Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“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.

Chapter Text

Duskmon falls asleep quickly on the train. Though Wanyamon tries to do the same it doesn't take. He gives up quickly.

Unfortunately, there isn't much for him to do on his own. He tries to sightsee out the window, but it's getting late enough that most of what he can look at is the reflection of the train's interior, and anyway he still doesn't know how Duskmon can spend forever doing nothing at all besides watching the scenery. He commandeers two taro buns, blows dust bunnies across the carpet to chase, ranks all the seats in the car by bounciness, helps himself to another bun, fails to build a dust snowman, and then – horror of horrors – realizes he needs to find the bathroom.

Duskmon has the magical ability to keep any train car they choose completely empty as long as the rest of the train isn't too full. This effect does not extend beyond the range of the car. There are people in the other cars. People who Wanyamon might have to talk to for directions. After passing through three compartments, he's starting to think he might have missed a sign, or that it might be on the opposite side of the train, and either way....

“Wanyamon?”

He whips around, bristling in surprise.

In his effort not to meet anyone's eyes, he completely missed the familiar face sitting there. Izumi is wearing different shoes, not the sandals from earlier, so he couldn't recognize her from the floor.

“Is Duskmon with you?” she asks, looking back down the corridor rather than at him.

“He's asleep,” Wanyamon offers.

Some of the tension drains from her posture. She props her elbows on her knees. “Are you looking for something?”

Well, he was. “Don't you live at the Wind Terminal?”

“Yes.” She smiles at him. She looks tired still, but she seems much more put together than she did earlier. He didn't like seeing her unhappy.

He remembers well enough what Duskmon said about her, but Duskmon was wrong. It wasn't a human that Wanyamon picked out of the crowd back at the Wind Terminal, it was Izumi. He doesn't know what other humans look like, if they're as difficult to tell apart as digimon of the same species, but even if they are he thinks he could spot Izumi in a crowd of them just as easily. It's nearly the same way he felt about Duskmon the first time he saw him. The difference is that Izumi didn't look nearly as scary.

He jumps onto the seat next to her. No closer than that, not with Duskmon's outburst still fresh in his memory. Izumi doesn't reach out again either. She says, “I thought I should do something different. A change of pace.”

“Which stop are you getting off at?”

“The next one.”

“Ours is the one after that,” says Wanyamon. He doesn't know what they'll do afterwards. Maybe they'll take another trailmon, or maybe they'll take a boat. “What's at your stop?”

“A village,” she replies. “But I'm not staying there. There's someone who... I should – I'm going to talk to. You're... headed to the Water Archipelago, right?”

“Yeah!” She must have either overheard them talking to Cherubimon or guessed by the station they're getting off at.

“Do you know what island?”

“I don't know.” He doesn't pay very much attention to logistics. Izumi hums. “Who are you going to meet? Is it one of your friends?”

“No, nothing like that. It's just – ” a wobbly hand motion “ – it's nothing important.”

Wanyamon doesn't know how to respond to that lie.

She asks, “Have you been to the Archipelago before?”

“Don't think so.” He hesitates, fishing through memory for how to keep up his end of a conversation. Reciprocation? This isn't ever a problem when he's talking to Duskmon, and with Cherubimon it only comes up sometimes. “Have you? Is it nice?”

“It's sunny,” she says. Wanyamon makes a face. “Is that bad?”

Duskmon doesn't like talking about it, and so Wanyamon has followed suit and never brought it up in so many words since Duskmon told him. But despite that, the thought of not telling Izumi doesn't so much as cross his mind. “Duskmon can't see when it's bright.”

Izumi doesn't seem to know what to do with that. “He has like twelve eyes.”

“I know! It doesn't make sense!”

Izumi laughs. She clasps her hands in her lap. The conversation lulls for just long enough that Wanyamon begins to remember the reason he left his own train car. Before that front can progress much further, Izumi says, “You like him a lot, don't you?”

The question catches him utterly off guard. He's never thought about it that way. There are things he likes – but things, only. Good food, wind in his fur, a sunny place to sleep.... but how can he say if he likes a person, three-dimensional creatures that they are with histories and nuances and feelings all their own? Like is a binding word. With Duskmon especially, it's too strong to commit to on only a moment's notice. But he doesn't know how to put that answer into words.

“What is it you like in him?” Izumi asks.

Unusual question that it is, it's also an easier one. He starts to respond –

– what does he like about Duskmon?

“...He's tall,” he says, which is true. Wanyamon gets to feel tall too when he's sitting on him. But a lot of stuff is tall, and Wanyamon doesn't necessarily appreciate all of it. He frowns as he casts about for another reason. “...And... nice.”

“He is. Isn't he,” Izumi says.

Wanyamon perks up immediately. That almost sounds like Izumi's okay with Duskmon now. Maybe they can get along! Maybe she'll want to travel with them! There's safety in numbers. Not that Wanyamon expects trouble, but staying safer sounds like a good thing.

But then she adds, “Sorry, I shouldn't have asked you that. I don't know what I was thinking.”

Wanyamon rolls a little onto his side, peering up at her from a new perspective in case the bad angle before was all that was hiding the pieces he feels like he's missing. But she's still Izumi no matter how he looks.

“Are you doing okay?” he asks.

“'course.” He can't tell if she means it, but he can't imagine a reason for her to lie about this, so it must be true after all. (And, buried deeper, a selfish thought: he doesn't know what to do if she isn't alright.) “You probably should head back before he comes looking. He will look, right?”

A nod. “I'm sorry he killed your Kouji,” he ventures. “It doesn't mean as much coming from me, but he's being stupid and won't say it.”

“What? It's not your fault. You shouldn't have to – ” She shakes her head. “And it's not true anyway.”

“Hm?”

Crossing her arms, she says, “He's not sorry for doing it.”

Wanyamon makes another uncomprehending sound. “But he said – ”

Quietly, Izumi continues, “He's not. I know he's not. I've killed people too, and I don't regret any of it. He's not sorry for killing Kouji.”

Chapter Text

Shutumon has no trouble identifying the island Ranamon attacked. It sits a bare minute's flight from a hole in the ocean, an unfathomable kilometers-wide void down which water pours in thundering torrents. Across the beach nearest that dead zone, the remnants of a fight still lie uncleared. Stretches of the shoreline sit uneven where attacks gouged them out. Left across the ground at the edge of a water-filled crater is a massive tentacle, shriveled and baking on the grit and sand beneath the late morning sun.

A path winds from the beach through a cluster of tide pools to a village slightly farther inland, though Shutumon doesn't get that far before a seadramon hails her from the water.

“Just passing through?” Seadramon rasps in lieu of a greeting once she's flown low enough, in a tone that promises consequences for answers that aren't yes.

The threat would put Izumi on the back foot, but Shutumon isn't Izumi in any way except the one that matters. “Are you the one who drove off the Warrior of Water?” she asks, unfazed despite the fact that a seadramon can wipe the floor with her. The serpent narrows their eyes. They tilt their head up, possibly to see her better but more likely to preemptively aim for a mouth-launched attack. “I'm here with a message if you are. And – help, if you'll have me.”

Seadramon hums and, after a pause, falls slightly back into the water. “That's hard to say no to. Who are you, then? I'm Seadramon, protector of this island and its digimon.”

“Shutumon,” she replies. “I'm from the mainland.”

Since most people don't go out of their way to help strangers in completely separate parts of the world, that requires some further explanation. Seadramon believes the prepared story she spins about fleeing a ruined homeland and wanting to help others escape the same fate. They seem touched by it, even, to the point that their wariness has all but evaporated by the time she finishes.

“How did you hear about us?” they ask.

When she lets herself, Shutumon feels more strongly than Fairimon and more strongly than Izumi, but she's better at squirreling those pesky emotions away if she needs to. Some memories are easier for her. “The one Cherubimon sent for us. He was talking about it as he left,” she says casually. Shutumon, after all, is not the one who felt like she was being gutted when she saw Duskmon using Kouji's Digivice, or the one who wakes up in the middle of the night frozen to stillness and trying not to find eyes in the dark. “Cherubimon wants him to finish what Ranamon started here.”

“Is he strong?”

She laughs.

“Ah.” Seadramon blinks and doesn't say anything for a moment. Their expression doesn't change, though Shutumon imagines that's more from of a lack of appropriate physiology than a lack of emotion. “More than Calamaramon?”

“There's no comparison.”

“I barely fought her off. She killed Ikakkumon and scanned our neighbors' island. Then she chased the gomamon here. If Ikakkumon and the gomamon hadn't already injured her, I wouldn't have won.”

“I'm sorry,” says Shutumon.

“What, for Ikakkumon? Don't be. Fighting her is – was the only useful thing it ever did.”

Shutumon raises an eyebrow. “That was brave of it. If that's what happened, though, then the two of us won't be enough to stop Duskmon. You'd be safer leaving and letting him have the island.”

Seadramon cocks their head. “Did you come to tell me that?”

Shutumon expected the question before she ever left the Wind Terminal, as soon as she pictured the conversation where the anonymous residents of the island heard a stranger tell them to abandon their home on nothing but her word, and yet she still hesitates when she hears it for real. There are few right answers.

“Do you know,” she asks finally, “how much of the digital world Cherubimon has scanned by now? I don't know the percent, but I passed through the Wind Terminal on the way here and talked to some of the people there. Their settlement's grown to four times its size over the past few months. There are refugees arriving every day from everywhere the trailmon go. No one is stopping the Warriors,” she says, and it comes out more heated in Shutumon's voice than it would even in Izumi's. Shutumon has too high of an opinion of herself to care much for regret or resentment or self-loathing, but she feels her anger with the keenness and clarity of someone who believes her discontent on its own is enough to leave an impact on the world. Izumi cannot match it. “At this rate, there won't be anywhere in this world left to run to.”

“I didn't know it was that bad,” says Seadramon. “I thought it was only in the Archipelago.”

Shutumon shakes her head. “Flame, Forest, and Hill have taken the worst of it, but they've been everywhere.” She takes a breath. “I don't think you should stay. Duskmon is strong. We won't win.” Though.... “But running won't do anything except put it off if no one else stops him. This is your home. It's up to you how much you can afford to gamble with. I'll try to help with whatever decision you make.”

The sea serpent takes her into the village after that, where the digimon answer Seadramon's summons. Up close, it's clear that the settlement is overcrowded. Betamon and shakomon gather around them, and gomamon filter in at the back.

When Seadramon explains the situation, the villagers near-unanimously choose to stay. Only Shutumon's total lack of surprise lets her hold back a sigh. They don't know what they're dealing with.

But they ask her, and so she tells them. Of how the only attacks she's seen land against him were the ones he chose to let through. Of how there were five in her group, each of the others stronger than her, and Duskmon stood still and took their signature attacks head-on and unguarded and then asked them if that was all. (That moment, and the one after, are memories Izumi has nightmares of, but Shutumon's utterly undeserved composure has to be good for something. She speaks of the encounter as simply as she would of the weather. It's in the past, and she's learned her lessons from it.)

She cannot stress enough how much they will not win this fight. Her group went against him because they didn't understand, not really, what they were facing, and for that one mistake Duskmon destroyed them.

“Is he worse than Calamaramon?” a gomamon calls out.

Shutumon has to take a moment before she realizes that to a gomamon, every digimon at or above Calamaramon's level might seem equally insurmountable. “Much worse. The five of us could fend off Calamaramon.”

That at least makes an impression on the gomamon. It's a start.

“The five of you,” Seadramon repeats overhead. “Where are your friends?”

“Gone,” she bites out, and lets them draw what conclusions they will.

The other Warriors deserve better than to have her thinking of them.

Seadramon asks if Duskmon can swim or breathe underwater, and if she knows how he intends to reach the island. By boat seems most likely to her, although she stumbles over that reply – some part of her finds it absurd that Duskmon rides trailmon and might need a vehicle to cross water instead of just magically appearing wherever he wants to like some horror film monster. It's the same part that listened to him arguing with Wanyamon and thought, Oh. He acts like a person.

Seadramon proposes smashing the boat and stranding him in the ocean, which is not... the worst plan she's heard. But after they get him into the water they still need either a way to damage him or to keep him under. They have neither. Seadramon can't physically hold him without putting themselves at risk, and trying to freeze him would both leave them in reach of his ranged abilities and probably not slow him for long anyway.

It only takes half an hour for Shutumon's unrelenting pessimism to sway the villagers. It's determined that Seadramon will remain, but the others will evacuate to a nearby settlement. If they win, Seadramon will find them and let them know that it's safe to return. If not....

“You're still staying?” Seadramon asks her once the crowd has dispersed to gather their possessions.

“I said I would follow your lead.”

Seadramon nods slowly. “I can't lose to an enemy before I've so much as seen him.”

“Agnimon said that too. He couldn't believe how strong Duskmon was even after we'd fought him once. It didn't seem fair.” She crosses her arms as Seadramon turns away from watching the villagers to peer down at her instead. “He forced our last fight. But none of us stopped him, either.”

She thinks it should go the other way around, but since Kouji died she's actually come to sympathize more with Takuya's position. Duskmon didn't attack them on the Continent for any reason like... like wanting to help his friends, or wanting to stop bullies, or any of the other causes you're supposed to fight for. He did it because he felt like it and someone told him to. With a motive that shallow, it wasn't right that he could win.

If she had the chance to go back and do it over there's only one thing she would change, and it wouldn't be the part where she followed Takuya into the fray because she was too much of a coward to let a friend risk his life alone. She would do that again just for spite. Takuya, after all, had a point, and it was a good one, and any decent reality should have bent over backwards to make it come true.

Seadramon says, “You brought us a warning. You've done that much already. If you think it's such a bad idea to face this Duskmon, you shouldn't have to feel pressured to stay.”

“I didn't leave Agnimon either,” she replies.

Seadramon doesn't ask again. The villagers finish their preparations by the end of the second hour, and they invite Shutumon to join them for a late lunch before they head out. Afterwards, Seadramon leaves her on her own in order to escort them. This seems like an unwarranted degree of trust, but, then again, she does prove them right by not even considering abusing it.

They return late in the afternoon, and she lands to greet them at the shore. “All quiet.”

“How did you know he'd wait until after sunset?” Seadramon asks.

Wanyamon, Shutumon thinks. She doesn't know if Duskmon will bring Wanyamon with him because he clearly has trouble letting the smaller digimon more than an arm's length away or if he'll leave him behind because he just as clearly would commit murder to keep Wanyamon out of the slightest hint of danger. She thinks the latter's more likely, but in either case he's unlikely to want to draw the confrontation out. That means not attacking under the handicap that daylight apparently is to him.

If not for Wanyamon, though, she wouldn't have been able to say for sure even if she somehow knew about his light blindness. He seems confident enough in his own ability that he might have attacked even at a time when he can't see well. (Despite how Wanyamon phrased it, Shutumon doesn't believe that he can't see at all under the sun. He had no trouble meeting her gaze while he was looking at her.)

When she absolutely doesn't say anything of that, it's not only because she feels ugly enough already using a child's trust against someone he loves. “I don't think he likes daylight,” she hedges, with no follow-up explanation as to where the information comes from. But Seadramon just gives a thoughtful rumble and accepts it.

Abruptly enough that she hopes it seems unrelated, she adds, “He might have someone with him. Not a fighter, baby level. If he's there, we can't attack him.”

Seadramon blinks. “Why not?”

Past the non-verbal infancy stage, digimon stop treating their children like humans do. Shutumon, a digimon who likewise cannot imagine children as anything other than small adults, is not really equipped to argue against it, but Izumi before she evolved made sure to come up with logical reasons to consider Wanyamon a bystander. “If something happens to him, if Duskmon thinks something might happen to him, he'll be even worse to deal with. It isn't worth it. Wanyamon won't do damage on his own, so it's alright to ignore him.”

She hasn't been able to work out Duskmon's relation to him. At first she didn't think it could be anything good, but she doesn't know that it's possible to fake every bit of the patience the Warrior showed for him.

What she has the hardest time reconciling is the way Duskmon interacted with him physically: he never stopped Wanyamon from moving away despite how uncomfortable the distance left him, and when he wanted Wanyamon back from Shutumon he reached out and waited. She's not certain what he would have done if Wanyamon chose in the end not to go with him, but the fact that she's even not certain throws her off. She should be sure that he would have killed her to take him back whether or not it would have hurt the smaller digimon, but she's... not. Even in the moment, she wasn't.

