[tri OOM] The Dark Ocean

Maki sits in the field of blue flowers.

Just her, and the scent of pollen, and the tears drying on her face.

Bakumon is gone. She doesn’t know where he went. But she knows he isn’t coming back to this field, not ever, no matter how long she waits.

Every night, she’d played out the moment that they’d meet again in her head. Sometimes she cried, sometimes he did, sometimes they both did. Sometimes they could pick up where they left off, sometimes it took more time. Sometimes Daigo forgave her, and sometimes he didn’t.

They always had each other, though. Every time she imagined it, they found a way. Never, in not a single one of those dreams, did Bakumon leave her behind again.

Maki sits in the field of blue flowers, and thinks about how the trajectory of her entire life has led her to a dead end. It doesn’t matter where she goes now, or what she does next: On Earth or in the Digital World, she’ll always be surrounded by the people she betrayed.

The sound and motion of a train rattles the field, and the silvers and blues run like paint sprayed with water, the colours shifting and changing.



“You’re panicking,” Maki said, wryly, as Meiko shifted from foot to foot in the doorway of the Venus Fort shopping centre.

Professor Mochizuki had made vague overtures to his agents about keeping an eye on his daughter -- and more importantly, keeping an eye on Meicoomon, who accompanied Meiko everywhere these days, under the paper-thin disguise of ‘just a regular cat.’

Usually, that would mean watching from afar, but Meiko’s overwhelmed bemusement at Odaiba struck a chord with Maki. Enough so that she’d reached out to the girl and offered to show her around town, expecting to be politely turned down. Instead, Meiko had leapt on the opportunity. Maki had to wonder just how lonely this girl really was.

“Sorry,” Meiko said, taking a few steps inside. In her backpack, Meicoomon stretched her paws out, then settled into a more comfortable position. “This place is, um -- a lot more crowded than back home.”

“You’ll find that a lot,” Maki said, leading her deeper into the mall. “Are you coping with school? Dai -- Mister Nishijima tells me you’ve made some friends.”

“Oh! Um, y-yes. I think I have. Tachikawa-san and Takenouchi-san are very sweet,” Meiko said. “A-and Yagami-san is very warm and funny, and Ishida-san is, er …”

“A little scary?”

“Only a little!” Meiko said quickly, waving her hands. “But I thought that about you too, at first, Ms. Himekawa.”

Maki gave her a rueful smile. “So formal. You’re your father’s daughter I suppose.”

That seemed to spark something defiant in Meiko. “What about ‘Hime-chan,’ then? It’s like a pun, because -- …”

“I get it. You’re not the first one to think of it,” Maki laughed. “That’ll do just fine.”



Maki sits in the field of red flowers.

Just her, and the crimson moon, and the tears drying on her face.

and the bloodied meat rotting in the cloth she wrapped it in.

It’s raining, and the damp makes every foul stench around her that much stronger, until she has to clap a hand over her mouth before her dry sobbing becomes retching, and that -- tasting the scratches on her hands where Bakumon struggled in her grip -- just makes it that much worse.

Bakumon is gone. She doesn’t know where to. But she knows he isn’t coming back to this field.

Every night, she’d played out the moment they’d parted in her head. Every time, it was a little different, another detail becoming sharper: The way Megadramon’s body had melted into fire; the way Piedmon’s gaze had softened into something like understanding; the ocean roiling in the sky above, the dark waves obscuring the mass of metal and flesh that sat within it.

Daigo had held her hand afterwards, and told her it’d be okay. It was the first time he lied to her. She’d told him she’d be okay. It was the first time she lied to him. It wasn’t the last time, for either of them.

There’d been a few months, though, when she’d thought it could be true. The ache seemed to lessen, some of the emptiness seemed to be filled. She could look back and smile at the happier memories, without thinking about the painful ones. But then Hikarigaoka happened, and then the invasion of Odaiba, and she’d seen them. The eight. The ones Gennai and Piedmon both had really been waiting for, the ones Bakumon had given his life to buy time for. The Chosen Children, marked since before the first world had risen from the quantum sea.

She wanted to hate them. She’d tried. But they were impossibly human, as flawed as she was, and she couldn’t help but like them. When opportunity had presented itself, and she saw a way to get Bakumon back, she told herself that any one of them would do the same as her, and that if they, the ones chosen to bear the Crests, would fall as far as she was willing to, then she couldn’t be beyond redemption.

Maki sits in the field of red flowers, and thinks about how the trajectory of her life has led her to this place that reeks of decay. She picks up the cloth-wrapped thing and hugs it to her chest.

The sound and motion of a train rattles the field, steam stings her eyes, and the colours of File Island run like blood in the rain.



“How many years has it been since we went to a hot spring?” Daigo asked, grinning over at Maki from the passenger seat.

Thirteen. Maki knew it was thirteen, because the last time they went, they were the same age as the kids, who had elected to celebrate Meiko’s arrival in Odaiba with a visit to the island’s hot springs and sauna.

She had guessed who had been behind it immediately, and Daigo had wryly confirmed her theory as soon as she brought it up: It had been a joint undertaking between Mimi Tachikawa and Takeru Takaishi, each with their own particular agendas that they were all too happy to help the other with.

She didn’t answer Daigo.

“The first time, we forgot to decide when we’d get out of the baths,” Daigo continued, cheery as anything. “I got out so early! But you, you stayed in the baths for a surprisingly long time, Hime-chan.”

Maki gave him an irritable look, and he cleared his throat awkwardly.

“I know that today we’re going out of duty,” he said. “Nothing else.”



