The instant Tai put the telescope away, a keening wail of despair rose into the air, filling the land with a scream of anguish. The cry echoed about the Digi-Destined with bone-chilling clarity, even though the source couldn't be seen.
"Speaking of eerie..." Joe shuddered.
"That's not eerie!" Mimi corrected, holding Joe's arm tightly, "That's positively chilling!"
"How sad." Kari murmured as the noise continued, lament and loss threaded through the howling.
"What's that, Kari?" TK asked, moving close as the whole group bunched together, anxiously watching the forest for motion, light...Anything that could tell them what was happening.
"Can't you hear the pain?" the ever-empathic Kari asked. "It's lost something...Or someone-very close to it."
Gatomon regarded her Digi-Destined, her large blue eyes quizzical. "You're weird, Kari." She said. "Not that that's a bad thing."
The mournful wailing ceased; in the distance, loud bass groans and creaks rumbled, sounding like a collapsing building. At the forest's edge, four large trees swayed, then toppled over heavily, the sounds of their descent delayed from the sight of their fall. When they crashed to the ground, great columns of ash billowed up like mushroom clouds, hiding what lay beyond.
"I don't like being out in the open, Matt." Gabumon stated, rubbing up against Matt's leg for security.
"Me either." Matt began. "It's too..." Whatever Matt said was lost in a bone-chilling howl of animalistic rage.
"No need to translate that, Kari!" Izzy exclaimed, staring at the blooming soot clouds. "Let's get out of here!"
Apparently, everyone thought this was an excellent idea, as no one objected and ran (or flew) off over the decimated land.
The snarling grew in volume, and when Tai risked a glance over his shoulder, something was chasing them! In the boiling dust storms kicked up by their feet, knowing exactly what it was became impossible, except to see that it was moving fast and kicking up a large ash cloud of its own.
"It's gaining on us!" Tai yelled, causing a massive surge of adrenaline in the Digi-Destined that pushed them into the forest, puffing and staggering farther into the trees.
"Gabumon!" Matt rasped as he caught his breath, "Can you fight?"
"Sure thing... Matt." Gabumon panted, turning around to face...whatever it was that pursued them.
The creature entered the forest, snarling. "PuPPeTMoN!" it grated, slashing at an unoffending tree. "PuPPeTMoN WiLL Die!!"
There was a moment of silence, then the tree slid along the cut, crashing into the dirt.
"What?" Sora gaped, staring back at the red eyes in the silhouetted shape.
Moving slowly forward, the mysterious Digimon entered a patch of sunlight.
It was squat and compact, heavily muscled, and solid red. It looked and moved like a hairless gorilla, knuckling along on all fours, standing occasionally on its hind legs to glare around the wood with the baleful red eyes like searchlights. There were no fingers or toes; rather, three long, blade-like claws adorned the end of each appendage, biting deep into the earth with every step. Jagged silver spikes were scattered thickly across the broad red back, and the wolfish muzzle perpetually exhibited its knife-like metal teeth. Triangular red eyes glowed malevolently, sunken under a heavy, jutting brow. Scars in rows of three looked self-inflicted, some still bled, oozing black liquid.
It lurched toward Gabumon a step, then wailed and fell to the ground. "FaiLeD!" it sobbed, scarlet tears flowing down its snout. "MaTT DeaD! SoRa DeaD! aLL DeaD!"
"WHAT?!!" Matt exclaimed, stepping out from behind the tree that kept him from view. Gasps from behind other trees suggested that everyone had pretty much the same reaction to the statement of the crying hulk that beat the ground, crying.
"FaiLeD! FaiLeD!" it whimpered, then stood up, voice instantly changing to an enraged bellow. "PuPPeTMoN... PuPPeTMoN FauLT!"
"Matt!" TK cried, running toward his brother with Patamon in his arms, "Be careful!"
"Stay back, TK!" Matt shouted back, raising a clenched fist. "We don't know what we're dealing with!"
