Rebuild and Rehab - Mentality

It seemed like Isaac's current unconscious condition was going to be a major pain in the ass to shake off. He hadn't moved a single muscle, even after being roughly handled from the Dark Area to here by a rather vengeful Greymon. Even now that he was here in the medical center, being stared at intently by a group of concerned onlookers, he didn't even seem to bat an eye in reaction. He simply laid there on the floor, only his shallow yet even breaths proof that he was alive right now.

With the benefit of closer examination, it was clear that Isaac wasn't exactly as healthy as his tranquil rest indicated. His leathery purple skin had failed somewhat, a few darkened veins standing out especially by comparison. His chest was heaving quite a bit, as if even breathing was giving him major issue. Even the smiley face emblazoned on his chest looked like it was in pain, eyes squeezed shut in consternation. There was no way Isaac could have been having a good time right now.

Thankfully, the Impmon's silence would stop soon. Unfortunately, what replaced it was probably worse. Isaac's eyes shot open, and like a wild animal possessed he charged towards the corner of the room on all fours. He fumbled around for a garbage can, desperately pawing until his hands finally seized what he was looking for.

That's when he started to retch, any sight or smell thankfully masked by Isaac's distance from Luke and Iko. His entire body seemed to shake between hurls, and the poor thing had to sit splayed on the floor because he couldn't even find the strength to stand.

And to think, this was before he even knew what he had done.

Isaac flopped over like a dying fish, moving from garbage can to bucket. Honestly, he didn't even know what he was retching up. Did Digimon even have puke? Did Digimon even have bodily fluids? Now was not the time to debate digi-biology, though. Now was the time to feel like total shit! Mikemon had warned him that the pills would hit hard if they wore off in any form besides Impmon form, but he didn't realize that it would be like this. Hell, he didn't realize that degenerating forcibly would also cause the corruption to hit him like a brick. Why did he even degenerate, anyway? How did he even get here? There were a million and one questions, and Isaac was peering into this bucket full of digipuke as if it would have the answers to all of them.

He heard a question. Iko? What was he doing here? And why did he have to ask about pain, because it seemed like him asking that reminded every cell of Isaac's body that they were on fire. Isaac tried his best to speak between retches, stammering out something somewhat resembling a complete sentence.

"I-" Retch.

"EV-" Retch.

"EVER-" Retch.

"EVERYTHING!" And that was the sound of Isaac letting it all out. Some people may have noted that Impmon were rather catlike, but nowhere was it more true than in the "hairballs" Isaac was currently choking out. Finally, though, he seemed to be done. He took a few shaky steps away from the bucket, slumping against the garbage can and letting out a defeated groan.

"What even happened? My head's on fire," he complained, still working up the strength to at least give Iko a polite wave.

"My . . . eyes?" Isaac asked, clearly dazed. He flopped himself around so he could get a good look at himself in the reaction of the garbage can. Sure enough, reflected in its porcelain surface, he could make out hazy orange blobs where hazy green ones should have been. "That can't be good," he muttered, more to himself than Iko. Orange eyes sounded cool on paper, but they seriously weren't all they were cracked up to be. It honestly looked more like rust than anything else. The only saving grace to this gross tone was that they didn't have the harsh pink color of the D-Reaper. That would've been seriously bad.

Without anything else to do but look at his eyes, he had little choice but to listen to Iko's explanation. The bad news was that Iko had no idea what he was doing here. The worse news was that Isaac did. There were two humans with him before. Now, he was hearing that both came in badly injured.

His eyes snapped open wide as he realized that he had failed.

"No," he said, softly. Every muscle in his body hurt right now, but by angling his tail and pushing his hand against the ground he was able to at least rise onto his feet. "I need to check on them," he said, ducking a little to try and dodge whatever attempt Iko would make at restraining him. "Damnit, I need to see them! Now!"

His body didn't agree. Isaac's legs gave way underneath him the second he took a step forward, almost splaying out as Isaac tumbled down. He caught himself with a desperate thrust of his palms, face barely an inch away from the floor. Then his arms, too, gave way, leaving Isaac lying on the ground in a heap.