Maki sits on the grey beach, and watches the black ocean lap at the shore.

Just her, and the ruined city at her back, and the tears drying on her face, and the eight long-legged shapes looming over her.

(Bakumon is gone. Bakumon is gone. Bakumon is gone.)

She’d dreamed this moment, on the nights when she woke up with a dry mouth and her heart thumping. The image would linger in her mind only for a moment after waking, and then it would fade, until only the inevitability of it was left.

This is what she’d seen through the waves of the ocean that day, before Bakumon had given his life to stop it. This is what Piedmon beckoned, and what Gennai feared. A Dark Ocean that swallowed worlds.

“I had to see him again,” she says, softly.

“I had to see him again,” one of the shapes echoes back.

“You don’t understand,” she says, looking at the sands. She can see the shapes out of the corner of her eye. “He was like a part of me. He was everything good about me. He died because of me, and I couldn’t tell anyone, and I couldn’t forget. It wasn’t right.”

“He was good,” says the shape with a flower in her hair. “It was right.”

“It was right,” says the shape with a hat. “It was a part of me. It was a part of me.”

“I couldn’t understand,” says the shape with a whistle around her neck. Her voice is melodic, like a whalesong. “He died, and I couldn’t understand why it happened. I couldn’t see him again.”

“It was right. It was good,” says the shape with a hat.

“No,” Maki says, shaking her head. “It wasn’t fair. It was someone else’s world, and someone else’s war. But we had to fight it anyway.”

“No,” says the shape with a whistle around her neck.

“He was like a world,” says a shape out of sight, his voice a low growl. “It was his world. He was like a part of someone else’s world. He had to fight.”

“He was like everything good about someone else’s world,” says a gentle-voiced shape. “He had to fight. But it wasn’t fair.”

Maki opens her eyes again. The tides are slipping closer now. In the distance, she sees the ruins of a lighthouse, half-obscured by fog.

“He couldn’t see you again,” says another gentle voice, a boy this time. “You couldn’t see him again. It wasn’t fair. But we couldn’t forget.”

“We couldn’t forget,” agrees the shape with a whistle around her neck.

Maki lifts her head to look at the shapes. They’re too tall, too long for her to see their faces, they seem to stretch off into infinity like the stalks of tremendous, black flowers. She hears a train bell when she looks at them, and a whistle blowing in the distance, and the sound of butterfly wings.

“Can I find him again?” She asks.

This time, they don’t reply. But the shape with a whistle around her neck lifts her hand, and points out into the ocean. Maki doesn’t know if it’s an answer, or a directive, or a warning. But the trajectory of her life has led her here, to the ocean where everything ends up eventually.

She stands up. The shapes vanish, like reflections disturbed by ripples in water. She walks out into the ocean, as the distant rattle of a train reverberates through the ruined city.



The day the kids said they’d return to the Digital World, Maki called her parents.

The phone rang, and rang, and rang. It went to the answer machine, a message her mother set up years ago stumblingly asking people to leave their name and number, and she’ll call them back.

Maki glanced at the clock. In less than an hour, she needed to be at the agreed spot, with Ken Ichijouji’s digivice, so that the kids could open a Gate -- a Gate that she’d use to enter the Digital World after they had. The last part of a plan that’s been years in the making.

She was happy about it. She just didn’t know if she’d be coming back.

“Hi, Mom,” she said. “It’s Maki. I know we haven’t talked in a while, and that’s on me, but I’m going away for a while. I can’t really tell you where, just that it’s important that I go, really important, and I hope you’ll be … I don’t know. Happy for me, I guess. If I don’t come back, then just know that I’m all right, and I miss you, and Dad, too. There’s so much I’ve wanted to tell you, but the most important thing is that I’m -- …”

A harsh beep on the other end of the line. Of course. Maki hung up and considered calling back.

She didn’t. Instead, she left her phone in her desk. She wouldn’t be needing it any more.



Maki walks through the black waters.

Just her, and the water, and the shadow people. The world is breaking apart. She realises, as the sky splits and fractures, that the Reboot didn’t save anything. It just patched over the cracks, buying a little more time before the inevitable.

“It’s breaking,” Maki says, quietly, looking at the red cracks shifting across the sky. “Everything is breaking.”

The water laps at her knees.

“This time, I’ll be chosen. Bakumon … Where are you? We need to save the world,” Maki says. A wave washes against her back, rocking her forward. “We’re the only ones who can save it. You and I. Only us. Only us who were Chosen. I trust you, Bakumon. Because you’re my partner.”

She sees a shape ahead, just beneath the ocean’s surface. The shadow people watch her without blinking.

“There you are.”

She walks, and walks, as the waters get deeper and deeper, and the shadow men follow, their eyes glaring bright red, the water shimmering off their gills for just a second with every movement.

Maki walks until she sees Bakumon just ahead, and thrusts her hands down towards him. The surface of the water splits, and Bakumon vanishes with the ripples.

For a moment, Maki just stares at the ocean’s surface. Then she slowly pulls her hands out. The black water drains between her fingertips.

“Bakumon …”

She turns, slowly. The shadow men are close now. Hundreds of them, passing through the water towards her.



"'I can be your new partner?' What late night drama did you get that line from?"



A sharp crack of clarity hits her, and she raises her gun, pointing it with one trembling hand at the shadows.

“Don’t come any closer!” She snarls. One of the shadow men tilts its head. They don’t stop moving. “Stay back!”

They keep moving.

Maki’s mouth twists into a grimace, and she fires.