Art wasn’t sure just how far they’d gone. Having been blindfolded before leaving the mansion, his perception was obviously more than a little muddled, but after enough time had passed, feeling his feet get sore while the climate around him felt as if it had changed several times over, he had to guess they’d gone quite a ways off. By the time they stopped, he could feel all the allotted strain from the prior incidents catch up to him, unable to keep standing as he dropped to his knees, hunched forward, doing his best to simply get some of his breath back. Despite the exhausting blind march, he still felt a bit thankful that his apparent captors weren’t forcing him to stand back up.
“Right, give them a chance to look around,” one of the voices, presumably the leader, commanded. The cloth around Art’s eyes was removed as ordered and he got the chance to see just where this posse of fellow humans had brought him and Candlemon, who was likewise being unshrouded by what appeared to be something akin to a burlap sack, likely since a candle with a lick of fire for one of its faces wasn’t the easiest thing to conventionally blindfold.
Where they found themselves was a hideout that looked rather… decently established, and quite well lived-in. The interior reminded him of a beach house, with pale white wood-planks composing the structure, the floorboard and the ceiling. A smattering of technological devices, ranging from makeshift little gadgets to those of a more meticulously designed appearance, were situated on tables. The limited furniture all appeared to have been made by whatever they had on hand at the time… one chair looked to be nicely crafted from softwood, while another was little more than a glorified tree stump. It was all as if the place had once been some abandoned domicile that this trio had found and claimed for themselves.
Speaking of said trio… It was only now that Art could get a good look at their appearances, as they were no longer concealing their faces behind their hooded garments. Standing in front of him with a clear air of authority was a young woman with deep red hair, the likes of which seemed quite short yet unkempt. Said hair color seemed… unnatural in a way. Not dyed, no… rather, it almost looked like when someone messed around with the color setting on a monitor, really cranking the red up… but specifically for her hair alone. Beside her were two men appearing to be of a similar age; One, looking the closest to being sympathetic, if such an expression was genuine, had dark blonde hair and jarringly grey eyes… In this case, it was as if said eyes were two oval-shaped screens with the color setting disabled. The other, whose expression seemed all-but-unreadable, had hair so bright white that the smallest light reflection gave off an irritating glimmer if one stared directly at it. It reminded Art of a bright white screen on a television, a head of burn-in reduction for hair.
“Didn’t detect anyone tracking us, at least not for very long,” the white-haired man said in a calm, near-monotonous voice. Art couldn’t recall hearing such a voice before, neither in the mansion nor the excruciating trip afterwards. It gave him an impression that this man in particular wasn’t necessarily chatty.
“Just a few curious onlookers, I saw some of them too,” the woman replied, not taking her eyes off Art. “No one stupid enough to investigate further, ‘least not from the Digimon side of things. That’s not to say we don’t have someone listening in right this very moment.” At that she grabbed Art and forced him back up to his feet, dragging him over to a chair and having him sit down before taking a seat across from him. Placed beside him on a table was Candlemon. Neither of them was restrained, though the mutual thought between them seemed to be that making a break for it would prove unwise. Aside from Art’s exhausted condition and Candlemon being in a weakened evolutionary stage, they were not the least bit aware of their current surroundings… and those three highly powerful Digimon were likely not far away.
“What do you intend to do with us?” Candlemon spoke after an uncomfortable silence had followed their being seated.
“Right now, you don’t get to ask any questions, candlestick,” the woman shot back, glaring at the fire Digimon fiercely before turning back to Art. “Another human hasn’t shown their face in the Digital World since we landed here. Might be a big world out there, but we’ve done our fair share of looking… We’ve had a lot of time to get acquainted with this world, I can tell you, so you can probably understand why we’re making a big deal out of you suddenly turning up.”
Art, slouched in his chair, didn’t say a word. He’d heard about how interrogations tended to go down, how speaking while you were the subject of one tended to only make your case worse… but then, that was for police procedures and these three were a far cry from cops. That right to remain silent probably wouldn’t be exercised in this circumstance.
“I’m gonna ask you a few questions. You’re gonna say ‘yes’ or ‘no’, or you’re not gonna say a damn thing. That clear?” she asked him.
“Wh-...Yes,” Art replied, having bit his tongue before he could accidentally slip up and ask why.
“Good. First question - You mentioned a portal earlier. Did you have anything to do with it showing up?”
“N-no,” Art answered, stammering despite himself, and the woman seemed to catch this.
“Don’t go BS-ing us, kid. If we find out you’re lying, we won’t hesitate to treat you like any hostile Digimon.” They’d already seen what that entailed from the Darklizardmon fiasco, so that was hardly an empty threat. “So… You didn’t have anything to do with the portal… Or, maybe you just don’t know, fine. Question two – That digivice there. I’m assuming it popped up when you first arrived. That correct?”
“…No.” This time, despite the pause, Art made sure his response was more audibly overt.
His interrogator seemed taken aback for a moment, but her expression quickly reverted from the brief surprise as she crossed her arms.
“So, already we’re looking at divergence here. You got that digivice in the real world then?”
Art nodded as he answered “Yes”.
“Did someone give it to you?”
“No.”
“Manifested out of the clear blue sky then?”
“Yes.”
She looked disappointed for a second. Art could only assume she was hoping he’d truly have some kind of new information that they hadn’t scraped together on their own.
“Knox, little differences aside, I’m telling you it sounds like he’s just another poor bastard who got roped into this nonsense,” the grey-eyed man commented.
“We can’t afford to jump to that conclusion until we’re sure!” she replied sternly. “You see this as a chance to get out, or at least get ourselves another ally. I get that, I understand wanting to have hope, but I’m not gonna just get all instantly chummy with someone just because they’re another human with a digivice. For all we know, we could be dealing with a spy, sent by the jerkasses who got us trapped in the first place.
