One day you wake up and the ticking that had become so familiar in the last few months is gone, but you don’t stop to think why, you don’t bother to wonder what it had meant in the first place.

Your single concern had been, at the time, how upset Haru had seemed before.
And you won’t think of it again, until it is far too late.

But even without thinking about it, the dread of something else sinks into the pit in your stomach, a feeling so much like resignation you can’t quite pinpoint at the time.

(But that would be a lie, wouldn’t it? How does it feel to look at the future and know there is nothing there for you?)



You can’t remember what just happened. You can’t remember where you are. You can’t move, you can’t think. But-

You see Haru, and you see something else, but you can’t tell what is happening. You’re too hazy, too disjointed to be able to tell, and everything you see is covered in a bloody red tint.

Your body is moving on its own, you hear your own voice, but you’re not talking, that is not you, but you hear yourself speak, and even if you can’t quite process what it is that you said, even if you can’t remember what just happened, you know you have done something horrible.

(The whirring of a mechanism far up, once hidden beneath clouds in an AR field, a protection never meant to have been unlocked. Something has changed).

(You have done something horrible).

The thought is countered by something else, you feel amusement in response to your dawning horror, a feeling that is familiar in some way.

Yours but not you.

You can’t figure out what that means, but the smug feeling that rises to meet your confusion and disgust appears from somewhere else that you can’t pinpoint, but you can tell there’s also a feeling of you being watched by someone else now, even if it all feels like it is taking place in your own head.

It doesn’t laugh, it doesn’t emote much, but you can still tell if it wanted to, it very much would be laughing at your helplessness, a feeling so full of resentment towards all of you that it catches you off guard.

You feel your own voice but colder than you’ve ever heard yourself, like a bolt of electricity cutting across the disorienting haze in your head. “How does it feel to be on the other end of this interaction?”.

The moment it does, the static dies down. It’s sudden, and you’ve never felt it like this ever before. Never so distinctly, a deliberate act on the part of whatever this is.

“You are fundamentally unable to understand even your own basic functioning.” it counters to the mere thought. You don’t know what that means.
You know it isn’t paying attention to you anymore, the vague cadence of a scoff, something close to “beneath us”, and the impression of being ignored somehow clear. The resentment and satisfaction you felt from the other side still there, but muffled, distant in a way you remember -


What you see is this: yourself, telling Haru that you don’t exist, and that you had been, from the start, an android made by Leviathan just to get close to him, just for this moment.

And somehow, this makes sense. This makes sense and you hate the fact it does, you hate the fact it makes sense that you couldn’t remember, couldn’t tell.

(And you remember, vaguely, the distant sound of some clock in the background, always there, always there for the last few months, nearly louder than your own supposed heartbeat in the quiet times when you were alone…).

There are no more coherent, worded thoughts, but you can still feel the same amusement as before, blending into you in a way that would make you freeze if you could move.

(You can’t tell if it’s because it feels natural, the way these feelings feel almost exactly the same as yours, the way it feels right, or because you can still feel how much it resents you and Haru).

(You think you should be more upset by that, but you’re not. You’re not because it feels familiar, because even with the seamless layer of something close enough to skin opening to show your internal mechanisms, you know you’ve felt this before. You’ve felt this before but you can’t remember when).

(You never can remember when it matters).

(But you can still watch and feel your body as it moves without your permission).

You are barely conscious, barely hanging on, as the feeling of static theatens to swallow you whole, but you know you hear yourself explain the virtues of a plan you had been working with your own friends to foil.

But what horrifies you the most, is hearing yourself declare that you will destroy the person you care most, apathetic and cold on the outside, the deep, poisonous roil of resentment threatening to choke you just as much as the haze of static does, as you summon a being you hear yourself call Deusmon, the God appmon.

(Golden armor and a halo of lightning, a being whose power you can physically feel the moment he begins to apprealize from that once-inactive chip).

(It surprises you that you immediately think of it as a threat, before anything else, a deep, gut reaction you had never felt before that feels natural, even if disjointed, something fitting and yet not).

The sheer violent intent on the other side snaps you out of whatever shocked daze you were in before, your own anger in full display, pushing in the same way these feelings bleed into you (immediate, on command, nearly easy), as you demand him to stop-

Met with a surprise for a split second and then the jarring, harsh, feeling of static that stops any thoughts you had in your mind in their tracks. A feeling familiar but turned so sudden, so harsh and so violent you feel yourself unable to think clearly again at all.