The red Digimon looked toward the commotion. "MaTT?" it asked dazedly, shambling nearer. "No... MaTT DeaD! PuPPeTMoN KiLL!" stopping, the strange Digimon cried again. "WHY ToRMeNT BeRSeRKeRMoN WiTH MaTT iMaGe?!" Berserkermon sniveled, wiping away bloody tears with the back of one bladed paw.
"Berserkermon?" Izzy said, bringing up the profile.
Digimon Analyzer:
Berserkermon: Final solution Digimon.
Level: Champion.
Type: Vaccine.
In the event that the Digi-Destined should be destroyed, Benjamon Digivolves into Berserkermon, the most powerful champion it is possible to create, with the express purpose of avenging the Digi-Destined. His 'Fires of Hate' attack acts as a conduit for the combined anger and hate of the Internet, channeling and focusing them into a powerful fireball capable of leveling mountains. This power comes with a price: Massive mental instability. This makes for dangerously unpredictable behavior, confusion, incredible aggressiveness, and the unusual side effect of invincibility to attack.
The chaos of Berserkermon's mind is such that he cannot recognize damage, and this incapacity is so strong, it prevents his algorithms from being damaged. Tremble, evil, for Judgement approacheth thee!
-Drowzee1
Izzy froze, trembling. "If this is true..." he whispered in a quavering voice...
"Then the Digi-world is doomed!" Joe finished gloomily, wrapping his arms about Mimi.
Berserkermon lumbered toward Gabumon. "PuPPeTMoN!"
"No! Gabumon!" the reptile Digimon with a fur coat shot back, holding his ground.
Berserkermon shook his read head, as if to shake the haze of confusion away. "Ga...Ga-Bu-MoN?" he said, slowly. "No! GaBuMoN DeaD! SaW Die!"
Berserkermon lunged, claws flashing in the dappled light filtering through the forest canopy.
"Gabumon WARP Digivolve to...METALGARURUMON!"
"Agumon WARP Digivolve to... WARGREYMON!"
Berserkermon crashed into Metalgarurumon's left wing, and tried to chew it off, grinding the blades of his teeth against the armor.
"What?" Metalgarurumon blinked, craning his neck to look. "Well, This is handy." Turning towards a large oak tree, the metal wolf slammed the red champion into the trunk, embedding his back spikes in the wood. When Metalgarurumon pulled back, Berserkermon remained attached to the tree, his arms and legs flailing like saw blades, slicing the trees to the left and right and causing them to fall, letting more light through the thick leaves of the canopy.
"All right!" Matt cheered. "Now, finish him off!"
"Wait!" Kari cried out, but Metalgarurumon was already firing.
"GIGA MISSILE!" he yelled, a large, high-yield warhead blasting out of his chest cavity.
"Get down!" Tai screamed, and everyone dropped to the forest floor as the explosive hit Berserkermon in the chest, unleashing its destructive fury.
After the ground had stopped shaking and the air had cleared outside the blast radius, the Digi-Destined got to their feet slowly in the new clearing.
"You got him!" Wargreymon roared, "And we thought he was invin..."
In the crater, the settling dust turned an angry crimson.
"FiReS oF HaTe!" Berserkermon bellowed, leaping out of the crater with a churning red sphere in his claws. Leaning back on one foot, Berserkermon cocked his arm, then launched the fireball into the sky, rolling it off of his slightly curved claws.
"He survived?" Matt said, incredulous.
"He missed?" Tai asked in the same tone.
"But he took it right in the..."
"It was at point-blank..."
"I don't think he missed." Izzy stated, looking up... "Hey, what's strange about that red ball?"
Tai and Sora, soccer players, noticed at once. "It's going up, but it's not getting smaller!"
"What does that mean, Joe?" Gomamon asked his Digi-Destined, who had started to tremble anew.
"It's getting bigger!" Joe exclaimed. "We've got to get out of here!"
