Dejital Wars Episode 1

C5: Darkness Eternal

[A/N: I love writing this.]

[Disclaimer: Lucas and the rest own "Star Wars" and TOEI and the rest own "Digimon".  Don't steal and don't sue.]

Gennai drummed his fingers against his thigh, reading the data on the holographic screen.  He hadn't time to read the data files on the children with all the excitement and his brief times of sleep.  Nine children were now with him—Taichi, Hikari, Yamato, Takeru, Ken, Jyou, Koushiro, Daisuke, and Iori—but there was still one to be found.

And for an odd reason, the data file was almost completely

Age, race, gender…even the child's name wasn't in the file.  All that was in the file was that a Deji reading was marked somewhere around the planet Yaseka.

"And you're completely sure that the last person in our little group is on Yaseka." Taichi strode into the main control room and sat next to Gennai, "I can't believe it."

"It's not a sure thing that they are on Yaseka." Gennai protested, "The reading was only marked near Yaseka.  We don't know where they are."

"Why do you keep saying 'they'?" Taichi asked, "Don't you even know if they're a boy or a girl?"

"Don't even know if it's a human." Gennai rubbed his forehead, feeling a headache coming on.

"Great." Taichi groaned, "That's wonderful."

Something abruptly threw both to the floor.  A rumble echoed through the ship as something groaned.

"Ouch." Daisuke groaned, rubbed his hand against his newly bruised shoulder, "What was that?"

"Felt like something hit us." Iori replied, a bit dazed from flying halfway across the room from his chair.

Another sharp strike rocked the ship and threw the children around even more.  The groans grew louder and louder and the ship began to pitch.

"Everybody grab hold of something!" Gennai and Taichi ran into the room, "We're going to crash!"

"Lord Vandemon!  We shot down the ship that you ordered us to!"

"Good.  Good.  Leave it be for a while.  We shall check on the silly Deji later."

"Much later?"

"Heh.  Yes, my dear.  Much later.  You may leave, little Impmon."

The purple digimon rushed from the room with a ruby blush on his face.  He truly hated delivering news to his master and his partner when they were in their private chambers.  Anywhere else—even the barely-used torture room—would be less painful—and embarrassing—than to their private chambers.

He truly hated it.

The soft sound of birds cawing and chirping was the first thing Gennai recognized.  He opened his eyes and closed them quickly, trying to clear the blood away.  He rubbed at a streaming cut on his forehead, pressing down to stop the flow, and sat up.

The outer hull of the Silver Sword was ripped away on his left, exposing the dark outside.  Four of the children had fallen out of the ship, while five remained inside.  Everyone had a few bad bruises, but not many had bad injures.

Gennai stumbled to his feet and walked carefully around to the five children inside.  Each awoke when he coaxed them to the conscious world through the Digital, and each was scared.

"How long has it been since we were hit?" Ken asked as the group cautiously climbed down through the gaping hole in the hull.

"About three hours." Gennai consulted his small computer to see how long it truly had been.

The children outside the ship were slightly worse for wear.  Larger bruises adorned their skin, and more scrapes and nicks as well.

"I can barely see." Gennai growled irritably as he took short, slow steps, "It's like night here."

"Right you are, silly Deji!"

Gennai looked up, only to duck back down quickly as something shot over his head.  He spun about, falling to his backside, drawing a light-disc from his pocket and activating it.  The beam fell on a person.

The person shielded their face and eyes from the sharp beam of light as it appeared, but it was simple to see them.  Black cloth covered every part of their body.  Black cloth boots, black pants, black belt, a black cloth around their neck, and black long-sleeved tunic.  Their fingers were long from pale hands, one hand reaching out in front of them.  The disc was torn from Gennai's grip and flew to the person.  They crushed it with one hand.

"Don't do that again." the person snapped, "Just draw your lightsaber and set it to its lowest intensity.  It's a nice, dim, light."

