Chapter two: Emanuel
"Where am I?..." Kari asked slowly opening her eyes, finding herself in total blackness. "I don't know." A voice suddenly said. She turned round and saw her brother, together with the others and their digimon. So she was not alone, wherever she was. "Hey, did you here that?" Sora asked and the others listened up. There was it again, that sobbing of a child or a rookie. And as there was nothing else for them to do, they followed it to the blackness. Slowly it lost its echoing and sounded as if it would be very close. And really there, some feet away from them crouched someone. No digimon but a small child. A little boy who was wearing nothing but a black shroud wrapped around his hip. And still he was crying heartrending. There were strange point-like scars that followed his spine on his ashen skin. "Why are you crying?" Sora asked him, tenderly laying her hand onto his shoulder. He jumped up as if she had burned him. Fear in his eyes he stared at them. Not much more then eight years old. And the digidestined were shocked when they saw a giant scar that led from his chest, actually from the point beneath which his heart was, down to where his navel should have been. And another smaller scar between his eyes and two others at his temples... He looked at them, looked at their digimon and ran away.
Of course they followed him. Gabumon digivolved to Garurumon and passed the boy and blocked his way. The child fell onto his knees. It looked as if he was sobbing, but they heard nothing now and saw no tears streaming down his cheeks. "What is your name?" Sora carefully asked and the boy writhed as if she had slapped him. The teens were confused. "Are you a digidestined?" Tai wanted to know, but the boy did not answer. He propped himself up with his little hands and the chosen children noticed circular scars on them to, just as on his feet. What had happened to this child? Had Myotismon kept him in this black dimension and tortured him? Now Mimi tried to lay her hand calming onto the boy's head. For a moment she felt the gentle blond hair. But when he noticed it he jumped up like electrified and ran away again.
She didn't know why she did it but suddenly Kari shouted something... "Emanuel!" The boy convulsed, stumbled and fell onto the black ground. They ran to him and Kari bowed over the fragile body. He was lying on the ground now, they could see his rips when his chest moved up and down as he breathed. He raised his hand and carefully touched Kari there were her heart was. Tai wanted to complain but suddenly Kari did the same with the boy. She touched him there were the giant scar began, there where his heart was. And suddenly a silvery tag appeared on the boy's chest. Kari remembered something like that... Nightmare Soldiers - Project HE-RAM... it said on the tag... For one moment a ludicrous thought flashed up in Kari's head... Nightmare Soldiers, blond hair, those blue eyes... Could he be... Myotismon? But then she remembered Myotismon's eyes, they were cold and dead... The boy's though blue were not cold but sad and fearful, his name seemed to be Emanuel and even more important, he was a human and Myotismon had been a digimon that never had been an eight year old child.
But still, who was that boy who was covered with scars and so afraid of humans and digimon?
And suddenly several voices appeared out of the darkness and even though they seemed to be in foreign languages the children understood them and the boy winced in pain.
"Ah doctor Goerlitz. How is the project going?"
"Fantastic doctor Mishima. Everything is just as it is planned. Project Humanoid Energetic RAM will be a success."
"Yes Mishima, IT is working very good. Just as I told you!"
"Yes, yes I know doctor Kinsey, but I still can't believe that a human brain is capable..."
"Normal humans generally just use a quarter of their brain capacity. As we avoid the unnecessary body functions of object E we can utilize the last bit of his brain and the last volt in his body."
"Oh doctor Pawlow, I thought you were on vacations?"
"Yes, but terrible weather in Paris, Goerlitz. So we're playing God aren't we?"
"What do you mean Pawlow?"
"Oh please, Kinsey. We're creating a whole world, a whole new race out of one human!"
"But don't you think that it is against all ethic? We're exploiting a living being?"
"No Mishima! It was procreated with a synthetic fertilization. With ovules from a woman who did not want children and a friendly 'donation' of Goerlitz! It is nothing more than any other machine or computer! And after all it has no consciousness! It will never know that it is a human being!"
