Gennai Explains Absolutely Nothing
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"WHY!" The wall exploded and brick and dust rained down. The hands were burnt and a grimace formed on the face. The sapphire eyes glared at their reflection in the metal fittings of a pipe. "I have the power now, nothing could stop me, why was that creature…capable of such strength!?"
From the depths of the mind came a voice not of nothing. A small voice, but strong in its convictions. "Destiny-"
"Destiny is destroyed, Shakamon has abandoned this-" The face contorted in annoyance. A piercing thought from within scythed to the surface.
"This world is re-established, its reality is becoming reaffirmed…" the small voice said. "Its heroes are back. They will protect this world, from all threats…even when the memories are gone the world will move them into position."
"Then they must be destroyed…" the eyebrows pinched atop the sapphire eyes glaring into the metal fixture.
"We can destroy them." the voice whispered from the darkness. "But not like this…not alone…."
"Then how?" Nostrils flared.
"You know the way, the only way…" the voice whispered quietly. "If destiny has its warriors then we…must have ours…"
"I have an army-" A hand pressed against the reflective surface.
"Empty husks, devoid of what makes a warrior worthy of me…" the voice whispered. "No, you must create warriors, true warriors, you know how…"
"NO!" The sapphire eyes glared at the reflection. "I will not stoop to their level! I will not-"
"Then you will fail…and this world will burn on forever…" the voice replied and it started to giggle. "You will suffer eternal pain….all because you refused to-"
"NO!" A hand curled into a fist and smashed into the metal fitting, denting it disrupting the reflection. The sapphire eyes closed. They slowly opened and looked up to the tubes that threaded the ceiling little pearls of yellow light, each one a packet of data floated through the tubes. "Creation for the purpose of returning to truth…." A smile curled into existence on the face, unbeknownst to the smiler's conscious mind. "Maybe it is acceptable in this one circumstance…." the body turned, behind it the mechanical spiders, the Gizmon, were waiting emptily, staring blankly, blindly forward. "Half of you find the gospels, the others track the children….but do not engage!"
The mechanical, hovering spiders beeped and then glided away. The head turned and stared into the metal fixture, looking at the dented reflection. It saw the smile that played across the lips. The eyebrows furrowed, and a sense of concern swarmed through it, what had the sprite said? It tried to remember, but a pain shot through its head, and the thought was banished replaced with a need a need to create….to create for its own pride's sake…
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"Wait, that's, that's Gennai!?" Miyako said pointing at the old man laying on the ground.
"Well, that's what he looked like when we first met him." Mimi said nodding. "Such a retro-look…."
"But he's so…old…" Miyako said, tilting her head slightly. "I mean if that's what he looked like before…then that means…"
"He got younger." Koushiro said as he sat down and opened his laptop.
"You're back into that computer?" Tentomon buzzed as he hovered over Koushiro's shoulder.
"I have to input this new variable into my files…" Koushiro said, as he typed. "The more we know about this world the more…"
"He's out like a light…" Yamato said as he looked down at the old man.
"Everyone's gotta take a nap sometimes…" Agumon said and then he reached over to Taichi and grabbed his hand. "Ummm…"
"What is it buddy?" Taichi asked as he looked down at the little dinosaur.
"Can…can I have a snack?" Agumon chirped smiling broadly.
"I digivolved…" Veemon said as he looked at his hands. He looked over to Flamon who was sitting rubbing his head. "Flamon did you see it!?"
"I-I was a little out of commission there…" Flamon grunted, as he looked to Veemon. "Lookin' good though. I wonder how that happened…"
"I jusht, I jusht, wanted to protect you…and I felt all thish shtrength and then and then-" Veemon stretched his arms out.
"Ugh-" The children and the digimon turned to see the old man move slightly. He slowly lifted his head. "Right…so then it wasn't a dream." The old man looked at his hands. "Pity…"
"Gennai!" Koushiro closed the laptop quickly and jumped to his feet running to the old man.
"Quiet down, yeesh, I'm old not deaf…" Gennai grumbled struggling to get to his feet. Having accomplished this, Gennai then surveyed the area. "So, he wrecked up the joint…"
"He?" Iori asked as the boy walked forward.
"I think he meant the black-winged angel-" Armadillomon said as the little hard-shelled mammal followed Iori.
"You know who that was?" Iori asked, he was nearly as tall as Gennai now and looked into the old man's squinting eyes.
"I suspect I do…" The old man said, folding his hands behind his back. He turned and started to walk away.
"Hey you can't just walk off!" Jyou yelped.
"Aren't you going to tell us?" Sora asked.
"Is that all I am to you then?" the old man snorted and turned glaring at the children. "A walking expository device? Children these days…"
"That's, that's not what they meant." Hikari said as she walked forward. "It's just this is all…getting beyond us."
