"It's not a choice," he'd told his parents. "I don't think it is for either of us. I saw the others and their partners. I wanted what they had. Someone who would help them no matter what. No, it's not about that, not about having help when I need it, but having someone who would want to protect me."
"But he doesn't. He attacked you, he tore you out of your life, he tried to manipulate you like that. That's not looking out for your welfare, Ryo."
"I know. I know just how evil he is." It made him smile. "I know just what he'd do to me, if he could get away with it. That part I actually like. That he can't just do what he wants anymore. He can't enjoy killing anymore. His core is forcing him to focus on me and leave the digital world alone. His own core is sabotaging him and he knows it. He's a god and an evil genius and he had four years to try to come up with something and he couldn't. I don't know if his core even let him look for a way out, when finding a way out would let him harm me and he has to protect me. For a different Digimon, being the partner of a Chosen Child would be an honor, but for him? This is why I was summoned to the Digital World. Because he's helpless against me. Good," Ryo said, remembering newly freed Digimon screaming at the memories of what they'd been made to do under Millenniummon's control. "He should get a taste of his own medicine."
When Ryo got to the top of the broken crystal mountain, seeing Kera curled up in MoonMillenniummon's coils always made him pause. It wasn't just because Kera looked like Ken. Kera's hair was shorter than Ken's and that left it messier, a mass of soft tufts almost like spikes. Way shorter than Taichi's, though.
He was utterly fearless around MoonMillenniummon: it just did not seem to occur to him that the two-headed dragon might be dangerous or cruel instead of someone to snuggle up to in hope of treats. Kera's affection for Millenniummon was cheerfully mercenary. Selfish and somehow still innocent, like a kid eager to go to their grandparents' because there would be hugs and candy.
Keramon was grateful, there was no question of that, but from the hard look Ryo sometimes saw in those green eyes when neither of Millenniummon's heads was looking in his direction, he remembered that his creator had sent him out to kill and then let him die when he fled to the Digital World. He seemed to want to play pretend with his creator, pretend his creator loved him, but how much of that was because he'd gotten Kera out of playing Millenniummon's pet? Or because he was afraid the gift of a partner might be taken away, that Millenniummon might let Kera die as casually as he had Diablomon?
Ryo didn't know whether or not he wanted some part of it to be that Keramon wished his creator did, that his creator could love him. Might want to play with him for normal reasons instead of to kill time or practice for Ryo somehow. Digimon didn't have parents, but Diablomon had devoured tons of data on the human world, so he should understand the concept. Should be able to see the difference between loving parents and his creator, the way Ryo could see the difference between everyone else's partners and his own. Given how powerful Diablomon was, it would be a good thing if he had a heart. The fact he wanted his partner didn't really prove anything about how much of a danger he was to the rest of the world: Millenniummon wanted his partner.
On the other hand, Ryo didn't want someone else to be stuck craving something they could never have.
Was it really that out of reach, though? When Wormmon's pain when he found out Ken was possessed and he hadn't noticed had registered with Millenniummon enough for him to remember to scold Ryo for it two weeks later?
Had protecting and looking out for Wormmon become force of habit? Was he capable of it now? Was it maybe possible that he might grow something that passed for empathy, or a conscience?
Kera was napping on black coils in the sun: they must be really warm, thought Ryo, as a red-eyed head untangled itself from those coils to look up at him.
Ryo walked towards him. He didn't want Millenniummon to move and wake up the kid, right? Kera seemed to need a lot of sleep, even if he'd been programmed to walk and talk. "Hey," Ryo said, voice soft and half of his attention on Kera. He cleared his throat when he realized how he'd sounded. "I know what you're doing, you know," he warned the evil god.
"Which aspect of what activity?"
"Carrying a cute accessory around." Like someone using a puppy to pick up chicks. Or Chosen Children in this particular case.
