Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Drifting Pieces ❯ Meaningless ( Chapter 16 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Author's Note: This chapter has been rewritten since its original posting in 2010. It was then put through a hard edit. If you have not visited since October of 2010, I recommend that you start over. It’s worth it (08/2012).

I LOVED writing this chapter. I thought Koushiro would be terrible to write but he was really fun. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Please review.



Chapter 16: Meaningless


Kaiser and Ken had remained in their respective rooms for several hours as the digidestined took turns watching them.

With Ken, they had teams of two. Sometimes they would chat, other times they played card games or just sat in silence.

With Kaiser, Daisuke had been determined to keep a constant vigilance, but when he had started to drift off, Daisuke had consented to letting Taichi and Yamato watch him while he stretched a bit and woke himself up.

For the most part, Kaiser had behaved himself and mostly ignored the other boys. There was no fun to be had with them. He was growing tired and bored, waiting for something that he could feel coming.

Eventually, the hours started to drag by and finally Ken and Kaiser had declared that they couldn’t be expected to just sit around all day and night waiting for something to happen. Reluctantly, the others had all agreed and allowed both boys to walk around the base with an escort.

Ken had eventually settled in the engine room and started to work on repairing the base. Wormmon acted as his assistant, bringing him tools and helping him to reach areas he couldn’t get to.

Miyako and Iori had watched for an hour while Ken clanged away at damaged instruments and machines, his nimble fingers expertly working on familiar wires and circuits.

Wormmon had explained to the others the idea of reconfiguring the base to help other digimon rather than just leaving it to rot away out in the desert. To their credit, the others had all liked the idea and offered to help clean the place up.

Eventually, Iori and Miyako had wandered off, deciding that they were better suited to cleaning than trying to assist Ken in such complicated repairs.

Unfortunately, Daisuke had taken their place and decided that Ken needed his help. Much to Ken’s amusement and frustration, Daisuke had found quite the talent for getting in the way or causing more of a mess than had originally been there.

Up in the observation room, Kaiser was half under a large dark computer panel cursing under his breath at the damaged circuits.

Koushiro had taken up watch and was sitting off to the side, his own personal computer hooked into one of the main consoles so that he could run through the massive amounts of code and programs that had once been used to observe and control the digital world.

As much as Kaiser hated to admit it, there wasn’t anyone else, save for Ken himself, that he trusted to assist in such a huge task. Koushiro was… Useful. Not to mention he didn’t waste his time asking a bunch of idiotic questions.

“You still have a lot of power diverted to useless systems that are either no longer functional or obsolete.” Koushiro also didn’t seem to have a problem stating facts bluntly and to the point. A trait that Kaiser respected.

Still… He couldn’t help but feel irked about the older genius picking apart his codes and finding flaws. “Such as?”

“Observation, control spires, and prisons.”

“Ah. Disable and reroute to the main systems. I’ll redistribute it once I have everything else up and running. You should have full access. If prompted, use password…” He paused, wondering for the millionth time why he had never thought to change the password after all those years. “The password is ‘Wormmon’.”

Koushiro raised an eyebrow but didn’t question it.

“You really built this place yourself? It must have taken a very long time. Especially for such a young kid.”

Kaiser wished they would stop questioning how he had built his empire. “I wrote a program from my home and uploaded it. It’s how I designed everything. Originally the base was much smaller and immobile, but I upgraded the program over time to suit my changing needs.”

“Ingenious.” This time it was Kaiser’s turn to raise an eyebrow at the simple and easy acceptance. Unlike the others, Koushiro seemed to have accepted the old days for what they used to be, analyzed them, and then dismissed them as things of the past that were simply waiting for another upgrade.

They worked quietly for a few minutes as Koushiro explored the computer programs and systems through his own laptop connection.

Out of all the others, Koushiro was probably the only one that Kaiser could connect with the most when it came to intelligence. He could hazily recall Ken sitting with the older boy on a few occasions and having deep discussions over tea.

Kaiser was finding himself starving for those conversations, needing someone who could match him and understand.

The computer rebooted above him as he finished doing a patch job on a few fried wires. He slid out from under the panel and climbed to his feet, logging back into the main system quickly.

Fingers flew across familiar keys, following old paths that were still deeply ingrained into his muscle memory, while Koushiro watched with an analytical inquisitiveness that left the Kaiser feeling smug.

The smug sensation evaporated far too quickly as he realized just what his next task was. He typed up the command and watched as each and every program he needed was spread out across the many screens.

Once he was positive that he had located them all, he highlighted everything that had been used to control, dominated, and conquer the digital world. His fingers hovered over the delete key.

