Even Koushiro and Gennai couldn't get a look inside the mountain, so when Ryo arrived the next day he brought some spelunking equipment. He couldn't fit through the hole Keramon had used, but there were other entrances. This wouldn't be the first evil underground complex he'd explored.
"Ah." Ryo heard MoonMillenniummon's voice from above him, and looked up to see the Digimon looking down from above the entrance he'd found. "You are still in the human equivalent of a Child evolution – of course exploring ruins in search of treasure would appeal to you. I will warn Keramon not to lash out if you surprise him in the dark."
He dove into the side of the mountain, and Ryo went in.
It was actually a couple minutes before MoonMillenniummon returned, and Ryo kept seeing red eyes in the darkness out of the corner of his eyes. Watching him, of course. He told the darkness that "There's enough room in here for you to come out." Where I can see you.
So far, he hadn't had to crawl: there were lots of fairly intact hallways.
Some of the equipment was even still lit up. "I thought there was a massive explosion," he said. "But that was according to Ken…" since none of the other kids or their partners remembered.
"There was, but an immortal god builds to last," MoonMillenniummon said, keeping pace with him on the slanted ground. "Programming structures with self-repair functions saves a great deal of effort."
Ryo swung the lantern forward. He didn't have to worry about bad air underground in the Digital World, not when there wasn't really oxygen here to begin with. "Like the Spires." That repaired cracks within minutes, and even if dispersed into data would pull themselves back together within hours.
"Of course. The Destiny Stones could only be replaced by the Four Holy Beasts, but the only reason to destroy the Destiny Stones would be to weaken the Holy Beasts. Those who rebelled would bring devastation upon the Digital World, devastation they would be blamed for. The amount of redundancy makes my spires a far more robust system: a Digimon breaking one in order to Digivolve won't cause their hometown to be swallowed up by an earthquake." Even though he didn't actually need to, MoonMillenniummon waited until Ryo had gone through the gap under the fallen pillar to follow him through it, instead of going through the pillar to keep pace with him. Pretending he was solid.
"The only way to get rid of them is to outhack you," Ryo said, as the two-headed dragon darted forward to slither along at his side again. Almost like a dog coming to heel.
"In real time, when I am connected to the Digital World." Ha, never.
No, nothing of a dog's eager loyalty or respect for their master. Ryo didn't want to be someone MoonMillenniummon shared his cleverness with, like they were on the same side.
He remembered going through palaces like this before, searching for the room where Millenniummon or one of his servants waited. Ryo guessed that here that was Keramon.
Diablomon, rookie or not.
Usually when Ryo went exploring like this, there were Child Digimon with him ready to digivolve. Agumon or V-mon sticking by his side, someone going ahead a short distance to watch out for ambushes, maybe someone who had just gotten tired out and de-digivolved back to baby or in-training tucked under Ryo's arm or in his bag on top of the supplies, head poking out.
Instead he was here with an Ultimate.
There wasn't any need to keep quiet: the most dangerous Digimon who could possibly be here already knew where he was. "This is familiar," he said.
Searching through bases to find the boss? "I would rather you didn't kill my pet."
"You were happy about it the first time." Ryo rolled his eyes, then returned them to the floor so he didn't trip over a piece of rubble.
"That was before I adopted him as a pet. Really, dear Ryo, you couldn't have waited to get me away from Wormmon, perhaps with Omegamon to back you up? I spent four years building him up enough to compensate for the fact I couldn't let him reach his Adult form without taking unacceptable risks, and now I'm certain he's so miserable he's refused to eat and gone right back to Baby."
"How did you think he was going to react when he found out?"
"He would not have found out. But if he had to find out I was within Ken, someone could have lied to him. It's one thing for me to have been watching from within his partner the way one of my slaves possessed Oikawa-"
"Who's Oikawa?"
"Another to discover he hadn't spoken to his partner in years. Really, Ryo."
From the amusement in Millenniummon's voice, he knew exactly how hypocritical it was for him to tell anyone they'd been cruel, and Ryo wasn't in the mood for banter, even if he didn't know when he'd last talked this much to anyone but Ken. His parents had seen how worn out he was and let Koushiro explain instead of demanding words. "Oikawa?"
"I dealt with it: he remembers nothing. I couldn't let anyone find out that some Digimon were capable of possessing humans when they died instead of returning to Primary Village."