"Demonstrating that I am capable of not crushing the hearts and minds of fragile humanoid creatures?" Millenniummon said, considering the matter. "As expected of you. That is part of this, yes. I considered attempting to make you jealous, the way seeing you with V-mon and Agumon used to… Hmm. Used to confuse me on some level. Why were you across the battlefield from me, why was that Digimon where I should be? Will you not take your proper place, Ryo?" The place currently occupied by a substitute?
"And wake up Kera?"
"I am a bodiless spirit: you should know that. After all, you are the one who killed my body. This form is a manifestation. If I choose, I can manifest something larger."
A cloud passed between them and the sun. No, Ryo realized, looking past MoonMillenniummon to see a fold in the sky, a line where the darkness was greater.
He looked up: yes, MoonMillenniummon's crystal had appeared around them. Around the entire mountain peak.
Trapped?
No. The crystal wasn't solid: it was a ghost, just like the rest of MoonMillenniummon.
But he could make that body solid when he chose. Solid enough for Kera to lie on top of those coils, solid enough to trap Ryo within them.
The thought should have scared him, and it did scare part of him. Another part of him thought it sounded nice.
To have his partner wrapped around him. No one could get to him without going through a god.
He would be safe. No more running for cover, no more threat of Millenniummon's return hanging over his head, going home knowing that he would have to go back. Or maybe Millenniummon would find some way to take him out in the human world. Send a sniper or a poisonous Digimon instead of a nuclear missile this time, something the other Chosen Children wouldn't notice and intercept.
Wasn't it at least a little tempting? The thought of having a partner who was normal, the way Keramon might want a normal father?
It was good Ryo's parents were still alive, and hadn't spent all those years crying over an empty casket.
That was part of why he stepped forward and said, "This is fine." He sat down next to where Millenniummon's head came out of the coils, and just leaned back against him instead of trying to climb in. He didn't want to disturb Kera – or Keramon, who was wrapped around his partner securely instead of just lying on him. "What?" he asked, since there was something about the way Millenniummon was looking down at him that didn't seem like it was just enjoying Ryo's presence.
"I am your enemy, and yet you give me what I need," Millenniummon said. Despite the fact he'd just pointed out why Ryo shouldn't be allowing liberties, he still bent that head to touch Ryo's cheek.
"You're my partner, and yet you attack me. I think you've got which part of our relationship is wrong backwards." It wasn't the two of them looking out for each other that was wrong, it was the two of them fighting. It was Millenniummon murdering people that was wrong, not being kind, of all the twisted thoughts.
"You are correct, by the way. I am quite certain that your summoning was the Will of the Digital World's revenge for Spiral Mountain. Among other things. Becoming a god equal to it made me an even greater threat. Greater than Apocalymon," if Millenniummon did say so himself. "Denying my own partner would have eaten away at me. Fighting my own partner, even unknowing? It was meant to break me."
"Right, you heard that conversation." Ryo laughed. "Stalker."
"I could take a page from Tailmon's book and obtain a pair of binoculars or two. Slither in through the walls of your apartment and place bugs connected to headphones, if you prefer the methods of guarding an unacknowledged partner available to a lesser Digimon to mine."
A huge night-scaled two-headed dragon perched somewhere with a line of sight to his window, binoculars balanced on his tail since he didn't have hands to hold them in place? Not going to be missed in Tokyo, even if it had been almost five years now since the Odaiba Incident. "Don't panic everyone." Not cool. "And what do you mean, unacknowledged partner?"
"I mean that after Hikari and Tailmon acknowledged each other the bond calmed in her core. She was able to leave Hikari's side almost immediately."
"She needed the Crest of Light to evolve and protect Hikari from Vamdemon. I don't think she wanted to go," Ryo told the dragon. He frowned. "I knew it. You've just been biding your time until you stop caring about me. You don't want to be my partner, you want to go back to your old ways."
"You speak as though wanting my mind back, wishing to escape this with my will unbroken, is somehow improper."
"Escape this?" Escape this? Escape Ryo?
Why did those words hurt so much?
