On Daisuke in this ficverse... Being Ken's jogress partner made him automatically an asset, so Mille was looking at how to maximize his usefulness. Daisuke's an energetic extrovert with a friendly nature, a helpful streak a mile wide and leadership skills that... Taichi made a very good call picking him for the 02 team's leader, the problem was that Takeru and Hikari needed therapy.
Mille!Ken was already social linking with humans and Digimon, but Daisuke actually enjoyed that kind of thing, and having him take point let Mille be less obvious about being a mover and shaker once the reason/excuse he had to be one was dealt with. I'll spare you the technobabble, but the Daisuke-and-Ken combination is powerful enough to kill Super Ultimates in animeverse (I firmly believe they could do something permanent to Mille himself and that's how 02 should have ended, since the Kimeramon arc means Daisuke can tap Ryo's power), and then someone who understood how the entire system worked min-maxed them. Since this was to Ryo's benefit (like sparing Ken in the second game) there wasn't any self-sabotage.
Mille's planning to create BlackWarGreymon because if the spire system is a person, the modern Chosen Children who have had the benefit of a peaceful Digital World aren't going to want to kill someone who's never done anything to them. It also means the person running the Digital World is an innocent instead of an evil god (even if said innocent is keeping things the way Mille wants them), instantly less objectionable to heroes. And less work for him.
If they don't figure out that Diablomon/Keramon has been turned into the Dimension Lord of the Network dimension (same thing as the Digital World in Tamers, separate dimensions entirely in Adventure 'verse), he has no reason to tell them.
In a timeline that got overwritten, Mille was ruling the Adventure and Tamers worlds, human and digital, by the year 2004. In this 'verse, he's mostly left Tamers timeline alone other than general scientific curiosity, but since Ryo wasn't around to stop him from taking over Adventure timeline... He's just gotten servants with Taichi and Daisuke's powers by manipulation instead of cloning brainwashed cyborgs. He hasn't turned the planet into a bombed wasteland, but he could.
The fact that cities haven't been stepped on... in a while doesn't mean that Millenniummon's return isn't Godzilla Threshold. The other Chosen Children don't remember anything but Mugendramon, but they can ask Gennai what happened.
The 02 kids in the anime had the luxury of scruples and were volunteers. The Adventure crew were drafted and are generally busy not dying.
"Sure you're not overcomplicating this?" Daisuke wondered, sitting down on the park bench next to Ken since it was obvious that this was going to take awhile and Ken wouldn't be free to practice with him until the younger kid was doing better.
He didn't mind: Ryo needed a lot of help, and anyone who understood that V-mon was the best partner ever was a friend of Daisuke's. Also, none of this would have happened if Ryo hadn't protected Ken when he was in the Digital World.
Miyako had asked Daisuke if he was really sure he knew anything about the real Ken at all, when he hadn't even met him before he got taken over, but Wormmon was Ken's partner, so of course he would have noticed if Ken wasn't acting like the real Ken? That was just duh.
It was pretty obvious that Ken felt different the moment that Millenniummon was out of him: Daisuke knew it wasn't his imagination when he'd asked Hikari and she sensed the same thing.
Daisuke wasn't quite sure what Hikari sensed, but what he'd sensed was that Ken-Ken liked Ryo but only wanted Daisuke.
That meant all the desire for Ryo in there was Millenniummon's. "You both want to be partners," Daisuke told Ryo. "You both want it a lot. That's why it'll happen."
Now Ken was looking at him funny. "What?" Daisuke wondered.
"I thought you didn't like Millenniummon."
"I don't, but that's between him and me. I'm not going to leave Ryo all tied up in knots because of it." Daisuke frowned at Ken. He might not be the Child of Kindness, but he wasn't a jerk. "It's my Crest, so I know what I'm talking about. Don't listen to Miyako. I know that sometimes things are just impossible, but that's your Crest. And partners is Destiny," he added. "Wallace owes the old Millenniummon for infecting Chocomon with that virus and the one pretending to be Ken for fixing Chocomon. The sooner you guys get that destined happy ending, the sooner everyone can stop worrying about him breaking out another virus or turning the golden spires evil or something." He noticed that Chibimon was holding up his arms and lifted him off Ken's lap to put him on his own. There weren't any people nearby, but still too many for Chibimon to say his name to get his attention.
"That's what I was thinking, but I don't know if I should be thinking about it that way, when he's my partner," Ryo said. Looking at Ken, he asked, "Are you really sure you're okay?"
