Your Stoicism will be tested. (Armor Hunt, Solo)
Jul 7, 2022 9:06:52 GMT
Post by Rai Ryuichi on Jul 7, 2022 9:06:52 GMT
Rai’s and Y2K’s search had started in Terminus and ultimately led them to a haven of mechanical digimon. As they ambled through the streets of the town Rai’s digivice eventually started beeping. There was a signal of some kind, and following this signal would ultimately lead him even further down below where Hardware Den already was, eventually to what looked like the door of an abandoned bunker.
A message appeared on what looked like a tv screen or a computer monitor installed above the door.
"Your Stoicism will be Tested."
~Trial: Denial of Panic~
Advancing carefully into what became a sketchy mechanical ruin, Rai thought that it reminded him of Evangelion...
it looked like the walls were just grey industrial steel plates of various sizes bolted over each other, while strange green and purple wires hung from the ceiling, some of which were clearly live, with ends that sparked dangerously, intermittently raining tiny lights down from above into his path.
Y2K didn't seem bothered by this though. If anything Y2K thought the colors were pretty. He swayed and weaved through the occasional low-hanging wires, oblivious to the danger. Rai on the other hand had to be extremely careful negotiating the wires. The little guy was too fast and was quickly and obliviously getting away from Rai.
"Y2K wait up!" he called.
Y2K moved past a curtain of what looked like power supply cables before stopping, intending to wait for Rai to catch up; what was taking him so long? On the other side of the cables, the Keramon had emerged into a round medium-sized chamber. It almost looked like an elevator of some kind. There was a raised circular plate directly in the middle of the room that looked like a shiny black lens.
"C'mon Rai! This place is huuuuge!" at least Y2K assumed it was huge. It seemed like it was shaping up to be pretty big, and he wanted to be home in time for breakfast tomorrow!
Rai had barely caught up, parting the power supply cables when he entered an empty room. "Y2K?" he didn't see his partner anywhere.
"Buddy, this isn't funny." he said flatly. Rai explored the circular chamber, walking around it with a hand on the wall. There wasn't anywhere he could see that Y2K could have gone. There were a series of what he thought were black screens circling the wall, but none of them were on or displaying anything.
Stepping away from the wall, he walked towards the center of the room, towards what looked like a camera lens, as black as any of the screens on the walls.
"Hello? Can I have Y2K back please?" he asked the lens-like feature, not really expecting anything to happen; he had to try though. He leaned over the lens and saw his reflection, which on the surface was as impassive as ever; he couldn't be anxious because being anxious wouldn't help anything. That's what he had to keep telling the quietly growing knot in his stomach.
Suddenly the floor shuddered, and before he could figure out what was happening the platform began to plummet dangerously fast as if there was nothing holding it up any longer. Was this it? Was he about to die in the digital world, unknown and never to be found until someone else entered the same death trap? What had happened to Y2K? He couldn't go and leave him in a place like this! But there was nothing he could do to stop the descent; other people would scream, but he knew there was no point in doing that either.
He did the only thing he could do. He simply closed his eyes and waited for what would inevitably come. Did he have regrets? No, that was also a pointless question.
After the platform had been plummeting long enough for him to quietly make his peace, he realized it was actually now gradually starting to safely slow down. Now he was annoyed. Was this some sort of--? Test. The vanishing of his partner and the sudden apparent plummet towards doom had been the first sadistic test this place threw at him. Finally, by the time the platform reached the ground, he was almost secretly aggravated at how it was now moving so slowly.
But what's this? The platform touched down gently and there was still no sign of his e-mail eating pal. "Y2K?" he cautiously called out into the darkness ahead. Nothing. No response. Great.
His digivice began to beep again, so he pulled it from his blazer pocket, and saw it was showing him a dot in the corridor displayed as two lines on their side of his dot, while something else at the top of the screen was sending radial waves out towards him. Was Y2K at the end?
He looked to the DigiRadio function and tried to ask, "Y2K? Where are you?"... alas no response.
Fine. He pulled a tiny flashlight out of his pants pocket and clicked it on, proceeding into the dark new corridor ahead of him with his digivice's radar and said flashlight as his only guide forward.
--
Y2K waited, but Rai never came. That was weird, Rai wasn't that slow. He peeked behind the curtain of power supply cables, but there was only a nook where there had previously been a hallway full of colorful wires and bright sparks.