"As though you would not wish the same. Bound to your enemy, to the ultimate evil? The Digimon of this time do not know you. The Chosen Children who insulted you to your face during the tournament where you were meant to win the prize of death now whisper behind your back. They ask if you are truly a hero, and conclude that you could not possibly be one. Not when you are my partner. Not when the only voice raised in your defense all these years was Ken's, and they have no reason to believe he would have done that of his own will."
Ignoring Millenniummon's contempt for, well, everything (and also the attempt to turn him against the other Chosen Children), Ryo said, "I've acknowledged you. I've wanted a partner since I understood what they were. I dreamed of having a partner. I'm not going to turn my back on mine now that I finally know who you are. Even if we do end up having to fight again." And only part of the reason was that it was stupid to turn his back on an enemy. "If our bond is still unstable, I think you know whose fault that is."
"The fault of whatever fate bound me to a hero, seeking my destruction."
"Does it really have to be destruction?" Ryo asked him, wishing there wasn't desperation in his heart. "Fighting each other, over and over: is that really what you thought was the best we could get? Do you still think that way?"
"We could not have biomerged if our thoughts were not compatible. You spent the entire time we were merged wishing to escape me."
"Because you startled me, and then you scared me! I thought I wouldn't be able to go home again, I thought… Partners aren't supposed to make each other feel alone," Ryo knew. So why…
"You say that as though solitude is not an enviable state. It was the awakening of this bond that forced me to surround myself with lesser creatures to stave it off, to blunt the edge of the claw buried in my core. Eating grass to quiet my stomach, but there was no nourishment in it. Realizing how pathetic it was that I had become grateful to that grass, for there was so little that gave me even a moment's relief. That I wanted a pathetic Wormmon kept intact, for I had come to need him." The Digimon shuddered. "Looking at me, with those eyes… Yes, Ryo, I resent you. I resent the times you were brought to my attention, and not merely as a Digimon resents the one who slew them. As a human resents the doses of arsenic they were tricked into ingesting, once they know that poison is sealed away within their body, and if they cease to take the slow poison the amount already within them will be released and slay them."
Why? Why did it hurt so much to hear those words, to hear the venom in his partner's voice? Even though he understood why Millenniummon would feel this way – no one liked being helpless, and the evil god wasn't exactly used to it.
So he was a poison instead of a friend to his partner? Their growing bond was a cancer corrupting and consuming a core that used to function in a way that was healthy in Millenniummon's eyes, if no one else's?
He had to scrunch his eyes tight shut, because he was too old for the tears that wanted to come. Especially according to the calendar date. He had to turn away, wanting to hide, wanting his partner to not be looking at him like this, even if it meant showing his back to the enemy.
"…Too many truths," Millenniummon finally realized. "You are a most deadly poison, a most keenly honed blade?"
"Not helping. I don't want to kill you."
"Oh? Was I imagining…"
"You I wanted to kill," Ryo interrupted him. "My partner I don't."
"So I am not wrong." Dark triumph in there, a point scored, a confession obtained. "You do wish to slay me, and have the partner you were promised."
"And what about you?" Ryo asked him.
"I want to not want a partner. I want to be free of this need!"
"And what would you do then?"
"Shatter both worlds, break and bind the cores of the survivors and reshape them to my will."
"You don't see anything wrong with that, but it's wrong for the world to try to change you first, to defend itself?" Aaargh! "Why can't you just stop being evil!" Ryo demanded, getting to his feet.
"I am an evil god! You ask me not to be myself!"
This didn't quite fit with much of what Millenniummon said to him when Ryo went down into the caves: Ryo wanted to think that Millenniummon was lying now, even if it made more sense that he had been lying back then…
Or there were two truths: the truth of Millenniummon's core, the part of him that longed for Ryo, and the cruel mind that longed for conquest.
