OK everyone, sorry I took so long to update this (again), but I haven't been able to get on a computer at university. I'll try to update more often in the future, though. This chapter contains slightly more mature content than before.

1 Chapter 5: Being a Hero is not always Easy…

As Yolei walked into school the next day, she saw Davis walking with Hugh next to him. Davis had the biggest smile possible – a large smile even for him. Yolei was not happy, to say the least.

"All right, Davis, what's so funny?" she said, with her hands on her hips.

"I had the best time ever last night! I took advantage of Hugh all night long!"

Yolei's face went redder than blood and smacked Davis in the middle of his face. "What?!?!? YOU MEAN YOU RAPED HIM ALL NIGHT?!??! I SHOULD SLAUGHTER YOU HERE AND NOW!!"

"Gack…c-c-alm down Yolei." Davis was choking half words through bloodied, broken teeth. Yolei decided on mercy over vengeance and put him down to explain his story.

"As I was saying (spits out a tooth along with some blood), all I did was get him to do my homework. Hugh was great – he did my homework as well as all the questions in my textbooks. I guess that'll leave me immune to the 'homework bug' for the rest of the year huh?"

"I see. Sorry I overreacted, Davis," Yolei apologized. "But Hugh, you wouldn't have had time to sleep! How can you go on for so long?"

"The dead need no sleep," Hugh replied, as he healed Davis' face.

Before Yolei could question him further, TK, Kari and Cody arrived at school. Yolei decided to ask them more about Hugh, as they had encountered him three years previous during their experiences in the digital world.

"Yo, TK, Kari. I need to talk to you about Hugh. What is he? I can't put my finger on it, but he doesn't seem to be quite human."

"Tssh!" TK spat on the ground in disgust. "You've got feelings for him, don't you?!"

"So what if I have!??! Why are you so indifferent to him?!" retorted Yolei.

"Yolei, you don't know about his past," replied Kari. "If you had seen or heard about the terrors he visited upon the digital world before we saved it three years, you would feel the same way we do about him. Quick history lesson, Yolei. Hugh was Myotismon's servant before we somehow turned him to our side."

"Yeah. Apparently he has to obey whoever gives him an order, no matter what," continued TK. "Gennai told us that it's not his fault, but, I don't know…" TK clenched his fists until they turned red from the stress, "I just feel that what he did was…and still is… inexcusable."

"But WHAT did he DO?!?" inquired Yolei.

"I'll simplify as much as possible," replied Kari. "He was the Genghis Khan of the digital world. His forces did Myotismon's bidding for many centuries until we came. Towns with no weapons or even skilled unarmed combatants were impaled on stakes or crucified, left to die over days or even weeks. What he did after that was even worse. The sight of people being tortured would have brought any survivors out of hiding as soon as he left. Clearly, they would make an attempt to free them. To enable his forces to move to another town – where he would repeat the process – Hugh would place hidden land mines all over the town – and around its perimeter. Everyone who went to rescue, or even say goodbye to, the crucified were blown up, and their viscera splattered on the ground. Whoever was left would attempt to warn nearby cities, but most were killed by the land mines. The explosions would alert Hugh, and he would dispatch a small contingent of crack troops to chase and take them down. In a town of several thousand, perhaps one or two would reach another village to give warning. The warning would always be in vain, however. The last thing the slaughtered would hear were the words 'Manus Celer Dei', followed by their own screams as they were roasted alive."

"I see. But he seems so…calmer now. To risk sounding cliché, he must be a different person now. And while I don't mean to praise the abhorrent things he did, if he thought up the method of torture and catching survivors, he must have been an astute strategist with a sound knowledge of military acumen." Yolei then turned to Hugh and asked him, "Did you think of the idea of torturing them and catching any survivors?"

"Yes. All my old master Myotismon told me to do was to wipe out the towns, but make sure some survivors escaped to warn other villages. When their preparation proved futile, they would know that they were truly doomed."

"I see. Well, Hugh, it seems that you aren't a complete zombie. Although you have to obey orders, the means, which you use to accomplish those orders, can vary. We should decide upon a nickname for you, Hugh. What do you suggest?"

"I believe that names can be earned as well as given," came the reply. "You have observed me for a few days…what name do you think would suit me?"

"Hugh, from what I can tell, you have always looked out for us – well, me at least. I know this because you saved me from those robbers. You watch over us, so I would dub you "The Watcher." Well, I suppose we should go to the digital world. I know we shouldn't go without waiting for the others, but Hugh, with you next to me I feel like we can take on the world! You took us here from the digital world before, right? Can you take us back?"

"At once, my mistress."

