68

Masks

"My most horrible vision was connected with an idle question I had asked myself the day before when looking at the great carven riddle of the desert and wondering with what unknown depth the temple close to it might be secretly connected. That question, so innocent and whimsical then, assumed in my dream a meaning of frenetic and hysterical madness…what huge and loathsome abnormality was the Sphinx originally carven to represent?" – H. P. Lovecraft, "Under the Pyramids"

At a casual glance, it was a peaceful Odaiba morning, about to make the transition into a peaceful Odaiba afternoon, perfectly safe and normal. There had been a slight earthquake some time earlier, but no aftershocks had followed. The only abnormality was the police presence still lingering around a certain Odaiba Mansion apartment, from which part of the wall was missing. On a lower floor, Koshiro was still stationed in front of his computer, reviewing all the police and news data that he could access, looking for patterns.

The assaults he had charted by time and place, including the one made on Ugaki Chiho, had all occurred in Tokyo on the previous night, most of the victims being teenaged girls. No two assaults had taken place at the same time, and when distances were taken into account it was just possible that all had been committed by the same perpetrator.

Who that perpetrator might be, no one could say. Details were hard to come by. Those of the victims who were talking couldn't give much in the way of description, though what he found reinforced Koshiro's belief that whatever had been loose in the city the night before, it wasn't human. And he was not alone. The word "Digimon" was starting to pop up everywhere, from police transmissions to forums to the personal webpages of conspiracy fanatics. It was starting up again, the cloud of questions and rumors that had last been raised after the battle with Armagemon in Tokyo Bay. But this problem had not been so quickly solved. People were angry, people were scared. Takeru's mother and the other "Digimon critics" would have their hands full in dealing with the public, especially since there were probably aspects of the situation that their children had kept from them.

However serene the city might appear to be, things were beginning to unravel behind closed doors and worried expressions. The situation would only get increasingly out of hand. Daisuke and the others were the best hope that Koshiro and his old friends had at the moment. If they could put a stop to things in the Digital World, it might be the end of the crisis. At the very least, it would allow all twelve Chosen Children to focus on eradicating the threats amassing in the human world.

Koshiro closed a couple of the windows he had open so that he could see the Digital World's map again. A little gasp escaped him. Daisuke and the other five had moved. Not in a slight way, but far across the world map, a distance that they shouldn't have been able to cover since he had last checked on them. That in itself was surprising enough, but it wasn't what chilled him. In the vicinity of the younger Chosen Children a massive distortion had manifested, larger than what BlackWarGreymon had left in his wake in 2002, but with a pattern that Koshiro had never seen before, differing from the distortion that had emanated from the Digimon Kaiser's derelict base when it had threatened to explode.

There was a tone, and Koshiro flicked his eyes over to a message received from Gennai. He opened it and began to read, then got to typing, first a reply to Gennai, and then a warning which, he was afraid, would be of no use.

Daisuke's goggles were protecting his eyes. The others had to shield their faces as best they could from the stinging sand, but even with their reduced vision they could tell that whatever the swirling chaos was above the pyramid, it was growing stronger. Crazy bolts of color lanced out from the great symbol in all directions, and there was a persistent tugging as space was sucked towards it. The pounding and half-musical whining was growing louder. Time was running out.

Daisuke turned towards his partner and screamed at him over the noise. V-mon couldn't hear, but he could make out that the boy had his D-3 at the ready. With a conscious effort V-mon evolved, emerging from the light that surrounded him as XV-mon. Whatever property of the underground base had prevented normal evolution, it didn't apply out here in the desert. XV-mon stood in front of his partner, shielding him somewhat from the anomalous pull as Daisuke made his way over to Ken.

Ken had his arm raised to his forehead, trying to peer through the swirling sand and midday darkness to get a better look at what hung over the pyramid, when he felt Daisuke's hand on his shoulder.

"What do we do?" Daisuke yelled into his friend's ear. Ken didn't answer immediately. He could just make out the figure that Hikari had pointed out above the pyramid. Whether it was the cause of all this, he didn't know, but it was certainly a focus for what was happening. A memory from the previous autumn flashed through his mind – staring up from the floor of the Kaiser's base at the dark energy leaking from the reactor, Paildramon bursting through the wall to stop the flow with Desperado Blaster.

He turned to Wormmon, who squinted up at him and nodded. Ken raised his D-3. Soon Stingmon stood where Wormmon had been, and turning to Daisuke Ken could see that his friend knew what they were going to try. As they held their Digivices aloft before them, a spiral of blue and green met in the sky.

Paildramon looked at the humanoid thing over the pyramid. He was now above the worst of the sand, but the inward pull was much harder to resist. If he wasn't careful, he would get a very close look indeed at what was happening. Already he was being drawn forward, as if on an unseen conveyer belt. He had time enough to wonder who and what it was that hovered over the pyramid, but didn't have the luxury of hesitation. The organic cannons at his side swung forward, and he fired.

