Rio drew her worn cloak tight around her thin shoulders as she approached the figure kneeling near the campfire, her mind locked in silent commune with the blue stone in her pocket. This was to be an enormous test of her abilities, and in preparation she cleared her mind of all extraneous distractions. To null the affection among a group of casual friends for one another was easy enough, and something she'd done often in the past, but to attempt to dissolve the infinitely stronger bond between parent and child? That was certain to prove to be something else entirely.

"Rio! Over here! I think I found a place!"

The raven-haired girl turned and slogged through the rain and mud towards her brother's voice, her hair plastered in tendrils to her face. It had been two days since she and the others had fled the camp, with all of its guards and councilors, and during those two days all that they'd eaten was a couple of stale candy bars and a package of chips that Ian had thought to bring along. Stupid.

She followed the sound of her brother's voice into a cave, floundering through the thick strands of moss that had grown over the entrance. Though it was much too dark to judge with any degree of certainty, the echoes of their voices far into the depths made her suspect that the cavern was quite large. It was a few moments later when the remainder of their small band straggled in behind her: Leiko, Daven, Ian, and finally little Cole. "Oh, this is simply... perfect," Roan hissed, peering forward into the almost sinister darkness.

"Perfect? This?" she sighed, too tired to take the care that she normally took when dealing with her brother. "Roan, isn't it about time we just gave up and went back? We've been wandering around for nearly three days now and we still don't have any idea where we're going. We've got no food, no water, and no place to go."

The taller boy turned on his sister and raised his hand as if to strike her, then paused in mid-swing. He looked at the cringing girl in front of him with a dangerous glower in his eyes. "No, Rio. There's no way in hell that I'm going back. Not now, not ever. And neither are you. No more sessions with counselors, no more rehab work. From now on, I'm in charge."

"But… but Roan?" asked Cole timidly, tugging on the older boy's dark coat. "I'm hungry. Really, really hungry."

Roan towered over the other. The smallest of their group was thirteen this summer but still talked and acted as if he were ten. "Grow up!" he snapped back. "You all wanted to come, and I told you that if I brought you along I'd kill any of you who tried to leave! Leiko! Give me that flashlight!"

The girl nonchalantly handed over the item, then gave a silent glower at her "leader's" back as he swiveled and switched on the light. He marched forward alone, then was joined by the hulking thug of the group, Ian, who obeyed Roan's every command without a second, or probably even first, thought.

"Pardon me, sir?" the young girl ventured, folding her hands in front of her dirty dress. She was taking pains to look as simple and harmless as possible.

The man sitting alone at his fire turned to glance over his shoulder, a surprised look in his eyes. "Oh! Hello."

The girl smiled an innocuous response as her fingers closed tightly around the midnight-blue crest in her pocket, stroking it and focusing her mind on the spirit therein, melding their intentions together as one. This man was the only one in charge of the children that they had been sent to take, so she must break his care for them. The last thing they needed was this man to raise an alarm when they all turned up missing. Still, to make a man indifferent about what happened to his own daughter... even with the mystical power at her command... she just wasn't sure how effective this would be.

But then, she didn't dare disappoint Roan...

She was concentrating so hard on the link between the two that a headache born of pressure started to burn behind her temples. She could feel the rhythmic stroke of the crest as its heartbeat pounded against her clenched palm. "Your... your daughter, sir."

A quizzical look gradually formed on the man's face then, and his eyes gave the appearance of being clouded over. His brow was furrowed deeply, as though he were trying to remember something... something that should have been of great importance to him. "My... daughter..."

Utter agony now, as the searing heat worked to sever the strong emotional bonds between the man and his offspring. The child was so very prominent in his thoughts. "She's getting bored here, sir, and wanted permission to come further up the mountain to visit some friends of mine."

"Bored...? Oh, yes... bored, I suppose..." the man droned on, and slowly started to nod. "People her age sometimes get... bored..." There was, after all, no real reason for him to be concerned about whatever his daughter wanted to do with this strange girl. It wouldn't inconvenience him in the least, just so long as she was back here and ready to go when the time came to depart.