"Funny you should mention that. The part about asking me not to be myself. When isn't that why you made the Dark Seed? To break me and turn me into someone who wouldn't care about the worlds? Maybe I should want a partner who isn't you, but what would happen then, to me and my partner? You'd kill both of us! And my parents, and all my friends! So maybe the others are right, maybe being your partner is evidence that I'm evil, if I'm okay with my existence being something that works to force you to stop! If I'm okay with being a weapon against my partner, if that's the only way to protect everyone! If I want the part of you that sees everyone as things to hurry up and break, so everyone will be safe! So my partner will be safe! So I won't have to, so no one will have to kill you anymore! Sure, it's wrong, but you started it and I don't know if… I don't know if I have a right to change anything. You're my partner so you're my responsibility so I have to stop you, so I can't choose to not be your partner when that would mean I couldn't stop you. No matter how much I want a dragon child looking up with me with eyes that aren't red!"
Those dark coils began to shift, a second head rearing up, both of them meeting Ryo's eyes. "My child form's eyes are red."
And why on earth did Ryo suddenly feel like he'd gone too far, like he'd hurt his partner as well as the evil god? "How would I know that?" he asked, as something of an apology. "I've never seen you in any form but a scary Ultimate. If you were an innocent Child I wouldn't care what color your eyes were. I told Gennai I'd be happy with any partner, even a Picodevimon, even if Patamon and Takeru would never forgive me. Wormmon's a virus type, and he's…" Sweet, loving and loyal. Would never dream of fighting or hurting Ken. Or telling Ken that he was, "A fate worse than death. Is that really what I am for you?"
"Death is a momentary inconvenience. You are an all-consuming erasure that leaves part of me wanting to be consumed. I struggle against the current and my own core sabotages me, seeks to break my fingers to keep me from clawing my way free."
The darkness shuddered.
There was horror in that voice that caused so much horror. Desperation. A note that in any other Digimon would mean they were about to ask Ryo for help. Because that was what the Chosen Children were for. If Ryo was one (but was he?) then they could count on Ryo. They could look towards him for hope, but to his own partner he was despair.
He wanted to tell Millenniummon that things were going to be okay. Not just because Millenniummon was his partner but because he was a Digimon. A scared Digimon.
Part of Milleniummon wanted to break, to give in. Part of him wanted to have his life back (no matter how many other people's lives would be lost). Part of him had posed as Ken to try to find some way to have Ryo and remain himself, to only give in and become something soft and kind on the outside, while his true core, hidden away, could still plot and use people and manipulate the world to his liking.
Disguise the outside so the inside could remain cold, hard steel, because if he didn't find some way to give in enough to appease his core's need that core would break. Either itself or him, the mind that resisted, the self that had wishes that were more than just instincts.
"I do feel sorry for you. I wish this wasn't happening, but that's half a lie. I wish it didn't need to happen," he said, stepping closer, putting a hand on the side of one of those heads. "I do want to find a way for us to be partners without anyone dying or having their mind violated. Anymore. Even you."
"You will always choose the world over me."
"We have to live in the world."
"No, we do not." Millenniummon's contempt: was it only for the world, or partially for Ryo, that he was attached to it?
"Well, I want to. I don't… feeling alone is terrible." Even with Ken, Gennai, Wormmon and V-mon still on his side after the revelation of the tournament, feeling that everyone else had been in on something together and he was the one on the outside, locked out? Why hadn't they told him the truth, why hadn't they treated him as one of them, after everything he'd done for them? "I need friends to be okay, and since you need me to be okay now, then yeah, we kind of do need the world intact. I know this feels unreasonable and high-maintenance or whatever to you, but really. It's not. It's a change for you, I get that, it's different, but different doesn't have to mean bad."
"It is not bad, and that is only more proof that my thoughts are being twisted. Humans are as soft and useless as Numemon, with even less physical prowess, and yet I found myself enjoying their company. Things I had always despised began to become necessities."
"Was it really so bad?" Ryo asked him. "Was being kind to people and seeing them smile really so bad?"
"It felt… but I am not a creature of feelings."