"Rai?" Y2K entered the metal nook and began to anxiously spin around in place. Not here, not here, not there! In a panic, he flopped through the curtain of flat, strip-like cables, back into the round chamber. That was still there. Flopping onto the ground and flipping over so his unchanging smile appeared to be a frown, before dragging himself along the floor with his arms, the twisted mass of tendrils that formed his body from the collar down, now slithering across the floor like a brace of snakes.
He looked at his distraughtly inverted visage within the reflection of the lens in the middle of the floor, only for the floor to begin plummeting.
"Rai? Rai, I want to go home now! Raaaai?" he whimpered as he clung to the floor for dear Digi-life, tears quickly welling in both his upper and lower sets of eyes. "I'm scared Rai!" he called out to the ever elongating darkness above. No response.
Y2K didn't even realize the platform wasn't hurtling down at the same velocity as before; Where was Rai? Where was he? Was Rai okay? Was he going to be okay? This wasn't fun, this was scary! Filled with anxiety he began chewing on the scenery. Literally. The Keramon had begun to anxiously gnaw on the edges of the lens-like object, his little teeth physically scraping away but a few precious 0s and 1s in the process.
Before the shiny black camera lens-like thing could become truly distressed, however, the platform came to a full stop; if it had touched down any more softly Y2K wouldn't have noticed in his near hysteria. He shakily scuttled around on the floor, eager to get off the platform, still doing his displeased half crab-walk, half slither.
"Is Rai there?" he called out into a new very dark corridor. "Are any friends there?" he asked hopefully. If anyone was down here he was sure they could be friends! They're probably lonely too! But what if he was alone? He didn't want to be alone! He looked back at the platform before spitting two blasts of destructive pink light at it, "Bug Blaster! Keehehehe!" Not very smart, but he wanted to take it out on the mean scary platform for being... mean and scary!
Y2K however decided he was better off scuttling into the dark, than waiting to see if the platform would retaliate somehow. He could light up the path with his bug blasters! Well... those would provide brief light... he supposed he'd better be careful getting around like that...
----
~Trial: Denial of Anger~
Rai walked for what felt like at least 15 minutes. On his way, he'd encountered what seemed to be a few doors found on either side of the hallway—alas he hadn't been able to get any of them to open. Not only did none of them have handles, but his examination of one of them led him to believe any attempt to kick one down would only leave him with a sorer foot. He kept his eyes out for anything that looked like buttons or controls.
Finally, his Digi-radar detected that a left turn ahead would open up into... something. Whatever it was had to be better than 15 more minutes of ubiquitous hallway-- something the creators of this place seemed very keen on. He turned the corner into what looked like…
---
A tearful Y2K was doing a very strange if frantic scuttle through another corridor, occasionally nervously laughing to spew one or two bullets of destructive brighten the darkness for a moment, so he'd have an idea as to his surroundings. The walls seemed only mostly unaffected by the blasts, suffering only shallow dents caused by the destructive impacts, meanwhile, any screen unlucky enough to be accidentally targeted was shattered beyond recognition.
The poor Digimon just wanted to find his human; find him and leave! He hated whatever this place was! Not only was his human nowhere to be found, but there were no friends here either! Just scary elevators and scary hallways!
"Raaaaiii!" he called, only to be greeted by a loud jarring buzz and red lights that seemed to come and go with the sound, lighting up his surroundings better than he could at least and for longer. Flaps on the walls opened to deploy five Missimon that fired and zoomed out, locking onto Y2K.
Oh boy! Friends! He thought, straightening up before the in-training Digimon rocketed into him, One knocking him upside the head, another sailing uncomfortably through the tangle of tendrils that made up his body, and three more missing and preparing for another pass. Of course, Y2K wasn't bothered. He was excited! He would he to play! Y2K loved to play! In fact, it was fair to say he likely didn't fully grasp the difference between fighting and rough-housing. It was probably just as well in this situation...
"Okay, my turn! Bug Blaster; Kekekyekye!" He cackled before firing a pair of pink light balls at a flying Missimon. Blast one went wide but blast number two sent the missile-like Digimon careening towards the floor. One down! Then another would slam into his head at full speed, but Y2K's his body moved as if his head was merely a balloon full of air that had been bopped, the movement causing the other four to miss again. Pain? It was okay if it hurt a little! Kekekeke!
