2004 – New Year, New Problems
Story #11: One Last Mystery for Ichijouji (Part 2)
In the first dream, Ken was seemingly alone, on top a large flat-roofed building. There was nothing but pitchblackness surrounding the building, and the only apparent illumination was some street-light like lamps attached to the side of the building. On top of the roof, what Ken then knew as "the mysterious lady" (later revealed to be Arukenimon) was advancing menacingly toward him, causing Ken in response to start backing, knowing he was heading for the edge...
"Hahaha. Why are you afraid of me? I am of the darkness, just as you are." the "lady" threatened.
Ken responded as bravely as he could with, "What are you talking about? I am not of the darkness, I am sorry for what I have done! Get away from me!"
"Oh, but Ken, you are of the darkness. It is so deeply embedded in you that it cannot leave. You have been marked with the darkness, and it will never leave you! Why do you think otherwise? It is foolishness."
Ken shouted in rage, "You're lying!! I want this curse gone from me, I want the Emperor gone, you hear me?!? I'm not him anymore, and I don't want to be him anymore! You understanding me?! I want you gone and out of my life, and your evil with you!"
"Oh, but Ken, I won't just go. Things have become too tightly knit, and there is the issue of getting what you deserve, which you will at the rate you are backing away from me."
Ken looked over his shoulder to see that she wasn't bluffing; he was only about 10 feet from the edge, from dropping into a black abyss. He decided to stand his ground, but still the "lady" kept coming towards him. Panicking, Ken suddenly noticed Davis and Veemon coming from the other side to attack her. Ken cried for their help but was dismayed when suddenly the other four kids involved (Yolei, Cody, T.K. and Kari) suddenly appeared and pushed Davis and Veemon back, saying that he deserved his fate and that he should be punished, before carrying Davis and Veemon out of sight. (Ken noted that the partner Digimon of Yolei and the other three pushing Davis away did not appear, a possibly important clue...)
Ken cried in despair, as the lady was rapidly closing on him. She laughed in evil anticipation of pushing Ken off and was almost within reach when suddenly a web-like net was shout at her from the side. Turning, Ken noticed that the attacker was Wormmon, who he rushed over to as the lady removed the sticky netting.
"Oh, boy, am I glad to see you!" Ken said as he pulled out his D-3, once the notorious "Dark Digivice". "Wormmon, I need you to Digivolve, now! Get the lady away from me!"
"But Ken, I can't Digivolve." Wormmon stated in a sorrowful voice.
"What?! What do you mean you can't Digivolve?!" Ken asked, now nearing a panic attack.
"I'll tell you why he can't Digivolve, Emperor boy!" the lady stated with a saucy attitude. "Look around and see if you recognize anything."
Ken looked up and around, hoping it wasn't a bluff, to find a heart-wrenching sight: Control Spires, outlined in a red glow against the blackness, were all around him! There seemed to be dozens, maybe even hundreds of outlined shapes; no wonder Wormmon could not Digivolve!
Ken panicked again and began to back from the renewed advances of the lady. Wormmon bravely leapt at her but was knocked aside, then hit with something that seemed to knock the Digimon out. Ken cried for his Digimon friend, but it was no use. "Haha. You have nowhere to run, Emperor, no one left to help you! Now either accept your position as the Emperor of the Digital World or prepare to face your destruction!"
Ken screamed out, "NEVER! I WILL NEVER GO BACK! I do not take rules from anyone, least of all you! Get away from me!" Bold words to be sure, but Ken was again nearing the edge, and if he wasn't careful he would go over by not watching where he stepped.
The evil lady chuckled again as Ken continued to cautiously back away. Eventually, Ken looked back to see that he was just inches from the abyss-like drop! He froze in place, but the women kept coming. When she was close enough, she tried to grab his shirt. He flinched away, but in doing so nearly put one foot off the edge and sending him tumbling. Ken was thrown off balance and his arms flailed around as he tried to avoid falling. The women grabbed him and leaned straight into his sweaty face. She then said, "I am the only thing now standing between you and your final doom. If you come with me now, I will make sure you will never have to experience that horrible tragedy again."
