Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Light in Dark ❯ Interlude One ( Chapter 3 )

This was written by M.C. Zarrella.

Author's Notes: This is a side-story meant to illustrate where LiD's Ken came from and where he might be going. I'm glad to have been allowed to write this, seeing as I did some things that Phil (Unremarked) didn't always approve of outright. It is an honor to write for such a great story.

# # #

Light in Dark

Interlude #1: (no subject)

# # #

When he received the first e-mail, he dragged its icon - a 16 x 16 pixel mess of pale yellow meant to resemble a letter - over to the recycle bin and left it there. He never opened it. The e-mail address unnerved him first; the subject line, second, but it was upsetting enough to warrant the e-mail's exile.

The next day there was a second e-mail waiting in his inbox. He casually checked the others from the daily spam flood, and though they were mostly porn advertisements, he absorbed every sinful word and hoped that, upon checking the inbox again, the one e-mail he feared might have vanished. But . . . but it was there. It blinked at him expectantly with the same subject line from yesterday.

From: digitalsurviver@digitalworld.info

Subject: PLEASE READ THIS. PLEASE.

"You've been staring at the computer for five minutes, Ken," his brother, Osamu, said. "Do something or get off. I need to use that."

Defeated, Ken quickly recycled the e-mail and drowned his headache-inducing anxieties with a dish of chocolate ice cream.

Within the next few days, the unavoidable subject lines said more than the e-mails could have:

Subject: Please, please read.

Subject: It's important.

Subject: Don't ignore me. Please.

Subject: I know you're getting these.

Subject: Aren't we friends?

Subject: You don't need them.

Subject: Please.

Subject: Come.

Subject: I'm not mad at you for before.

Subject: I promise.

He was watching a desperate, one-sided argument.

Subject: READ THIS OR I'LL KILL YOU.

Frequently he received e-mails with the subject lines in all caps as homage to the first two he ever encountered. They were usually threatening. It was hard to ignore them when they began flooding his inbox in multiples of two, three, four, and ten. The harmless e-mails, porn advertisements or otherwise, were lost to the all-or-nothing cleanses he performed: CTRL + A + DEL. All gone.

Another e-mail came soon after his latest expunging (If you loved me, you would open this; his heart knotted), disrupting the empty inbox, and he removed it; then another, deleted; another, gone; another, put in the bin. He did this until Osamu the bystander became annoyed with the constant mouse-clicking and exploded.

This inbox swelled as Ken found another e-mail service provider. It only took two days for the letters to uncover him again, although he hadn't specified a forwarding address at his old, swamped account.

Subject: Don't try to hide from me.

Subject: I know where you really live, anyway.

Subject: (no subject)

Wait. That one. (Restore that one - pull it out of the bin.) No subject? For all the hundreds and thousands that were sent, there was finally one e-mail that his obsessed correspondent had not titled? No pleas, threats, caps, memories, pathos, or open wounds? The icon winked; it was real. Ken stirred on his hard little computer chair - the one Osamu picked out a few months ago because he liked its severe, classy edges - and dared more e-mails to appear after the (no subject). None did. He tongued a sore hangnail nervously as the icon stared him down.

A quick, furtive look-see through the apartment proved that no one was home this time. He sat down again, and past the spread fingers of his left hand, he watched the inbox as though it were a horror movie. Still no new e-mails appeared. Pulling at his bangs, Ken wondered whether it really did contain a message or not.

Before he lost his nerve, he maneuvered the pointer over and double-clicked (no subject).

Hello, Ken.

There it was: a message. The font, a 12-point Times New Roman that went without furnishings of CTRL + B or CTRL + I, was easy to read and, justified, lined the window evenly on both sides. Ken sucked in a breath as he scanned that first line repeatedly. Was it? - could it be? - a harmless greeting?

I've sent you so many e-mails this past week. Have I done something to earn your neglect? Is this about what happened when we last saw each other face-to-face? I apologized for it countless times in my other e-mails.