Sora and Biyomon were already moving, Digivolving to Birdramon, then Garudamon. "Climb in!" The giant bird woman bellowed, collecting the Digi-Destined and Digimon. She launched into the air, flying swiftly away from the expanding fireball.
"I think we're safe, now..." Sora breathed, looking back.
"I hope so, if he's even stronger than Angemon!" Patamon squeaked as his ears accidentally tickled TK, making him giggle despite the seriousness of the situation.
Izzy mumbled his agreement as he worked at his pineapple.
Garudamon turned pi radians around (180 degrees) and watched as the pulsing sphere, now a mile across, hit the ground, enveloping the forest in a dome of red and orange flames that striped the hemisphere from top to bottom.
"So THAT'S what happened to the forest!" Mimi said, on the verge of tears. "What if there were some good Digimon in there?"
"I don't think they survived, Mimi...Berserkermon's just trying to stop the Dark Masters, even though he'll turn the whole Digi-World into a lifeless husk doing it." Kari said sadly, hugging Gatomon close.
"We are in serious trouble!" Matt yelled from Metalgarurumon's back as they flew beside Garudamon.
"That's an understatement if I ever heard one." Izzy commented, sitting back. "There."
"What did you do, Izzy?" Sora asked, hoping that the most computer savvy of the group could come up with an answer.
"Since we can't stop Berserkermon, the only chance we have is that Drowzee1 wrote in a termination code, some trigger that would halt the program. If he's worth his salt as a programmer, he should have one. So, I sent him an e-mail." Izzy answered smoothly.
"You're saying you can't stop him?" TK asked, worried.
"There's no shame in asking for help in a life or death situation." Izzy replied sagely.
"I can agree with that." Tai said, earnestly.
"Look!" Tentomon cried, pointing to the forest below.
From the now incinerated impact zone, a steady line of trees were falling directly under the path that Garudamon flew. As they watched, two more trees groaned and toppled.
"He's following us!" Gomamon yelled.
"I hope that this Drowzee1 has an answer, and soon." Gatomon whispered from Kari's arms.
In the analog world, on the West Coast of America, it was midnight. Not that that stopped some people, specifically Internet junkies, programmers, and hackers, from being online. The eccentric computer geek Drowzee1 sat in a plush executive style chair, reading reviews on Slashdot, when...
"Huh? Who's writing me at this hour?" He mutters to himself, turning his chair to face the mail server that hummed away next to him, a layover from an unsuccessful attempt to become an ISP.
Drowzee1 fell out of the chair with a crash, losing his glasses on the floor. "Benjamon!" he exclaimed, groping around for his eyewear. "And the Digi-Destined!" he looked over blearily at a towering stack of printouts that contained the hardcopy coding for Benjamon and all his Digivolutions. His hand closed about his spectacles, and he threw them on, replying to Izzy's request as fast as he could, fingers flying across the keys.
"Oh, Dear!" he muttered, too polite to swear. "I just hope they can hold out!"
Drowzee1 hit enter and sent the reply on its way. Less than a minute had passed; would the reply be in time?
"Oh, no!" Izzy groaned. "I forgot the time difference!"
Tentomon looked shaken at this. "You forgot something?"
"Even if Drowzee1 replied instantly it will take a while to get here, at one minute analog time equaling one day Digi-time, we could be waiting all day, maybe even several!"
"WHAT?" Tai yelled, grabbing Izzy's collar and jerking him to his feet.
"Tai, he's trying!" Kari interceded, and Tai sighed, letting go.
"Sorry." He apologized.
"It's no problem. You're just panicked because of a distressing situation." Unflappable as ever, Izzy readily accepted the apology.
"So what do we do now?" Sora asked, looking up at Garudamon. "Just fly around until Garudamon tires and drops us into Berserkermon's path?"
"Don't worry, Sora." Garudamon said reassuringly. "I won't get tired for a while yet."
"I think he's turning!" Gomamon called, still tracking Berserkermon's path, which now veered at right angles to their flight path. Over the wind, the Digi-Destined heard:
"PuPPeTMoN!"