Wanyamon calls him nice. To Wanyamon he is. And that makes sense, doesn't it? Shutumon has people who would call her the same. Duskmon in battle is an unstoppable monster drunk on his own power willing to cut down his ally for the crime of losing a five-on-one fight, Duskmon out of battle is a digimon who treats a child like a child and starts conversations with people he's tried to kill, and there's nothing strange about the seeming dichotomy. She doesn't define any of her own Warriors by how they treat their opponents.

There's no reason Duskmon's motives for taking care of Wanyamon have to be nefarious, no reason he can't just like Wanyamon as much as Wanyamon likes him. Anyone can have someone who will miss them when they're gone.

Seadramon agrees not to target Wanyamon and offers dinner. Over it, Shutumon half-seriously raises the possibility of enlisting help, but they shoot it down. Ikakkumon and Seadramon have for a long time been two of the most competent fighters in the area. The few others at or above their level either can't be reasoned with or won't risk themselves in a conflict they hold no stake in. It's infuriating to listen to.

When they've finished and she's preparing to go they say, “Shutumon, wait.” Shutumon, several meters in the air, pauses in a hover. “If something happens to me, are you going to keep fighting?”

Too late to pretend she didn't hear. She should have kept flying. “Do you think something will?”

“Who can say.” Seadramon doesn't look at her, eyes fixed on the distance in the direction of the island that doesn't exist anymore. They shake their head and continue, “I don't know. Maybe not. But if it does, do you have a plan for what you'll do?”

“No,” she says. “I'll let you know when I see him.” She bursts upwards before Seadramon can call her back.

After the devastation Calamaramon wrought, Duskmon can only arrive from one direction anymore. Even with the moons dark, she doesn't worry about missing him – Shutumon and Fairimon can see as far at night as they can during the day, Shutumon naturally and Fairimon with the visor's help. Shutumon doesn't grow bored as easily as Izumi or Fairimon do, either, at least not as long as she's in the air, so she's not concerned about zoning out.

The hours don't pass quickly, but they pass. Midnight's long since come and gone by the time the speck of shadow crests the curve of the horizon, too far away for her to tell if Wanyamon's with him. She hesitates, considering whether to move close enough to confirm Wanyamon's presence first, but there's no real reason to. It won't change how the plan proceeds.

(That thought is entirely Shutumon's. Izumi's the best of any of the human Warriors at managing her Spirits, but even she can slip.)

She circles back to the island, lands, and calls for Seadramon, who rears out of the water as the shout fades. “Straight ahead,” she tells them, flicking her head in Duskmon's direction.

For a moment she thinks Seadramon's about to speak, but in the end they only sink into the ocean. Shutumon feels a pang of... something as she watches them disappear. They'll probably both die in this fight while Duskmon walks away unscathed. Shutumon's not leaving anything important behind, and there's nothing else she wanted to do before the end. Maybe Seadramon's the same. Maybe not. She wouldn't have asked anyway, but it would be too late now if she wanted to.

Then she launches herself into the air to wait again, this time for their signal.

She's not surprised when the plan hits a snag on the first step. She's too far away to hear and she can't see into the water to find Seadramon, but she can spot just fine Duskmon suddenly standing up in the boat, the glint of a sword extending, and the heavy spray of water when he sends an energy wave arcing into the ocean.

Then the back of the boat explodes into splinters around a thin pillar of water. “Nice one,” Shutumon says, impressed at any hit anyone might land against Duskmon without his allowing it. She folds her wings and dives.

He has Wanyamon with him, she notices when she's a little under two kilometers out. The smaller digimon's perched on his shoulder, tucked close against into his neck and nearly out of sight. She finds him by his tail. That's a problem, but it's not hers so much as it is Duskmon's.

The next break in the plan, however, is definitely her and Seadramon's concern: Duskmon steps out of the sinking boat and onto the waves, seemingly unused to the footing but still standing. On water.

He's an armored warrior in spikes and all black with crimson swords, creepy magic eyes, and daylight blindness. Outside of being too strong, his power set basically makes sense. His abilities that she's seen play into a theme. But where does walking on water fit into the suite? Was she supposed to expect him to have it just because it's the one skill that would bring their already negligible chances down to zero?

Instead of standing his ground, though, he takes off in the direction of the island. She flares her wings out of the dive and spins to follow him. He sprints nearly as fast as – nearly as fast as Garmmon, which doesn't surprise her because unlike water-walking it actually makes sense on him.

At his speed, he can reach the island in under four minutes. She wonders why he wants to, why he can't demolish them just as easily on the ocean. Maybe standing on water takes up too much concentration for him to fight at the same time? Or –

No, look at the bigger picture. There's a downside to his staying where he is. It doesn't matter what it is, only that it exists. As long as it does, they have a chance.

She outpaces him and dives again, moving to intercept. Red energy builds around her talons. Her ranged attack would do nothing to him, so melee's her one choice, though she can't help the trepidation that builds in her gut at the thought of moving into reach of his swords.

The armor doesn't cover parts of his face, but she can't land that target. She'll have to aim for his other eyes, gross as it is.

As she nears, one of his shoulder eyes swivels towards her. Panic nearly overrides her at the mere sight, the urge to fly into the clouds and into safety winning out long enough that her path in the air wobbles – but if she backs off whenever he might kill her, she might as well not be here at all. Kouji never hesitated.

Duskmon skids to a stop, turns, and catches her clawed fingers on a blade. She snatches her hands back before he can cut through Gilgamesh Slicer and kicks him in the massive eye on his chest with both feet.

It does nothing. He doesn't stagger. The eye doesn't so much as blink. She uses the force to throw herself away from him, and he tsks and returns to running.

She launches herself at his back. The move actually catches him by surprise, and she manages to get a grip under his armpits and take them both into the air. He's heavier than she expected, but his weight still isn't much of a strain.

“Okay,” he says. He doesn't struggle, and she has an awful, lurching flashback to this same scenario playing out with Agnimon in her place. This probably won't even hurt him. But there really is nothing else she can try that he hasn't proven immune to. Frustration tears at her – this isn't right. She shouldn't be this helpless. She's Shutumon.

“Can you fly high enough to reach outer space?” Duskmon asks idly, like he's not dozens of meters in the air and rising rapidly. “If you can't, this is useless.”

“What is it going to take to kill you?”

Wanyamon's ears flatten, and he makes a noise from where he's sitting with his eyes closed and his face pressed into the side of Duskmon's neck. Duskmon says, “I wouldn't be here if I knew.” She plans to drop him from the height of a skyscraper and he's relaxed enough to joke. “But gravity won't cut it.”

She lets go. She watches him fall, her pulse loud in her ears and her hands shaking. It's not fear, not entirely. Just as much is anger.

A beam of light shoots out of the sea, the waves around the origin freezing into a spreading layer of ice. An energy wave from Duskmon's sword catches it and slices through it before it reaches him. The beam stops firing just before Duskmon's attack shatters the ice and carves into the water, and Shutumon hopes that means Seadramon dodged in time.

She follows him down. He lands, crouches to take the impact, and then, true to form, stands up as if it didn't happen and easily positions himself to catch her attack on his sword again. He meets her eyes and unsheathes his second blade.

She knows what's going to come an instant before it does, knows as he raises the other sword how she's going to end up when it slices down. He stills for a bare fraction of a second, almost as if giving her a chance to retreat, but there's no point to that anymore. She clenches her jaw and fully over-commits, palms bleeding onto the red metal as she presses in.

The sword falls, and Shutumon with it. She howls.

“Don't look,” says Duskmon, muffled through the rising pitch of her own voice. For an instant she thinks he means it for her, and for that instant she hates him more than she thought possible.

Brine fills her mouth, her nose. She flails for the surface, breaks through to the wind she should have and has never had mastery over, draws breath, and screams. Under her weakened grasp the Spirit tries to slip away – it hurts, it hurts, it took the brunt of the injury for Izumi but she needs to let it go and she will not, she won't, it helped bring them to this point and she will not let it run away. Her Spirits' beauty and confidence and power are a trick that took her too long to see through. Their power could not protect Takuya or Kouji or even Izumi, their confidence is haughtiness without the strength to justify it, and their beauty – well, Duskmon's sword just cut right through it, along with her right arm and wing. They deserve all of this.

But the fight is about more than just them, isn't it? Seadramon can't face Duskmon alone, and Shutumon's even less useful now than she's ever been, seconds away from sinking permanently. Izumi shoves the Spirit and its pain back and wraps herself in Fairimon. Fairimon's wings can't carry her aloft while drenched, but at least all her limbs are firmly enough attached to let her tread water.

“Slide evolution,” says Duskmon from above.

“No,” she breathes.

But he's not evolving, only watching her. “You're Wind.” He sounds... a little horrified, actually.

She can use that. And if he didn't recognize Shutumon.... “The Warrior of Ice is here, too. Did you hit them? With the sword beam?”

“Barely,” he says faintly. He reaches down. She balks, but he grabs her by the back of her collar like a cat and lifts her up. She punches him, and he tilts his head just enough to take the blow on his helmet. “Wings. You can fly?”

Oh. Maybe she does have a way to hurt him. She doesn't understand why, but he has a wound she can pick at. “Why do you care?”

“And Ice can breathe underwater?”

“They can't.”

All of his eyes dart down. “They... okay.” He turns and starts towards the island again. Fairimon grabs his arm to keep the jostling from choking her and curls her legs up enough to keep them from dragging in the water.

She tries at a Brezzo Petalo, but the streams of wind budge Duskmon as much as any other attack she's seen him take. They're both using Human Spirits, yet Izumi has Fairimon and Duskmon has himself. The only thing she's managed to move him with is words.

And... the final option. But Fairimon can't muster the necessary will to push it through her unwilling Spirits. Only Izumi can. Not to mention that she doesn't know if it'll even work against him when nothing else has, and though she hasn't done it yet she understands that once she uses it there will be no easy way back.

“You can't leave them,” she snaps.

“They're moving.”

“They can't hold their breath for long.”

Duskmon huffs. “I can't swim, you can't fly – can you fly?”

“Drop me and see.”

He doesn't. “I can't do anything if you drown. Or if I drown. You'd better trust them to manage.”

“How are you running?”

“Cherubimon. Don't ask me how he did it.”

“There's a time limit.”

“Near enough.”

“A step limit.”

“Both of those,” he says. “I thought it was only Kouji and Fire, but you're all stupid. Why – ”

“You don't get to say his name.”

He cocks his head. A sliver of amber by his throat as Wanyamon cracks an eye open. “Will you stop me?”

Shutumon would lunge. Izumi would... she's not sure what Izumi would do. She never really is, these days. But right now she's Fairimon, who only snarls, “Why is that always the question? Why does someone else have to do it for you?”

“Because you're the only one who cares if I upset you.”

“Kouji would.”

He stops in his tracks, staring at her if he's seeing her for the first time, and although the delay only lasts a second it's longer than anyone else has ever managed to slow him without his letting them. “...He's not here.”

“I wonder how that happened.”

“Look – ”

A small voice cuts across him. “Neesan?”

The water gives way to sand under Duskmon's feet. He drops her as if scalded, and she takes a step back, swallows, and draws herself to her full height. As Shutumon she's taller than him, and Fairimon isn't that much shorter. “You shouldn't have brought him.”

Duskmon raises a gauntlet to block Wanyamon's view. “I told you not to open your eyes.”

“You were fighting neesan,” Wanyamon whispers, so quiet Fairimon strains to catch the words. “Why would you.... I don't – I don't understand. Someone got hurt! Duskmon, what did you do?”

“Nothing,” Duskmon sighs. “She's fine.”

In a flare of spite so strong she nearly chokes on it, Izumi sheds Fairimon. Shutumon shielded her from the worst of the injury, but enough broke through the Spirit's protective shell that blood pours down a deep cut on her arm as soon as Fairimon retreats. She tries to raise it, and the pain nearly sends to her knees. Her fingers are cold. “I'm fine,” she says hoarsely. “Yeah, Duskmon. Repeat that.”

He eyes the blood dripping to the sand with an unreadable expression. “You're scaring the kid.” Wanyamon tries to peek around his hand, but Duskmon shifts to keep it in front of him.

“I – ” The gall of him. She bites her lip. “Sorry, Wanyamon. But if you didn't want him to be here, then you shouldn't have brought him.”

“All those babysitter options,” Duskmon mutters.

“And if you didn't want me to be injured, then you shouldn't have hurt me. And if you didn't want Kouji to die, then you shouldn't have killed him! Whatever hang-ups you have for owning up to your own actions, get over them.”

“Or what?”

The ground churns under her. She feels light-headed, disconnected, and she imagines she's so furious she can't think straight. “I've tried everything against you. I fought and it did nothing. I froze and it did nothing. I ran and it wasn't far enough. What do I have left?” She laughs, though it's a shaky thing when she can't get enough air. “Did you know, I'm really good at controlling my Spirits. My Beast Spirit listened to me perfectly the first time I used it. I don't know why anyone has trouble with theirs.”

“And?” says Duskmon. “Are you done?”

“There's one thing I haven't tried on my own,” she rasps. “Takuya believed in teamwork, and it... usually worked. It got us through a lot. Except a team is as strong as its weakest link, and sometimes the others make stupid decisions and you just have to follow them in because your voice is too quiet to hear in arguments. So maybe cooperation can't always be the answer. Maybe sometimes you have to pick a leader and make everyone else shut up, even the ones who yell the loudest.”

Her left hand closes around her Digivice. Static buzzes against her palm, her Spirits' attempt to force her to let go. She tightens her grip through the pain. “Shush,” she murmurs. She's done it their way all this time even though it hasn't won her a single battle that she can remember, and where has that gotten her? Nowhere closer to the material world and home, who knows how far away from her friends, on a planet where Cherubimon's Warriors run unchecked.

“Double Spirit evolution: Furymon.”

Chapter Text

Smoke and bone remain when the light of her evolution dims. Duskmon doesn't step back, but it's a near thing. Of all the tricks he guessed she might pull (admittedly his expectations were low), this one did not make the list.

It doesn't help at all that Furymon is beautiful.

She lifts the central and largest of three eyeless heads. The beak opens wide, showing rows upon rows of curving teeth, and at the back of that arrangement a void gapes, a human mouth, lips and teeth and tongue, embedded in the muscle of her throat. That mouth warbles, with a voice that rattles like her blade-edged feathers, “This is me.”

Duskmon isn't deluded enough to imagine she means the words for him.

Dark dust pools around her skeletal claws, gathers in the feathers that drape around her ankles, and spirals from her in gossamer threads caught on the wind, staining the moonless night like ink in water. The wisps shift around her breaths when she exhales, and the exposed ribs of her chest curl in and out, empty and grasping. Her feathers rustle where they brush against each other, the scraping of knives; her single wing drapes low at her side, slicing furrows through the sand and grit of the beach. The black-gleaming wrist bone taps a metronome beat on the ground. Has she always had one wing, or did her Beast Spirit's injury carry over?

“Double Spirit evolution,” Duskmon murmurs, testing the phrase. The other two heads tilt at the ends of their long necks to peer at him – the jagged beaks open, and from each a human's eye glares out in the same spot that holds a mouth in the central head.

All of the Spirits hold a thematic connection between their Beast and Human forms, but apparently the combination of both carries nothing of either. Rather than her previous two humanoid evolutions, this one is crane-shaped, long necks and long legs that set her taller than Duskmon (though that's no great feat), except for a tail that drags behind her in an expansive train and the ridges of her spine that break through her back in needle-thin spikes.

Along with every other feature, obviously. No one will see her and mistake her for a real crane.

He remains distantly aware of an unfamiliar emotion coiling tight in his chest. Anticipation, if anticipation had teeth. That's his element she wears so well. Nobody naturally looks like Furymon without the power to back it up.

Wanyamon whimpers, and Duskmon freezes like he got doused in ice water.

She might be an actual problem. He doesn't intend to kill one of the people Kouji died for, but neither will he allow Wanyamon into real danger. There's no question of what he'll choose if he needs to prioritize.

Furymon's eyes turn to Wanyamon at the sound. Her left head snaps its beak, a feathered crest rising into a crown behind it, and she takes a step forwards. “Get out of here,” the central head says.