“If he is, the question would be why they’d send him now, of all times,” the white-haired man chimed in. “Furthermore, unless this man’s a brilliant actor, his overall confusion seems to infer a lack of understanding regarding his current predicament. That being said… It’s worth noting his digivice is not the same as ours.”
Art had presumed they were each carrying digivices, but it did only just dawn on him as well that they were not of the same sort of design as his. Theirs were each more of a rectangular shape, less like eggs and more like horizontal-oriented handheld radios with screens.
“He’s got some kind of light beam trick. Never seen that one before,” grey-eyes added.
“Neither have I…” the woman, Knox, answered, looking down contemplatively before turning back again to Art. “Alright, ‘yes’ and ‘no’ time’s over. You clearly knew how to use that beam function, what does it do?”
Art looked at Candlemon, who merely motioned for him to go ahead, seeing no point in holding out when these three would likely be very insistent on getting an answer.
“Alright… from what I gather, it’s like a sort of antiviral software or something. Apparently some Digimon are getting possessed by some kind of mind-warping program. It’s like an orb of some kind… and this, if aimed at the spot where that orb’s lodged, forces it out of them.”
“And this came with the device from the get-go?”
“Yeah…”
At that the three seemed to convene for a moment, murmuring this amongst themselves for a time before the interrogation continued. Art, still quite tired, had nearly drifted off before Knox snapped him back to attention.
“So that’s what you were doing back at the haunted house then. How’re you figuring out where these afflicted Digimon are supposed to be?”
“Ah… Well… the first two we basically just kinda stumbled upon, but… we got the third’s location from the last Digimon we saved. He said he had a vision of the mansion that he couldn’t get out of his head… Seemed almost like a clue left behind…”
“Not a bad clue then,” Knox remarked, pacing about lightly in thought. “So this is the journey forced on you, this is the job you’ve been stuck with. The janitor of the Digital World with his glorified mop and talking candle. Seems when those idiots aren’t leaving us completely for dead, they’re giving us the task of being their goddamn clean-up crew.”
“You keep bringing up some outside party. Do you know something about the ones responsible for these portals between our worlds?” Candlemon asked, his curiosity on the matter getting the better of him.
Knox didn’t say anything, but the grey-eyed man stepped up to answer. “We haven’t found much regarding proof, but we’ve had plenty of time to make a few educated guesses. Best we can surmise is that this has gotta be the work of someone from our world’s side of things if this world’s all supposed to be one big digital network. Someone had to have programmed it, and by that logic, someone must be operating it. Frankly we’re not the biggest fans of their work.”
“You never met them yourselves?” Art asked.
“As a matter of fact, no. Pretty sure we never once met whoever whisked us away into this whole nightmare.”
“That’s enough, we’re not here to answer your questions, you’re here to answer ours,” Knox said, swiftly jumping back into the conversation.
“Knox, what else is there for them to tell us? Sounds like they couldn’t have been here for too long.”
“That right there is one more question worth asking in itself. How long have you been stuck here?”
Art was going to say he’d only been here for a day’s time, but, he hesitated. Just how long had it really been? Did the Digital World even go about time in the same way?
“It appears he is only now realizing the difficulty in time perception,” the white-haired man commented. “It seems to me he cannot have been here for more than a few days at most, bearing in mind everything we have observed so far.”
“Not that it’s ever been the easiest thing to keep track of,” grey-eyes added with a shrug.
“Well, he’ll have to adjust soon enough if he’s going to survive… but I suppose we’ve heard everything we’re likely going to get out of him.” At that, Knox gave a loud whistle, and a section of the ceiling seemed to pull itself away as their three Digimon companions made their presence known. From the opening in the roof they stepped inside of the house that only seemed to barely accommodate their collectively large sizes. “Since you cooperated with us, and since you don’t seem to be a spy, or at least, certainly not a very competent one, we’ll go ahead and give you the courtesy of knowing our names. Listen up, I’m not repeating anything here…” From that, she first pointed to herself, stating her name was Violet Knox, moving on to introduce Doumon as her companion. Next was grey-eyes, Cory Raka, and his partner Astamon. Lastly there was white-hair, Isaac Viteri and his Digimon, Yatakaramon. “Now, tell us what we’re supposed to call you.”
“Art MacTavish… This is Candlemon… though he’s been jumping around from this to Wizardmon a lot lately,” Art explained.
“Fluctuations from Rookie to Champion level… that cannot be an ideal situation,” Viteri quipped, his tone actually shifting slightly away from monotony and sounding a bit grim.
“It’s not our issue. If MacTavish here wants to survive, he’s gotta figure that out himself,” Knox said, rousing Raka’s protests.
“You’re really just gonna toss him out there back into the wild? He’s just one guy, Knox! Show at least a little mercy for Christ sake!”
“Calm down and shut up!” Knox shot back. “I’m not saying we’re abandoning him entirely. We’ll keep a close eye, make sure he doesn’t do anything too stupid, but we’re not just bringing him along into our fold. These two have their own problems to deal with. This whole virus situation doesn’t sound so good, obviously it’s gotta be dealt with, but that’s his concern. We have our own matters we need to get back to. We can’t stretch ourselves too thin here.” She walked up to Candlemon and pressed a button on her digivice, hovering it over him for a moment before it let out a distinct beeping noise.
“There we go. We can monitor his Digimon wherever he’s headed. No way in hell are these two gonna split apart if they value their present existence any. Not out there. We’ll keep in touch.”
“So, what, you’ve got a bug on him now? What does that entail?” Art asked, just a little anxious at the thought of someone keeping tabs on him constantly.
“Don’t go having a heart-attack about it. It just means we’ll know where you are and how many other Digimon are around you at any present time. Not like we’ve got a surveillance camera on you here, but if you get yourself in too deep, we’ll at least have a chance to realize it and bail you out before you get your ass handed to you,” Knox explained. She looked ready to say something else when Astamon suddenly interjected.
“Hate to cut in on your little chat, y’know I do love a good bit of drama, but I’ve got somethin’ you fellas might wanna know about, regardin’ that whole ‘virus’ thing.”
