Etemon had been looking for Mimi and the two digimon accompanying her for a while. He finally found them in the dead garden of the City Hall, surrounding a little cross sustained by small rocks. He didn't like what he was about to do, but understood it was the best way to proceed.
The monkey monster jumped on Picodevimon from behind and rolled over with him, until he stood up a few meters in front of Mimi and Banchoulilymon. Etemon held Picodevimon with both arms and covered his mouth to prevent the bat's escape and spell-casting abilities. His brother had warned him to take the little monster's life, knowing that he could've been taught magic by Vamdemon. However, Etemon couldn't do that. Especially not in front of Mimi, who obviously cared a lot about Picodevimon.
"What are you doing, Etemon?" Mimi inquired. Her confused and hurt expression was hard for Etemon to witness.
"Release him!" Banchoulilymon ordered, getting her yo-yos ready to attack.
"I have no interest in hurting him or anyone else." Etemon informed. "But I need a hostage to make sure that you're going to listen."
"You didn't have to go to such an extreme to talk to us!" Mimi protested. "Please, let Picodevimon go already!"
"I can't!" Etemon said. "Letting him live was the most I could compromise. Mugen-chan doesn't trust sorcerers."
"Mugen-chan?" Mimi asked, not understanding.
"I'm not the one who's going to talk to you." Etemon explained. "I called one of my brothers over. He's already here."
With a bang, a heavy and large mechanical monster landed behind Mimi and Banchoulilymon. Two huge cannons erupted from his back. They were pointed in the girl's direction. Banchoulilymon put herself between Mimi and the giant monster, taking a fight stance.
Etemon was having some trouble holding Picodevimon, who was struggling to free himself.
"I never thought I'd see you again, Banchou." The metallic monster told her. "Partnered with a chosen child now… who would imagine that you could be even more fearsome?"
"I don't remember ever meeting a Mugendramon." The fairy said.
"I was a perfect level monster in Seraphimon's army and didn't get to fight you directly." Mugendramon told her. "Nowadays, I'm one of the Dark Masters and serve the Sanctuary."
"So you switched sides, huh?" Banchoulilymon questioned. "Did you feel bad after the destruction of my continent?"
"Please, I'm not a sentimental guy." Mugendramon scoffed. "During my whole life, I've always taken decisions based on how they would help me to survive in this dangerous world. The night the Cloud Continent went kaboom, I knew I had to get away from the emotionally unbalanced angel that liked to blow up stuff. And as you can see, despite some setbacks, I chose the winning side."
"You realize that your side's plan is to annihilate the world, right?" Banchoulilymon inquired. "How is that going to help you to survive?"
Mugendramon stayed quiet for a few seconds. He glanced up, and then said:
"I have orders from the Queen to make sure that the chosen children leave the Digital World." Mugendramon informed. "I want you two to come along with me, or the fur ball will bite it."
Mimi flinched after hearing that, looking with concern at Picodevimon. Banchoulilymon, however, smirked.
"How about this plan: I take you out and free Picodevimon." The fairy monster spoke with confidence.
"You can't risk Picodevimon's life like that!" Mimi scolded her partner.
"We both know Etemon doesn't have it in himself to kill him." Banchoulilymon told the girl.
Etemon gulped. She wasn't wrong about him.
"Fighting me wouldn't be wise." Mugendramon warned.
"Scared?" Banchoulilymon taunted.
"You're the stuff of legends, of course I'd like to avoid fighting you." Mugendramon said. "But I should let you know that I have the core code of all the cities in the Digital World inside me. If I die, they'll all be destroyed along with everybody in them."
Mimi and her partner were taken aback by that information. Picodevimon shivered. Mugendramon pointed his metallic claws to his neck. Once again, he glanced up.
"I'm really attached to my life, but I have orders." The robotic monster said. "The smart thing for you to do is to follow me, chosen child. Your partner can come along too."
"What about Picodevimon?" Mimi asked.
"The little bat stays here, as further motivation for Banchou not to attack me by the back." Mugendramon stated.
Without other option, Mimi and Banchoulilymon agreed to his terms.
"We're going to solve this, don't worry." The girl told Picodevimon. Then, she looked at Etemon and said: "Don't let anything bad happen to him. Otherwise, I don't think I'd be able to forgive you."
Etemon felt a sting in his heart after hearing that.
"I'll do what I can, brat." He promised.
"Come on, kid." Mugendramon called, getting ready to propel himself to the sky. "We have another stop before you go home. One of my subordinates reported that he found a blue-haired chosen child close to Paradise Lake. The human wasn't in very good shape."
Mimi's eyes widened and her skin paled. She opened her mouth and let out a concerned murmur:
"What happened to Jyou-san?"
Chapter 41: Jyou's vow
Gomamon couldn't keep on holding onto Houomon. His grip failed and the dark storm winds carried him away.
Without thinking, Jyou let go of the giant bird and grabbed his partner's leg. He was thrown into the storm too, but he didn't let go of Gomamon.
They were spinning while falling. If they hit the ground in that speed, they would certainly die.
"YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE LET GO, YOU IDIOT! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!" Gomamon shouted. Unable to see anything in the darkness, all he knew was that Jyou was still holding his leg with all his strength.
"STOP INSULTING ME! I DID THAT TO SAVE YOUR LIFE!" Jyou shouted back.
"HOW WAS YOUR DUMB SACRIFICE GOING TO SAVE MY LIFE?!" Gomamon retorted.
"IT'S NOT LIKE I HAD A FULLY FORMED PLAN, YOU KNOW?! I JUST WANTED TO SAVE YOU!" Jyou yelled.
"I KNOW BUT THAT DOESN'T MAKE ME LESS ANGRY!" Gomamon said back.
"INSTEAD OF BEING ANGRY, YOU SHOULD EVOLVE AND SAVE US!" Jyou suggested.
"HOW EVOLVING WOULD SAVE US? IKKAKUMON AND ZUDOMON DON'T FLY! THEY'RE HEAVIER! I'LL JUST FALL FASTER!"
"ACTUALLY, ACCORDING TO THE LAW OF GRAVITY-" Jyou began to say.
"JYOU, I DON'T CARE ABOUT THAT!" Gomamon interrupted, feeling increasingly more distressed. He had to think on a way to save Jyou, but nothing aside from evolution came to his mind. If only he had a form that could fly, he would be able to save his partner.
"YOU CAN EVOLVE TO ULTIMATE!" Jyou reminded him. "NANOMON SAID YOU'D TURN INTO A LITTLE ANGEL, REMEMBER? ANGELS FLY!"
"WE DON'T HAVE ANY GUARANTEE THAT HE WAS TELLING THE TRUTH!" Gomamon contested, feeling his eyes getting brimmed with tears. "WHAT DO I DO, JYOU? WHAT DO I DO?!"
They began to see the ground approaching them. It seemed that they were heading to a large surface filled with sand.
"DON'T GIVE UP, GOMAMON!" Jyou pleaded. "I BELIEVE IN YOU! WE SURPASSED EVERYTHING UNTIL NOW, WE CAN DO THIS! I KNOW THAT WE'RE GOING TO BE OKAY!"
How can he be so optimistic? Gomamon wondered. He doesn't understand the danger he put himself into… he never does! He always throws himself into the fire without thinking! If he hadn't done that, he wouldn't… why? Why does he have to be like this? Why?!
Gomamon didn't have time to find an answer.
They hit the ground.
"My orders were to kill the former agents of the Academy that had lost their memories." Ogremon explained on their way to Lake Paradise. "I guess many other digimon like me had the same orders. The group I had to take out consisted of 15 monsters. They kept asking who they were and where they were… no matter how many times I tried to tell them, they would forget and ask the same questions again. They were terrified…"
"But you did kill them, right?" Andromon asked, once they reached what used to be an inn a long time before, but in that moment was nothing more than an abandoned house. "Our Queen's orders are absolute. She knows what's best!"
"I mixed poison in their food." Ogremon said, taking two glass flasks from a bag he was carrying and handing one to the other monster. "Most of them died peacefully, but there was that Leomon… he gave me such an intense look. It didn't convey fear, but defiance. He knew that I had led him to death and silently demanded an explanation. He kept staring at me until he died, I never told him anything. What could I have said? I was just following orders, he was an enemy… he wouldn't remember, anyway! I keep seeing those eyes everywhere. I'm afraid they'll be all I'll see in my final moments…"
"Maybe you will get to talk to him when you're both reborn in a new world." Andromon said, drinking his poison after sitting in front of the lake filled with dark water.
Ogremon sat by his side and did the same.
"Thank you for doing this with me." Ogremon murmured after drinking his poison.
"A long time ago, when I was sent to stop Nanomon in the factory where he was developing a fake Spirit of the World, I was attacked and trapped by his creation. I was afraid I was going to die alone there…" Andromon narrated. "I was saved by the chosen children, the most recent ones. They almost killed themselves trying to stop me from destroying their infected friend. One of them, most impressively, tried to trade places with the possessed child. I could only admire his bravery."
"I never met any chosen child, only heard stories about the old ones." Ogremon said. "They were bloodthirsty mass killers…"
"The ones I met could've been different, I don't know…" Andromon muttered, taking a different glass flask from his own bag. It contained crystalline liquid instead of the black one he had just drunk.
"Why did you bring that with you?" Ogremon asked. "If you drink that, instead of a peaceful death, you'll suffer a long and painful one!"
"Do I deserve a peaceful death?" Andromon wondered. "I was captured and kept away right before the insurgence of the Academy, I couldn't even get to Nanomon, the one responsible for the weapon that destroyed the Cloud Continent. I failed my mission and couldn't be by my Queen's side when she needed me the most. What right do I have to die in peace? I deserve punishment."
"You shouldn't blame yourself for things out of your control." Ogremon told him. "I can't think of anything more pointless."
Suddenly, they saw something fall behind the dunes at the other side of the lake.
"I'd better check." Andromon decided, getting up. "Mugendramon-sama ordered us to inform him if anything out of the ordinary happened. You should go inside, it's cold here."
"You better come back quickly." Ogremon told him. "You promised me I wouldn't die alone."