Ken's stomach rolled over in slow-motion; he could just imagine the e-mails that contained no more than page after page of "I'm sorry" or "Forgive me," not unlike the lines written by a student receiving discipline.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Ken, I think we're growing apart. We need to talk more. What I really mean to say is this: I made you an offer and you never answered. Come. Otherwise, how is Osamu-kun doing? Is he still sore about that win I had over him in soccer?

"Is that from Akiyama?" Osamu demanded, scrutinizing the screen as he leaned over Ken's shoulder.

Ken scrambled with the mouse, and after enough desperate clicking, the e-mail disappeared. "When did you get home, onii-san?" he said; his voice trembled.

Sighing, Osamu lifted his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. The premature creases surrounding his eyes, all those overlapping crow's feet, deepened as he alleviated the pressure. He grimaced and turned away.

"Tell Akiyama to go to hell for me," he said, setting down his backpack by the desk. "But what was he talking about? 'I made you an offer and you never answered,' was it?"

He unzipped his backpack and rummaged through it for his Mead notebooks and a little baggie of Fig Newtons he hadn't eaten at lunch. Supplies acquired and also prepared to kick Ken off of the computer, he looked up to find that Ken had already left.

# # #

Ken liked the roof, but it took some creativity to bypass the alarm systems that protected the door leading to it. The roof was a large, bleak expanse of gravel, ventilation shafts, some rusted tools, and a metal cage around the perimeter that prevented anyone from falling to their deaths. He liked it all: the cement and chrome, the height and solitude. A year ago, huddled in a sleeping bag next to Ryo, Ken had the constellations pointed out to him, and he did not have the heart to say he was already familiar with Osamu's old astronomy textbook. Right now, however, he was alone. He waited for the stars to appear, even when he knew that the city-glow would be too discouraging to star-watching without Ryo to insist they at least look for Orion. Osamu might come up later and scold, or if he were to be in a better mood, might sit down too and forge a calm, companionable silence for a little while.

# # #

I made you an offer and you never answered.

# # #

Ken remembered hands sneaking around his shoulders; he remembered a voice close to his ear, this warm trickle that seeped down the back of his neck; and he remembered that it was trying to reason with him. There was a pungent smell on the roof that day, something close to ginger or pepper, and then his mind was gone - was anywhere else! - when Ryo began to tease his shirt's collar with two callused fingers.

"What do you think?" Ryo said, smiling.

Ken fumbled over his words. "I - I don't -"

"It'd be like an extended camping trip. We can fool your parents easily and my mother is a pushover. Osamu might present a problem for us, but that's just an uphill battle that makes this opportunity worth it."

"Ryo-sama . . ." Ken didn't like those fingers; he squirmed away from them.

"Just hear me out, okay? I thought you'd be a little more enthusiastic about going back to the Digital World," muttered Ryo as he shook his head. Those uncomfortable fingers snuck back up and now teased the hair grazing Ken's ears. "I think you should grow your hair longer."

"I - excuse me?"

Ryo grinned. "You looked too serious. Sorry."

"Well . . ."

"I'm going to go whether or not you're with me, Ken," he said, his everyday tone more suited for a passing comment on a star formation. The stars were invisible now, hidden by the daytime sky, and the air was heavy with humidity and that sharp aroma.

"What?"

"Tonight. I'm leaving tonight. Everything has already been arranged. I want you to come with me. You only need a couple changes of clothes and maybe a few other essentials." He fixed Ken with a ferocious stare and said, honest-to-god, "I need you to come with me."

"I can't -"

"You don't want to see Wormmon again?" he shouted, holding up his fists. There was a wild glint in his eyes that Ken didn't understand. "Don't you want to go back - back to the Digital World?"

The sun in his memory sunk lower; Ken looked at it through his fingers and shivered. Ryo paced back and forth, silent after his outburst, and sometimes reached out to touch that dark hair again (but then drew away before any formal rejection).

"Does this have something to do with Millenniumon, Ryo-sama? Is he making you stay there? He's been yours for so long. Has he done something to you? Is that why you're leaving? I didn't want you to take him; I just knew . . ."

