Chapter Text
“Ryo…”
“Huh?” Ryo sat up from his bed. “Is that you Akane?” he called out from his bed.
“Did you say something?” came the response from down the hall in the direction of the living room. Ryo rewound the memory of the voice he thought he heard and frowned.
It hadn’t sounded like her. The voice was far too deep.
“Never mind,” he called back. Not receiving a response, he frowned and looked about the room.
His eyes fell upon the sheen of a glowing, green card sitting on the desk on the far end of the room.
The card throbbed with green light, but remained dim. Getting up from off the bed, Ryo went over to it and picked it up.
“Hey,” he greeted it. “Was that…you calling to me?” he asked.
There was no response from the card, save for its light vanishing once he touched it. As with before, it had a strange, holographic look to it that displayed the letter D and a crude, pixelated dinosaur next to it that appeared and disappeared as Ryo turned it over in his hand. Ryo ran a tongue over his lips, thinking about the card slot in his strange digital device.
The card appeared to him before, and it did so now again.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, he decided, setting the card to the slot. Besides, Hypnos never tells me anything about what they found with this thing.
He slashed the card through the slot, and lightning sparked as the digivice read the data.
At first, nothing happened, and then the whole world lurched.
###
Flash.
Ryo cursed under his breath as the lights in the room dimmed and darkened, plunging everything into shadow. Outside, thunder shook his home, and a bolt of lightning briefly illuminated the blank monitor of his father’s computer. A thunderstorm in December! And on the verge of the new millennium…
Of all the times for this to happen! Right when he was in the middle of a discussion in a chat room about the incident in Odaiba a few months ago, back in August; an incident that the Japanese government covered up considerably. It had taken him months to locate a server with sufficient protection to avoid scrutiny and censorship so that he could finally discuss everything that he heard about what happened then, and the images that dotted the Internet… Images of monsters fighting each other.
I was so close… Ryo thought, running a hand through his hair. Getting up, he started to head out of the room to see if the problem involved the fuse box…only to stop when the computer screen flickered back on.
The computer screen and nothing else, save for a voice.
“..o? Hello? Can anyone here me? I need help…”
Turning back to the computer with a raised eyebrow, he found himself starting in shock as light suddenly burst forth from it, and a small, angular device with a screen at its center emerged. He stood there, transfixed by the device, radiating with such force that he felt something inside him rising… surging alongside it. Something about the device called to him and he raised his hand toward it. As though it sensed his motion, the voice from the computer spoke, desperate; pleading.
“Take it,” it said. “Take the digivice! Please! Tai and Matt need your help! They were captured by evil digimon! I can’t do it alone!”
Ryo didn’t understand a thing that the voice was saying, yet his hand moved of its own volition all the same. His hand fell upon the digivice and the next thing he knew was a swirl of color and blinding light, dragging him into the screen…and to another place far beyond his wildest imaginings.
###
Flash.
“We did it!”
Ryo heard Wormmon shout in victory as their opponent crashed to the ground – a massive, dinosaur-like creature with dark scales, a glowing, beastly aura atop its head with a pair of twin, shoulder mounted mechanical cannons attached. The monster roared as its body dissolved, sending a cloud of dark… Ryo blinked as something whizzed by him. Something small and black, like a seed. He only saw it for a fraction of a second, but before he could fully process it he heard a shout of “Get down!” before being knocked forcefully to the desert sand below. The dark-haired boy responsible for the act – his best friend and confident Ken Ichijouji – jerked and twisted, his face writhing in agony before he collapsed down alongside him.
“Ken!” he shouted, the cloud passing over them as quickly as it arrived and he pushed himself up and rushed over to him, Wormmon not far behind. “What happened?”
“Something struck him in the back of his neck,” Wormmon replied, worry plain on his insectoid face. “I don’t know what it was.”
Reaching out, Ryo ran a hand along the back of his neck, trying to find whatever it was that hit his friend. There was a plainly obvious red swelling already forming, but no other damage marred the flesh.
“I…guess that’s it?” he said aloud in confusion. “No… Something’s wrong. He has a fever…”
###
“ You know ...Machinedramon was your true partner .” Millenniummon murmured, effortlessly pushing back Monodramon with ease, the power difference between the mega who plagued Ryo, making it impossible for him to rest, and the rookie who fought loyally by his side without any hidden agenda since they first met, even more apparent. “ And as you know … Machinedramon is one within me. Don’t you see? We’re partners? It’s why we are tied by fate!”
