content notices: violence, body horror (canon-typical for corrupted evolutions, but written and visual body horror can come across differently so it's worth a mention)


Smoke and bone remain when the light of her evolution dims. Duskmon doesn't step back, but it's a near thing. Of all the tricks he guessed she might pull (admittedly his expectations were low), this one did not make the list.

It doesn't help at all that Furymon is beautiful.

She lifts the central and largest of three eyeless heads. The beak opens wide, showing rows upon rows of curving teeth, and at the back of that arrangement a void gapes, a human mouth, lips and teeth and tongue, embedded in the muscle of her throat. That mouth warbles, with a voice that rattles like her blade-edged feathers, "This is me."

Duskmon isn't deluded enough to imagine she means the words for him.

Dark dust pools around her skeletal claws, gathers in the feathers that drape around her ankles, and spirals from her in gossamer threads caught on the wind, staining the moonless night like ink in water. The wisps shift around her breaths when she exhales, and the exposed ribs of her chest curl in and out, empty and grasping. Her feathers rustle where they brush against each other, the scraping of knives; her single wing drapes low at her side, slicing furrows through the sand and grit of the beach. The black-gleaming wrist bone taps a metronome beat on the ground. Has she always had one wing, or did her Beast Spirit's injury carry over?

"Double Spirit evolution," Duskmon murmurs, testing the phrase. The other two heads tilt at the ends of their long necks to peer at him – the jagged beaks open, and from each a human's eye glares out in the same spot that holds a mouth in the central head.

All of the Spirits hold a thematic connection between their Beast and Human forms, but apparently the combination of both carries nothing of either. Rather than her previous two humanoid evolutions, this one is crane-shaped, long necks and long legs that set her taller than Duskmon (though that's no great feat), except for a tail that drags behind her in an expansive train and the ridges of her spine that break through her back in needle-thin spikes.

Along with every other feature, obviously. No one will see her and mistake her for a real crane.

He remains distantly aware of an unfamiliar emotion coiling tight in his chest. Anticipation, if anticipation had teeth. That's his element she wears so well. Nobody naturally looks like Furymon without the power to back it up.

Wanyamon whimpers, and Duskmon freezes like he got doused in ice water.

She might be an actual problem. He doesn't intend to kill one of the people Kouji died for, but neither will he allow Wanyamon into real danger. There's no question of what he'll choose if he needs to prioritize.

Furymon's eyes turn to Wanyamon at the sound. Her left head snaps its beak, a feathered crest rising into a crown behind it, and she takes a step forwards. "Get out of here," the central head says.

Wanyamon presses closer to Duskmon. This would have been simpler if he kept his eyes closed and ears covered the whole time.

"Stay," Duskmon says. The kid doesn't argue. Wanyamon's presence restricts him from several abilities and splits his attention, but it's less distracting than having him somewhere Duskmon can't see him. "And hold on."

He draws his swords and waits for her move.

He might, after all, be overestimating her. It's happened before. Best to see what she can do first.

The feathers have to be a weapon. The eyes might fire projectiles, and the mouth, and that dust she's shedding might be more than aesthetic. And of course she can bite. She should have more to watch out for, except that Duskmon has very little practice at gauging an opponent's abilities. In terms of real experience Furymon is his clear senior, but the gap has never mattered. A house cat can't kill a lion no matter how much practice she has in fighting other cats.

The rustling of her metal feathers rises to an irritating pitch. She rears her heads back and spreads her wing, the feathers on it glow, and she launches a volley of them forwards. He scatters them with a sword arc, and when the light from his attack fades she's nowhere to be seen.

Well, look at that. Give her a few more abilities to work with and she immediately does something clever with them. She could have evolved off the bat and saved them all some trouble.

A faint distortion above catches his attention, but the attack comes from below as well: two wind funnels as thick around as his torso, one from the sky and one from the earth. He dodges the second only because he was already moving to avoid the first, and it still clips the outer edge of his foot.

It takes him an instant to realize that the sand that the wind carried sheared through his armor. Though it's too little to hurt, he can feel the pieces missing.

She must have acquired this evolution at some point after Kouji's death. He'll kill her otherwise. If she had a trick that could have saved Kouji and refused to use it, then she doesn't deserve the life his sacrifice bought her. Wanyamon would get over it. He would.