Ken looked back and forth between the woman's offer and the endless drop which he would take if she let go of him. He knew that what she was offering was a return to evil, something which he refused to do considering how repulsive it felt to him. He scowled at the lady.
She sighed and then said "Very well. I have offered you a chance to avoid it, but you have now brought your own judgment. Farewell, Ken Ichijouji, the Digimon Emperor that never will be!" She let go and pushed him away as well.
He went over. Tumbling head over heels, the side of the building, vaguely recognizable in the dim light, flew by him, and from somewhere above he faintly heard someone (possibly Wormmon) call out to him in despair, while Ken himself screamed in mortal fear of the seemingly endless freefall. He also heard the lady laughing above him, gloating over pushing him into condemnation...
Turning so that Ken could see what was below him, he found to his horror that he was headed for a pit of darkness very similar to the one Devimon had been in, that it would swallow him up and destroy him – his punishment!! The scream stuck in his throat, then changed to a despairing loud whimpering as he sped down toward the black hole of his punishment... Ken tried to look away, hoping it wasn't happening, but as the pit loomed larger and larger, Ken was more convinced that this was real.
Suddenly, Ken felt his left arm be grabbed by something, and the fall stopped with a jolt. Ken was now dangling in mid-air, with the only thing preventing him from going into that dark circle was whatever grabbed him. Ken immediately looked up to find he could still see a faint silhouette of what had grabbed him. He couldn't make out many details, but from what he could see, he guessed that it was an angel (somewhat surprisingly, and perhaps another clue to the meaning of the dream) that had arrested his fall!
Ken asked who it was and why it had intervened to stop his fall. The angel responded with an echoing voice, saying, "I am only someone who wants to help, someone who still cares about you. There are still those that care about what happens to you, and I am one of them. That's why I have done what I have done: to stop you from falling further than you already have."
Ken was naturally comforted, but looking down at the black pit below, he was mortally scared. He cringed, pulling up his dangling legs and saying, "Ahh! I'm scared! What if you lose your grip?!? I don't want to fall again!"
The angel (or whatever it was) reassured Ken: "Don't worry, I won't let you go. There are too many who care about you, myself included, to make me give up hope." Ken then saw vaguely another hand reaching down towards him. He raised up his right hand, and the angel now took that too. Ken was now dangling by his arms, holding on to whatever angel or other being had cared enough to catch him from falling.
Suddenly, Ken heard Davis's voice from above: "Ken... KEN!! Where are you?!? Can you hear me, Ken?!!?"
Relieved but perplexed, Ken shouted up that he was down there. He saw Davis look down over the building edge in confusion. He was then quickly joined by something green (probably Wormmon) and something else blue (probably Veemon), who were apparently just as confused as Davis was.
"What happened?!?" Davis yelled down. "Why didn't you enter that black pit or be killed by the fall? What stopped you from doing those things?"
"I don't know. Something caught me, but I don't know what or who." Ken yelled back up.
"Well, what's more important right now is that we get you back up here. Wormmon will send down a rope while Veemon and I anchor him. You need to grab on and climb back up. Understand?"
Ken yelled up an acknowledgment, and shortly afterwards a slender white rope made of Wormmon's threads dangled down by where Ken was hanging on to the merciful benefactor. He looked back and forth between the angel and the rope, not sure if he should reach out and take the rope.
"Do not worry." the angel reassured. "They will not let you fall purposely, and their grip on Wormmon and his lifeline is as strong as they can make it. Also, I will catch you if the rope breaks or you slip, I can promise you that." Ken considered for a moment, then with as much courage as he could muster released his right hand from the grip he had on it and reached over for the rope. He managed to get a good grip on it, then hooked his right leg over it as well. Ken looked up to see Wormmon being held on to by Davis and Veemon, then at the benefactor, who reassured him again.