Hugh snapped his fingers and all of the digidestined found themselves once more in the digital world.

"How did you do that?" asked an incredulous Yolei.

"Didn't you need to concentrate for a little while the last time you did that?"

"Yes, but I…well…I became stronger in the time I was in the real world from…training."

Before they could reply, a voice cried for help from a distance. Following his instinct to obey any command, Hugh ran in the direction of the voice. The children were miles behind him when Hugh finally stopped in the middle of a cornfield. Unfortunately, for him, the cry for help was phony – one of Ken's agents took advantage of the cover the field provided to attach a dark spiral onto Hugh just as the companions arrived on the scene. Takata, Ken's agent, merely laughed sardonically at the children.

"Hah! Your precious little 'pet' is ours now. Why don't you go now? You'll at least escape with your lives!"

"You don't know him like we do! Hugh would never betray us!" replied Yolei. Her voice was full of indignation. She picked up a rock and threw it at Takata, knocking him down before he was able to escape.

"You incontinent #%$!! Don't you know to always quit while you're ahead?!?! You should've taunted them from a distance!"

"Sorry, Ken," said the barely coherent Takata.

Ken emerged from the field and dragged Takata off, ostensibly to his base. The children gathered around Hugh, who was clearly struggling with the dark powers of the spiral. Eventually, he levitated himself high into the air. Kari and TK screamed and urged the others to run away. They ended up having to drag Yolei away.

"We'll all be killed if we stick around! I've seen Hugh do that before," explained TK as he dragged Yolei away. "It means that he is going to create the same phenomenon that occurs during a nuclear explosion, CENTERED ON HIMSELF! The only difference is that there is no radiation. Still, we'll be fried if we don't…"

All of the children were blown to the ground from the force of the explosion. After the dust settled, Yolei looked to where Hugh was moments before. She saw his lifeless body fall in a crumpled heap, landing in the center of the crater formed by the explosion. Yolei ran up to him, cradling his battered form and bawling her eyes out. After less than a minute, however, Hugh gently stroked her long hair. "Why are you crying? I told you that my life was a cheap commodity."

At the sound of his voice, Yolei laughed and choked back tears at the same time. "You survived?!!? Will your wonders never cease? You are the most…"

"Um…Yolei, you misunderstand me," interrupted Hugh. "You see, my body did not survive the conflagration I conjured. It is my crest that gives me a new body when my old once is no longer suitable." As he said this, Hugh cut him self from the neck to his stomach, and revealed his crest, which floated in his body where his heart should have been. "Please, allow me to demonstrate."

Before Yolei could respond, Hugh had grabbed his neck in his hands, and twisted his head until there was a loud crack. Yolei was wide-eyed and stunned when she saw Hugh's head bent at an unnatural angle. The other children gathered around Hugh's 'corpse'. Before their very eyes, they saw Hugh's crest glow, and the cut in his crest had sealed, and Hugh's opened his eyes, his head now correctly attached to his neck.

"Wow," exclaimed Yolei, flabagastered and incredulous. "I didn't believe you before, but now, there is nothing that I will not believe. Please, tell us more. What was it like to – well – die?"

"The dying process is no problem, once you've done it as many times as I have. I went to have tea with the Grim Reaper, or Toby as he lets me call him. He regrets that I can't stay longer, and I feel the same way too. He really is a nice guy, I don't know why he gets such a bad reputation."

"What?" blurted Kari. "How do you know all this? Weren't you in the digital world since your creation?"

"Yes, but some of my assignments for Hiroshi and the Deceiver were to learn about your world, for a possible future invasion – all your history, culture and knowledge I have stored. Back on the subject of dying – returning to my body is the hard part – most of the time it feels like I've had the mother of all hangovers for a while, but the moment passes soon after."

"And what about the times when you don't feel like you've had a hangover? Heck, what is a hangover?" inquired Cody.

"My apologies," continued Hugh, "A hangover is what happens in the morning when you've had too many alcoholic drinks the night before. Believe me, you don't want one. Sometimes, when I wake up it feels much worse. Like this time, it felt like I had been strained through someone's bowels."

All of the children threw up simultaneously when they heard that. However, Hugh did not seem to be fazed, and continued, "However, by dying and coming back, it is the only way I become stronger. My crest represents sacrifice, and the greatest sacrifice anyone can give is their own life. So each time I 'die', I come back stronger than before. It is my greatest gift, and the most terrible curse at the same time."

"Curse? How so?" inquired Yolei.

"For a start, my life is not my own. I am completely dependent on others to order me around, otherwise I become unstable and destroy the world around me. That was what happened after I was abandoned three years ago. No doubt you noticed the rivers of lava around me when you came and rescued me?"