"Bug Blaster! Kahaha!" Pew pew! This time the first blast from his oversized smile struck another Missimon as it was turning itself about to make another pass at the Keramon. It was knocked out of the air so quickly the second ball of pink light had nothing to strike, sailing out into the hallway! Two down! He was two for two.
As three remaining Missimon fanned out and zipped towards Y2K in a three-pronged fashion, the Keramon flopped himself backward, evading his 'playmates' causing them instead to all bump into each other, knocking themselves out.
Wait... was it over? Y2K rubbed his head and poked at the little missile-like creatures with his antenna.
"Are you okay? No more play?" While the dazed group of Missimon didn't respond, the concerned Keramon gathered them up in his oversized hands and began to carefully try to return them to their launcher ports, the flaps of which were still open. "There there, play another time." Y2K told them obliviously.
The noising red lights were still blaring and flaring, so Y2K decided to keep moving while he could still see for the most part, unsure if or when the lights would stop.
---
Rai found himself in a room that looked nearly identical to his father’s bakery--except that it was completely trashed. Glass was smashed, fine cakes were thrown onto the floor, trampled into shards of the display windows and the walls were defaced with vulgar graffiti. It was like the Yakuza had decided Rai’s father Reiden had owed them money that had gone unpaid, and gangsters had made an example of his family’s only pride. Internally squelching the kindling feelings of rage and distraught, he immediately checked his digivice; he was still in the Digital World.
He turned to look back the way he came and looked around the corner. It was the same corridor as he’d been walking just a moment ago. This wasn’t real. What it -was- was an utter mockery of his family’s hard work and livelihood! This place was getting into his head now to produce displays to challenge his composure. This was meant to make him furious.
Perhaps he was furious… but if there was one thing he’d learned it was how to bury his feelings in a frigid, artificial sea of cold indifference. And his anger most of all; the sole point to denying himself everything else was to banish that one burning feeling that could cause him to act out irrationally and hurt someone again after all.
Knowing for certain in his mind that this bakery wasn’t his own, and that it was but a low tactic to get a rise out of him made it easy to douse those flames in his gut. No, easy wasn’t the right word… whatever. He looked towards the corners of the ceiling-- the security cameras were still intact; of course they were, how else would they observe his reaction to all this? It was then he heard something that sounded a distance away-- like someone had tripped the alarm.
Why wasn’t it going off where he was?
Rai, ready to leave this insult behind him, exited the shattered remains of the front door of the shop, thinking if he could find a way to move closer to the sound, then he might become closer to finding Y2K.
I’m coming, buddy.
----
Rai continued through the complex, trying to follow the sounds of blaring security alarms, but soon the sounds shut down disturbingly. Was the alarm shut off? Did Y2K do it? Or did it mean the threat--Y2K-- had been eliminated? He stalled where he was, without the sound to provide a sense of direction towards the source.
That's when he saw something move. It looked like the shadow of a person in a wheelchair-- and they were beckoning him to follow. Rai obliged them, and let them guide him through the corridors until they entered what seemed to be a pure white void… no. The air didn’t feel any different. Tapping his foot made it clear the floor didn’t feel any different. This was the start of another trick. Suddenly a headache came as if some cold claw was reaching into his mind.
---
~Trial: Confronting the Root~
Rai was shown a series of scenes that he'd replayed in his head countless times, yet had never seen from the perspective of a third person.
A younger version of himself was on a field trip with his class.
He'd given part of a pastry to a friend before quickly another student snatched both halves and shoved Rai's part in his face before spitting it out and throwing the other half, meant for his friend on the ground. "Gross! I hate cherry!" complained the greedy child.
Rai's father had made him that cherry turnover and his friend who he'd been sharing it with had started to cry! Upset of both of these things, little Rai wanted the brat's attention.
"That wasn't for you!" complained younger Rai, but the greedy child ignored Rai's younger self and his friend before moving on, not even dignifying him with a response. That's when little Rai snapped and did something unjustifiable; he'd grabbed the bully and pushed him into the busy street; where he was immediately struck by an oncoming car.
The boy had miraculously survived and was screaming and bawling that 'it hurt' and 'he couldn't feel his legs' while
Rai also saw on his younger self's face, anger becoming abject horror for what had happened. Rai's action had permanently crippled another child that day, and it was too horrifying for him to accept.
He'd done this. He'd done it over a danish! He'd ruined someone else's life... someone who had been lucky to even -be- alive. And there was nothing he could do to ever take it back.