Yeah, not saying thanks for that. "What does it feel like to you?" Ryo asked.
"Scattering a Digimon's data in the real world?"
Ryo shook his head, even though it was good to know at least one evil Digimon wouldn't be possessing anyone else. "The bond. I talked to the others about it. Tailmon said that until she pledged her loyalty to Hikari, it was a leash. She could leave Hikari's side after her partner accepted her, but until then it kept shortening, pulling at her. She was spying on Hikari through binoculars, and it was only a few days."
"Most of them don't realize it's there," MoonMillenniummon said, and of course he would have taken advantage of his deception to gather information from the other Chosen Children on what was happening to him. "The humans accepted their partners minutes after they first saw them, and the other Digimon were eagerly awaiting the bond. It is the air they breathe: always there, they must have it or they die, yet rarely noticed. Most of my data comes from Wallace's observations of his separation from Chocomon. An unexpected benefit of having Diablomon neutralize the Child of Destiny for me."
"What do I feel like to you?" Ryo repeated the question.
"You drain life from the world. Slowly, inexorably, everything began to dim. Food became tasteless, victories became empty, discoveries became merely interesting instead of fascinating. The satisfaction of eliminating enemies became a chore. And I did not realize, because I wasn't looking at the world around me to watch the color fade from it. All I could look at was you. Then you left, after my temporary defeat, and all I could care about, all I could think about, was the plan to draw you back to the Digital World. I needed you to return to my side. When other tasks couldn't occupy my mind or energies, my strategies became unnecessarily elaborate. Unrelated research only had value in the context of you. I meant to plant my Dark Seed in you, but instead it found a host in Ken, and tasting his emotions, feeling his bond with Wormmon, I knew that such bonds had become the only thing that could matter to my core." This chuckle's mockery was directed at himself. "To find myself with something in common with a Wormmon. Being able to observe his responses to stimuli was of use to me, true."
"Dark Seed?"
"An anchor for my core, among other things. It made it easy for my spirit to take over Ken when I cast you forward in time. I didn't know of the Four Holy Beasts' schemes to destroy you until well after I woke up to find you there, but if you were going to show up to foil my plans that fast from then on, I needed more time to work with. Four years seemed like such a small span of time until I spent those years craving you. You are a black hole, Ryo. Your pull gives order and purpose to the dance of the stars, but you will devour all in the end, and not a scrap of data will escape erasure."
Ryo paused in the middle of scratching a mark into stone. "That is not a compliment."
"You have no appreciation for the beauty of destruction," Millenniummon knew, but didn't seem bothered by it. Not wanting to watch people get killed was simply a little quirk he would tolerate in his partner. "Do you sense in me the death of all things? Is that why you had to face me, even after I ensured that victory was impossible?"
"No." He said, and hesitated. "Gravity, I guess, but you felt like you weren't going to devour me. Something made you feel like I didn't need to fight you, and since I knew better, that was scary. Something was wrong." He sighed. "Something was wrong. You weren't supposed to be my enemy."
"You are the one who chose to get in my way."
"You're the one who decided to conquer the Digital World." Ryo stopped, looking up at the ceiling almost in a daze.
Were they bonding? Even if he still hated MoonMillenniummon for what he'd done, he was letting the Digimon be by his side, he was giving him what he wanted, Ryo's attention and company, without a fight.
It was instinct. This was how they were supposed to be, except for the evil god being evil and seeing Ryo as some agent of death, chaos and being a killjoy.
"My guard is down," he knew. "That was what gave you away. I woke up in the Digital World after fighting you, without an army, and Ken was there, also without an army. I wouldn't have felt safe just because he was there, I should have worried about him, wanted to protect him. I saw you the first time I opened my eyes and looked at him, but I would have thought that was a mirage, if it weren't for the fact it was hard to… Right now, I should be watching you out of the corner of my eyes, waiting for you to toss a black ring or dark seed or something at me. I'm not even watching my back the way I would if I was alone in the Digital World."
"You recognize me as your chosen protector."
"I thought it was because you were a god. Gods are supposed to protect people."
Was Millenniummon laughing at humans and their quaint mythologies? "I could."
Only if Ryo made it worth his while, Ryo thought, and his shoulders slumped at the reminder. He'd known too many Digimon to not see the gaping chasm between his partner and everyone else's, between Millenniummon and the ones who protected Ryo because it was the right thing to do, not just because he had helped rescue their partners.