"I don't intend to fail at keeping promises anymore." Andromon said, looking at him with sadness.
Gomamon woke up facing the dark and thunderous sky. He didn't feel any pain, but the cold wind bothered him. The digimon turned his body so he could stand on the white sand. He turned around in search of his partner and found Jyou unconscious a few steps away, being guarded by a digimon he hadn't seen in a long time.
"You're… that Andromon from the factory?" Gomamon asked, approaching the mechanical man sitting close to the boy lying on the sand.
"It's been a while…" Andromon said in a weak voice. "It was quite fortunate that I was around when you fell. I had some healing water I'd saved from the underground temple in File Island. I didn't have too much, but I hope what I had was enough for you two..."
The perfect level digimon showed Gomamon an empty glass flask he was carrying. Gomamon approached Jyou, whose head was resting on the boy's bag. Jyou's glasses had been put on his chest.
"Thank you for saving him… for saving us…" Gomamon murmured.
"I'm not sure I really saved him. Human bodies are a lot more fragile than ours." Andromon commented. "At least his body isn't as broken as it was when I found him."
Gomamon gulped, imagining how Jyou must've looked like a little before. His tiny body trembled and his heart ached.
"The Digital World isn't a place for weak creatures like human beings." Andromon stated.
They stayed in silence for half a minute. Gomamon couldn't find the will to contest that.
"I was told what happened to my Queen. She didn't deserve that… nevertheless, she's still fighting." The perfect level monster said. "The last mission she assigned me was to destroy the underground temple. Now that I've completed it, my life has fulfilled its purpose. I don't deserve this peace, but now there isn't another way."
"The underground temple?" Gomamon asked, remembering what he had been told about that place. "But that's where the lake with healing water was, right? Why would you destroy it?"
"There were many digimon that regretted drinking the poison and tried to cure themselves by drinking the water from that fountain." Andromon explained, showing a pained expression. "Their corruption wasn't cured, they only took longer to die… horrible, agonizing deaths… no punishment could be more horrendous."
"Poison…? Corruption…?" Gomamon questioned, disturbed. "This doesn't make any sense… why would anyone drink poison…?"
"It was meant to be a quick and painless death for those that wanted to go before the destruction of the world." Andromon replied.
"The world is going to be destroyed?!" Gomamon shouted.
"You're… really uninformed." Andromon murmured, a bit amazed.
Then, he began to cough.
"Are you okay?" Gomamon asked.
"Yes… well, I'm dying…" Andromon said, falling on his back. "I had drunk my poison a little before you two fell from the sky…"
At that moment, Gomamon was sure he was about to lose his mind.
"What do you mean you're dying?! You can't just die after saying all that! You can't die on me!" The little digimon cried in frustration. "What do I do?! What am I supposed to do?!"
"When the boy wakes up, can you take him to a house beyond those dunes?" Andromon asked, pointing to the dunes behind the other digimon. "It's better than to be out in the cold… and that way, I won't have… my promise wouldn't…"
Andromon stopped talking and closed his eyes. It only took a few seconds for his body to turn into black particles and rise to the sky.
Gomamon was hyperventilating. Too much information had been dropped on him and he barely had time to process everything. What was he going to tell Jyou once the boy woke up? He turned to his partner and paid attention to the boy's tranquil breathing. Jyou seemed to be okay.
But would he still be okay upon learning that the world was ending and that digimon were willingly drinking poison? Would he be okay after knowing that Andromon died after saving him and that the lake of healing water had been destroyed?
Jyou wouldn't take that well. He had said time and time again that he wanted to save everybody. The boy would surely feel guilty for not being around to stop all that and would think of a crazy plan to try to fix the situation. But Gomamon couldn't see any way to fix the apocalypse.
Maybe Hikari could save the world; she was Fate now, after all. Perhaps she was already working on a way to fix everything. That should've been the reason for her to be in such a hurry to come to the Digital World. And the reason why she didn't want to bring anyone along was because she knew nobody could do what she could.
There was nothing Jyou could do to save the world; there was no way for him to help anyone. Gomamon was sure that knowledge would crush his partner. Jyou had come such a long way to believe in himself. But because of that boost in self-confidence, he became more reckless than ever. He convinced himself that he could save everybody, not taking into consideration his own well-being. Jyou even let go of Houomon to try to save him.
He wanted to scold Jyou for that behavior, but would that solve anything? How many times had Gomamon called him out for that and how many times had Jyou promised to be more careful, only to put himself in danger again? The sad thing was that Gomamon knew that his partner had been sincere when he apologized for worrying him and promised to do better. But when Jyou knew someone needed help, it was as if his brain shut off and his body moved on its own. And Gomamon could only watch, wondering if he would be able to protect Jyou or if that would be the day he would lose his partner.
That day, Jyou only didn't die because of a miracle.
How long would it be until the boy ran out of luck?
"Gomamon…?" Jyou asked in low voice, opening his eyes. He searched for his glasses and found them on his chest, putting them on next.
"Are you hurt?" Gomamon asked by his side. Jyou noticed his partner's anguished look and felt a grip in his heart.