That knowledge devoured his young soul, even as he found himself sentenced to 3 months in a Children's Psych Ward. Why had he reacted like that? He'd just been angry... and now he knew anger was an emotion that could kill. How could he justify having a capacity for such actions? No more, he decided, than he could justify his capacity for such feelings.
Yet where did anger come from? Anger could be both empathetic and selfish. The only answer was that to avoid wrath, he couldn't indulge in other emotions either. The safest thing was not to feel at all.
When he finally went home he wasn't the same.
Confronted with these things, Rais's stomach turned over and tied itself in knots as he worked to squelch the hot anger for having these things waved in his face by some unknown. These feelings, these resolves, belonged to him alone. He didn't need to justify them to whatever sadistic force was testing him. And he certainly wasn't about to give it the satisfaction of allowing his composure to crack.
He needed to find Y2K.
--
Yet, further distracting him from that goal spoke a voice, "You're a coward you know that? You're still not confronting the problem. You're just running away." Rai turned to see a teen in a wheelchair. It was more or less what he'd imagine the bully would look like today.
"I decided my emotions were the problem." Rai replied calmly.
"That doesn't even counter or contradict what I just said," asserted the apparition. "You never even apologized." it reminded him as it wheeled its chair around him.
"He doesn't want to hear an apology from me. Meanwhile apologizing to you would mean nothing." Rai said coldly.
"You never know." he replied, looking Rai dead in the eyes before he disappeared.
---
With the apparition gone, the environment finally took the appearance that Rai believed was the truth. It fit at least; he was in some sort of lab, with a large central computer, manned by what Rai assumed was a digimon that looked like an alien. He held out his digivice and an image of the creature with the word VADEMON, was displayed.
“Greetings. You have been remarkably stoic through this all. Quite surprising for a human. You did not succumb to panic, or anger, even when confronted with the things that upset you the most.” remarked the creature with mild approval.
“Your partner on the other hand however has been anything but stoic. They panicked in the elevator and became gleeful when attacked, afterward showing undue concern for their assailants. I’m sure what you came here for will do wonders to compensate. You did come here for the Digimental?”
“We did. Where is Y2K?” asked Rai calmly. He didn’t like imagining what his partner had been put through without him-- he’d be happy just to leave this place with the little guy.
The alien made several inputs without looking at the human. “Y2K? Oh yes, how quaint. Here we are.” with a the press of a button, Y2K was literally zapped into a pod where he continued to be electrocuted for a couple of seconds.
Rai’s eyes widened slightly, then narrowed twofold before he marched over to the pod, opened it without asking for anyone’s permission, and maintaining a wooden expression, took Y2K’s finger in his hand before leading the Dazed Keramon back to Vademon. “The Digimental, please.” he petitioned the alien.
“Yes of course, and such politeness too. You have proven your stoicism once again of course. Take this then, the Digimental of Stoicism.” pressing a button before two half-circle panels parted on the floor to allow something on a pedestal to rise up out of the floor. It was a green and purple object emblazoned with a flame-like symbol.
Now it was up to him to lift it. Rai crouched down, and grabbed it by the sides before preparing to lift with all his might, and nearly jumping into the air from the lack of resistance. Wait… was this thing really made of metal? Was this a fake or something? One way to find out… the lame phrase.
“Digi-Armor Energize.” Rai managed to say sounding less impressed than he normally did, holding his digivice towards the object. Both the object and Y2K surprisingly enough glowed brightly and joined together.
“Keramon Armor Digivolve to!” there was a blinding flash, “Gizumon AR: The Stoic Machine.” came out a metallic voice that sounded even less expressive than Rai-- Like a Hollywood robot.
In Keramon’s place looked like a floating robot. It maintained Keramon’s shape in broad strokes, Wires like the ones in the corridors were in place of the many tendrils of Keramon’s lower form, and the panels on either side could be seen as a nod to both Keramon’s arms and antenna. It sort of had ears like Kuramon, with its main eye in the center of his face and another offset to the right above it. “Y2K?” Rai asked cautiously. This -was- still Y2K wasn’t it?
“Affirmative. I am Y2K.” Gizumon replied, the ‘affirmative’ giving a shiver to Rai. “Right, well go back to your rookie form, we’re leaving.”