"Are you sure Pawlow? It is still an infant what if it will develop a consciousness? There is a whole world in its head, that will be linked to every computer in the world. What if it will develop a consciousness in this world!"
"You are exaggerating Mishima! It was you who programmed the Modified Online Tracking Hyper Executable Retrieval!"
And suddenly the boy screamed in agony. And light spread all around the children. There was no black now, but the sterility of a laboratory. Four men in smocks stood in this laboratory. One of them had blond hair and blue eyes, one looked Asian, one had an uncombed beard and the last one wore glasses. On an apparatus in front of them was a baby, with pale skin and blond hair. Thousands of needles stuck in its spine, three electrodes were implanted at its head, one between the eyes, two at its temples. Four more at its hands and feet. A tube stuck in its throat and strange cables came out of a notch that let from its chest down to its navel... It looked rather than a machine than like a living being...
"Yes Pawlow, but I don't think that MOTHER can still intervene if it creates itself an individual existence in this digital world!" The Japanese said, looking afraid at the man with the beard.
"And even if, Mishima!" The Russian replied. "It was our aim to create a world with digital life. There are a lot of little monsters. Who will care about one more or less?" He said and laughed at the blond man. "Why so serious Goerlitz! This is a triumph of science! We created a digital world with digital monsters!"
"Yes..." The German said slowly... "The digiworld..."
"With digimon!" The American finished his sentence...
Tai, Kari, Matt, Sora, Izzy, Mimi, T.K. and Joe twitched. This was impossible. The digiworld that they had thought to be a dimension in the internet was actually in the brain of a now eight year old boy? They looked down at Emanuel, did that mean... They were in his head right now?
"I am crying because I am no human being. I have no name. No, I am not a digidestined. I named myself Emanuel. No you cannot help me." The children were stunned, the boy had talked to them. And he had answered their questions even those two that Tai just wanted to ask... He sounded very mature, even though his body was eight years old... Or maybe he was older, after all it was just an image of him. "Who... are you?" Sora asked and Emanuel smiled as if he had expected that question. "You know me." He said and turned away from them when they saw little tears appearing in his eyes.
"The tears of a bevy of old kids I draw onto a white hair... threw into the air the wet chain and wished that I had a mother..." The digidestined gaped at the blond boy who stood there with his tormented body... speaking strange things... "No sun that shines for me... No breast had cried milk for me, a tube sticks in my throat, have no navel on the belly..." His voice was soft and sad, though the children liked to listen to him, they were shocked of his words... "Mother... Mother... Mother... Mother..." He yelled and drove his sore hands through his blond hair, skimming it back. "I was not allowed to lick nipples... and no wrinkle for hiding... no one gave me a name... breed in haste and without semen..." In this moment Tai tried to cover Kari's ears. How could an eight year old boy speak in such a way?
"To the mother that never gave birth to me, I swore tonight... I will give her... a disease and afterwards drown her in the river..." And now he started to laugh maniacally, no more like a child. But somehow his laugh became more and more a painful yell... "Mother... Mother... Mother... Mother... Mother..." Kari could not bare this any longer she ran to him and tried to embrace him... tried to calm him. But he stuck his hand into her pocket and suddenly pulled something out of it... And she knew it... it was a dagger... with a silver blade, an onyx sheath and a garnet hilt...
"Mother... Mother... Mother... In her lungs lives an eel of dark... on my forehead a birthmark... remove it with dagger's kiss... even if I have to die with this..." And before anyone could say something or stop him. He took the dagger and slashed his forehead between his eyes... blood gushed out of the wound and he had to close his eyes while the digidestineds could do nothing but watch him, petrified... "Mother... Mother?... Mother!" He whispered and then when he felt the children rousing from their numbness. He yelled but it was not the voice of a fearful child... "MOTHER!"... Anew the children were shocked when the blond boy opened his blue eyes and they were not sad and fearful anymore but unfeeling and cold... icy... And he slowly began to age... His voice was the one of a man... mature, deep, even enticing had it been filled with emotion, but it was heartless...