At that, everyone immediately turned their attention over to the demon-man, who smiled another toothy grin. He did always enjoy the little chances to be in the spotlight.
“I think I might’a picked up somethin’ from the Darklizardmon we absorbed. Probably some kind’a memory I’ll bet, sounds a lot like what you were talkin’ about earlier.”
“You think it might be where the next one of these viruses is gonna spring up?” Raka asked his partner, getting a scoff in response.
“Hell if I know, kid. ‘Virus’ might be my attribute but I’ve never heard’a this thing before in my life. All I know is I’m gettin’ some real vivid thoughts of that meadow near the City.”
“That’s almost certainly where the next threat will spawn… if it hasn’t already,” Candlemon said, looking to the others with a dire expression. “If you do not intend to assist us directly, then, please, you must let us go so we may deal with this threat!”
“You’re in no position to make any kind of demand, Wax,” Knox retorted. Even though he was fighting off the urge to nod off, this still caused Art to flinch slightly, just from how suddenly defensive she had gotten from that one request. “Count yourself lucky that we were already planning on doing just that.”
Knox looked over to Raka, who walked up to Art and handed him a rolled-up piece of parchment. “That’s a map of the Digital World, or at least, what we’ve managed to scope out. Should help you get around a little more conveniently.”
“I… ah… I appreciate that,” Art said as he looked over some of the map’s details, though he realized one particular bit of info was absent. “This doesn’t say where we are now though…”
“You don’t have to concern yourself with that,” Knox said, motioning to Doumon. The ornately-dressed grey fox approached both Art and Candlemon at the signal, two paper talismans materializing from their paws. Art watched the talismans float in the air for a moment, watching as they held themselves up, motionless, static… before suddenly flinging themselves in his and Candlemon’s direction in a blink of an instant. Before he could even react to it, one of them had attached itself to his head and his surroundings seemed to evaporate away, leaving him drifting in darkness, his consciousness finally succumbing.
Candlemon had found himself in a similar void for a time. It felt as if an invisible hand was carrying him off, but there was no distinct place to be brought to. For a moment it puzzled him, though he was gradually starting to understand what must have happened… just as he felt himself being dropped, and the void was replaced by a much less abstract riverside trail, sheltered by a forest of cherry-blossom trees that seemed to be eternally in bloom. Even in the dark of the night, he could see the vast clusters of vibrant pink petals, so numerous that the ones at a distance seemed like pink clouds. Beside him, Doumon was placing a sleeping Art on the ground as the talismans floated back to them and disappeared.
“A peculiar variation of your Hidden Gate Divination indeed,” Candlemon commented, though Doumon hardly acknowledged the remark. Only Knox seemed to have similarly accompanied them to this spot, and Candlemon turned a wary gaze over in her direction.
“You seem to have a rather negative viewpoint on most Digimon, Miss Knox,” he said. She stared at him for a moment in silence before responding.
“You know who we are, right? I can see from your reactions that you aren’t so keen on my team either. I keep most of you Digimon at a distance because I know what even the cutesiest and harmless-looking of you are capable of, and so many of you look upon us with vitriol.
“Do you truly think that’s unjustified?” Candlemon asked, looking rather distressed. “There are countless horror stories about the hundreds of Digimon whose code you’ve absorbed without remorse. You’re likened as bringers of death. Most of us choose not to believe such a malicious force could possibly exist. Is it truly so difficult for you to understand why so many would at least show some anxiety at the realization that you’re not just some myth?”
Knox let out a particularly loud scoff at this. “That’s cute… The Digi-rumour mill chugs along and now you think that we’re just running around on a murderous spree, like big game hunters… Well, newsflash, Lumiere, all those dead Digimon came after us. Beyond anything else, we’re out here to survive, that’s what it all comes down to. If you come after us, if you put any of us in danger, we end you, we guarantee you can’t make that mistake again. You’re the Digital Monsters here, it’s what you willingly call yourselves, and guess what? When monsters attack, you don’t reason with them, you slay them. It’s how it goes.”
“But you must realize this method of yours has just earned more scorn and hostility?” Candlemon attempted to argue, but it was clear Knox wasn’t hearing any of it.
“We’re giving your kind the same treatment that so many of ‘em would love to give us. It’s not exclusive to Digimon either, believe it or not. We’re not averse to bringing your Tamer down if he crosses us.”
Candlemon swiftly hopped over to Art’s side protectively. “You’re not laying a hand on him, not on my life you aren’t.”
“Hah… Look at that, couldn’t be more than a few days in this working relationship and you’re already laying your life on the line… Either you swear your loyalties far too quickly, or you’re way too protective for your own good, you little candlestick.” She motioned for Doumon to follow her as she turned away and threw her hood over her head. “You might not like it, but the reality is that we already played our hand, and we’re going all in with it until we win-out and get back home. The only ones who get hurt are the idiots who get in the way of that. Don’t be one of them.” She stopped for a moment, looking up to the night sky. Nothing was there but the digital stars above, but, it was clear she was assuming something more was looking over them. “By the way, if you bastards are watching… This little game of yours is gonna end soon, and then we’re gonna have a nice discussion of our own.” Doumon then proceeded to materialize a circle of talismans, uttered what sounded like a ritualistic chant, and the duo vanished in a shadowy haze, leaving only Candlemon and his unconscious human companion.
Preparing to keep watch until Art had some time to rest up, the fire Digimon saw a glowing light in the human’s coat pocket. His digivice seemed to be alerting them of something… Not wanting to awaken Art until he knew for sure it was an emergency, Candlemon carefully took the digivice out to see what the issue was, only to see that the digivolution function had reactivated itself.
‘Strange…’ Candlemon thought…The last couple times that happened, the two were in dire straits. Right now, try as he might, he couldn’t spot any immediate danger at all. Still, any chance to get back to his normal power level was okay by him. He attempted to press the button as he pointed the device at himself, but it didn’t seem to trigger anything.