"I'm alright, don't worry." Jyou replied. "What about you, Gomamon?"
"I'm… not injured." Gomamon muttered, glancing down. "I'm sorry I couldn't evolve… I couldn't save you…"
"Don't feel bad about it! That was my fault!" Jyou told him. "I shouldn't have pressured you to evolve, I'm so sorry!"
"You shouldn't have come after me." Gomamon said. "It was irresponsible… reckless…"
"I couldn't let you to die!" Jyou affirmed.
That statement angered the digimon.
"If I had died, I would've turned into an egg and live again!" Gomamon shouted. "Can you say the same about yourself?!"
Jyou didn't answer that question. He knew what Gomamon meant, what he had done wasn't logical. But how could he stand still when his friend was in danger? If something bad had happened to Gomamon and Jyou did nothing to stop it, the boy would never forgive himself.
He knew how he made Gomamon worried by acting like that and felt terribly about it. Jyou didn't want to make his partner suffer, but he also couldn't stop trying to save people. The boy would never allow himself to return to the coward mindset he once had, a mindset that hurt his friends and almost cost Koushiro's life.
"How did we survive a fall like that?" The boy asked, trying to change the subject.
"Andromon gave us healing water…" Gomamon muttered.
"Andromon? The one from the factory?" Jyou asked, surprised. "What are the odds of meeting him? And he just happened to have healing water?"
"It's a weird coincidence." Gomamon agreed. "Maybe Hikari sent us in his direction somehow…"
"Hikari-kun…" Jyou said, concerned. "I hope she's okay. And the others too."
"That girl is a goddess now." Gomamon reminded him. "She must be way better than us."
"She's still a little kid… a scared kid demanding too much of herself… crumbling under that pressure…" Jyou murmured.
The boy still remembered the day he had met Hikari in the convenience store. She had told him that she saw digimon in her dreams. If he had questioned her more and found out about Fate sooner, things wouldn't have gotten so bad for her. Jyou felt sick thinking about the years of manipulation Hikari had suffered to get to the point of controlling her partner and fighting them.
She had hurt Gomamon and the other partners, but Jyou couldn't bring himself to be unsympathetic towards her. Wasn't he someone who had also done a lot of harm because he thought he had to be more like an adult? How much worse would his behavior have been, how much greater would have been his pain, if he was trying to be a god?
"Andromon said there was a house after those dunes." Gomamon spoke suddenly, pointing to a couple of dunes close by. "We should go there."
"Did Andromon heal us and then just go?" Jyou questioned. "I wanted to ask him a few things… did he say something about what happened to the Digital World during the time we were gone? This storm doesn't seem normal…"
Gomamon shivered, his eyes grew wide and his lips trembled. He turned around, showing his back to Jyou.
"Are you alright?" The boy asked, picking his bag and putting its strip over his shoulder.
"Back on File Island, Andromon just ditched us without saying a lot, remember?" Gomamon asked in a high-pitched tone. "And he never apologized for trying to kill us…"
"You seem tense, Gomamon." Jyou commented, worried.
"I think I'm entitled to be tense after everything that happened, don't you think?!" Gomamon replied, nearly shouting.
Shocked to see his partner like that, Jyou crawled to him and picked him up. Gomamon tried to hide his face, but Jyou knew he was crying.
"I'm so sorry…" Jyou told him, feeling as if his heart was being torn apart.
The weight of how his action of trying to save his friend had wrecked Gomamon was unbearable to him. He wanted to promise to never do that again, but the words didn't make it out of his mouth. Hadn't he promised to be more careful before? Jyou knew that he wouldn't hesitate to take risks if he thought he could help someone. If he repeated that promise to Gomamon, he would just be lying.
Jyou stood up, still carrying Gomamon, and silently crossed the dunes.
They saw a huge circular hole and, behind it, a little rustic house. The hole in front of the house should be several meters deep and large. The sand inside it seemed to be wet, as if it had been filled with water not long before.
Jyou walked around the edges of the hole carefully and got to the house. The residence's roof was made of red tiles; its walls were yellow and dirty and had only two windows, each at one side of the entrance, which didn't have a door to cover it.
"This place looks abandoned." Gomamon said, breaking the long silence.
"Let's check inside." Jyou suggested, showing a smile to his partner as they crossed the entrance.
The floor was covered by sand. There was a round wooden table close to a window and two chairs near it. In the middle of the house, there was a green monster with horns and a large mouth lying on the floor.
"It's an Ogremon." Gomamon murmured.
"Who's there?" Ogremon asked, sitting up. "Andromon? What took you so long to come back?"
When he looked at Jyou and Gomamon, Ogremon stood up and assumed a fighting stance.
"A human?! Are you a chosen child?!" He asked, nervously. "I thought you had all died! Were you the ones that fell from the sky? Did you do something to Andro-"
Ogremon began to cough and had to put a knee on the floor to better sustain himself.
"Are you feeling ill?" Jyou asked, worried.
He drank the poison too… Gomamon thought, anxiously. Wanting stop Jyou from learning about that, he tried to change the subject:
"So, are you friends with Andromon?" Gomamon asked.