Wanyamon presses closer to Duskmon. This would have been simpler if he kept his eyes closed and ears covered the whole time.

“Stay,” Duskmon says. The kid doesn't argue. Wanyamon's presence restricts him from several abilities and splits his attention, but it's less distracting than having him somewhere Duskmon can't see him. “And hold on.”

He draws his swords and waits for her move.

He might, after all, be overestimating her. It's happened before. Best to see what she can do first.

The feathers have to be a weapon. The eyes might fire projectiles, and the mouth, and that dust she's shedding might be more than aesthetic. And of course she can bite. She should have more to watch out for, except that Duskmon has very little practice at gauging an opponent's abilities. In terms of real experience Furymon is his clear senior, but the gap has never mattered. A house cat can't kill a lion no matter how much practice she has in fighting other cats.

The rustling of her metal feathers rises to an irritating pitch. She rears her heads back and spreads her wing, the feathers on it glow, and she launches a volley of them forwards. He scatters them with a sword arc, and when the light from his attack fades she's nowhere to be seen.

Well, look at that. Give her a few more abilities to work with and she immediately does something clever with them. She could have evolved off the bat and saved them all some trouble.

A faint distortion above catches his attention, but the attack comes from below as well: two wind funnels as thick around as his torso, one from the sky and one from the earth. He dodges the second only because he was already moving to avoid the first, and it still clips the outer edge of his foot.

It takes him an instant to realize that the sand that the wind carried sheared through his armor. Though it's too little to hurt, he can feel the pieces missing.

She must have acquired this evolution at some point after Kouji's death. He'll kill her otherwise. If she had a trick that could have saved Kouji and refused to use it, then she doesn't deserve the life his sacrifice bought her. Wanyamon would get over it. He would.

He turns slowly, half of his eyes on the sky and the rest on the ground. “Not calling your attacks?”

Furymon doesn't respond and give away her position, more's the pity, but he finds that distortion in the air again, this time moving towards at him at speed. A faint breeze makes for the only other warning he gets.

He raises his sword just in time for an invisible force to grip the blade and pull hard enough to drag his entire forearm away from his face. At the same time something serrated grabs his ankles – three somethings, two around his left leg and one for the right.

He aims the eyes on his knees down and the remainder up towards his sword, then looses lasers at half power from all of them.

The attacks he launches at the ground only kick up sand, but the rest hit home.

Light flares for an instant. He makes out Furymon's outline – two beaks clamped around his sword and then the third one, with its human mouth and rows of obsidian fangs, wide open centimeters from his face – just before the impact launches her away. Whatever was holding his legs in place disappears, and at the same time Furymon tumbles through the air, shedding tarry dust.

She vanishes from his sight before she hits the earth, though he sees perfectly well the sand that gets pushed aside when she crash lands. He didn't throw her nearly as far as he expected.

So: she has bladed feathers, invisibility, possibly flight, wind blasts, and some ability that seems to happen near ground level but otherwise operates on rules he doesn't understand.

More than that, her attacks affect him. No one before this has chipped his armor.

But for all that it feels like an impressive kit, so far she's done less damage than he has.

He sends a sword beam towards the place where she landed. He glimpses her outline again as it strikes her, her lone wing held up in front as a shield, heads lowered behind it, talons digging into the beach for purchase. Then she bends her legs and throws her wing to the side, dissipating the energy beam as she swipes through it. He takes that to mean he should quit pulling his punches.

A cloud of sand mists up around her once she disappears. Back into the air.

He peers up, searching for the warped space that marks her location, but something suddenly shifts. He stills, caught flat-footed by the premonition, just before Wanyamon slips off of his perch.

Duskmon catches him against his chest. Something feels wrong. Wanyamon feels...

...Wanyamon's not moving.

Duskmon thought that the inkling of an emotion when he discovered Furymon's wind attack hurt him might have been something like fear – I probably shouldn't let that hit me. Or maybe the moment when he saw her slide evolve and realized who he nearly killed.

He was wrong. He still doesn't know what those were, but this, now, this must be fear. Time slams to a halt and narrows to the space around him and the limp body draped over his arm. He doesn't understand. He needs the minutes to rewind, he needs to know what he missed. What does he have to do to take this moment back?

Something slams into Duskmon from behind. It catches him so off guard that it actually bowls him over. He manages to go down on one knee instead of both – Wanyamon stays where he is, Duskmon cannot let go – and a blade-feathered wing shimmering back into visibility wraps around him, threatening to slice into Wanyamon.

Duskmon roars and throws his elbow back into Furymon's chest. His couter clacks against her exposed ribs without dislodging her.

Teeth scrape against his pauldron, and the other two heads curve around to face him from the front.

One of them stretches its beak apart, but the human eye inside of it only watches. The other follows suit, the mouth buried in its throat peeling open and making a satisfied noise somewhere between a gasp and a death rattle, before it twists and darts forwards to clamp its fangs around Duskmon's neck.

She's too close. He doesn't have room to swing a blade – her wing's keeping the arm not occupied with shielding Wanyamon pinned to his side. His laser attacks don't function like real lasers, they pack a solid force and a tendency to explode, and while he can tank the blasts from them Wanyamon cannot. All of his options that involve indiscriminately hitting everything nearby sit firmly off limits. He can use less obviously destructive lasers only from the eye on his chest, likewise presently blocked by Wanyamon.

The beak at his shoulder wrenches, hard enough to dent the armor. His visual feedback from the eye there cuts off abruptly.

He doesn't have time for this.

“Do you care about the kid,” he snarls, breathless with pain.

In response, the head with its teeth around his neck copies that same quick, violent motion that nearly dislocated his shoulder. It doesn't snap his neck, but it's a near thing. He kneels there stunned, white noise swallowing his thoughts, and only after a full three seconds pass can he gather himself enough to wonder if this is how Kouji felt before he died.

That odd vibration coming from Furymon might be laughter.

He doesn't remember why he can't use most of his attacks. He should, the reason's right there, but it dangles just out of reach and he doesn't have energy to spare on retrieving it. He'll have to trust that it makes sense. Still, that doesn't leave him many avenues to work with, and all of those he can think of are bad ones.

But dying is worse.

Digimon need to announce their evolutions the first time they evolve. Through a throat bruised half-shut, Duskmon whispers so quietly not even his own ears catch it, “Slide evolution: Velgrmon.”

K̸̙̮̥̋̍͗̄̕͜͝͝͝ͅơ̷͇̐͊̿̏̍͊̚ͅȕ̸̢̧̖̬͕̺̘̺̯̤̅͋͑͝͝ͅi̸̠̼̤͓͈̱̜̺̔͐̆͐̀̈́̑̈́̆̍̃͠͠c̶̟̎̅̐̊h̴̨̡͇̮̦̟̭̮͇͚̉̈́ï̴̬͓̺̮͉͒̈́̂͆̋̊͊̓̕͝ sheds the Human Spirit like an egg grown too small. Velgrmon tears out of Furymon's hold and into the sky, wings flapping madly for altitude. This is better. This is much better.

Furymon's disappeared again. Petty tricks. Something else lies on the beach where they fought, something nearly too small to spot despite the shine of its orbiting data ring. Too small to spot, too small to eat. Velgrmon sets it aside. That doesn't feel wholly right, though. Wanyamon matters, doesn't he?

He matters to Duskmon. Human Spirit with human foibles. If Duskmon wanted to keep caring about Wanyamon, he shouldn't have fed himself to Velgrmon.

This is why Duskmon waited so long to slide evolve. Cherubimon gifted him the Beast Spirit months ago when he killed Kouji, but he had no reason to use it. He's heard of how the Warriors all lose control over their Beast Spirits the first few times they call on them. No need, he thought. He had power enough already.

As if there's such a thing as enough power.

Velgrmon will eat the world down to its heart eventually, but they can start with Furymon. A favor to Duskmon. The bone and keratin of their beak distend into a smile.

They find Furymon easily. The third eye on their forehead catches the distortion that marks her position. She's well within the thin cloud of dust that has gradually been dispersing across the beach and farther inland since she evolved. What is all of that? If it was cosmetic, it wouldn't linger.

Duskmon noticed nothing untoward about it, but Duskmon notices nothing as a general rule. Cherubimon prefers him that way.

Wanyamon didn't lose consciousness for no reason. Furymon never touched him, Duskmon made well sure of that, so either she has an intangible attack he couldn't perceive or... something. They lack information. They can't reach Furymon without entering the debris field, though. If their wings blow it away, she'll produce more.

So they'll finish this quickly.

They spiral into a dive. The distortion flits away, but Velgrmon's reach is long; Furymon barely qualifies for the size of their head. They snatch her in their beak on the way down and, once they near the ground, they turn onto their side to trace the tip of a wing across the sand. She struggles until it's like holding onto a bag of knives, but they don't let go until they've drawn a circle as long across as their wingspan.

The line glows and sends shadows stretching upwards, meeting at the top to form a sphere. Velgrmon throws Furymon inside just before it closes.

The Zone Deleter sphere collapses inward, leaving little behind. Wind rushes to fill the newly created vacuum, and saltwater sloshes into the perfectly round crater in the sand.

Furymon, feathers torn and smoking, lies collapsed at the bottom of the hole, but she's alive and apparently awake. (She's more colorful than they thought. Duskmon sees in monochrome, so he noticed her black bones and deep grey feathering but failed to catch the muted pink, red, and blue trimmings along the crests, wing, and tail.)

Velgrmon didn't expect her to survive. They lick the edges of their beak, cleaning off tasteless dust. If this stuff is a problem, they inhaled a fair bit of it catching her.

Wildcard abilities. They could have dealt with JetSilphymon, her true double Spirit form, but they don't know Furymon.

The Spirits don't corrupt easily. Izumi accomplished a feat that until now only Cherubimon, an ultimate-level fallen angel, has succeeded in. She did it more thoroughly than him, too. Velgrmon themself has no chance of forcing a double Spirit evolution. Their vessel's half-awake at the best of times. Without him, they have no bridge to connect with the Human Spirit by.

Still, there's something to be said for experience over raw power when the difference in strength between opponents is so small. Furymon twines her necks around each other and blasts a combined wind funnel from all three heads. Velgrmon flaps a wing leisurely to avoid it. The Beast Spirit has been Velgrmon for a long time, but Furymon didn't exist until tonight.

She disappears, but they have the measure of her. She must know it too, since now she comes at them head-on. She dodges their claws and makes it in close enough to turn Velgrmon's greater reach against them.

No more of that strike-and-retreat routine for either of them. She tears at their belly, and they spin aside and send her tumbling with the gust from their wings. They snatch for her with their claws, and she darts around them and tries to fly higher. If she gets on top of them, they'll lose. Duskmon didn't piece it together, but Furymon seems able to make her shadow duplicate her attacks, and if she casts her shadow directly onto Velgrmon she won't even need to try in order to hit them. They surge upwards to block her.

The two of them harry each other through the sky, a muddle of claws and teeth and wings and the few abilities they buy enough time to fire off. Furymon's slower than she could be. Some of her movements seem jerky, pained, and try as she might she can't make up for that with aggression alone.

Velgrmon's talons score a slash down her wing when she doesn't turn quickly enough, and while her feathers leave a hundred small cuts across their feet the hit sends her spiraling into a barely controlled fall. Fair exchange.

Courtesy in aerial battles dictates that no one target the opponents' modes of flight. Velgrmon, in other words, always aims for the wings.

They don't practice courtesy for food.

They dodge the perfunctory wind blast she throws at them on her way down. In doing so, they lose track of her when she smashes through the trees on the forested side of the island.

No matter. That's what they have Zone Deleter for.

They trace a wide, unhurried circle over the treeline, marking leaves and branches with their wingtip. They might not know Furymon's exact location, but they have the general area and they can guess that her ground speed should be nothing to write home about. And if they miss, they can try again.

The circle, once they complete it, covers a diameter of nearly a full kilometer. The shadows that spill from it blot out the sky.

The devastation of the attack cuts into bedrock. Nothing remains of that piece of land they marked, nor of the plants and any digimon and insects caught inside of it. Except for one.

Velgrmon alights on the lip of the crater. “Found you.”

Furymon rattles her feathers and hisses. She doesn't seem able to move more than that. As they watch, her fractal code breaks free of her body and settles into orbit around her, a pair of darkened Spirits coalescing above the ring.

Ignoring the increased rattling, they pluck what looks like the Beast Spirit from her and swallow it whole. Hello, Shutumon. Do you go by that name still? They can't digest Spirits, but they can't access Furymon's base code with her Spirits in the way either.

Furymon's shape breaks apart and reforms as a thoroughly unconscious Izumi bleeding sluggishly from an assortment of injuries. Those won't trouble her for much longer.

Velgrmon reaches for the Human Spirit.

Vertigo crashes over them before they touch it.

The sensation passes quickly, but the suddenness and ferocity of it stuns them. They freeze, waiting, and it hits again a few seconds later, strong enough that the world blurs. They stumble and narrowly avoid stepping on Izumi.

They shake their head, pulling themselves upright in a bid to regain any control, but then the third wave arrives.

They return to awareness with their chin against the ground. They lie half-sprawled where they fell, trying to work out which way is up. It doesn't help that they can't feel their extremities, and that they appear to be sliding slowly along the side of the crater.

Wanyamon must have caught the same ailment as this. Weaker, smaller body, so it took effect more quickly. Whatever it is. And the last Velgrmon saw of him, he was dead to the world with his data loose.

Absolutely not. “Slide evolution. Duskmon, don't do anything too stupid.”

Duskmon hits the ground on his knees and barely catches himself from tumbling down the slope.

His head pounds. Everything hurts. Velgrmon offloaded their minor injuries onto him, too – they figured it'd help him stay down, since if he goes raring off in his condition and gets himself wounded more badly he won't have them to fall back on anymore.

“Velgrmon,” he rasps.

They left Wanyamon on the other side of the island. They left Wanyamon.

He tries to stand, even though he hasn't had nearly enough time to recover from the number Furymon did on him. Black immediately swamps his vision, and he loses track of most of his limbs, but he thinks he makes it upright.

That's his last thought before he loses consciousness.

Chapter Text

Duskmon wakes first. He sits up slowly with a hoarse groan and slumps, holding his head between his gauntlets. Renamon bites his tongue and watches. There's so much he doesn't like about this, but what strikes him the most right then is how small Duskmon seems. He's bigger than Renamon, sure, and yet....

He doubles over coughing. Renamon beats down the urge to head over to him. Duskmon subsides soon enough and makes to stand, but Renamon snaps, “No. Sit down.”

The eye on Duskmon's nearest shoulder's gone milky white even though it's stopped oozing liquid from the rows of punctures. To see Renamon, he has to turn his face.

Despite the sun high overhead, his vision should work fine since they're in a heavily shaded spot under the towering trees. Not a trace of recognition emerges in his expression, though. Renamon hurriedly scrunches his eyes shut and buries his head under his arms, but the brief glimpse already etched the moment into memory.

That must be what other people see when they look at Duskmon.

“Oh,” Duskmon breathes. Loam whispers under him, and Renamon bites out without looking, “Sit down.”

Silence falls again.

“A fox,” Duskmon croaks after a pause, like out of all that's happened that's the one event worth commenting on. Did he expect something else?

“I'm Renamon.” Renamon wraps his arms around his legs and lifts his head from his knees. Despite having limbs now, somehow he wants most to curl back into a ball.

“I wasn't there.”

No, Duskmon wasn't.

Renamon evolved on his own. Alone, he found Duskmon and Izumi and carried them to flat ground. Both of them were still bleeding. He didn't know what to do for it, but it stopped after a while without intervention.

He hasn't eaten or slept since yesterday. He doesn't have food and doesn't know how to find it, he doesn't know how to start a fire for warmth and boiled water, he doesn't know how to leave the island, he doesn't know how to contact Cherubimon since Duskmon still has the Digivice ensconced in his inventory. He doesn't know anything. He spent the night and morning in terror that two people he cares about might die in a way anyone other than him could have prevented.

“Sorry,” says Duskmon.

The world has shrunk around Renamon, people shorter and distances less daunting and dangers closer, but that word has become the smallest of all. No one should get to undo their mistakes with two syllables. “For what?” he demands.