"Wha? Who are you?"
"PuPPeTMoN Die!"
"We'll see about that! PUPPET PUMMEL!"
Garudamon circled and hovered over the impromptu battlefield.
"This should be good." Matt said from Metalgarurumon's back.
Berserkermon deflected Puppetmon's multi-shot attack with his claws, the little light balls scattering about the trees. He advanced, step by heavy step. "PuPPeTMoN KiLL TK!" Berserkermon raged.
"I never did that!" the small Dark Master screeched, holding his mallet to keep the red fury at bay. "Sure, I tried, but... PUPPET PUMMEL!"
Striking the ground, Puppetmon sent up a firewall to engulf and destroy Berserkermon in the same way that he had deleted Cherrimon.
"FiReS oF HaTe!" Berserkermon howled, unscathed. The devastating orb leapt from his claws, barreling towards Puppetmon.
"PUPPET PUMMEL!" Puppetmon swung his mallet like a baseball bat, connecting with the fireball beautifully. However, hate is difficult to redirect once started, and instead of knocking the oscillating red and orange sphere back, Puppetmon ruptured the ball like a popped balloon, and the resulting backlash caught the Dark Master's hammer in an explosive vortex of fire that picked up both hammer and owner, tossing them high over the trees as easily as a child threw a pebble.
"I'll get youuuuuu!" Puppetmon promised as he became a speck in the sky.
"Anything yet, Izzy?" Tentomon whispered.
Izzy shook his head, not wanting to bring Berserkermon's attention upon them.
"FaiLeD! FaiLeD PRoTeCT!" Berserkermon gibbered, bawling again. "DiViDe BY ZeRo, FaiLeD!"
"Divide by zero?" Palmon wondered, standing on tip-roots to peer down at the insane champion. "That can't be done, can it?"
Joe nodded. "It's impossible." He paused. "My math teacher once asked me to try, and I went nuts trying to do it."
"Of course!" Izzy exclaimed.
Berserkermon looked up mournfully, scarlet tears dripping over silver teeth.
"What do you mean, Izzy?" Mimi asked, who was, like Palmon, looking over Garudamon's fingers at the forest below.
"I think he uses the number of Digi-Destined to decide who to protect. For instance, if we broke into two groups of three and five, he'd go with the group of three, because they'd need more protection."
"Yeah, so?" Tai grumped, trying to keep up.
"So when we all disappeared, he had no way to make a ratio! The result would be zero Digi-Destined in a group divided by zero total Digi-Destined."
"And because he's so literal and protective, he couldn't avoid the instruction." Kari said with her usual insight.
"Precisely!"
"This doesn't help us at all, though." Matt yelled. "We know he's nuts, knowing why he's nuts is beside the point!"
"It tells us what has to be done to stop him!" Izzy shouted back. "If we can make him accept that even one of us is alive, then the balance becomes one over one, and then he won't be subject to dividing by zero!"
"We need to make Berserkermon see us?" TK asked, watching the ape-like Digimon alternate between intense sorrow and frightful anger, his own eyes tearing up with sympathy.
Izzy nodded firmly. "Remember how he hesitated when he saw Matt? His initial coding was trying to reassert itself."
Tai snapped his fingers. "Then why don't we all go down at once? Make sure he recognizes us!"
"I don't know, Tai." Mimi said dubiously. "I don't really know if he'll stay calm long enough for us to approach him safely..."
"What have we got to lose?"
"Our lives, for one thing!" Sora snapped, irritated at Tai's lack of common sense.
"We can't just fly around all day." Wargreymon rumbled. "I'm getting bored."
"Do we want to try?" Tai asked rhetorically, "Or do we want to wait around for an answer that might not exist, or ever come?" he looked at the startled faces of his friends.
"Well," Izzy began, scratching his head nervously. "When you put it that way..."
Slowly, Joe swallowed and nodded. "If we have to, I'd rather face him in daylight than at night." He admitted.
