Epilogue – Double Impact

The first thing I noticed upon waking was that I was falling. I panicked for a moment, before realizing that I was being held onto.

"Relax, Mako."

Seeing Phelesmon grabbing onto me, I did indeed try to relax. I tried to focus on our landing point instead.

Then I remembered.

"Um… Phelesmon? What happened to Apocalymon?"

I could hear the frown in Phelesmon's voice.

"I dunno, but I doubt it's a good thing."

"It's not."

We both looked over, just in time for Phelesmon to catch a claw to the side, knocking him out cold and reverting him to Impmon. Looking up, not wanting to see our approaching doom, I saw Apocalymon, but…

"Ugh. Disgusting."

He was… different, that was for sure. His main body and the ball he stood upon were still there, but they were covered in pulsating red and black veins. The claws that shot out of the holes were different as well, being more like red, organic-looking scythes than the metal pincers that he'd shot out before.

"REAPER CLAWS!"

Oh oh.

Staring at the incoming scythes, and realizing that we were between an edge and a hard place, I tried to wake Impmon, who wasn't responding.

"Impmon! Wake up! We're dead, if you don't WAKE UP!"

Something shot out of the ground then, piercing Impmon, and consequently waking him, and striking the hand I raised to cover my eyes.

Biomerge
Digivolution

Impmon Biomerge to… Beezlemon!

I marveled, even as I flipped around in mid-air to land on the ground in a crouch. I had the power back, the power to strike down any foe with impunity. A part of me considered the power new as well, and I knew it must be the part of me that was Mako, but some of it was different.

It felt… cleaner than it had been before, now that I was relying on my own strengths and no one else's to achieve this.

Eat it, Zhuquiamon, Beezlemon's back in the house.

Seeing the many many claws headed in my direction, I dashed to the side, reaching to my sides for the double barreled delight they held there, and brought my hands up, fingers squeezing off rounds, deleting the scythes just as fast as they appeared.

I grinned manically, and rushed in for the kill.

Apocalymon, in all his veined glory, only smiled right back.

"OBLITERATION SWARM!"

My eyes widened as I caught sight of what happened next. Where scythes should have been coming out, now there came… ADR's?

I looked up at him the red, veiny appearance starting to make a twisted sense.

"What the hell? D-Reaper! DOUBLE IMPACT!"

Apocalymon gave a pleased sneer as I was forced to pause and start deleting the ADRs instead of bothering with him.

"Of course! You didn't really believe that a program like D-Reaper could really have caused all the destruction it did without something prodding its evolution, did you?"

"I admit… DARKNESS CLAW! That I never really thought about it!"

I managed to get several ADRs in a single swipe as I answered. Apocalymon laughed, even as he started adding scythes to the swarm again, taking a personal hand with his minions.

Quite the workout. Too bad he can't take me!

"Fool. But it is what I wanted people to think, the D-Reaper all on its own, after all, if I'd been more obvious about it, then that blasted interfering Azulongmon would have sent his digidestined in, and then I might not have gotten enough warning to conceal myself in the core!"

I jumped back, realizing that this was taking way too long. I'd run out of power before he did.

"BEHEMOTH!"

The demonic motorcycle roared into existence beside me, and I hopped on. I revved the engine, and started mowing through the digimon in my path. Counting on the cycle's intelligence to keep us on course, I once more drew the guns from my holsters and started firing into the herd, all the while getting closer to the heart of the problem.

Almost there, I spotted an incoming scythe, and jumped, commanding Behemoth mentally to be gone. It vanished just before the thing hit home, but it was a little late, as I was already more than halfway up the side of the ball, and still rising steadily from the jump.

Starting to realize that he might be in danger from my approach, he started to call in his forces, but they were too late, as I was already on top of him.

"DARKNESS CLAW!"

My hand slammed into Apocalymon, but did little apparent damage. He sneered and backhanded me into the coming fray of weaponry and ADRs.

I dodged frantically, but still took several hits, and eventually landed on the ground. I collapsed to my knees and whipped away a little blood from my mouth.

"I don't get it. ChaosGallantmon destroyed D-Reaper. You should have died with it!"

He shrugged, and more ADRs poured out of the holes to confront me.

"Yes, well, that's when I fled into that girl. It took years, but eventually gained control of her."

He frowned, caught up in his explanation.

"ChaosGallantmon later healing her set me back a bit, but by then I had a large enough foothold to hang on."

He glared.

"And if you idiots hadn't interfered, then I would have been perfectly recovered!"

As he spoke, he got angrier, and as he got angrier, more and more viens started covering him.

"AAARGGH! REAPER CLAWS!"

The sickle-like appendages came flashing in again, and I dodged through them, in the only direction he probably didn't expect.

Forward.