Gizumon didn’t make a comment, he merely immediately complied with Rai’s request, separating into Keramon and the Digimental, which stored itself automatically in Rai’s digivice. “Good,” he turned back to Vademon. “We’re ready to leave. Can you make sure we get outside somehow?”
Vademon looked over his shoulder. “Oh yes, fine, I’ll show you out. Follow me.”
A message appeared on what looked like a tv screen or a computer monitor installed above the door.
"Your Stoicism will be Tested."
~Trial: Denial of Panic~
Advancing carefully into what became a sketchy mechanical ruin, Rai thought that it reminded him of Evangelion...
it looked like the walls were just grey industrial steel plates of various sizes bolted over each other, while strange green and purple wires hung from the ceiling, some of which were clearly live, with ends that sparked dangerously, intermittently raining tiny lights down from above into his path.
Y2K didn't seem bothered by this though. If anything Y2K thought the colors were pretty. He swayed and weaved through the occasional low-hanging wires, oblivious to the danger. Rai on the other hand had to be extremely careful negotiating the wires. The little guy was too fast and was quickly and obliviously getting away from Rai.
"Y2K wait up!" he called.
Y2K moved past a curtain of what looked like power supply cables before stopping, intending to wait for Rai to catch up; what was taking him so long? On the other side of the cables, the Keramon had emerged into a round medium-sized chamber. It almost looked like an elevator of some kind. There was a raised circular plate directly in the middle of the room that looked like a shiny black lens.
"C'mon Rai! This place is huuuuge!" at least Y2K assumed it was huge. It seemed like it was shaping up to be pretty big, and he wanted to be home in time for breakfast tomorrow!
Rai had barely caught up, parting the power supply cables when he entered an empty room. "Y2K?" he didn't see his partner anywhere.
"Buddy, this isn't funny." he said flatly. Rai explored the circular chamber, walking around it with a hand on the wall. There wasn't anywhere he could see that Y2K could have gone. There were a series of what he thought were black screens circling the wall, but none of them were on or displaying anything.
Stepping away from the wall, he walked towards the center of the room, towards what looked like a camera lens, as black as any of the screens on the walls.
"Hello? Can I have Y2K back please?" he asked the lens-like feature, not really expecting anything to happen; he had to try though. He leaned over the lens and saw his reflection, which on the surface was as impassive as ever; he couldn't be anxious because being anxious wouldn't help anything. That's what he had to keep telling the quietly growing knot in his stomach.
Suddenly the floor shuddered, and before he could figure out what was happening the platform began to plummet dangerously fast as if there was nothing holding it up any longer. Was this it? Was he about to die in the digital world, unknown and never to be found until someone else entered the same death trap? What had happened to Y2K? He couldn't go and leave him in a place like this! But there was nothing he could do to stop the descent; other people would scream, but he knew there was no point in doing that either.
He did the only thing he could do. He simply closed his eyes and waited for what would inevitably come. Did he have regrets? No, that was also a pointless question.
After the platform had been plummeting long enough for him to quietly make his peace, he realized it was actually now gradually starting to safely slow down. Now he was annoyed. Was this some sort of--? Test. The vanishing of his partner and the sudden apparent plummet towards doom had been the first sadistic test this place threw at him. Finally, by the time the platform reached the ground, he was almost secretly aggravated at how it was now moving so slowly.
But what's this? The platform touched down gently and there was still no sign of his e-mail eating pal. "Y2K?" he cautiously called out into the darkness ahead. Nothing. No response. Great.
His digivice began to beep again, so he pulled it from his blazer pocket, and saw it was showing him a dot in the corridor displayed as two lines on their side of his dot, while something else at the top of the screen was sending radial waves out towards him. Was Y2K at the end?
He looked to the DigiRadio function and tried to ask, "Y2K? Where are you?"... alas no response.
Fine. He pulled a tiny flashlight out of his pants pocket and clicked it on, proceeding into the dark new corridor ahead of him with his digivice's radar and said flashlight as his only guide forward.
--
Y2K waited, but Rai never came. That was weird, Rai wasn't that slow. He peeked behind the curtain of power supply cables, but there was only a nook where there had previously been a hallway full of colorful wires and bright sparks.
"Rai?" Y2K entered the metal nook and began to anxiously spin around in place. Not here, not here, not there! In a panic, he flopped through the curtain of flat, strip-like cables, back into the round chamber. That was still there. Flopping onto the ground and flipping over so his unchanging smile appeared to be a frown, before dragging himself along the floor with his arms, the twisted mass of tendrils that formed his body from the collar down, now slithering across the floor like a brace of snakes.