"We've been playing a game that we don't even know the name of this whole time." Ken said. He looked over to Veemon who was still sitting with Flamon, "and we've already lost so much…"
"I'm sorry." Gennai said quietly and he walked back towards the children. "I'm just a bit grumpy, I guess, you'd understand. I'm stuck in this crinkled up mess of a body, when I had a young sexy body just only a little while ago…."
"Sexy?" Miyako asked, quirking an eyebrow.
"Yeah, I was all…" Gennai very slowly and shakily sliced his hands back and forth, "Annakin Skywalker, Jedi knight, super cool and now I'm all…'Hmmm, the force, use, you must, Luke!'…can't say that it isn't a tad disappointing…"
"How do you do that?" Koushiro asked, as he sat down and started opening his laptop.
"Oh, you just swap around the predicate and the subject of the sentence, and add a disgruntled hmm to it…" Gennai said, looking at the cinnamon haired boy.
"No, no, go from young to old and back to young…like you did." Koushiro said shaking his head. "That's one thing I've never been able to understand."
"Lots of fiber." Gennai said shaking his head.
"I'm being serious!" Koushiro growled.
"I am, too, lots of bran…" Gennai grunted and looked at himself. "Too much bran probably…"
"Uh, right, I'm going to tag in here." Taichi said as he walked forward and sat on his haunches in front of Gennai. "Gennai, we need to know what's going on?"
"Didn't he explain it to you? It was all he could talk about..." Gennai said furrowing his bushy eyebrows.
"No one's explained anything…" Yamato sighed and exasperated sigh. "We wouldn't be asking you if whoever 'he' is explained anything."
"Oh, I rather suspect you weren't listening." Gennai replied and he looked at the other children confused looks. "Let me rephrase that, I know you weren't listening." Gennai sighed and groaned as he bent his legs and sat down on the puffy ground of the primary village. "Fine then…let's do this."
The children looked down at the man and he patted the ground. They slowly sat. Veemon and Flamon looked up.
"Yes, you may as well, too." Gennai said waving them over. The two digimon looked at each other and then walked over sitting with the children. "Right well, let's start at the beginning…" Gennai frowned, "no, scratch that, let's start before the beginning…."
"Before the beginning?" Takeru asked.
"Yes, of everything." Gennai said quietly. "What do you know of the origins of reality?"
"There was this umm, explosion…" Mimi said lifting her finger to her mouth.
"An expansion from a singularity, that caused space, time, matter and energy to come into existence." Yamato said crossing his arms over his chest. Everyone looked at him fairly shocked. Yamato's eyebrows pushed together and he frowned. "It's basic knowledge anyone would know it…"
"Hmm, not bad…" Gennai said as he poked the ground. "However, that's not the full story…you see before the stuff happened there was nothing."
"Nothing?" Salamon asked furrowing her brows. "But how could stuff come from nothing?"
"Fairly easily…" Gennai said quietly. "The nothing that preceded everything was not just a void. It was true nothing. It was nothing with a capital 'N'…or rather it wasn't an it…" the old man sighed quietly. "Look language is going to get real tricky here, from our point of view true Nothing is kinda…impossible to conceive…"
"Is he always like this?" Palmon asked looking to Mimi.
"To be honest, I usually just wait for him to stop talking and listen to whatever Jyou or Taichi end up saying that he said…" Mimi admitted tapping her chin as she remembered the last time they had a conversation with Gennai.
"You don't wait for me?" Koushiro asked looking at Mimi, shocked.
"You're usually just as bad as he is!" Mimi said looking back to Koushiro.
"She's not wrong-" Tentomon said quietly.
"How would you know!?" Koushiro yelped.
"It's obvious…" Biyomon said.
The other digimon nodded together.
"You do seem the kind of guy that understands all this stuff but can't explain it without using huge words…" Flamon said.
"I-but…" Koushiro looked at the other kids and then looked to Sora, Taichi and Yamato. "Really?"
"Sorry, but…a little bit…" Sora said, looking very embarrassed.
"You never said anything!" Koushiro yelped and then slumped his head.
"We figured you - needed it…" Yamato said as the blonde reached out and patted Koushiro on the shoulder. "But dude, if it helps, I got like…twenty-five percent of it usually…"
"LIAR!" Sora and Taichi yelled.
"Miracle you lot didn't get your bodies mish-mashed in the gate when you chased Myotismon that one time…" Gennai shook his head.
"This nothing…" Koushiro started still a little shook.
"Nothing…say it with a capital N…" Gennai retorted.
"I-uh…" Koushiro flummoxed looking up and narrowing his eyes at the old man.