"My apartment. Tonight. Nine o'clock," Ryo babbled, avoiding the question. The jittery edginess cocooning them made it seem as though he were asking Ken out on a first date. "Be there. Please. I have to go now."

"All right," Ken said, addressing nothing. "Okay." He could handle this.

"Please, Ken. Nine o'clock." And though Ryo had been yelling not too long ago, he was pleading humbly now and pushing at his inner ankle with his other foot. Ken wondered if Ryo had gone insane because of the Digital World and if insanity were communicable, like a disease. "Please. I have to go. I love you."

"All right," Ken said again, still looking at the sun through his fingers. The yellow light caught by his hand appeared warm, but it wasn't.

Up on the roof, suspended in the sunset, the air was too wet and smelled too much like the spice aisle at the grocery store. At this height there was an occasional rock pigeon, and Ken watched one soar by overhead while Ryo bowed deeply and left the roof, careful not to trigger the alarm.

Ken insisted upon cleaning up after dinner. It had to be done the old-fashioned way: he ran water over the plates and silverware liberally, brandished a sponge, and set to work with his hands mired in mother-recommended, light blue antibacterial fluid. (He found its bottle underneath the sink, tucked in between the air freshener and carpet deodorizer.) Thirty minutes rinsed away while he struggled with grease, and then his bemused mother decided to help him out; at half past eight they gave up, decided that modern conveniences were worth the cost, and loaded up the dishwasher with the plates that had resisted cleaning. A remaining half-hour to nine o'clock stretched out before him.

His parents adjourned to the living room to watch an old, boring movie and Osamu wanted to be alone in the bedroom to study for some nationally standardized test. Ken avoided looking at clocks and went for a walk to clear his head. While taking a shortcut through the park, he heard a distant tone bleat nine times and imagined Ryo standing in front of a computer, red-eyed, waiting for him to burst through the door with his daypack stuffed to the brim and an apology. Instead he went home slowly, deliberately pacing himself so he stepped through door a full hour after he departed. The movie was still going and Osamu only grunted when he knocked. Ryo was already in the Digital World.

# # #

Come.

# # #

Presently Ken sighed and went back to the apartment, shaking a little, though imbued with determination. He thought about Ryo's e-mails and tried pinching his nose like Osamu did, but it didn't seem to dampen the headache swelling behind his eyes. Osamu came by with Fig Newtons, mumbled something uncivil about Akiyama around a moist purple mouthful, and sat down in the kitchen where it was cooler. Ken went into their room and opened the closet; in its back left corner, he unearthed an old cardboard shoebox. Under the cover were many things: shiny stones, individual Legos, sparkler candles from his last birthday cake, tattered manga, and - secreted away below elementary school report cards - a plain gray digivice, the alien among the mundane.

He brought it out carefully and wiped dust off its liquid crystal display. There was nothing to see. He shook it once, testing its construction, and then hastened over to the computer with these fierce steps that he mimicked subconsciously from Ryo's own purposeful stride.

It had to be like this. He threw his hand out to the computer terminal, the digivice's display forward, unsure of what to expect - if anything at all. Instantly the screen flickered with a million bands of red-green-blue, as though it was being degaussed, and a simple command prompt executable opened in the top left corner. He didn't have to type anything: he just had to will the connection to open, and so the world dropped away. It seemed too easy, so of course . . .

Something happened between point A and point B.

Ken had only seen the tunnels that provided passage into the Digital World twice: when he first went there and when he left. They were psychedelic pipelines that processed you too quickly to be studied, because one second you were - let's say: - in your room and the next tumbling down a hill in the Digital World after an awkward landing. But en route Ken opened his eyes and saw the neon colors swirling around. Exit holes with large signs pockmarked the cylindrical conglomeration of irrational shapes and symbols that made up the tunnel. He flew past the exits, his mind jammed before it could panic, and that part of him still functioning squeezed his bladder like a stress-ball until he thought it might burst.

