Prologue
Rei Kurenada stared down at his pieces fiddling with a pawn moving it back and forth ever so slightly. He stared outside, birds fluttering in the cool shaded sky, slight raindrops tearing down from the clouds sliding down the windowpanes like faces crying.
"What ails you?" The creator asked. "You seem to be awfully preoccupied in this important match. Could it be you are starting to understand the magnitude of the sins you have committed?"
Rei said nothing putting his head down covering them with his arms as if he had been silently dealing with a migraine.
Homeostasis approached the two of them and set down two drinks. "A gin and tonic. Just as you ordered," she said, Rei peaking his eyes and forehead through his arms annoyed.
"I detest you," he said latching onto the beverage and hesitated as he swished it, started to drink it and then in a fit of rage without hesitation slammed the glass against the side wall, the alcoholic fumes lingering in the air.
"Hostess Wench!" he snarled. "Clean it up!"
Homeostasis irritated clenched her fingers, but not forming them into a fist. She stared at the creator as if asking her she really had to obey.
The creator nodded his head, Homeostasis sighing, leaving to grab clean up supplies.
They said nothing as Rei only had animosity for the supposedly superior being in front of him.
The Digital Creator then next made his move taking one of Rei Kurenada's pawns with one of his.
"It's been forever since I took one of your pieces," he said. "This game has been boring at times."
"Maybe for you," Rei Kurenada said casually taking his queen and slicing across the board with his rook. "I imagine that must suck to be powerless for so long only letting your servants do the work," he said sighing out. "I've been too busy taking over the Digital World piece by piece to contemplate boredom. Adding to my life has been most fulfilling. And it will be even more so once both worlds are mine."
"It will not happen," Homeostasis said coming back over with two washcloths. She bent down and started picking up the glass piece by piece. "The Digidestined will overcome you."
"I said silence!" he yelling putting one hand on the side of his head.
Homeostasis said nothing and continued cleaning as if it never bothered her.
"You seem so unlike yourself," the Digital Creator said. "You are usually so levelheaded. It's as if you've returned to being a child," he said moving a pawn forward. "You used to be so emotional even in your disdain."
Rei Kurenada slightly chuckled. "Leave it to you to rekindle unpleasant memories. Go ahead and reminisce as much as you want. It will only delay the inevitable."
"Maybe I will then," the Digital Creator mused. "It might prove efficient to remove this obstacle to this game."
"Oh, you have no idea," Kurenada grimaced. "The only obstacle I truly have ever had, now that I really think about it," he said through groaning and growling, "Is you."
"Me?"
"Yes." he breathed out heavily. "Truly you. You and your pathetic friendship with mankind whose never deserved that chance."
"But it's not about who deserved it," Homeostasis said. "I've learned from Hikari. It's about having grace and sharing the light of who you are with others."
"Light?"
Rei Kurenada snickered and started laughing almost hysterically.
"Ok Homeostasis," he confessed, his composure more uniform. He straightened himself placing one hand folding it on top of the other. He grinned mercilessly towards her.
"Such nonsense," he said. "But let's look at your theory. Why don't you take a look at my data," he said. "Why don't you tell me if you see any light within me?"
Homeostasis turned to the creator for approval and he closed his eyes nodding his head.
"Very well," Homeostasis replied, staring towards him, towards the core of his very digital being.
She locked eyes with his core, the core immediately flailing out as if consumed in hatred attacking anything having any brightness at all to it.
She started panting heavily, bending a bit forward and barely able to put up her hands clenching them on the rectangular side service of the table, her eyes in horror as if she had seen something so terrible she would never recover.
"I-in an instant," she said, her form slightly shaken, "I saw him creator," she said. "I saw him for what he truly is."
"Oh?" Rei Kurenada said, his whole body covered in a translucent darkness almost like a pressured compact fog or flame, his body turning monochrome, his eyes a sinister hateful red color, yet Rei Kurenada in control of himself and the anathema literally pouring out of him.
"And what did you see?" The Digital Creator asked.
