"Duskmon, what's that?" Wanyamon asks. Duskmon's recently acquired accident, a living ball of fur with a striped tail the size of his body, a pair of tufted ears, and two luminous eyes that take up half his face. Despite the latter, the kid's somehow diurnal. Duskmon can't claim to be a fan.
Wanyamon's all but bouncing where he sits on Duskmon's shoulder. They don't visit busy towns like the Wind Terminal often, so he's seeing mostly new things in every direction. The same should apply for Duskmon, except that the sun's so bright he can't see much of anything, and most of what he can is utterly banal. He follows the direction Wanyamon's looking in, but all his shoulder eye can make out is a ghostly figure who's significantly taller than it is wide. Humanoid.
"What are you pointing at?"
"That," Wanyamon insists. "That person. What kind of digimon is it?" At a whisper: "It's looking at us."
That's of no concern on its own. Duskmon's appearance attracts suspicion outside of the continent that shares his title. Normally an individual's nature influences the path of their evolution, so no one will ever mistake Duskmon for a paragon of virtue. The stares are easy to ignore.
When he squints, he can make out the bodily proportions of the figure and a face which he chooses to assume contains features. Combined with the height... well, that's interesting. "Does it have skin?"
Wanyamon manages a particularly vigorous bounce. He doesn't have a neck to nod with, but it's the same sentiment. "It's sort of whitish."
"That's a human, not a digimon."
"A humon?"
"Human. No 'mon'. It's not a digimon."
The street curves, and the human passes out of sight behind them. Wanyamon rolls onto his side. He says, drawing every syllable out, "A... hu... mon."
"You're doing that on purpose," Duskmon says dryly.
Wanyamon giggles because he is the most easily entertained being Duskmon will ever meet. It caught Duskmon by surprise, the first time he heard Wanyamon laugh. He was expecting more... abrasiveness, maybe. It makes their interactions much easier, though, so he's not interested in complaining.
How many humans does the digital world play host to? Duskmon's sure it must be more than just the Warriors. Ophanimon's ploy, as he understands it, was to bring over as many human children as she could sweet-talk from their homes and hope that some of them would both attune to a Spirit and choose to fight in her name. How many of them boarded the return trains when the Spirits didn't choose them? After finding themselves in a bright new world, all that work to reach it... there must be more who stayed than just the Warriors.
What are the chances that the human back there was staring out of recognition?
Not extremely high. But high enough. Wouldn't take much time to confirm.
He turns around. Wanyamon asks, "Where are you going?"
"Where did you see the human?" Duskmon remembers well enough, but this gives Wanyamon something to do. Wanyamon points out the narrow thoroughfare between two shops. (The Wind Terminal doesn't really have anything long enough to be called an alleyway. Most of its buildings on the forest floor are rounded huts with at least a few feet of space between themselves and their neighbors.)
The human's gone.
"Tell me if you see it again," Duskmon says.
"Do you know it?"
There's no way to answer that. He doesn't try.
But Wanyamon presses. "Does it work for Master Cherubimon too?"
"I've told you not to mention that where people can hear."
"Sorry," Wanyamon says quietly, ears drooping. A few seconds later, he perks up again. "But does it?"
"I'd be surprised."
They find lunch. Wanyamon eats three times his weight in grilled fruit skewers and promptly falls asleep. Diurnal, yet still sleeps through half the day. Duskmon sighs and moves him to the crook of his arm. He hopes Wanyamon will grow out of it at some point, but he really doesn't know if the kid does this because he's genuinely young or if it's because he's at the baby stage of evolution. Duskmon would prefer the former if he had a choice. He doesn't especially intend to put Wanyamon under enough stress for him to evolve.
While Wanyamon's out of it, he finds a shaded clearing with less foot traffic to rest his eyes in for a while. Not to sleep – it took forever to flip his sleep schedule to align with Wanyamon's, and if he takes a nap at this time of day then he'll wake up at sunset and that'll be all his work down the drain. When he feels himself starting to doze off he shakes his head and climbs to his feet, planning to go find another clearing to brood in.
