“That creature can digivolve no further.”
The soft glow of digivolution faded, revealing a writhing black mass where Loogarmon had been just moments before.
“That creature” had no legs, like a snake; yet it was covered in legs, like some sort of insect.
It wriggled, scrapped, and clawed across the ground with alarming speed, making the most of the surprise generated by its hideous form.
The next instant it was right in front of Kazuchimon, sinking its teeth into the deity’s throat.
Kazuchimon broke its stance, dropping its lightning blades as it grabbed at the creature, desperate to tear the monstrosity away.
Alas, the creature’s fangs were already in too deep.
Trying to tear the beast off would only do more damage to Kazuchimon’s throat.
(What is going on?!)
Eiji, meanwhile, now found himself in a completely silent DigiCore.
He’d been shut out of any incoming information; the virtual monitor now displayed a blue screen, like a computer entering recovery mode.
All he knew, given the feed of what this new form saw, was that they were firmly attached to Kazuchimon’s neck.
The exceedingly strange part was that he couldn’t sense his partner Digimon’s presence.
He input a command but got no response.
What on earth had become of Eiji’s partner Digimon?
(My commands aren’t getting through? My tool’s disconnected... Hey! Loogarmon! Er, did you digivolve? Hey! Who are you?)
GROOOOOOAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGHHHHH!
The loud roar assaulted Eiji’s ears. He was almost certain blood would start trickling out of them any minute now.
He slammed his fist against the blue-screened monitor in desperation.
The error occurred again, but at least this time it was accompanied by the bare minimum of information.
(Ultimate! Demon Beast. Virus...)
Eiji’s partner had reached Ultimate level—at least as far as the stats were concerned.
They’d done it.
The digivolution was a success.
Eiji kept trying to call out to the partner whose name he no longer knew, but there was no response save for the meaningless noise, which sounded like the low growls and rumbles of a beast.
(Loogarmon digivolved... They made it to the Ultimate level!)
Together they would win.
They did this in order to win.
But this...
This was a mistake. The thing was going berserk.
Eiji heard a voice over his comms.
Kazuchimon’s voice. Leon’s voice.
“Your digivolution failed, Eiji! It’s out of control!” Leon shouted.
Eiji’s consciousness felt what would be the blood draining from his face, were he in his body.
“Out of control...? Failed...?” Eiji repeated absentmindedly.
As Digimon digivolve their specs get a boost—their attack, stamina, speed, and perception values all go up—and the process may also dramatically increase their processing speed.
The process isn’t always smooth, though.
Errors can and do occur, like an insect failing to fully transform in its chrysalis, or a vulnerable freshly molted crustacean.
Except when a Digimon fails to evolve, it can cause them to go berserk.
Text streamed down Eiji’s monitor.
Error codes, endless streams of them.
“No, there’s no such thing as success or failure with digivolutions. The professor said so himself, so I take that back. But you’ve lost control of your Digimon, Eiji!” Leon said.
Eiji could just about make out Leon’s voice above the sea of noise and feedback.
Eiji’s sensors were still online, so the creature hadn’t lost consciousness or otherwise shut down.
The mindlink was still active, too, but Eiji couldn’t communicate with it, either mentally or through the usual tools and interfaces.
“You dug your own grave, Eiji. Forcing it to digivolve like this.” Leon’s voice rose above the noise again.
“I forced Loogarmon to evolve?” Eiji asked, stunned.
“We can consciously encourage digivolution over the mindlink, but it’s a double-edged sword. The Digimon is heavily influenced by its partner’s consciousness when digivolved that way.”
“Well that explains it! I digivolved Loogarmon so we can defeat you!”
But why?
At what cost? Then what? Why? Why? Why?
“Eiji, whether you acknowledge it or not, just look! Look at this misshapen, out of control Ultimate-level Digimon!”
Helloogarmon, Ultimate, Dark Beast, Virus
Kazuchimon’s scan turned up a name: Helloogarmon, marked with Mindlink and Berserk tags.
The hideous image of the now-hideous partner Digimon burned itself into Eiji’s consciousness.
The Hellfire Demon Wolf. Its upper body was now lifted off the ground, its arms more muscular, making it almost bipedal compared to Loogarmon.
That upper body, however, was now completely skeletal.
The jaw now clamped down on Kazuchimon was just that: an exposed jawbone, its massive teeth sunk into its rival’s neck.
Massive claws erupted from the ends of the arm bones.