"Yes, what did you see?" Rei Kurenada taunted.
"The truth," she said still shaking. "There's not a shred, not a data bit, not a twinkle of light within you! Nor in your soul!" she seemed to exasperate.
"Oh?" he said curiously. "Is that how you see me? Well," he said his eyes getting more and more livid intensely staring at her. "You're not wrong," he said, his voice sounding almost monstrous like a maelstrom. "But you know something else," he added, Homeostasis almost fearful that she might be consumed by him, "The way that you see me, is the way that I feel about you. You're the monsters," he said his voice almost garbled as if by flames, a sinister flaming heat emanating from him.
As she stepped back instantly like an echo the heat came back and cooled, the flame-like fog absolutely cool.
"To be able to manifest your emotions so strongly yet instantaneously harbor them again is inherently terrifying," the Digital Creator said. "Look at what you've done to my servant."
"I'm fine Creator," Homeostasis replied still a bit stricken shaking. "I need a moment alone," she said as if being weighed down by what she saw. She approached the exit opening the hefty door, turning to glare at Rei Kurenada who only smiled back with malice, the door slamming shut shortly thereafter.
"Oh Homeostasis," Rei Kurenada snickered." That useless servant of yours is so fun to mess with. She truly wears her heart on her sleeve."
"She never used to," the Digital Creator replied. "Only after she had interacted with Hikari Yagami did she ever become this way."
Rei Kurenada leaned forward daring to move a piece. "But you've always been this way," he said. "You're ever holy above everything else? So untouchable? I can barely stay in your presence without wanting to vomit. You're the demon, not me."
"Are you still going on about that?" the Digital Creator asked. "Even after all of these years you still insist on projecting your venom? And you insist it's a panacea? Truly you have become twisted by your own pain Kurenada."
"Twisted does not begin to even describe it," he said solemnly looking at his hand. "However, whether human or digimon all of it is pointless. The greatest sin of all is thinking somehow each race can cover up the other's faults and lead to peace. Humans are not so kind," he said darkly. "They will smile and lie right to your face while thinking about how they will dispose of you or use you when you're not looking."
"It sounds like you had a horrid childhood, much more so than the Dgidestined."
Rei Kurenada scoffed. "Humanity itself is a pyramid scheme. People build up towers elevating themselves from the corpses and idiots of other people, even sacrificing their own to maintain higher levels of power. And anything mankind seeks to do, even if it has the power to elevate itself, the ones in power will choke any progress in order to maintain that power. We are a lost, dying species incapable of progression. Most people will die having a pointless existence, neither accomplishing anything or being destroyed by their own avarice's. They will be nothing but a number in the annals of humanity."
"But there are others," the Digital Creator countered, "Who go against that narrative and live fulfilling lives and passing those same traits onto the generations after them. Like the Digidestined. You saw what originally happened."
Rei Kurenada shook his head. "It's not enough to make a difference. It never is. Only I can make up that difference. And once they are all under my rule then will any significant gains be made? No, sadly, that will not be the case," he grinned. "I've determined humanity is not worthy. Only my select vessels will survive. It will be a peaceful world. A world of my own creation."
"It will not come to pass," the Digital Creator replied standing up. "What forces have condemned your soul to this darkness to take everything down with you?"
"Darkness..." Kurenada said, his dark ocean data swarming around him like a fire. "...It has nothing to do with it. You are the Creator of the digimon. You can't possibly understand the depths of my loathing for everyone, but mostly you of all. But you will find out very, very soon."
He got up and walked over to the window staring out one hand in his pocket. "When you dry all your tears," he said, "And the rage remains, you won't be able to cry anymore. But instead the rage will pour out," he said taking a breath. "And this fire, this rage, this loathing, started burning a long time ago."
He stared even more intensely out the window watching the rain pour down imagining that fiery ashes reigned down from the sky. "Yes," he said out loud to himself. "It all began on that day. All of my machinations. All of my despair. All of my suffering. I had been cursed with the knowledge of it all my life. The knowledge of the inevitably that life will end. The curse of...
...death."