The invisible current buffeted him back and forth. He floundered against the forces helplessly, this way and that, sometimes upside-down, and in the distance of this uncharted dimension, he heard what seemed to be thunder. When the roar grew loud enough to make his innards tremble, he thought Hell was bearing down upon him, and before he could scream, everything turned bright red.

He awoke when water touched his cheek. He was face-down on a beach without any idea as to why he was there or how he arrived. As pins-and-needles numbness receded from his body, he took a quick breath with cramped lungs, the first breath in a while, and then choked when brine slid down his trachea. He sat up, turned to the right, and vomited saltwater mixed with his half-digested dinner onto the sand. The splatter glistened in the meager light there - wherever it was - and he collapsed again, breathing hard. His eyes tried to focus, but everything was a charcoal-colored blur.

The monochromatic quality of his surroundings didn't go away even ten minutes later when he got up onto rubbery legs and walked down the mysterious stretch of beach. Everything, from the dimly twinkling sand to the tall seawall, accommodated a distinct shade of gray. The clouds were heavy, silver things that layered the sky like a cushiony duvets; and because of them, there wasn't enough light to make out very much. Only the water that stretched on into infinity was another color, and that was a flawless black, because not even whitecaps disturbed its surface.

Ken knew that he should have felt alarmed for being in such an unknown place, but since coming here the breadth of his emotions had been locked away; and in place of fear there was only an uneasy gnarl in his heart. He picked along the beach, crunching shells, and wondered how much closer he was to the towering lighthouse in the distance that sprayed gray light in evenly timed passes. It never seemed to come any closer.

Some sad, rotting remains of a fishing village lay beyond the seawall from what he could tell: there were considerable holes in the rock that allowed him to look in whenever he felt that gnarl tighten with what he might have called curiosity anywhere else. The last hole showed him a decrepit avenue filled with overturned fishmonger carts and open houses haunted by an omnipresent salty mist. He saw indiscriminate shapes lurking behind broken windows and decided to keep moving.

He stopped when he heard buzzing coming from out over the water. It was just there without warning, the opposite of a soft noise that leached awareness gradually, and it did strange things to him: he felt lightheaded, he wanted to throw up again, and he lost his balance. The water started to ripple: waves lapped at the shore with steadily increasing frequency. He cried out but his voice fell flat, dead, because this place allowed no echoes. The next defense was his digivice, which he held toward the water, eyes shut and his skin crawling. And then just like that, he was gone.

As scheduled, he tumbled down a hill in the Digital World after an awkward landing. At the bottom he laid upside-down for a few minutes, staring at the sky and wondering what had just happened. His subconscious acted quickly by swallowing the memories whole, in huge gulps, and then he didn't really care what that stop-over was either way. Just a bad dream, he thought, like those bad, split-second dreams you'll get when you tempt fate by falling asleep in class. He stood up and looked around.

The Digital World was just as he had left it: the colors were vibrant and splashed about in patches, which never failed to make everything - ground, trees, sky - look like it had just been created by an impressionist. Lazy cotton candy clouds floated by, resembling bloated animals, and then he suddenly saw a flash of wide gray clouds that reminded him of ash smears; even so, the image promptly dissipated.

He didn't have to go very far to find Ryo. A sloping hillock brought Ken up to where he could overlook a level, broad expanse of natural prairie. There was nothing remarkable about it, although nearby, beneath one of the saplings, was Ryo and the laptop that had disappeared along with him (according to his mother). Ken went over immediately; Ryo favored him with a cold glance.

"Ryo-sama . . ." Ken murmured when he stopped.

"What's your decision?" Ryo said. His voice was hoarse, as though he hadn't spoken aloud in a while.

"- Huh? Decision?"

"Yes. That's why you came, wasn't it? It ought to have been."

"How about we start with 'hello,' Ryo-sama?"

"I have no time for that."