"Did you do something to Andromon?" Ogremon inquired.
"He gave us healing water and then left." Jyou told him.
Gomamon felt a sting in his heart. Ogremon deserved to know the truth, but he didn't want to disclose what happened in front of Jyou.
"He left?!" Ogremon was surprised. "That inconsiderate guy said he would pass with me on Lake Paradise! Well, it would probably be hard for him to walk all the way back… but for him to just leave…" He looked down. "I didn't want to have to pass alone…"
"Pass?" Jyou asked, confused. "Like to pass time?"
"So there was a lake here?" Gomamon hurried to ask, not giving Ogremon a chance to answer Jyou's question. "It just dried up? That's crazy!"
"It was filled with water earlier today…" Ogremon commented. "I heard murmurs that Metalseadramon's core code wasn't tied only to the seas. If he already died, then this world should be done for in a matter of hours."
Gomamon felt Jyou's arms loosening around him. The seal digimon felt his heart racing as he tried to think on something to say.
"W-What do you mean?" Jyou asked in growing panic. "T-The world… is the world going to end?!"
"You didn't know?" Ogremon sounded surprised. "With all the data of the dead obscuring the sky… what the hell did you think was happening?!"
Jyou unconsciously let go of Gomamon, taking a few steps back. He put his trembling hands on his head and breathed rapidly. Then, he ran outside and stared in horror at the dark clouds. Gomamon observed him with apprehension.
"The poison is kicking in… I'll be joining them soon…" Ogremon said, sitting on the floor.
"Poison?! You drank poison?!" Jyou shouted, turning around. He was bearing the most horrifying expression Gomamon had ever seen. The digimon knew that his partner's trembling body and the tears at the corners of his eyes were a small sample of the despair the boy should be feeling.
Ogremon began to cough again and wasn't able to answer his question.
"Andromon has the healing liquid… if I find Andromon, I can fix this…" Jyou mumbled. "Stay with him, Gomamon! I'll be right back!" The boy added, walking out of the house in large steps.
"Why would you…?" Ogremon asked, weakly.
"JYOU, WAIT!" Gomamon yelled, going after his partner the fastest he could.
"It's going to be okay… I'll find him and save Ogremon… it's going to be okay…" Jyou continued to repeat to himself as he walked along the edge of the hole where the lake used to be. "I can do this, I can do this, I can save him, I can, I can, I have to…"
Seeing how futile his attempts to protect Jyou's feelings had been and feeling his heart breaking, Gomamon couldn't continue to hide the truth. That would shatter Jyou's spirit, but it had to be better than allowing him to go on a pointless quest for a cure that didn't exist. Jyou was desperately trying to grasp at any grain of hope he could think of, but Gomamon knew that there was no hope in that situation. To allow Jyou to keep on deluding himself would only make things worse on the long run.
"Andromon used all the water he had on us!" Gomamon told him.
Jyou turned around to face his partner. A couple of tears rolled down the boy's face.
"H-He has to have more… he has to…" Jyou spoke in a pleading tone. "There has to be more… to save Ogremon… I have to save him… I can't let him die…"
"There isn't more, Jyou." Gomamon stated.
"There has to be! I'll find Andromon and he'll-"
"ANDROMON DIED!" Gomamon shouted. "He had drunk the poison too and had destroyed the fountain of healing water before that! And even if there was any of that liquid left, it wouldn't be able to save him, Jyou! It didn't save any of the others that tried that cure before! There's nothing for you to do! You can't save Ogremon!"
Jyou stared at him, dumbfounded.
"I'm sorry for not telling you sooner…" Gomamon said, walking in his direction.
The boy took a step backwards. The expression on his face had changed from a shocked to a hurt one.
"I wanted to spare you." Gomamon continued. "Please, understand!"
Jyou took another step backwards. He lost his balance and fell into the hole, rolling on the wet sand.
Lying on his belly on the bottom of the dried lake, Jyou felt as if the world was spinning around him. It was difficult to take air into his lungs. His heart was beating so fast that he could swear he could hear his own heartbeats. Jyou's body was trembling violently, getting covered by cold sweat.
The world was ending. Digimon were taking their own lives. Why was that happening? Was it because the chosen children had left the Digital World? If only they had stayed behind, maybe they would've been able to prevent all that tragedy. But they didn't have any choice but to flee that time. Nevertheless, they should've returned earlier.
What were they doing, taking their time in the human world, bonding with their families, while digimon were suffering? Didn't Jyou want to save everybody? Didn't he want to fight for the innocents? But he didn't even think about going back when he was in the human world. Jyou got distracted by the problems there and forgot to consider how the Digital World would be without the Academy.
Not that the Academy was good, but the Sanctuary was clearly worse. How many digimon had died because the chosen children weren't there to defend them? They should've found a way to return faster. If they had done that, things could've been better. If he had acted sooner… but Jyou never acted soon enough. He never realized the problems in front of him until they became too out of hand.
It was like that with his attempt at leadership, with his treatment of Koushiro, with his lack of concern that a little girl he had just met could see digimon in her dreams, with the emotional distress he continually put Gomamon through. Jyou had the habit of being blind to the suffering of others until said suffering became impossible to be ignored, even if he genuinely wanted to help everybody. When he did act to help, too much harm had already been done.