And yet he was still defiantly undulating to the door. What a trooper.

Isaac squirmed in Iko's grip. Or, at least, he tried to. With how much firm contact with anything hurt Isaac's body, he had to keep his wiggles to a tragic minimum. "Just try and stop me!" he half-groaned, half-challenged. Judging by the fact that he was now putting up as much resistance as a dead frog, Iko had already tried and succeeded.

Trusting Dr. Mikemon was a novel concept, though. Isaac huffed a little in displeasure at the mention, his puffed-out cheeks looking rather ridiculous in his current form. "I trusted him, alright," Isaac said. "And the pills he gave me to make sure my higher forms didn't get corrupted didn't even work. I could feel the Reaper gnawing at my mind and they hadn't even been in my system for 5 minutes yet!" He sighed a little after his little outburst. "I know, I know. All this Reaper stuff's really complicated. But else how am I supposed to feel? He told me to use them in case of emergency, and all they did was make the emergency worse."

They probably did, right? Everything went black, and then he wakes up in the hospital hearing about two hurt humans. His goal was supposed to be no hurt humans, darnit! He could understand Alicia, with whatever the heck happened to her, but Mitsuko? How? Why? Who the hell would hurt Mitsuko, of all people?

He turned to look up at Luke, trying and failing to call up a weary smile. "He knows I'm bolting for the door the second he lets go," Isaac said. "Can't say I blame him."

Iko probably didn't expect his little flick to get that much of a reaction, so it was probably a huge surprise when Isaac let out a shuddering wince of pain. "Ow!" he yelped, trying to wiggle an arm out of Iko's grip to rub the back of his head. "Jeez, I don't even think you were trying with that one . . ." Isaac muttered. If it hurt this bad, how much did he just mess himself up? Maybe he really should have taken Iko's advice and rested.

At Iko's question, Isaac shook his head. "It's a long story," he said. "I'll explain in a bit. My head's kinda swimming here." At least it wasn't swimming too badly for Isaac to hear Iko out, though. He nodded as he listened to each of the wolf's points, not putting up nearly as much resistance as he had before. What was he supposed to do? Dr. Mikemon probably was Alicia and Mitsuko's best hopes, just like how he was also Isaac's. He sure as hell wasn't perfect, but he was at least helping make a difference. That was more than Isaac could say about his own luck so far.

With Luke, too, asking about how things started off, Isaac took a deep breath. "So I was in the Dark Area, looking for my next spirit," he started. "And god knows why, but one of my friends was there. Mitsuko, the white haired one. And while she's minding her business there, this giant, horrifying cybernetic dragon attacks her. Now, you know me. I'm not just going to let a friend get hurt. Especially when there's something, anything I can do about it. But the power coming off of that dragon was insane. I knew there was no way NeoDevimon could stand up to it. Not without some help.

Remember those pills Mikemon gave me? The ones he said would stabilize my form? I figured if I didn't at least try using them, Mitsuko would've been in some really deep trouble. So I took the pill and got back to Devidramon, so I could at least go toe to toe with this thing. It was a brutal as hell fight, but I knew I'd be able to save the day. I mean, I had to, right?

Then Mitsuko told me that this dragon was actually Alicia. The redhead, and a really close friend of mine." Isaac paused, swallowing a little. "And you have no idea how much that threw me off. I could've fought a monster to the bitter end if that's what it took. But Alicia? How the hell was I supposed to even think about hurting her? I was furious that this happened to her, and terrified of hurting her, and terrified of Mitsuko getting hurt, and I was so scared that I couldn't even breathe, and everything felt so hot, and . . . "

He squeezed his eyes shut, forcing himself to blink back tears. "And then I woke up here," he said, voice dulling to a flat, neutral tone. "I don't remember a thing that happened after blacking out. But . . . if they got hurt this badly, then I failed, didn't I? Either I wasn't strong enough, or whatever the hell I did just made things worse. And I can't even remember what happened, so how the hell do I even start to make up for it?"

Isaac's entire body was practically shuddering from terror by now, and he was blinking back tears so hot that they were almost steaming off of his face. Clearly, the poor kid was sitting on the cusp of a breakdown.