“Must be interfaced directly to a Tamer then…” he surmised, carefully placing it on the ground beside Art’s hand, lifting his index finger and dropping it on the button. A bit unconventional a method, but, it proved to work nonetheless. Digivolution commenced, and he was once again back to being Wizardmon.
“I must say if this whole debacle taught me anything, it’s not to take having feet for granted…” he quietly murmured to himself, understandably pleased to no longer be restrained to hopping about to get around on his own. He went to put the digivice back in Art’s pocket before he was halted by the presence of a message beginning to scroll along the screen. Unlike the prior ones, this seemed a lot more… communicative.
YOUR DATA LIMITS HAVE BEEN COMPROMISED. HOWEVER, I HAVE INCORPORATED A TEMPORARY FIX. DEVOLUTION SHOULD ONLY OCCUR IF YOU OVEREXERT YOURSELF. DO NOT ENGAGE IN COMBAT FOR MORE THAN THREE MINUTES.
A message in the first-person… which meant, more than likely, that someone was using the digivice to speak to him… and someone with quite a bit of programming clout, no doubt. There wasn’t exactly any way to text out a reply, leaving it a rather one-sided conversation, but, he had to admit this was still some encouraging assistance. Unfortunately, the next part of the message wasn’t quite so pleasing to read.
I KNOW WHAT HOLDS YOU BACK. TREAD CAREFULLY. HE HASN’T FORGOTTEN ABOUT YOU.
A shiver ran through the wizard Digimon’s spine. Of all the potential reasons for his digivolution to go haywire… He thought that chapter of his life was over and done with.
“I was naïve to think otherwise…” he muttered grimly, looking back at Art with growing concern. He barely got out of that prior arrangement alive, but at least he was alone in the suffering, and at least he escaped… To have to face such anguish again… and to subject another to that kind of torment? It’d be unbearable…
“I roped you into this… Foolish of me to think this would all turn out to just be a spirited little adventure at most… Yggdrasil forbid I have you face that devil…”
--
“Cara, What’s it look like over there?”
“We just got another Digivolution. Hopefully it’ll stick this time. Still have a camera monitoring that little base of our lost souls?”
“It’s set. We’ve got 24-hour surveillance on the outside domicile. ‘Fraid we aren’t able to get any visual indoors however.”
“That’s fine… It’s still something. Better than years of nothing.”
Cara and Mateo had been plastered to their monitors, typing commands out with furious speed as they attempted to keep all the known humans in the Digital World in their sights. They’d informed many of their fellow Programmers stationed elsewhere about the development, by now realizing that this wasn’t an issue they could keep quiet. This would need to involve everyone to some extent. At the very least they would have to be in the know.
“Can we get any kind of read on who activated that Digivolving sequence by the way?” Cara asked.
“Seems to be coming from a concealed system… outside of any of our networks. It’s gotta still be one of ours though, no one else even knows of the world’s existence,” Mateo answered.
“No one we’re aware of…” Cara replied worryingly. “Still, whoever it is, they’re being helpful, and that kid needs all the help he can get.”
Mateo merely nodded an acknowledgement of that before turning to one of the workers assigned to handle the ongoing debacle that was the Coredramon aftermath. “What’s the situation looking like?”
“Not great… Every time we manage to get a video taken down, at least a dozen more copies of it seem to be getting out. It’s turning into a textbook Streisand effect,” the worker admitted.
Mateo cursed under his breath. Perhaps Cara was right about this getting out of hand. Was this going to be it, the rip in the façade that inevitably exposed everything? It had been so easy for their organization to keep things under wraps before… but that was because there’d never been something as difficult to suppress as the near-irrefutable video-evidence of a dragon on a rampage. At the very least they could keep people from finding out too much, let them ponder it, spout baseless theories, keep them in the dark about it, maybe that would be enough to keep things manageably still confidential…
The fact that this conjecture was supposed to be a good potential outcome ended up rubbing him the wrong way. There really wasn’t much honor or moral high-ground to be had in hoping for people to stay confused and uninformed, really pushed the cynicism to light… but said cynical take still had its merits. Far as he was concerned, the lesser of the two evils still was to keep the public ignorant. Millions of people could barely keep an MMO running without chaos ensuing, just what would they do if they had access to a world of free-thinking, living beings that just happened to be in a digital reality? He was positive the results of that outcome would make the Coredramon affair look like a noise-complaint in comparison.
On her side of things, Cara couldn’t shake off the threat Knox had made. It didn’t matter that she was unaware of who she was actually addressing, nor the fact that her circumstances of being trapped in that world were accidental… By all accounts this mess was still their fault, and the rage she felt was plentifully justified. One way or another this was just proof of how much of their own garbage they needed to get to cleaning up.
“Goddammit Alvi, whatever you’re doing it’d sure as hell better be important if you’re leaving us to deal with this alone.”
--
‘You are a clever sort, aren’t you?’
Once again the two anonymous players began a conversation, to the amusement of one, and the chagrin of the other.
‘Now now, we only wish to give credit where it’s due, you should be more grateful.’
‘Ah yes, all your pieces have been moving about at a relentless pace. We especially like how one of them sent out a message just recently to try and get more of you informed. Communication is such an important factor when working in teams, wouldn’t you agree?’
A message? A quick check in a private board… revealing a recently posted wall of text, discussing the Coredramon incident, including the information about the latest human who’d crossed into the Digital World and the location of the previous visitors thought long lost. Information posted like this was supposed to be Programmer knowledge only…
‘One clue at a time, friend. You’ll have to make the most of it. Believe me, we intend to do the same with what we've uncovered. Do your best to keep pace, this has been quite the fun little game, we’d rather it not end so soon. Won’t feel like much of a satisfying victory if you cave too quickly.’