Where there would be meat on these bones there was now pure hellfire; its legs were completely wrapped in what looked like dark bandages.
Its once fluffy tail was now a fiery whip of bones and flame.
(Ultimate-level. Helloogarmon!)
This was the deity-eating wolf’s final form.
Had Fenrir, the wolf who kills Odin in the legends of Ragnarök, been real, Eiji imagined this was more or less what it’d look like.
But why? Why had this happened?
The answer was obvious, and Leon had said it himself: Eiji willed it to happen.
(This is MY fault?!)
He’d done it to win.
He just wanted to win.
Even if that meant crushing Leon underfoot.
He wanted to be strong enough to win.
He had asked, and he had received.
Helloogarmon would win. It might sacrifice the lives of others, or its partner, or itself, but it would win. Anything it couldn’t eat, it would crush underfoot.
Eiji couldn’t stop it, as much as he wanted to, now.
It had a firm grip on Kazuchimon’s windpipe, and it wasn’t about to let go.
“Loogarmon, Loogamon! Buddy! Come back! Come back to me!”
Eiji carried on screaming, but there were no commands being issued.
Eiji, locked in his partner’s DigiCore, was just more noise.
Leon analyzed the data on his monitor through the pain of the attack on Kazuchimon.
“Helloogarmon’s got a virus attribute. Its instincts are to corrode and destroy.”
Seeing as it was no longer listening to its partner, it was likely to destroy any data that happened to land in front of it, and continue to do so until it, just like a virus, was itself destroyed.
“I just don’t understand. How could a Mega-level Digimon like Kazuchimon get caught flat-footed by an Ultimate?”
Was it all down to the sheer potential of Eiji’s connection with his Digimon?
Leon felt the first tendrils of anxiety creep over him. An alert went off, drawing his attention.
“Kazuchimon, what’s—ah!”
His eyes darted to the timer almost instinctively.
The C Line.
He couldn’t stay mindlinked much longer.
“You’ve dug your grave, too, Leon...” Eiji said feebly.
“Was this your plan? To wait me out?”
The Caution Line and Limit Line, as defined by Professor Ryusenji, represented mindlinking’s biggest risk.
Eiji and Leon had accepted that risk in order to have a chance at reaping the rewards.
True hackers and code crackers weren’t looking for peace of mind in the Digital World in the first place.
Anyone who did was a mark.
And here they were, putting their time—their lives—on the line for a chance to stake their claim to something in the Digital World.
“Leon, no matter how good of a hacker you are, you can’t fire off a bunch of Mega-level attacks in addition to maintaining this electromagnetic barrier,” Eiji continued.
He knew Leon was rapidly running out of time inside that Mega Digimon, and that using any sort of attack would drastically reduce that time.
Leon said nothing in response.
“I figured if I could drive you near the C Line, we’d be on equal footing for the first time. Then I could digivolve Loogarmon and, well... Then Loogarmon went berserk...”
“Eiji—”
“I’m sorry. I did this to you, it’s my fault...”
Eiji wanted to win, even if that meant trampling Leon underfoot.
Professor Ryusenji would finally see that he was better than Leon.
Those who have nothing need a dream, a goal that drives them.
They long to carve out a space on the invasive plant that the tree of freedom has allowed to flourish.
They want to stop fighting to simply survive. They long to be free of a life in which they cannot see beyond today.
Eiji didn’t want pity. He didn’t want help.
He just wanted to be able to support himself as a code cracker.
He’d begun to equate the removal of his jealousy for Leon with the removal of Leon himself. If Leon could just go away... It all happened unconsciously, but somewhere deep down, Eiji had been aware of it every step of the way.
The flames of jealousy consumed him, and now the fangs of his own insecurity were buried in the flesh of his perceived enemy. He basked in the blood that flowed down upon him.
Eiji saw himself as if he were looking in a mirror.
Ready or not, this wild Helloogarmon was about to make his wish come true.
A wish whose implications he had admittedly not thought through.
“We had Judge right where we wanted him, and I forced you to digivolve... I’m sorry, buddy...”
Helloogarmon’s power was undeniable; they overwhelmed a Mega Digimon in their Ultimate form.
Of course, this came at the cost of Eiji turning them into a monstrosity.
Still, both of them had to win here. Eiji stood to lose so much more if they didn’t.
And yet, Eiji felt the urge to fight evaporate.