The heat against Rio's hand was searing her as she clenched the crest of Apathy tightly, and she longed to release it. But the pain was muted by grim satisfaction as it also, with that same heat, burned off the last frown of concern on the man's face. "Oh well, okay," he replied, waving his hand as if unconcerned. "Whatever makes you kids happy."

Rio let go of the breath that she had been unconsciously holding, and released the scorching heat of the crest. She almost imagined that she could smell burnt flesh, but knew from experience that there would be no mark on her hand to evidence what she'd just undergone. "Thanks, mister… ah, sir," she said to excuse herself, then turned and started on her long trek back to the cave. She had done her part, now the rest was up to Leiko.

"Come on! Keep up!" Roan snapped at the small group trudging along behind him. The thin, faltering illumination that came from the flashlight kept the darkness in the cave from smothering them, but on reflection, Rio probably would preferred absolute darkness just as well. It would have at least prevented the ugly shadows on the walls; shadows that unnerved them all but absolutely terrified Cole.

Then they rounded a corner, and were surprised to find that the next portion of the cave was already occupied. A good-sized fire was burning on the floor in the center of the room, bringing the illumination in this enormous portion of the cavern to an almost tolerable level. A wizened old man sat by one side of the blaze and poked at it with a stick, coughing as though every breath that he took would be his last. Roan looked around at his followers, then motioned for Ian to follow him to the man's side.

The stranger appeared to take no notice of the pair as they stopped behind them. "All right, old man," Roan demanded scornfully. "Clear out. This is our territory now."

Leiko'e eyes widened in dismay as she crept forward and stood at Roan's back. "What are you doing?" she demanded of him in a frantic whisper. "If we throw him out he'll tell somebody that we're here and then we'll all get caught!" If Roan heard the girl's challenge he didn't answer it, and stood impassively with his arms folded across his chest.

The old man slowly craned his head over his shoulder to stare at the other and Roan, who feared nothing, caught one glimpse of his eyes and stepped back, right into the giant Ian. "What the hell are you?" he demanded in a disgusted voice. At the twisted sight of the man's face Cole turned and buried his face into Rio's shoulder, though he had reached puberty and was almost as tall as she.

The other did not immediately respond to the question, and slowly turned back towards his fire. He looked wretched, and rather disinclined to even acknowledge the group... though he could not have possibly missed the threat in Roan's words or stance. If Rio had been forced to say, she'd guess that he was only waiting there to die.

"I don't think you hear too good, old man," taunted Daven, pulling himself up to his entire puny height and advancing on the other, confident that Ian was there to handle any trouble. "Roan said to clear out, and as far as you're concerned, his voice is the voice of God."

Now the man groaned and rose to his feet, though he continued to face the fire. And when he responded, it was with what sounded like a rather distant and unconcerned tone of voice. "Is that true... Roan, is it? Is yours truly the voice of God for me? For you see... I have been waiting for a god. Or at least something of the like." And as the last echoes of the other's voice died off into the cavern, Rio thought that a peculiar type of hunger had replaced the indifference within it.

Daven slowly backed away from the aged man with a quick glance at Roan, as if looking to him for guidance. Roan frowned and motioned Ian forward with a nod of his head. "Look, freak," the dark teen said patiently. "This doesn't have to hurt."

"Ah," replied the other, sounding contemplative. "But you'd prefer it if it did, wouldn't you, Roan? That's half the fun of being a god. To be able to cause whatever suffering you wish at a whim, and be above any retribution, yes? To make others fear you, to the point that they'll do anything to keep you happy with them? Anything, Roan..."

The boy snorted. "See, this is what I get for being a nice guy. Okay, Ian," he finished, jerking his thumb in the direction of the ragged figure.