Grass crunches a little ways behind him, approaching. He pauses.
"Dusk – " a girl's voice stutters, choked. "You."
He turns around. She might be the human from earlier. She's the right size for it. "That's right," he says.
Even this close he can't read her expression, though he's at least more certain this time that she has eyes and a mouth and nose. He has no appreciation for sunlight. But he doesn't need to see her to hear the terror in her voice.
Yeah, he knows where this one recognizes him from. There must have been at least one girl in that group, then, though he doesn't know which Warrior she could have been. He only remembers the fire one and Kouji. There were five, weren't there? Light, fire... other light... and... Maybe it was just four.
It doesn't really matter.
The girl doesn't say anything else. Duskmon takes a stab at it: "Are you here for revenge?"
He does remember that they were all idiots, however many there were. Even Kouji. Especially Kouji. Duskmon's not excluding himself, either, but his mistakes didn't manifest in the form of picking an unwinnable fight. God, why didn't they keep running?
The girl stumbles a step back. "Please don't kill any of the people here," she says. "They're all innocent. None of them will fight if you take the key, so please don't..."
"Will you stop me?" asks Duskmon.
Silence again.
Too scared to say 'no'. Ophanimon knows how to pick them. "I'm not here for the key today," he says. "Your terminal is safe." The terminals are too useful to be scanned so early. In any case, data collection isn't Duskmon's job. Cherubimon's given permission to Ranamon and Mercuremon to call him in if they run into trouble with scanning an area, but otherwise he has free reign to act as he likes. He's already done more for the cause than any of the others.
He had some points docked for killing Arbormon, admittedly, but Duskmon's worth ten of Arbormon, so Cherubimon didn't spend too much time reprimanding him over it. "Don't do it again," was what the lecture amounted to.
"Not even for Mercuremon?" Duskmon asked. Arbormon's fault was that he was useless to the point of sabotage, but Mercuremon is outright treasonous. More than that, he's incompetent about it. Is it even treason anymore if the people you're planning to betray have known for months?
"Not even for Mercuremon," Cherubimon said.
Understood.
Well, acknowledged. Duskmon doesn't understand, but he trusts Cherubimon must have his reasons.
Wanyamon stirs. It doesn't take the kid long to notice the girl, and it's obvious when he does: he tenses up completely, fur puffing out like he rolled himself over a balloon again. Duskmon's considered trying to have him talk to people so he can learn to stop overreacting, but it's not a plan he's ever put into practice. He has no interest in forcing the kid to do anything he doesn't agree to.
Wanyamon thinks he's a pushover, which would be a hilarious accusation if only it came from nearly anyone else. Duskmon never knows what to feel about this entire situation. All he's found out for certain is that he doesn't like complicated emotions very much.
"Do you have time right now?" Duskmon asks the girl. He shifts the arm holding Wanyamon, and the kid snaps out of his reverie and climbs over to his usual perch on Duskmon's shoulder.
"What?" says the girl.
"I realize you don't want to talk to me, but I have questions about Kouji."
A harsh intake of breath. "You killed him," she snarls, a straight one-eighty into anger. There it is, a response that Duskmon can make sense of.
Wanyamon makes a questioning noise and crowds up close to Duskmon's ear, hiding behind his helmet. "Duskmon?"
"Why would you even ask?"
Why indeed.
Wanyamon whispers, "She's crying."
Duskmon takes his word for it. That probably means he won't get anything useful out of her. Well, asking her about Kouji was just a thought. No harm, no foul. He turns to go.
"Duskmon!" Wanyamon squeaks, and Duskmon stops. He hasn't heard that tone before. "You made her cry!"
"My bad."
"You shouldn't just leave her, that's not okay!"
"If I'm the reason she's crying," says Duskmon, "why do you think it's a good idea for me to stay with her?"
Wanyamon droops. "Oh."