Gennai put his hand inside his belt, pausing only briefly to wonder about the person, and drew his saber.  When he had activated the blade, he saw the same person standing where they had been.  Blue eyes, the color of the midnight sky, glinted with the dim light, and it shimmered off shaggy brown hair.  A human woman.

"Welcome to Yaseka." she called through the darkness, "I hope the ride down wasn't too unpleasant."

"Who are you?" Gennai questioned, "What is your name?"

"Ah, formalities." she waved her hand, smirking and closing her eyes, "Those can wait.  I see you have many injured with you.  Come along.  I have a HT for you to use."

"And where would that be?" Taichi questioned, walking rather blindly around.  A clang rang out as Taichi's head smashed into something, and he fell backwards to the ground.  He rolled around, his hands over the lump on his skull.

"Well, you just ran into it." the woman replied flatly, "Just press the motor button and it'll go straight to Shadow.  Don't press any other buttons, and I'll see you there."  She lifted a hand and smirked, and vanished abruptly.

"OW!" Taichi screamed.

The darkness of Yaseka was difficult to get used to.  Gennai was almost grateful that the directions were preprogrammed into the HT (Hover-Transport), or he would have hit something.  The HT coasted to a slow stop in darkness, and Gennai began to draw his lightsaber.

Abruptly, something fell onto the HT with a loud clang.  More things fell with resounding clangs, and the children cried out as they were grabbed and pulled from the HT.  Gennai clutched his saber, but something struck him heavily on the back of his head.  Lights seemed to wink before his eyes in the darkness, and then complete black swelled up and swallowed him.

A deep, baritone chuckle reverberated in Gennai's ears.  Gennai slowly opened his eyes, trying to keep his sight in focus.

"Hello, young Deji." the deep voice said through the darkness.  Gennai blinked, and his sight finally cleared.  A flickering orange light seemed surrounded by complete darkness, but there was no sound.

"I assume you wonder where you are." the voice said from the darkness, "And what has happened to those children that you have recruited to be Deji."

"Where are they?" Gennai shouted into the shadows, jumping to his feet, "If you've harmed them—"

"No need to for such noise, Deji." the voice said, amused and irritated at the same time, "I see no purpose of hurting anyone unless they bother us."

"Who are you?" Gennai turned around and around, trying to see the source of voice, "Show yourself!"  In a flash, Gennai was blinded by brilliant light.  He covered his face with his arms, crying out in pain and cringing.  He tensed, readying himself for the attack that was sure to come.

Someone laughed.  Gennai opened his eyes, his eyebrows low on his knitted brow to protect against the harsh light.  But the light was no longer harsh; it was soft.

"Deji really are too funny for words." said the voice of the woman from before, "I believe you now."

"It was an excellent test of your skills, my dear." the deep voice rumbled, chuckling once more, "You've outdone yourself with your illusions."

Gennai dropped his arms and looked straight ahead.  A stone-crafted chair—a throne—sat before him, and in it sat the most hauntingly beautiful man he had ever seen.

Three bangs of spun-gold hair hung before pale, pale skin, and in front of midnight blue eyes.  The golden hair was trimmed, immaculate, perfectly combed, and curved behind pointed ears.  A hand, pale as the face, was curled to let the long fingers hang just against the man's face, and he leaned his face against his hand.  His clothes, although he had the air of royalty, were simple.  The cloth was the same tone as his eyes, long sleeves and legs, and the boots were crafted from hard material, showing a rather rounded shape, but two metal shapes were stamped upon them.  On the left was a skull, and on the right was a bat.  Hanging from the black belt was a long lightsaber hilt.  And as he smiled, sharp fangs glinted in the light.

"I ask you again," Gennai sighed, almost snarling, "who are you?"

"My name is Vandemon." the man said, "I am the ruler of Yaseka.  And I hope you and your young charges on the floor there have a fairly restful stay here while some of my technicians repair your ship."

