Series: Division of Destiny||Story: Reign of the Undead King||Chapter: The Sacrifice
Characters: Piemon, Vamdemon, Chosen Children, others||Pairings: Ken x Daisuke/Daisuke x Ken, Mimi x Sora/Sora x Mimi
Chapters: 32-40||Words: 2,725||Total: 84,845
Genre: Romance, Drama||Rated: PG-13
Summary: Vamdemon and Piemon rule supreme. Only now, ten years after their victory, are things about to change. For good or for ill.
Deep silence held in the ruined room for long moments after the vampires left. They'd left destruction, death, and devastation behind, in every way that they could. Daisuke ground his teeth together. That was just like them. Vampires ruined everything. They wanted to ruin it, they loved ruining it. Vamdemon had destroyed their entire world and spent the time since grinding it down into a pathetic mess.
He had to be stopped. It wouldn't put the world back to the way it had once been, but they could at least try. They could start to rebuild. They wouldn't have evil Digimon keeping them down anymore.
"So you're the one that he's been looking for. I thought your name was familiar." One of the surviving adults stared down at Daisuke. He'd barely noticed her coming over to him. He didn't like that look on her face. "He wants you, you know."
"Yeah, I guessed that." Daisuke slid his crossbow and bolts back to their holsters and rubbed his forehead. What he wouldn't give for a hot bath and something to eat and just to let all of this stressful day slip into the back of his mind.
"He's promised that if he doesn't have you, he'll turn over a dozen people in the slave-pens to his pack and let them do as they please with them." Her fists clenched and unclenched as she stared him in the face. "My son is in those pens."
Oh. Oh, this was not good. Daisuke didn't think he could even run away if he needed to. His legs wobbled a bit and that was it. Part of his defiance against the vampires had been raw hatred; the rest had been the fact he just couldn't move after everything that happened.
But Ken could and Ken still stood by his side. "There are better ways to deal with this than to turn Daisuke over to him. We can find a way to get your son out of there."
"What about everyone else who is in there?" Iori spoke up. "We can't just save one person and not all of them."
"What we need to do is get rid of Vamdemon and the pack altogether." Miyako rubbed her chin, apparently having put the thought that two of the other vampires also wanted her right out of her mind. "I'm not so certain that turning Daisuke over wouldn't help there."
Daisuke had never known Ken could say words like that. He wondered if he'd learned from from Miyako. She'd proven to have an expressive vocabulary herself today as well. The things that they were learning about each other on this excursion...
He reached down to clench Ken's arm and hopefully quiet him. "What are you talking about?" He trusted Miyako didn't just mean to throw him to the wolves – or in this case the vampires – without some kind of a plan in mind. Or if she didn't have a plan, he wanted one before he'd even consider this. Something more than 'it will make sure not as many people die'.
"Simple. We're at least considering going to the Digital World to find their kids, right?" Miyako waved one hand between Mr. Ishida and Ms. Takaishi. "We just need to talk to Wizarmon about it to get more information. That means we also need someone to distract Vamdemon so that he's not paying attention to what's going on in the Digital World. And there's only one person who can really pull that off."
Daisuke swallowed. He didn't like it. He could see a hundred problems that could come up from it, and from the way Ken was looking at Miyako, he probably saw a hundred more. Maybe a thousand more.
But problems or not, he couldn't deny that it at least had a chance to work.
"So how do I stop him from making me one of the pack?" He wanted an answer to that right away. Vamdemon had considered it in his hearing before, and all that had stopped him at the time was that Daisuke wasn't old enough then. Not that age was a complete problem for turning; the flock ranged from ten to twelve when they'd been changed. But what else Vamdemon had said...well...that wasn't an issue now.
There were plenty of nights Daisuke didn't sleep because of those memories. He'd rather he didn't have more of them, and for more reason.
"There isn't a way. He could turn you the moment that you're there," Ken said, biting the words off as sharply as any vampire. "It's a ridiculous idea and I'm not going to let you do it, Daisuke."
"So what else can we do?" Miyako asked before Daisuke could open his mouth. She folded her arms over her chest and gave Ken a very good glare. "Are we actually going to do something or just let everything we've worked for fade away because we can't take chances?"