All of his work. All of his late nights filled with frustration, intense brain storms, and finally the elation over a completed project. All of it listed so perfectly and orderly spread across his screens. His finger flexed a few times as he looked it all over.

Koushiro shifted to the side. “That’s a lot of data. It must have taken you ages to write it. Even longer to get it up and running.”

Kaiser made a sound of agreement, his finger still refusing to descend and hit the one key that would singlehandedly erase an entire empire in less than a second.

“You don’t have any backups, do you? No hard copies or anything of the sort?”

Kaiser’s free hand clenched on the panel. “No.” They had all been stored in a well hidden drawer in his desk at home until Ken had gone through and destroyed everything in a fit of guilt.

“You don’t need any of that anymore?” It was carefully phrased as a question, but Kaiser knew it for what it was.

“No.” He answered shortly.

The only sound that greeted him was the clack of Koushiro typing at his own computer.

It was almost as if the older genius didn’t care what Kaiser did. At least that was the impression that was being given, but Kaiser knew better. Koushiro was watching him. Waiting to see if he could let go of the past.

He closed his eyes and slammed his finger down onto the key. He ignored the slight pain as his finger hit the cold metal harder than needed. There was a ding as a warning box popped up, questioning his decision, and his hand moved quickly without looking to hit the enter key.

He breathed slowly as all of his work was swiftly erased. He felt a great dissatisfaction at how quickly and quietly everything had disappeared. After all that… After the years of suffering and toiling, he felt that there should have at least been some sort of explosion or even a few drops of blood shed to mark the occasion. Instead, all he had was a dull throb in his hand that would be gone in just a matter of minutes.

Behind him, the typing stopped as Koushiro glanced up at him. “I’m not sure if I would have been able to do it.”

Kaiser slowly slid his fingers aimlessly over the keys then opened his eyes to look up at the now blank screen.

The typing continued once more and Kaiser moved to take a seat in the only chair in the room. He was positive that had any of the others been present, they would have felt uneasy or made a comment about him resuming his familiar throne. If Koushiro was bothered by it, he didn’t give any indication.

Surprisingly, there was no feeling of regret at the loss of his work. It had once served its purpose and now that purpose was gone. He could build bigger and better programs that would have a new and better purpose; and if the time came, he was positive that he would be able to delete those as well.

“I’m sure the others will have dinner ready soon. Daisuke’s stomach must be raising a royal ruckus by now.” Koushiro didn’t look up. The comment was open, but Kaiser felt that it had direction. Neither of them seemed up to small talk.

“I’m not hungry. Besides, I doubt the others would miss my company if I continued to work here.” He decided to take the bait.

“You do have a few of them spooked.”

“But not you. You see to be taking it all in stride.

“Honestly? We’ve dealt with worse. You don’t seem to be out to take over or destroy the digital world. You aren’t trying to kill us and you’ve allowed me to examine your prodigious programs. This is a much better vacation than the week I had planned of defragging my hard drive.”

“You really aren’t disturbed any all this?”

“Well it does worry me. I mean, a friend of mine appears to have suffered a pretty bad mental break down while none of us were looking and some evil spore that was planted by an evil digimon from another dimension seems to be taking advantage of that mental break down causing some pretty serious if not intriguing problems.”

Kaiser slowly looked over at the genius who was still staring intently down at his screen. “Well, if you put it that way…” He smirked. “I guess it doesn’t sound so bad, does it?”

“You don’t seem too particularly bothered by it either. You almost seem to be enjoying it. Aside from earlier, that is. You even seem to have recovered quite well from something that most of us would still be pretty torn up over. Your ability to cope and process is really quite amazing.”

“I’ve had practice.” Kaiser fought back a sneer and instead waved a hand dismissively. “I am enjoying myself, though. Ken is such a stick in the mud. He hardly ever lets his inhibitions go. This is like a dream for me. I can do and say what I want and I don’t have to worry about reputation or fall out.”

“But that’s not one-hundred-percent accurate. You do care about reputation. You want what you used to have. You were honestly upset over the fact that Ken is no longer at the top of his class or in the media or the soccer captain or the best at anything.”

“I worked hard to acquire all of that and I still have the ability to maintain it, spore or no spore. He is just being foolish and throwing it all away in some pathetic attempt at making amends for his crimes. It would be like if you suddenly dropped out of school and decided to be a paper boy because you stepped on some ants!”

To his delight, Koushiro paused and looked up at him as if considering that possibility and then shuddered and went back to typing. “Not exactly the same situation, but I see your point. You don’t like wasted potential.”