He turns slowly, half of his eyes on the sky and the rest on the ground. "Not calling your attacks?"

Furymon doesn't respond and give away her position, more's the pity, but he finds that distortion in the air again, this time moving towards at him at speed. A faint breeze makes for the only other warning he gets.

He raises his sword just in time for an invisible force to grip the blade and pull hard enough to drag his entire forearm away from his face. At the same time something serrated grabs his ankles – three somethings, two around his left leg and one for the right.

He aims the eyes on his knees down and the remainder up towards his sword, then looses lasers at half power from all of them.

The attacks he launches at the ground only kick up sand, but the rest hit home.

Light flares for an instant. He makes out Furymon's outline – two beaks clamped around his sword and then the third one, with its human mouth and rows of obsidian fangs, wide open inches from his face – just before the impact launches her away. Whatever was holding his legs in place disappears, and at the same time Furymon tumbles through the air, shedding tarry dust.

She vanishes from his sight before she hits the earth, though he sees perfectly well the sand that gets pushed aside when she crash lands. He didn't throw her nearly as far as he expected.

So: she has bladed feathers, invisibility, possibly flight, wind blasts, and some ability that seems to happen near ground level but otherwise operates on rules he doesn't understand.

More than that, her attacks affect him. No one before this has chipped his armor.

But for all that it feels like an impressive kit, so far she's done less damage than he has.

He sends a sword beam towards the place where she landed. He glimpses her outline again as it strikes her, her lone wing held up in front as a shield, heads lowered behind it, talons digging into the beach for purchase. Then she bends her legs and throws her wing to the side, dissipating the energy beam as she swipes through it. He takes that to mean he should quit pulling his punches.

A cloud of sand mists up around her once she disappears. Back into the air.

He peers up, searching for the warped space that marks her location, but something suddenly shifts. He stills, caught flat-footed by the premonition, just before Wanyamon slips off of his perch.

Duskmon catches him against his chest. Something feels wrong. Wanyamon feels...

...Wanyamon's not moving.

Duskmon thought that the inkling of an emotion when he discovered Furymon's wind attack hurt him might have been something like fear – I probably shouldn't let that hit me. Or maybe the moment when he saw her slide evolve and realized who he nearly killed.

He was wrong. He still doesn't know what those were, but this, now, this must be fear. Time slams to a halt and narrows to the space around him and the limp body draped over his arm. He doesn't understand. He needs the minutes to rewind, he needs to know what he missed. What does he have to do to take this moment back?

Something slams into Duskmon from behind. It catches him so off guard that it actually bowls him over. He manages to go down on one knee instead of both – Wanyamon stays where he is, Duskmon cannot let go – and a blade-feathered wing shimmering back into visibility wraps around him, threatening to slice into Wanyamon.

Duskmon roars and throws his elbow back into Furymon's chest. His couter clacks against her exposed ribs without dislodging her.

Teeth scrape against his pauldron, and the other two heads curve around to face him from the front.

One of them stretches its beak apart, but the human eye inside of it only watches. The other follows suit, the mouth buried in its throat peeling open and making a satisfied noise somewhere between a gasp and a death rattle, before it twists and darts forwards to clamp its fangs around Duskmon's neck.

She's too close. He doesn't have room to swing a blade – her wing's keeping the arm not occupied with shielding Wanyamon pinned to his side. His laser attacks don't function like real lasers, they pack a solid force and a tendency to explode, and while he can tank the blasts from them Wanyamon cannot. All of his options that involve indiscriminately hitting everything nearby sit firmly off limits. He can use less obviously destructive lasers only from the eye on his chest, likewise presently blocked by Wanyamon.

The beak at his shoulder wrenches, hard enough to dent the armor. His visual feedback from the eye there cuts off abruptly.

He doesn't have time for this.

"Do you care about the kid," he snarls, breathless with pain.

In response, the head with its teeth around his neck copies that same quick, violent motion that nearly dislocated his shoulder. It doesn't snap his neck, but it's a near thing. He kneels there stunned, white noise swallowing his thoughts, and only after a full three seconds pass can he gather himself enough to wonder if this is how Kouji felt before he died.

That odd vibration coming from Furymon might be laughter.