"I can tell the difference." Gennai said. "If it helps, the original Nothing was infinity itself. Nothing is the other side of the coin of Infinity, same coin, different sides. If you walk far enough into the infinite you find nothing, likewise if you delve deep enough into the nothingness, you find infinity; same destination just depends on which way you are walking towards it that determines what you call it. The Nothing has infinite potential to be anything, and then it was, and this is what we're talking about, and why we're all here, and why I'm old again."
"My…head hurts…" Agumon whimpered.
"You're not alone buddy…" Taichi said quietly.
"That which is attacking this world is a shard, a remnant, of the Nothing…" Gennai said, pushing his bushy eyebrows together. "It is very miffed at us…"
"Why? What did we do?" Miyako asked angrily.
"You exist…" Gennai said quietly.
"Yeah, he said that when he looked like you…" Jyou said, nodding.
"Not looked like, was…" Gennai sighed quietly.
"Yeah, how did that happen?" Iori asked.
"I let it happen…" Gennai said quietly, sighing. "I thought I could change it…"
"How did it get to you?" Miyako asked. "I mean even the dragons couldn't crack you…"
"Oh it's been in me for centuries…" Gennai replied waving a hand. "Since Piedmon…part of the reason I got old the first time was to forestall it taking over my mind. This isn't the first time the Nothing has attacked this world. It's been at this since the very beginning. It was very much against existence. It has always wanted to undo creation, it started with the ancient quantum titans, then it attempted to manipulate the demons…even the dragons had a component to them built towards its design…and of course Apocalymon he was the most blatant…"
"You thought you could change Nothing?" Ken asked, narrowing his eyes.
"Nothing can't exist in creation, reality abhors a vacuum, if Nothing exists in creation without a vessel; creation would simply define it and fill in the nothingness with somethingness." Gennai said quietly. "So I allowed myself to be taken, in hopes that maybe I could work on the Nothing, work on it and get it to stand down…I underestimated its motivation…if Nothing can have motivation…heck calling it Nothing is…only lying about the true nature of Nothing…." Gennai twitched his mustache. "I think I'm getting a headache…"
"So this thing is mad at us because…we exist but….why?" Iori asked again.
"Existence defines it, when Nothing is definition Nothing becomes less…" Gennai said. "The only thing I can say that would make sense is that, existence, for all intents and purposes inflicts pain upon Nothing by defining it. Existence is like a boa constrictor, tightening its coils around Nothingness, each coil tightening more and more…and Nothingness in general tolerates it because universes die out, naturally over time…."
"But…I feel there's a but coming…" Jyou said.
"A big butt!" Gomamon giggled.
"Not now!" Jyou growled.
"There are all these other worlds…" Gennai said. "Most of them are, isolated, they have no Digital World counterpart, they are for lack of a better word 'mundane'. Those universes die out because there is only so much energy within them, and within a closed system…"
"All the energy gets consumed to entropy…" Yamato said quietly.
"Ok, no, time out…" Taichi said raising his hands to make a 'T' and looking at Yamato. "When?"
"It's just space stuff!" Yamato said, sheepishly.
"It's the second law of thermodynamics….everything goes until it freezes…basically." Koushiro said. "In a closed system entropy increases…and in a closed system there's a finite amount of energy that can be converted into entropy…."
"Except…" Gennai said quietly. "The Digital World creates an open system, this universe has even more worlds than other universes that have Digital Worlds….This universe is an immortal thorn in the paw of the primordial Nothing; and it's decided to pull it out."
"Ok, so we hurt it and it wants to destroy us…" Miyako said.
"Not just destroy us, undo us." Gennai said quietly. He reached up and stroked his moustache. "And then all other universes with Digital Worlds. The Nothing intends to wipe them all out. There's been multiple attempts across the multiverse. Each time the Nothing infiltrates a universe, attempts to mutate and manipulate that world to create a crisis where the world is destroyed or consolidated into a single closed system. This time however, I fear there's a difference. It intends to attack the source itself, the world that sits in the middle of the multiverse, the world that is the template of all realities…and it's going to do it by shattering this world first."
"Why this world?" Ken asked.
"You know why." Gennai said narrowing his eyes at Ken. He looked at all the children. "They don't remember, but you do, at least fractions of it. It burrowed into your neck, Ken Ichijouji…."
"What's he talking about?" Wormmon asked looking up at Ken.
"Millenniummon…." Ken said, looking down at Wormmon.
"Millenniummon's attack resulted in this world coming in direct contact with the template world, with the entity at the center of creation itself…." Gennai said quietly. "The Nothing intends to use that connection to destroy creation at its source."
"How do we fight it?" Yamato asked.
