BanchoLeomon sighed again as Rodendramon responded, eventually internally deciding to just give up and play along with this nonsense going on. “Yes, yes, valid. You’re an angry robot, fine. I don’t care anymore.” They were wasting time with all this. “Just follow along for now. We’ve got to regroup with the others before pushing against Millenniummon. Or whatever it is he is now.” Without waiting for Rodendramon’s reaction, BanchoLeomon leapt into the air, starting to hop between rooftops and rubble as he followed in the direction Parasimon had flown off in previously. --- Dirk could only very generously be described as ‘a little touch and go’ when it came to intuition, but Beelzemon hadn’t clawed his way up the ranks of infamy purely on dumb muscle. Between that and his familiarity with Dirk’s own destructive behaviours and deducing exactly what Parasimon was implying was elementary. “Look, I don’t want to go giving you the wrong idea here, we’re not friends or anything remotely similar to that.” Fuck, he still hated complex emotions. He supposed that was something he could start working on if he made it out of this alive. “But are you absolutely sure you’ve got to die to put that thing down? I know it’s been a long day, but you can’t possibly be alright with that?” “Whether I’m [i]alright[/i] with it is immaterial.” Parasimon was already regretting dropping this particular shoe. Should have just kept his mouth shut until it was time to check out. “This is the way it has to be.” “Yeah, and I know a certain other idiot who wouldn’t stop running his mouth about ‘what needs to be done’.” Beelzemon’s voice tapered out into Dirk’s as he responded to Parasimon, the disembodied human jumping back into the fray as the Knight’s words unleashed something in him. “You or the world? Don’t be stupid, you just can’t see past your own self-loathing long enough to imagine a better way out.” “There isn’t a better way out.” Parasimon seemed unfazed, only firing back at Beelzemon in the same bored tone as before. But- “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I didn’t think I had this coming. Every outcome I saw when that thing had me under its thrall ended up with either me dead or both your world and mine destroyed.” He sighed, looking down at Beelzemon. If the Demon Lord and his human weren’t lying about what had happened, they weren’t completely talking out of their ass. He supposed he could take the matter seriously. “I may have been a poor excuse for a Knight, but I know where my duties lie. All of us here do. We made peace with death when we took up the sword- and beyond that, I came to this world knowing full well it might be my grave. I’ll go on and do what I have to do, and then perhaps no-one else will have to die.” Parasimon fell silent again after that, looking out over the ocean. Beelzemon continued to glare up at him, but likewise said nothing. What could he even say? His own wounds were fresh and open once more after his own experience across his personal timeline, and Dirk seemed to retreat to the background once more as the Knight gave his piece. Once again, they’d wandered into a situation too thorny and ridiculous for either of them to deal with. Damn it, what a colossal pain in the ass this all was. --- Soaring through the foggy skies, Dorugoramon’s eyes were peeled open despite the horrendous visibility of her surroundings. Though much smaller than her fellow companion, she was no less cautious in their search for potential allies. Still, the steel dragon had been silent for quite a while and, while one might blame the silence on the trauma of her human half, the other half had also been unusually quiet throughout the flight. Examon had likewise been quiet, ppting to protect them from behind as Dorugoramon tracked a route that would quickly lead them to Rodendramon before he or they attracted Moon=Millenniummon’s attention. There was still no sign of Siggy, and Alphamon was being unusually quiet as well, so Examon found himself having some room to think. It was certainly unusual that UlforceVeedramon hadn’t re-appeared. While the simplest and most pessimistic conclusion, that he was the first casualty of the newly-formed abomination, weighed heavily on his mind, his gut feeling told him that wasn’t the case. Perhaps it was wishful thinking, thought of another death after the loss of Dirk too much to bear. It could simply have been a refusal to believe that his oldest ally had passed without him being so much as able to perceive it. But from what Examon could recollect of the grim futures he’d seen, UlforceVeedramon would have to have survived the opening salvo from Moon=Millenniummon to have appeared at all in his visions. After all, they were no illusion, simply a view into the infinite and gruesome outcomes of this bloody conflict. As if to confirm his point- and rub salt in the wound while it was fresh- in no future had he seen Beelzemon take part in- Examon froze mid-flight as a new set of signals bled in from the edge of his expanded senses. One of them was immediately recognizable as Parasimon, and beneath that acrid miasma was Dynasmon. So he’d found the other Knight after falling behind, and before he could do anything reckless. That much was a relief. But the third signal… In no future had he seen Beelzemon take part in the battle against Moon=Millenniummon. As far as he was aware, Impmon had either perished with Dirk or had otherwise been able to take part in the ensuing fight against his murderer’s magnum opus. And yet, there he was, nestled amongst the two Knights. After what seemed like an eternity of eerie silence, Dorugoramon finally took notice of the larger dragon’s sudden stop. A soft growl rumbling inside her throat, the steel dragoness approached him and asked in an almost feral tone, “What is it, prey?” Examon paused, deliberating. So she hadn’t noticed the signal yet. Perhaps her hyperfocus on locating Rodendramon narrowed her perception. Her senses were far keener than his, and Parasimon’s aura would have caught her attention even if Beelzemon’s own was smothered beneath it. But knowing what he knew, he didn’t have time to figure out why. --- [i]‘I know you can sense that too.’ Alphamon may have been quiet, but Examon knew she was there, keeping their Biomerged form stable. And if she was there, she could weigh in on the situation. ‘Any suggestions?’ ‘Right now, I suggest we stay the course. I trust Parasimon and Dynasmon to be able to guide our surprise guest-if it really is the one we’re both thinking about-and find their way to safety, if only because we have to trust them to do their own thing,’ Alphamon replied, her voice remaining calm despite the surprising discovery. As hopeful as she could be at a time like this, she knew she had to focus on their objective for the time being. ‘Trusting them is something I’m prepared to do.’ Examon didn’t react with frustration to Alphamon, but instead decided to be more candid with his concerns. ‘But with the route we’re taking, we’ll likely encounter them before we encounter Rodendramon. There’s an obvious alternative, but-’ Examon paused- but then pressed on. No second-guessing himself any more. ‘We can’t go keeping them in the dark any more,’ he said, directing Alphamon’s attention to Dorugoramon- and the traumatized human within. ‘But you know as well as I that truth is hardly ever painless. We have to break this to them without breaking them again- and before it’s too late to soften the blow.’ Alphamon understood why Examon wouldn’t want to keep Dorugoramon and Zei in the dark, knowing that they needed everyone to be on the same page to even stand a chance against Moon=Millenniummon. At the same time, being the most sane one of the three ‘Faces of Eves’-a horrendously bleak achievement as far as she was concerned-made her worry about how Zei, the least mentally stable of them all, would react to the discovery. After another moment of silence, the former Knight spoke up again. ‘I understand your concern,’ she hummed softly, ‘in that case, why not let them find out on their own? I’d argue that it would be easier for them and what’s left of their sanity to find out themselves than having us drop the news on their heads like an anvil.’ There was a momentary lull as Alphamon brokered her suggestion, as Examon weighed up her words.[/i] --- “What is it, prey?” “Something like that. I can’t smell Rodendramon like you can, but I can sense something else in our path.” Examon answered both Dorugoramon and Alphamon’s suggestion in one fell swoop, gently nudging the other dragon with the vague statement as he resurfaced from the inner dialogue. “A few different signals, clustered together. Can you make sense of them?” A soft chirp escaped her metal maw as Dorugoramon looked around, stepping back from her focus on Rodendramon to expand her senses. For a moment, the dragon seemed almost confused, wondering what could’ve given Examon pause, until something, or some[i]one[/i] caught her attention. Her eyes widened as she started sniffing the air, her tail flicking restlessly, until she let out a string of soft chirps. In that moment, the metallic beast acted more like a Fresh Digimon than the ferocious dragon she physically was. “Dirk?” Zei’s voice cut through the otherwise feral undertone of the dragon’s own voice. “So it’s not just me, then.” Well, so far so good. Examon looked down in the direction that he could sense the signals. As he’d said to Alphamon, short of lying to them, they would have to face this eventually, and while Zei’s re-appearance and reaction wasn’t the best outcome, it was something he was prepared to deal with. “Easy, I’m sure he’s shaken up too.” Examon couldn’t dance around what had happened, but speaking to Zei’s empathy seemed the best course of action- acknowledge it in a way that would help tether her back to whatever modicum of sanity and reality still existed in this hellish situation. “If we can sense Beelzemon, then he’s got to be alive and up- and if I’m right about who’s with him, he’s safe.” Dorugoramon, or Zei rather, turned to Examon and chirped again. The dragon’s senses finally picked up on the other Digimons traveling with Beelzemon, and she finally calmed down. Though Zei’s voice was silenced once more, her response looked promising. At the very least, the unstable human didn’t suffer any mental breakdown and seemed almost hopeful, as hopeful as a broken bird could be. “If we keep going the way we’re going, we’ll reach them before we make contact with Rodendramon.” Examon took heart from Zei’s response, deciding to press on and bite the bullet. If she was taking it well so far, hopefully they could join back up without a hitch. “I trust Dynasmon and Parasimon to look after Beelzemon, but strength in numbers might help if Rodendramon has gone berserk. What do you think we should do?” Dorugoramon’s eyes narrowed down as she turned her single-minded focus from Rodendramon to her new target. “We go,” Zei’s truncated voice echoed in the dragon’s maw. “Regroup and see for ourselves…” Examon simply nodded, waiting and watching as Dorugoramon took off into the air again before following her with his shield engaged as he had before. So far so good, and it was with a mixture of relief and trepidation that he was finally able to think over the implications of his discovery. So Beelzemon was alive and able to assume his Mega-level form again. That much he readily understood, seeing as he’d only had Dirk’s death confirmed for him and his knowledge of the Digimon’s sordid past. What he was having trouble understanding was why he hadn’t seen the Digimon fight alongside them in any of his visions of the future. Perhaps, as had so often happened before, his own expectations coloured his perception for the worst. At the very least, he doubted that it was a ploy from the abomination in the sky. But he knew what he’d seen, and it didn’t take long for him to understand what this new development implied for it. The futures he’d seen were all changeable, and something had happened in the brief space of time between him falling into Moon=Millenniummon’s trance and him escaping it to upset them. That much was both terrifying and reassuring, knowing that their future was very much still within reach. But at the same time, while it emboldened him to accept his instinct that UlforceVeedramon was still alive… if one unforeseen development had brought Beelzemon back into the fray, had another one taken him out of it?