He doesn't remember why he can't use most of his attacks. He should, the reason's right there, but it dangles just out of reach and he doesn't have energy to spare on retrieving it. He'll have to trust that it makes sense. Still, that doesn't leave him many avenues to work with, and all of those he can think of are bad ones.

But dying is worse.

Digimon need to announce their evolutions the first time they evolve. Through a throat bruised half-shut, Duskmon whispers so quietly not even his own ears catch it, "Slide evolution: Velgrmon."

K̸̙̮̥̋̍͗̄̕͜͝͝͝ͅơ̷͇̐͊̿̏̍͊̚ͅȕ̸̢̧̖̬͕̺̘̺̯̤̅͋͑͝͝ͅi̸̠̼̤͓͈̱̜̺̔͐̆͐̀̈́̑̈́̆̍̃͠͠c̶̟̎̅̐̊h̴̨̡͇̮̦̟̭̮͇͚̉̈́ï̴̬͓̺̮͉͒̈́̂͆̋̊͊̓̕͝ sheds the Human Spirit like an egg grown too small. Velgrmon tears out of Furymon's hold and into the sky, wings flapping madly for altitude. This is better. This is much better.

Furymon's disappeared again. Petty tricks. Something else lies on the beach where they fought, something nearly too small to spot despite the shine of its orbiting data ring. Too small to spot, too small to eat. Velgrmon sets it aside. That doesn't feel wholly right, though. Wanyamon matters, doesn't he?

He matters to Duskmon. Human Spirit with human foibles. If Duskmon wanted to keep caring about Wanyamon, he shouldn't have fed himself to Velgrmon.

This is why Duskmon waited so long to slide evolve. Cherubimon gifted him the Beast Spirit months ago when he killed Kouji, but he had no reason to use it. He's heard of how the Warriors all lose control over their Beast Spirits the first few times they call on them. No need, he thought. He had power enough already.

As if there's such a thing as enough power.

Velgrmon will eat the world down to its heart eventually, but they can start with Furymon. A favor to Duskmon. The bone and keratin of their beak distend into a smile.

They find Furymon easily. The third eye on their forehead catches the distortion that marks her position. She's well within the thin cloud of dust that has gradually been dispersing across the beach and farther inland since she evolved. What is all of that? If it was cosmetic, it wouldn't linger.

Duskmon noticed nothing untoward about it, but Duskmon notices nothing as a general rule. Cherubimon prefers him that way.

Wanyamon didn't lose consciousness for no reason. Furymon never touched him, Duskmon made well sure of that, so either she has an intangible attack he couldn't perceive or... something. They lack information. They can't reach Furymon without entering the debris field, though. If their wings blow it away, she'll produce more.

So they'll finish this quickly.

They spiral into a dive. The distortion flits away, but Velgrmon's reach is long; Furymon barely qualifies for the size of their head. They snatch her in their beak on the way down and, once they near the ground, they turn onto their side to trace the tip of a wing across the sand. She struggles until it's like holding onto a bag of knives, but they don't let go until they've drawn a circle as long across as their wingspan.

The line glows and sends shadows stretching upwards, meeting at the top to form a sphere. Velgrmon throws Furymon inside just before it closes.

The Zone Deleter sphere collapses inward, leaving little behind. Wind rushes to fill the newly created vacuum, and saltwater sloshes into the perfectly round crater in the sand.

Furymon, feathers torn and smoking, lies collapsed at the bottom of the hole, but she's alive and apparently awake. (She's more colorful than they thought. Duskmon sees in monochrome, so he noticed her black bones and deep grey feathering but failed to catch the muted pink, red, and blue trimmings along the crests, wing, and tail.)

Velgrmon didn't expect her to survive. They lick the edges of their beak, cleaning off tasteless dust. If this stuff is a problem, they inhaled a fair bit of it catching her.

Wildcard abilities. They could have dealt with JetSilphymon, her true double Spirit form, but they don't know Furymon.

The Spirits don't corrupt easily. Izumi accomplished a feat that until now only Cherubimon, an ultimate-level fallen angel, has succeeded in. She did it more thoroughly than him, too. Velgrmon themself has no chance of forcing a double Spirit evolution. Their vessel's half-awake at the best of times. Without him, they have no bridge to connect with the Human Spirit by.