This time, he couldn't see a feasible way to mitigate that harm, unlike other occasions when he put effort in compensating for his mistakes. He didn't have the power to bring the dead back to life or to cure someone from a poison he didn't know. Jyou, who had convinced himself that he could do anything he wanted as long as he didn't give up, faced an obstacle he couldn't overcome.
He was reminded of the awful feeling of being useless.
"Jyou!" Gomamon called him, sliding down the wall of the dried lake.
When he got to the bottom, the digimon approached his partner. Jyou, who was still lying with his belly on the ground, hid his face with his arms.
"You knew from the start." Jyou stated.
"Andromon told me before he died." Gomamon said.
"You kept the truth from me." Jyou spoke with disappointment. Gomamon had always been straightforward to the point of being rude. The digimon was the last person he would expect to deceive him.
"Can you blame me?" Gomamon asked. "Look at how you took the news."
"So, you were sure that I would break down, that I wouldn't be able to handle it." Jyou murmured, ashamed. It had always been clear to Gomamon that the boy was far from being a strong person. How pathetic did he look in that instant?
"I thought you were going to blame yourself for the end of the world and beat yourself up for something that wasn't your fault." Gomamon told him. "Then, you would put all your energy searching for a way to fix things. You wouldn't accept easily that the situation is too out of your reach. You would end up killing yourself trying to solve the problem. I couldn't stand to think about that…"
Jyou finally looked at Gomamon, who was at the verge of tears.
"Is that what you think of me?" The boy asked in low voice. "You think I'm a reckless idiot who would throw my life away?"
"When weren't you a reckless idiot, Jyou?" Gomamon inquired. "Your motivations might change, but you keep on doing the same things, you continue to chase after danger. You scare me to death… I know that I'm sounding like a selfish coward… I can't help it, that's just who I am…"
"You're not a selfish coward, Gomamon!" Jyou stated, sitting up to better look at his partner. "You're an intelligent and reasonable person, and you're almost always right. You're able to stay calm and see things clearly when I panic. If it weren't for you to pull me back, I doubt I'd be alive now."
"It's exhausting to be your nanny all the time." Gomamon let him know. "I know that you're brave and selfless, but you have to think more seriously about the consequences of your actions! Have you ever considered how I'd feel if you died? How the others would feel?"
"I don't want to die, Gomamon." Jyou assured him. "But I don't want to feel like I could've done more. I don't want to feel that if I had worked harder, things would've turned out better." The boy's vision got blurred with tears. "You say I'm brave and selfless, but I'm scared all the time… I'm scared of failing, of letting others down… I'm scared I can't actually become a better person and that I'm still the same coward that nearly abandoned Koushiro-kun to die in that factory!"
"That wasn't what you wanted to do!" Gomamon protested. "You wanted to save everybody! Jyou, you only tried to lead the others to escape because you thought that was your duty-"
Gomamon stopped talking suddenly. He stared at Jyou with wide open eyes, as if he had just understood something.
"It's the same thing." Gomamon said. "The reason why you continue to act recklessly is because you think it's your duty to act like that!"
"What kind of crazy talk is that?" Jyou inquired, astonished. "I risk myself to save others because that's what I want to do! I decided on it by myself! It's not out of duty!"
"I know that you want to do that, but that doesn't mean it's not because of duty!" Gomamon insisted.
"That doesn't make any sense!" Jyou protested. "I acted out of duty when I went against what I really wanted because of what I thought was the right thing to do! But now I'm following my heart! I'm not forcing myself to do anything!"
"Then, you weren't forcing yourself to find a way to save Ogremon just now?" Gomamon asked. "You weren't forcing yourself to find a way to save the world, as if that was your responsibility?!"
"He needed help! I wanted to help him!" Jyou stated.
"Andromon drank poison because he wanted! Same thing with Ogremon and plenty more people! They didn't want to be saved!" Gomamon told him.
"They couldn't have wanted that!" Jyou affirmed, refusing to believe in his partner. "They were desperate and hopeless! They did that because we weren't here to stop them! If only we had defeated the Sanctuary-"
"Ogremon worked for the Sanctuary! So did Andromon!" Gomamon pointed out. "If we had stayed to defeat the Sanctuary, we would've killed those two way sooner! We would've killed many other digimon that worked for or supported the Sanctuary! How many of them would that be? Thousands? Millions?"
"No, that… we wouldn't have done such a thing…" Jyou mumbled, disturbed. "I want to save lives, not take them!"
"How do you think we would've defeated the Sanctuary without taking lives?" Gomamon asked.
"We would've talked to them! We would've made them understand!" Jyou replied.
"Don't you remember what happened in Aurora Town? Most digimon think that the chosen children are evil! They wouldn't listen to us; they would try to kill us! And we would have to kill them even if for self-defense!"
"NO!" Jyou cried. "We wouldn't kill them all… that wouldn't be right… no…"
The boy suspended his glasses to wipe the tears that were falling from his eyes.
