Afterlife Programme

Chapter 3
how the game was played

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It worked. The increase in digital world data in the Afterlife had attracted Hikaru's dissociating soul. Sending Dorumon had been a little trickier, but opportunity had afforded him the chance. Now it was a matter of wrapping things up. Editing the programme yet again so the modifications could be neatly packaged and removed without damaging the rest. Because it wouldn't do at all to have so many restless, regretting, souls suddenly cut loose into the world.

Their second chances wouldn't be like his: a breath of fresh air from the fog that had throttled them at first. They wouldn't have a chance to give thanks, to do better by their new life, their new opportunities. They'd be doomed to repeat the same mistakes again and again and again…

Well, look at him, suddenly sympathetic for the entirety of the human race. But a fair number of them had become his pawns in paying back Ryuuji Hikaru, so perhaps he was as selfish as he always was.

That was its own sort of perpetuating cycle, but that was fine. He was a digimon. He could afford to die and be reborn again. It was the digital world's fault, anyway, for restoring him so quickly and restoring his memories as well. As though they'd always meant for him to take this course of action and that irked him a little. He was the game master, not a pawn, but Homeostasis was invisible to him and, now, invisible even to the remainder of the Royal Knights as well. And it hadn't revealed itself to the children either. Was there a living being who Homeostasis would reveal itself to? Or would it continue to interfere from the shadows and give them the illusion of free will?

He'd hated that, last life. He'd sought to shatter its chains. He'd failed. He hadn't even found the chains to break before he fell.

Or was it no illusion at all? Were there no chains? Had Homeostasis abdicated from its role as the controller of fate, the writer of their tales?

This life, it didn't matter. He was simply paying back a debt. Next life…he might consider it.

It might be a very slow next life…and he wouldn't mind if it was.

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'MetalPhantomon?' Hikaru repeated, before he groaned. 'Seriously? He's probably got an even bigger grudge against us now – for killing him and all.'

None of them consider there might be another reason behind his intervention. Why would they? They have no proof at all, and they're only just starting to piece the story together.

Kiyoshi had been a very minor player in the digital world. Perhaps MetalPhantomon had forgotten her entirely. Hikaru though – Hikaru was at the centrepoint. Hikaru and Dorumon – Grademon. They couldn't be forgotten, couldn't be ignored. Just like how the sun in the sky couldn't be ignored.

No wonder the phantoms flocked to him now.

He could handle it, but they kept on coming. How long would this stalemate go on?

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New people still came to the Afterlife. Old people managed to settle their regrets and leave as well. Through it all, Hikaru and Kiyoshi and Yuzuru remained.

'Do you know what your regret is?' Hikaru asked one day. 'It's pretty sad you don't ever try to settle it.'

'I can't,' said Yuzuru, without hesitation. 'My regret is that I fell in love too late. I can't leave unless she returns. And…' And here, he had to hesitate, because he both wanted and did not want her to return.

'…what's her name?' Kiyoshi asked, after a brief pause.

'Tachibana Kanade,' and there was a small, sad smile on his lips when he said it. 'She was the previous school council president.'

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The attacks went on. They occurred whenever Hikaru ventured outside of the school building. Left him alone in class, in his dorm, but as soon as he was in the courtyard, he was fair game it seemed. And he could not, and would not, stay inside.

And if they tried to keep him, the phantoms went back to attacking other souls. So there really wasn't much they could do but let Hikaru and Dorumon go out there and try to thin a horde that never thinned. And in the meantime, Kiyoshi and Yuzuru and anyone else who could help out combed through every book on data and coding and the digital world that appeared in the library, attempting to find out the secret of the phantoms – and maybe even the world.

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Once, when Kanade and Yuuri and the others were still there, they met a man in the computer room. The computer room had been destroyed and rebuilt since, but Yuzuru and Kiyoshi made their way there anyway.

The man wasn't there. The manual was, though. "Afterlife Programme" – but it was less of a manual and more of a tale about having regrets, growing them, and letting them go. The fable that built the school. What they already knew. That trip at least had turned out to be a waste, but it let them revisit the basics.

The Afterlife had been created from a single man and a single wish. But now it was teeming with the wishes of every person who passed through. Girls Dread Monster still existed, even though its founding members had long since passed on. Iwasawa Masami had been the first person Yuzuru knew to overcome their regrets and pass on – even if they hadn't understood at all at the time. The book – more of a journal, really – would have helped them then. It wouldn't help them so much now.