"No, you are. Everyone is. You're a creature of power, right? Feelings are power for Digimon, and probably humans too."
"Semantics. Twisting words because you wish for me to give in. And yet." The dark serpent sighed.
"You're my partner. Aren't I supposed to want what's best for you? Is it really so bad, to give in before you break?"
"I have already bent. I have already changed, I have already compromised myself. It is not enough," he said with quiet desperation, a hint at the mad need and desire restrained only by a will of steel. "You wish me, this programming wishes me to bend, and bend, surrender more and more of myself to you until finally there is no more give and I break. Until the mask consumes me."
"What's the worst that could happen?"
"From my perspective or yours?"
Right, he'd mentioned that he might destroy all of time and this was better than alternatives to Millenniummon. "From yours," he said, stroking the side of his neck. "You are my partner. That does mean I care about what happens to you. I don't like to see you like this any more than I'd like to stand by and watch you kill people."
"And yet you gloated of the effect you had on me."
"And you've gloated about killing the Digimon who were helping me, when failing them made me feel miserable. Like I couldn't help anyone." Not a hero, just an inadequate substitute for the real heroes. "I'm angry at you, Millenniummon. I'm hoping that if you understand what you've been doing to people it'll make you change. That's different from wanting you to suffer just so you'll suffer. I want this to happen so all of this can stop. So everyone will be okay."
"It claws at me, over and over, until it becomes impossible to be rational, until I am willing to lose my rationality just to cease to be aware of it. Until madness seems like blessed relief from loneliness, when I never suffered from loneliness before."
"So if I'm with you, if you're not alone, then what? What's the worst that can happen then?"
"It is hard to think. Of that. So much of me thinks that you are the only thing that matters, that it does not matter what I must give up to be your adoring Wormmon." The serpent shuddered.
Ryo had to frown, and bop him gently on the snout. "That's my friend you're insulting. He can't help being born weak: being a Wormmon just proves that he's even braver and stronger. A lot braver than you."
"Your loyalty to a Wormmon overrides any loyalty you might have to me."
"You're being stupid. I'm not going to ignore you being stupid just because you're my partner. Or being a jerk." Ryo put his hands on either side of that head. "Would it really be so bad to stop hurting people? You've mostly stopped, right? You told me so. Even Hikari agrees that you weren't a sadist like Vamdemon. What would be so bad about sitting on my lap while I do my homework and you can do your science? My parents are really spoiling me, so I can buy snacks for you. I could carry you in my bag, and you could just look up and see that I'm there instead of spying on me from the Digital World. I can… I can be a good partner, right?" The note of pleading in his voice surprised him, but no wonder it was there, really. "A lot of Digimon said they wanted a partner like me. I learned how to take really good care of Digimon, I promise."
"I know. I watched you serve as a substitute partner. Watched them use you and your skills and care to gain power, but then all of them returned to their own partners or to the wilderness, didn't they. None of the ones without partners you raised to Ultimate came to aid you in your second battle against me, or in the tournament, now did they?" Millenniummon chuckled. "For a Wormmon to aid you, while Ultimates wash their hands of you… Perhaps you do fear that only the weak see you as worthy, and only for how they can use you. That is simply the way of the Digital World, Ryo. You have no one to blame but yourself for fighting for them. For letting yourself be used. For aiding them without asking anything in return, even that illusion called loyalty. You sold yourself and your power so very cheaply… my partner was allowed to sell himself so cheaply. Your unthinking generosity was used and the Holy Beasts intended to use you up. It enrages me. My will and my programming both wish to reduce this world to ashes, to use up all of the Chosen Children save those too young to have been involved in your betrayal, but you do not wish it and so I cannot even protect you by avenging the wrongs done against you. If they think that they can use you like this, then they have no reason not to seek to use you again!"
The other Chosen Children had been too guilty. Ken had been too shocked. None of them, not one, had been angry on Ryo's behalf. His partner was. His partner bared his fangs and wanted to rip apart the people who hurt him, and Ryo had to close his eyes, wipe at them with the back of his arm. "I… Maybe… Thank you." He swallowed. "Thank you."