Further encouraged, Ken released the grip on his left hand and quickly grabbed on to the rope. As he hooked his left leg on as well, Ken now saw that he was hanging from the rope, just like in gym class. He had excelled at the rope exercise then, but now he was scared stiff and his hands sweated into the thread rope. Therefore Ken was further relieved when the benefactor shifted mid-air position to beside Ken, encircling the arms that had stopped the fall around his waist. It was obvious that the benefactor was going to prevent Ken from falling again should his grip give way, and also Ken got a better impression that the hard-to-see shape was indeed angelic. Slowly and carefully Ken began to climb back up the rope, propelled both by fear of what was below and amazement at those that had offered him a way back up. As Ken moved back up, so did the benefactor, adjusting position so that Ken would still be caught if he lost the grip.
Eventually, Ken got close enough to Davis and Veemon that they partly released their grip on Wormmon and reached down to pull him the rest of the way. Together, they helped Ken over the lip, and once far enough away from the edge, Ken collapsed into a heap, still shaking from the shock but relieved that he was even alive.
With Davis's help, Ken shakily got to his feet again. He reached down and gave a bear hug to Wormmon, which he took graciously. Davis then asked Ken "What happened down there? You went over, and I couldn't help... I thought you were a goner! What grabbed you?"
Ken looked in confusion. "I... don't know. I really don't. I'm just grateful that it saved me." Ken looked around and back down over the edge, but the angelic benefactor was nowhere to be seen...
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It was at this point that Ken woke up and pondered what the dream had meant. He was pretty sure it was some kind of allegory based on what had happened to him: the fall, being pulled up by Wormmon and Davis. But the benefactor couldn't be explained by anything he knew about, and that seemed to indicate the "agent of grace" that was missing from the redemption equation.
He had had another dream like that one as well. In that one, a scenario similar to that in the other dream had played out, except he had been on a cliff by the sea and "the lady"/Arukenimon had pushed him into the water. Even though in real life he was an excellent swimmer, in the dream all he did was flail about in the water while the lady laughed at him. Eventually he went under, and slowly sunk into a sea which looked alarmingly like the Dark Ocean, the dimension where he had been first turned to evil after the Myotismon-controlled Oikawa sent an email telling him "to use Sam's Digivice", which sent him there, apparently due to the Spore.
However, what was more important in what was being considered right now was that Ken had been saved in that dream too: Drowning and rapidly losing consciousness, something that looked like an angel (but could not be identified exactly due to the front being in deep shadow) had burst down into the water surrounded by bright lights, and just before losing all sensation the angel had grabbed his hand and began to pull him up out of the water.
The dream suddenly flipped to Ken laying on his back, looking up at the sky. He saw Davis, Veemon and Wormmon looking down worriedly at him. He wrenched and sat up as he began to cough violently, quickly expelling some seawater from his lungs before laying again on his back, breathing hard and completely drained of energy.
"Ken, we saw you get pushed in but we were too far away to help you." Davis explained. "Who pulled you up out of the water? We found you laying on your back completely soaked and it looked like you might have drowned, but now you just came to and coughed up some seawater. Who was there to prevent you from being shark food?"
Ken sat up, looking as confused as Davis was. His head ached, and both his clothes and hair were dripping wet with seawater. Slowly walking to the edge and looking over the sea below, Ken couldn't see anything that would even tell were the rescuer had been. He looked back at Davis and said, "I don't know. I don't even see where it went. But I would be drowned and dead had it not pulled me out of the sea..."
That dream ended there, and Ken was sure that both dreams were roughly parallel allegories of his situation, and both with explainable (Davis, Veemon, Wormmon) and unexplainable (the rescuing angel) elements, supporting his theory of an "agent of grace" adding to his redemption story.
However, the question of who it was still remained. Ken had an idea, but again he needed something more than hunches to go on. Ken figured that maybe the third dream he had might be able to give some insight into answering that question, so he began to recall that dream...
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In this dream, Ken was stumbling into a ruined temple of some kind. The sky outside was a very dark gray, and it seemed it was going to start pouring rain any minute now. Ken himself was caked and besmeared with dirt, and his face was very dirty, making it a dark brownish color.
The dirty Ken stumbled into the ruined temple so weak that he wobbled around and barely maintained his balance. He had apparently been walking a long time, and was so tired and dirty that he couldn't stay on his feet any longer. He collapsed on all fours in front of some kind of mural.