"Do you understand what I'm trying to say?" Gomamon asked. "Things wouldn't necessarily have been better if we had stayed here and fought the Sanctuary. Those deaths would probably still have happened. There's no point in blaming yourself or feeling guilty, Jyou. You couldn't have changed anything."
The boy trembled after hearing that.
"Are you saying that I wouldn't have made any difference?" Jyou asked. "That my effort… that my determination would've been pointless… that they are pointless?"
"That's not what I'm saying, Jyou!" Gomamon protested.
"Yes, it is!" Jyou shouted. "You don't believe that I can save anyone! You never did!"
"The thing with you is that you don't want to save 'anyone,' you want to save everybody! And when you don't get to do that, you think you failed!" Gomamon cried. "You forget that you saved that Drimogemon, that you saved Koushiro, that when Hikari-"
"I didn't save Hikari-kun!" Jyou interrupted.
"But you tried! We tried!" Gomamon shouted. "We did everything we could! We fought the hardest we could! But she still beat us!"
"We didn't do enough…" Jyou said. "If only…"
"There was nothing you could've done!" Gomamon interrupted.
"Right! Because I'm just useless! Because I'm a failure, right?" Jyou inquired, bitterly. "Because my effort and energy are not enough! Because I'm just an at best average guy that will never achieve anything!"
After saying that, Jyou realized that his words sounded familiar. In Monzaemon's Hotel, the illusion of his father, preying on his insecurities, had told him those things. In the night before Gomamon evolved for the first time, Jyou had confessed to Mimi that was how he felt when he couldn't live up to his own expectations. But that had been before he began to be true to himself. Jyou shouldn't think like that anymore.
But he did. Just like he once condemned himself for not being his idealized version of an adult, now he beat himself up for not being the idealized self he strived to be since the day he defied Leomon to save Drimogemon. In his attempt to break free from his old chains, he had twisted the deepest desires of his heart into a new prison.
It wasn't enough for Jyou to be himself. He had to be the best version of himself possible. It wasn't enough to be able to help someone. He had to save everybody from everything. If he didn't, he reprehended himself as harshly as he did before his decision to follow his heart.
Gomamon was right. Jyou hadn't changed at all. In the end, Jyou did things because of a new self-imposed duty, not because he was becoming a better person. He was as bad as he had ever been.
"Jyou, listen." Gomamon said, softening. "Your effort isn't pointless. You aren't useless, much less a failure. You've accomplished so much… but sometimes, even though you work hard towards something, you just don't achieve it. That doesn't take away the value of your effort; it doesn't mean that you should've done more or that you were not enough. The thing is… it's impossible to win all the time."
"I wanted to succeed… just like before." Jyou muttered. "I wanted to be someone I could feel proud of, someone better… but I'm not… I'm not selfless or noble. I'm just the same guy with the same self-esteem issues, trying to achieve something so I could hate myself less."
"But you did good things!" Gomamon stated. "And you can still do many more good things, you can still help many people, as long as you're more careful and don't push yourself too hard!"
"My actions can't be considered good if my motivation is corrupted!" Jyou protested.
"Who gives a damn about your motivation?" Gomamon asked. "What matters is what you do, not why! And you did a lot of good stuff! You helped a lot of people! I'll say this from the bottom of my heart, Jyou. You better believe in me! Even though you frustrate me a lot with your recklessness, you're still the most amazing person I've ever known."
Jyou's vision got blurred by new tears. Back when he had just met his partner, Jyou wouldn't have expected him to be able to be so honest with his emotions. Gomamon had changed a lot during their time together.
The boy, on the other hand, was still an insecure and self-loathing person who demanded too much from himself. But he had tried to be a better person and it was true that he had done good things. Jyou really had tried to be kinder and more helpful to other people. And when he failed to be like that, the boy tried to make amends.
He had hurt Koushiro's feelings, but saved his life in Raven's Canyon and tried to be a supportive friend since then. He had failed to save Homura, but listened to her when she needed to talk to him before the end, and that had made her happy. Jyou couldn't help Mimi with her problems with Fate and Palmon in the beginning, but then was able to remind the girl of her worth and helped her to reach her partner. The boy had failed to notice Hikari's issues and to stop her from going alone to the Digital World, but he had reached out to her in that convenience store before and cheered her up. Once he reunited with her, Jyou could try to talk to her again and she could listen to him. They could find common ground. After all, he knew how it felt to hurt others despite having good intentions and to push himself beyond his limits because of unreasonable self-imposed expectations.
Jyou remembered that, when he had met Fate in Raven's Canyon, he had stated that life was a right by itself and that people's lives shouldn't be valued by how useful they were. The boy was referring to Koushiro back then, but shouldn't the same be applicable to him? Shouldn't he treat himself with the same kindness and understanding that he had tried to treat Koushiro and others from that day on?
Realizing all that, Jyou smiled. Maybe Gomamon was right. Maybe, he wasn't such a bad person. His effort was important and could make a difference on the lives of other people, even if small. That positive impact on others should be more important than what he felt about himself. And it was a fact that if Jyou died while he tried to do the impossible to save everybody, he wouldn't be able to save anyone anymore.