Duskmon gives him a searching look. “I shouldn't have – ” He breaks off with a flinch. This time Renamon doesn't manage to stop himself from bounding over to crouch at his side. He still can't help, though. Duskmon grimaces and rubs the side of his neck, where the metal bears teeth marks. Izumi made those, or the monster she became did.

Duskmon might have hurt her first, though. Renamon doesn't... he didn't see. Someone screamed. Izumi's voice when she spoke held more anger and desperation than it seems like one person should have the ability to contain.

Maybe Duskmon had it coming. Maybe Renamon would have done the same if he understood and lived through what Izumi has. Even still, he has never wanted to see Duskmon hurt.

“I can wait.” He would like accountability, but it doesn't have to happen now.

“No,” rasps Duskmon. “I shouldn't have brought you.”

Renamon gapes. How did he misunderstand that badly? “We shouldn't have come at all! What's the point of scanning this place? Why are we trying to destroy the world? How is this supposed to help?”

“There's nothing in the world worth saving.”

What? “We live in this world! You're worth saving! Neesan's worth saving! I'm... I'm worth saving, too. Right?”

Duskmon stares like Renamon just forced him to reevaluate all of his life choices, and Renamon reels. Duskmon's too smart not to have considered any of this when it's glaringly obvious, so what if Renamon is the one who got it wrong? Duskmon might have a reason he hasn't thought of.

“You left,” he says. “I almost – I had to evolve. Did you go because I wasn't worth it?”

“No,” Duskmon says with force that surprises them both. After a moment, Duskmon hooks an arm over his shoulders and pulls him into a hug. He can't fit into it like he did as Wanyamon. Sometimes hands come in useful, like when he needs to carry things, but right now they might as well be an extra tail for him to make sure doesn't get caught.

He sets his chin on Duskmon's shoulder, and that, at least, feels familiar.

Duskmon murmurs, “I messed up. I'm sorry. ...You're important. I don't fully understand why, but you are. I wouldn't let anything happen to you if I could stop it.”

Renamon laughs wetly. Duskmon, emotional quota spent for the week, tries to let go, but Renamon's worked out what to do with his limbs and clings tighter. He's still brittle, the weight of the world too sharp and too present against his fur, and reeling from the whiplash fracturing of his trust in Duskmon's invincibility and ability to always answer when Renamon needs him. But that only means he should treasure Duskmon more when he does come through. They won't always exist like this, together. “I'm glad you're okay. But please don't leave me alone again.”

“I'll try.”

No one will get more out of him than I'll try. He doesn't make empty promises any more than he lies. Renamon wouldn't have believed it if he answered with I won't instead, but it would have been nice to hear.

Duskmon's gaze flickers to focus on something past Renamon. This time Renamon goes when Duskmon prods him off, settling into a crouch and turning on his toes to look at Izumi.

Her breath hitches. She opens her eyes and spends a few seconds staring at the shifting leaves far above, and then she makes a pained noise and eases herself upright, favoring her right arm. Renamon doesn't remember her having skin that pale or lips that waxy yellow before. Her clothes have enough dried blood caked into the fabric that they barely bend with her movements.

He angles himself to block most of her view of Duskmon, so she looks at him first. He waves. “Hi, neesan.”

Her frown clears slowly. Once it does, she sighs explosively and says with feeling a word he doesn't know. She slumps and covers most of her face with her left hand. “Wanyamon?”

“I'm Renamon now.”

“You lived,” she says with such palpable relief that it leaves him uneasy under the strength of it.

“Do you remember what you did?” Duskmon asks with strange intensity, finishing the question even though midway through Renamon whirls on him and motions frantically to stop talking.

Something awful and wounded takes over Izumi's expression. “Do you? Who were we facing at the end?”

Renamon shoves a hand over Duskmon's mouth before he can respond. Duskmon grabs his wrist, seemingly as a reflex since he doesn't act further. “Don't fight! Please don't fight, it doesn't fix anything.” He just got them back. “You two blew up half of this island and nearly killed each other and nearly killed me and you still don't like each other. What was the point? What was that supposed to accomplish?”

“He shouldn't have brought you,” says Izumi.

“You shouldn't have fought!”

By their faces, both of them disagree. Are adults just like this? He wants to lock them in a room with candied fruit to talk their issues out like people who make sense.

Duskmon tries to move Renamon's hand, but Renamon slides it back. Duskmon sighs. “I need to take a call,” he says, because only his helmet is blocked and not his mouth underneath.

Renamon reluctantly withdraws. Izumi leans forward at the sight of the blue-trimmed Digivice, then sets her jaw when Cherubimon's reply to Duskmon's greeting sounds from the speakers.

“What happened to your voice?”

“I lost a fight,” says Duskmon. Izumi startles, and Renamon, though he doesn't know and doesn't care about the specifics of how they tried to murder each other, blinks as well. The aftermath pointed to a draw. “Met the Warrior of Wind and she evolved with both of her Spirits. I doubt I can scan the area.”

“...Is she still there?”

“Yes.”

“Walk me through from the beginning.”

Once Duskmon's account of events arrives at the beach, Cherubimon asks, “You're certain it was a corrupted double Spirit evolution?”

“Velgrmon was confident it was.”

“You can stop there.” Cherubimon hums. “It sounds like it couldn't be helped, I wouldn't expect you to win against that. Is she still in that form?”

Duskmon pauses. Izumi slides her hand into a pocket. “No. She's human.”

“That, I expect you to win against.”

Renamon freezes, hackles rising. Cherubimon spoke those words as easily as he might ask him how his day went. Izumi's gone tense as well, but Duskmon, who looks confused more than anything, hasn't moved. “I already lost.”

“To her human form?”

“To Furymon. I can't challenge her when she's at a disadvantage after I lost to her strongest form.”

Judging by Izumi's expression and the silence emanating from the Digivice, Renamon isn't the only one stumbling over the logic.

Eventually Cherubimon asks, “Why not?”

“Because she won.” He hesitates. “I... don't know how many more ways I can say it.”

Cherubimon makes a noise deep enough to set Renamon's fur on end. “I was sure I'd cut out your sense of honor. Well, you can't fight her, and you won't kill her. Since you're useless right now, you have time to come up with your own method to cross the ocean.”

Renamon starts. “But – ”

Duskmon slashes his gauntlet down in a cutting motion so abrupt it shocks Renamon into silence. He's never noticed, but Duskmon always keeps his body language soft around him.

“Oh? Hello, Wanyamon.” Renamon almost corrects the name but subsides when Duskmon shakes his head. “Were you listening?”

A reply dies on his tongue. Duskmon's acting strange, Cherubimon's acting strange, and the right words sit out of reach.

“How are you?”

“...I'm okay.”

“I'm thankful Duskmon managed to keep you safe, at the very least. This isn't the time for it, but remind me someday to tell you the story of why he took you from the Village of Beginnings.”

“There's a story?” he blurts, setting a hand on the ground as he leans closer. He thought it just sort of happened.

“A rather long one, yes, for another time. I'll leave the pair of you to it. It was good to hear from you, Wanyamon.”

Duskmon opens his eyes a long moment after the call ends – he closed them at some point while Cherubimon spoke to Renamon. Renamon settles back into a crouch, peering at him with his head tilted. “Why... did Cherubimon-sama pick now to talk about that?”

“Don't ask him,” Duskmon says. “If you need to, ask me. But don't do that either.”

“Why not?”

Duskmon keeps silent.

“Is it personal?”

He exhales. “Yes.”

If it's important enough to him that it makes him unhappy to remember, then Renamon has no great reason to learn it. He nods and decides he doesn't have to know. “Okay.”

Izumi says quietly, “That was unpleasant. Why did you lie to him?”

“When did I lie?” says Duskmon.

“You told him you lost.”

“I did.” He seems surprised that it's in question. “When you forced a slide evolution. If Renamon didn't pull a miracle, you would have killed him. Nothing would have counted as a victory afterwards.”

“Seriously?” She draws herself up and takes a shaky breath. “I didn't mean to hurt him. I – ”

She makes to turn towards Renamon, but Duskmon's already cutting her off: “What you meant doesn't matter.”

Renamon flattens his ears and covers his snout with his hands. “Stop using me to start arguments.”

Actually, he can do something about that. “Duskmon, can I have the gourd? I passed water on the way here.” Duskmon blinks at him, then starts to stand. He lets Renamon push him back down, though. “No, I'll do it! You stay here with neesan and talk and – and if I come back and you're yelling or one of you is gone I'll be really sad. Okay?”

Chapter Text

Furymon is a blight. Any digimon who perishes choking on their poison dies a human's death and never finds their way to the Village of Beginnings. Neither Duskmon nor Renamon met that fate last night, but not for lack of effort on Izumi's part.

There's something wrong with her, but she's too exhausted to think about it right now. Later, when her brain isn't a cloud and colors look right again and every swallow doesn't scrape like sandpaper through her parched throat.

“Hey.”

She looks up. Duskmon's holding a Beast Spirit that has to be his own, but once she focuses on it he tosses it her way. She makes no move to catch it, and it lands on the ground at her side and topples over. It doesn't look like Velgrmon.

Touching it feels like meeting a friend she parted on bad terms and never made up with. She flinches but picks it up.

“Why?” she asks, staring at Duskmon. She turns the Beast Spirit of Wind over in her hands, tracing the new contours. Antlers and four three-toed hooves, though overall it's shaped more like a horse than a deer from what she saw of it before she looked away. It doesn't seem to have limbs to fly with. What has she done to it?

“I don't have a reason to keep it.”

Cold fury grows in her and claws its way out as words: “Do you still think I can't hurt you?” Her voice is even, but she's so furious she can't breathe, all of the space behind her ribs taken up by that swelling anger. Her hold tightens on the Beast Spirit. It would be easy.

Then she breathes in, and the ice cracks. She swallows, shivering.

Who was that in her head? That person who only lives in the present, who only understands her own pain and what she can do to make the things hurting her stop? That can't have been Izumi. She lets go of the Spirit and clenches her right hand around her other fist.

She wants to go home.

She doesn't mean that thought any more than she means it when she's hungry enough to eat an entire cake or tired enough to sleep forever. Her parents' house these days is a dream and an ache. She clings to it when reality doesn't have what she needs.

Though her house didn't have what she needed, either.

The thing is, Izumi never once considered running away from home. Home wasn't the problem. She loves her parents. She loves their cats. Her room was her castle, the safest place in the world. Some days she felt like she'd never want to leave it, although, thinking back on it now, she doesn't understand how she thought she could be happy in a cage so small.

So the question, then, becomes this: why did a girl who had people she loved choose to board a train of an unknown route in a hidden station on the advice of an unidentifiable phone caller who knew her name before she gave it? Why does she regret what happened afterwards, but never that first step?

She felt this way at home too, sometimes. But not this strongly. Maybe she did imagine smashing her chair into a wall or holding a lighter to her desk or putting her hand up to the ceiling fan while it spun at the fastest setting, but temptation almost never crossed the line into desire. She didn't have to make an effort to stop herself from carrying them out.

She licks her lips. She's thirsty and hungry and tired and in pain. She's not thinking straight. Give it an hour and she'll be back to normal.

Whatever normal is.

Duskmon's talking again. She wishes he would stop. “If you want another fight,” he rasps, “I don't mind, but I need the time to move Renamon first.”

“You really don't hate me for hurting him?”

Duskmon's expression tightens. After a long pause, he sucks in an audible breath and says, “You gave a warning. Since I didn't take it, that's on me.”

Izumi snorts. “What are you? I don't understand you at all.”

“Do you imagine you make a lot of sense, either?”

“Don't say stuff like that.” Stop reminding me that there's a person under the armor.

Silence again. The forest is too quiet, likely from the massacre Furymon and Velgrmon committed last night. She can't guess at how many creatures died to Furymon's poison or Velgrmon's final attack or all of the abilities they used that missed their targets and landed in the trees instead.

Seadramon probably abandoned the island once they saw Velgrmon take flight. It would have been the smart thing to do.

Duskmon doesn't look away from her, though he keeps half of his eyes fixed in the direction Renamon left in. Izumi turns the Spirit over a few more times, then collects it into her Digivice. The Human Spirit on the screen doesn't look like Fairimon anymore either, but she puts it back without examining it.

Duskmon says, “If you do anything like that to Renamon again, I'll kill you.”

She grunts.

“Velgrmon thought it was the dust.”

Does he think she'll explain her attacks to him? “Why are you talking in third person?”

“Because Velgrmon isn't me,” he says, blinking. “Are you the same person when you evolve?”

He means it rhetorically. She cocks her head. “Yes?” As much as she's the same person whether she's wearing short sleeves or a jacket. Her Spirits are shells that change how she interacts with the world and with herself, but she's still her whether she calls herself Izumi or not.

Although Furymon was different. Three minds in one body, even if ultimately she was still in charge.

“Well, I'm not.” He crosses his legs. There it is again, his ability to completely ignore the fact that the person he's talking to last tried to kill him. Someone sits like that only if they don't expect to get into an altercation anytime soon. “Velgrmon is the Beast Spirit. I'm the Human Spirit. I have as much control over Velgrmon as they do over Duskmon.”

What? That's not – “Is that how it works for digimon?” But the rest of Cherubimon's Warriors with Beast Spirits don't turn into new people when they slide evolve.

Duskmon seems to be weighing the same thought. “...No, probably just me.”

That can't be the case. Spirits don't act on their own.

A few other observations come together all at once, and she jolts. “How old are you?” she demands, sitting up straight.

“Why?”

She growls and gestures at herself. “I'm eleven. How old are you?”

“Ten.”

The tension leaks out of her posture. She almost thought....

He adds, frowning at her, “Months.”

“Che cavolo, you're how old? We arrived in the digital world ten months ago! When did you become the Warrior of Darkness?”

“The same length of time. Where are you going with this?”

She doesn't know either yet, but it can't be anywhere good. “Right out of your egg? Did you become a Warrior as soon as you hatched?”

He doesn't refute it, though she waits and hopes for him to.

Finally she breathes, “Oh. You don't have a personality.”

He's barely a real person. He seems a little closer to it now, but back on the Continent of Darkness they must have lost to a shell, a living puppet, the Human Spirit with just enough of a mind controlling it to point it in the direction its lord wanted it to go. The realization leaves her sick to her stomach. Cherubimon fielded a blank slate, and it worked.

What did Cherubimon say earlier? I was sure I'd cut out your sense of honor. “And Cherubimon tampered with your Spirits.”

He inclines his head. “That's what Velgrmon said. What did you mean, I don't have a personality?”

He doesn't sound upset or offended. A little annoyed, if anything. She told him Cherubimon snatched him from the cradle and slotted him into a shape of the angel's making and he nodded. Never mind what's wrong with him, how much is wrong with him? Kouji died to a monster Cherubimon made by taking a living person and turning it into a thing. Ophanimon was friends with someone who could do that.

She feels like she's going to throw up.

She's fought against enemy Warriors and seen the desolation that failure leaves behind. She's lost her friends to a fallen angel's crusade – Kouji permanently to Duskmon, Takuya to who knows what, and the rest to her own ineptitude. She's made a space for herself at the Wind Terminal, where she couldn't escape the constant influx of new stories about friends killed, people displaced, landscapes destroyed, a steady wave of misery on a scale beyond comprehension that everyone there learned to survive each day beneath the weight of.

But this quiet atrocity of a single stranger guts her. The others Cherubimon has hurt at least know what they've lost. Duskmon doesn't even understand he's been wronged.

It doesn't take back what he did or the consequences of Kouji's death. It doesn't lessen her hate. It doesn't change anything.

It's just yet another horror allowed to occur because no one stopped it.

She startles as Renamon fades into existence with a bundle of firewood couched under his arm. He looks between them both, brightening a little at what he sees, then holds the gourd out to Duskmon. “I'm back. We have to boil this, right?”

“No.” Duskmon shifts his attention from Izumi, who uses the lull to try to bring herself back under control. “The gourd sterilized it already.”

Renamon blinks, then considers his firewood.

Duskmon says, “We can use that for cooking. Are noodles alright? I'm not up for anything more complicated.”

Renamon seems happy with that, though his gaze flicks over Duskmon's injuries even as he smiles. “Then I'll get more water. Can I have the pot?”