"Really, Ryo, I'm fine. It's actually surprising. I think he wanted to be sure that if I was temporarily back in control, perhaps because I got hit with a digivice or some new Chosen Child's power, no one would notice anything suspicious."
"Wouldn't not remembering that day be suspicious?" Ryo wondered.
Daisuke frowned. "Didn't anyone do that for you? The week after you got back, someone thought that maybe they should use the digivices on all the Chosen Children, just to be sure no one else was like Ken. I was bouncing off the walls! Taichi was trying to make everyone knock it off, or at least be careful, after Hikari started glowing and passed out. Jou said that the power of the digivices was still power, and Leomon was able to digivolve to Ultimate a few times after being purified by the digivices twice."
Ken blushed. "Daisuke and I were hugging people, but Takeru…"
"Takeru was a jerk until it wore off. Miyako was worried about what it would do to her, after she was the one to figure out that it was intensifying Ken's crest power, mine too, but she was fine compared to Takeru."
"I hope it doesn't make me act like a jerk," Ryo said. "Because I think I need to ask you guys to do it. He merged with me that time, you saw it. The Dark Seed was supposed to get me, not Ken."
"Your crest power doesn't make you glow and pass out, does it?" Daisuke asked, just to be sure. Taichi was really mad.
Ryo shrugged. "No idea: I didn't have a crest." Or a digivice.
"Miracles," Ken said. "I looked – he looked it up. It's as powerful as mine, Hikari's and Wallace's. The power comes from the Chosen Child, not the crest: you were using it when you fought Millenniummon. Was there anything strange that happened to you?"
"Other than beating a god the other Chosen Children couldn't?" Even after they had Omegamon to call on? That was weird.
The first time, what hadn't been weird? It was Ryo's first time in the Digital World and everything.
The second time, Taichi was frozen and Ken wasn't, but after Ken fought the first couple of Millenniummon's minions and it was clear Millenniummon didn't take him seriously at all, that explained why Ken was spared, right?
Instead of begging the question of why Taichi was frozen and Ryo wasn't, or why Millenniummon hadn't done the same thing to both of them that he did to Taichi. Now, Ryo knew that Ken was spared because Ryo had needed someone fighting in the other dimension Millenniummon split the Digital World into. His bond with Millenniummon had protected Ken too, because Ryo needed Ken.
The third time? When all of the Chosen Children who defeated Apocalymon were fine, and Ryo was pulled into the Chosen Children tournament even though the other Chosen were right, and he didn't even have a digivice? It wasn't like he would have felt insulted by being left out, if anything it was an insult to Ken that Ryo was there and Ken wasn't. Not that Ryo wanted Ken there: he wished both of them could have been left out, it had only been a few days since they got back from fighting Millenniummon.
Honestly, losing to Mimi had been a relief because then he could have just hung out with Gennai, Wormmon and V-mon until the portal opened again and they could all go home, but she'd felt bad about the fact she had such a huge advantage in their fight because she had a partner and he didn't and had given him a second chance, and he didn't know how to tactfully decline. That hadn't exactly helped the people who thought he'd only been invited in the first place because the Odaiba Chosen Children owed him one.
He'd been kind of stuck anyway, hadn't he? When that was the entire point of the tournament.
The whole deception hadn't made any sense: no one would set up a big lie without a reason, would they? What could the reason possibly be?
"I haven't felt right since the end of the tournament," Ryo said, hands in his pockets. "I know Millenniummon was asleep during the tournament, but he has minions. One of the fake evil Digimon said the whole thing was happening because the Four Holy Beasts didn't understand love, so I have to wonder if that was one of his spies. If they knew the Four Holy Beasts were counting on me to beat Millenniummon again, it would make sense for the Digimon still loyal to Millenniummon to try something."
Ken looked at him with sympathetic eyes, holding Wormmon in his lap. "You've had a lot of shocks, one after the other. If this will help, then we'll do it."
Daisuke nodded when Ken glanced at him. "As long as your power doesn't tire you out like Hikari's. Maybe it'll help?"
"What do you mean?" Ryo asked.