Wisemon felt the first impact of the energy bullets as they tore into his body, but the sensation was a faint one, because all of his attention was focused upward. For him the Elder Sign and the sky of the Digital World were already gone. What he could see now was the world Outside – beautiful, in a way, and terrible beyond description. He was completely deaf; the sounds, no longer muffled, had obliterated his hearing. But that was alright, because he had new senses now, and an infinity to take in with them. And in the awful wonder of the moment, he did not even notice that he was dying.

Anubimon would have trouble recalling the order of events later. He saw the twin streams of energy find their target. He saw Wisemon torn into pieces and vanish in deletion, and may or may not have wondered dully whether the data should be destined for the Dark Area or the Village of Beginnings. He understood that the Chosen Children had arrived in time. He watched the Elder Sign vanish, and could not be sure if it had ever really been there. He heard something, which might have been a scream of disappointment or the sudden shriek of absolute silence.

These were the impressions he had, and when they had passed he was left standing in the doorway of his old place of residence, with the sun shining down on the sand beyond the threshold, and Sato and the Dark Man standing off to the side. Sato was looking at the back of the Dark Man's head, breathing heavily. It was plain that he didn't know what to say or how to feel. The Dark Man himself had stopped smiling, and though he kept staring at the place where Wisemon had been, there was no trace of emotion on his face.

For a good while the tableau held. Then the Dark Man took a deep breath, drawing the air in slowly and exhaling equally slowly. He walked out of the temple. Sato took a few steps after the Dark Man, glanced at Anubimon without really seeing him, and managed to ask the Dark Man's back, "What are you going to do?"

But the Dark Man just kept walking.

"What was that?" Daisuke asked, breaking the silence as Paildramon landed in front of him.

"I don't know," the Digimon answered in his composite voice. "But it looks like it's over now."

"That was… a gate, wasn't it?" Ken asked no one in particular. The others just looked at him dumbfounded. Then Takeru gave a start as he remembered something.

"That man, where did he go?"

"Did…he really come out here?" Miyako wondered.

No one answered her. It was Hikari who spoke next, but she was addressing her partner. "What's wrong?"

All the children noticed then. The partner Digimon had tensed up, staring off towards the pyramid and the other, nearer building. Paildramon also had turned around. Tailmon's claws were at the ready. "It's coming," she said.

The Chosen Children followed the gaze of the Digimon, and then they could see him, walking swiftly towards them over the sand. In spite of the distance, there was an odd shortening effect, so that they could make out his features as he approached with unusual clarity. Miyako had seen him before, in the fog of a nightmare, but even Ken, who had only seen him in darkness, knew him immediately. It was the other, the Dark Man, wearing a smile that was wide, burning, and terrible. In fact, the grin was too wide to be anything real; the whole face was like a Halloween mask just about to slip off.

The Dark Man stopped and crossed his arms in front of his chest. All the dimness that had vanished with the Elder Sign rushed back into the day, drawing about the Dark Man like a cloak. The shadows that went with him everywhere deepened, until they could see only his eyes glittering out of the black shape he had become.

"Mask Change!"

Suddenly the blackness expanded, flowing outward like mercury, clogging up the air. A massive shape was taking form, eating away at the light to make room for itself. The Chosen Children and their partners watched in horror as the immense bulk loomed up and began to grow more defined.

From a distance, no less horrified, Anubimon also watched, but his fear was rooted deeper than theirs, because even before the shape had settled, he knew what it was going to be. He knew what new form the Dark One was taking, because it was too perfect, too terribly perfect, to be anything else. Anubimon had not always presided over deletion. There had been one before him. His predecessor was gone now, deposed by the Four Holy Beasts after its cruelty had left angry regrets to amass as Apocalymon, but its legacy remained with those old enough to remember.

The Dark One's transformation was now complete, and Anubimon could see that he was right. Its black and gold armor glowed in the sun. Sphinxmon. AncientSphinxmon. The ruler of death returned to the world of the living.

The Chosen Children stared at the thing before them. There was a terrible majesty to it. The unblinking crimson eyes and the grim set of the mouth inspired the same awe as the statue of Giza. Then the solemn visage split in a grin of needle-sharp teeth, and the illusion was broken.

"AncientSphinxmon!" said the voice of the Dark Man, magnified a hundredfold in volume and power. "Now we'll have some fun."

Ken had gone very pale. "His true form?" he wondered under his breath.

"No," answered the sphinx, though it could not possibly have heard. "I am no more Digimon than I am human. I am beyond your comprehension, Chosen Children. My true form? The sight would blast you to ashes!"

Yes, AncientSphinxmon was a borrowed form, and not the Dark One's true form, Anubimon thought. For a moment he had been afraid that this truly was his predecessor resurrected, but that fear had been replaced by one less definite. Not a true form, but it was perhaps a truer form. It was a clearer expression of the Dark One's power, and its inhumanity. Anubimon knew that beside this thing his own strength was nothing.

It is up to the Chosen Children to thrust this abomination back into the dark, he thought. Please be careful, young ones.