"It's scary, but we have to be brave!" TK stated as firmly as he could, clutching Patamon to his chest.
"I guess I make a majority." Sora sighed. "Let's go down and meet our misguided avenger."
Garudamon and Metalgarurumon sailed down to the ground, letting the Digi-Destined off, but staying close, just in case.
"Hey, Berserkermon!" Tai shouted, waving his hands. "We're okay! You can stop now!"
The other children face-faulted, falling to the ground with a thud.
"I don't think it's that simple, Tai," Said Mimi, who was well acquainted with being simple before her adventures forced her to grow.
"Well, what did you want?" Tai demanded. "A speech?"
"Sure, if you have one." Gomamon replied.
Tai gritted his teeth, and advanced on the seal Digimon, who was now staring at Tai, open-mouthed. "Yeah, that's right, Gomamon." Tai sneered. "You think you're so funny, but..."
"TAI! LOOK OUT!" Wargreymon yelled, leaping toward his Digi-Destined with Dramon destroyers extended.
"Wha...AIEE!" Tai screamed as a pair of stocky red arms with foot-long blades wrapped about him from behind and jerked him away from Wargreymon.
The blades of the Dramon Destroyers punched deep into the ground directly behind where Tai had stood mere picoseconds before.
A cold nose pressed into Tai's back, and he yelped loudly, spinning around in the scarlet arms.
Berserkermon disengaged his grip, and stepped back, sniffing. "SMeLL LiKe Tai." Berserkermon grumbled, sauntering over to smell each Digi-Destined in turn.
Sniff. "So...Ra." Sniff. "J...Joe."
Berserkermon's eyes turned lighter shades of red as he smelled each child.
Sniff... Sniffle... "M...MMMM..." he halted, making strange faces, nose twitching.
"Mimi?" Mimi supplied helpfully.
"N..." Berserkermon said hesitantly, then turned away, exposing the metallic spikes of his back to her.
"Well, I never!"
Berserkermon sneezed noisily, ripping up a large divot to wipe his muzzle.
"Oh! Bless you!" Mimi exclaimed, freezing suddenly as Berserkermon turned and smelled her again.
Sniff. "MiMi"
Snort. "iS iS... iZZY"
Sniff. "Tee...KaY"
Sniffle... "KaRi"
And finally, after a long, drawn-out smell... "MaTT!" clawed paws swept about the Digi-Destined instantly, catching Matt in an enormous bear hug, lifting the startled blond from the ground and stamping with delight. "MaTT! MaTT! MaTT!" Berserkermon nearly sang, eyes now glowing a radiant pink as he tenderly returned Matt to his feet.
"I think it's working!" Matt whispered hoarsely.
"I think he likes you!" Tai jeered, smiling as Matt gave him a look that spoke eloquently of long, sharp daggers.
Pink eyes flicked back to red. "BuT DeaD?"
"We're alive!" Kari assured him, stepping carefully over and placing one small hand on the meaty shoulder.
"aLiVe?" Berserkermon asked, eyes pink again.
"Yes!" Gatomon exclaimed. "Alive!"
"BuT SaW Die!" Berserkermon's triangular eyes returned to a baleful red. "SaW Die, BeRSeRKeRMoN CHaNGe To FiGHT FoR DeaD?" A shake of the head, paws going up to hold the thick skull. "BuT DeaD aLiVe! No! DeaD DeaD! No! DeaD aLiVe!" Berserkermon screamed in pain, and jerked away from Kari's hand. He staggered off, clawing at the trees and weeping.
"Can someone tell me what just happened?" Matt asked quietly as another screech filtered through the wood. "And why was he smelling us?"
"What about his eyes?" Sora added, puzzled as she looked where Berserkermon had disappeared.
"Animals have great senses of smell." Gatomon explained. "He was identifying you by your scent."
"As for the eyes, maybe a show of internal conflict?" Joe suggested.
"Yeah! His eyes were that horrible red while he claimed we were dead, and that rosy pink when he said we weren't!" Mimi happily declared.