"The Digital World is ending. Many digimon have died. Ogremon is dying as well. And I don't know how to stop any of that. I don't think I can do it, at least not on my own." Jyou acknowledged. "But there's still something I can do, something in my power."
"Really?" Gomamon asked, smiling in relief.
"Ogremon didn't want to die alone, right? If I can't cure him, at least I can keep him company until he departs. That way, he could feel a little better." Jyou said.
"That's a good plan." Gomamon told him. "Better than searching desperately for a fix-it-all solution."
"Yeah." Jyou agreed. He felt lighter after coming to terms with his limitations. The boy wasn't a perfect person and would never be, but that didn't make him worthless. Although he couldn't do everything, there was still a lot he could do. And he shouldn't feel bad about that.
Jyou picked Gomamon up and rose to his feet. The boy looked upwards, not to the dark sky, but to the edge of the hole. Ogremon had been left without anyone in that house, but wouldn't be alone for long.
"I can't do everything I want, but I want to help as much as I can. That's what I'm going to do!" Jyou vowed.
A strong gray light came from his digivice and enveloped Gomamon. The digimon wrapped in light broke free from the boy's embrace and hovered above him.
"Gomamon warp evolves to… MARINANGEMON!"
The tiny pink digimon with a pair of fluffy wings, the drawing of a red heart on his chest and a golden ring with inscriptions around his neck smiled brightly at Jyou.
"You look so cute!" Jyou let his first impression of the ultimate form of his partner out, without thinking.
"Thank you! But I'm much more than a pretty face!" Marinangemon said. He spitted out a heart shaped bubble from his mouth, which grew and enveloped Jyou. The bubble containing the boy floated.
"Incredible!" Jyou exclaimed.
"I know!" Marinangemon agreed. "Now, let's go see Ogremon!"
They floated back to the entrance of the house. Jyou's bubble vanished and he fell sat on the sand. The boy quickly stood up and they walked in.
Ogremon was lying in the middle of the room. Jyou went to him and sat by his side. Marinangemon hovered next to his partner.
"What? You two came back?" Ogremon asked in a weak voice, half-opening his eyes.
"We are sorry for making you wait." Marinangemon apologized.
"I'm sorry, I can't cure you." Jyou said, glancing down.
"Who said I wanted to be cured?" Ogremon asked, smirking. "I had a good life and got to serve my Queen. Now, I just want to reunite with my comrades in the clouds and wait for the world to be reborn."
Jyou didn't understand all that he meant, but decided it better not to ask questions.
"If you're okay with it, I'd like to stay here with you and keep you company." Jyou told him.
Ogremon's eyes became brimmed with tears after he heard that.
"Heh, you're too sweet. Are you really a chosen child?" Ogremon asked. "Do as you want, then."
They stayed with him until his life came to an end. Ogremon didn't take his eyes away from Jyou's. The adult level digimon had a peaceful smile when he passed.
Afterwards, Jyou cried quietly as Marinangemon patted his back. They didn't move from that place for hours.
Suddenly, the impact of something heavy hitting the ground outside made the house shake. Jyou and Marinangemon ran to the entrance and crossed it quickly. By the house's left, they saw a huge mechanical digimon.
"That's a Mugendramon!" Marinangemon informed Jyou. "He's an ultimate!"
"Jyou-san!" Mimi called from above. The girl was being carried by a fairy digimon that was flying in the boy's direction. When they landed, Mimi jumped from her partner's arms and ran to the other child.
"Are you okay? Are you hurt?" She asked, worried, holding him by the shoulders. "Please, tell me that you're alright!"
"Y-Yes! How about you?" Jyou said back, happy to see the girl again.
"I'm so glad you're okay!" She exclaimed, pulling him to a hug and forgetting to answer his question. Jyou hugged her back. She seemed to be okay.
"So, you reached ultimate level too?" Marinangemon asked the fairy. "Banchoulilymon, huh? You look cool!"
"And you look adorable, Marinangemon." She told him, smirking.
Mugendramon shot one of his canons upwards, which created a wave of static around them.
"The Queen is always watching. This is the only way to stop her from hearing our conversation." He informed.
"Why shouldn't she listen? Isn't she your boss?" Jyou inquired.
"She must not know what I intend to do." Mugendramon answered.
"I thought the Queen had ordered you to take us back to our world." Mimi said. "Are you going to do something else?"
"That's my official mission, but I have other ideas." Mugendramon informed. "Etemon told me that you wanted to stop the apocalypse, girl. I assume that's a common goal of the chosen children. How about we join forces?"
The two children and their partners stared at him in shock.
"Aren't you a servant of the Queen?" Banchoulilymon inquired.
"You're seriously going to betray her?" Marinangemon questioned. He couldn't believe what he had just heard.
"She wants me to take my own life to destroy all the cities in the world." Mugendramon said. "I'd rather not to have to sacrifice myself, though."
"Self-preservation…" Mimi muttered, raising an eyebrow.
"Is it possible to stop the end of the world, then?" Jyou asked, hopeful. "Is there something we can do?"
Mugendramon chuckled.
"Together, we can save the world, chosen children." He stated. "So, how about we form an alliance?"