Yolei nodded.

"I created those lakes and flowing streams of lava. I really couldn't do anything without someone telling me what to do, so I went mad and bawled my eyes out for weeks. Then I called upon fissures in the ground, and volcanoes directly underneath me. I wished for death. Unfortunately, I kept coming back. No matter how strong I became, I still did not have the power to destroy myself fully. James Joyce once said, 'Every man has the right to kill himself, it's the only absolute inviolable right a man does have, the only act he can commit which nobody else has a say-so in, the one irrevocable deed he can execute without outside influence. The old Anglo-Saxon term of 'freedom' came from that: 'free' and 'doom' with the idea that every man always had that last final resort that nobody could take away from him, if he wanted to avail himself of it. But like everything else it has it's price too: it's price is it's own absoluteness and irrevocableness and inviolableness. 'doom' is the only thing that is ever 'free''. However, if I had been given a simple order three years past such as 'guard this place until I return' from TK or Matt or anyone, I would have happily stood sentinel for as long as it was needed."

"I see. Well, we know that you didn't lie. We attached a mini lie detector to your back two days ago. It hasn't registered a single lie. For some reason, it's still intact," replied Kari.

"I was aware of that, and I created another one when I recovered from my 'death'. I respected your desire to know the truth about me, and I wanted you to trust me," replied Hugh.

"And now that we know the whole story about you…well, not everything…but I know that we had certainly misjudged you in the campaign to overthrow Myotismon. I'm sorry for the horrible way I treated you this time." Fighting back tears, Kari hugged Hugh, who reassured her by gently patting her on her back."

As she pulled away from him, Kari took the lie detector and crushed it underfoot. "We won't be needing this any more."

"She's right, you've earned our trust," conceded TK, "now it is our turn to earn yours."

"Don't worry about it," came the reply, "I would have endured any treatment from you – after all, by rescuing me, you gave me a reason and a purpose to my…existence."

"That's great," interjected Yolei, "but right now we need to stop Ken before he becomes more powerful."

"That shouldn't be hard," Hugh explained, "You see, while I was wrestling with his dark spiral, I was able to tap into Ken's base computer and discern the location of his base, and I am informed of any movements in its path."

"The base is MOBILE?!?!" exclaimed an incredulous Cody. His usually calm demeanour was visibly disturbed by this revelation.

"Yes, but don't fret. I shall teleport us all there immediately if you wish, undetected by his radar."

The children immediately voiced their fervent support. Hugh merely blinked, and in the next instant they found themselves in a boiler room, allegedly in Ken's base. Immediately, Hugh gasped in terror and rage. He quickly stormed in the direction opposite to the reactor's core. The children decided to follow him, and they were led into what was clearly Ken's science laboratory. There were tanks filled with water next to each other, each one containing a growing specimen. A computer screen and keyboard was next to each tank. They were all shocked at the horror of this, but had to admire Ken's ingenuity. Yolei went over to the nearest terminal and pressed a few buttons. An image of the fully-grown subject appeared. Yolei couldn't believe what she saw.

"Hugh, this says that in these tanks are clones of you. If Ken made them, I have no doubt in believing that he would use them for the wrong ends. He even made a mockery of your crest, they have something similar, but upside down. Ken must have taken your genetic information with the dark spiral Takata put on you!"

"Yes, and they would have capabilities matching my own…if they were to reach their fully matured stage," replied Hugh. He seemed to be readying himself to destroy each and every tank – his eyes seemed to glow blacker than death, obscuring his irises. His ire caused the steel walls of the room to twist and crack, seemingly at his command.

"What's wrong, Hugh?" inquired Yolei.

"If I don't destroy each of these now, they'll be ready for action within 12 hours. They will become soulless beasts, slaves to Ken's will. I will not be able to contain their fury. Please, let me destroy them to protect you."

"I concur," said Kari. "He's never lied to us or let us down before, so let us let him make the choice."

"But…these…clones…they're other Hughs, right?" protested Yolei.

"No. It is not the body that makes the person, it is the soul," explained Hugh.

After a long silence, Yolei relented. "Very well. I believe that you know best."

"Thank you, Mistress. 'Manus Celer Dei!'," bellowed Hugh, his hands outstretched. Immediately, a blast of white energy shot forth from each of his palms. The room quivered from the shock, and when it subsided, there was a plethora of glass shards and embryonic fluid on the ground.

*End of Chapter 5*

How was it? I hope everyone liked it. Please R&R! I apologise for the delay, and I'll be working on Chapter 6 from tomorrow!