On the second to top floor of her tower, in her most spacious audience chamber, Lucemon had to give the former dark lord Yamacus credit. Yamaki didn't so much as blink or cower in front of the demon lord. Stripped of any weapons on him and made to stand face to face with the new Empress of Japan, a hybrid one part his race and the other the one he had spent years in a mock crusade against, Yamaki didn't twitch.
"So, what happens next? You blink and zap me into one of your little perfect people dolls?" Yamaki asked in the same business manner he used when facing his shadow government superiors.
"While I'm sure it would be a definite improvement for you," Lucemon said, her voice echoing in the smooth circular room engraved with her emblem. "I can't let that happen. Not yet."
"Not yet?" Yamaki asked, hoping for some information he could use.
"When I detected seismic activity under my tower, I knew something was wrong. In particular since I used my powers to remove the possibility of natural disaster. But I never dreamed I would also sense the last missing piece of the remaining demon lord's data. I never dreamed Riley would actually return here willingly. I figured I would have to spread my influence again systematically, just to find her. You have no idea what a boon it was for me to sense her here."
Now Yamaki did grimace. 'Why is it the one time we didn't listen to Roshi was the one time he was right?!'
Yamaki had been flown with impossible speed by the dragon of purgatory to near the top of the tower where he was delivered excitedly by the two dragon children to their 'mother'. Yamaki had no idea who the two poor souls used to be, and he had more pressing things to think about. "So you're going to trade me for the sin data still inside her?"
"Well, close," Lucemon said. "When I recovered the memories of the first Lucemon, I learned a few things from his memories. Impmon was able to give up his sin data without any problem, and the Gremlin tried to steal mine without my consent, and I doubt the power was taken from Daemon and the others willingly. However, being a demon lord, I can't be sure if Riley won't try something to leave me without her sin data and you back in her arms. The only solution is to get her so angered that she totally forgoes all thoughts of strategy and attacks me head on. And seeing someone she cared about altered before her eyes will have more emotional impact than seeing that person already changed."
Yamaki had a sick feeling in his stomach. He knew precisely what she meant. "But why? Why do you want it so badly? Just for more power?"
"Of course not... I'm already powerful enough with my own sin data and that of five other demon lords... I simply wish to make sure that power is never used against me, or my utopia."
Yamaki didn’t say anything else after that.
Gorou "Shibumi" Mizuno gazed up at the paper white sky.
'Reminds me of the sky background for the first episode of Golden Rangers.' He saw a few gathering silver clouds. 'Is it going to rain? Can it rain? Or did Queenie Lucy decide that rainy days were just no fun and messed with the weather system while she was at it?' Shibumi was famous (infamous) for being the most odd minded of the Monster Makers. Opinions of him ranged from thinking on a level above that of his compatriots, or just being plain crazy. Shibumi himself preferred to see himself as thinking a bit more outside the box than most. Yet even he was having trouble compiling a list of every single thing Lucemon would have needed in order to make her little ideal world work properly and continue to work properly. 'How are there enough doctors to keep so many kids healthy? Do they still get sick? If not, what's keeping their immune systems from becoming hyper sensitive and developing several allergies?'
Shibumi remembered that the police station he had passed was now just another public play house. 'Is there really no crime now? Is everyone that scared of Lucemon's grunts, or are they programmed like robots not to be able to?'
Shibumi remembered a foreign novel he had once read called 'Clockwork Orange', that had a shameless murderer undergone torturous sessions that made him unable to commit any act of violence... leaving him to be brutally assaulted by his former gang members and victims the moment he was released from prison. 'Is everyone effected mentally by this change, just like that? Are they just unable to do anything wrong? Written like automatons to simply not be able to commit any acts of violence?'
Shibumi shuddered.
Cutiepupmon and Janyu happily skipped along ahead of him on a hopscotch pattern permanently engraved into the sidewalk, holding hands and singing like a couple of children - which is what they were. Shibumi, of course, being the adult, was the one hauling along the apparently healthy candy, ice cream, soda, and dog food. While Shibumi had no children of his own, he was rather perplexed at how this system could even properly function. Some adults who left the grocery store had a tired look on their faces, others were neutral, and many had a dreamy, almost innocent expression on their faces. The shopping center itself was shaped like a giant smiling toy centipede.
'I don't know what's worse... what Lucemon will do if her perfect little world breaks down from fundamental flaws in its design... or that it works out perfectly and keeps on going and going forever. And of course, since it'll be perfect, why should anything whatsoever ever change?'
Shibumi thought of what the hostile two in the apartment had said, that many of the former adults were just idly waiting for their parents to return 'from vacation.' With adult to child ratio turned upside down however, Shibumi doubted there were enough 'parents' to go around. 'Are they going to ever eventually learn the truth? Or does it just reset itself each day?' A chilling though occurred to Shibumi. 'Is anyone going to even age?' Given the power Lucemon had to have gained control over to make this wide scale a change possible, it didn't seem that far-fetched.
'If that's true, that everything would be completely frozen, only the present would exist, the past just previous copies of the current day, the future just more copies to come... and everyone oblivious to how similar every day is from the next...'
"Hey, Uncle Shibumi!" said Janyu, turning around. "After we eat, can we go to..." He gave the name of a place.
Shibumi stared. He repeated what he was sure Janyu hadn't said, and the boy just cheerfully repeated it back, as did Cutiepupmon.
Shibumi just murmured: "But, but that's a prison."
"That's where bad people go," Mayumi said, smart-aleck.
"But there are no bad people in Japan." Janyu said without irony or sarcasm.
"Yep! Uncle Shibumi is just being silly," the Cutiepupmon giggled, and Janyu joined her in giggling soon enough.
Shibumi had to see this for himself, so they took a fair detour to the location the kids had described.
The prison in Lucemon's world was no more. In its place was just a beach of limestone and sandstone rocks, inhabited by water-based Digimon and tanned kids with the most innocent hearts imaginable who before Lucemon's change had been the most awful serial killers and rapists in the region.
But at the same times, kids who had been dangerous convicts and prison guards before Lucemon's warping of everything, were now playing together, sleeping on the beach, only to wake up and play again.
It took a bit for Shibumi to remind himself that this 'brave new world' was being dictated by a little girl in an adult woman's body who by her very nature believed herself incapable of error and that any being who disagreed with her was automatically incorrect because they disagreed with her.
Up in the sky, a Birdramon and little girl flew about, who had originally been a jet-fighter, it's pilot and copilot in the attempted exploration of the white field around Japan.
"Eiko, what are you doing now?"
"Don't worry, Kei, I'm not changing anything! I'm just taking a few screen captures of Yui."
"And just why are you doing that?"
"So when things are back to normal, and is human again, I can show these pictures to all her friends how she was going around Tokyo naked!"
Kei felt her leaves droop.
In what originally had been the In-Training Digimon Kei's bedroom (in term of before Lucemon's mass change) the three kids were continuing their games.
"Do you think that purple fox will come back to play with us?" Mizuki asked.
"Why would a girl care if a boy comes back to play?" Wormmon asked.
"Cause he's cute!"
Tanemon (originally Kei's foster mother, and before that a human woman named Miss Asaji) was too young to get any sublimity, so she just continued to look at the pretty pictures of the book she was reading.
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Fri, 26 Dec 2008 19:13)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.