From the moment of her existence, Dorugoramon wasn’t a creature of peace and capable of elevated enjoyment of sensory stimuli, but the overall silence of what was left of the warzone seemed rather pleasing to her. It certainly didn’t distract her from wandering aimlessly and not having to worry about any other threat was also a bonus.

Despite the fact that she was covered from head to paw in a set of clearly hard and metallic armor, she could still feel the force of the wind weaving past her. There was something about the wind blowing past her that felt pleasant, if not a tad calming, and she let out a soft chatter like a chirping bird... if said bird was a giant, feral dragon incapable of speech, rational reasoning and higher thinking.

Having seen nothing of interest thus far, Dorugoramon decided to make a quick stop on an office building, devoid of the salarymen and employees that had promptly fled for their lives the moment Millenniummon went to town with its destruction galore. A hushed growl escaped her metallic maw as golden eyes scanned for any signs of life, human and Digimon. While she didn’t find any other living creature in her vicinity, she found something else of notice: an abandoned grocery store full of food. 

Not even caring about how she knew the things inside were edible, the giant dragon swooped down and landed right in front of the sliding door, said door promptly ripped apart by a strong claw. Because of how big she was in comparison to the available entry she had opened up, the Mega proceeded to just chuck her claw inside and grab the first thing she could get. She then pulled it out and examined what she grabbed. 

Whatever they were, they were green, round and crunchy to the touch. They weren’t meat, she could tell that much, but something about them was familiar to her and she somehow knew they were edible. After making sure that she didn’t end up ingesting pieces of broken glass, the round, green iceberg lettuces soon found a home in the Mega’s digestive tracts and were soon joined by more lettuces and a bevy of other vegetables and fruits, Dorugoramon apparently neither a discerning nor selective eater.
---
The slow flight over Tokyo was fairly sobering, Examon had to admit. Now that the battle with Millenniummon was done, all that was left was a damaged city; even as his pursuit of Dorugoramon led him further and further away from the ground zero Millenniummon had emerged from, the signs of destruction and chaos were plain to see. Cars were abandoned and overturned with their windows shattered, buildings likewise had been abandoned and shattered in places by the shockwaves, and whatever people he could see coming out of their safe places turned and hid themselves again as they saw his tremendous form pass over them. 

Examon and Siggy travelled in silence. There wasn’t any need to say anything, their thoughts were all the same and kept them quiet and contemplative besides. This is what happened when the battle went [i]well[/i]- a painful sensation gripped their stomachs as they thought of what a less successful battle might have wrought on the city. 

But a loud sound cutting over the quiet ruin was enough to pull them out of those thoughts briefly- pausing mid-flight and turning, they caught sight of a form in the distance. Large enough to be seen from a few hundred meters away, but only just in the way it was resting- 

“Found you.” Examon whispered to himself, as he pressed forwards towards the sight of Dorugoramon, sending his lance back into the aether as he approached. 

As he got closer, he could see more of her- sitting by herself, gorging herself on abandoned food. He set down about a hundred meters away, placing his gigantic feet down carefully and trying not to crush anything on the street surface as he did. 

He engaged his shield, but left his lance dispersed. With all the care of a man approaching a wounded wild animal, he took his first few steps towards her, staying quiet and keeping his body language restrained.

While she licked her claw clean, an image moved at the edge of her view, causing Dorugoramon to turn towards the incoming Digimon. Needless to say, she wasn’t happy about being approached and quickly snarled at him, lashing out with her tail against Examon’s powerful shield.  

All that her tail met was a crackling shimmer of orange as Avalon blocked it; though Examon stopped in his tracks, electing to stand his ground against Dorugoramon without crossing into her space. 

Now that she knew he was well-prepared to handle her, she began to wonder why he came here. 

Did he want to devour her? 

Was he going to challenge her? 

Either option would require a weapon of sorts. For all of Examon’s strength, he only had his shield on, his prized lance nowhere to be seen. This confused her, but it didn’t change the fact that she currently saw him as a threat. Roaring at the larger dragon, she tried charging him head on, only to be pushed back by Avalon’s protective barrier. 