"That's as good a guess as any," Tai said.
"It didn't work, did it?" TK said sadly.
"No, It didn't work." Izzy said in a similar tone. "We scared him pretty bad, I don't think he'll be back for a while. Why don't we stay here, and see if Drowzee1 responds."
Soon enough, early the next day...
"Hey, It's a message from Gennai!" Izzy called, bringing over the others as the wizened attribute-less Digimon appeared on the screen.
"Greetings!" he said, holding up an envelope. "I bring a message from the outside world."
"What, you read all the mail sent to me?" Izzy said, startled.
"Sure, I live on Server, everything comes through there."
"But that's PRIVATE!" Izzy sputtered furiously.
"Oh? By the way, there are a great deal of missives from women here for you."
"Women?"
"Sure! Lola, Babs, Chesty..."
"Gennai, that's spam! Advertisements and come ons!"
"Really?" Gennai looked saddened, and tossed a list away. "And I got so many phone numbers, too..."
"What's the message?!" Matt grated, glowering at the ancient Digimon.
"Hold your horses! It's from Drowzee1, whoever that is..." an e-mail message appeared on the screen.
Greetings, Digi-Destined!
I have left this message vague to avoid meaning to interception.
It's a pleasure to meet you all, and extend an electronic hand in friendship. I make this offer with utmost sincerity, as I would love to be there and share my knowledge, but I fear I would lack the courage to have enough reliability in this situation. I hope you understand. The way to stop Berserkermon is to make him see the light. I trust you know what to do now, it's the only way you'll be able to achieve your goal.
Good luck,
Drowzee1.
"That's it?" Tai asked quietly, then snarled. "SHOW HIM THE LIGHT? THAT'S ALL?"
"That's it." Gennai smiled and disappeared, leaving the message.
Joe laughed so hard he began to cry. "How old is Drowzee1, anyway? Five?"
Sora mouthed the message... "Have enough reliability?" She muttered, "That's awkward."
"About as subtle as a sledgehammer to the head, wouldn't you say?" Joe grinned, wiping his eyes.
"Well, it was meant for us, so it should be." Izzy tried to keep his normal poker face, but started smiling himself. "I don't know why I didn't think of it myself. Of course if we were dead, our crests wouldn't work."
"So all he's saying is use the crests?" Tai said incredulously.
"Yup." Matt answered, rolling his eyes.
"That, and Kari's should be the final crest to activate. The rest of us can go all at once, but Kari needs to make him see the light." Izzy clarified.
"So now we wait?" Agumon queried.
"Looks that way." Palmon shrugged, "And I'd rather stay here in the sun."
They didn't have long to wait. Perhaps an hour later, a harsh spitting and snarling bounced about the clearing.
"Everybody ready to save the Digi-World?" Tai called, confident in an easy victory.
"YEAH!" the others cheered, pulling out their crests.
Agumon gently tapped Tai's shoulder. "Umm. I don't want to rain on your parade, but you mind if I warp Digivolved to Wargreymon?" He said timidly, pressing his stubby claws together.
"Go ahead, Agumon! But you're right, I don't think we'll need you."
"Agumon WARP Digivolve to... WARGREYMON!"
Now standing as tall as the trees, Wargreymon flexed, brandishing the tri-clawed Dramon Destroyers ominously. "Let Berserkermon come! I'm ready!"
Berserkermon flashed out from the trees, snarling. "LieS!" he thundered. His eyes were so deep of a red as to appear black, but still glowing insanely. "aLL DeaD! You... TRiCKS! DeSTRoY!"
With that, Berserkermon launched himself at Sora, howling a battle cry.
Just as sudden as the attack, Wargreymon sidled in front of Sora using his armor to deflect the attack in a shower of sparks. "Nice try!" Wargreymon delivered a powerful backhand to the champion that was shorter than his arm. "But not on my watch!"
"Now!" Tai shouted, holding his crest to the sky. The sun-like symbol of courage shone brilliantly and lanced out, joined by the light of the six original Digi-Destined's crests.