“Focus, Eiji! Your willpower is all that can stop this beast’s rampage! It’s still your partner Digimon!”
Leon shouted, snapping Eiji back to reality.
“I’m trying! I’m trying but it’s not—!”
The sounds of the various errors popping up inside the DigiCore cut Eiji off as he tried everything he could to restore his connection with Helloogarmon.
COMMAND NOT FOUND
“I can’t hear them! I can’t hear my buddy’s—my Digimon’s voice!”
“URGH!”
Leon struggled, but Kazuchimon couldn’t move.
Helloogarmon’s strength was enough to hold them in place.
Helloogarmon was physically larger, and beginning to inflict damage that reached the DigiCore.
“Get out of there, Leon! Run! You’re out of time!” Eiji screamed.
The will to fight was gone.
“I’m not giving up until you swear to me you’ll quit code cracking! I’m going to save you, no matter what it takes!”
“The hell?” Eiji was baffled.
Why was Leon so committed to this? Why was he so fixated on Eiji’s code cracking?
They were close friends, sure, but they hadn’t been in elementary school for ages.
They’d forgotten about each other until they bumped into one another on the X nation’s server.
They didn’t even hang out that much in the real world.
If it weren’t for Professor Ryusenji and the Digimon, their paths might never have crossed again.
“Why? Why can’t you let it go?” Eiji asked.
Leon was quiet. “I know you’ve got a reason!”
He expected Leon would say he had to protect Professor Ryusenji’s reputation again.
But there was no reason to make Eiji, specifically, to give up code cracking.
As a hacker, all Leon had to do was ensure the code crackers were destroyed.
Kill them all. If Eiji was gone, then—
“WWW Flight 626.”
“...What?” The flight that took Eiji’s parents from him.
“There’s more to the story. It’s earth-shattering, Eiji—”
Leon began to say before a grating, high-pitched squeal cut him off.
Kazuchimon finally succeeded in prying Helloogarmon’s jaws loose from its neck, and proceeded to twist its back toward the beast before launching Helloogarmon over its head in a perfectly executed judo throw.
Helloogarmon flew straight into the Shido Ittetsu’s electromagnetic barrier.
Pure energy coursed through Helloogarmon, and Eiji swore he could smell his own flesh burning. He briefly lost consciousness. Helloogarmon, singed by the shocks, was flung to the ground, where it lay writhing in pain.
Its form was at once wolf-like and anything but.
Its body was covered in the fires of sin, and atop it lay the skull of a beast that may well have once been a wolf.It was a failure of humankind’s own making.
Its eyes mirrored Eiji’s.
“I’ve got to reboot—no, enter recovery mode,” Eiji said, giving up on restoring access to his tools and turning to his last resort.
The safest thing to do when a digivolution went wrong was roll back to Rookie level. It was the only way.
Eiji typed the command directly into the blue screen before him.
“Come back, pal... C’mon, Loogamon!”
Eiji shouted as he sent the command over and over.
Eiji had a feeling being mindlinked to a Digimon that had gone berserk wasn’t all that different from approaching the C Line.
Kazuchimon stood motionless, tending to its grievous wounds.
The textures destroyed by Helloogarmon’s bite were bleeding blood filled with static noise. It flowed down Kazuchimon’s body, dripping off its armor and pooling on the ground below.
“WWW Flight 626 crashed because of a Digimon. It was a terror attack facilitated by the X nation and carried out by Machinedramon,”
Leon said, breaking the silence.
“Machinedramon?!”
The cause of the flight’s disappearance and crash had long been listed as unknown, but Eiji knew a Digimon was behind it since he started his journey as a code cracker.
This was the first he’d heard of any specifics, however.
If Leon was telling the truth...
What would Eiji have done, had he known during the attack on the X nation’s server?
Digimon were still tools, so he probably would have followed orders and collected Machinedramon. The Digimon that destroyed his life.
“I put the pieces together when we were talking at the café. I didn’t know your parents were on that flight. I didn’t look closely at the passenger manifest, I’m sorry...” Leon said.
“Why are you apologizing?” Eiji said, puzzled.
It didn’t have anything to do with Leon...did it?
“There was a fierce battle being waged on the network while the flight was in the air. The U.S. Army’s cyber counterterrorism unit was working to prevent the terrorist code cracking team from downing the flight.”
“You’re serious?”
So the United States Army had its own version of Japan’s DigiPolice.