No further replies. Only speculation remained. This… person… or perhaps these people... they knew far too much, and they were getting it from a source that shouldn’t have been available to them… No doubt, either someone was secretly playing for the other side, or they were putting too much trust in the wrong sort. Either way, the game was proving itself to be much more complicated.
“Right, give them a chance to look around,” one of the voices, presumably the leader, commanded. The cloth around Art’s eyes was removed as ordered and he got the chance to see just where this posse of fellow humans had brought him and Candlemon, who was likewise being unshrouded by what appeared to be something akin to a burlap sack, likely since a candle with a lick of fire for one of its faces wasn’t the easiest thing to conventionally blindfold.
Where they found themselves was a hideout that looked rather… decently established, and quite well lived-in. The interior reminded him of a beach house, with pale white wood-planks composing the structure, the floorboard and the ceiling. A smattering of technological devices, ranging from makeshift little gadgets to those of a more meticulously designed appearance, were situated on tables. The limited furniture all appeared to have been made by whatever they had on hand at the time… one chair looked to be nicely crafted from softwood, while another was little more than a glorified tree stump. It was all as if the place had once been some abandoned domicile that this trio had found and claimed for themselves.
Speaking of said trio… It was only now that Art could get a good look at their appearances, as they were no longer concealing their faces behind their hooded garments. Standing in front of him with a clear air of authority was a young woman with deep red hair, the likes of which seemed quite short yet unkempt. Said hair color seemed… unnatural in a way. Not dyed, no… rather, it almost looked like when someone messed around with the color setting on a monitor, really cranking the red up… but specifically for her hair alone. Beside her were two men appearing to be of a similar age; One, looking the closest to being sympathetic, if such an expression was genuine, had dark blonde hair and jarringly grey eyes… In this case, it was as if said eyes were two oval-shaped screens with the color setting disabled. The other, whose expression seemed all-but-unreadable, had hair so bright white that the smallest light reflection gave off an irritating glimmer if one stared directly at it. It reminded Art of a bright white screen on a television, a head of burn-in reduction for hair.
“Didn’t detect anyone tracking us, at least not for very long,” the white-haired man said in a calm, near-monotonous voice. Art couldn’t recall hearing such a voice before, neither in the mansion nor the excruciating trip afterwards. It gave him an impression that this man in particular wasn’t necessarily chatty.
“Just a few curious onlookers, I saw some of them too,” the woman replied, not taking her eyes off Art. “No one stupid enough to investigate further, ‘least not from the Digimon side of things. That’s not to say we don’t have someone listening in right this very moment.” At that she grabbed Art and forced him back up to his feet, dragging him over to a chair and having him sit down before taking a seat across from him. Placed beside him on a table was Candlemon. Neither of them was restrained, though the mutual thought between them seemed to be that making a break for it would prove unwise. Aside from Art’s exhausted condition and Candlemon being in a weakened evolutionary stage, they were not the least bit aware of their current surroundings… and those three highly powerful Digimon were likely not far away.
“What do you intend to do with us?” Candlemon spoke after an uncomfortable silence had followed their being seated.
“Right now, you don’t get to ask any questions, candlestick,” the woman shot back, glaring at the fire Digimon fiercely before turning back to Art. “Another human hasn’t shown their face in the Digital World since we landed here. Might be a big world out there, but we’ve done our fair share of looking… We’ve had a lot of time to get acquainted with this world, I can tell you, so you can probably understand why we’re making a big deal out of you suddenly turning up.”
Art, slouched in his chair, didn’t say a word. He’d heard about how interrogations tended to go down, how speaking while you were the subject of one tended to only make your case worse… but then, that was for police procedures and these three were a far cry from cops. That right to remain silent probably wouldn’t be exercised in this circumstance.
“I’m gonna ask you a few questions. You’re gonna say ‘yes’ or ‘no’, or you’re not gonna say a damn thing. That clear?” she asked him.
“Wh-...Yes,” Art replied, having bit his tongue before he could accidentally slip up and ask why.
“Good. First question - You mentioned a portal earlier. Did you have anything to do with it showing up?”
“N-no,” Art answered, stammering despite himself, and the woman seemed to catch this.
“Don’t go BS-ing us, kid. If we find out you’re lying, we won’t hesitate to treat you like any hostile Digimon.” They’d already seen what that entailed from the Darklizardmon fiasco, so that was hardly an empty threat. “So… You didn’t have anything to do with the portal… Or, maybe you just don’t know, fine. Question two – That digivice there. I’m assuming it popped up when you first arrived. That correct?”
“…No.” This time, despite the pause, Art made sure his response was more audibly overt.
His interrogator seemed taken aback for a moment, but her expression quickly reverted from the brief surprise as she crossed her arms.
“So, already we’re looking at divergence here. You got that digivice in the real world then?”
Art nodded as he answered “Yes”.
“Did someone give it to you?”
“No.”
“Manifested out of the clear blue sky then?”
“Yes.”
She looked disappointed for a second. Art could only assume she was hoping he’d truly have some kind of new information that they hadn’t scraped together on their own.
“Knox, little differences aside, I’m telling you it sounds like he’s just another poor bastard who got roped into this nonsense,” the grey-eyed man commented.
“We can’t afford to jump to that conclusion until we’re sure!” she replied sternly. “You see this as a chance to get out, or at least get ourselves another ally. I get that, I understand wanting to have hope, but I’m not gonna just get all instantly chummy with someone just because they’re another human with a digivice. For all we know, we could be dealing with a spy, sent by the jerkasses who got us trapped in the first place.
“If he is, the question would be why they’d send him now, of all times,” the white-haired man chimed in. “Furthermore, unless this man’s a brilliant actor, his overall confusion seems to infer a lack of understanding regarding his current predicament. That being said… It’s worth noting his digivice is not the same as ours.”
Art had presumed they were each carrying digivices, but it did only just dawn on him as well that they were not of the same sort of design as his. Theirs were each more of a rectangular shape, less like eggs and more like horizontal-oriented handheld radios with screens.