After only thirty seconds, everything Ken had been expecting of this confrontation became erroneous. Their dialogue, the one he had hoped to wield well and convince Ryo to return home with, had already fallen apart. He stared at Ryo; he tried to understand what was different. Maybe it was the way Ryo sat, upright and stiff; or perhaps how his eyes were like dull gold lumps because of the laptop's glow; or it could be the grittiness of his disused voice. Regardless of their details, the differences were there and they frightened him.

"I don't understand . . ."

"Are you going to join me or not? I asked that question in every one of my e-mails, or did you fail to read more than one?" Ryo sneered, but then the ice relented and he finally looked at Ken, wearing a perverse version of a smile. "Sorry. I've just been stressed lately. Please, sit. I want to show you something."

Ken was too bewildered to not follow the request; once seated beside Ryo, he could see the laptop's screen, but none of the text on it made sense. Strange, rune-like symbols twisted back and forth, arranged in structures not unlike the DNA double helixes he had seen in class. Ryo tapped one key and the lines froze, flexed noticeably, and then began moving again.

"Digital Code," Ryo said preemptively. He pointed at one of the slower-moving lines and read off each symbol as it passed. "Se . . . Ka . . . To . . . Ru . . . I . . . Chi. Roughly translated, it means 'Sector One.' That's where we are. It's an immense territory that encompasses nearly a fifth of the Digital World."

"What does that have to do with what you want to show me?"

Ryo grinned and his teeth shined brightly enough to hurt Ken's eyes. "This is what I wanted to show you," he said. "Look down the hill from us, okay? Don't look at me."

Reluctantly, Ken turned to the prairie. Nothing remarkable. "Okay."

"Are you looking?"

"Yeah, Ryo-sama."

"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth," Ryo whispered.

His fingers flew across the keys, and Ken noticed the modifications at once.

In retrospect, Ken had no better explanation than to say, "It died," with a queerly unsatisfied look that worsened later when he refused to elaborate. What really happened was more visual than anything else: first the colors bled from the land, literally bled, and formed shiny pools of color - sizzling, chromatic data in its purest form - all across the prairie. Blots of red, speckles of blue, and wallows of green were the most conspicuous casualties; the landscape that Ken once described as a painter's one-minute ideal lost its pigment, and so with that, its life. The data popped and sparked prettily, but then Ken heard the keyboard's furious clatter, and the data receded into nothingness like an oil strike reversed.

Ken sat inches away from Ryo's laptop. He could have seized it and thrown it to the ground, halting the destruction; he could have exacted "an eye for an eye" and hurt Ryo for hurting the Digital World; he could have done many things, and so nothing was done. He was immobilized, and years later, suffering his angst, he did not know whether his own shock or some other sinister force prevented him from stopping Ryo. What seemed like an eternity to Ken lasted approximately twenty-six seconds, and when that time passed, Sector One was no longer a living element of the Digital World. The land, its spirit annihilated, transformed into no more than an outline of its former self. At the horizon the sun shied behind ghostly trees; green-edged red light hit Ryo's little hillock and his face, giving it the appearance of a bruised tomato about to turn. His lips were very far apart and his teeth were clenched; they squeaked when he looked at Ken, who could see the thin, translucent skin on Ryo's bottom lip splitting under the force of that demented, unchecked smile.

"And on the seventh day, my Ken," Ryo said from his throat, his jaw barely moving, "I took over."

# # #

Sunset.

# # #

Whisper: "We could have this together."

"I - I can't help you."

"Please stay. You're my best friend."

Shout: "This is insane!"

"I'm trying to be patient, but I can't wait for you forever."

"Ryo-sama, why are you doing this?"

Scream: "Because I can, insect! Because I can!"

# # #

Night.

# # #

Ken couldn't remember how he came to stand between the crumbling seawall and placid black sea again. There existed a sizable gap in his memory: he was yelling at Ryo, and then, without explanation, he was on this beach with his sneakers teasing the water. Maybe the first visit was by accident, but it marked him; maybe he was here now to honor a subconscious wish, since this world-within-a-world could grant it. Thinking about these maybes was an exertion he felt too dizzy and unfocused to pursue; he left it to someone else. He wanted to enjoy the tranquility, though the smell of rotten fish bordered on overwhelming. He noticed last the buzzing sound suspended above the unmoving water, just before all else ceased to matter.