"Like I said, the Nothing can't exist in creation, if the vessel is destroyed, then the shard of Nothing will simply - pfft-" Gennai swept his hand out. "Fill in…and…err…umm….cease to be Nothing…"
"Sounds easy, that angel didn't seem too-" Flamon started.
"Lucemon's not as easy as the display it gave shows. The Nothing doesn't know how to use all of Lucemon's power…and I'm worried that the Nothing is underestimating Lucemon." Gennai sat silent for a while thinking. "Plus, Lucemon's body is only going to get more powerful, the Nothing is searching out some old gospels to evolve into Lucemon's other forms, which are terribly powerful, and worse yet, have access to the Digital Hazard. I presume that's the true tactic at play…" Gennai said quietly. "Utilize the Digital Hazard to erase the source….it is the original attempt by the Nothing after all; it tricked reality into coding it for the purposes of destroying everything…"
"So then we find the gospels then." Jyou said smiling. "And we keep them from this Nothing… Where are they?"
"No idea, when the reboot happened, everything got scrambled." Gennai said. "It's the only thing that's saving us, because I'm ignorant of the current location the Nothing could find the gospels by searching me or Lucemon. Fortunately the Nothing isn't as clever as it could be, because I know where we can find out where the Gospels are."
"Awesome!" Taichi said.
"Rosa de Venus." Gennai said quietly. "It's the codex for the entire Digital World, if it exists in the Digital World, it is searchable there…"
"Maybe we can find Daisuke there then!" Hikari said, for the first time in a while. The entire group seemed to become gloomy at the girl's cheer.
"Kari…" Taichi said quietly.
"I'm sorry…" Gennai said quietly. "But he's gone…anything foreign to the Digital World would've been purged in the reboot."
"No!" Hikari shouted. Even Salamon flinched as the little puppy-kitten looked up worriedly to Hikari. "I know he's alive. He came to me in a dream, he has to be the one that propped the gate open for us!"
"The gate malfunction was just the barrier glitching due to the reboot…." Gennai said quietly.
"NO!" Hikari yelled, louder this time. Tears started to build at the corners of her eyes. "He can't be….He can't be…"
"Wait…what about this stuff…" Flamon whispered as he reached into his pants' pocket and pulled out the D-terminal and D-3.
"Yeah, the D-terminal is from our world…" Takeru said pointing at it. "It didn't get erased…and Daisuke had it when…" Takeru stopped himself.
"Hmm…" Gennai said looking at the machine. He then looked up at Flamon. "And you, how did you come by it?"
"Leormon had it, with Veemon's egg…" Flamon said.
"And where did you come from?" Gennai asked. "I've seen all the digimon, you…you're new…"
"I-I don't know, all I know is I woke up one day and I was…alive" Flamon said quietly. He scratched the back of his head.
"Just like me!" Veemon said proudly. "I don't remember anything about before I hatched, just that one day…I was alive."
"I suppose that makes sense." Gennai grumbled. "It's been so long since I first lived…I can't hardly remember it either…I guess it's possible I missed a digimon, heaven knows the dragons created a whole bunch of new data forms…" Gennai twitched his moustache. He turned and looked to Hikari. "My dear, maybe you're right. Maybe there's some small miraculous chance that he survived. If he did…then…there's one place to search for him."
"At this 'Rosa de Venus' place…" Ken said quietly. "Even I've never heard of it…where is it?"
"Continent of Cloud…" Gennai said quietly. "Not easy to get to, it's a hovering continent…" Gennai pointed into the sky, "somewhere up there, it's always moving…"
"Great, how are we supposed to get there then?" Miyako fumed quietly.
"Patience. Also, there's a backdoor around here somewhere…" Gennai grunted as he stood up. "I think in Centaurumon's maze….should be an old transmat laying around."
"Then let's go!" Taichi said jumping to his feet.
"May as well, I'm not as young as I used to be…" Gennai said quietly, nodding.
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"Cloud…" The face scrunched up into a sneer. Its face was reflected in the screen, and looked at the shadows behind it. "You heard the old geezer…"
"Of course, my most malignant magnificence." bowed one of the shadows with all the pomp and circumstance of a mon that knew what court he was jesting in.
"Those children, their digimon, not a scrap of them left behind." the eyes glared at the reflection of the shadows that framed their face. "I want destiny properly eliminated from the equation…excised…"
"Nullified…" The bowing shadow said, as it stood up and a wide, wicked smile cut across its face.
"Precisely-" The voice replied quietly. The face's lips curled into an unbeckoned smile.
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AN: Sorry everyone. Sorry Sorry…. This may be the last chapter for a bit, I've been incredibly busy and this story is hitting some hitches for me, so I've gotta figure out what I'm doing before I proceed too much further. Have hope though, dream big…..and maybe we can try and get this done within a decade!