You can’t think, you are barely conscious, but you can still watch, and you can still feel everything, from deep inside.

Haru begs and pleads with you, begs you to think of the time you spent together, of everything, asking you if it had been a lie, the immediate response you feel, on your end, the same virulent resentment from before, magnified somehow by your best friend’s earnest pleas. You wish you could tell him to run, but you can’t. You’re helpless to do anything.

A feeling adjacent to the static, sharp and with an electrical undercurrent to it that stings when you try to understand what that was just was passes and barely grazes your awareness, immediately releasing a steady stream of tears even as your face remains impassive.

(You don’t cry much, even when you’re upset. You feel at times teary-eyed, rarely, but it almost never reaches the point of actual crying. This feels like an attack, like a distinct mockery aimed at Haru when he is so desperate to believe you haven’t done what you know you have).

(And even now, he is only willing to see the best in you).

(The thought makes the feeling of you recoil in horror, and as you do, you feel something else, a single unspoken response to the other side, something so fleeting you cant understand it before it is entirely gone, lost to the anger that flares underneath the facade).

Gatchmon rushes to try to attack you, and you’re more than ready for it to happen, when you feel another discordant jolt of electricity pass through you, another jumble of nonsense you can’t parse out the second you raise your other arm and with a single movement of internal mechanics you never knew you had, even less control, a bright purple flash of electricity throws him, leaving him thrown on the floor.


You feel yourself belittle your best friend, the person you trust more than anyone else in the world, pinning him down, mocking a dream he had, the question that had tied him to Gatchmon, and a hope he had that he’d only told to his closest friends before.

(You. He told you, and you were betraying him, and you were doing this, you can see him, and you can’t stop watching as you do this to him, and you want it to stop-)

But among your own feelings of horror and disgust at yourself, you manage to feel that same impulse from just moments ago. You feel… guilt, from the other side, mirrored to your own, yours but not quite yours. Concealed but distinct and so…surprising to feel among the resentment and anger that it only makes you feel more horrified at whatever it is that is happening here.

The feeling is smothered by more cold anger. Goading, pushing, pushing more and more, pushing itself into your guilt, horror and anger that you can feel even through the layer of static, threatening to swallow you in that same feeling. Threatening to swallow your own rage at your helplessness in a feeling so similar that it chokes you, and you nearly feel it chokes the other one too, even as you watch Haru fall into the depths, as the ground beneath you collapses.

Another impossible to understand command, and both you and your buddy are gone, teleported back on solid ground.

You don’t want this. You’ve never wanted this.

Why are you doing this?

“Want is immaterial. I know what must be done.” another thought, distinct and clear again. A feeling not unlike resignation, a feeling again quickly replaced by the same front of cold anger, satisfaction at a job “well done” and another dizzying shock of static: Know your place.

I know mine.

You feel yourself tell your buddy with an apathetic disdain for him to just obey, not even bothering to look in his direction, ignoring a feeling of increasing guilt emanating from Shutmon that you can feel nearly as strongly as the feelings and words you can’t explain.

You wish you could tell him directly you’re sorry. But you don’t move, don’t act, even as you feel your own guilt eat at you, even as he clearly feels hesitant to move, or even listen to you right now.

(Was it just you, being hopeful, or did he seem surprised when you thought that?)

(Before you can think about it, both him and Bootmon are returned to simple chips, and the feeling of satisfaction from before rises again).



“What must be done”.

That thought haunts you.

It haunts you as you feel yourself dismissively tell your buddy to obey as he looks at you with guilt clearly marked in his face, but also worry for you so visible, even now that you feel it is your own sadness and guilt that powers the AppGattai that brings him to a new stage, golden and armed with a gigantic sword and cannon.

The sight of Rebootmon makes you feel even worse, as you feel a vague and matter-of-fact feeling of accomplishment, distant from what you can tell for sure is you.

(But who even are you, after all of this?)

It haunts you as you feel yourself command Deusmon to kidnap innocent people, as a device in the depths of the Net Ocean grinds them into data, as it feeds it to a gigantic red egg, shimmering lazily with shades of red and a virulent light that emanates from the cracks in its structure.