It's okay to feel the pain.

"I don't want to," Ken said in an apostrophe.

I suppose not. Your Ryo-sama doesn't want to feel it either.

He realized that the "voice" - a misnomer for it, since it was not an audible thing, but rather felt, as if the pulse of each word were being translated by his brain and then relayed into his consciousness directly - sounded remarkably like Osamu, despite that being absurd. But thinking of Osamu brought back memories that this place had withdrawn temporarily from his mind: he saw Ryo's weary face, smiling and silhouetted against a foreign sun in the Digital World, just after a day-long trek. Ryo-sama.

"I want to help him," he said and choked on those words. His cheeks stung in the peculiar way they did when holding back tears. Weakness felt dangerous to have: he knew that dark, cunning things were waiting for a lock installed on his heart to break, because open hearts extended invitations. RSVP for occupancy.

Do you?

"Yes."

Do you?

"Yes!"

Do you?

"I said so already!" he yelled. There was no echo.

I admire you. In a place meant to ruin all cholers on the path to atonement, you still possess fervor. Most mortals hear my voice and explode when it registers in their brain, and yet here you are, secure, about to draw contract with me.

He meant to ask about everything, but all he said was: "Contract?"

Yes. Turn around so we can make these arrangements.

He felt the world behind him waning and bending, and he turned to see a lazy, bright line of fire appear. It corkscrewed outward in concentric circles until a blazing portal formed; its flames split apart like a curtain as the anticipated contractor moved through them. Ushered by the smell of wood smoke, the contractor in his large maroon cloak shook the fire away and glided up to Ken.

"Here we are," the contractor said.

Ken was irrationally afraid, as though within the last ten seconds he had developed a heart-stopping phobia for strangers in billowy garments. The contractor favored him bemusedly with two red jewel-points stashed in an obligatorily shadowed hood.

"You're speechless, but understandably so. It's not a common thing to make a deal with the devil."

"A deal with . . .?" Ken said, feeling faint. He couldn't stop staring at the long, ridged, and undeniably goat-like horns atop the contractor's head.

"Yes. My name is Demon, and this is my domain: the Dark Ocean."

A long, funnel-like banner hung from Demon's neck to the cloak's hem, and on its dark gray surface, there were inverted pentagrams - and also bright gold symbols, which closely resembled those Ryo had displayed on the laptop. Unable to look into Demon's hood directly for more than a few seconds at a time, as fear gripped his heart whenever he tried, Ken studied the designs and wondered where the Dark Ocean was in relation to the Digital World.

"You are very close or very far away, depending on how you look at it," Demon said and held out his arms. From the air he plucked out items as though they were hanging there, waiting, and then he brought them down for Ken to see. Fingers boasting thick claws (painted a ludicrous hot pink much like Wormmon's) held onto a parchment roll and long quill with a delicacy that Ken didn't assume monstrous hands to have. "This is what we need for the contract. You'll find that the particulars have already been written up, and all that is required is your signature."

"Don't pacts with evil usually have a catch?" Ken said, suddenly shrewd and suspicious. Those claws were laughable because of their color, and after some smothered giggles, the paralyzing fear subsided.

"Clever boy," Demon said curtly. He withdrew the contract and unfurled it. "The legalese would confuse you, so I deign to translate:

"The party of the first part - that's you - agrees that they will consign something major and wholly appropriate of their own as collateral for the party of the second part's - my - services. These services shall aid them as they attempt to end Akiyama Ryo's conquest of the Digital World.

"Should Akiyama be incapacitated with help from these services, the collateral will be awarded to the party of the second part; if he is stopped through any other means, the collateral will return to the party of the first part. Also, if the party of the first part gives up on Akiyama, the collateral is compromised and awarded to the party of the second part by default. While the outcome is being decided, the collateral will be left in the safekeeping of a third party that possesses no interest or bias either way.