Gennai could have smacked himself for being so stupid.  There were no humans on Yaseka—that woman was probably some digimon exclusive to the dark planet—so there was almost no need for names if one recognized the digimon.  Yaseka was the only planet to have an entirely digital population—and that of a viral sort.

"Are you going to wake your children, or may I feed from them?" Vandemon smiled a wicked smile, his fangs glinting even more.

Gennai jerked, moving his hand to draw his lightsaber to protect his wards.  Almost instantly after he moved his hand, something tackled him from behind and, as they both fell to the floor, the thing flipped off of him, pushing down on his shoulders hard, and landed—surprisingly—in Vandemon's lap.

The Deji Knight growled low in his throat, standing up again and rubbing his shoulders to alleviate the pain.  He looked at the person that had landed in the vampire's lap.  It was the female digimon from before.

"So who are you?" he questioned, "I never seen a digimon like you before."

"And who in the hell said that I was a digimon?" the woman questioned, "My name is Shinji."

"And I am her partner." Vandemon put a hand on the woman's hip, smirking darkly, "Her link to the Digital, and her master.  Now, you.  You and I have much to discuss."

"Hey.  Hey.  Wake up, would you?"

Iori felt a soft nudging in his side, and opened his emerald eyes.  He looked right into midnight blue eyes.

"Finally." the person—the woman from before, said, smiling, "I was bored."

"It's you again." Iori groaned, sitting up and rubbing his head, "I saw you hit Gennai over the head before I passed out."

"Well, Gennai is a bit too strong in the Digital to be knocked out with the Digital for long." the woman smiled, extending her hand to pull the ten-year-old to his feet, "You children on the other hand, aren't trained that well.  Yet."

"Why aren't the others awake?" Iori questioned, "Where'd Gennai go?"

"He's off with Vandemon." she replied, "And I don't want those others to wake up.  You seemed best to talk to.  I wonder, do you want to see the only natural light source for this planet?"

"I thought that no light even existed on Yaseka." Iori said rather sheepishly, "All the textbooks and lessons I've had said that Yaseka had no light.  Not even artificial light created by the digimon living there.  Are you a digimon?"

"Well, doesn't that seem to be the popular question to ask me today." the woman said in a flat tone, a vein throbbing on her forehead.  Iori cringed, not knowing the hell that he had unintentionally let loose.

"NO!  I'M NOT!"

"Yaseka is a much more advanced planet than you humans make it out to be." Vandemon murmured, striding through the hallways of the gigantic place everyone was in, "We have many weapons, ships capable of HJ.  We even have safer versions of things you humans have that would be lethal.  And we only have one human in our entire population of three planets."

"Three planets?" Gennai stopped, dumbfounded, "Yaseka is three planets?"

"Yaseka is technically a system of three planets, called the Yami system." replied the vampire, "The first, which we are on, is known as Yaseka.  The second is known as Dimius, and the third is Shadio.  Each has billions of digimon, but only Yaseka has one human.  I have been the Yami system's ruler for around three hundred years."

"Then you must have seen some part of the Light War two hundred years ago!" Gennai murmured in excitement, "Do you know who the Dark Knight was?  What his name was?  Or even what he looked like?"

"I only know his signature killing technique, as does most of the universe." Vandemon replied, "Blood red lightning.  That's all I know of him.  Sorry."

Gennai frowned in anger.  It seemed he had finally found a source of information that had been purged from the Archive Files in the Deji Council's home, but it wasn't to be.

Clink.  FFT!  FFT!

Iori tore his eyes away from the shining moon to find the woman—her name was Shinji—snapping a lighter to life with her thumb, shielding the bright orange flame from the chilly wind, and holding it up to the end of a cigarette.

"Those are disgusting." Iori said plainly, "They make people sick, and billions of people and digimon die from them."

"Not these." Shinji replied, capturing the heat with a short inhale, "The digimon on Yaseka managed to create something like your nicotine-packed sticks, but without the addiction, and without the threat of health problems.  All that these do is provide a small light source in this world of darkness.  They make great incense too!"