Once he leaves, Duskmon stands to pass the gourd to Izumi. She bites her lip and takes it from him. Her fingers brush his gauntlet, and she's forcibly reminded that the last time she touched him she nearly broke his neck, and that, before that, he sliced off two of her limbs.

She gulps downs half of the bottle, then returns it. He retakes a seat with his back against a tree, unclasps the plate in his helmet that covers his mouth, and finishes the rest of the water with considerably more restraint, taking shallow sips with long breaks between. He makes no move to continue the conversation Renamon interrupted.

Izumi needs to get the most important question out of the way at some point. “Are you still planning to scan this island?”

Duskmon lowers the bottle. “You'd stop me if I tried. Not worth it.”

“So if I leave....”

“Then I'll scan it,” he replies. No attempt to soften the sentiment.

“Okay,” she sighs, dragging a hand through her hair. “I'll worry about this later.”

If he's been Duskmon his entire life, what incentive would he have had to learn how to deflect or mince words? Until Izumi evolved, the only person he's met who can hurt him is his own boss, who... he did lie to, just now, if only by omission: he hid the news of Renamon's evolution.

So he understands the concept. He simply doesn't see a reason to with Izumi. She probably is less scary than Cherubimon.

If he won't lie to her, she can ask the other most important question.

“About Renamon – did you take him from the Village of Beginnings because he can use one of the Spirits?” Duskmon's attention sharpens, and she flinches. But he doesn't deny it. “Is it Wood? Or....” She takes a shaky breath. Takuya should have Earth, which leaves one other. “Light. He's Light. Isn't he.” Duskmon likely wouldn't have such an attachment if Renamon was Arbormon's or Grottemon's successor. He's not hung up over them the way he seems to be with Kouji.

“How did you...?”

Because Cherubimon's done the same at least once already, to the person sitting across from her. “Why didn't you force him to take on the Spirits as soon as he hatched?” He makes to reply, but the answer comes to Izumi first. “Cherubimon hasn't finished changing the Spirits of Light the way he has the Spirits of Darkness.”

He stares at her. “That... makes sense.”

“You didn't wonder about it at all?”

His mouth twists. “No. Not about that.” He finishes drinking, then fits the armor piece back between his helmet's teeth.

“What did you wonder about, then?”

Duskmon says nothing.

She leans in. “Will you let Cherubimon do it?”

“I....”

“You can't. Don't do that to him. Kouji wouldn't have wanted his Spirits used that way.” It's the truest thing she's ever said, but Kouji probably wouldn't have wanted Izumi to keep wielding his name as a weapon against his killer, either. Sorry, Kouji. I have to do this for someone else's sake.

Duskmon glances aside, for the first time unable to meet her eyes.

Renamon returns more quickly than before and starts to set up a cooking station, fighting off Duskmon's attempts to take over. He lights a fire by snapping his claws to conjure a blue flame but fails several tries at constructing a frame to hang the pot from. Duskmon has to demonstrate.

Duskmon acts more subdued around him than he did before, slower to speak and to touch. Izumi suspects Renamon notices too, but he doesn't draw attention to it outside of worried looks.

She nearly killed both of them several hours ago.

And Duskmon nearly did the same to her. From the outside, she might seem just as unconcerned about it as they do.

Renamon makes another water run for soup after the noodles cook through. Izumi, feeling a little surreal, offers seaweed she has stashed. Duskmon takes it after a brief hesitation and combines it in the pot with miso, dried mushrooms, and pickled ginger.

The resulting broth smells better by far than a meal she would make for herself. Somehow it doesn't surprise her. She doesn't know how to explain it, but Duskmon just seems like the type to know how to cook. It's not a thought that makes a lot of sense, especially since she can't easily picture Cherubimon or the other Warriors teaching him how.

Eating poses challenges. Renamon asks to try chopsticks. Duskmon only has a fork, which he needs for himself because he doesn't have fingers, so he whittles a pair for him while the soup simmers. Izumi gives Renamon the rundown on how to use them, and then they struggle through the meal together, Renamon mostly succeeding only in spinning his noodles around in his bowl and Izumi fighting to make her chopsticks cooperate with her left hand because she can't raise her right arm without pain.

“You can just use your mouth,” says Duskmon once he and Izumi have both finished and Renamon still has most of his bowl left.

Renamon's shoulders slump. “Yeah,” he sighs, and sticks his muzzle in. When he finishes a few sloppy seconds later, he volunteers to wash the dishes.

Duskmon says, “You don't have to do everything yourself. I'm not bedridden.”

“I want to. Just this once, at least.”

“Can I go with you?” says Izumi, climbing to her feet. “I need to wash the blood off.” She's still covered in it, and the smell has been worsening.

“Yeah,” says Renamon, and then to Duskmon he adds, “We'll be fine, you can stay here. Really!”

Duskmon eyes him but makes no move to stand. “Come back soon.”

Izumi's back prickles as she follows Renamon farther into the trees. She felt safer from Duskmon when she could see where he was. But he likely won't try anything by this point, especially after he let Renamon go with her alone.

“I haven't apologized yet,” she says.

The next bearer of the Spirits of Light hums and glances her way.

“I'm sorry. I... there's no excuse. You shouldn't have gotten hurt.”

He smiles wanly. “Yeah. It's.... Can I say something? And you won't tell Duskmon?”

She nods.

The quiet stretches before he whispers, “I can't forgive either of you yet.” He tilts his head up, looking at the passing tree trunks rather than at her. “But it's – okay. Just please don't do that again. I know you weren't mad at me, but if one of you had died I would have been hurt by that too. So please don't fight unless it'll actually....” He swallows. “Please don't fight.”

Chapter Text

Strictly speaking, Duskmon doesn't need to get off of the island, but the longer he spends in the tropics the more tempting the idea of asking Velgrmon out to play becomes. Renamon's antsy as well, if less due to the weather, and Izumi's skin has darkened and cracked despite her spending most of her time in the shade. The Warrior of Ice hasn't shown their face since the fight, though Izumi apparently called and confirmed their survival.

She, out of all of them, can leave at any point and without first begging Cherubimon's forgiveness. She's even acquired enough power to take Mercuremon and Ranamon out of commission if she goes looking for them. But doing so would require her to leave Duskmon unchecked.

He can't shake her off, either, now that Renamon's grown attached to her and acquired legs. It's harder to run off with a protesting fox than with a ball not even the size of his head.

The stalemate leaves them orbiting each other until someone makes a move. Which they won't, both due to Renamon's proximity and because they're too evenly matched. Either of them stands an equal chance of losing. Duskmon doesn't mind the possibility for himself, but if instead he kills Izumi... what a waste that would be.

Mealtimes between the three of them are uncomfortable. He can't put together a reason for why they seem that way, though. He minds his own business during, while Izumi talks to Renamon if she talks at all. Renamon appears to have recovered his spirits somewhat from what happened, but he hasn't adjusted entirely to his evolution. When he eats, he still does it either leaning against Duskmon or outright sitting on him.

He's light enough that his weight doesn't make for an impediment, but his size does. Duskmon can't move without dislodging Renamon when the smaller digimon is perched on his shoulder or sitting in his lap.

Despite the inconvenience, Duskmon doesn't mind it. He just waits for Renamon to finish and leave before starting on his own food. He got used to Wanyamon's dependence. He can do the same for Renamon's clinginess.

Aside from eating, he spends most of their days in the darkest patches of shade he can find, standing up at sunrise and sunset to go down to the shore and try to build a raft.

He's not very good at it. At any part of it. At tying the knots, at keeping the logs together once he sets them on the water, at constructing something that actually floats. Izumi watches judgementally from a distance, which is easy to ignore, and Renamon in his attempts to help accomplishes as much as she does.

Early on, Duskmon conducts a brief experiment where he walks chest-deep into the sea, keeping his grip tight on a rock formation sticking out of the water near him, and raises his feet off of the ocean bed.

In principle, he knows how not to drown. He keeps air in his lungs and holds his free arm out on the water's surface. Saltwater is also considerably more buoyant than freshwater is. He shouldn't have trouble staying afloat.

But as soon as his boots leave the ground, he drops like an anchor.

He hauls himself upright using the rocks, mouth twisted under the helmet and injuries aching dully from the sudden movements. If a raft breaks apart with him on it, he will sink. It's not in question. And, since he'd rather not die from something so avoidable, in that situation he'll slide evolve and hand the reigns to Velgrmon, who holds a wholly different set of priorities from him.

Maybe he should send Renamon off of the island with Izumi –

– no.

Sand and gravel crunch behind him while he's recovering the materials of his... which failed attempt is this? He hasn't bothered to keep a count. Without turning, he swivels a shoulder eye to watch Izumi's approach.

She's shading her face against the setting sun with one hand and dangling a water bottle in the other, looking thoroughly miserable with her skin bright as a crab's shell and her nose peeling. She grimaces at Duskmon the way she usually does when Renamon isn't around to see and comes to a stop a good several meters away from him.

“How long is this going to take you?” she asks.

“Can't say.” Duskmon picks at the ties on the logs, trying to keep his frustration in check. He needs to undo the knots without damaging the vine rope – the thing wasn't exactly easy to make, and he doesn't look forward to doing it again if this rope breaks – which is a chore when he doesn't have fingers and even worse if he gets impatient enough with it to try shortcuts. Renamon can't help, since he possesses the unerring ability to turn any previously functional knot into a dead one. “I haven't needed to do it before.”

“You've been at it for a few days now.”

He raises a gauntlet for her perusal and pinches it as much as he can. The gap between the teeth narrows by about a half dozen centimeters. By this standard, he's been working almost quickly. “I am aware.”

“And your rafts are still terrible. All of them.”

“I can't wish them better.”

“Have you thought about what you're going to do if something happens once you set out? If the raft breaks, or if you can't steer and the currents end up dragging you into that abyss Calamaramon left?”

He spends a few more seconds working on a knot before he answers, “Velgrmon will deal with that.”

She doesn't say anything about the elephant in the room, only watches him with a hard stare.

After a while, he turns his face to look at her. Crouched and lower on the slope as he is, she has a head of height over him. “You're not taking Renamon first.”

“What is he to you?”

The question that dogs his every thought about the kid. “Did you want something?”

She purses her lips. “No.” She hesitates and then sucks in a breath. “I... actually, I've meant to ask. Is there a way to uncorrupt a Spirit?”

“You'll die if you face me in your old forms.”

She snaps, “Who said I was talking about me?” Her temper might have grown worse lately. Not that he knew her before, but Renamon, who might be a better judge on this matter even though Duskmon abhors admitting it, looks a little confused whenever she raises her voice. Luckily, she doesn't do it often around him, and never at him, only at Duskmon, and only in flare-ups of a second or so before she wrestles herself down.

If she didn't ask for her own sake, then.... “The Spirits of Light.” He settles on his heels, draping an arm over his knee. “I don't know. Why do you think I do?”

She frowns. “Have you never thought about it? For yourself?”

“Why would I?”

Still, she might have a point about the Spirits of Light.

The Spirits don't usually override their host's personhood. From what he's seen, not even the Beast Spirits do despite being harder to control. But Furymon bore little relation to the Izumi across from him, and Duskmon is fully the Human Spirit of Darkness with no living filter shielding the world from him. If Cherubimon corrupts Light and offers the Spirits to Renamon....

Digimon change by nature. Little of them remains constant between evolutions. Duskmon assumed Wanyamon would evolve into Gabumon, a pack canine, but even that much didn't go the way he expected it to. When and if Renamon reaches his adult form, it might be any species and have any effect on how he can interact with the world. He'll still be the same person, but he won't be Renamon any more than Renamon is Wanyamon.

That isn't the same as forcing him into a shape he wouldn't have achieved on his own, though.

Duskmon holds nothing against the concept. Cherubimon did it to him, and he's never had a reason to mind it. Fighting alongside Renamon as a fellow Warrior who doesn't need protecting might even be interesting. But, given the choice, he would prefer to see the person Renamon will become on his own. It's part of the reason he took the kid from the Village of Beginnings at all.

Still, whatever Duskmon or Cherubimon might think, the decision in the end needs to come from Renamon. The Spirits have chosen him, so he can claim them if he wants to. If, instead, he refuses them, and Cherubimon presses them on him anyway, then Cherubimon can go hang. Kouji... wouldn't have wanted them used that way.

And Duskmon, for some reason, still lingers over the memory of the human boy he killed months ago.

Izumi says, “You've never wondered who you could be if you weren't” – she gestures expansively at the whole of him – “this?”

Not until she brought it up. “No.” He is what he is. No use in thinking too hard on it. “I don't know how you would remove the corruption from a Spirit.” Dryly, he adds, “You could try doing the opposite of whatever you did to corrupt yours.”

She makes a face. “They don't deserve to be forgiven that quickly.”

“Forgiven for what?” he says, and then wonders why he cares enough to ask.

Izumi works her jaw and glances away for a moment, then looks back to him. “You never lost a fight before Furymon. Well, I never won until then. Almost came close sometimes, but in the end I always needed help. Or rescuing.”

Far be it from him to tell someone that weakness is an excusable fault, but.... “Not all of the Spirits are combat types.”

She freezes. “What?”

“Most of them are naturally useless. Like Arbormon, and Fire. Your Spirits as well.”

“What are you saying,” she breathes. “You can't compare them to you.”

“Your group did that when you thought you could stand your ground against me.” How much does he want this conversation to escalate into an argument? ...Not very. He has tasks that need finishing today. “Don't compare them to me, then. Compare them to you. Since you were a burden in fights, what situations could you handle better than the others?”

“It doesn't matter! I wasn't good enough at anything to beat you. Or even Ranamon and Grottemon and... Arbormon.” And Mercuremon, who's slacking as usual if she can't remember him well enough to name him. Someday Cherubimon will finally let Duskmon kill the rat.

“True,” he replies. He offered her the information. What she chooses to do with it isn't his problem, so he focuses again on pinching the raft apart at a snail's pace.

“Why did you give me back the Beast Spirit?”

“I can't use it.”

“And? What else? Why did you give me back something we both know I'm going to use against you?”

“Because Velgrmon had no right to claim it in the first place.” And, even if Velgrmon did, Duskmon would still have returned it to Izumi to spite his other half. “They would have let Renamon die.” They would have eaten Renamon if not for their absurd, twisted sense of pride. “Any victories after they chose to do that don't count.”

He pulls at the current knot too quickly from a bad angle, and a tooth on his gauntlet tears halfway through the rope. Great. He doesn't care about hands; at this point, he would do with a claw that can at least close all of the way.

“Okay,” says Izumi, “but I still might be able to kill you with it.”

Why is she pressing him on this? “And you earned that.”

She furrows her brow. “Do you... not care? The other Warriors would've – ”

“I'm not on a level with Ranamon and Mercuremon.” If he needs to pull stupid tricks the way they do to eke out a win, then he'll take a loss instead. “Why did you face me with your Beast Spirit when you knew I could kill you like that? You let me cut off your wing.”

She blanches as much as she can against the sunburns, staring at him wide-eyed, and says nothing.

“I don't think,” he continues, “that you're in a position to ask me why I choose to fight, when you and your group keep coming at me like lemmings.”

“That's different.”

“I'll bet.”

“What are you protecting when you fight?” she snarls.

So much for keeping things civil. “If you walk into a fight because someone needs protecting, you've already lost. That's a liability you're babysitting.” Which is why he cut down Arbormon.

“You didn't believe that a couple of nights ago.”

“I messed up, and I've admitted to it. Have you? Doesn't sound like you have.” He leans forwards. “The second time you faced me, Fire charged in first. The rest of you hesitated, but in the end you followed. That was your mistake. You should have let him die.” Kouji should have let him die.

“No. You're the only backstabber here.”

“Well – ”

“Would you ever let Renamon go up against someone alone?”

He recoils. “Fire's not worth a hair on Renamon's head.”

An odd expression settles across her face. “You haven't realized, have you? Not everyone treasures the same things you do. You have to be the one to protect the things you care about, because if you don't then no one else will. That's why we didn't let Takuya go alone. It's why... he knew we wouldn't let him go alone.” She takes a deep breath. “But it doesn't matter now, because he's gone and no one knows where. And the others are....”

He latches onto the only part of that he has interest in dealing with. “He's gone?”

