aiko's otter den

black cat's curses - Blake Belladonna is not a faunus.

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8. Breaking Fast

Blake glanced over at Weiss, who was still not conscious enough to understand. “What are you talking about?”

She looked around. She remembered the digital world once, its thundering weight under her paws and the way it warped and twisted on command of minds who had never seen it or touched it.

This was pieces of it at most, the land disintegrating and collapsing onto itself in twists and spirals. It was maybe File Island, with no beautiful fake mountains. No brilliant village of babies, no hope.

“The reboot—” Taichi stopped. “The reboot— happened once. And you all forgot everything. And we tried to do something, anyway. We failed. And Meiko tried to make it right herself, and that was mistaken. And I tried to make it right by myself, but that wasn’t wrong too. Hikari—” His eyes went to Ruby, who twitched. “Hikari messed up, and she lashed out and the world was angry. The worlds got angry. It was just a minute of that, but you guys, you and L-Meicoomon and the darkness in all of you grew and warped and twisted everything and we just didn’t make the miracle fast enough.”

Blake could see it. She could envision the human world melting under black feathers. She could feel people dying under her legs, squashed beneath her desires.

She felt Hikari’s love, love and pain, echoing through her bones and binary. She felt her saying clearly, it’s not worth it, it’s never going to be worth it again.

What’s the point of living in a world where you’re not around to change it? What is the point of a world where people you love will leave you without full happy lives, buried painfully in the darkness?

Nothing. There was no point.

And this, this is where the light went empty. Light’s opposition was darkness. Love became apathy. Hope became despair. Courage became fear, and on and on and on.

In that moment, Hikari had forgotten to hang onto her crest and make it shine, and in the end, they all had.

And that moment is enough.

It had been enough.

The crests have kept the digital world whole. It broke all the worlds now.

“So… I…”

“Ordinemon destroyed the world,” Taichi said. He didn’t sound angry, only rather resigned. He had had an unknown amount of time to think about it, after all. Even anger died eventually. “But she did it when the worlds were merging. With that and the reboot and the state of the worlds, well…” Taichi laughed sadly and shrugged. “New gods formed from the old. Some things stuck around. Homeostasis found me and kept me here because they can’t finish reformatting the world without the worlds actually ending. If you stick a half-deleted drive in there and don’t wipe it, it won’t work.”

“You’re saying we have to destroy the world?” Blake thinks of her siblings, her family, her team’s families… Adam even. The White Fang.

No one deserved to die.

“No,” Taichi corrected. “You’re just finishing the job so yours, Remnant, can become whole. To do that, you need to find Libra, Meicoomon, and draw out Ordinemon’s power one more time, just properly.”

---

They had been fighting Gennai for a long, long time.

In fact, Daisuke wasn’t sure how they had kept fighting at all. Their last memories were being stuck in a pod, stuck and frozen in pain and their digimon distorting in the gloom. Then a few voices, panicked and clearly in pain, talking in a distance.

He remembered Ken groaning in pain, fingers scrabbling at his neck and something spiking and growing and growing—

Well, that had been a while ago.

Now, the four of them were fighting. The others had never come and found him, but then, they hadn’t had to. That bastard had appeared, gloating and holding eight familiar devices.

Eight cracked, dead devices.

Gennai, or what had maybe been Gennai once, laughed at them all with his own face, and then Ken’s.

Iori had snapped first and then it had all gone downhill.

Now they were fighting Alphamon again. This time, there would definitely be no backup. They’d be dead once the power-ups and anger ran out.

A part of Daisuke wondered if that would be better, to die and give up. But it was a small part, and thinking of Hikari and Taichi dead or worse just galvanized him all over again.

Imperialdramon answered in kind. Alphamon did struggle, but not much.

Gennai kept grinning at them. It was almost like a circus clown, the way it refused to break, the way he danced on his feet away from anything that could kill him.

The air hummed.

Miyako grimaced beside him. “Do you think—”

“Nope,” Daisuke shot back. “Whatever you’re thinking, nope! We gotta focus on here and now and beating this guy.”

Miyako let out an amused snort and Ken helped Iori back to his feet as Shakkoumon slammed headfirst into the air. “Point. Thinking is overrated by now.”

Imperialdramon roars. They all ducked to the ground again as he raised his great, tattered wings and—

Paused.

Gennai stopped as well before Alphamon let out a strained grunt. Their shoulder pads clenched and dented and they let out another groan of pain.

“Get down!” someone shouted.

The four of them rolled against Imperialdramon’s leg right as the knight’s armor imploded. Blood splattered the ground and there were hundreds of cracks. Arms and legs splintered as the armor dug into Alphamon’s flesh everywhere it could reach.

A young woman with red hair dove into the fray seconds later, their shield slamming into Gennai and knocking him across the field. His face distorted with laughter and pain as he flew and hit sharpened bits of armor.

“Phew,” said the woman, getting to her feet. “I made it. Are you all okay?”

The world swam into focus for a moment and then distorted again, ruined trees and shattered earth and for a moment, Daisuke thought it was Sora, standing tall and regal and unafraid.

“Hi,” said the woman, approaching them in full armor and a muted, thoughtful smile. “My name is Pyrrha Nikos, but… I think they knew me as Mochizuki Meiko. Right?”

They stared at her for a moment. Then she nodded. “It’s fine. I understand. Don’t worry, I’m going to fix this, for sure.”

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