“He’s got some kind of light beam trick. Never seen that one before,” grey-eyes added.
“Neither have I…” the woman, Knox, answered, looking down contemplatively before turning back again to Art. “Alright, ‘yes’ and ‘no’ time’s over. You clearly knew how to use that beam function, what does it do?”
Art looked at Candlemon, who merely motioned for him to go ahead, seeing no point in holding out when these three would likely be very insistent on getting an answer.
“Alright… from what I gather, it’s like a sort of antiviral software or something. Apparently some Digimon are getting possessed by some kind of mind-warping program. It’s like an orb of some kind… and this, if aimed at the spot where that orb’s lodged, forces it out of them.”
“And this came with the device from the get-go?”
“Yeah…”
At that the three seemed to convene for a moment, murmuring this amongst themselves for a time before the interrogation continued. Art, still quite tired, had nearly drifted off before Knox snapped him back to attention.
“So that’s what you were doing back at the haunted house then. How’re you figuring out where these afflicted Digimon are supposed to be?”
“Ah… Well… the first two we basically just kinda stumbled upon, but… we got the third’s location from the last Digimon we saved. He said he had a vision of the mansion that he couldn’t get out of his head… Seemed almost like a clue left behind…”
“Not a bad clue then,” Knox remarked, pacing about lightly in thought. “So this is the journey forced on you, this is the job you’ve been stuck with. The janitor of the Digital World with his glorified mop and talking candle. Seems when those idiots aren’t leaving us completely for dead, they’re giving us the task of being their goddamn clean-up crew.”
“You keep bringing up some outside party. Do you know something about the ones responsible for these portals between our worlds?” Candlemon asked, his curiosity on the matter getting the better of him.
Knox didn’t say anything, but the grey-eyed man stepped up to answer. “We haven’t found much regarding proof, but we’ve had plenty of time to make a few educated guesses. Best we can surmise is that this has gotta be the work of someone from our world’s side of things if this world’s all supposed to be one big digital network. Someone had to have programmed it, and by that logic, someone must be operating it. Frankly we’re not the biggest fans of their work.”
“You never met them yourselves?” Art asked.
“As a matter of fact, no. Pretty sure we never once met whoever whisked us away into this whole nightmare.”
“That’s enough, we’re not here to answer your questions, you’re here to answer ours,” Knox said, swiftly jumping back into the conversation.
“Knox, what else is there for them to tell us? Sounds like they couldn’t have been here for too long.”
“That right there is one more question worth asking in itself. How long have you been stuck here?”
Art was going to say he’d only been here for a day’s time, but, he hesitated. Just how long had it really been? Did the Digital World even go about time in the same way?
“It appears he is only now realizing the difficulty in time perception,” the white-haired man commented. “It seems to me he cannot have been here for more than a few days at most, bearing in mind everything we have observed so far.”
“Not that it’s ever been the easiest thing to keep track of,” grey-eyes added with a shrug.
“Well, he’ll have to adjust soon enough if he’s going to survive… but I suppose we’ve heard everything we’re likely going to get out of him.” At that, Knox gave a loud whistle, and a section of the ceiling seemed to pull itself away as their three Digimon companions made their presence known. From the opening in the roof they stepped inside of the house that only seemed to barely accommodate their collectively large sizes. “Since you cooperated with us, and since you don’t seem to be a spy, or at least, certainly not a very competent one, we’ll go ahead and give you the courtesy of knowing our names. Listen up, I’m not repeating anything here…” From that, she first pointed to herself, stating her name was Violet Knox, moving on to introduce Doumon as her companion. Next was grey-eyes, Cory Raka, and his partner Astamon. Lastly there was white-hair, Isaac Viteri and his Digimon, Yatakaramon. “Now, tell us what we’re supposed to call you.”
“Art MacTavish… This is Candlemon… though he’s been jumping around from this to Wizardmon a lot lately,” Art explained.
“Fluctuations from Rookie to Champion level… that cannot be an ideal situation,” Viteri quipped, his tone actually shifting slightly away from monotony and sounding a bit grim.
“It’s not our issue. If MacTavish here wants to survive, he’s gotta figure that out himself,” Knox said, rousing Raka’s protests.
“You’re really just gonna toss him out there back into the wild? He’s just one guy, Knox! Show at least a little mercy for Christ sake!”
“Calm down and shut up!” Knox shot back. “I’m not saying we’re abandoning him entirely. We’ll keep a close eye, make sure he doesn’t do anything too stupid, but we’re not just bringing him along into our fold. These two have their own problems to deal with. This whole virus situation doesn’t sound so good, obviously it’s gotta be dealt with, but that’s his concern. We have our own matters we need to get back to. We can’t stretch ourselves too thin here.” She walked up to Candlemon and pressed a button on her digivice, hovering it over him for a moment before it let out a distinct beeping noise.
“There we go. We can monitor his Digimon wherever he’s headed. No way in hell are these two gonna split apart if they value their present existence any. Not out there. We’ll keep in touch.”
“So, what, you’ve got a bug on him now? What does that entail?” Art asked, just a little anxious at the thought of someone keeping tabs on him constantly.
“Don’t go having a heart-attack about it. It just means we’ll know where you are and how many other Digimon are around you at any present time. Not like we’ve got a surveillance camera on you here, but if you get yourself in too deep, we’ll at least have a chance to realize it and bail you out before you get your ass handed to you,” Knox explained. She looked ready to say something else when Astamon suddenly interjected.
“Hate to cut in on your little chat, y’know I do love a good bit of drama, but I’ve got somethin’ you fellas might wanna know about, regardin’ that whole ‘virus’ thing.”
At that, everyone immediately turned their attention over to the demon-man, who smiled another toothy grin. He did always enjoy the little chances to be in the spotlight.
“I think I might’a picked up somethin’ from the Darklizardmon we absorbed. Probably some kind’a memory I’ll bet, sounds a lot like what you were talkin’ about earlier.”