I took more hits, but the claws were destroying ADRs more often than they were hitting me. I reached out mentally, and reformed Behemoth.

His eyes widened at the roar from behind him, but Apocalymon couldn't turn around to face the threat with his bulky body beginning to succumb to the veins that were covering him more and more.

Behemoth slammed into his back with all the force of a Trailmon, disrupting his concentration.

I jumped, finally breaking through, and leveled my guns as my jump carried me right into his face. I grinned widely.

"DOUBLE IMPACT!"

I laughed as I sailed by him, the attack had torn his head to pieces.

Then I realized that he hadn't burst into data. I spun back around as Behemoth circled back to come up beside me.

The head was reforming. He raved at me.

"YOU LITTLE SHIT! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH THAT HURT!"

He glared down, but I noticed that his head was completely reconstructed from the red now. I frowned. What was it Henry had said? D-Reaper was supposed to delete all data that exceeded it's programming? My eyes widened as I figured it out.

I only had to hold on a little longer, and Apocalymon would be gone…

But what am I gonna do about D-Reaper?

I dismissed Behemoth, and flipped backwards, gambling on D-Reaper being less of a hassle to destroy. The deterioration seemed to be speeding up as it went though, so I bided my time, saving energy and ammunition.

I was beginning to wear down when he noticed it finally, watching the red sweep in waves over his hand.

"NO! Not yet!"

His glare focused on me, and energy began to gather in his hands as he held them over his head.

"DELETION WAVE!"

As it spread outwards, I did the only thing I could.

I ran.

The ADRs eithere weren't intelligent enough, or weren't fast enough to get out of the way, but the wave was slowly gaining ground. In the end, I dove across a gorge, and tumbled, rolling to a halt on the other side.

The wave finally faded out of existence in the middle of the gorge, and I sighed in relief.

Then I noted that the red vine like structure of D-Reaper had been left in the thing's wake.

I groaned, but prepared to wade back in. If I didn't go kick it's ass, who knew what would happen. Tired, but convincing myself that it was the right thing to do, I jumped back over the gorge and began to walk forward, keeping an eye out for any surprises.

I couldn't see anything really wrong, except for the red wires/vines on the ground, and frowned a bit. That made me think I was walking into a trap.

And it was, too.

Suddenly, a large vaguely defined hill with arms shot up in front of me.

Crap.

A source of strong data pieced my senses, and I, a demon lord, nearly shuddered at how corrupt it felt. I decided I didn't like that.

"Finally decided to show yourself, eh?"

Predictably, it didn't answer. At least, not intelligibly. I don't speak ear-slitting shriek.

"Figures. DOUBLE IMPACT!"

Firing off the shots, I started running up hill, using the guns to ward off the blows from the arms it had sprouted.

Reaching the top, I paused, then dug down to where I felt the source coming from.

"DARKNESS CLAW!"

Glancing briefly down, I could see the entire thing react as I ripped the core out if it's 'head' with one hand.

What was it Apocalymon said? He hid in the core?

Well, I wasn't going to let that happen again. I raised my hand to destroy it, and paused.

He also said that Takato nearly killed him when he fixed Delia. Now how did he go about it…? Ah yes.

I grinned.

"Bye bye. CRYSTAL MATRIX!"

Red light erupted from my palm as it shot through D-Reaper's core, and I had to balance myself as the 'hill' began to shrivel and die like the rest of it.

When I finally felt the core was dead, I unloaded a round into it, shattering it like cheap glass. Then I glowed as I dedigivolved.

"Whoa…"

I had to hold my head in my hands for a second as I came down from the head rush. I looked over at Impmon, who looked at me, and we both didn't know what to say for a moment. Then he sighed.

"Well, this bites."

I blinked.

What?

"What do you mean? We just kicked its – their asses. We rule!"

Impmon looked at me.

"We also can't get home."

I sighed, and I collapsed onto by backside, followed by my back, to rest.

"Oh. Right."

Impmon sighed as well, and joined me on the ground.

"Well, at least we've got each other for company."

I smiled.

"Yeah. Who'd a thought it'd turn out like this."

Impmon grinned.

"Not me. But hey, whatever, right?"

"Yeah."

We were silent for a while.

"Hey Impmon?"

"Yeah Mako?"

"What are we gonna do tomorrow?"

I could feel Impmon's shrug.

"Dunno. Pick a direction and start walking, I guess."

I nodded.

"Hmmm. I don't suppose we could use Behemoth?"

Impmon shrugged again.

"We'll see. We might wanna conserve our strength in case we into something though."

"I suppose."

We were silent for a time again.

"Mako?"

"Yeah, Impmon?"

"Thanks. For not giving up on me. You know, when I lost the power of the sovereigns and all?"

I smiled, and looked at the gunmetal gray glove on my hand, the one with the triangle design on it.

"No problem."