"Knew it," Isaac grumbled, rubbing the back of his head in a mix of frustration and embarrassment. In his current state, Isaac was fairly sure that a particularly determined In-Training could kick his ass. "Wish I knew what the heck Mikemon put in this stuff to give them so much kick. Pretty sure I'm gonna be feeling this for, like, at least another week." Maybe he'd luck out and that wouldn't be the case, but "floored" didn't even being to describe Isaac right now.

At least now Isaac could properly sit. He sank into the chair that Iko put him into, legs dangling off the end as he basically smooshed 99% of his body in the corner between the seat and back. It was almost like watching a human trying to melt. How tired was Isaac right now if that was his current state of mind?

He nodded as Iko described Mikemon's intent behind the demon pills. "I did!" Isaac protested. "I could've gambled with Orochimon if I was trying to finesse it. He's at least somewhat stable. But I knew I had to go right to Devidramon if I wanted to stand a chance against Alicia. He's been my strongest, most reliable form since I found him. Although . . ." Isaac pondered. Was there really another?

"When Elliot and I were trying to escape, we were able to access something stronger. Some sort of dragon knight, more powerful than anything we've become before." Isaac explained. "Whatever it was, it wasn't Dualdramon, Devidramon and Gargoylemon's usual fused form. But if we reached a new form together, did that mean I had another form I could've tapped into? I . . . god, I don't even know." Could Isaac have averted all of this if he had dug just a little deeper? Or would trying to pull out a form he had never used before meant all sorts of unintended consequences? He couldn't imagine how he would've felt if he tried to summon a new form into existence and instead accomplished nothing but bringing the D-Reaper back into this world.

At least Luke was optimistic about this. Isaac felt a clutching in his chest, but he still forced a small smile. "Yeah . . ." he said, even if in his current state of guilt he was having a lot of trouble fully internalizing that. "Alicia was out for blood that day, and she's strong enough when she's holding back. I don't know if Mitsuko would've been okay at all, especially since she got ambushed. But . . . even if it's a little better, I feel like there's still so much more I could've done. There had to have been, right?"

Isaac sighed at Iko's attempt at kind words. "I wish I felt alright," he admitted. "About any of this."

Isaac shuddered, trying to imagine what would qualify as poison to a being like the D-Reaper. "If its up to me, I'm not touching these things ever again," Isaac said. "Or at least, finding a better way of winding them down." Something told him the second time would be even worse than the first. And if the second was that bad, how bad would the third be? Nevertheless, it was still preferable to ever risking D-Reaper corruption again. Had he not taken the pills, he may not have even put up an initial resistance.

Unfortunately, as always, Iko was right. A slight blush spread across the Impmon's face as he looked down, grinding his teeth in frustration. "I couldn't hurt her," he said, wondering why he had to let his sentimentality hold him back so much. "If it was just some random Digimon, I could've forced it away. But what am I supposed to know that every little attack I do is hurting her? It makes me sick just thinking about it . . ." And Isaac was already sick, too, so that had to be some major sickness going on. "I swear to god, if I ever find the lowlife scum that did this to her-" Isaac started, but was thankfully interrupted by a horrible hacking fit.

Iko seemed a little confused by Isaac's new spirits, but frankly so was Isaac. "It's like, I think they merged together?" Isaac started, trying to remember how exactly the visions of his spirit arising played out. "But it seemed like its own entity, too. And Yasyamon and Devidramon almost seemed like they were deferring to it. Almost like they were the keys to summoning it. Kind of like how we fused, and SkullSatamon made its presence known. But that's all I can really say about it."

His attempt at deduction finished, Isaac sighed as Iko tried to reasure him. "I dunno. Doing it right, I guess," he sighed. "Honestly, I don't think I've ever done it right since coming here. Elliot's a way better fighter than he gives himself credit for, but every time I step up the plate I always find a way to blow it. Can't say I've ever pulled off a win sparring with you and Alicia, after all. And I spent the whole D-Reaper incident captured while Elliot had to go it alone. And now . . . this.

Am I just weak?"