Snorting contemptuously, Berserkermon slashed at the seven radiant beams, severing the connection. "No! No!" Berserkermon raged, stomping and tearing at the grass. "FiGHT! FiGHT PuPPeTMoN!" he gestured to Wargreymon with a swipe of his claws.
"He brushed them away like cobwebs!" Tentomon wailed, buzzing around behind Izzy. "Now what do we do?"
Garudamon bent over, ready to grab everyone and take off again. "We may have to retreat, Sora."
"No!" Matt exclaimed. "We have to hold the line if we want to live!"
"Maybe he's rested." Tai said. "Wear him down, Wargreymon!"
"You got it, Tai! NOVA FORCE!" Wargreymon roared, spinning faster and faster until he was just a blur of dinosaur and armor.
"Tai!" Izzy yelled. "Benjamon's Digivolutions take energy from their surroundings! Berserkermon can't be worn down, only distracted!"
Wargreymon dove at the howling Berserkermon, who had begun to foam at the mouth, spraying flecks of spittle as he screeched and screamed his defiance to a cloud. Nevertheless, his own claws flicked upwards and caught Wargreymon's attack on the six tines of his fingerless paws. The Nova Force continued as the orange Mega kept rotating, but the force of his dive was stopped cold! The scene was ludicrous; a five-foot champion not even sliding as it halted the forward momentum of a twenty-foot Mega Digimon.
The Digi-Destined couldn't gape, as the rending scream of metal on metal, at least fifty times louder than a stopping train forced them to drop to the ground, clutching their ears in pain.
Berserkermon tightened his grip, laughing madly as he brought Wargreymon to a complete stop before slamming 'PuPPeTMoN' into the ground.
"Wargreymon!" Tai yelled, climbing to his feet.
"I'm okay, just surprised." Wargreymon said as nonchalantly as he could, jumping into the air while he blinked his emerald green eyes and stretched.
Berserkermon cackled a hollow, hooting laugh. "aLL You HaVe? WeaK! WeaK PuPPeTMoN!"
"Shouldn't we do anything?" Patamon asked Gatomon.
"How much can we do?" Gatomon replied, depressed, tail drooping.
"TERRA FORCE!" Wargreymon cried, pulling together his signature energy attack and hurling at Berserkermon.
"FiRe...FiReS oF HaTe!" Berserkermon gibbered, tears running from his eyes and down his chest. Between six foreclaws, the bloody crimson light of the sterilizing fireball ignited, and shot up at Wargreymon.
The red fireball grew, swelling with human hate and anger. Inflating like a balloon, it met the Orange Terra Force sphere as an equal; however, after the two attacks bulged outwards in their attempts to break each other, Wargreymon's attack burst like a bubble, dissipating back into the environment as the pulsing fireball raced on to hit Wargreymon dead center.
The attack erupted around the Mega, sheathing him in the radiant flames of emotion. Fire and shockwave obliterated his armor by melting metal, then blasting it off the spread-eagled Digimon. Breastplate, shin and arm guards, even helmet disintegrated in the superheated, hate-fueled combustion.
"WARGREYMON!" Tai cried, "NO!"
Out of the blossoming field of incineration, Agumon fell to the ground in a smoking heap. Berserkermon was instantly there, pinning the helpless rookie with his knees. Mouth twisted into a terrible smile as red tears dripped off his teeth onto the weakly struggling Agumon, Berserkermon raised one arm to the sky, light glinting off the blades as he prepared to deliver the coup de grace, the finishing blow, the final strike, the...
-Whap!-
Oh, sorry.
Anyway...
"NO!" All the Digi-Destined and Digimon shouted in unison as the scythe-like claws swept down...
Freeze-frame and understand:
(Camera rotates around the scene, creating a Matrix-esqe 3D effect)
In times of extreme distress, say, the impending death of a friend, emotions can warp reality to the point where previously impossible events can occur.