Still, there's something to be said for experience over raw power when the difference in strength between opponents is so small. Furymon twines her necks around each other and blasts a combined wind funnel from all three heads. Velgrmon flaps a wing leisurely to avoid it. The Beast Spirit has been Velgrmon for a long time, but Furymon didn't exist until tonight.

She disappears, but they have the measure of her. She must know it too, since now she comes at them head-on. She dodges their claws and makes it in close enough to turn Velgrmon's greater reach against them.

No more of that strike-and-retreat routine for either of them. She tears at their belly, and they spin aside and send her tumbling with the gust from their wings. They snatch for her with their claws, and she darts around them and tries to fly higher. If she gets on top of them, they'll lose. Duskmon didn't piece it together, but Furymon seems able to make her shadow duplicate her attacks, and if she casts her shadow directly onto Velgrmon she won't even need to try in order to hit them. They surge upwards to block her.

The two of them harry each other through the sky, a muddle of claws and teeth and wings and the few abilities they buy enough time to fire off. Furymon's slower than she could be. Some of her movements seem jerky, pained, and try as she might she can't make up for that with aggression alone.

Velgrmon's talons score a slash down her wing when she doesn't turn quickly enough, and while her feathers leave a hundred small cuts across their feet the hit sends her spiraling into a barely controlled fall. Fair exchange.

Courtesy in aerial battles dictates that no one target the opponents' modes of flight. Velgrmon, in other words, always aims for the wings.

They don't practice courtesy for food.

They dodge the perfunctory wind blast she throws at them on her way down. In doing so, they lose track of her when she smashes through the trees on the forested side of the island.

No matter. That's what they have Zone Deleter for.

They trace a wide, unhurried circle over the treeline, marking leaves and branches with their wingtip. They might not know Furymon's exact location, but they have the general area and they can guess that her ground speed should be nothing to write home about. And if they miss, they can try again.

The circle, once they complete it, covers a diameter of half a mile. The shadows that spill from it blot out the sky.

The devastation of the attack cuts into bedrock. Nothing remains of that piece of land they marked, nor of the plants and any digimon and insects caught inside of it. Except for one.

Velgrmon alights on the lip of the crater. "Found you."

Furymon rattles her feathers and hisses. She doesn't seem able to move more than that. As they watch, her fractal code breaks free of her body and settles into orbit around her, a pair of darkened Spirits coalescing above the ring.

Ignoring the increased rattling, they pluck what looks like the Beast Spirit from her and swallow it whole. Hello, Shutumon. Do you go by that name still? They can't digest Spirits, but they can't access Furymon's base code with her Spirits in the way either.

Furymon's shape breaks apart and reforms as a thoroughly unconscious Izumi bleeding sluggishly from an assortment of injuries. Those won't trouble her for much longer.

Velgrmon reaches for the Human Spirit.

Vertigo crashes over them before them touch it.

The sensation passes quickly, but the suddenness and ferocity of it stuns them. They freeze, waiting, and it hits again a few seconds later, strong enough that the world blurs. They stumble and narrowly avoid stepping on Izumi.

They shake their head, pulling themselves upright in a bid to regain any control, but then the third wave arrives.

They return to awareness with their chin against the ground. They lie half-sprawled where they fell, trying to work out which way is up. It doesn't help that they can't feel their extremities, and that they appear to be sliding slowly along the side of the crater.

Wanyamon must have caught the same ailment as this. Weaker, smaller body, so it took effect more quickly. Whatever it is. And the last Velgrmon saw of him, he was dead to the world with his data loose.

Absolutely not. "Slide evolution. Duskmon, don't do anything too stupid."

Duskmon hits the ground on his knees and barely catches himself from tumbling down the slope.

His head pounds. Everything hurts. Velgrmon offloaded their minor injuries onto him, too – they figured it'd help him stay down, since if he goes raring off in his condition and gets himself wounded more badly he won't have them to fall back on anymore.

"Velgrmon," he rasps.

They left Wanyamon on the other side of the island. They left Wanyamon.

He tries to stand, even though he hasn't had nearly enough time to recover from the number Furymon did on him. Black immediately swamps his vision, and he loses track of most of his limbs, but he thinks he makes it upright.

That's his last thought before he loses consciousness.