Edge of Hope

Author's Note: Set after Digimon Adventure 02 and prior to Digimon Adventure tri., with non-plot relevant side references to Digimon Tamers. And yes, I included a hint at Kogami Ryoken / Revolver, who Takeuchi Shunsuke also voices, given how similar his character is in Digimon Adventure tri. to his role on Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS. Enjoy the story and R&R.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of the Digimon series.

Pairing: Extremely mild Daisuke x Takeru, if you want to view it that way. Or not. It works purely on a friendship level as well. The choice is up to you.

Summary:

Takaishi Takeru has a frightening premonition involving Ordinemon, an apocalyptic vision that makes him question what the future has in store for the Chosen Children.

Takaishi Takeru is falling in the dark. The world around him spirals, a maddening network of white and red pulses whose infinitesimally minute gyrations roll over his ears like a baleful animal's sonic bellow. A black cube tumbles into the abyss just as he does, deeper and deeper awash the quantum sea. A light overtakes them, and then he is floating in negative space, blank as canvas. Bits of white data, not unlike the shape he had been tracking, cluster and coagulate. The chaotic pieces merge, coalescing into a rounded oval, an ordered microcosmic plane within a digital eggshell.

It was perfect. An unspoiled beginning. That which possessed no soul awaited the gift of life.

But the corrupt fragment had insinuated itself. In it, Takeru felt unquenchable loss and jealousy, the collective anguish of those denied breath during the course of evolutionary progression. Cast off. Crusty. Mephitic. Wrathful. This single shard of gestalt hatred – the ultimate ugliness – sullied the whole, spreading a miasmic cloud that enveloped everything in existence. The egg and the universe outside inverted. White became black. Black became white. The shadow had become reality, and reality, a shadow.

The crucible wobbled and stood upright of its own accord, its gestating occupant pushing against its natal bonds. Cracks started to form on the spotted surface. A green eye opened, normal at first, then slit in four by an X. Its owner thrashed free.

Saltation. A rogue gene breached the population, infecting others with its aberration.

Feral feline claws closed viciously around Takeru's throat, choking the air from his lungs. He was surrounded in the one born of great darkness' orange fur, but he identified the deadly metal vise underpinning that new flesh, the hot and cold throbbing enmity of a familiar foe.

Inconceivable.

His untamed attacker retracted neon violet knives sheathed in her golden gauntlets, shrieking a devolved thanks. When she released his neck to strike, Takeru sprang to avoid them.

Yet she was already gone.

It was raining feathers. Had Angemon come to save him? Pegasmon?

He was wrong.

These were not his partner Digimon's leavings, but the shed raven plumage of a fallen ophanim angel.

She is visible now. His view is magnified, or she really is as gargantuan as she appears. Unravelling from a conical foetal state, she crashes to the ground and lurches rampantly across Odaiba's waterfront, exceptionally fast for her size. A sickly pale, nude and sagging, emaciated and contorted quadriplegic monstrosity holding herself up on massive serrated five-layered wings. Her arms, legs, tails, and strands of hair terminate in divided stumps like the double helices of DNA. In each wing, she carries an orb, purple and green. Though she is sightless, they seem to dictate her movements, some grotesque omnidirectional guidance system.

She fires a beam of cascading energy from her whale's maw, splitting the sky. The crevasse widens to engulf the atmosphere. Acid globules and caustic mist expelled by her mammoth wingbeats eat the city. The ocean ascends like an oil slick toward the fluctuating, contaminated heavens.

A legion of nondescript creatures tethered to umbilical cords grasps at him, before getting sucked back into the writhing conglomeration of horrors that constitutes the she-beast's hanging prehensile appendages. Are they Digimon? He thought he spied a Devidramon in there.

They're in pain at being alive. They're crying out for him to relieve them of their suffering. He pities them, yet tries desperately not to listen. It is too much. He can't be the merciful sword they demand.

It is the end of the world. She has summoned the apocalypse.

The Child of Hope is swallowed by despair.

Re…

Re…

He is alone, a small youngling again, powerless to hold on to the fading light. Angemon's sacrifice reverberated in his memories. He scrabbles at the receding phantom playback of his holy protector.

Taichi-san? Oniichan? Hikari-chan? …Anybody? he calls amidst the ashes of that cremated anamnesis.

He vaguely remembers Motomiya Daisuke obnoxiously hogging the TV remote, then snaps to attention.

"Hey, watch it, Takeru!"

Takeru rubs the crippling terror from his sockets. He was leaning on Daisuke's shoulder at the dining table in his and his mother's apartment, in the building they shared with two of his Chosen Children allies and their families, until his rude awakening caused the soccer star to drop the ball he had been throwing.

Chibimon and Patamon are frolicking on the hardwood floor. The blue baby dragon was using Takeru's flying mammalian pal as a trampoline.

"Bad dream?" their fearless leader asked, squashing Takeru's bucket hat over his bed hair.

The trembling wouldn't stop. Flashes of Miyako plummeting, her glasses splintered. Iori blown away. Ken unconscious.

Re…

Daisuke screaming. Vanquished under a Royal Knight's blade.

Their D-3s forfeited to the elements. Their Digimon unaccounted for.

Re…boot.

"Daisuke-kun," he mutters emotionlessly.

"WHAAT?" the loudmouth grumbled, annoyed.

Takeru doesn't answer. He just breaks down in the very confused goggle-head's chest, hoping what he saw was truly a nightmare and nothing more.

Daisuke pets his friend despite not knowing what's troubling him.

Unnoticed to the boys, Homeostasis' messenger stands sentry on the opposite rooftop, a silent, neutral sentinel. In the span of a revolver's click, Hackmon bypassed and altered his own OS' fundamental generics, evaporating beneath his vermilion cowl.

Un pour tous.

REBOOT YOUR WORLD.