The hulking figure of Roan's thug stepped forward and clapped a heavy hand down on the shoulder of the old man. But instead of reacting in alarm, the aged figure simply pulled a closed fist from the pocket of the garment he was wearing. A fist that flickered with an odd, bluish glow from within. And then, oddly and quite suddenly, Ian's giant hand went limp and literally slid off of the man's shoulder.

Roan's brow furrowed tightly together, and he stepped to Ian's side with a dangerous look on his face. He did not tolerate hesitation or disobedience from those he led. "What the hell do you think you're doing, you lumbering sideshow attraction? I just told you to get this damned fool out of my cave. Now move!"

But Ian didn't move, only stood there in mute silence with his great hands dangling limply at his side. The old man turned to Roan and shrugged, his eerie eyes studying the boy intently. "And thus, the voice of God is silenced for him. Now pray, don't be upset with your large friend, Roan. You could stick a gun to his head or run him through with a knife right now and he wouldn't care in the least. You could kick him in the groin as hard as you like, and while the pain would be real enough for him, he wouldn't feel any anger towards you. His is now a state of perfect, blissful indifference."

Behind the three, Rio had to affix Daven with a stern glance to keep him from going through with a test of the man's final illustration.

But Roan, of course, had no such restraints on himself. Angrily he clenched his fist and smashed it into the side of Ian's ugly face. The enormous youth took a step backwards and looked to wince a bit, but otherwise his stance and demeanor did not change.

Roan turned on the man. "Fine, then I'll do it myself," he scowled, grabbing a fistful of the other's shirt and pulling him close. "You wanna see if you can screw with my head like that?"

The other's unnatural, yellow eyes flashed a longing at the boy. "Yes... yes, you'll do. You'll do perfectly." He bowed his head. "Oh no, I doubt that I could do the same to you. In you there is rage. There is hatred, the likes of which I've never felt before. I would not dare even attempt to emasculate such power."

The eyes of the two locked for a moment, as if feeling one another out. "I can help you, Roan. I can give you more power than you've ever dreamed about in your short life. I can give you the means by which all of your power-hungry and murderous dreams can come true..." And as he spoke the man's voice fell in a steady decrescendo to a point where it almost became a private, hypnotic invitation for Roan's ears alone.

"Short life? I'm near on seventeen old man," Roan growled back in response. "And you'd better not be implying that I need your help. Or I swear by the time I'm done with you you'll be begging for me to let you die."

The other approached the scowling boy and brought his face close to his, the defiant response answering for him in the affirmative. The bright, seemingly unnaturally bright eyes stared into Roan's dark ones. "Let me help you, boy. Let me make you more than what you are. And I swear by the time I'm done, you will be a god."

Leiko's face betrayed a patronizing smirk as she spied on the small group of children surrounding the campfire. The three older children on one side sitting on a log, the girl in between the two boys who kept flashing suspicious glance back at one another, and the two youngest sitting on the opposite side, holding hands. And suddenly she knew just what Daven had meant. The treacly sentimentality of the younger pair was enough to make her want to throw up.

"Man, you are pig-headed!" Matt almost shouted, leaning across to look at Tai. "How does getting your head messed with by that sick, screwball clown make you evil?"

Tai winced and turned away. "Not evil, Matt. Susceptible to evil. All that time he was there, doing whatever he wanted, and I couldn't fight him. I wasn't strong enough, and all of you almost paid with your lives because I wasn't."

"He's right, Tai," said Sora gently, taking the boy's hand in a comforting manner. "Whatever Piedmon did with your body, it wasn't you. And you're expecting too much of yourself, if you think that you should have been able to fight him off once he was already in control. Think about all of those people in the restaurant. He had total control over them in seconds, and he wasn't stuck inside their heads."

The boy appeared a bit less melancholy at the girl's words and her hand on his own, but then a single glance at the younger pair across the fire beat him back down. Even though it had not, ultimately, happened that way, he could see the sword in his hand as it drove through Kari's back and straight through into T.K.'s chest, pinning both of their dead bodies to the ground. He could see it now as clearly as he saw it whenever he closed his eyes to sleep at night. The sight haunted and terrified him, and made absolution impossible.

