~~~

Chapter 2 - A Room In The Dark Castle of Digital Doom

~~~

Renanullmon's dark past means she doesn't like to talk about it! (SO DONT ASK HER!) She doesn't care if evil or good wins at the end of the day, because NOTHINGNESS is what she's dedicated to and who will be the ones that REALLY win.

Because she's SO dedicated to THE nothingness (her one true love xoxoxo xD), people think she's mean. But actually, she's GREAT at hugs. Because nothing gives the BEST hugs like the void does :3.

She is immortal, she is constantly chased by death! But because NOTHING is eternal, and she is part of NOTHINGNESS, she always comes out on top! She met the abyss when she stared into it, and now they're besties.

If she shows up in your world, it means that soon it will be the end of everything, so if she shows up in your digiverse, put some mittens on your kittens and go meow for the void because it's coming! xD

~~~

"That's a useful tool you've got, kid. I could use one of those," I told him.

"I gave them to our commanders, the controllers were lost when they were defeated," the kid said as we stepped through the portal, entering into a hallway of red carpet and edgy armored statues. Really, it was the digiverse. There were probably a thousand different ways of getting places fast.

The castle was eerily silent. Not sure why but I had the vague expectation there would be screaming and crying in the distance. Putting two and two together was easy enough. The bad guys trying to take over the digiverse really were on their last legs.

The castle was very clearly not even trying to give the impression of being real.

"What's the castle called?" I asked, making conversation, soaking in my voice as we waltzed through the hallway, my tail occasionally brushing up against the armor on more than one occasion. I still wasn't used to moving in this body.

Things were going rough, and the warriors of digi-good or whatever were liable to win soon. Which meant they had fought all the monsters of the week that the Plot had thrown at them, and they were at full power. Which was, apparently, where I came in. Either as the final baddie or the baddie-that-came after. Unfortunately for the forces of eeeviiiil and deeeestructiooon, I had to go home.

"Non," the kid said. "The castle Non," I said, sounding it out loud. Not that I remembered any locales in digimon but I had hoped it would jog some memory of a canon timeline or something. That would have been nice.

"A newcomer!" a high pitched, glitchy voice shrieked as we rounded a corner . A white creature with six short appendages with small, sharp claws and an orangered eye popped out of the head of a statue sitting on the wall. A black ring adorned one of its appendages.

An eye, but likely not the Eye the kid had mentioned and then immediately said it didn't know anything about.

"Where are the lieutenants or commanders?" I asked, keeping my tone no-nonsense and neutral.

"Dead!" It shrieked, then giggled a harsh and overly happy-with-itself giggle. "They're dead! The digi-warriors are coming here!" it said, laughing more.

"Why haven't you evolved?" I asked it, deliberately avoiding the obvious questions.

"She's glowing purple, Skyler!"

"The ring," the kid, apparently named Skyler said. "It stops her from digivolving." The implicit unless I let her hung in the air. Best not to get too attached to these kids— if this all kept going, I woke up after I had gotten attached, given how intense this experience was, I would be inconsolable for days.

"It's a sign of our partnership! It's way better than a digivice!" Tsumemon said. "And I can use it to go anywhere in the castle!"

Tsumemon disappeared into a tiny portal and popped out the other side of the hall, demonstrating the teleportation ability. Skyler clearly had tried making a digivice of his own. He'd been in the world long enough I was surprised he hadn't gotten one of his own.

I found myself grasping the one around my neck, nestled into my fur. Gray and glitchy. I didn't remember exactly what all you could do with a digivice, but I wasn't about to let a probably at-least morally compromised if not outright possessed kid touch it.

Hm. Who was a character that I could remember from the shows that I could ask about? Impmon? Yeah, the funky bunny-thing that just randomly caused problems? If I remembered right, his evolutions were something of a sleeper?

"Do you know Impmon?" I asked as the three of us walked down the hall.

"Yeah, there's an Impon. Or was," the kid said. "He disappeared a while ago."

Sounded about right.