“Disappeared. We thought he might have died in your last attack, but Ranamon didn't gloat about it so your side obviously didn't know either.”

Duskmon doesn't... really remember what he did after Garmmon's body dissolved into nothing and Fire cried the name of the boy the wolf had been. He came back to himself kilometers away, voice hoarse with screaming, that word rattling in his head, and his own blade snug against his throat. That was what had snapped him out of the fit. What am I doing? he managed to think through the litany of Kouji Kouji Kouji playing on damning repeat. What's wrong with me? What was wrong with him? Arbormon was nothing, so why...?

He could have killed Fire before that point without noticing, but he doubts it. For a while after Kouji died, Duskmon wasn't in a state to hurt anybody but himself.

He still doesn't have any idea why Kouji's death affected him. Opposing elements, maybe, Kouji as Light and him as Darkness. He clings to that because he has no other explanation, despite not a single other Warrior having reported similar issues with their own opposites. Grottemon had no trouble with Izumi, or Arbormon with Fire, or Ranamon with Ice, or Mercuremon with whoever. Just Duskmon and Kouji.

In the end, he doesn't care what the remaining human Warriors do with the lives Kouji bought them. Fire can go wherever he likes. He can run away, hide in a hole like a coward, cut off all contact with the rest of his group, anything – except die.

“Was that the last you saw of him?” Duskmon demands.

“Yeah.”

“I'm not the only thing on the Continent stronger than him,” he tells her. “Cherubimon-sama, obviously, but there are quieter predators. Digital ghosts, entities like that 'trailmon'. They have territories they don't stray from, but those territories aren't physical. If Fire blundered into one, they could have taken him.”

He could have simply fled without telling his former allies, in which case Duskmon will leave the matter be, but he can't check for that. He can, however, check for if one of the Continent's other denizens snatched him; the only ghost Duskmon can't do anything about is the trailmon at the Darkness Terminal.

The terminal isn't a real station, the trailmon who runs it isn't a real trailmon or even a digimon, and it's impossible to reach without an invitation on account of, again, not being real. It – and even Duskmon isn't sure whether he's referring to the station or the trailmon with that – feeds on regret and fear. The way to leave is to remove those emotions and, with them, its food source. If the terminal spirited Fire away, then Duskmon will have to figure something else out to bring him back.

“He could have been kidnapped?” Izumi says.

“The possibility isn't nonexistent. If he was, though, he should still be alive.”

Izumi huffs a breath and looks away, hand coming up to cover her face, though not quickly enough to hide the wet glimmer in her eyes. A beat later, she says, voice rasping, “Why would you care?”

“Kouji died for him. He's going to live if I have anything to say about it.”

“...What are you going to do if you leave this island?”

“Look for him on the Continent.” Though that place won't be safe for Renamon. Duskmon's going to have to teach him how to run away if Duskmon tells him to.

“That's it?”

Probably not, come to think of it. “Scan somewhere on the way over to make up for the failure here.”

“Of course you are,” she whispers, turning away fully. It's the last thing she says to him to that evening.

Late the next morning, once the sun's risen fully and Duskmon's taken shelter under the canopy, he blinks awake from his reverie to Renamon materializing draped over him.

It's not usual. Renamon occasionally wanders off for half an hour or so for no particular reason that Duskmon can tell, but he otherwise spends his time glued to Duskmon like a burr. He rests his chin on Duskmon's shoulder and tips his head to the side to lean against Duskmon's cheek, humming thoughtfully.

“Did something happen?” Duskmon asks.

After a moment, Renamon replies, “Neesan said she can carry all of us off the island.”

“She's going to drop me over the sea,” Duskmon says immediately, and Renamon tenses, breath catching. “Sorry.”

“She won't do that,” says Renamon with far too much blind faith.

“I'll go talk to her.” Duskmon eyes the shreds of sunlight lancing through the canopy. “In a bit. Where is she?”

“On the beach.”

He heads down closer to sunset, Renamon trotting along after him. With the addition of a spine, the kid's quickly learned the new art of slouching, though that's probably a side effect of his penchant for transitioning between bipedal and quadrupedal at the drop of a hat. To Duskmon, his bad posture gives the disquieting impression that he might bolt at any point, since he always drops to all fours when he sprints.

Izumi isn't on the beach. Instead, a digimon stands at the shoreline, the setting sun throwing its shadow long over the waves.

It's a horse, coat as white as bleached bone, scaled legs shining silver before they reach the three-toed hooves. Antlers the color of charcoal branch back from between its ears. Partway down its head, skin and muscle transition into exposed bone of the same powdery black as the hooves and teeth and antlers.

Its left forehoof taps at the ground in the slow, even rhythm that Furymon's wing did whenever she wasn't in motion.

Renamon's steps falter. “Duskmon – ?”

“It's her.” She looks just like her Beast Spirit. “I don't know what she's called, though.”

“Anemosmon,” she introduces in a voice slightly deeper than Duskmon's when they draw closer. She raises her head. Skin and hair stretch seamlessly over the sockets where her eyes should rest. Renamon shrinks further behind Duskmon, gaze caught on the teeth exposed past the point where her lips end. They wouldn't look out of place on a shark.

Duskmon wouldn't mind watching her in this form forever, but time won't stop and wait for him if he does.

“You have that under control?” he asks.

She apparently doesn't consider the question worth the dignity of an acknowledgement. “We'll go to the nearest trailmon station and head to the Continent first thing. I'm going with you.”

Chapter Text

The trailmon slows. Through the fogged-over windows, the ice plains give way to a great crater that the tracks circle the edge of.

Renamon presses his face to the cold glass to peer at the settlement crowded onto the floor of the crater, where the icy slopes level out to make way for sparse shrubbery and tundra flowers and, beyond those, squat buildings. Series of ropes supporting lifts extend from the top of the ice down to the edge of the town at several points around the crater, including from the train station. A towering structure in the center of the town casts a shadow across the entire settlement.

Even with the gloom from it, the town of Akiba Market is a spot of welcome color after hours of sheer white. Every roof seems painted a different shade, and he doesn't spot a speck of snow on any of them.

“Can we take a break here?”

Duskmon stirs. He zones out sometimes in a way Renamon doesn't think anyone else does – he's not present enough for it to be daydreaming and too quick to recover for it to be sleep, and he never remembers a thought or event from those periods. He didn't even realize it happens until Renamon asked him about it. Renamon's a little jealous; it must make boring stretches of time pass by in a blink.  

Undisturbed, Duskmon can last in that state for hours, but it doesn't take much of a commotion to draw him back to awareness. A direct address from a voice he recognizes is always enough.

“Sure,” Duskmon answers.

“What?” says Izumi. “There isn't time to waste – ”

“I'm tired,” Renamon snaps, shoulders hunching. They've slept the past three nights on three different trailmon lines. Before that came four hours spent clinging to Anemosmom's back as she galloped through the air over an expanse of unbroken blue, Renamon speaking over the wind the whole while about any nonsense subject he could think of. (Without giving a reason, Anemosmon asked him to keep talking through the journey, and Duskmon only said, oddly grimly, “If you can, Renamon.”) Pacing up and down the train car isn't doing anything for the itch in his legs anymore.

“One day won't make a difference,” Duskmon says. In their reflections in the window, Renamon sees Izumi watching Duskmon, expression hard, and Duskmon tilting his head to meet her gaze across the aisle. “No one will stop you from going ahead if you're in that much of a rush.”

Izumi agrees like the words are being pried out of her with a knife.

The instant the trailmon stops and the car door slides open, Renamon bounds for the platform.

The cold hits immediately once he crosses the threshold, the wind flattening his fur and snaking up against his skin, but at least it isn't the overbearing tension of the train. Duskmon and Izumi, left in a small room together for five seconds, weigh the atmosphere down enough to suffocate any attempt at producing not just words but any sound at all.

He shifts on his feet while waiting for the other two, trading which paw has contact with the ground whenever the chill begins to set into his bones.

Izumi exits after Duskmon. She pauses on the last stair to look at Renamon, and then she sighs and something about her expression softens, tension relaxing and shadows melting away. Renamon can't read what changed, or why, but, as she steps down to the platform, she looks like a different person than the one who spent most of the last week unhappy.

Outside in the open cold, with the weight of Izumi's and Duskmon's discontent only a memory, he nearly forgets why he wanted to stop here at all. Surely he could have borne another few days until they reached the Continent of Darkness. The quicker they find Izumi's friend, the quicker they can make sure he's safe. He's more important than Renamon's mild annoyance.

Renamon begins quietly, not looking anyone in the eye, “Actually, I think....” But he doesn't know how to say, a minute after exiting the car, Actually, let's just get back on, I was wrong. He sways a step closer to Duskmon and leans against his arm.

Duskmon hasn't wholly recovered. Even though his armor has mostly grown back, the plating around his neck still bears faint dents, and his injured shoulder eye looks a little cloudy under light even though the visible injuries have healed and Renamon can touch it without causing pain. Duskmon said that digimon can heal from anything given long enough, which Renamon will only feel safe believing once he sees it happen.

Izumi sighs again. “It's warmer by the furnace,” she says, waving at the looming structure at the center of the crater before carefully wrapping her arms around herself.

She told Renamon that her arm doesn't hurt anymore, and for a few days she went back to moving normally, but afterwards she suddenly started being more cautious with it again. A faint shadow of a bloodstain that she couldn't completely wash out still covers her sleeve, and below that, encircling her arm beneath the shoulder, sits a wide, bumpy growth that Renamon knows exists because it's raised high enough off of the surrounding skin for her shirt to faintly mold around it.

She won't talk about it. He catches her scratching at it sometimes, with a look in her eyes like she would rather tear it off completely.

“Probably a scar,” Duskmon said when Renamon brought it up without Izumi present. “Digimon regenerate, but humans need to heal. It's different. She'll have the reminder for the rest of her life. I don't know why she didn't let her Human Spirit take the damage instead.”

She and Duskmon aren't trying to kill each other anymore, but they each bear the signs that they did it once and could get back to it at any point. Renamon mostly tries to ignore it, with extremely mixed results.

“You've been here before, neesan?” he asks.

Izumi says, “Yeah. One time. Ranamon's followers stole our things and came to Akiba Market to sell them.”

“Ranamon?” he echoes, looking up at Duskmon. The name's vaguely familiar. Still, he hopes it's no one Duskmon knows who did that to Izumi's group. Most digimon types have more than a single member, so it could have been a different ranamon.

But Duskmon answers, “Ranamon of Water. There's only one. If I have my way, you'll never meet her.”

“Yeah,” says Izumi. While Renamon's struggling to find a place in his worldview for the idea of Izumi and Duskmon agreeing on any point, she continues with strained lightness, “It's almost like all of your allies are terrible people.”

“They each have ulterior motives,” Duskmon says, which even Renamon can't help noticing isn't a denial.

“Arbormon didn't seem like he did. And I guess you don't, either.”

Oh. That's why Renamon couldn't bear staying on the train, he remembers now. If he heard them get into one more barely-civil interaction, he would have crawled out of a window and taken up residence on the roof.

“I want to explore on my own,” he declares before Duskmon can provoke Izumi. Again. Leaving the two of them alone together has, to date, achieved no progress whatsoever in convincing them to get along, but that's not even Renamon's goal anymore.

Izumi blinks while Duskmon glances down into the crater that houses the town. Izumi says, “Are you sure that's...?”

“Renamon,” Duskmon says, measured, “do you know which way south is?”

Renamon freezes, and then he thinks to look up. The sun rises in the east, and currently it's still morning... he needs a a moment to find the sun, a pale silver glow through a cloud bank not far above the horizon, but once he does he points it out. “That's east.”

“That's northeast,” says Duskmon.

“...What? But – ”

“The sun moves.”

“That's cheating!”

Duskmon absently pats Renamon's head as he turns to Izumi. “Hey, do you have a compass?”

“I don't,” she says, still watching Renamon with an odd expression. “I've never needed one.”

“Renamon, this station is due south of the furnace. Can you find your way back here?”

“I can ask people for directions.”

“Will you do that?”

Unbidden, the memory rises of Duskmon's dead weight as Renamon hauled him out of the pit. “I can if I have to.” There is a lot, he has discovered, that he can do if he has to.

Duskmon gives a slow nod, but Izumi says, “This doesn't feel like a good idea.”

“It's not,” Duskmon says.

Renamon didn't expect a decision this straightforward to start a debate. “I'll be fine.”

“Yes.” Duskmon pauses, considering Renamon while Renamon puts up with the scrutiny with ill grace, and then continues, “Shout if you need me. I'll be there. Otherwise, I'll wait at the bottom of the lift. I'll come find you if you're not back by sundown.”

“I don't think I'll take that long.” Renamon glances at the lift and hesitates again – before very, very recently, he's never gone far enough that he couldn't hear Duskmon's voice at a normal volume – but then he steels himself and turns away. “See you later.”

---

(“You're really letting him go alone?”

“Obviously not. I'm following him.”

“...I'm coming, too.”)

---

Recently, whenever Renamon thinks he can do anything, the situation changes just enough that he can't anymore.

He could go off on his own on the island, but there he only needed to navigate terrain, not people, and he never strayed so far that he couldn't return to Duskmon in less than a minute. He can hold a conversation with someone who isn't Duskmon or Cherubimon, but only if that someone is Izumi. Even though Duskmon gave him currency to barter with, he hasn't eaten since getting off of the train because he doesn't know the procedure for approaching a vendor to buy food.

He can get to all kinds of places now that he has legs, but it doesn't matter when he doesn't know where he is or where he's going. Despite having spent his life traveling, he hasn't learned the first thing about navigation or trip planning because Duskmon manages logistics and Renamon has never asked.

In other words, about two hours into the visit he admits to himself that he doesn't want to be alone anymore, tries to find the trailmon station, realizes he was so focused on his anxiety that he forgot to keep track of landmarks while he walked, and spends a mortifying, frustrating amount of time hesitating in the middle of the street as he tries to muster the strength to bother a passerby for directions.

If he tells Duskmon about it later, he thinks Duskmon will answer with something like, None of those people matter. Their opinions don't matter. Do what you have to. Don't think about them. 

Maybe Renamon's imaginary Duskmon is right – the real Duskmon usually is – but at the same time he can't be right. Renamon is one of these people too, after all, and Renamon matters.

A local notices and takes pity on him. He took too many turns, she tells him. The reason he can't find the station is because it's on the other side of the furnace, blocked from view. She can show him the way.

Renamon's happy enough to follow her, up until she makes to lead them down what is blatantly a dead end.

“Um,” he says, slowing.

“There's a shortcut through here,” says PicoDevimon with a smile. “I know it doesn't look like it, but I promise there is.”

He can't think of a reason why she would lie to him, and she probably knows the area better than him, but right then he spots another friendly-looking passerby. Renamon just wants to confirm that PicoDevimon actually knows where they're going, so he slinks over to hail the stranger.

“Huh?” When Renamon asks, the digimon nods in the same direction PicoDevimon has been leading Renamon in. Then the stranger frowns up at Renamon. “Are you listening to PicoDevimon's directions?”

“Hey,” PicoDevimon snaps, “butt out. This has nothing to do with you.”

Renamon glances between the two of them. He doesn't want to get caught up in an argument. He's spent the past week getting caught up in arguments. “I just wanted to check....”

“Good point,” the snowman digimon says, ignoring Renamon. “It doesn't.” He adjusts his hold on the concerningly heavy-looking crates he's hauling, one over each shoulder, and gets back to walking.

“Do you want help?” Renamon asks. “With carrying those,” he clarifies when the digimon shoots him a baffled look.

“No. I don't know you.”

It takes Renamon a second to make the connection that the digimon means he might try to steal the boxes.

Meanwhile, PicoDevimon says, “Do you still want me to show you the way or not? I'm taking time out of my day for you.”

Renamon wavers. He needs and deeply appreciates the help, but she definitely just tried to head down a dead end. Plus she apparently has a history of offering questionable navigation.

“You don't want to follow her,” the other digimon calls over his shoulder, not sounding as if he cares either way.

PicoDevimon squawks. “You just said – !”

“I'm not doing anything.”

The digimon's getting farther away. “Thank you for all the help,” Renamon tells PicoDevimon hurriedly, “I'll stop bothering you now.” He jogs to catch up with the stranger, leaving PicoDevimon behind.

