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Yamato Ishida ([personal profile] angry_friendship_wolf) wrote2020-10-13 01:24 am

[tri OOM] The Dark Chosen

It’s three in the morning when every alarm in Fuchu Prison goes off. The maximum security wing has been compromised by a vast, shimmering distortion, and every electronic device in the building is going haywire.

Gennai steps out of the distortion, smiling.


---


The Bureau had managed to keep the theft of their prototypes mostly a secret. The attack on Fuchu Prison, meanwhile, is all over the news when Yamato wakes up, complete with calls for people to be on the lookout for three escaped convicts.

Agent Nishijima arrives an hour later, looking disheveled enough that Yamato’s not even sure he got any sleep.

“You heard about the prison break?” He asks without greeting them. Taichi, toast in mouth, just wordlessly turns his thumb to where the news is running the eighth bulletin of the morning on the breakout.

“Gennai’s breaking people out of prison now?” Sora asks.

Nishijima holds up a blurry security camera photo of what is absolutely, definitely not Jyou, but equally certainly Gennai wearing Jyou’s face. “Unless Kido-kun wants to confess to something.”

“Very funny,” Jyou says, his voice just slightly strained.

“So,” Taichi says. “Three of your artificial Digimon, and three of convicts to partner up with them. Who are we looking at her?”

Nishijima gives an irritable noise, tossing down a file and opening it.

“Kaito Otsuka,” he says.

“I remember him!” Mimi says brightly. “Wasn’t he the cult guy? Justice Minister’s kid?”

“That -- yes, that’s actually true, I suppose,” Nishijima says. “Otsuka, currently eighteen years old, is the eldest son of the former Justice Minister. He committed a string of assaults, and even a few murders, over the course of three years, all covered up by his family. The truth came out when he attempted to expand his activities to starting a cult, and once one of his potential recruits went public, the whole lie unraveled and everyone learned about his other crimes as well.”

“That was huge news,” Takeru murmurs, looking over the file. “I kind of figured he’d be on death row as soon as he hit twenty.”

“Next up,” Nishijima says, setting down another file. “Ryusei Daimon, nineteen years old.”

The young man in the picture is, Yamato thinks, more conventionally intimidating, a boy with shaggy hair pulled back into a high ponytail, furiously angry eyes, and the build of a linebacker, glowering at the camera.

“Never heard of this guy,” Mimi chirps. “He’s not bad looking, though.”

“He’s killed four people,” Nishijima says flatly. “He was the leader of a juvenile gang. When they started expanding out into other gangs’ territories, he ended those gang wars personally by putting on brass knuckles and fighting with other gang leaders and their closest subordinates. Four of his opponents died from their injuries, the rest are all either permanently crippled or in prolonged rehab. He was caught, found guilty, and jailed pretty quickly -- killing and maiming that many people that fast is a good way of shooting up to being the police’s number one priority.”

“I find him less attractive now,” Mimi says wisely. Jyou pats her on the shoulder absently.

“So we’ve got the sadistic rich kid and the sadistic gang leader,” Takeru says. “And one more?”

“Those two would be plenty,” Sora adds, frowning.

“Mizu Kojima,” Nishijima says, setting down the last file. “Eighteen years old.”

“Oh!” Koushiro pokes his head over the top of his computer. “I know her!”

Eight heads turn to squint at him.

“-- Ah. That is, we’ve crossed paths before,” Koushiro says awkwardly. “Everyone in hacker communities sort of knows each other.”

“... Right,” Nishijima says. “Well, like Izumi-kun says, she’s a hacker. She’s also a blackmailer, though. She gathered blackmail material on more than a dozen people, mostly for the purposes of extorting them for money. There’s reason to believe she may have ordered hits on people who got too close to dismantling her operations.”

Everyone squints at Koushiro just a little more, but he’s already distracted himself with work again.

“In Koushiro-kun’s defence,” Jyou says, raising his hand, “she’s objectively the least terrible of the three.”

“It’s not a competition, Jyou-senpai,” Sora says reprovingly.

“But if it was -- …”

“Anyway,” Nishijima says. “It seems … plausible … that Gennai wants to partner his stolen prototypes up with these three. That was something we tried ourselves -- with agents, not convicts -- but at the time, it didn’t make any of the prototypes more functional.”

“If they’re partnered with humans, though, then they can theoretically evolve,” Koushiro says distractedly. “Although it’s more likely he needs them to act as control devices.”

“Do we know where he took them? He’ll have them somewhere in the Digital World,” Yamato says.