"Okay, so you weren't evil," Matt continued to thrust away mercilessly. "What then? You found out that you're not as strong as you expected to be, or maybe as you wanted to be, and it scared you? So what? That's not a character flaw, that's part of being human. A real character flaw is expecting yourself to have been able to withstand him, even though you have no idea how strong he really was."

Now Tai was on his feet, his hands balled into fists at his side. "Why don't you just shut up, Matt? Willing or not, I helped him do what he wanted with all of you. You don't have any idea how that feels! I left you all, helpless, to become a tool of evil! How do I know I'll be strong enough to resist the next time somebody wants to use me like that? I might as well be a stupid little puppet!"

Okay, that's it! Leiko rose from her crouched position and eased meekly into their camp. T.K. and Kari looked at the newcomer suspiciously as she cleared her throat. "Hello," she murmured, trying to feign a girlish nervousness.

Tai and Matt were on their feet as one, and turned to stare at the darkly handsome girl. Leiko, unlike her partner Rio, was full-figured and was well endowed in her more feminine attributes, even at a young age. And moreover, she was also well aware of how she looked and just how attractive she was to those of the opposite sex. "Hello," they each replied in a nonchalant tone, though the look on their faces betrayed a somewhat more animated response.

Leiko favored the pair with a rather alluring smile, and then nodded politely to the others. "I... I'm sorry. I didn't mean to disturb your party, but my name is Leiko Kimura, and I've been sent to deliver an exceedingly urgent message to the five of you. A message that I hope will convince you to come with me right away." She flashed a demure glance in Tai's direction. "Which of you is Taichi Kamiya?"

The dark-haired boy stepped forward with a self-confident smirk on his face as Sora crossed her arms and looked away in disgust. Trust Tai to forget his problems at the sight of a glimmer in the eye of a single pretty girl.

Sora stepped forward. "From who, did you say?" she replied coolly, rather bluntly making the point that any decision regarding their little group would not be made by Tai alone. T.K. had caught a single glimpse at the eyes of the girl who he now considered as much an older sister as anything before she'd turned to speak. She doesn't like her either.

Leiko smiled back innocently, her face betraying no hint of the scowl at her mind was directing at Sora. She hoped that when it came time for the reckoning, Roan would have no use for that one.

A moment or two passed, and Leiko realized that she'd gone too long without speaking. "I'm... I'm sorry, Taichi. The name that I was told to give you was 'Gennai', and that the name alone would serve well enough as a token of sincerity to you five. To be quite honest, the one who asked that I give you the name seemed somewhat... unique... to me, but assured me that you would know the significance of it."

Matt rolled his eyes skyward. "Well 'unique' isn't a description I've heard yet, anyway."

Sora saw Tai contemplating what the new girl has said, and frowned. She stepped to the boy's side and addressed Leiko. "Will you excuse us for just a moment?" She then grabbed Tai by the ear and led him over to the far side of the fire.

"Oww! Hey!" the boy chirped in an embarrassed protest.

"Are you insane?" Sora demanded of him in a fervent whisper. "We aren't going with her! You don't just have a stranger walk into our camp in the middle of the night, say 'Gennai' and go traipsing off with her around the mountain to who-knows-where! I know you're smarter than that, and you'd better not be letting that body of hers," she jerked a thumb in the direction of the other girl, "make you otherwise."

Tai's couldn't seem able to make his eyes meet with Sora's for a moment, completely aware that allowing her to see them at that moment would have confirmed just such a thing for her. But still...

"I'm going, Sora. She's right: any human who knows Gennai by name almost has to have credibility with us. 'Unique'? Yeah, she's seen him, too. So what? Is she one of us, or just somebody who Gennai's using to get us a message? Either way it's important enough to pay attention to, and I am going."