"Why does it affect you so, to hear your own value? To hear that how you were treated was wrong?"
Outrage there, and even if Millenniummon probably still didn't understand that it was wrong to use other people who weren't Ryo, Ryo still stepped forward, looking through bleary eyes, to lean against one of those necks, sit down on those scaled coils.
They were warm this time. Probably from the sunlight.
"Those vermin treated you as if you were no better than one of them, when you were my partner, their only prayer of survival against me!"
Ryo put a hand up to hold that mouth closed, even if Millenniummon wasn't speaking with either of those mouths. That wasn't what he wanted to hear.
"Do you think… Do you think I deserve to be…" to be what? Ryo didn't even know what he was asking.
"That you deserve better than to be used by those who don't know your value? Yes." Of course, and Ryo was a fool to fight for them. "Or is it… Do I think that you deserve to be my partner?"
"Is it true, that if it weren't for your core… It probably is," Ryo said with an empty laugh, dropping his hands to his sides. "I know how you treat everyone else. I'd just be another dead enemy if I weren't your partner. Of course you wouldn't love me, you don't love anyone. Even my own partner doesn't think I'm worth caring about! Ken can't help it, he's the Child of Kindness. He'll be kind to anybody. The other Digidestined were heroes, and they still trusted the Four Holy Beasts instead of thinking I had a right to know what was going on. You want me because of your programming, they want me because of the power they can get from me. I thought that someday I wouldn't just be Taichi and Daisuke's substitute. That there would be a Digimon who was for me. Who wanted me instead of just what I could do for him. I should have known better. They were right: I'm not a real Chosen Child. I'm just a weapon no one wants."
"Why do you want to be wanted? Why does anyone?" MoonMillenniummon sighed. "Human instinct. I've studied your kind. Programming in your core makes you need others, because you're too pathetically weak to survive on your own. We both share this cursed desire, but you do not understand that it is a curse, because you're programmed to feel good when the need is sated. To derive pleasure from being loved. There is pleasure in it," he admitted about as willingly as if the words were being extracted with pliers. "I have tasted the bond between that Wormmon and Ken, and my new pets. There is pleasure in seeing you smile, in watching you press against me like this, hoping that I will give you what you are programmed to need. There was pleasure and rage in seeing you begin to cry simply because their idiocy enrages me. What a waste, that my plans were ruined because those fools used you, when they should not have dared to even speak to you. To think they were worthy of your favor? I have not been able to savor the thought of destroying the enemy since I removed the Four Holy Beasts!"
"But you don't want to be my partner," Ryo knew, and ached with it.
"…You're in pain. Stop being in pain. Right now, if I said that I was willing to be your partner, you would have to think it was a lie, someone said only because I am programmed to protect… Ah. Perhaps there is some usefulness in being unable to lie to you. I cannot know if I truly want to be your partner or not. Not when my judgment is skewed, my thoughts twisted by this instinct. Yet… you have said that you would wish to be my partner in order to stop me and preserve the world you need to survive. Because you need to not be alone. If I attempt to value our bond, value you for your potential usefulness to me… If I must be bound to a human such that when they die I will no longer be reborn, I suppose it is best to be tied to one whose power makes them very difficult to kill. You are intelligent and willing to serve, so you would be more useful than other humans once I managed to convince you to serve me. If I must be bound to one among seven billion vermin, you are a higher quality of human than most of them." The head he had touched leaned down to press a cold kiss to his cheek, the other wrapping its neck around him. "We are upsetting Kera now."
Ryo opened his eyes and looked up to see a wide-eyed younger version of Ken peeking at him over the coils. 'Mommy and Daddy are fighting,' he thought.
Millenniummon's tail pushed the frozen Kera forward, and Ryo found a human's arms wrapped around him too.
Not Keramon's tentacles. That might have been a little much.