". . . And beyond that, there is little else to speak of."

"What's the collateral meant to be?" Ken said, taking the contract again.

"It has to be of comparable worth to my services, which are almost priceless, but I'm sure we can reach some agreement." Demon's eyes flashed and brightened his revolting snout, it torn open by a toothy grin. "How about we wager something interesting? Your soul, mayhap?"

"My . . . soul . . .?" Ken replied in a hushed, halted voice. "But -"

Demon laughed raucously. "Hilarious! The soul is not the seat of your mind and body; in actuality, it is not truly important, no matter what a religion might tell you. You humans are selfish, spoiled things that don't like the thought of selling something so intimate. Losing a soul is much like losing a healthy appendix: it doesn't matter."

"Oh." But Ken's eyes narrowed and he looked back up. "And that's why it's collateral for something you called 'almost priceless?'"

Trapped by diction, Demon snarled and stepped forward; he pointed a long claw at Ken, who shrunk and bore terrible fear like before.

"Clever!" Demon rasped. "But its worth is applicable only to me. Nothing in the contract states that I must tell you what my plans with the collateral are, so you shall learn nothing."

Ken looked down at the contract in his shaking hands. The letters were archaic, blocky, and severe on the off-colored paper; the words were difficult to read, and those that he did discern ended up giving him a headache. Demon held out the quill to him, composure regained, and waited for a decision.

". . . I'll sign," Ken mumbled. "If your services will help Ryo-sama, I'll sign."

"They will. This contract is my promise."

Quill in hand, Ken pressed the nib to the line that acknowledged him as the party of the first part, and then discovered belatedly that there was no ink. Confused, he examined the feather, and when Demon started laughing at him again, he tilted his head up and glared.

"I need an inkwell."

"Oh, I ought to have told you," Demon said, chuckling. His eyes were lustrous again. "You must sign in your own blood. Prick your finger, please."

Ken hesitated, but tolerated a small cut on his left index finger (the quill's tip was surprisingly sharp), and from that he had enough blood to scratch out his name in childish cursive. Methodically, Demon took the quill back, wiped it off, wet the tip in his own blood, and signed himself as the party of the second part.

"That's it?"

"Mm. Now there's only the matter of your collateral. This will sting a little."

Unprepared for it, Ken had begun to ask "What?" when Demon thrust one hand forward: five claws splayed and plunged into Ken's chest, defying skin and bone, and despite the hot gush of blood that doused the offending arm and the gray sands, his shock kept himself conscious. Demon spread leathery bat-like wings Ken couldn't recall from before, but then his thoughts stopped when those claws clenched, closing around something in between his heart and lungs, and wrenched viciously. The hand emerged. There was a brilliant light tucked inside it. Ken fell backwards without a support, dying, and watched from the ground as the soaked fingers carefully moved away from the gleaming mote.

Is that my soul? Ken marveled through his eyelashes. It was as bright as the sun.

The light lessened until a small rose-colored rectangle remained in its place atop Demon's wide palm. As the fingers began to close again, the light flared and took off into the sky as a glimmer.

"Well then," Demon said, looking down at Ken, "your soul is off to find that impartial third party to keep it safe in the interim. Trust me when I say everything is now an uphill battle that makes this opportunity worth it."

That sounds familiar. Is my life flashing before my eyes? I'm dying, aren't I?

"Something like that. I ought to have said! This way of extracting your soul and a few other things slipped my mind when we were making our agreement. I apologize. Now, what did I miss? Hmm. You're going to feel terribly when you wake up. Your digivice is going to be rather different. There's going to be a nasty scar, and your blood might look odd, but who will know about all of that if you're discreet? My services will be yours immediately, as I'm sure the knowledge is already trickling in on how to access them whenever you wish. Now it's time for sleep. Sleep."

# # #

Dawn.