"When we purify you, it might let you call in our powers. The Digital World draws on data from all over the world," Ken explained. "Some of the Crests – especially Miyako's and Daisuke's – didn't seem like virtues, but they're not based on Japanese virtues. My crest is Caritas: Daisuke's is Eros. Sora, Jou and Yamato have the Crests of Storge, Agape and Philios. Destiny didn't make sense as a crest either because Destiny is an outside force shaping someone's life, but Wallace's crest is Wyrd, which is a kind of Destiny that's inescapable because it's not something from outside, it's you and what kind of person you are. What kind of person you're going to become, and the path you have to walk because of it, to be true to yourself. That's why his power summoned his partners as soon as he made contact with the Digital World, because becoming Gummymon and Chocomon's partner was something that would come true because they were already connected. Wyrd means both 'inescapable fate' and 'the power to control fate. Sorry, I know it's…"
"Complicated? No it's not," Daisuke said. "If someone else is making you do something, then you don't have to do it if you can get out of it, but if you make a promise, then you have to stick to it. Free will isn't doing stuff randomly, it's doing what you want. Like that Beowulf guy – he could have just not been a hero, but he was a hero, so he was stuck 'cause people needed him. Or like how Wormmon and I are going to have a restaurant!"
Ken grinned and had suppress a laugh. "Well, Wormmon's cooking is really good, but I don't know if that's the same thing, Daisuke…"
"Your cooking is great!" Chibimon insisted, waving his arms. "You guys have to share it with the world!"
Daisuke shushed his partner, although the effect was lessened by the fact he was holding that finger to grinning lips, really happy about the compliment.
"He may have a point," Ryo joined in, because once Wormmon was feeling a little better he'd cooked Ryo a welcome-back dinner, but then his eyes widened. "Is that why Millenniummon told Diablomon to make sure that Wallace couldn't come fight him along with you?" Kindness? No wonder Millenniummon hadn't seen Ken as a threat, but a crest that might force partners together? "So he didn't have to start really being my partner?"
Ken looked down at Wormmon sadly. "When you think about it, Ryo… I think the part of Millenniummon that wanted to protect you was trying to keep the two of you apart. He captured the other Chosen Children, but then he just left you alone when Agumon summoned you to fight him? Just like Tailmon didn't capture Hikari, even though that would have meant they'd spend time together. He didn't freeze you like Taichi and just come and pick you up when we fought him. There was only one Dark Seed and if it was thrown just a little earlier or later I wouldn't have seen it coming. Maybe both sides of Millenniummon wanted you to stay away from him."
"…Yeah," Ryo agreed, hanging his head. "Parts of him don't want me around."
"Not like that!" Ken said, shaking his head. "You know what Millenniummon did to Digimon! He was incapable of anything but cruelty: that was part of why I had to fight him, even if I wasn't any good compared to Taichi and I'd just get Digimon hurt. I think the part of Millenniummon that was your partner knew that if he got his hands on you, he'd hurt you."
Daisuke shuddered, then stood up and grabbed his soccer bag. "Come on, we should find somewhere indoors." There were too many people around for them to pull out their digivices and shoot glowing beams of light at somebody. "Maybe we can go over to Taichi and Hikari's place."
"So… feel any different?" Taichi asked.
Ryo looked down at his hands. "I'm not glowing, and I don't think I'm about to fall over."
"Any symptoms?" Koushiro asked, looking at Ryo with his fingers already on his laptop keys. "You just absorbed a certain amount of power, and how you earth that charge might tell us something about your crest."
"Have you tried to purify anyone without a crest for a control group?" Ryo asked, shrugging. "I'm really not feeling anything weird."
"We have, but trying to create a control group without crest powers is complicated by the fact that even though abilities don't run in families, overall strength may."
Taichi groaned. "I haven't been able to pry my Mom out of the kitchen. What if she feeds any of that to Hikari? She's already sick!"
"Is that why you brought a bucket of cold water?" Ryo asked him, looking at where it stood next to the mass of blankets Taichi had pulled from the hall closet and topped off with cold medicine.
"Well, I can't throw it on my mom," the legendary leader of the Chosen Children said. "She'll kill me. Also you brought Daisuke."
"What's wrong with Daisuke?"
"There's a possibility the affinity of the Chosen Child may affect the precise nature of their output. Well," Koushiro said, correcting himself, "It definitely does, which is why the physical crests can be designed to anticipate the output of certain types of power and help turn that particular energy into the power of evolution. As of yet I don't really have enough data for how channeling that power through another Chosen Child affects the energy, although Taichi and Yamato were able to harness power that came from Hikari and Takeru and turn it into digivolution energy."
"And Ken and Daisuke have… huggy crests," Ryo realized. "Wait, Agumon told me about that! If Hikari's power let her brother's partner evolve, then what if what you just did affected my partner?"