"Uh-huh." Iori said, thoroughly unconvinced, "Anyway, you have a beautiful moon."

"Yeah." Shinji replied, holding the cigarette between two fingers, looking up to the glowing orb of white, "Brightest moon in the universe, I think.  Better than the brightest sun, certainly."

"I wouldn't mind a sun right about now." Iori tried to smile, his teeth chattering hard as a gust of wind blew by.  Shinji curled her left arm around Iori and scooted him up next to her, tugging the black scarf slightly untied from her neck.  She lay the cloth down around Iori's shoulders, and kept her hand against his shoulder.

"Thank you." Iori said, smiling.

"I wouldn't do that for many people." Shinji murmured from the corner of her mouth, the nearly dead cigarette in the other corner of her mouth, "But you have a pretty strong connection to the Digital.  Your Digital aura speaks to mine.  I know only one other person that has such a deep connection to speak to my aura, and that is Vandemon."

"Vandemon is a Deji?" Iori inquired.

"I won't say." Shinji ground the dead cigarette in the ground to extinguish the tiny embers, obliterating it with a flash of Digital energy.  Iori looked amazed.  "But he speaks to me, and my aura like no other person—human, digimon, or anything—could speak.  He raised me from before I can remember, and he trains me to this day."

"How old are you?" the ten-year-old boy asked carefully.

"Seventeen." she answered, staring up at the moon, "Vandemon has told me many times of why I'm here."

"Why is that?"

"My parents were against the growing Imperial government even when they were children.  They worked against it, speaking out with facts about the darkness behind it.  Piemon is the force behind the Empire, and he's part of the Wicked."

"Wicked?"

"There is a difference between Darkness and Wicked in the flow of the Digital.  There is the Light, where the Deji Council on Thurinien puts its value.  The Light is hard to see, so say the many students of the Wicked.  But the Darkness…the Darkness can see the Light, as well.  The Wicked see only the eternal emptiness of evil and mistake it for Darkness.  Darkness is created by Light, and it would be futile for Darkness to try and destroy Light.  Both sides compliment each other.

"The stronger the Darkness, the more powerful the Light.  The Wicked grows with each person that gives into its evil.  I am part of the Darkness, but I don't see any reason to try and destroy the Light.  The Wicked use our title because they believe themselves to be Darkness, but it isn't so."

"So why are you on Yaseka?"

"When my mother and father married and had me, they continued to go through the civilized galaxies to speak out against the Empire.  However, the Empire—Piemon specifically—had grown very angry with them.  Piemon ordered their deaths.  They were coming out of an HJ near the Yami System—we are on the first of the three planets therein—when they were ambushed by Imperial starfighters.

"They couldn't win again them.  They were shot down, and, being very close to Yaseka, they were drawn down to crash there.  Being the dimwitted people that they are, they left us to die.  But Vandemon…oh Vandemon.  He had been on Yaseka for three hundred years waiting for a worthy student.  He was watching the moon and the stars that day, and sensed an outcry in the Digital.

"I was scared, but my parents were already dead.  The ship hit the planet, and Vandemon found the wreckage.  It was going to explode, but he heard a strong cry through the Digital.  He saved me, and protected me from the explosion.  He decided that I would be his disciple.  And so it has been for seventeen years.  We've been preparing for the inevitable war between the Light and Darkness against the Wicked."

"Shinji?"

"Yes?"

"I want to help."

"You will.  As long as you remember that the Darkness is almost the same as the Light.  The Wicked flow is our enemy."

She paused and looked down at the young boy.  He had fallen asleep, his emerald eyes closed.  Shinji sighed, but smiled, shaking her head.

"Cute little kid." she muttered to herself, "He must need a nap."

"So, you want Shinji to go with you?"

"She obviously has the makings of a Deji." Gennai answered, "I'd like to take her back to Thurinien and train her with the other children."

"Sorry to disappoint you, but I don't think she'd want to."