He looked at his distraughtly inverted visage within the reflection of the lens in the middle of the floor, only for the floor to begin plummeting.
"Rai? Rai, I want to go home now! Raaaai?" he whimpered as he clung to the floor for dear Digi-life, tears quickly welling in both his upper and lower sets of eyes. "I'm scared Rai!" he called out to the ever elongating darkness above. No response.
Y2K didn't even realize the platform wasn't hurtling down at the same velocity as before; Where was Rai? Where was he? Was Rai okay? Was he going to be okay? This wasn't fun, this was scary! Filled with anxiety he began chewing on the scenery. Literally. The Keramon had begun to anxiously gnaw on the edges of the lens-like object, his little teeth physically scraping away but a few precious 0s and 1s in the process.
Before the shiny black camera lens-like thing could become truly distressed, however, the platform came to a full stop; if it had touched down any more softly Y2K wouldn't have noticed in his near hysteria. He shakily scuttled around on the floor, eager to get off the platform, still doing his displeased half crab-walk, half slither.
"Is Rai there?" he called out into a new very dark corridor. "Are any friends there?" he asked hopefully. If anyone was down here he was sure they could be friends! They're probably lonely too! But what if he was alone? He didn't want to be alone! He looked back at the platform before spitting two blasts of destructive pink light at it, "Bug Blaster! Keehehehe!" Not very smart, but he wanted to take it out on the mean scary platform for being... mean and scary!
Y2K however decided he was better off scuttling into the dark, than waiting to see if the platform would retaliate somehow. He could light up the path with his bug blasters! Well... those would provide brief light... he supposed he'd better be careful getting around like that...
----
~Trial: Denial of Anger~
Rai walked for what felt like at least 15 minutes. On his way, he'd encountered what seemed to be a few doors found on either side of the hallway—alas he hadn't been able to get any of them to open. Not only did none of them have handles, but his examination of one of them led him to believe any attempt to kick one down would only leave him with a sorer foot. He kept his eyes out for anything that looked like buttons or controls.
Finally, his Digi-radar detected that a left turn ahead would open up into... something. Whatever it was had to be better than 15 more minutes of ubiquitous hallway-- something the creators of this place seemed very keen on. He turned the corner into what looked like…
---
A tearful Y2K was doing a very strange if frantic scuttle through another corridor, occasionally nervously laughing to spew one or two bullets of destructive brighten the darkness for a moment, so he'd have an idea as to his surroundings. The walls seemed only mostly unaffected by the blasts, suffering only shallow dents caused by the destructive impacts, meanwhile, any screen unlucky enough to be accidentally targeted was shattered beyond recognition.
The poor Digimon just wanted to find his human; find him and leave! He hated whatever this place was! Not only was his human nowhere to be found, but there were no friends here either! Just scary elevators and scary hallways!
"Raaaaiii!" he called, only to be greeted by a loud jarring buzz and red lights that seemed to come and go with the sound, lighting up his surroundings better than he could at least and for longer. Flaps on the walls opened to deploy five Missimon that fired and zoomed out, locking onto Y2K.
Oh boy! Friends! He thought, straightening up before the in-training Digimon rocketed into him, One knocking him upside the head, another sailing uncomfortably through the tangle of tendrils that made up his body, and three more missing and preparing for another pass. Of course, Y2K wasn't bothered. He was excited! He would he to play! Y2K loved to play! In fact, it was fair to say he likely didn't fully grasp the difference between fighting and rough-housing. It was probably just as well in this situation...
"Okay, my turn! Bug Blaster; Kekekyekye!" He cackled before firing a pair of pink light balls at a flying Missimon. Blast one went wide but blast number two sent the missile-like Digimon careening towards the floor. One down! Then another would slam into his head at full speed, but Y2K's his body moved as if his head was merely a balloon full of air that had been bopped, the movement causing the other four to miss again. Pain? It was okay if it hurt a little! Kekekeke!
"Bug Blaster! Kahaha!" Pew pew! This time the first blast from his oversized smile struck another Missimon as it was turning itself about to make another pass at the Keramon. It was knocked out of the air so quickly the second ball of pink light had nothing to strike, sailing out into the hallway! Two down! He was two for two.