"ARGH--- In her lungs lives an eel of dark... on my forehead a birthmark... remove it with dagger's kiss... though I must bleed to death with this! ... Mother... Oh give me strength!" And his voice echoed through the darkness that now fell upon them and the blood gushed forth from the wound on his forehead... "Mother! Mother!... Oh give me strength..." And no drop of blood hit the floor. It streamed down his body and clothed him like a suit... and the darkness made it change its colour... "Mother! Mother!... Oh give me strength!" The rest of blood remained in his face, gathering around his sapphire eyes and where the electrodes on his temples had been... like a mask... And the digidestined barely believed with whom they had been together the whole time... "Mother! Mother!... Oh give me... strength..." He almost whispered, heavy breathing. And now the children stood in front of Emanuel... in front of the Project HE-RAM... the one that was neither born as a digimon nor lived as a human...
"You never should have returned Gatomon!" He said composed. "And you, my pretty, should never have touched other people's property!" He threw the dagger and it kept stuck in the ground only inches from Kari's feet. "Though thanks for waking me..." He said as the girl skipped backwards to her brother. "We killed you!" Tai yelled and Emanuel grinned smugly. "You cannot kill the undead... and especially not me..." He said with a faint touch of distress in his sonorous voice. "But this is against all physical laws and anatomically impos---" Izzy began but the blond man raised his hand and suddenly Izzy stopped, though he did not wanted to... "This is MY world and it is I who creates those laws here!" And something flipped up in Tai's head. "You're just a tall child with an expensive toy you don't want to share!"
Emanuel started laughing and snapped his fingers. "Oh I would really love to have you doing my 'job' Taichi Yakami! Unfortunately... I CAN'T!"A pit with boiling lava appeared underneath Tai who stood on a thin rope now. "How can you do that! They all wanted to help you!" Gatomon hissed at him. "No... They wanted to help a little boy... And I told you! NO ONE can help me!" And there was this tone of sorrow in his voice again. "You've seen my real body... I've been like this since more than twenty human years..." He whispered and slowly lowered his hand, snapping his fingers again and Tai stood on solid ground again.
"We have nearly killed you twice! It has to work the third time! It just has too!" Kari shouted at Emanuel while embracing her brother. "Oh cry me a river, my pretty! But let me tell you something! It will work!" Unbelieving they stared at the blond man with the sapphire eyes. He laughed. "Yes children! We are here in the motherboard of the digital world... Or as you would say... My very own head and brain!" Slowly he began unbuttoning the upper part of his suit. "So if you kill me here... My body will die on a cerebral stroke!" He said calmly as if this was nothing important. Immediately Gatomon digivolved to Angewomon taking aim at him. "C'mon Angewomon have try!" He said inviting and bared his chest and the giant scar the children remembered so well from the body of the little boy minutes ago. "But before you shoot your celestial arrow... One more thing!" She lowered her bow and listened. "Though I would like not to do so, but it is my duty to remind you... I am the motherboard of the digiworld... Think about what happens when you switch me off... Now do you want to kill me?" He asked friendly, his pale chest a perfect target in the darkness all around.
And realising whom she actually would kill, Angewomon de-digivolved back to Gatomon.
"No! Of course you don't!" Emanuel spitted looking very disappointed. And they knew why. He wanted to die. He snapped his fingers and a hole in the darkness opened behind which they saw their sleeping bags in the tall hall. "You will leave the castle now. Feel free to frolic in the digiworld as you like it. But please, never return to Nightmare Castle. My life is miserable enough without you bothering the hell out of me!" He said and they were pushed out of the dark. "Human children never seem to be satisfied with what they have..." Myotismon sighed and immersed in his thoughts again...
-end-
Note: Well the whole story is much more impressive when you listen to RAMMSTEIN's song
"Mutter"... I hope the whole thing was not too confusing... And if you wonder about all this stuff with eels and mother... this actually is the song... it makes no sense in German but even less after translating it into English, I've changed some lines a bit... but I still love it! And you should listen to the song! (In German it has rhymes at last!)
M i s h im a
G o e r l i t z
K i n s e y
P a w l o w
Myotismon