"Hey, you haven't told me what kind of digimon you are yet! You look like a Renamon, but you look way eviler but also not!" The Tsumemon complained. "What kinda digimon are you!?!" it said.

What kind of digimon was I?

"I'm Tsumemon! What are you?"

"I'm Renanullmon. You can call me Kaylee."

The floating eye widened. "A … Renanullmon!" It exclaimed in awe.

I gave the floating eyeball a direct side eye. "What do you know about me?" accidentally putting too much emphasis on you, which made it more accusatory than I intended.

"Baalmon talked about you! We thought it was just a myth!"

My eyes sharpened, and the Tsumemon backed up a bit.

"Baalmon?" Who was that? "I would like to meet them." So I could kill them.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"Well, you'll hafta wait until we beat the kids, e-h-e-eheheeee!" Tsumemon cackled.

We were late in The Plot, so they had probably done something fucked up to bait the warriors out so they could contrive a situation where their last warriors had the upper hand.

"How soon will they be here?" I asked. "I am not ready for a fight." I wasn't ready for a fight. I knew my moves, like, in theory? Some things I could do, but I haven't even tried jumping in this body yet. More than that, I didn't actually care for the risks involved with getting in a major fight this early on.

Actually, if the kids were coming, then I could show up at the end and congratulate them?

Digimon wasn't like pokemon. You could die in it, especially if you were a digimon. This was an intense dream, but that didn't mean I didn't want the deck stacked in my favor, in terms of first impressions.

So, if I walked in after they inevitably won, I could congratulate them, and explain all the bullshit I had been through.

"What do you wanna do when we win?" Tsumemon asked, its unfounded confidence dripping with each word.

"I just want to go home." No sense in lying.

"Oh?" Tsumemon said. "Well, if you just found loco—" it started to say, before it shut up mid-word.

Locomon, huh. I could do that. But clearly they wanted to keep who/what that was under wraps. It was worth humoring them, for now anyway.

"Oops! Nevermind! I didn't mean to say anything bad!" Tsumemon said, floating back behind the statues.

Staying in the grey would be a lot of work if this was the company I was keeping.

If I got stuck in the Red for too long, or it got too intense, I had been very explicit that my raw power would go up, "at the expense of not being able to tell friend or foe until calming down".

Truly, I was a hallmark of originality. Regardless, I wasn't keen on entering a berserker rage just because I was annoyed with characters being stereotypically stupid. It would just compound my already problems. Didn't help that any new thing anyone said had a solid chance of adding to the downpour of shit falling from the skies. Which meant there was only a matter of time before the freezer doors would stop shutting down.

"The mirror is in this room," the kid said, popping open a heavy wooden door. "You'll need to pull back the curtains. The others and their digimon will be at the castle soon, Tsumemon and I need to prepare. It can also be your bedroom."

"If it's still here after we DESTROY THEM!" A high-pitched tee-hee-hee echoed back down the hall as the six-legged, partially-corporeal creature ran off to do presumably-evil things.

Left alone in the room, I shut the large, thick door. It was a very large room, with a luxurious bed, wardrobe, and even a private bath with sinks. Hmm. Castles didn't have running water, did they? No, that was a stupid question. This wasn't a real castle. If The Plot needed running water, we would have it.

Finding the mirror was easy enough. The candles burning on walls of the black (yes, black) rock of the castle flickered as I approached. Haunted mirror. Sweet.

I grabbed the cloth on one side, careful not to rip it with my ridiculously sharp claws and swung it open. Right as I did that pulling, a faint swish caught my eye, and by who-knows-what reflex I intercepted a scythe right before it hit.

"You're … fast…" The voice said, gravelly and all.

"May I ask why I'm being stalked and attacked by a reaper digimon in my own guest bedroom?" I asked, grabbing harder on the scythe and pulling it closer, staring directly in the glowing blue eyes of the red hood. I could handle digimon's tendencies for violence.

"My … apologies … Renanullmon."

"Shouldn't you be preparing to fight the warriors before they come charging into the castle?"

I just wanted a better look at myself. At the initial request for a mirror, it didn't require privacy, but now that it was an option, Kayleemon was not about to let others snoop in.