“No more than you do, it would seem.” Kaiser shook his head at the idea. “Perhaps I don’t want any of that back. That is the old way and I don’t need that sort of attention anymore… But the point is that Ken still has the ability to do something with that potential and he refuses to so much as even tap into a small fragment of it because he’s afraid. With this split, I don’t have to be inhibited anymore. I can be free.”

“So if this is like a dream come true and you’re enjoying yourself,” Koushiro’s typing slowed just a fraction. “Why are you working so hard to punish him?”

A purely inquisitive question with no moral implications behind it. Kaiser was impressed.

He paused to consider the question for what it was. He felt that such a question from such a person deserved a well thought out answer.

Koushiro patiently waited for the answer as he searched through the systems and made small repairs where he deemed them necessary.

Finally, Kaiser sat back in the chair and crossed his legs. “He isn’t real.”

Koushiro’s fingers slowed to a stop and then he slowly set his computer aside, giving Kaiser his undivided attention at last. Had this answer been given to anyone else, they would have protested and argued semantics. Much to Kaiser’s delight, Koushiro took the higher road.

“Are you real?”

“I’m more real than he is, but no… I’m not real either.”

Koushiro seemed to consider the answer, a look of intense concentration on his face. “From what I understand, you spent years here while time stood still in the real world. I had a similar experience. Those years that were mere seconds allowed me and the others to grow mentally without growing physically. It was if we had all stepped out to check the mail and returned as completely different and more mature kids. In my eyes, we were better for it. It allowed us the time to work through problems that most people don’t normally have to face until they are in their adult lives wondering where things went wrong. In some people’s opinions, we each lost a part of our childhood and our innocence. When we came back, we were no older than we had been, but we now saw the world through the eyes of people that had been forced to face their darkest innermost demons.”

Kaiser stayed silent, agreeing with the notion, though he would have put it in far more blunt and angry terms.

“But your memories were stolen.” Koushiro continued. “It must have been a very tricky piece of programming to do what they did to you. To make sure you still retained the growth and lessons that you obtained here while the experience that you had to go through to gain it was taken away. It must have been very difficult for you to understand and accept such things. I can’t even imagine how one begins to cope with that. Of course, then you were being affected by the spore. From our experiences with the other children, even though their spores were altered and growing at a more advanced rate, you more or less must have gone through the same thing. Though, I don’t actually believe that it made you smarter like it did in their cases. I believe it allowed your already present potential to bloom earlier and faster than it would have normally. In essence, while the rest of us were growing up and experiencing things at a normal level and becoming who we are now, you skipped all those steps and suddenly you just came into being.”

“I couldn’t have put it better myself.” The corners of his lips twitched slightly as he found himself forcing the smile to stay in place.

“So that brings us back to why you want to punish Ken. He is you and you are him. You are parts to the same whole, yet you seem to be out to tear him down and destroy him. You must know what that will do to you.”

Kaiser sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. “If you could only understand what I really am… I don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Ken is blind to it all, but a part of him has always known what I know. Now that we’re separate, I represent the part that knows the truth. I am his knowledge, his suffering, and his freedom. I am his essence. Ken is the desire to be someone else. To go back and start again. He just can’t understand that you don’t get to start over. There is no going back. You can only pick up the pieces and move on. That is what caused the split. That is why he is naïve and I am reality. That is why I am more real than he is.”

“But there is still a connection. You both experience all of the emotion on both sides, pulling the other in even if they don’t agree. If you were to be enraged, he would lack the ability to control that emotion and understand where it’s coming from. He simply just feels the rage and responds.” Koushiro paused and considered the implications. “But why do you want to destroy him? You would feel it just as much as he would. I imagine that his death would lead to your own.”

“Because there is more going on here than you realize.” Kaiser tapped a finger on the arm of the chair in agitation. This was not a subject he had anticipated discussing.

Koushiro’s eyes suddenly widened. “The spore. It’s affecting you more than him. Whatever reactivated it… It started with you because you’re the…"

Koushiro cut himself off, unable or unwilling to finish that thought. It was hard to say if it was because he didn’t want to believe it, or if he wasn’t comfortable saying it without first making sure he could prove it first.

Kaiser smiled. “If I must be destroyed for the cause, so be it. I have already accepted this and moved on. I will laugh from the sidelines as he spirals into his own personal abyss. It will happen, regardless of what you or anyone else tries to do. If anyone gets in my way, and I hope that some of them do, I will take them down with us.”

“It doesn’t bother you that you’re just a means to an end?”

“That’s the beautiful thing… There’s no one doing the controlling anymore. All I’m trying to do is finish what destiny started and return to where it all went wrong.”

“You mean the Dark Ocean?”

“A monster was born there. I’m curious to see just what kind of monster we really are.”