"You see," said the old man, moving to the other side of the cavern after having freed Ian from his bemusement. "I have been waiting for you. Oh not for you in particular, you understand, but rather for a group of your bearing. To keep the universe in balance... it was inevitable that you should come."

"Oh-kay..." Daven murmured derisively to the others while making a circular 'crazy' motion with his finger.

The old man silenced the boy with a stare and then continued. "You all will see that I am not from your world... at least not originally." The others gave a collective snort as the man continued, his voice becoming a bit wistful. "It was a very, very long time ago in my world when I... much like you, Roan... sought to be something other than ordinary. And, like you, very few appreciated the methods that I chose for becoming... more that what I was."

"But you don't become extraordinary without taking some risks, do you Roan? And, unfortunately, one of the risks that I took failed in the worst way. In the middle of one of the most pitched battles in the history of my world I switched sides, assisting one who, in time, would the greatest criminal genius that my world had ever seen."

The six followed the old man as if hypnotized. "You see, I had been what you would call a scientist. And the time eventually came when the genius of whom I spoke organized an attack upon our laboratory to stop an event that was destined to bring about his downfall. That genius, Piedmon to his allies, broke into our laboratory and tried to stop what had been prophesied to happen before it ever could. He failed in his attempt, the prophecy was fulfilled, and now he is dead. Shortly thereafter I was banished here, to this world, because I chose the wrong side."

"And what does any of this have to do with us?" Rio demanded of him.

"I'm getting to that!" the other snapped. "You see, the prophecy of which I speak was satisfied only with the assistance of a group of younger children from your world. They came through a dimensional rift while atop this very mountain, and assisted a rival of mine named Gennai in his mission to stop that little maneuver of ours."

"That's a stupid name," piped up Cole.

"These children from your world had specific traits of virtue that allowed them to make special friends in mine, great friends that helped them to fulfill this prophecy. Those virtues, however, I've always felt were more hubris than anything."

"Get to the point now, old man," snapped Roan, grabbing the other's shoulder and stopping him in his tracks. "I'm really starting to lose my patience with you."

The man shook off the hand angrily. "The point is just this -- those children ruined my world, and now I'm going to ruin theirs... with your help of course." He took a key from his pocket and unlocked a rusting, neglected cabinet that almost seemed to have been built into the cave. "And since the six of you have been rejected by your world as well, I think that you might be pleased to finally have things the way that you want them. You see, for every good, there is always an evil. For every yin, there must be a yang. For every hero," he paused and looked at Cole, "a coward. It is the way of the universe."

The group gathered around as the man stepped back, and saw in the cabinet a set of five pendants. The dark blue talisman still in his hand made six. And each of the ornaments seemed to shimmer with an illumination of a separate hue, although the radiance that came from them seemed to only suck the light from the cave, instead of enhancing it. "Take them," the man urged. "They're yours. You'll know which one is for each of you, and with these little trinkets you will be destined to do great and terrible things…"

"Sora, I still don't believe that your dad is letting us do this," whispered Kari, still hand-in-hand with T.K. but trailing the rest of the group.

The older girl grimaced. She didn't quite believe that he was either. It had seemed a good idea at the time, to force Tai to concede that they would all go along with the girl Leiko only if her father agreed to let them. She hadn't really expected him to say yes. "Kari, you heard him as well as I did. Who knows why parents do anything?"

"But Sora," said T.K., coming to the Kari's defense. "Didn't you notice something odd about him when we were talking to him? Almost like he was... preoccupied?"

Sora nodded. She would have had to have been rather preoccupied herself not to notice. The way that he brushed off such a seemingly major request as so trivial had given her great pause for thought at first, particularly as he had given such a contrary answer only the day before. Though now she was distracted by an even greater problem. The boys in front of her, both Matt and Tai, had quite suddenly turned into the world's two biggest idiots in describing their individual exploits for the benefit of the new girl. It wasn't that she had a problem with suddenly being relegated to the backs of their minds, she told herself, but for some reason she didn't entirely trust 'Leiko'.