As three remaining Missimon fanned out and zipped towards Y2K in a three-pronged fashion, the Keramon flopped himself backward, evading his 'playmates' causing them instead to all bump into each other, knocking themselves out.
Wait... was it over? Y2K rubbed his head and poked at the little missile-like creatures with his antenna.
"Are you okay? No more play?" While the dazed group of Missimon didn't respond, the concerned Keramon gathered them up in his oversized hands and began to carefully try to return them to their launcher ports, the flaps of which were still open. "There there, play another time." Y2K told them obliviously.
The noising red lights were still blaring and flaring, so Y2K decided to keep moving while he could still see for the most part, unsure if or when the lights would stop.
---
Rai found himself in a room that looked nearly identical to his father’s bakery--except that it was completely trashed. Glass was smashed, fine cakes were thrown onto the floor, trampled into shards of the display windows and the walls were defaced with vulgar graffiti. It was like the Yakuza had decided Rai’s father Reiden had owed them money that had gone unpaid, and gangsters had made an example of his family’s only pride. Internally squelching the kindling feelings of rage and distraught, he immediately checked his digivice; he was still in the Digital World.
He turned to look back the way he came and looked around the corner. It was the same corridor as he’d been walking just a moment ago. This wasn’t real. What it -was- was an utter mockery of his family’s hard work and livelihood! This place was getting into his head now to produce displays to challenge his composure. This was meant to make him furious.
Perhaps he was furious… but if there was one thing he’d learned it was how to bury his feelings in a frigid, artificial sea of cold indifference. And his anger most of all; the sole point to denying himself everything else was to banish that one burning feeling that could cause him to act out irrationally and hurt someone again after all.
Knowing for certain in his mind that this bakery wasn’t his own, and that it was but a low tactic to get a rise out of him made it easy to douse those flames in his gut. No, easy wasn’t the right word… whatever. He looked towards the corners of the ceiling-- the security cameras were still intact; of course they were, how else would they observe his reaction to all this? It was then he heard something that sounded a distance away-- like someone had tripped the alarm.
Why wasn’t it going off where he was?
Rai, ready to leave this insult behind him, exited the shattered remains of the front door of the shop, thinking if he could find a way to move closer to the sound, then he might become closer to finding Y2K.
I’m coming, buddy.
----
Rai continued through the complex, trying to follow the sounds of blaring security alarms, but soon the sounds shut down disturbingly. Was the alarm shut off? Did Y2K do it? Or did it mean the threat--Y2K-- had been eliminated? He stalled where he was, without the sound to provide a sense of direction towards the source.
That's when he saw something move. It looked like the shadow of a person in a wheelchair-- and they were beckoning him to follow. Rai obliged them, and let them guide him through the corridors until they entered what seemed to be a pure white void… no. The air didn’t feel any different. Tapping his foot made it clear the floor didn’t feel any different. This was the start of another trick. Suddenly a headache came as if some cold claw was reaching into his mind.
---
~Trial: Confronting the Root~
Rai was shown a series of scenes that he'd replayed in his head countless times, yet had never seen from the perspective of a third person.
A younger version of himself was on a field trip with his class.
He'd given part of a pastry to a friend before quickly another student snatched both halves and shoved Rai's part in his face before spitting it out and throwing the other half, meant for his friend on the ground. "Gross! I hate cherry!" complained the greedy child.
Rai's father had made him that cherry turnover and his friend who he'd been sharing it with had started to cry! Upset of both of these things, little Rai wanted the brat's attention.
"That wasn't for you!" complained younger Rai, but the greedy child ignored Rai's younger self and his friend before moving on, not even dignifying him with a response. That's when little Rai snapped and did something unjustifiable; he'd grabbed the bully and pushed him into the busy street; where he was immediately struck by an oncoming car.
The boy had miraculously survived and was screaming and bawling that 'it hurt' and 'he couldn't feel his legs' while
Rai also saw on his younger self's face, anger becoming abject horror for what had happened. Rai's action had permanently crippled another child that day, and it was too horrifying for him to accept.
He'd done this. He'd done it over a danish! He'd ruined someone else's life... someone who had been lucky to even -be- alive. And there was nothing he could do to ever take it back.
That knowledge devoured his young soul, even as he found himself sentenced to 3 months in a Children's Psych Ward. Why had he reacted like that? He'd just been angry... and now he knew anger was an emotion that could kill. How could he justify having a capacity for such actions? No more, he decided, than he could justify his capacity for such feelings.