Realizing that she couldn’t get rid of him, she snarled and flicked her tail at him before, in an attempt to shake him off, flying away towards higher ‘ground’ in the shape of many abandoned office buildings.

… Well, that happened. Examon wasn’t completely sure what to make of this, though it didn’t stop him for long. He continued his approach, staring up at Dorugoramon as she glared down at him from the nearby cluster of buildings-

And promptly just stopped and stood there, crossing his arms.

“You going to come down from there any time soon, grumpy?” He called up to her, his tone more a deadpan, teasing one than anything antagonistic. Fuck it, if it was Dorumon in there after all, maybe a change of tactics was in order- “Come on, then shorty, what’s it gonna be?” As he spoke, he remained on the ground- best to keep the non-threatening tactic for now. 

Dorugoramon listened to Examon’s taunts. Though she didn’t fully comprehend what he was saying, there was something about his tone and the words he used that irked her. [i]Something[/i] at the back of her mind seethed with familiar anger, yearning with a desire to exchange the banter. Predictably, she snarled at him in response for his taunts. What was unpredictable was her then flying down to where he was, snarling and glaring at him. She opened her maw, as if trying to say something, but all she could muster was angry chirps.

“Gonna have to speak up there, I can’t quite hear you!” Examon responded, remaining where he was as his taunt brought Dorugoramon back down to the ground and instead following it up with more teasing. With a smirk, he cupped his hand to his ear and leant towards her a little- a little gesture to go with the verbal teasing. “Gatomon got your tongue? Or is it just indigestion?”

Dorugoramon didn’t understand. All Examon was doing was talking to her, yet she wanted nothing more than to just chew on his head and make him stop speaking. The seething anger grew stronger and slowly began to cut away from the cloud that stormed her mind and rendered her as nothing more than a feral Digimon. She slammed both claws against the ground, leaving a pair of indents on the asphalt road, and screeched at him with a barely restrained fury. Amazingly, in her fit of irritation and anger, a muffled, faint word began to come out of her steel maw. “Ex.... Exa… mon…!” 

If Examon had been smirking before, it was completely [i]eclipsed[/i] by the one that stretched further over his face now. [i]It was working.[/i]

“Ohhhh, there was almost something there!” If it was working, there was no sense in stopping now- if he could coax her out of her feral shell- “Still, no need to be mean to the road, little miss grumpy! What’d it ever do to you, eh? [i]Eh?[/i]” Very briefly, Examon’s eyes flashed green as the more oblique humour was scattered in.

The taunting pushed the [i]thing[/i] over the edge of the feral clout within Dorugoramon’s mind. That alone seemed to be altering how the Digimon comprehended Examon’s words, but the last straw was the sight of a pair of green eyes. It evoked a very familiar image within her mind, one that she felt she knew for the longest time.

Suddenly, a flood rushed against the feral clout as Dorugoramon let out a loud roar, fire suddenly coating her claws and erupting like a jet fuel being ignited. With the flames burning like the ignited fury within her, she stomped on the ground and roared at him. 

“DO I LOOK LIKE I GIVE TWO SHITS ABOUT THE FUCKING ROAD, YOU SON OF A ROYAL BITCH?!“ 

And there was the short-tempered, familiar Digimon Examon had known for a long time.

“Well, if you’re throwing such a huge tantrum over it-” Out of both relief and amusement, Examon couldn’t help but burst into a raging torrent of laughter, both consciousnesses in the Biomerge just about losing it as Dorugoramon went from a very angry feral to a very, [i]very[/i] angry Dorumon.

While Examon was internally celebrating her return, Dorumon, now back in control, was reeling from all the headache she was now feeling. “If you can stop laughing at meeeeeeeee RIGHT NOW, it would be really, [i]reeeeeeeally[/i] nice,” she slurred with a sense of irritation. “Zei, fucking say something already,” she muttered softly, expecting to hear the human woman’s more even voice rather quickly, but something felt off. While she was back in control, it felt as if she was standing in the middle of a storm… with her human partner nowhere around her. “Zei?”