Well, not really, but in this story it's a good way to justify what happens next.
Mere nanometers from Agumon's fear-dilated eyes, the lethal claws jerked to a halt. Berserkermon stared dumbly at his arm, immobilized by a ray of blue light.
"Agumon, get out of there!" Tai yelled, adding the beam of courage to hold the other thick arm.
As Agumon rolled and dragged himself out from under the befuddled champion, the light of sincerity, love, knowledge, reliability and hope reached out and ensnared Berserkermon, binding the insane Digimon's arms and legs to his stumpy, squat body.
"LeT Go!" he pleaded, "MuST FiGHT, DeSTRoY FoR DeaD!"
"Your turn, Kari." Sora said, her voice detached, almost apathetic.
Kari nodded and walked out to the vainly struggling Berserkermon and held up her crest. White light spilled forth into the dark scarlet eyes, filling them with illumination.
Berserkermon's screams seared the air as the stunned Digimon looked on. His cries of agony grew increasingly shrill as Kari's light drove out the red madness, in much the same way a priest would exorcise a demon by ritual prayer.
Bands of lightning-like red energy arced across his body as the light filled his eyes, forcing the red into lighter and lighter shades; white lightning swirled about his wolfish muzzle, crackling over metal teeth and spreading down over his head, jumping between the silver spikes on his back as it continued to push out the red...
Fractures appeared in the pink of his eyes, the light of Kari's crest blazing out from the cracks. Then, as the purity filled Berserkermon completely, it shattered the last remnants of insanity, bursting out of his eyes and mouth with the same intensity as the white being forced inside.
With a final jerk and arch of his back to point his glowing eyes and gaping maw to the sky, Berserkermon ruptured, flying apart into black data bits, and was no more.
But still, the shimmering core was bound by the power of the crests... "Enough, enough!" it croaked hoarsely, weeping.
Kari looked to Tai, who nodded. "All right, but you promise not to hurt us first." She said, still holding her crest.
"I swear!" it rasped. "I swear by my honor, by my coding! By the Digi-world, STOP! I implore you!"
"That's good enough for me." Kari let her crest fall and dangle from the cord around her neck as she stopped the ray.
As the binding light of the crests fell away, the glowing shape dropped heavily to the ground and lay there, too bright to look at.
"Benjamon?" Izzy hazarded a guess. "Is that you?"
"No." the answer came back. "It's Queen Victoria the second, and we are not amused."
"What?" Palmon blinked, looking at Mimi. "Who's Queen Victoria?"
"Of course it's Benjamon!" the voice snapped. "Who else could it be?"
Slowly, the luminescence faded away.
"I'm not going to say 'What happened?' or 'Where am I?' because I fragging well knew what was happening, I was in there, too fighting the madness with will power." Benjamon groaned, trying unsuccessfully to sit up. "I guess I was the white, trying to keep Berserkermon from killing you all. But it was hard... So very hard."
The Digi-Destined relaxed somewhat, Garudamon and Metalgarurumon returning to rookie form as Tai, Kari, and Joe worked on Agumon's wounds.
"Berserkermon's gone now, right?" TK asked softly.
"Gone for good." Benjamon replied wearily. "You deleted him, and I can't feel that Digivolution option at all... Like something was ripped out of me." He closed his golden eyes in exhaustion. "I suppose you all hate me now." He sighed. "If you want to leave... I won't...can't stop you. I can't go on until I recover my strength; I need to sleep. I'll understand if I wake up alone..."
"We won't abandon anyone." Sora said, kneeling and running a gloved hand through his short brown hair. "Especially not a friend."
"A friend?" Benjamon smiled wanly as he whispered. "Thank you, Sora."
Matt dashed a tear from his eye and walked off into the forest, Gabumon trailing behind.
This was written during vacation, I just can't help it.
Hope you enjoyed it, I've had this thing planned for MONTHS. From here on out, it's touch and go, so my fanfics will come more slowly.
Write to you later,
Drowzee1