Duskmon expects that to end the matter, but he doesn't make it two steps before Wanyamon launches off of him and bounces over to the girl. Alright. He watches the girl's hands for sudden movements while Wanyamon leans back on his tail to look up at her face far above. The kid doesn't say anything at first, but eventually he musters up a tentative "Hello!"
She drops to her knees in the grass and covers her eyes with an arm, sniffling and breathing shallowly. She rubs her sleeve across her face. "Hello," she says, so quietly that Duskmon nearly misses it.
"Sorry Duskmon made you sad."
"You didn't do anything," the girl says. She reaches out to pet him, but stops when Wanyamon skips back. The kid's only fine with contact when he's the initiator. "Sorry. What's your name?"
He glances back at Duskmon. "Wanyamon."
"I'm Izumi," says the girl. "Did Duskmon kidnap you?"
"'Kidnap'?"
"She's asking if I took you from someone else," says Duskmon, sitting down cross-legged.
"I was with Swanmon before?" the kid tries.
Izumi gasps.
"I didn't kidnap him," Duskmon says. Maybe. He's not sure. By certain definitions it might constitute a kidnapping. But those aren't the definition she's using. "Swanmon is the caretaker at the Village of Beginnings, where all digimon hatch from their eggs. She gave him to me willingly." If under false pretenses.
"Why?" Izumi whispers.
There are several questions she might be asking. Duskmon addresses none of them. "I don't owe you answers."
"Why are you being mean?" Wanyamon whines, scandalized.
"...It usually takes you a long time to warm up to strangers," Duskmon says. He can't actually recall it having happened before. This isn't the first time Wanyamon's heard him being curt, either, but it's the first time he's seemed to mind.
Wanyamon stares back at him, and then suddenly makes a muffled sound and scurries away from Izumi. "Did you forget she was a stranger?" Duskmon asks as Wanyamon jumps onto his knee. Wanyamon doesn't reply but flattens his ears and sinks into himself. That's a yes, then. Something for Duskmon to pay attention to.
"She feels safe," Wanyamon murmurs.
She is one of the least safe people Duskmon can imagine him ever knowing. "You can't always trust your feelings," he says shortly.
Wanyamon's started swinging his tail. "Did you really kill that person?"
"I did."
"Why?"
"I had his ally pinned. He jumped in front of him and took the attack."
"Why did you want to kill that person?"
"They wanted to kill my master."
"Because he's going to destroy the world?"
"That's it," says Duskmon.
Wanyamon scrunches up his mouth. "I like the world. I don't think we should destroy it."
"Mm hmm."
Last time the topic came up, Wanyamon's response to learning of Cherubimon's goal was, "Okay!" Barely a month later, he's criticizing it instead. Give him a few more months and Duskmon expects to have to present a reasoned argument justifying their endgame. That'll be fun.
"You should apologize," Wanyamon declares.
Duskmon frowns. "To her? For what?"
"Killing that person."
"I will not," says Duskmon flatly. She is not the one he owes penance to. She's just as responsible as him for what he did. If she or anyone managed to talk them into running, Duskmon would still have caught up and forced a confrontation, but there's a chance he would have killed one of the others in place of Kouji if the circumstances changed.
"Duskmoooonnnn..."
"I'm not sorry for anything I did to her. She's not the one I killed."
"So you would say sorry if she was that person?"
Sometimes Duskmon wonders if he might hate the kid after all. He doesn't know what else the sudden ache that takes up residence in his chest could be if not hate. "I don't know," he says. That feels like a lie, though. He adds reluctantly, "If I thought it would help."
Wanyamon hums, rubbing his chin with his tail. "But she's crying," he says eventually. He seems very stuck on this point.
"Still?"
"A little."
"What a tragedy," says Duskmon. "Well, you tried. It didn't work."
"You should try!"
"I already said no."
"But – "
"Quiet."
"No!" Wanyamon snaps. He bristles like some odd furry growth. "You have to!"
"I really don't."
"You do!"