"She wouldn't want to, or you don't want her to go?"

"Both."

Gennai stopped in the doorway as Vandemon continued through to the main room where the children were finally awake.

"What do you mean?" Gennai questioned.

"Nothing at all." Vandemon murmured, "Except that the Deji Council most likely wouldn't want a student of true Darkness to be a part of their new army."

"What—how—what the?" Gennai tried to form a sentence, but every word the vampire had said came from things never spoken.

"What I mean is that Shinji is a student of Darkness." Vandemon sank down in his throne and closed his blue eyes, resting his head against his fist, "How I know about the Deji Council and its army is because I read your mind.  But you can ask her when she comes back with that child of yours."

Gennai blinked and looked around at the children that were up and rubbing their heads.  There were only eight.

"Where's Iori?" he half-shouted at the digimon, "What did you do with him?"

"He was with me." Shinji appeared at one of the many doors in the hall, "Now be quiet, or you'll wake him up."  Iori was cradled in her arms, fast asleep.

"What did you do to him?" Taichi snarled.

"I told him a story and he fell asleep." Shinji replied, walking through the hall, "Much like most any ten-year-old.  So be quiet."

Taichi had heard enough—or what he wanted to hear.  He grabbed his lightsaber and started at Shinji.  In a crimson flash, Taichi was in the air, being held upside down by a whip that was made entirely by red lightning.

"Bloody Stream." Vandemon said in a dark tone, glaring angrily at Taichi, standing from his throne, "You will not touch her.  You will get away from both of them.  Or I will make my attack much harsher.  You will die if you try to touch her."

Gennai stared on in horror.  Before him stood the legendary Knight of Darkness that was infamous across the universe.  Taichi was in the Dark Knight's death grip.

"Let him go!" Gennai rushed forwards, drawing his own silver lightsaber, "Don't dare hurt him!"

Vandemon flicked his wrist, sending Taichi flying right into Gennai.  Both flew into the hard stonewall, and Vandemon turned to glare at both.

"There is a difference between the Dark Knight of years ago, the Darkness we are, and the Wicked you fight." he murmured, "We are the Darkness that is akin to your Light.  The Wicked you fight—Piemon and his Empire—are the empty evil that tries to destroy everything.  The Dark Knight you see before you sees the link between the Light and the Darkness.  The Dark Knight from years past was unable to see the link, but now there has been an enlightenment of sorts.

"I have found my purpose.  I will fight alongside you against the Wicked and the Empire, but I am not a part of the Light.  We never will be.  Sorry that you've lost an 'ally' to your despised Darkness, but if you can put aside your misconceived thoughts, we can fight together and destroy the Wicked."

"If you aren't going to join the Light, then we have little to discuss." Gennai sighed, pulling Taichi to his feet, "Someone get Iori.  We had better leave."

"Your ship is just about ready.  You can leave." Vandemon muttered.  Gennai didn't acknowledge the vampire, but instead strode to Shinji and started to pull Iori from her arms.

"Let go." Iori said groggily, "I don't want to go."

"Iori, what are you talking about?" Gennai said, "We have to go."

"Shinji's my friend." Iori said, shifting to his side and taking hold of Shinji's black shirt, "I don't want to go.  I don't want to leave my friend.  Leave me alone."

"Iori, stop talking crazy!" Taichi snapped, "We're leaving!"

"No!" Iori yelled, "I'm not going!"

There was a harsh silence.  Iori stood and stared at the rest of the gathered children.

"I believe what Shinji and Vandemon say about the Darkness." he said, "And you aren't going to change my mind about staying here on Yaseka."

"Iori—"

"I said no!  I'm staying here!"

Gennai stared out into the infinite points of light.  Stars were beautiful.

He sighed, drawing himself back into the real world.  He had lost one of his children to Darkness, and one had been inside the Darkness before he had arrived.

He felt like a failure.

—End Episode 1: To Be Continued in Episode 2—