Leiko, for her part, simply favored the pair with what might have been considered a charming smile. "Oh yes. I know exactly what the two of you did in the digital world," she replied, leading them well off the path and into a heavily wooded section of the mountainside. It was only a short walk later when the group finally reached the cave that the girl had promised. Roan, you'd owe me for this. I swear, if I have to listen to either of these two simpletons for another second…

"Here we are," she said pleasantly, ushering them all into the entrance of the cave. All but T.K. and Kari had to duck to avoid striking their heads on a low overhang that was hidden just inside the entryway. Stepping outside for a moment, Leiko took pains to rearrange the foliage that kept the place hidden from the eyes of the outside world.

A roar echoed somewhere deep within the cavern as the group entered, well before their eyes could adjust from the dim light outside to the even shallower illumination in the cavern. "What was that?" asked Sora, startled. She grabbed at the hand closest to her and squeezed it tightly, uncertain of just who it belonged to.

Tai's voice came to her out of the darkness, though it was a voice that sounded quite preoccupied at the moment. "You know..." he whispered quietly. "It kind of puts me in the mind of... it was kind of like..."

The boy's voice trailed off into silence and his face screwed up into a deep thoughtfulness as he moved quickly to catch up with Matt and Leiko. T.K., Kari and Sora gave one other a brief glance and nodded. '...kind of like Greymon,' they each finished mentally. Now the older girl had a strong feeling that the most responsible thing to do would be to take the younger pair away from this place, but then realized that, with their brothers involved, they each had a greater stake in this than she. And, logic chided her, if this did pertain to digimon, they had as much a right to see it through to the end.

Each of the six placed the talismans around their necks, and suddenly felt a surge of… something indescribable. "What do these emblems mean?" Daven asked, peering at his own.

The old man responded with a crooked smile. "You are my evil to their good. My yang to their yin." He glanced at Roan. "My hatred to their love."

Rio. "My apathy to their friendship."

Daven. "To their reliability, my duplicity."

Leiko. "To their sincerity, my deceit."

Ian. "To their knowledge, brutality."

The runt, Cole. "For courage, timidity."

He then nodded, and clandestinely passed Roan a small, egg-shaped device while whispering something into the oldest boy's ear. The other said nothing, but looked at Cole with a frown on his face and nodded to the man.

Some six months later the man had died, and his body, surprisingly, had vanished with his death. That very night Roan, per the other's final instructions, had placed his talisman of hatred upon the device that the other had given him, and watched emotionlessly as an apparition of the old man had sprung forward from its heart. The boy listened intently as the vision spoke, and this is what he heard...

Roan Kuroda, if you are hearing this then it means that my time has passed without knowing my vengeance. But I will rest well knowing that it must come to fruition. When I was cast from my world, I pleaded that I should find those to help me avenge my fall. And you... you went beyond my wildest imaginings, Roan. You are everything that my former partner was, and more.

But of you all, one will not be able to fulfill the task that is set for him. It will destroy, and consume him. And you know which it is, for you have seen it in him as well as I.

But it may be that this will profit our cause, for I have seen that, in time, the leader of those on whom I have sworn vengeance will come to you. He will serve instead. Indeed, it will please me greatly that you should use him to destroy what he has saved. When he comes he will be weakened, but still useful, if you can sway him to your side.

In addition, he may joined be two others of importance... two others whose holy virtues cannot be distorted into wickedness even by my sciences. You will know them by their youth, and by the instant revulsion that you and your comrades will feel towards them. Take these two to the fourth cavern, and if they can be seduced to your cause there you will gain allies of immense power. But do NOT under any circumstances approach the fourth cavern without them. You are strong, Roan Kuroda, but what dwells therein would destroy even you.

And with that the image vanished from his sight, along with the egg-shaped device and leaving only Roan's blood-red talisman behind. And the following day, as he had indeed seen, the sniveling little runt Cole lost control of and was consumed by the great beast that had been summoned to serve him...