Until Kiyoshi got the idea to ask for another journal…except this time, from MetalPhantomon.

'Do digital monsters attempting to take over the world even keep journals?' Yuzuru wondered aloud.

He should have known better to think the Afterlife conformed to such restraints of logic.

They got their journal.

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Kiyoshi combed through the journal. Hikaru and Dorumon handled the Phantoms. Yuzuru was supposed to look after the new students who came, but there wasn't much to do on that end with Hikaru on the outside to protect and illuminate them when they first came in, and Kiyoshi to follow up.

He wondered if he was becoming redundant. Wondered if this meant his time in the Afterlife was coming to a close, and his reincarnation approaching. The same thing had happened with Kanade, after all. He'd been there for Kanade to say "thank you" to for months, and yet it was after her role as school council president was no longer necessary – in the present, at least, because it would always be necessary in a future where new teenagers with new regrets arrived – that she spoke those words and disappeared.

And yet she couldn't have done that without his presence. So did that mean Kanade was about to appear again? His feelings were mixed on the topic. They were always mixed on that topic. He wanted her here, but for her to be here meant a sad life she didn't deserve again…

But the Afterlife, aside from the whole phantom problem, was well under control. They no longer needed him there to hold down the fort.

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It took Kiyoshi a while to read the journal she'd requested from the world. It told of the origins of the digital world: about Homeostasis who controlled with iron chains and the Royal Knights who protected it. It told about how there'd been a huge war, between those forces who desired to break free from the fate Homeostasis decreed for them, and Homeostasis and those who were devoted to it. It told of how a virus ravaged digimon-kind, and how a few of them mutated to fight it – and they were named "X". It told of how the war ended, how Homeostasis chose to seal the digicore – the source or perhaps cornerstone of its interference – away and retract itself from the world and left them to fend for themselves, either because it believed in them or felt they deserved it for their insolence.

After that was the shaping into the digital world they saw. The surviving Royal Knights slipped away. Digimon like MetalPhantomon wondered if Homeostasis was truly gone, and they fought. MetalPhantomon summoned them humans because humans powered the potential of digimon, their digisouls, and there was a source of power that had been exploited before. Except they – or Hikaru and Dorumon mostly – overcame MetalPhantomon and defeated him. And how the digital world progressed after that.

Their partners were fine, which was nice to know. Even the partner she'd never met, but a talking plant called Palmon X seemed oddly appropriate. One of the species that survived the war ten thousand digital years ago, then – or maybe more. The journal wasn't very aware of human time.

Palmon X was like Teru's Agumon X. But Ryuudamon and Dorumon were different. Dorumon was one of the Royal Knights reborn. Though Ryuudamon's involvement in the old war was one they hadn't been aware of at all. Apparently an experiment by those who sought to go against Homeostasis. The dragon God killer who turned out to lack the potential to kill a God. But they'd chosen a General to model Ryuudamon. Perhaps that was the logical conclusion. Ryuudamon had been a perfect fit for Masuken, down the road.

And MetalPhantomon had known it all and tried to play to his desired endgame. But somewhere, he'd misplayed. Or perhaps some of that information had come to him in hindsight, after he'd lost and drifted in the data stream before rebirth. There wasn't a very good grasp of time in the book. Ten thousand years between the two wars and nothing else. Who knew what was from the past and what was from the present, and Dorumon's memory didn't stretch far enough to learn. She could request more books from the digital world, to be sure, but was it necessary? Not yet, she decided. She wanted to know the rest of MetalPhantomon's tale.

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The time had come. Data had potential, but it required something else to give it form, and humans had the best source of that which shaped their potential.

The puzzle of his phantoms had finally been solved. Now, they would open the gate for him.

Perhaps, for the two of them, it would mean very different things. Ryuuji Hikaru may never understand his reasons, despite all this, but that didn't matter. It was the dues he owed. His reason for this new life – and whether he'd chosen it or not, it didn't matter. Ryuuji Hikaru had been the first and only thing on his mind when he'd been reborn, and being reborn as the Perfect digimon he'd died as left him too narrow-minded to seek another avenue to life.

Unlike Dorumon and Ryuudramon who had changed the tale of their past fates so thoroughly.