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When he came to, he was at home, in bed, covered in a cold sweat that made him feel sticky and embarrassed, and everything - everything - hurt very badly. In the bathroom he saw the scar: it was a nasty spider-web of lines that made five points at the places where Demon's claws had lanced through his sternum. Trembling a little, he realized none of it had been a dream, and the large pentagram-like brand on his chest was the evidence. He took a long, near-scalding shower and cried, pressed up against the chilly tile. It wasn't until afterward that he discovered his digivice had mutated into a black, ovular thing that he dubbed "Demonic" without thinking. Much later he understood what Demon meant about his blood, because now it was a dark, unflattering purple that dismayed him the first time he saw it, after scraping his knee accidentally on the playground. He breathed, lived, and yet his blood appeared to not be capable of oxygenizing. It was impossible.

Visiting the Digital World again took a week because of school and his own fear for what he might find because Ryo had the leisure of seven full days to take over. Once there he understood the buzzing that had settled in the back of his mind since the agreement: with the smallest gesture he could conjure any number of Demon's seething monsters to carry out any aim. Scubamon were always the most easily summoned, or any rung of their evolution's ladder (up to and including): Pabumon, Yanmamon, Leviamon, the last being fearsome demon lords that still bowed to Ken's instructions.

But he tried to act pacifistically and risked a late-night visit, since otherwise his parents or Osamu would note his absence. He found Ryo again, but things were so different. Wormmon, beaten . . . Millenniumon controlled utterly, following Ryo's whims as he destroyed a town . . . Veemon, valiant Veemon, sealed in a flash of orange light for trying to stop Ryo from continuing his takeover . . .

In a month every sector was like the first he had seen destroyed. Cavities of resistance were rare, surreal places that Ryo or Millenniumon had forgotten about. Rebel presence didn't matter: nothing could be done to displace Ryo's hold. Ken's reasoning never moved Ryo's convictions. Inevitably, Ken turned to fists for help.

Even with Demon's forces and the other resistance fighters willing to help, the first attack on Ryo's stronghold failed miserably. Ken didn't trust anyone but Wormmon, so he ended up slaughtering members of both sides indiscriminately on his way to the control room. Halfway through the base he was detained; his fury spooked the superstitious, because it seemed that an eerie aftereffect of the pact had made the Digital World tune in with his emotions. The ground bucked and wind screamed outside: a fearsome storm manifested to rival the one inside Ken. Ryo - by now known as the Digimon Czar - only laughed off these concerns, and carved Ken's shoulder with his very own knife (another scar) to demonstrate how powerless his former friend was. The blood was dark purple and the Czar studied it sharply. He knew something had happened, but didn't bother to find out what.

"I'm disappointed, Ken. You've failed."

The Czar deleted Wormmon. From that point on Ken was known as the Terror Shinigami.

His childhood became a rape victim: he grew up going into the Digital World whenever he had the chance to seize whatever ground he could. It was gobbled back up overnight. Wormmon was his only ally. At times Demon met with Ken, though the devil offered no more support than his minions, and every once in a while he tried to delude Ken into quitting his war to concede the collateral without any more fuss. Ken was not asinine and never gave up, however, and Demon did not recognize that faith until it was too late to negate the contract.

But neither Ken nor Demon expected to have the arrival of other Chosen. Only Demon accredited the threat posed by Motomiya Daisuke, the obstacle capable of corrupting the contract. Demon soon received a critical notice from the soul-keeper that fortified the Motomiya menace.

The third party reported a while ago that Ken's soul - which had taken shape as the Crest of Kindness - had soured into a cold, unresponsive thing that lost its color and light only a month after separation from its true owner. The day following Motomiya's ingress into the Digital World, an event that thoroughly infuriated Ken, the third party informed Demon of a miraculous change: the crest was pinkish again, and to touch it was less like handling ice.

Demon concluded that Ken's soul was beginning to resist its fate. It had discovered trust, and that trust came from Motomiya's earnestness in helping Ken fight his war.

Needless to say, Demon was not happy.