"Chances?" Ken's tone could've frosted solid stone. "This is Daisuke's life. Our lives, because the moment Vamdemon turned him, he'd tell Vamdemon everything about what we have planned, where our bases are, and about Wizarmon and everything else."
Daisuke winced; he hadn't even thought about that yet, and Ken was right. He knew way too much to just walk into Vamdemon's lair without any kind of backup.
Miyako drew in breath and this time Daisuke interrupted her. "Come on, guys. It's a good idea, but you're both right. It would distract Vamdemon, but the cost is a lot higher than I think any of us want to deal with." He wanted to just charge in and not worry about the consequences. He'd seen what happened to people when they did that, and it wasn't pretty. And very seldom could someone survive it. So he had to press against all of his innate urges to work this through. "Let's get hold of Wizarmon and find out what he knows. Maybe he'll have some ideas.
Ishida and Takaishi didn't look as if they liked the idea of trusting a Digimon anymore now than they had before. Osamu moved toward them.
"I've said it before, Wizarmon can be trusted. We'll need to return to our own base to contact him, though. How can we get in touch with you?"
"You don't. We'll get in touch with you when we need to," Ishida said, brushing himself off in a business-like fashion. "And we don't want anyone else knowing where we're going after this anyway."
That made sense, Daisuke knew. Their base had already been shattered and broken by the vampires once already. If anyone knew where they were going to relocate, it would happen all over again.
Which is why I can't go to Vamdemon without some kind of protection. Protection that so far as they knew didn't exist. And if it did exist, none of them knew where it was or how to use it.
Sometimes, it really did not pay to be on the side of good.
Ken managed to keep himself under control as the group sorted itself out and headed away from the ruins of the building. The very idea of sending Daisuke back to the place he and Osamu had worked so hard to get him out of it made him sick to his stomach. And Daisuke wasn't even arguing against it, just that they needed to plan it better!
Daisuke hated Vamdemon. They all knew that; it was why he was a part of their rebellion in the first place. But to choose to go back there, even as a distraction, or even for the chance to kill Vamdemon himself, that was far beyond hate and into the realms of insanity.
Ken didn't think most of them were poster children for sanity as it was, but still, none of them had ever considered walking into the lion's den like this.
Part of why I like him. He couldn't help the small flickers of a smile around his mouth at that. He did like Daisuke. And as far more than a friend. He hadn't said anything to Daisuke about it, and now wasn't the best time either. Maybe if we can kill Vamdemon. That sounded like the perfect time to ask Daisuke out.
It wasn't as if dates were like they used to. Instead of a movie and dinner or a long walk by the river, most people interested in one another simply skipped that and made out with one another. Sometimes people put in the effort to craft something for their beloved, but Ken didn't know what he could make that Daisuke might actually like.
Though the idea of some better carved bolts did intrigue him. He would have to think about it. More bolts, perhaps a better knife. There wasn't any way he would let Daisuke go to the castle without being armed to the teeth anyway.
As if he'd let him go there at all, but if there were no other way, then Daisuke would carry a small armory along with him.
Ken wanted to get back so Osamu could contact Wizarmon, and he wanted Wizarmon to have some kind of information that would make all of this completely useless speculation.
But he'd learned years earlier not to entirely trust to hope, not in this world.
Osamu gave Ken and Daisuke their space as the group sorted itself out and started to work their way to the top to head for home. He took the point, gesturing Iori to the rear, and Miyako and Jun to the sides. No one said anything overtly about it, but they were all keeping an eye on Daisuke, just in case one of the pack thought it a good idea to drop down out of the sky and pluck him away from them.
Yagami would do it, too. If the brunet even looked like he were going to try it where Osamu could see him, Osamu had already made up his mind to put a bolt through the vampire's shriveled heart if he had to throw it there himself.
There was so much they had to do, and he knew at the top of his list was to get in touch with Wizarmon. That sent a special kind of thrill to him, an eagerness that he had no words for, and only could express as a simple yes. He wanted to see Wizarmon again. It had only been a short while, perhaps a few hours, and yet he wanted to see him, talk to him, maybe figure out some way they could spend more time around each other.
It honestly confused him and if he hadn't known better, he might well have thought he'd somehow fallen for a Digimon. Which he was fairly certain he hadn't, especially since he still glanced at Jun now and then with slightly more than thoughts of friendship. But Wizarmon had a place of his own with him, and Osamu wasn't entirely certain what that place was.