The stranger giggles. “I shouldn't have done that.” He composes himself quickly, and he asks, “Why're you following me now?”

“Um.” The stranger is heading in the general direction of the station as verified by PicoDevimon. Latching onto him isn't a bad idea. “You seem nice?”

“I'm sorry, who are you?”

“I'm Renamon.”

“...Guess you are, yep,” the stranger says. Renamon's not sure anymore why he thought he might be friendly. Nice, yes, for giving Renamon directions when he didn't need to, but he seems too occupied to be friendly. “What d'you want the train station for?”

“I have to get back there before dark.”

“Or else what?”

Duskmon doesn't like it when Renamon talks about him too much. “I, uh” – maybe if Renamon doesn't refer to Duskmon by name – “someone will come looking.”  The stranger doesn't reply, and after a moment Renamon asks, “Are you sure you don't want help with carrying those?”

“Nope, thanks,” the stranger says, side-eyeing Renamon. “Where'd you say you were from? A village with five people in the middle of nowhere?”

Renamon blinks. “I didn't say that. I'm – not from anywhere. I've been to lots of places.”

“What, really?” The stranger purses his mouth, then says, “I've only ever lived in Akiba. So, if it's directions you want, you could've always picked worse. Somehow.”

He moves to the side of the road, Renamon following, as a monochromon who takes up the entire street trudges by. Something about what the stranger said doesn't ring right.

Renamon asks, “You've never been anywhere else?”

Instead of replying, the stranger pauses under the nearest building's eaves, stacks his crates on the ground, and points at the intersection up ahead. “Okay, for the train station you turn left there and keep going. The furnace has to stay on your right, so make turns that keep it there. The train station's at the top of the ice, you'll probably spot it in twenty minutes if you keep going at the speed you were just now, if you miss it then I don't know how. If you get lost again just ask somebody else. Somebody who's not PicoDevimon. Or yell for your friend, I guess. You seriously need to learn how to do things on your own.”

Yeah. Renamon does. “Thank you,” he says, but he doesn't move yet. The stranger stoops to retrieve the crates, and Renamon begins, “Um – ”

“I can carry these by myself,” the stranger interrupts, glancing narrow-eyed up at Renamon.

The boxes still look too heavy for comfort, but Renamon nods – that wasn't what he wanted to ask about anyway – and then blurts, “Do you know the name Izumi?”

“Never heard of it.”

”It's a person's name, not a place.”

The stranger stalls in the middle of hefting the second crate. “What kind of name is that?”

It is an unusual name. Calling someone without a -mon feels like eating a sandwich with no bread or getting rained on by a storm with no clouds. “It's a human's name, she's not a digimon. But she can turn into a digimon... sometimes. She...”

...had a character on her wrist that looks like the one on your chest, but hers read wind instead of ice.

The words stick in Renamon's throat. He saw that character only one time, between the moons and sea, before Izumi devolved back into a human and blood poured down her arm from a cut Duskmon left.

Renamon doesn't remember that night very well, most of it a vague impression – the thickly salty smell of the ocean, Izumi screaming, Duskmon saying awful things in response – but a few details stick out photo-perfect from the blur. How Izumi looked before she devolved is one.

But he doesn't want to bring any part of that night back into the world by talking about it, especially not to someone uninvolved who's probably happier not knowing any of it.

Evolving and devolving are supposed to shunt injuries onto the form that the person is transitioning out of (or, according to Duskmon, at least into a form other than the one that the person is transitioning into), not let them follow a person into the new form. They can carry over, but only through a conscious decision. When Renamon evolved, he didn't want anything from Wanyamon coming with him, so none of it did.

Even though, in the moment, he was scared that it would anyway. He had only just watched it happen that way for Izumi.

The stranger is staring at him. “Do you just ask everyone you meet if they know a human named Izumi, or am I special?”

“You look like her,” Renamon says weakly, “a little bit.” But the stranger has never left Akiba Market, and Izumi lived in the Wind Terminal. Why did Renamon feel like they might have met each other before? It was a stupid assumption.

“...Right,” says the stranger.

This time when the stranger goes, Renamon doesn't trail after him. Renamon has directions now. He waits for the other digimon to move farther away, so that he doesn't feel like Renamon is still following him, and then starts finding his path back to the train station.

---

“He looked like me,” Izumi echoes, later, when the three of them are sitting at a small diner for lunch near the lift leading up to the train station.

Renamon nods. “He had ice, like neesan had....”

Duskmon snorts. “Then who was that back on the island?”

“Seadramon,” says Izumi tightly, “protector of the digimon who lived there.”

“You haven't had a way to contact them,” Duskmon says. Renamon has no idea what they're talking about. “That's why they didn't come for you afterwards. Not because you told them to stay away.”

“Are you trying to go somewhere with this?” Izumi snaps, and Renamon slowly crosses his arms on the table and buries his head in them. Just until the food arrives. Izumi and Duskmon will stop sniping at each other as soon as they have something else to do with their mouths.

After a pause, Duskmon speaks again. Renamon's ear twitches at his tone: gentleness worn over his words like an ill-fitting sandpaper glove, the way Renamon hasn't heard from him since Renamon was Wanyamon and Duskmon was halfway a stranger. “That lie won't work for you a second time.”

Izumi doesn't respond. Instead, she says, “Renamon,” and Renamon peeks at her over his arms. “Did Chackmon bring up anyone else? Or tell you what he's been doing?”

“He didn't really want to talk,” Renamon says, sitting straighter. “Do you know him?”

“Not like he is now,” she answers. Quieter: “And he didn't recognize my name. So, no. I don't.”

“I don't know what that means.”

“It might be safest if you don't go up to people who have characters like Chackmon's on them,” Izumi says. Duskmon doesn't refute her. “They're either going to be on Duskmon's side or... it's just easier if you don't. Takuya's waiting for us and there's not enough time to waste on them.”

Chapter Text

None of them knew what happened to Tomoki after he and Neemon vanished one night without a word and without a struggle.

Izumi should have searched harder for them that morning, when a frantic Bokomon shook her out of one nightmare and into another. It was Tomoki, the baby of the team, along with Neemon, who none of the remaining three could imagine as anything other than one half of a pair. Bokomon had woken to find the other side of their bedroll empty, Tomoki's bedroll and pack missing entirely, and the earth gone cold under the absences, and every new possibility Bokomon could come up with for what might happen to the two of them on their own was worse than the ones before.

But, wherever Tomoki had gone, he had Neemon, who might not always know the most or be the best with words but who's always the quickest to cotton on to when a situation begins to go sour. 

And Tomoki knew, besides, how to hide from them if he didn't want his trail followed. Fairimon and Blitzmon between the two of them can cover a wide area from the air, but all Tomoki would have needed to do to avoid them was find shelter and wait for them to pass overhead. If he could do that much – if he had learned how to avoid an encounter he didn't want to meet – then he was already no worse off than any of them.

Izumi couldn't believe anymore that staying in a group with the other Warriors was safer than going alone. 

So she didn't look for him as hard as she could have.

Which makes anything that might have happened to him afterwards, any danger he couldn't handle because she'd let him leave without them, her fault as much as anyone's.

Junpei and Bokomon kept searching. Izumi kept going through the motions. The more time that passed without a sign of Tomoki or Neemon, the more likely it became that something had happened to them, and the less Izumi could face the thought of them, or of Junpei and Bokomon, without guilt wrapping thorns around their memory.

After all of that, running across Chackmon in Akiba was like... 

...lightning didn't descend from a clear sky to strike her. Tomoki didn't recite each of her sins back for her to hear. If she'd gone up and talked to him he might not have recognized her at all, which is an entirely different problem from the one she's dreaded this whole time.

He looked well.

Not much like himself, obviously, but well.

In the present, the train's floor shudders gently beneath Izumi's feet. The tracks are weirdly well-maintained on the long, narrow land bridge that links the Continent of Darkness to the rest of the world. The trailmon must manage it themselves, since Izumi doesn't think anyone else comes out here, whether it's the Continent's residents venturing into the daylit world or vice versa.

Into the dusty quiet, Izumi says, “What type of digimon would you be if you weren't a Legendary Warrior?”

“Don't care,” Duskmon answers.

Izumi couches her chin on her palm and her elbows on the back of the train seat in front of her, carefully not looking at her left bicep and the scar that sits under her sleeve. Maybe she'd have better luck talking to Velgrmon.

But that's probably a bad idea.

Duskmon side-eyes her from across the aisle and one row ahead. Izumi's refused to sit in any position that will put her back to him, but he hasn't taken the same precaution. She can't tell if he's just that unconcerned about the possibility of a murder attempt or if he's also run through the scenarios and understands that Izumi doesn't physically have the ability to ambush him. She would need to evolve first, the commotion from which would give him more than enough warning to react.

Above Duskmon, Renamon pokes his muzzle down through the bars of the overhead baggage shelf. “I can't imagine you as anyone else.”

Since the detour to Akiba ended, he's gone back to his usual agreeable and curious and notably clingy self.

It took a lot of stress to make him throw the tantrum he did. If someone forced Izumi to sleep on trains without beds for three nights in a row to go find someone she'd never met and knew nothing about and had no attachment to, all while the people who she was traveling with and who'd organized the trip couldn't find a single decent thing to say to each other, she'd have started clawing at the walls long before Renamon did.

In mortifying retrospect, Duskmon noticed his emotional state before Izumi did. Whenever Duskmon asked if Renamon wanted a break, though, Renamon told them he was fine to keep going, up until the moment he announced he wasn't.

“Why are you trying to?” Duskmon tilts his head back slightly to look up at Renamon. “I can't be anything else. If you see me evolve or – devolve, don't treat that digimon like it's me. It won't be.”

Renamon blinks. In the deepening evening shadows, his irises shine as flat discs of light the way Izumi's cats' would. “But where would you be?”

Duskmon says, “Nowhere.”

Renamon gives a vaguely skeptical hum.

“Hey, Renamon,” Izumi says, “do you know anything about the Legendary Warriors?”

Renamon's snout retreats from the bars so he can turn to look at her. Slowly, he replies, “Duskmon is the Warrior of Darkness, and neesan is the Warrior of Wind, and Chackmon is the Warrior of Ice....”

Just about nothing, then.

“There are ten elements and ten Warriors,” she says. “And we don't evolve the normal way digimon do. Each element has a Human Spirit and a Beast Spirit that let us evolve into a human form and a beast form. Duskmon has the Human Spirit of Darkness and the Beast Spirit of Darkness. I have both of the Spirits of Wind.” Or something like them.

She can't regret what she did to the Spirits. Shutumon lost the right to exist the instant Garmmon, the second fastest member of the team, reached Agnimon first.

She doesn't deny her own responsibility in how things went down, but the split-second decisions of combat have always belonged to the Spirits more than their host. Shutumon saw the sword rise, knew where its arc would end and what it would cut through, and understood both that there was only one thing she possessed that she could deflect it with and that she did not intend to die.

So she didn't move.

And Izumi, who was Shutumon, made the same choice.

“So you'd be someone different if you weren't Warriors?”

“Duskmon would be.”

Duskmon adds, “She wouldn't evolve at all. Humans stay humans until they die.”

Hey, no, Izumi didn't start this conversation for them to shift the subject away from the Spirits.

Something she's noticed about Duskmon: he doesn't think about things unless Renamon is the one pressing him on the topic. Even Izumi invoking Kouji's name in the question, or Renamon's name, doesn't have as consistent of an effect. If she wants to compare notes about the Spirits with the Legendary Warrior who has the most drastically contrasting perspective on them from her, she needs Renamon to do the heavy lifting as her go-between.

“What?” she says. “Humans evolve. Why wouldn't they?”

A pause. “Not the way digimon do.”

“Yes the way digimon do,” Izumi says, squinting at him. Duskmon twists around in his seat to stare at her. “You shouldn't talk about things you don't understand. Who's the human here?”

Renamon looks conflicted. Probably his habit of listening to Duskmon is warring with his common sense telling him that of course a real human has to know more about humans than a digimon does. She moves along before the wrong side can win out for him. “Duskmon is the weirdest one. Evolution doesn't work like that for anyone else anywhere, even the other Warriors. Renamon, you're not a completely different person from Wanyamon, are you?"

“I'm not.” He vanishes from the baggage shelf and fades back into existence kneeling on the seat of the bench below, his chin on Duskmon's head and his arms crossed on Duskmon's shoulder. It doesn't look very comfortable. “Duskmon.”

“Yeah? Evolution's different for me because....” Duskmon trails off, then continues, tone unchanging, “I'm the Human Spirit of Darkness. If I evolve, I'm not that anymore.”

Renamon settles back on his haunches to look Duskmon in the face. “You're Duskmon,” he says, though it sounds like a question.

Izumi offers the explanations and history lessons she remembers from Bokomon: a long time ago, ten ancient, powerful digimon defeated the evil angel Lucemon, then created the Spirits for future generations to turn to in times of need. They gave the Spirits the personalities and desires that they each thought the world would need most in a time of crisis, then filled their creations with fragments of their own power.

The host they bond to typically overrides most of the former two, though. Never all, but most.

“But it doesn't work that way for Duskmon?” Renamon asks once she finishes. “Why not?”

Izumi sits back to let Duskmon take that one. They've gotten much closer to the question she wants an answer to. If her luck holds out and Renamon keeps following this topic, he might think to ask it soon.

Duskmon says, “You need to have your own personality and desires before you can try to replace a Spirit's.” Renamon makes a puzzled noise, but Duskmon doesn't elaborate for him. “You also need to know yourself well enough to pick out the differences between yourself and the Spirit” -  Izumi thought so, but it's oddly relieving to hear it spoken; she hasn't heard it phrased so clearly by anyone else – “and you have to want to be yourself, more than the Spirit does.”

That's not entirely true. It's enough, Izumi's learned, just to want the Spirit to not be in charge more than the Spirit naturally wants to have control.

“I'm missing... at least two of those three.”

Renamon tilts his head faintly.

For as long as he's been Renamon, he's looked much more innocent than Izumi suspects his species typically does: his expression guileless, back hunched just enough to make him look smaller than he is, light on his feet and ever ready to retreat to the shelter of Duskmon's shadow.

There and then, though, at Duskmon's side in the rusty-red twilight, with his eyes narrowed to the shape of willow leaves, his posture steady, the accent markings along his cheekbones darkened into shadows themselves by the evening light, he resembles for the first time the digimon Izumi would have expected him to be if she had only ever heard his species' appearance described to her secondhand.

Bokomon could have told her why Wanyamon evolved into Renamon instead of any other child stage. There's a meaning to that, what forms a digimon takes.

(There's a meaning to what form Izumi diverted her Spirits into. Why is Furymon an untouchable shadow of a creature armored in chrome feathers and filled with so few soft parts, a three-headed barely-unified thing who fights most easily from a distance and, by simply existing, kills the people around them so awfully that they can no longer find their way to their next incarnation?

But that won't ever be worth thinking about.)

“If something bad happens,” Renamon says, his voice crystal clear in those few instants where the rest of the world feels only half real, “I can use your Spirit and you'll be back.”

The implications of those words are so horrible that for a second they don't sink in.

Then, for another second, Izumi tries to convince herself that she misheard them.

They strike her all at once. She startles, an aborted lurch in his direction as if she can physically hold him back from the idea he spoke into the world. “Renamon....”

From her angle, she can't see Duskmon's expression.

But he's silent for a longer while, and when he finally responds, even he sounds like he's trying, poorly and with no practice, to pick up something fragile without fracturing it: “I don't want you to do that. Why would you?”

Renamon's probably never hurt a single person in his life. He'd give that up to be Duskmon?

“Renamon,” Duskmon says, almost brittle, “why would you want to?”

A blink, and the moment falls away. “Never mind,” Renamon mutters, a child again instead of a child-stage digimon. “No reason.” When no one else says anything, he adds, “There's nothing weird about fusion evolution.”

“If I die,” says Duskmon, and Renamon flinches at the word, “go to Cherubimon-sama. Don't try to get the Spirits back. Don't try to fight what killed me. Don't talk to Mercuremon or Ranamon. Just get to Cherubimon-sama.”

“Or neesan?” Renamon murmurs.