“Not stopping that accident—that terrorist attack—is my biggest regret. It hurts me to think about it, even now. But I won’t ever forget it, so I have to confront it and overcome it! I was at the scene of a terrorist attack, Eiji. Working to prevent it as a hacker.”
Leon was in high school.
He fought a group of terrorists alongside a group of hacker cops, trying to stop a Digimon committing and act of cyber warfare.
That wasn’t the scene of a terrorist attack—it was a warzone. He’d just learned how to mindlink under his own power, and he was helpless to stop what was happening.
He couldn’t keep up with the superior team of code crackers he was up against.
The terrorists broke through the Army’s line of defenses, and completed their mission.
The rest was history.
WWW Flight 626 crashed into the Pacific, killing everyone aboard.
“I couldn’t save your parents, even though I had the chance,” Leon said mournfully.
“Why... I still don’t understand why you’d apologize...”
“Because you were my best friend, Eiji.”
Leon always said what he meant.
He was honest to a fault.
“You didn’t kill them! That messed up dictator from the X nation and his team of terrorist code crackers did!”
Eiji hadn’t changed his mind. Eiji had no reason to be mad at Leon for the death of his parents.
So why did he feel the need to apologize?
“But it’s my responsibility as a hacker to uphold justice on the network,” Leon said.
“If you continue down this path as a code cracker, you’ll be caught up in a Flight 626 situation of your own someday. You might even be the one committing the act of terror itself.”
“Quit treating code crackers like we’re all the same! I wouldn’t do that!”
“Are you sure? You’ve already helped the SoC attack the X nation’s servers, and now you’re letting your Digimon run amok.”
Whether he’d intended to or not, Eiji started to see a path where he would eventually do as Leon said.
He was quickly running out of counterarguments.
“I will break the cycle of pain and anguish created by the Digimon crimes you and yours commit. That’s why I became a hacker.
To fight for justice.
To put it in Eiji terms, this is my life, my livelihood. I can’t let you destroy it. I’m going to save you, instead.”
Kazuchimon raised their twin lightning blades once more. Eiji was stunned.
“I’ve long crossed the C Line, but I can spare one more attack’s worth of time. Dispel the Shido Ittetsu, Kazuchimon! We’ve got to stop that Helloogarmon! Then I’m gonna take you back to the real world, Eiji.”
Before Kazuchimon could make a move, however, an awful roar tore through the air, scrambling their senses.
The ground shook beneath them, sending small shockwaves through Kazuchimon’s body.
“What the heck?! I can’t—! What’s going on?!”
Eiji yelled, disoriented.
He couldn’t stand the noise. It was less like someone struck a massive temple bell next to his ear and more like he’d been tossed into some sort of junkyard scrapper tearing apart a car, or dropped into a compactor crunching down a bunch of metal.
“What on earth?!”
Leon yelled. He’d told his first lie; he didn’t have enough time.
The electromagnetic barrier created by his Shido Ittetsu began to crack open.
“No! Have I hit Kazuchimon’s limit already?!”
Leon’s voice cracked.
He watched as the once-impenetrable barrier his Digimon constructed briefly tore apart, then shattered like so much thin ice.
Kazuchimon hadn’t lowered the barrier.
Something had broken it from the outside.
The barrier shattered to reveal a massive hole.
A vortex.
The yawning, wireframe chasm looked like a gigantic black hole.
Kazuchimon’s barrier had kept them completely unaware of the vortex forming right next to them, and now they were right on top of the latest vortex to spawn from this well-known hotbed of vortex activity.
Eiji heard Marvin’s warning echo in his head: Never approach a vortex.
Eiji had no real frame of reference for how big this one was compared to the others, but it had to be at least as big as a soccer stadium.
It moved slowly, spinning as it went, sucking up any and all data in its path, including the junk data that formed the island beneath them.
Something began to emerge from the Depths.
A defender, manifested from the deep.
Mega Type: Holy Knight Attribute: Vaccine
It is known as a Holy Knight, a guardian deity, one of the 13 Royal Knights of Yggdrasil, and many other titles.
Though it had no wings, it looked like an angel adorned in battle armor.
“Royal Knight Omegamon!” Eiji and Leon exclaimed.
It was humanoid in form, and on its right arm sat the Supreme Cannon, capable of freezing stars with a beam fired at absolute zero. On its left arm sat the Transcendent Sword, a peerless blade with which it was now inscribing system-level code for the Digital World.
DELETE ALL