"The risk is negligible," Koushiro told him, motioning for the others to calm down. "He's already evolved to the point that another evolution couldn't really make matters worse. If anything, we might get lucky, and a different evolution might have different abilities that are easier to overcome." If Millenniummon lost the time/dimension powers that let him cheat, it might actually be a fair fight.
"You knew!" Yamato realized. "You knew that could happen and you didn't say anything?"
"What if Ryo was possessed?" Koushiro asked him. "I couldn't discuss it in front of him without MoonMillenniummon being forewarned, and I didn't want to talk to Taichi about it behind Ryo's back since apparently I did that before and I really don't like the entire concept. Anyway, it was only a theory. Doing this to everyone else would have used up the majority of the power stored in our digivices, so I seriously doubt we had enough of a charge to digivolve MoonMillenniummon."
Ken sighed. "Then we probably didn't have enough to influence him, either. Especially since only a percentage of the energy was all that likely to transfer through his link with Ryo."
Everyone stared at him. Ken blushed, looking embarrassed. "I remember thinking like a genius who understood all of this for a few years, I know how to have ideas."
"You said 'influence,' not purify," Koushiro said, looking a little taken aback.
"If evil Digimon get to do it?" Ken asked them. "I'm not Takeru, but Millenniummon would deserve it." Wormmon nodded.
"If I had a Light Gear I'd stick it into Devimon in a heartbeat," Yamato agreed. "And he was just a servant of darkness, not the boss."
"…Hey, aren't we supposed to be the good guys?" Taichi asked them, looking around the room. Someone, anyone? He looked at his sister, propped up on pillows, when no one else gave him any support. Tailmon gave Taichi a look, because she certainly hoped he wasn't expecting her to feel bad about someone trying to do something to the Digimon who handed her and Hikari over to Vamdemon.
"Mugendramon… those poor Numemon," Hikari said, and smiled, shaking her head. Her big brother was out of luck with this crowd.
"How am I supposed to get my partner to tell the difference between right and wrong when I'm willing to do whatever it takes?" Ryo wondered, looking at Hikari. Not just him: even the heroes. Even the Child of Light?
"Doing the right thing just because it's the right thing: I don't know if he'll ever understand that," Wormmon said, glaring around at every corner of the room, probably to increase his odds of actually glaring at wherever MoonMillenniummon was watching from. It might have been more effective if Wormmon was less adorable. "But Ryo is Ken's friend, and doing whatever it takes to help a friend or a partner, that's not hard to understand, right?"
"Maybe," Ryo said, finding himself smiling.
The little bug smiled back at him. "When Ken's friends are happy, Ken is happy! And when Ken is happy I'm happy. I don't like Millenniummon, but you're Ken's friend, Ryo, so I'll have to put up with it."
"Wow," Ryo said. "That means a lot, when he got between you and Ken." He walked forward and leaned down to pat Wormmon on the head. "No wonder you're the partner of the Child of Kindness."
Wormmon's antennae stood on end. "Oh, do you really think so?" His little feet rose up to touch his cheeks as he blushed happily, dancing around a bit on Ken's lap. "Ken is the nicest partner ever, do you really think I deserve Ken?"
"Of course."
"Oh, you're the nicest, except for Ken and V-mon!" Ryo found himself with a bug with stickly little legs attached to the front of his shirt, looking up at him with big eyes. "And Daisuke, but we missed you, Ryo! You and V-mon were my first friends. I wanted friends before, but…" Ryo wrapped his arms around the sad bug. "I found my partner Ken, and then I had friends! I got to stay with Ken in the real world, when everyone else but Gummymon was separated from their partners. So I know I'm lucky, that I get to be so happy, and I know you'll be happy someday, Ryo." Wormmon reached up with one of his little legs to pat Ryo's cheek.
"He didn't have friends before you…" Even if that was probably because he'd killed anyone who dared speak to him in a familiar fashion. "He was a little upset that you were upset. I know it. That you weren't going to want to play with him anymore. So, so maybe…" Maybe he could see some value in having friends, in what came from being kind to people. "It could happen?" It wasn't impossible, right?
Just very, very difficult, like any other battle against Millenniummon.
But this time, if he won, Millenniummon wouldn't just come back to life and try again. This time, if he won, it would be over. The worlds would be safe and he'd have his own partner.
"You're right, Wormmon," he said, hugging his friend's partner. "I will. Someday."