“The distortion closed too quickly. And it isn’t like you can easily move back and forth between worlds like he can, not right now,” Nishijima says. “We may have to wait for them to come to us.”

“Good to know we’re still cleaning up your messes, Agent,” Takeru says sweetly. “It’s so exciting. We never know which of your bad choices will backfire on us next.”

“If Gennai’s done this, that means he’s going on the offensive,” Yamato says. “Either his new Chosen kill us and we can’t complete a cure, or he’ll try to corner us and force one of us to blacken our Crests, so he can force a fusion with Meicoomon. Either way he wins.”

“Gotta love those almost-no-win situations,” Taichi mutters. “Guy’s got about a dozen win conditions and we’ve got just the one.”


---



Mizu has to admit, this Gennai guy had been very generous. He’d broken them out of prison, after all, and that would be enough, but he had also provided them with clothes and food afterwards. The first real clothes and real food, not a prison jumpsuit and ungarnished rice, that Mizu has enjoyed in almost a year.

It’d been longer for her companions, she knows. She remembers Kaito Otsuka’s arrest, it had made the news -- the Minister of Justice’s son arrested for brutalising the helpless and the poor and getting his father to cover it up -- and the big guy, Ryusei, had spent just over two years behind bars.

When they finish their food, Gennai makes his offer. He couches it in all the usual bullshit that people making ‘offers’ had: It might be a new experience for Kaito and Ryusei, but Mizu has heard all the platitudes about ‘working together’ and ‘turning their lives around’ before, from every government official and yakuza oyabun who had visited her to try and convince her to work for them in exchange for an early release. She’d turned all of them down.

Gennai’s offer is almost intriguing, at least on an intellectual level. He would give them the prototype Digimon he had stolen from the Data Management Bureau, and in return, they would kill the Chosen and destroy their research on a cure for the Infection. After that, they could do whatever they liked with their Digimon after that.

“You needn’t have bothered with the fucking incentive,” Ryusei scoffs. “A fight with some destined heroes? Sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to me. It’s been too long since I’ve had a real challenge.”

“Just in it for the thrill, are you?” Mizu asks dryly.

“In it for the glory. I want to say that I fought the prophesied saviours of the multiverse and won, with the trophies to prove it,” Ryusei replies. “Not a single other gang leader in the world who can say that.”

“Your gang’s all gone, Daimon-sama,” Kaito says sweetly. “I don’t think you’re much of a leader of anything right now.”

“Then I’ll make a new gang. People’ll flock to me after this,” Ryusei says. “What the fuck are you getting out of this, Otsuka?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Kaito asks. He gave them both a wide, benign smile. “I’ll be the new protector of the world. What more could I ask for?”

“Talk about unimaginative. You want to kill the Chosen just so you can take their place?”

“Says the man who hasn’t planned further than his next fight.”

Mizu sighs, throwing up her hands. “Well, thanks for the clothes and the food and the prison break, but it’s a hard pass from me. I’ve got no issue with the Chosen and I get nothing out of killing them.”

Gennai arches an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Look, I’m not like the rich kid over here who wants a head start on his next cult, and I’m not the big guy who just wants to get in a dick-measuring contest with destiny,” Mizu says. “You know what I like? Zeroes at the end of my bank balance. Killing the people keeping the world from being blown up seems like a pretty good way of screwing myself over, so good luck to you all, but I’m out.”

Kaito holds up a hand, waggling his fingers. “Come on, you’re just going to walk out? You could join me. If we’re the new Chosen, people will pay you whatever you want. They’ll have to, if they want your protection.”

“Oh, sweetheart, no,” Mizu replies. “I’ve got a system that was working out pretty well for me, and it doesn’t involve putting myself in danger to fight off angry monsters.”

“How about a fresh start?” Gennai asks. “If you walk out, I can return you to Tokyo unharmed -- where you will, of course, be arrested and imprisoned again in less than a day, because your face is being circulated across every major news station, in every newspaper, and all around the internet.”

“And you’re going to fix that for me, are you?”

“I am,” Gennai says. “I can delete every single record of you. Nobody will know your face, your name, anything. You’ll be completely anonymous, able to create whatever new identity you like. I’ll even give you an exorbitant amount of money to get started with. All I ask for in return is your help in dealing with the Chosen.”

Mizu hesitates. Then: “All right. I guess I’m game.”

“Splendid,” Gennai says. He flicks a hand, and three blocky devices -- violet, dark red, and white, their frames dominated by screens -- appear in front of him. “Let’s begin your training.”