The creature, with a red hood and glowing eyes looked at me.

"You escape Fantomon's scythe … live another day, glitched one. Word of advice … Don't look into the mirror... The windows drive even the strongest souls mad."

It tried to pull back, but I kept my grip on the scythe. It pulled back, but didn't try too hard. Whatever it was about me, it apparently didn't manage to phase back out of existence while I was holding onto it.

"If … you … would… Let go … I have … a child to hunt…"

"Promise me you won't come into my room or personal space ever again," I said.

We stood, staring at each other in silence.

"I … yield," it said.

I pulled the scythe closer to me, but Fantomon does not let go of its scythe.

"Swear it."

"I … swear … to … respect … your … privacy …" it said.

"Good enough. Now get out of my room," I said, letting go, practically shoving it into the door, but before it made contact, it faded out of existence, the ghost digimon disappeared into the wooden door.

"I don't care that this is the evil castle of doom," I muttered. If I was going to have a room, I was going to HAVE a GODDAMN room. There were days when I just wasn't feeling it, and chose to sleep in the guest bedroom. Usually because hubby snored and rolled around too much, but still.

I turned my head toward the mirror, flicking my generous mane along the way, watching it sway in the reflection. Well, it was a good signal anyway. Someone could be watching me at any time. Dire-enough straits to pull in a total rando like me, but never enough to get their shit together.

Did I want to destroy the world? No. Did I want to be mean? No, of course not. Unfortunately, these were comically-evil characters, which made it hard to take anything particularly seriously.

The mirror only reflected me. Not the candles, not the massive, luxurious bed in disarmingly-good condition. There was a lump though, under the mirror, roughly where the bed would have been. Hm.

The smiles on the bandanna shifted from purple, fanged grins to its more "normal" ones. Ones that "just" showed the flat teeth that mirrored Abaddomon's aesthetic.

Is this me? Or was my character sheet feeding back? Another line of thought destined straight for the freezer. I could still find things funny. Joy and sadness were all still real.

So I got to checking myself out. I peeked under the mask, holding it up. For some reason I couldn't actually take it off but, the most striking feature was that there was no mouth. I could feel my tongue, which felt my teeth. Yeah, I checked everything else. Nothing indicated sex other than the base Renamon faire— child-bearing thighs and a silky smooth voice.

Abaddomon was probably an idiot, then, unless digimon didn't propagate through sex, which was possible but… yeah, a smaller thought, but it, too, went into the freezer. I had stared a god of the abyss and was shunted out of their realm before I got to tell them their whole plan was fucking stupid.

I pulled the curtain back, and again considered whether or not I really wanted to reveal myself to the warriors.

What was I going to do? Waltz up to the digidestined and tell them that I just wanted to go home? The body I inhabited currently totally had the villain "phenotype", though if I was lucky, they had seen a Renamon before and would recognize my general shape.

It wasn't like I couldn't make an appeal to their better nature that I was misunderstood. It was worth a shot. Didn't we all just want to go home? Or, on the other hand… a nap seemed like as good of an idea as any other.

Perhaps if I fell asleep, I'd wake up in the hospital, with Daniel, my hub, pacing back and forth in the room. Sleep was much more appealing.

I landed on the bed, a thunk and a "oww" later, and I found a little girl, about eight years old, holding a yellow and white cat-like pokemon with flat pads that had been hiding under the bed. I had grabbed the girl by the closest limb I could reach, along with her partner, pulling them out from under the bed.

"Yeooowwww" the cat squealed, the girl yelped as I dragged them out, holding the girl upside down by her leg. I would have held her by her arms, but my claws were incredibly sharp, and I still hadn't gotten used to them.

"Sh!" I said, and the girl, who was about eight years of age, so only a few years older than Kyle, my six year old, had clearly already been crying, just started crying even more. Her partner, for its part at least, was trying to scratch at my paw-hands, but doing nil damage.

I drank the moment in for a solid few seconds.

…

Goddamnit.

~~~