No … Ryo thought numbly. No, Millenniummon of all Digimon couldn’t be his partner. Not Millenniummon, who was the reason his life was hell. That he was even forced into these battles in the first place. While in the past he would have jumped at the chance of being some unique legendary hero, now …
“ Cracking Bite!” the scrappy rookie yelled, refusing to yield despite the overwhelming odds against him.
No his partner would be someone who was there through thick and thin; who looked out for Ryo’s interests and well-being instead of playing some perverse game. Someone like …
“ Monodramon…”
Just then a bright light filled the corridor, and Ryo could only watch in horror as the two fighting for the title of his partner began to fuse together, their data and digital frames beginning to mesh.
“ Monodramon!” he yelled rushing forward, trying to help the rookie in any way he could, but by the time he got there, there was just a single digital egg where his partner … or partners used to be.
###
The sky was red. Ryo squinted his eyes, sweat dripping down his brow. Pulling at his bandana, he surveyed his surroundings, or what was left of them.
What city was this? He wondered, Cyberdramon by his side growling threateningly, although amongst the rubbles of what appeared to be buildings and bridges, the Legendary Tamer couldn’t make out a single living soul. The only real thing of note - as far as Ryo could see anyway - was a giant red … blob which he didn’t notice at first as it merged with the skyline.
He wasn’t sure why he decided to go to this new world instead of home - he was certainly tired of fighting and all the bullshit the Digital World threw at him - but at the time he felt like if he went home, he never would escape the grasp the digital world.
He was seeing now perhaps that wasn’t the best idea; wherever he was now was in far more need of help than ever before.
If he didn’t know better, he would assume Millenniummon was behind this. But that was impossible now.
“ Hey. ”
There was a snarl in the form of a greeting, and surprised, the Legendary Tamer whipped around to see two other teenagers around the same age as him staring back. It took him a moment to notice each had Digimon flanking them - a Renamon and a Terriermon respectively - so distracted by their battle scars. While he was taught not to stare, he couldn’t help it.
The boy - Chinese by the looks of it - was minus one arm, an ugly scar where his elbow used to be. The girl - while she could be pretty maybe once upon a time - had scars across her face, marring it. By the looks of things, she barely avoided losing her left eye with how close the raised flesh was to her socket.
“ Who the fuck are you and where did you come from?! ” she growled, taking a threatening step forward, only for the boy with her to hold a hand out, stopping her in her tracks.
“ Rika ,” he said simply before looking at Ryo, his grey eyes cautious and tired. Ryo knew that look; it was a look he was well familiar with, wearing it himself in what he thought was the past. “ Still, please do answer the question. If we don’t have to fight you, that would be beneficial. ”
“ I’m … Ryo Akiyama ,” the Legendary Tamer answered hesitantly after a moment, looking around again. “ What … what happened here? ”
“ What … what happened?” the girl spluttered angrily. “Have you been living under a rock for the last four years? ”
“ Rika ,” the boy warned once again, before sighing, turning to Ryo. “ Still, it’s a bit shocking you don’t remember. After all, thanks to the D-reaper, everything on this planet is going all but extinct .”
###
Ryo awoke, finding himself lying on the floor, the green card and his digivice sitting next to him. The screen of the digivice glowed and then the figure of a man appeared, standing on it. He was translucent, and looked haggard, his red beard having gone through considerable growth that went well beyond societal concerns of appearance. Ryo felt a strange…familiarity regarding him, and before he knew it, a word…a name…escaped his mouth.
“Shibumi…” he whispered, and as though his name had been a signal, the holographic apparition began to speak.
“If you are receiving this…” the image began, only to glitch, a massive jerking of the image ran along its length, garbling its words before stabilizing. “Ryo…escaped Mnemosyne. He must…” Another glitch ate a word. “…imprisoned by any means necessary. He’s a power beyond anything we’ve seen before. If we don’t stop him…” Shibumi’s face set itself into a sorrowful expression before continuing. “I’m sorry. I actually thought…we could trust him. I should have known… The timeline…”
There came another glitch, followed by another and finally Shibumi’s body froze, and then dissolved into a thousand shards of light before vanishing. The glow in the digivice winked out of existence. With a groan, Ryo pushed himself up to his knees and lifted up the digivice and the green card, surprised that it was still there.
He had the distinct feeling that such colored cards normally disappeared upon use.
“Just…what is going on here…?” he wondered aloud before pressing a hand to his head.