He couldn't… what was there to say that could ever make this be the way it should be? So he kept walking.
He couldn't look for marks on the ground to track Keramon, not when he levitated, and even if MoonMillenniummon was pretending he cared about gravity, he wasn't solid so there wouldn't be marks in the dust to reveal where in these caves he'd gone, either. Ryo's best bet had been trying to find the working equipment, thinking Keramon and Millenniummon would have repaired only what they wanted to repair, but if the base was repairing itself that wasn't much help.
"I didn't bear a personal grudge against Agumon for killing my Mugendramon evolution and ruining my plans to gain Apocalymon's power," the dark serpent said finally. He still wasn't bothering to move the lips of either of his heads, not when they weren't solid enough to speak. One of those heads was Mugendramon's. "That was the Will of the Digital World's doing, not his victory. But, for being the one to greet you when you came to the Digital World, for protecting you…
With the two of them talking, Keramon might hear them coming before they heard him, if he hadn't taken his treasure and vanished until Ryo left.
Ryo didn't respond, so MoonMillenniummon remained silent again for awhile, following Ryo. A real snake's scales would have reflected some of the light of the lamp, Ryo thought, but his partner was only darkness, except for the red eyes. While the serpent kept one pair of eyes focused on the ground, pretending he had to pick his way through the rubble like a mortal, one of his two heads was almost always watching Ryo.
"My early evolutions were dragons: I do find the search for treasure nostalgic, and yes, often I would have to eliminate its current owners. Traveling with someone by my side: I wish that brought back memories. I learned to enjoy the company of a pet, but that was because I could see their happiness and imagine causing you that same joy."
Why was he saying that? Revealing loneliness and envy, that he craved Ryo's company, weaknesses? To get sympathy, obviously, but Ryo didn't know if it was possible to not have sympathy for your partner. Yamato and Takeru said they'd had major fights with theirs, but it clearly hadn't stuck. "Can you honestly say to me that you're not mind-controlling anyone, or enslaving them, or holding them prisoner, or letting one of your servants do anything like that to anyone?" Because if that was true, then Ryo wouldn't have to feel so bad about giving the evil god what he wanted. About wanting to be around someone who was doing things like that.
"..." The silence made Ryo's stomach drop, until he turned to look at MoonMillenniummon and saw his heads tilted thoughtfully. "Nothing comes to mind, but no, I cannot promise it. Not when owning shares in a company makes its employees some percentage my servants."
"A Digimon with a stock portfolio?" If it was any other Digimon, Ryo could have laughed at the thought.
"I studied the Network dimension and its manifestation as the 'Internet' in the Human World, which came in useful crafting Diablomon and giving him his orders. Money is power in the human world, and I did say that I possessed wealth and power in that world, tools that could be yours."
"You're a corporate overlord now?" Spires all over the Digital World, and with the false front turned off Koushiro didn't know half of what they did with the data they broadcasted.
"Not an active one, no. I haven't cared to take control, no more than I've cared to take control over the Digital World. No excitement, no challenge, no feeling of accomplishment… not without you. I would have been very bored once the Four Holy Beasts were dealt with if I wasn't able to continue to practice having a partner bond and caring relationships with humans. Planning and preparing for your arrival. Now my toys won't play with me anymore." A false lament – or at least MoonMillenniummon thought it was.
"Except for Diablomon. Mimi said she still wants to give you multiple pieces of her mind."
"Purity? I was not enough of a fool to play around with a power that strips away enchantments and illusions. Making friends with her friends was enough to make her start hugging me without encouraging her. Thank goodness she moved to America." One of his heads cocked to the side. "Does human reproduction count as imprisonment?"
Ryo stumbled. "…Wha?!"
"He's effectively in a digiegg. It's far too early for him to hatch, he's not viable without life support yet. However, I did program language already, and he keeps asking to be allowed outside the tube. For understandable reasons, but he's not even an in-training yet and can't understand that no, he truly must not leave."
"…What are you doing?"
"This way," Millenniummon said, gesturing with his tail towards a passage at a forty-degree angle from the way they'd come.
Because even when he has no more damns to give about killing rebels (they'll all be destroyed when the timeline shatters anyway), mad science is still happening.
Ryo is the type to do his screaming internally.