“What happens once you go back?” Koushiro’s intense focus never wavered from Kaiser for a second. It was unnerving and intimidating, yet Kaiser found himself drinking it all in eagerly.

“I don’t know… Maybe the human that was Ken Ichijouji will still be there waiting in the sand… Or maybe the monster will consume us.”

“So why put it off? Why don’t you just take Ken and go there now? I know you’re capable of opening the gates any time that you want. The spore has given you both that ability. Why wait?”

“Because it won’t be the same. The spore is not ready to return yet. It’s feeding and growing. It hasn’t been nourished in a long time, you see, and it has a lot of work to do. We can’t cross over until the spore is ready to bloom. When we split, the spore also split; the spore cannot bloom while it’s split like this. We’re gravitating back together, even if we are in two separate forms. Willing or not, the spore will eventually win and force us to become one again and not even I know when that will happen or how. My best guess is that one of us has to break. One of us has to lose control and be swallowed up by the other. In the end, there will be one singular will and when the spore is strong enough, it will take us home.”

“So, you both are being pulled back together and forced into one mind. It’s only a matter of which mind is in the best shape to take that burden. You were not meant to be in two separate bodies, yet you insisted on staying here rather than staying in the real world where I’m sure this would have been far easier to achieve. Why go through the extra work?”

“In here, the barriers between worlds aren’t as strong. In here, we’re closer to the darkness that makes it harder to resist the spore’s call. In here, it can feed and grow freely.” Kaiser shrugged slightly. “It’s also more interesting. I’d rather feel my own skin, see his face, and watch as his hope is torn away.”

“What will happen when the seed forces you two back into one? If you’re still in two bodies, won’t that cause problems? Your psyches are already damaged to an unimaginable extent and you are both still two whole separate minds. Even if one becomes more dominant, the other is still there.”

Kaiser looked at Koushiro solidly for a long and silent stretch. “Sanity is a nice warm bed that hasn’t been slept in for a very long time now. That is the key to everything. The answer to what caused the reactivation and the split in the first place. The Ken that you have known since day one is nothing more than just an abstract concept. I doubt that there has ever really been a Ken Ichijouji. If you pay attention, you will understand. You’re relatively sensible, after all. I’m sure the whole thing is very fascinating to you, and I give you full permission to sit back and watch. When he finally realizes all that I know… When he finally snaps… I promise it will be a very entertaining show.” He gave a smile that he was certain wasn’t completely sane. “Try not to get too close. It could get a little ugly.”

Koushiro looked at him steadily then picked up his computer and got to his feet with a stretch. “I hope you’re wrong. Daisuke certainly isn’t about to let Ken go, no matter who or what he really is. When this is all over, I’d like to really talk with whoever comes back from the fray. Till then… I think it’s dinner time and I don’t know about you, but I’d really like to get something before Taichi and Daisuke scarf it all down.”

Kaiser stared after him with intense interest. “Are you going to tell them?”

“No. I think they already know all that they need to know right now.” Koushiro looked back at Kaiser curiously. “Do you want me to tell?”

Kaiser laughed and stood up to follow. “No. I don’t think it would make a difference.”

“You’re probably right.” Koushiro got to the door then suddenly stopped and turned to look at him intensely.

Kaiser stopped and raised an eyebrow in question.

“I don’t agree with everything you’ve said… A lot of it does make sense and I understand your point of view. I won’t get in your way. It’s not my place and we all have to solve our own problems…. But a word of warning to you: Leave Hikari and Takeru alone. Daisuke is already far more than you are prepared to deal with. You won’t stand a chance against all three.”

Kaiser considered this for a moment. It wasn’t a threat or a warning. It was a statement.

“Perhaps… But that’s really not up to me anymore. If they choose to follow, it’s up to them. I’ve laid the path and the dark world has already noticed them once before… Once it sees you for who you really are, you never escape its gaze. Let’s hope that they know who they really are and have nothing to hide.” They looked at each other for a moment, really looked, and in that instant they understood one another.

Koushiro smiled. “Gennai was brewing some tea in the kitchen earlier. I could really use some to relax.” The slate was cleared and an understanding had been reached.

“Gennai brewed it? I think I’ll make my own pot. He tends to make it a tad too strong.”

“The stronger, the better. I have a lot of work to do before we crash for the night. Your codes are a real mess.”

“Maybe you just lack the ability to appreciate pure genius when you see it. Would you like for me to explain some of my more complex programs to you over dinner?”

They laughed, walking out of the room together. Kaiser couldn’t help but think that if things had been different, perhaps they could have been good friends.

It didn’t really matter anymore. Things like this were meaningless in the end.