“No. Cherubimon-sama.” Izumi can't even take offense to the knee-jerk refusal. There's a lot to say about Cherubimon, but, unlike her, he has never directly made himself a life-threatening danger to Renamon. Duskmon inhales. “Do what you want, I can't stop you. Not if it gets to that point. But don't do anything that would... don't lose yourself. The Spirits don't work that way, anyway. You can't use them unless they choose you to. That's the reason we don't have a Warrior of Wood. Cherubimon has the Spirits, but they're dead weight until he finds a digimon they'll accept.”

Cherubimon doesn't have a Warrior of Wood because Duskmon killed him in cold blood, actually.

If Duskmon had waited fifteen seconds, Junpei or Takuya or Kouji would have done it instead.

“Hey. Duskmon,” Izumi says. This won't be subtle, and she's interrupting the moment between Duskmon and Renamon, but she might not get a closer chance. Renamon went in a direction she didn't expect, to understate it. “Is there a way to separate a Warrior from a Spirit, other than the obvious way? Doesn't need to be separating them physically, just – making sure there's a difference between them.”

“No. Don't let the Spirit get that close in the first place.”

Izumi lets out a long, slow breath, grip tightening on the back of the seat in front of her. Duskmon is watching Renamon still, who in turn isn't quite looking Duskmon in the eye.

Quietly, she asks, “You're sure?”

His face turns very slightly in her direction. “If Cherubimon was going to tell anybody about a way to do that, he wouldn't tell me.”

Renamon makes a little noise, and Duskmon's attention jerks back to him.

“Izumi,” Duskmon says after another pause, “when you were using your Beast Spirit to leave the island, why exactly did you want Renamon to talk to you the whole way?”

It takes her a second to fit the thought into words: “I needed the reminder that he was there. It's hard to... remember what's important, sometimes. But I was still me, I wasn't – the way you are.” 

Or the way Chackmon is.

Duskmon probably thinks she's asking because of what Renamon just said, but in truth she wants an idea for how to eventually get Tomoki back without resorting to beating him to near death and stealing the Spirits of Ice from his data.

He didn't seem to be doing badly. She can't imagine he could have lost himself to a Human Spirit unless he chose to make it happen, so if she drags him out of the new life he's living, the one where he doesn't remember anything about Legendary Warriors or adventures or human children, he probably won't thank her for it. And if he decides to return to it afterwards, she won't stop him.

But she does intend to hear him say it.

Unless Tomoki as himself tells her that he never wants to be Tomoki again, she won't help him go back to that life. It's selfish of her to think of tearing him out of what he's built for himself, even if it turns out to be for just the few seconds he needs to tell her to get lost, but she doesn't want another regret. 

Duskmon says, “But the reminder still helped you.”

“Yeah.”

“Is there anything that would have gotten you out of being Furymon?”

“We're not talking about Furymon,” Izumi says sharply. Furymon's not relevant. She knows why the three of them acted the way they did, and it had nothing to do with Izumi forgetting who she was.

“Sure. Alright.” Slowly, Duskmon says, “Conflict, maybe. Between what the person wants and the Spirit. ...And if there's no difference between them anymore, then maybe you'll just need to live with doing it the blunt way.”

---

Just like last time, the trailmon stops a few meters away from the gates into the Continent and refuses to go farther.

This trailmon is a little nicer about it, letting them step out of the car on their own instead of unceremoniously dumping them onto the sand. Its surreptitious glance at Duskmon probably has something to do with it. Duskmon's appearance won't make him many friends, but it must save him a lot of other trouble.

Once, Izumi arrived here with a party of seven. She left as part of a fractured group of five. Their echoes linger.

It takes her no effort at all to put herself back into her own shoes on the evening they went in.

There's Takuya squinting through the sun to peer at the gate ahead, looking forwards like he always does, never back at the people following him; Tomoki beside him staring up at the abrupt divide where the clear sky over the surrounding sea ends and the heavy cover of dark clouds over the Continent begins; Junpei watching the retreating trailmon with a distinctly unimpressed look; Bokomon and Neemon flipping through Bokomon's lore book for references to the Continent of Darkness and finding none; Kouji standing to the side with his hands in his pockets – around his Digivice – with a stern set to his brow, like he's come to some sort of decision and doesn't care for it.

Did he understand already? That Mercuremon had killed Seraphimon, and one of the enemy Warriors had killed Sorcerimon, and Junpei had killed Grottemon, and that just because the five of them had made it to the final stretch before Cherubimon didn't mean any one of them was guaranteed to see their journey through to the end?

But he kept his own council, as he normally did when he wasn't butting heads with Takuya.

Then Takuya, without a look back at the rest of them, said - 

“If I tell you to run, then you run.”

Ah.

“Go to the Rose Morning Star. You can see it from anywhere on the Continent. Cherubimon-sama's castle is there.”

Izumi shouldn't have come here.

Not the first time, when they weren't prepared for what they would face.

Not the second time, when they abandoned Takuya as a lost cause.

Not the third time, at the side of the digimon who brought them to this point.

She told Seadramon that she would pledge herself to their choice no matter if that choice was to see a hopeless fight through to the end, yet she hasn't raised a hand against Duskmon since that night. Where did her resolve go?

When she faced him, she decided that if neither of her spirits would give her the power she needed, then she would bring them both to heel. It was a desperate, half-formed dream of a plan: when she made the attempt, she suspected it wasn't actually possible to combine multiple Spirits' power into one form. But she couldn't afford to care anymore. It was the only thing she had left, her final chance to do something useful with herself.

Even then, she didn't ask for much from them. She didn't expect to gain enough power to match Duskmon.

She just wanted enough to match Kouji.

A motion in the corner of her eye – the sea wind ruffling Renamon's fur – and she inhales, shallow, and takes a half-step back into the present. “Let's go.”

Renamon's chatter (“We're finally going to go see where you're from? And Cherubimon-sama's castle, are we going – oh, but neesan's here.... The clouds are weird. Why do they look like that? How dark is it going to be under there? I thought it'd be brighter – ”) dies as soon as they pass beneath the gate and into the shadowed woods. The hair rises on Izumi's arms.

She's been to other parts of the world that feel unwelcoming – Hill used to, and Forest, and Water always reminds her of her last school for the first few minutes after she enters the area, and Steel on the one occasion she and the other Warriors passed through it on a train just seemed too glaringly bright – but Darkness has a wrong sense to it that takes longer to pass. It feels like walking over the grave of someone buried alive.

The last bearer of Light never came back out.

With night drawing close, they don't travel far into the forest on the first day. They set up camp on a small outcrop too rocky for trees to grow from, where it'd be difficult for anything to approach them without being spotted.

The last time Izumi was here, her group hashed out watch schedules, but Duskmon doesn't raise the topic. Even so, nothing harasses them that night, and the next morning they set out, following Duskmon as he makes a beeline for wherever he's leading them to.

She's not sure how he knows the area so well. He couldn't answer her when she asked and seemed annoyed that she thought the question worth voicing at all, which usually means Cherubimon did something to the Spirit again.

He doesn't once alter his course. When they find a small boulder in their way that they'd need to walk around, he cuts it level to the ground instead, and the same solution applies to fallen trees, a thorn thicket, a giant spider web, another giant spider web, a third giant spider web, a giant molted spider exoskeleton....

“I'll wait for you here,” Izumi decides, trying terribly not to look at the bisected spider shed. “Renamon, you should stay with me, too.”

Back with the other Warriors, she didn't have as much of an impact in fights as the boys, she didn't have the confidence in her decisions to convince people to follow her like Takuya or Kouji could, and she couldn't pick up new skills as quickly as Junpei did. What she had that the others didn't was an artlessly pretty face and the willingness to use it. Appearance was the one thing they couldn't have replaced her over.

Digimon's physical forms reflect something of their natures, so a notable percentage of the digimon who the Warriors met on their travels trusted Izumi on sight even as they took longer to warm up to the boys.

The team gradually, naturally settled into an unspoken pattern when meeting wary strangers: Izumi made the overtures, and then, once she got the group their in, Bokomon, Takuya, and Junpei took over as spokespeople.

But she doesn't want to cooperate that closely with Duskmon, and he hasn't given any indication that he needs or expects it.

Duskmon slows, several eyes swiveling back towards them. “You're safer with me. The dokugumon – ”

“What? No.” Izumi's sure the poison spider monsters are... nice, but: no.

“Renamon?” Duskmon asks.

Renamon looks between them, then sidles over to Izumi. “I don't think neesan should be alone here.” Izumi still has no idea how Duskmon raised a digimon so much nicer than himself.

Having Renamon stay saves her the work of figuring out how to stop Duskmon from just leaving on his own after talking to the spiders, too. She doesn't know that Duskmon would, but, since he doesn't need her for anything the way she needs him as a guide, she can't forget the possibility.

Duskmon doesn't argue. “I won't take long,” he says, and makes to go.

Then he makes a noise suddenly, stops in his tracks, and turns his face to look at her. “Are you scared of spiders?” he asks with stronger intonation than she's heard from him all week combined. “You?”

“Obviously?”

He blinks. “...Right.” Then: “For real?”

“Yes?”

“What's scary about spiders?” Renamon pipes up.

“They're pretty average digimon. I don't know.”

“It's not about – ” No. No, she's not going to stay here and explain to Duskmon (and Renamon) what's phobia-inducing about spiders, let alone giant poison spider monsters with legs longer than she stands tall. “Just go talk to them already! Before they come looking.”

He huffs a laugh that raises her hackles, but he doesn't make more of an issue out of it.

Once he's left earshot, Renamon says into the quiet, “Hey, neesan, does Duskmon....” He trails off, brow scrunching into a frown. “Is the person we're looking for the one Duskmon tried to kill?”

...Did they drag him out here without even explaining that much? “How did you work that out?”

Renamon hesitates. Then, gingerly: “I don't think he'd care this much if it wasn't.”

“I think he would.”

She doesn't realize what she's said until the words have left her mouth. Renamon stares at her, ears at attention.

Duskmon backed off from Seadramon when Izumi told him they were a Legendary Warrior. The memory of that moment hasn't stopped lurking in a corner of her mind since it happened: it was the first victory she ever struck against him, and she still doesn't know exactly why it worked. She doubts she lied convincingly, not in that situation; simply the possibility of it being true threw him off so badly that the thought didn't occur to him to suspect her, and she doesn't know why.

“I think he would,” she says again.

“He's not that nice to people,” Renamon says. Halfway between a question and a statement: on some level, he probably wants Izumi to answer with a rebuttal. “Except he's nice to me. And he's been nicer to neesan.”

Her voice sounds a little distant to her own ears. “I'm not ever going to like him.” Renamon winces, but this is already as gentle as she can be about the topic. Everything that Furymon did to Duskmon, Izumi would do again. “But he has been trying harder. You're right.” Mostly to keep from upsetting Renamon. He's hardly censoring himself for Izumi's sake.

...She didn't realize how much the two of them talk over Renamon's head. He doesn't have the context to follow some of the issues hanging between her and Duskmon, he doesn't always ask when they reference something he doesn't understand, Duskmon sometimes gives simplified answers when he does ask, and Izumi rarely feels like putting in extra effort to explain without prompting and drag him into a fight he's not directly involved in.

They don't really include him in practical discussions, either. Izumi and Duskmon each handle their own logistics, so she doesn't know for sure if Renamon helps Duskmon with keeping track of their supplies, but she would bet a meal that he doesn't. Renamon definitely doesn't contribute to travel planning – he listens in and asks questions in a way that suggests he's new at it, so she wouldn't trust him to plan a route any more than she would trust Neemon to.

When they first met, she figured he was more or less a toddler and treated him like it. But Duskmon treats him like a little kid, too, and Duskmon might be an adult but technically he's younger than her cats. If Renamon's even smaller than that, then....

“Renamon, how old are you?”

A blink. “Almost six.”

With very little hope, she says, “Years?”

“Months!”

“How old were you when you evolved into Wanyamon?”

She doesn't have a good reason to ask, because there is no good answer: any number Renamon gives will make things worse. Digimon can't remember much before they evolve to Wanyamon's level; and almost six means five. 

Depending on when he became Wanyamon, his entire life might consist of four or so months' worth of memories.

“One and a half,” Renamon says.

God.

Her hand drifts up to cover her mouth. “What am I doing,” she murmurs.

She hasn't forgotten what Cherubimon plans to use the Spirits of Light for. The thought strikes her suddenly that this is the first time since leaving the island that she's been alone with Renamon: if she wants to get him away, to somewhere – not safe, there's nowhere safe because Cherubimon intends to eventually destroy the entire world, but just to any place where Cherubimon can't reach him so easily, or Duskmon, or Izumi – she might not get a better chance. He doesn't deserve to get caught up in this fight.

Except that she still has to find Takuya.

For that, she needs Duskmon, who's uncannily familiar with the Continent's layout and inhabitants for someone who is ten months old. Duskmon, in turn, will go nowhere without Renamon. She doesn't have much choice.

---

The dokugumon haven't seen Takuya. Neither has the other digimon they manage to visit that day, who Izumi doesn't meet because Duskmon doesn't want Renamon near them.

“Sometimes a reference to an object or a property gets lost, and then the world forgets it exists and stops processing it correctly. The Continent is the digital world's garbage collector, so those ghosts end up here. You're better off not meeting them,” Duskmon says by way of explanation before he forces Izumi to babysit.

“Garbage collector?” Renamon echoes. “Why's it the Continent?”

“Somewhere has to be. There used to be a group that cleaned these things up. The Royal Knights. But they're on sabbatical, or something.” Duskmon glances Izumi's way. “This one probably didn't do anything to your Fire. It's weak, and it shouldn't have a motive, but since we're nearby I might as well check.”

That's a downgrade from his description of the dokugumon: if he's come through at any point, they'll know. “Where are we headed after that?” Izumi asks.

“Mountain not far from here. At our pace, it might be... about three days.”

“How long would it take you on your own?”

“Few hours.”

If Izumi's Spirits were Fairimon and Shutumon, she wouldn't hesitate to evolve. But Furymon and Anemosmon are...

...no, she needs to get them under control. She'll have an easier time doing that in any situation calmer than the middle of a fight.

The next morning, before they set out, she announces, “I'm going to evolve.”

Renamon freezes, then shuffles a step closer to Duskmon. Izumi pauses for a second, trying to understand the reaction, before it hits her that he's never really seen Fairimon or Shutumon. He's interacted with her in an evolved form twice, and both times she was a monster.

Duskmon's voice drags her attention away from Renamon. “What for?” 

“I'm the reason we're moving this slow.”

Duskmon's brow furrows. “We're not in a rush. You don't have to....”

He doesn't understand anything. Izumi left two friends to die in this horrible place, and for one of them she didn't even know she did it. “We have completely different priorities,” she tells him flatly, fingernails catching on the join in her Digivice's case.

“Spirit evolution: Auramon.”

---

It goes like this: at eleven years old, in a strange new world, Izumi falls in love.

Fairimon – Izumi's new Spirit – is a storybook hero. Izumi has daydreamed about being a kind and beautiful princess who meets a shining prince, and about being a bird who flies away from school and never touches the ground again; and she's daydreamed about being an elf, and a cat, and a better daughter; but she has never in her life dreamed of being someone like Fairimon. Even in a fantasy, she's never been able to believe she could be that perfect.

Fairimon is every good thing. Kind and beautiful, and confident, too, and warm, and effortlessly likable, and just, and happy. 

She cares about the people she meets without the barrier of also caring about whether they'll like her (though they will) and about whether she's provided enough of an excuse for her own existence: genuine and uncomplicated selflessness in a form that Izumi always tries and fails to bring with her when she lets the Spirit go.

She isn't the strongest of the Warriors in open battle. That doesn't matter. She does her best and gives it her all and protects what she cares about as well as she can, and she's satisfied with that because it's no more than she would ask of anyone else. Everybody has their strengths and weaknesses. She's simply herself; there's nothing wrong with that.

(She has her own ways of fighting. She might not have the power to devastate a landscape like Vritramon or Bolgmon do, but she was the first Warrior to land a blow against Duskmon without dying first. If Izumi doesn't use her right, it's not Fairimon's fault.)

The first time Izumi evolves into Fairimon is the first time she understands how it feels to not live her life wishing she was someone else.

And she ruins it.