"You don't want any of what I can give you. You don't want to want it. It's not willing, it's not real. I know it's stupid, hypocritical of me to be okay with forcing you, with using this as a weapon, and then turning around and complaining about what it means that it's being forced from you at gunpoint. I feel so… I just feel…"
Ryo swallowed. "Is it my fault? Is it because I'm evil? Because I'm okay with you suffering to make you change when that's cruel and you're my partner. Like going back to places I'd already gotten past just to find Digimon for the Digimon I was training to fight and kill so they could get stronger. It was necessary because I wasn't strong enough to just make them strong, but suffering and death to get what I want… I wanted a partner for so long, but I'm a horrible partner, aren't I? I…"
"Do not be ridiculous," said the darkness wrapped around him. "You, evil? I have offered you the world, Ryo, and vengeance on those who used you. You are too good for your own good. The good of either of us." He sighed. "I do want the bliss that will come from having you for my own, Ryo. I also wish to remain myself. Sometimes I wish to kill you, or that I had never met you, but if you die, my core will follow you. Better to have my partner be a known quantity, better to keep you where I can protect you than exist not knowing when my existence will end. Once my conquest of the Digital World was complete, I would have hunted you down regardless before commencing my assault on the human world, to be sure that you were not eliminated during the opening salvo."
To be sure Ryo wasn't living in one of the cities Millenniummon had planned to wipe off the map to demonstrate his power.
"If I was a young Digimon, then a human who had trained in strategy, who had learned how to make Digimon powerful? I could not ask for a better partner. I have simply had thousands of years in which to surpass you. True, until you have learned more you will be useless to me save for the pleasure you can give me, but that would be true of any human, and at least you have learned the basic concepts and have an aptitude for warfare. I have never enjoyed the lamentations of my enemies, but that is because they bore me and an enemy must be alive to lament." Instead of properly blown up into a thousand bytes of data. "But seeing you upset pains me, Ryo. If that is what you wish me to learn, then I will admit that I have begun to learn it, if that will make you happy."
"I feel so pathetic, this is the second time I've broken down," at least he hadn't been crying the first time, just overwhelmed, knowing that he couldn't handle this, that he was useless when his partner needed him, when he had a chance to have his partner.
"You are a child. I am an Ultimate. To send you to battle against me, to expect you to match me, is lunacy. Is cruelty. You are in even more danger of breaking than I am, Ryo, because you are young and fragile. You cannot bear a thousandth of what I can endure. Surviving me would be impossible for you, if you did not possess your power. There are words you need to hear. It pleased Wormmon when Ken was angry on his behalf, and Gennai felt the same way. I have already crushed your enemies, Ryo, but there is more to it than that… Being told that how you were treated was wrong. The knowledge that someone wants to help, wants to change things for you. I will, if you will let me. You may use my power, and the world can be shaped to your liking."
"I don't want the world. I want my partner."
"You have just said that you care for the world more than me… Aaaaaaah," the serpent breathed. "You care for the fate of the world, but your core drives you to need your partner. Just as I desire to take the worlds for my own, but you must come first. So we are alike in this. You too are caught between your desires and your needs."
Hearing that he was like Millenniummon shouldn't have been a relief, but he still felt the trembling smile on his lips. "Is that so?" It was so. "Right. How do I do right by my partner, and the world?"
"I care for you and myself. You wish me to add the world to my list? Add yourself to your list. You cannot bend me to your purposes if you yourself are broken."
"I'll go visit Ken and Daisuke before I go home. They're a big help." Daisuke was simple like a sledgehammer, and sometimes he needed that when it felt like this was far too complex to ever work out. "You too. Thank you, Kera."
"Bring snacks," Kera said, meeting Ryo's eyes with a child's seriousness. "Snacks are good. Keramon likes me, so he's very happy when I feed him snacks. When your partner is happy you'll be happy and both of you will be happy."
And if Ryo bought snacks, he'd inevitably end up giving some to Kera.
It must be nice, to be innocent enough to think that everything would work out.