"No."
"You're dumb!"
And that's a curtain call if he's ever heard one. "I agree. Come on, let's go. There's nothing else here for you to do."
He makes to stand, but immediately Wanyamon hops off and over to Izumi. Duskmon sighs and props his chin on his gauntlet.
Wanyamon turns to look at him and... does something with his face. Sticks his tongue out? Duskmon hopes not. This conversation has devolved enough as it is. Then Wanyamon jumps into Izumi's lap, and Duskmon's half on his feet and lunging almost before the thought to do so crosses his mind.
The girl screams. Duskmon checks himself.
Izumi's fallen back, Wanyamon hugged tight to her chest – right in the path his sword would carve through if he meant to hurt her – what is wrong with her? That is a five month old child she's using as a shield. "Let him go," he says, perfectly steady.
He's holding back so as not to alarm Wanyamon. He couldn't care less that they're in a populated area, that her scream might already have attracted attention. The most that could happen is some vigilante deciding to butt in, and if it does it'll be on its own. They're digimon. Any minor disturbance of the peace will be forgiven by the end of the day. Conflict of this level is barely noteworthy.
Izumi scrambles farther away, as if she doesn't know he would pursue her to the ends of the earth for this. Wanyamon wriggles out from her grip and sits on top of her arms instead. "Duskmon?" he asks, sounding bewildered more than anything.
"What are you going to do to him?" Izumi rasps.
What is he going to – ? "Nothing," Duskmon grits out. "Wanyamon, come."
The kid struggles with the decision for an interminable moment, visibly wobbling back and forth. But finally he says, "Bye, neesan," and bounces over and onto Duskmon's proffered gauntlet.
"Not her, alright?" says Duskmon quietly. "She's not safe." Wanyamon pouts and doesn't look him in any of the eyes.
"What," says Izumi. "You think I was going to hurt that child?"
Duskmon transfers Wanyamon to his shoulder. "I think you would hurt anyone who got too close to you."
Izumi's breath hitches. She doesn't reply.
"Is this really okay?" Wanyamon asks as they walk away.
"You don't owe her anything."
"But..."
He trails off. Duskmon leaves him to his thoughts.
It's a great time for his master to contact him. Duskmon stops in his tracks, spends a second reflecting on how genuinely pointless Ranamon and Mercuremon are, and then slides the wildly vibrating Digivice out of his gauntlet. Cherubimon's symbol is splashed across the screen, though hard to find against the dark background. It stops shaking, and the angel's voice sounds tinnily out of it. "Duskmon. Ranamon's been foiled in the Water Archipelago."
The reason the Warriors exist at all is to protect and maintain the regions they share their titles with, which for Cherubimon's purposes means they have a significantly easier time accessing and claiming an area's code than a digimon otherwise would. Certainly Cherubimon didn't gather them for their combat ability. How did Ranamon fail at the one, only, singular purpose for her existence.
"I'll take care of it," he says, not bothering to hide his contempt.
Cherubimon chuckles. "Don't be so hard on her. She's doing her best."
"Her best is trash."
"Why not tell her so when you see her? It might improve her performance."
"She'll be gone by the time I arrive." She and Mercuremon have done a remarkably efficient job of avoiding him since he threatened them. If only they could be half as effective at their actual roles.
"Ah, well," says Cherubimon. "How is Wanyamon?"
Wanyamon pipes up, "We saw a wind turbine this morning!"
"Did you now?"
"Yeah! A piyomon made it to power their smoothie stand. They had grapefruit smoothies. They were really good! How do wind turbines work?"
Duskmon turns his feet to the trailmon terminal and hands the Digivice to Wanyamon, who sits on it to keep it in place. He is not entirely sure what Cherubimon does when he's alone in the castle, but the fallen angel always seems willing to set everything aside to hold long, rambling conversations with Wanyamon. He hopes that the plan to destroy the world will come up at some point so that he can offload to Cherubimon the task of justifying it, but alas, no dice.