Ken was exhausted, but managed to raise his head up long enough to look at the mural. He could only recognize vague shapes, but figured out that the mural seemed to be divided into four parts according to a compass rose and that there seemed to be a Digimon drawn at the end of each compass point. This seemed to indicate one thing: this mural depicted the four Harmonious Ones guarding their respective sectors of the Digital World, and this ruin had been a temple to them.
Ken knew about what had happened to the Harmonious Ones, how they had been captured and imprisoned during the first days he was the Digimon Emperor by a force even he did not know, and knew what he had to do. He immediately threw himself completely flat on the floor, weeping bitterly and pleading for mercy from the Digimon that the mural depicted, wishing he could find a way to release them from their prisons.
He was still weeping and pleading when Ken suddenly felt a drop of water splash on his head, then another. Ken looked up, thinking it to be from a leaky roof. However, he was wrong...
When he looked up, he did indeed find a hole in the roof, but as clouded as the sky was it was not raining and thus dripping on his head. Instead, Ken heard something like sobbing above and then another drop of water fell on his face. Ken carefully wiped the drop off, then felt another one drip on his face. Ken looked up again, and as more drops fell he realized that the drops were actually tears – tears of sympathy – that were dripping off the faces of whatever was above.
Looking more closely, Ken could make out two silhouettes, maybe Digimon, but before he could analyze them further rain started pouring down through the hole above him, the rainwater joining the tears of the Digimon above. Ken watched in amazement as the rain slowly started washing the dirt off his hands, arms, legs, even his face (already streaked with the teardrops).
As Ken stared up at the rain washing him clean, he felt someone put an arm over his shoulder. Ken turned to see Davis and Veemon standing behind him, offering hand shakes of friendship. Davis said with a smile, "The rain of grace has made you clean, now all you need is a friend to help make up for what you've done. So what do you say, Ken? Can we set things right?"
Ken turned around, got up and shook hands with Davis, then Veemon. "Yes, you're right. Let's go!" Ken said as the three of them started out of the temple, into a sweet smelling, delicious rainshower...
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Ken looked around his room. He knew that this dream seemed to indicate an "agent of grace" more clearly than the other two, and was also metaphoric in that it showed Davis helping restore him, but he still had no idea about the trigger, so Ken reluctantly went back to his list...
"Patamon...? Gatomon...?? It would make sense, but..." Ken said to himself. "I can't believe it without more proof. I need more proof..." Ken was also thinking of the consequences of where this train of thought lead. The social network was already shaken now, and if this was shown to be true it would lead to effects so far reaching that no one would escape unaffected.
This is why Ken had not said anything about the dreams and his theory yet, because of the fact that he had no hard proof of anything. Now it was a new year, and things were closer between him and the potential triggers of the agent of grace than ever, but he still had no hard proof. "How would I get the proof? How would I get proof?..." Ken pondered.
Then it struck him. "Of course, why didn't I think of it before?!?" Ken exclaimed, his face brightening. He would become a detective! It fit him perfectly: he could put his brainpower to work in a productive manner, his athletic skills would come in handy for investigative work, he could have Wormmon as a partner and backup, and he even had a "case" to solve! Ken could also recruit other Digidestined into his detective agency: Kari, Izzy, T.K., maybe even Davis and Yolei!
Of course, he could not recruit without some other case than searching for the "agent of grace" on his slatelist. He would wait until he had another case, then recruit Kari and Gatomon and probably others as partner detectives. It would allow him to work on finding the agent of grace as well as the other case by allowing Gatomon and those he picked to be open with him, revealing things that wouldn't be shown otherwise...
Ken nodded to himself. He would be like the boy detectives he had seen from reading some American books. It was the perfect way to redeem his spore-given talents, and allow him to discern the truth about the "agent of grace". Also, even if the agent didn't exist, he could still receive comfort through simply sharing experiences with Gatomon and Kari, something for the edification of both them.
Ken excitedly leapt to his feet. "Forget about the evil that came from my talents, today I will use them only for good, and to find out this last mystery about how I was saved by grace..." Ken said to himself, smiling as he went off to tell Wormmon his plan...
The End