He kind of wished he had a chance to talk to one of the Chosen. Sure, these days the only ones that he came close to being able to speak with were the ones that would shred him alive if given the opportunity, but surely they remembered what it was like to have partners? Was this what being a partner was like?
On the other hand, there hadn't been a true Chosen Child in ten years. Four dead, three under the thumb of the monarch of the Digital World. No one wanted to see humans and Digimon being partners.
That's not true. Gennai does. He hadn't said so much to Osamu in those words, but what he'd mentioned of humans and Digimon working together, what Wizarmon himself had mentioned...perhaps it could be done.
Perhaps it would take talking to Wizarmon more to settle it for himself. He couldn't see any reason why he shouldn't do it. It would take them all working together to defeat Vamdemon anyway. This was just the beginning of something interesting.
"Humans." The voice wasn't Wizarmon's, but it held a level of contempt that only Digimon had for humans on Earth these days. Osamu had his knife out in a few seconds. "Oh, you think that could hurt me? Not a chance."
It took a moment for all of them to focus on where the voice came from. The Digimon sat on a spill of broken cement and logs a few feet away, staring at them with annoyed red eyes. It looked a great deal like a puppet of some kind, clumsily carved from wood, but with eyes that screamed of anger and madness, and carrying a mallet that looked more than capable of smashing anything struck with it to pieces.
"Who are you?" Osamu didn't back down. All things considered, he was getting very annoyed at facing creatures that looked at what they could do for weapons and laugh at them. He would have given a great deal for the ability to blast this creature himself, or to at least have someone he could trust to do it for him.
The image of warm, if wary, eyes floated in the back of his mind, but he shoved it away for now. Once he survived this, and made certain his companions did, then he could worry about Wizarmon and what their roles together were.
"I'm Pinnochimon! One of the Dark Masters of the Digital World." For a moment, he raised his mallet as if in salute, before he slid back down, head drooping. "Or I used to be."
"Used to be?" Miyako slipped just a fraction forward. "What do you mean?"
"None of your business!" Pinnochimon waves his mallet at her fiercely. "Now you tell me what you're doing around here. You don't look like you're up to any good."
"We should be saying that to you," Daisuke remarked, amusement twitching at his lips. "But if you really want to know, we're plotting the downfall and overthrow of Vamdemon."
It took Osamu all of his strength not to completely facepalm at that. He doubted if Pinnochimon would actually believe Daisuke, but why take the chances? Why risk their lives? Had he lost it completely at the thought of going back to Vamdemon, willingly or not?
Pinnochimon eyed them all. "Don't tell me that you think a bunch of stupid humans stand a chance against him. Don't you know what he does to humans?"
"Of course we know!" Daisuke snapped, stepping forward, fists clenched. Osamu wished doubly hard that someone could invent a teleporting device so he could get them all out of there before something even worse happened, like Daisuke saying something that would get them all killed. "Why do you think we want to stop him?"
"Humans. Just like those ones back in the Digital World. You think you can do anything if you just try hard enough." Pinnochimon shook his head and shouldered his mallet. "Well, if you want to play with him, I'm not going to stop you. You'll just be dead idiots instead of idiots."
"You know something about humans in the Digital World?" Jun wanted to know. "What can you tell us?"
"That they're no fun to play with at all, especially when they get older." Pinnochimon made a face, shaking his head. "They start off being fun to chase around and make scream but when they start growing up, they start hitting back. I don't like the ones that hit back."
"I don't think they'd like you all that much either," Daisuke muttered, shoving his hands in his pockets. "You don't look like you'd be fun to play with."
Pinnochimon was on his feet a second later, pointing one sharp-taloned finger at Daisuke. "That shows what you know! They all wanted to play with me when they were little! The little blond was lots of fun, but the big one wasn't, not once he got burned up anyway, and the one with the red hair and the brains...he wanted me to help him! Help him make something to stop Vamdemon! And I did and he never came to talk to me again and I'm never going back there!"
Most of that flew over Osamu's head, and he didn't care. But one phrase stuck in his mind. "Something to stop Vamdemon?"
To Be Continued