Well, here's the end. It sucks. I'm sorry. TT;; If you really, really hate it, you can go back to chapter 24 and see the link to the fake ending.
Hawkmon ruffled his feathers and took a deep breath. "It feels like everything is normal in the digital world."
"Do you feel better here?" Miyako observed him stretching.
"Much. Remind me never to get into another fight with your friends, though."
"Of course," she laughed in relief. "So how much time do you think has passed here?"
"Probably not enough to make up for other things," he looked around. "It may not even have been an hour."
Miyako sighed. "We sure went through a lot of trouble just to satisfy a little curiosity. Should we find the digital clock first, or do something about the destiny stone?"
"Now that you mention it, we didn't stick around long enough to see what happened when you broke it," the digimon mused. "In any case, I vote that we see to the clock first. We left our friends back in a state of panic."
"Panic? They don't know how to panic until they've seen me do it," she and her partner began walking back towards the digital world's central clock.
"That's certainly true, Miyako," he smiled weakly and matched her pace. "You take the cake."
It didn't take long to reach the inside of the temple that contained the clock. It ticked in a regular fashion, and showed that only a few minutes had passed since the last time they were there.
"It's now or never," she took a deep breath and lifted her hand towards the mechanical ones. Just before her fingers touched it, though, a deep voice stopped her.
"What do you think you're doing, touching that clock?" the voice bellowed and shook the entire temple. The partners fell over on top of each other in surprise as a bright figure appeared behind the clock. They both struggled to shield their eyes while still identifying the figure.
"A-Azulongmon!?"
"In the flesh," the Sovereign digimon nodded. "Now answer my question. What are you trying to accomplish here?"
Miyako, a little fear-stricken, started to well up tears. "Because I thought I killed you!"
Azulongmon didn't quite follow. "I'm sorry?"
"You're not the one who should be sorry- it's me! It's all my fault! Hawkmon and I already tried to--"
"Hold that thought," the deep voice boomed back, "the time is off, and I need to fix it."
Miyako and Hawkmon flailed their arms desperately to stop him, but before they could tell him not to, he had already used one of his talons to turn the hands forward. They huddled together, expecting the digital world to collapse around them. To their surprise, the only sound they heard was the continued ticking of the clock.
"Nothing happened?" they blinked to each other.
"Something happened, alright," Azulongmon growled. "I'd like to know whose been messing with--"
"It was me! I'm the one who messed up the clock!" Miyako turned to him and begged for mercy. "I thought that if I turned back time, I could erase a mistake I made. A horrible, horrible mistake. We came back here to set things right."
"Oh?" he raised a glowing eyebrow. "And what made you change your decision?"
"We went back to the real world," she slowed down. "It turns out that by fixing a mistake I made here, I made an even bigger one that affected everyone else I knew. I turned their lives completely upside down."
"Oh, really?" raised the other glowing eyebrow.
"Yes, really. And I'm really, really sorry."
"Is that all you're sorry for, though?" the Sovereign continued. "What about the first mistake you made?"
"That?" her throat plummeted into her stomach. Hawkmon sensed her distress and spoke for her.
"We were trying to find you and ask you more questions about the digital world. When the destiny stone wasn't reacting to the D-3 at first, Miyako tried other methods. In the end, she wound up breaking the stone, and therefore…"
"Therefore throwing the digital world into chaos and breaking the last barrier between this world and ours… and all the other worlds!" tears finally escaped Miyako's eyes.
Azulongmon stayed silent a few moments longer before responding. "Interesting. So even though you saved the worlds from crashing into each other, as you say, you still chose to risk that in order to put your friend's lives back in order?"
"It sounds pretty selfish when you say it that way, but yes."
"I wouldn't expect anything less from a Chosen Child," he laughed heartily, much to Miyako and Hawkmon's surprise. "Since you came looking for me for information in the first place, I'll give some to you. The digital world wasn't in any danger in the first place."
They both froze, which invited him to clarify.
"The world wasn't crashing down. I'm just cranky when I wake up. Apparently, my reaction was enough to scare you into doing all this."
"Then… I didn't really break the last destiny stone?" Miyako's heart was aflutter.
"No. Not at all," he chuckled to himself, but it was still deep enough to rumble the temple again. "The reason I was mad in the first place here was because I wanted you to apologize for waking me up without good reason."
"Without good reason?" Hawkmon asked. "It was wrong for Miyako to try to satisfy her curiosity about the digital world, then?"
"Not necessarily, but there's a very important lesson to be learned by this. While having curiosity is good, humans can't expect to understand everything about a world as complex as the digital world. When they try too hard to satisfy that curiosity, they can wind up hurting others."
The partners thought back to the Yamaki and how twisted their views of the digimon became when they wanted too much to study them. "That's completely true," Miyako's heart sank.
"If it's not too much trouble, though, could you answer one of my questions?" Hawkmon raised his voice, not as satisfied with the situation as Miyako was.
Azulongmon eyed him carefully. "Very well. Ask."
"How do you know about us, 'waking you up', as you say? Before you changed the clock forward again, you couldn't have known about that."
"That's just one of those things too complex for humans- or ordinary digimon- to understand," he smiled. "We sovereigns are not affected by time. That's why it's so much easier for us to make sure this thing is set right than anyone else," he tapped the clock.
"Then this whole time, we've been panicking over nothing?" Miyako felt dizzy. "We've been running around like chickens with our heads cut off."
"Almost," Azulongmon replied. "The damage you caused to your own world was very real. Because you were so driven to make things right once again, though, I can easily forgive you for waking me up from my beauty rest."
"Will everything be okay now?" she asked. "In the real world?"
"You'll just have to see for yourself," he said. With that, he disappeared, leaving Miyako and Hawkmon to run from the temple and find a digi-port and return home.
Everything seemed normally. People were wearing modern day clothes, and going about their usual business. The two of them carefully looked around each corner before turning it, just in case anything out of the ordinary should happen.
"You two look like you're pretending to be spies," Tailmon purred, startling them. Hikari sat behind her on a bicycle, giggling at their reaction.
"Hikari! It's great to see you!" Miyako hugged her friend. "How is everyone?"
"Mostly fine, since we last see each other yesterday," she shrugged. "But my brother might have broken his arm playing soccer with Daisuke. We're waiting to see what the doctor says."
"Oh, well, that's strange," Miyako laughed in response. Just a coincidence, right? "Nothing about people we know randomly decidedly to hurt each other, right?"
"If that doesn't count, then of course not," Hikari started to laugh nervously, not sure why Miyako was acting so strangely. "It was an accident anyway. These things are fixable."
"You're right. It's all been fixed," Miyako smiled from one ear to the other. "Right, Hawkmon?"
He nodded to her with a smile just as wide. "Everything's right."