“You think it might be where the next one of these viruses is gonna spring up?” Raka asked his partner, getting a scoff in response.
“Hell if I know, kid. ‘Virus’ might be my attribute but I’ve never heard’a this thing before in my life. All I know is I’m gettin’ some real vivid thoughts of that meadow near the City.”
“That’s almost certainly where the next threat will spawn… if it hasn’t already,” Candlemon said, looking to the others with a dire expression. “If you do not intend to assist us directly, then, please, you must let us go so we may deal with this threat!”
“You’re in no position to make any kind of demand, Wax,” Knox retorted. Even though he was fighting off the urge to nod off, this still caused Art to flinch slightly, just from how suddenly defensive she had gotten from that one request. “Count yourself lucky that we were already planning on doing just that.”
Knox looked over to Raka, who walked up to Art and handed him a rolled-up piece of parchment. “That’s a map of the Digital World, or at least, what we’ve managed to scope out. Should help you get around a little more conveniently.”
“I… ah… I appreciate that,” Art said as he looked over some of the map’s details, though he realized one particular bit of info was absent. “This doesn’t say where we are now though…”
“You don’t have to concern yourself with that,” Knox said, motioning to Doumon. The ornately-dressed grey fox approached both Art and Candlemon at the signal, two paper talismans materializing from their paws. Art watched the talismans float in the air for a moment, watching as they held themselves up, motionless, static… before suddenly flinging themselves in his and Candlemon’s direction in a blink of an instant. Before he could even react to it, one of them had attached itself to his head and his surroundings seemed to evaporate away, leaving him drifting in darkness, his consciousness finally succumbing.
Candlemon had found himself in a similar void for a time. It felt as if an invisible hand was carrying him off, but there was no distinct place to be brought to. For a moment it puzzled him, though he was gradually starting to understand what must have happened… just as he felt himself being dropped, and the void was replaced by a much less abstract riverside trail, sheltered by a forest of cherry-blossom trees that seemed to be eternally in bloom. Even in the dark of the night, he could see the vast clusters of vibrant pink petals, so numerous that the ones at a distance seemed like pink clouds. Beside him, Doumon was placing a sleeping Art on the ground as the talismans floated back to them and disappeared.
“A peculiar variation of your Hidden Gate Divination indeed,” Candlemon commented, though Doumon hardly acknowledged the remark. Only Knox seemed to have similarly accompanied them to this spot, and Candlemon turned a wary gaze over in her direction.
“You seem to have a rather negative viewpoint on most Digimon, Miss Knox,” he said. She stared at him for a moment in silence before responding.
“You know who we are, right? I can see from your reactions that you aren’t so keen on my team either. I keep most of you Digimon at a distance because I know what even the cutesiest and harmless-looking of you are capable of, and so many of you look upon us with vitriol.
“Do you truly think that’s unjustified?” Candlemon asked, looking rather distressed. “There are countless horror stories about the hundreds of Digimon whose code you’ve absorbed without remorse. You’re likened as bringers of death. Most of us choose not to believe such a malicious force could possibly exist. Is it truly so difficult for you to understand why so many would at least show some anxiety at the realization that you’re not just some myth?”
Knox let out a particularly loud scoff at this. “That’s cute… The Digi-rumour mill chugs along and now you think that we’re just running around on a murderous spree, like big game hunters… Well, newsflash, Lumiere, all those dead Digimon came after us. Beyond anything else, we’re out here to survive, that’s what it all comes down to. If you come after us, if you put any of us in danger, we end you, we guarantee you can’t make that mistake again. You’re the Digital Monsters here, it’s what you willingly call yourselves, and guess what? When monsters attack, you don’t reason with them, you slay them. It’s how it goes.”
“But you must realize this method of yours has just earned more scorn and hostility?” Candlemon attempted to argue, but it was clear Knox wasn’t hearing any of it.
“We’re giving your kind the same treatment that so many of ‘em would love to give us. It’s not exclusive to Digimon either, believe it or not. We’re not averse to bringing your Tamer down if he crosses us.”
Candlemon swiftly hopped over to Art’s side protectively. “You’re not laying a hand on him, not on my life you aren’t.”
“Hah… Look at that, couldn’t be more than a few days in this working relationship and you’re already laying your life on the line… Either you swear your loyalties far too quickly, or you’re way too protective for your own good, you little candlestick.” She motioned for Doumon to follow her as she turned away and threw her hood over her head. “You might not like it, but the reality is that we already played our hand, and we’re going all in with it until we win-out and get back home. The only ones who get hurt are the idiots who get in the way of that. Don’t be one of them.” She stopped for a moment, looking up to the night sky. Nothing was there but the digital stars above, but, it was clear she was assuming something more was looking over them. “By the way, if you bastards are watching… This little game of yours is gonna end soon, and then we’re gonna have a nice discussion of our own.” Doumon then proceeded to materialize a circle of talismans, uttered what sounded like a ritualistic chant, and the duo vanished in a shadowy haze, leaving only Candlemon and his unconscious human companion.
Preparing to keep watch until Art had some time to rest up, the fire Digimon saw a glowing light in the human’s coat pocket. His digivice seemed to be alerting them of something… Not wanting to awaken Art until he knew for sure it was an emergency, Candlemon carefully took the digivice out to see what the issue was, only to see that the digivolution function had reactivated itself.
‘Strange…’ Candlemon thought…The last couple times that happened, the two were in dire straits. Right now, try as he might, he couldn’t spot any immediate danger at all. Still, any chance to get back to his normal power level was okay by him. He attempted to press the button as he pointed the device at himself, but it didn’t seem to trigger anything.
“Must be interfaced directly to a Tamer then…” he surmised, carefully placing it on the ground beside Art’s hand, lifting his index finger and dropping it on the button. A bit unconventional a method, but, it proved to work nonetheless. Digivolution commenced, and he was once again back to being Wizardmon.