Even before he'd understood the irony of their pasts, he'd been jealous of them.

Now…he owed them. And he'd pay them back the only way he could. He'd make it possible for them all to reunite again. Though it wouldn't be up to him when or where. He was the God of Death, not of life, and Homeostasis could not interfere with the human realm. And if it honoured its claim of abstinence, it would not interfere even if it could. He was able to interfere with Ryuuji Hikaru's fate himself – and so he did.

Now, it was time to bring an end to his interference.

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Kiyoshi had to go to the courtyard and scream her answers to Hikaru and Dorumon as they fought. Hikaru couldn't seem to get a break otherwise and it was a miracle he hadn't been worn down by it. Or maybe it was just the presence of other teenagers in the process, and Hikaru's uncanny ability to hold a conversation even as he fought for his life. It broke up the monotone even if the stalemate was a constant.

And now she was the converser, joining in the fray. She was no fighter though. Yuzuru had come as well and he was covering her, firing at any shadow that got close and Kiyoshi was suddenly wishing she'd taken the chance to practice with at least one gun model so she could hold her own – but she'd uncovered something important. She was sure of it.

'MetalPhantomon wants to fight you again!'

And it sounded absolutely ridiculous when she said it like that, but she couldn't do much about it.

'Like unfinished business,' she explained. 'He feels he owes you something – can't tell whether that's good or bad – and he's going to fight you to pay you back.'

'Can't tell?' Hikaru repeated. 'Not clear revenge?'

'Don't think so.' And that was what boggled her. But that wasn't the important bit right then. 'And when you acknowledge him, he'll app –'

The phantoms suddenly pooling together cut her off.

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It was time. Whether he meant to or not, Ryuuji Hikaru acknowledged him and the fight he demanded.

It was time to lay that boy's regrets to rest – and free his soul from the chains that bound it to the digital world as well.

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They fought. It was an odd fight, Dorumon climbing through its evolutions until it was Alphamon and it could go no higher, not without Ryuudamon. But MetalPhantomon was an equal match at all of those levels: only as strong as required.

At first, in any case. Eventually, he fell back under Alphamon's onslaught. He fell, and then unleashed his final attack before he faded into nothing.

And they all heard the words. 'Now you're free…to be reborn.'

And they understood the last bit of the puzzle.

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Hikaru and Dorumon were suddenly gone. Kiyoshi only recognised that aloud before she too faded away, and Yuzuru was left standing there alone. No more phantoms hunting souls – but did that mean they wouldn't come back again? Would there be something else to break the otherwise monotonous school in the Afterlife? Or would his chance for finally moving on come.

This time, there was no discord in his mind. He wanted Kanade – and the rest of his friends as well. He wanted to be reborn. He wanted to leave the Afterlife.

And then a new figure blinked into existence before him. Small, with silver hair cascading down her shoulders and her eyes flitting about in growing recognition before focusing on him.

He embraced her before his mind caught up. Kanade…

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In the digital world, MetalPhantomon's egg floated gently down, and so did Dorumon's. Three digimon saw them: a Ryuudamon, an Agumon X and a Palmon X, and they quickly understood.

They'd wait. And this time, the enemy of the past would join their rank as friends.

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In the human world, almost ten years had passed for Masuken and Teru after the deaths of their friends. They'd grown out of school: had careers, married, and now their wives were expecting.

They'd already chosen names, though it would be quite awkward if they had a boy each, or both a girl. But as luck would have it, the two children were a boy and a girl, born within an hour of each other.

Masuken named his son "Hikaru". Teru named his daughter "Kiyoshi". It was a tribute to the friends that had died before their prime.

And when they grew and the likeness to their namesakes was too uncanny to ignore, they wondered if it was something more than that. If this was the second chance they both deserved.

Welcome back.

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A/N: The end. That was tricky, trying to keep each chapter exactly 2600 words so they'd add up to 7800 in total. But it's done! And hopefully didn't screw up either canon in the process. The pairings sort of snuck in unintentionally. Masuken and Teru's kids being the reincarnation of Hikaru and Kiyoshi though – sometimes I think I overuse that plot device, but oh well. Some time had to pass, after all. Had to make up a few things in regards to Kiyoshi – like her surname and her fated partner. And dunno why MetalPhantomon suddenly decided he wanted to redeem himself in an obscure way – but that's what muses do, I guess. Hope you enjoyed!