Yet where did anger come from? Anger could be both empathetic and selfish. The only answer was that to avoid wrath, he couldn't indulge in other emotions either. The safest thing was not to feel at all.
When he finally went home he wasn't the same.
Confronted with these things, Rais's stomach turned over and tied itself in knots as he worked to squelch the hot anger for having these things waved in his face by some unknown. These feelings, these resolves, belonged to him alone. He didn't need to justify them to whatever sadistic force was testing him. And he certainly wasn't about to give it the satisfaction of allowing his composure to crack.
He needed to find Y2K.
--
Yet, further distracting him from that goal spoke a voice, "You're a coward you know that? You're still not confronting the problem. You're just running away." Rai turned to see a teen in a wheelchair. It was more or less what he'd imagine the bully would look like today.
"I decided my emotions were the problem." Rai replied calmly.
"That doesn't even counter or contradict what I just said," asserted the apparition. "You never even apologized." it reminded him as it wheeled its chair around him.
"He doesn't want to hear an apology from me. Meanwhile apologizing to you would mean nothing." Rai said coldly.
"You never know." he replied, looking Rai dead in the eyes before he disappeared.
---
With the apparition gone, the environment finally took the appearance that Rai believed was the truth. It fit at least; he was in some sort of lab, with a large central computer, manned by what Rai assumed was a digimon that looked like an alien. He held out his digivice and an image of the creature with the word VADEMON, was displayed.
“Greetings. You have been remarkably stoic through this all. Quite surprising for a human. You did not succumb to panic, or anger, even when confronted with the things that upset you the most.” remarked the creature with mild approval.
“Your partner on the other hand however has been anything but stoic. They panicked in the elevator and became gleeful when attacked, afterward showing undue concern for their assailants. I’m sure what you came here for will do wonders to compensate. You did come here for the Digimental?”
“We did. Where is Y2K?” asked Rai calmly. He didn’t like imagining what his partner had been put through without him-- he’d be happy just to leave this place with the little guy.
The alien made several inputs without looking at the human. “Y2K? Oh yes, how quaint. Here we are.” with a the press of a button, Y2K was literally zapped into a pod where he continued to be electrocuted for a couple of seconds.
Rai’s eyes widened slightly, then narrowed twofold before he marched over to the pod, opened it without asking for anyone’s permission, and maintaining a wooden expression, took Y2K’s finger in his hand before leading the Dazed Keramon back to Vademon. “The Digimental, please.” he petitioned the alien.
“Yes of course, and such politeness too. You have proven your stoicism once again of course. Take this then, the Digimental of Stoicism.” pressing a button before two half-circle panels parted on the floor to allow something on a pedestal to rise up out of the floor. It was a green and purple object emblazoned with a flame-like symbol.
Now it was up to him to lift it. Rai crouched down, and grabbed it by the sides before preparing to lift with all his might, and nearly jumping into the air from the lack of resistance. Wait… was this thing really made of metal? Was this a fake or something? One way to find out… the lame phrase.
“Digi-Armor Energize.” Rai managed to say sounding less impressed than he normally did, holding his digivice towards the object. Both the object and Y2K surprisingly enough glowed brightly and joined together.
“Keramon Armor Digivolve to!” there was a blinding flash, “Gizumon AR: The Stoic Machine.” came out a metallic voice that sounded even less expressive than Rai-- Like a Hollywood robot.
In Keramon’s place looked like a floating robot. It maintained Keramon’s shape in broad strokes, Wires like the ones in the corridors were in place of the many tendrils of Keramon’s lower form, and the panels on either side could be seen as a nod to both Keramon’s arms and antenna. It sort of had ears like Kuramon, with its main eye in the center of his face and another offset to the right above it. “Y2K?” Rai asked cautiously. This -was- still Y2K wasn’t it?
“Affirmative. I am Y2K.” Gizumon replied, the ‘affirmative’ giving a shiver to Rai. “Right, well go back to your rookie form, we’re leaving.”
Gizumon didn’t make a comment, he merely immediately complied with Rai’s request, separating into Keramon and the Digimental, which stored itself automatically in Rai’s digivice. “Good,” he turned back to Vademon. “We’re ready to leave. Can you make sure we get outside somehow?”
Vademon looked over his shoulder. “Oh yes, fine, I’ll show you out. Follow me.”