“I must say if this whole debacle taught me anything, it’s not to take having feet for granted…” he quietly murmured to himself, understandably pleased to no longer be restrained to hopping about to get around on his own. He went to put the digivice back in Art’s pocket before he was halted by the presence of a message beginning to scroll along the screen. Unlike the prior ones, this seemed a lot more… communicative.
YOUR DATA LIMITS HAVE BEEN COMPROMISED. HOWEVER, I HAVE INCORPORATED A TEMPORARY FIX. DEVOLUTION SHOULD ONLY OCCUR IF YOU OVEREXERT YOURSELF. DO NOT ENGAGE IN COMBAT FOR MORE THAN THREE MINUTES.
A message in the first-person… which meant, more than likely, that someone was using the digivice to speak to him… and someone with quite a bit of programming clout, no doubt. There wasn’t exactly any way to text out a reply, leaving it a rather one-sided conversation, but, he had to admit this was still some encouraging assistance. Unfortunately, the next part of the message wasn’t quite so pleasing to read.
I KNOW WHAT HOLDS YOU BACK. TREAD CAREFULLY. HE HASN’T FORGOTTEN ABOUT YOU.
A shiver ran through the wizard Digimon’s spine. Of all the potential reasons for his digivolution to go haywire… He thought that chapter of his life was over and done with.
“I was naïve to think otherwise…” he muttered grimly, looking back at Art with growing concern. He barely got out of that prior arrangement alive, but at least he was alone in the suffering, and at least he escaped… To have to face such anguish again… and to subject another to that kind of torment? It’d be unbearable…
“I roped you into this… Foolish of me to think this would all turn out to just be a spirited little adventure at most… Yggdrasil forbid I have you face that devil…”
--
“Cara, What’s it look like over there?”
“We just got another Digivolution. Hopefully it’ll stick this time. Still have a camera monitoring that little base of our lost souls?”
“It’s set. We’ve got 24-hour surveillance on the outside domicile. ‘Fraid we aren’t able to get any visual indoors however.”
“That’s fine… It’s still something. Better than years of nothing.”
Cara and Mateo had been plastered to their monitors, typing commands out with furious speed as they attempted to keep all the known humans in the Digital World in their sights. They’d informed many of their fellow Programmers stationed elsewhere about the development, by now realizing that this wasn’t an issue they could keep quiet. This would need to involve everyone to some extent. At the very least they would have to be in the know.
“Can we get any kind of read on who activated that Digivolving sequence by the way?” Cara asked.
“Seems to be coming from a concealed system… outside of any of our networks. It’s gotta still be one of ours though, no one else even knows of the world’s existence,” Mateo answered.
“No one we’re aware of…” Cara replied worryingly. “Still, whoever it is, they’re being helpful, and that kid needs all the help he can get.”
Mateo merely nodded an acknowledgement of that before turning to one of the workers assigned to handle the ongoing debacle that was the Coredramon aftermath. “What’s the situation looking like?”
“Not great… Every time we manage to get a video taken down, at least a dozen more copies of it seem to be getting out. It’s turning into a textbook Streisand effect,” the worker admitted.
Mateo cursed under his breath. Perhaps Cara was right about this getting out of hand. Was this going to be it, the rip in the façade that inevitably exposed everything? It had been so easy for their organization to keep things under wraps before… but that was because there’d never been something as difficult to suppress as the near-irrefutable video-evidence of a dragon on a rampage. At the very least they could keep people from finding out too much, let them ponder it, spout baseless theories, keep them in the dark about it, maybe that would be enough to keep things manageably still confidential…
The fact that this conjecture was supposed to be a good potential outcome ended up rubbing him the wrong way. There really wasn’t much honor or moral high-ground to be had in hoping for people to stay confused and uninformed, really pushed the cynicism to light… but said cynical take still had its merits. Far as he was concerned, the lesser of the two evils still was to keep the public ignorant. Millions of people could barely keep an MMO running without chaos ensuing, just what would they do if they had access to a world of free-thinking, living beings that just happened to be in a digital reality? He was positive the results of that outcome would make the Coredramon affair look like a noise-complaint in comparison.
On her side of things, Cara couldn’t shake off the threat Knox had made. It didn’t matter that she was unaware of who she was actually addressing, nor the fact that her circumstances of being trapped in that world were accidental… By all accounts this mess was still their fault, and the rage she felt was plentifully justified. One way or another this was just proof of how much of their own garbage they needed to get to cleaning up.
“Goddammit Alvi, whatever you’re doing it’d sure as hell better be important if you’re leaving us to deal with this alone.”
--
‘You are a clever sort, aren’t you?’
‘I’ll admit I was hoping you might allow my moment’s peace to last a bit longer.’
Once again the two anonymous players began a conversation, to the amusement of one, and the chagrin of the other.
‘Now now, we only wish to give credit where it’s due, you should be more grateful.’
‘Forgive me if I’m not appropriately grateful to you for causing me and my team so much trouble.’
‘Ah yes, all your pieces have been moving about at a relentless pace. We especially like how one of them sent out a message just recently to try and get more of you informed. Communication is such an important factor when working in teams, wouldn’t you agree?’
A message? A quick check in a private board… revealing a recently posted wall of text, discussing the Coredramon incident, including the information about the latest human who’d crossed into the Digital World and the location of the previous visitors thought long lost. Information posted like this was supposed to be Programmer knowledge only…
‘How are you aware of this?’
‘One clue at a time, friend. You’ll have to make the most of it. Believe me, we intend to do the same with what we've uncovered. Do your best to keep pace, this has been quite the fun little game, we’d rather it not end so soon. Won’t feel like much of a satisfying victory if you cave too quickly.’
‘Are you one of us? Why are you doing this?’
No further replies. Only speculation remained. This… person… or perhaps these people... they knew far too much, and they were getting it from a source that shouldn’t have been available to them… No doubt, either someone was secretly playing for the other side, or they were putting too much trust in the wrong sort. Either way, the game was proving itself to be much more complicated.