“Pff,” Examon bit down on his tongue as Dorugoramon hissed at him to stop laughing. He’d had his fun, now came the serious business. “Alright, well- mind telling us what happened back there?” As much as he was relieved at seeing the Digimon back in her right mind, there was still the question of just what the hell had happened to trigger this; “Look, you didn’t hurt anyone, and we’re not angry- we just want to know.”

“Good to know,” Dorugoramon mumbled quietly, then straightened herself out as she tried to recall the last few things she remembered. “In all honesty, I remembered absolutely jack shit about what happened after I Digivolved until now,” she replied, then looked up at Examon, a grim look in her eyes. 

“After she confronted Takeda, I picked Zei up and went to have a chat with our favorite mousy and his boy. We were planning to Biomerge from the get-go, aside from whatever the fuck happened that delayed it. However, something’s definitely wrong with Zei, but I kinda put that on the sideline with the whole ‘artificial-Digimon-outta-nowhere’ issue. Right as we Biomerged, I heard the sound of glass shattering… and then everything went black,” she said to him. “As we speak, I can’t even sense her inside my own head and there’s also this urge to just tear everything apart. Suffice to say, I think something’s fucked up with me, with [i]us[/i], right now, as crazy as that sounds coming from me...”

Contrary to Dorugoramon’s fears, Examon seemed to listen quietly and intently as she told him all she could. A far cry from the way he’d teased her back into coherence before, he seemed about as grim-faced as she did as she filled him in on the dark reality of the situation. 

“So you did experience a Dark Digivolution…” It may have sounded obvious, but it went a significant way to clarifying the situation they were in. At the very least, it brought up one important point- “Think back on everything that happened before Millenniummon showed up. Can you think of anything that might have happened to Zei to set her off like this?” 

Another flash of green shot through Examon’s eyes; Siggy knew there had to be something more than it seemed to the situation. Millenniummon’s appearance had been terrifying, but they’d all held strong through it; he doubted Zei would have crumbled to that fear any faster than he himself or any of the others would have.

Dorugoramon growled softly, trying to sort out her still chaotic mind, until she came upon something that could go a long way in explaining the precursor to their Dark Digivolution, or whatever Examon called it. “We were trying to get into the office where this apparently head guy was, the one responsible for all the fuck-up we went through in the human world. After we finished talking about it back when we got back to the human world, something inside Zei seemed to click,” she replied, then realized that there were holes in her own story. While Zei certainly was hit hard by the revelation, she was certain she had yet to snap at that point.

“Come to think of it, when we snuck into the office with Ranamon, Zei suddenly asked us to be on the lookout while she went in. Before we grouped back up, I felt as if something had snapped inside my head. Something must’ve snapped her while we were split up, but I don’t know what.” Still feeling something was amiss, she growled and dug deeper into the dark maelstrom before hitting a realization. “Zei jumped from the same floor Beelzemon came into... She said she saw Takeda kill Dirk. That must have fucked her up!”

“... What?” It took more than a fair moment for Examon to process what he’d just been told- Dirk was dead? 

No, come to think of it- it made all too much sense. Beelzemon had entered the building after MirageGaogamon had failed to restrain him, and he hadn’t seen him at all during the fight against Millenniummon- in the terrifying chaos of the situation, he’d hardly thought anything of it at the time, but now he knew why. 

“... I hope Lucas paints the walls with that bastard’s brains,” Examon hissed, his eyes flashing green again and remaining in that burning emerald shade.

“I think Zei would’ve done it herself if he didn’t. She had a weapon with her: a sharp one, called iaitō or something,” Dorugoramon sighed. “Had a gut feeling she knew the guy too. There was a hurt look in her eyes when you guys talked about him.”   

“... You said you can’t feel her in there with you, right?” A moment after his little outing of anger, Examon spoke in a more quiet tone. It seemed the dark news had him melancholy too, now that he’d been given a moment to process it.

Nodding her head, Dorugoramon chattered sadly and looked down on the cracked road. “Nope. Not even a peep. It’s like I’m all alone." 

"I can’t hear Alphamon either.”