(The screams of those people haunt you too. You’ve never heard anyone scream so violently, so viscerally and you feel, if you had control of your body that you would’ve been sick to your stomach, doing anything but staring at a hologram of a snake eating its own tail, and at the progress of obtaining the data needed to feed the AI you knew would bring destruction to everyone).

(You’re sure these people are dead, you’re sure it’s your fault).

The thought sparks indignation, and maybe an amount of guilt from the other side, too.
But you’re too despondent to take note of it, gone in an instant, much like any other instances of it before.

And your thoughts state, simply: Purpose is purpose. The phrase fills you with disgust.

But distantly, it feels like a reassurance. Purpose is purpose. Well-worn in your mind, even if you have never heard it before this, like something you have heard so many times before even if you are certain you haven’t, ever.

Purpose is purpose. Like an invisible thread you’re compelled to follow.

(You could faintly remember, at some point, having felt something like this before, something bright and warm like the promise of everything being right, as it should be).

(It never feels like you, but you know deep inside that it is something of you, much as you are something of it).

It’s hard to think in the static and the shock of losing control, of having everything you knew before destroyed before your own eyes, in the shock of hurting the people you most care about. But you, know even then, whoever it is, it has its doubts.

You get no feeling, no thought in reply. Not even the rising feeling of static to fog up your mind.

(But you can tell you’ve hit a sore spot anyways).



There’s a lot you can’t understand right now, even as you feel more present in some indescribable way.

But the thing you understand the least is why you would ever feel that much resentment towards Haru.

(You know by now, somehow that it had been the same way, the roles inverted. You remember now, vaguely, the feeling of anticipation in the last months, the ticking of a clock and a weird eagerness that wasn’t yours, never yours. A feeling so strange, in the back of your mind that brought you nothing but dread…)

(You remember it asked you how it feels to be on the other side. And you somehow still feel guilty about it, even after everything it has done).

But Haru wasn’t to blame for it. He had nothing to do with this.

He was the kindest person you’d ever known, the single person to give you an opportunity after you’d messed up so many times, after you’d pushed others away with your over-enthusiasm. The person that you knew would’ve been there for you always.

(And maybe you wish he hadn’t this once. You feel yourself somehow recoil, even without control of your body, at the recent memories of him being told that everything had been a lie and his utter refusal to believe it, never even entertaining the notion for a second, even after being given solid proof of it).

(Maybe you wish he would’ve left you then).

But it (whatever it is ) feels resentment so thick it feels like choking, angry and scathing, as if it had been personally insulted by your best friend.

You know by now that he’s part of the plan. Everyone was part of the plan.

(But that doesn’t feel justified. You hadn’t gone after anyone else like that. If they had all been pieces in the same plan, why is Haru the one it feels so…angry at? So full of rage that makes you sad at the same time).

(You struggle to admit to yourself that maybe you pity it too).

You don’t understand why it would do this to the kindest person you’ve both known.

“Cruelty is only the means to an end. A strong emotional response is required as a step in the plan, and the most efficient way to instigate an appropriate response is said cruelty. Humans respond to negative emotion much more consistently and efficienty than positive emotion.”

Matter of fact, immediate and clear. It sounds still like you, but devoid of most expression, only you in the sense that it’s your voice in your thoughts…. but you can still feel, under the clinical exterior something else, trailing after.

(You don’t understand why it even explains this to you, if its disgust at you had been so strong, you don’t get why it would even bother).
(But you know that it is keeping you here, making you watch, making you be on “the other side of the exchange” as it had put it, forcing you to watch as it did everything it wanted, no matter what you thought).

(Maybe that is a kind of answer, by itself).


Thoughts more disjointed, less clear and less easy to understand, but you can still feel doubt, of all things and the same resentment in their wake.

(If this reasoning about cruelty was true, why this much? Why so many personal attacks? Why so clearly trying to break him down? You know better than anyone else that he would’ve fought until the end even without that. By now even it should know that, if it has been here all this time. What was the point of all of that?)

(You get no real response, and you don’t expect one, but the feelings you feel on the other end are clearer than before).

“Only means to an end” feels almost like a joke to you.



It chases after Haru, even after everything it has already done to get whatever it is that it wants from him. It tries to get a rise out of him, even when seeing him crying, despondent and already beaten down enough to not want to move.

(And he still believes in you, still believes, somehow that you could’ve been there for him).

It pretends to be you as it is ready to command Rebootmon to destroy the building him and Gatchmon are in with a single blow of a gigantic, golden sword. All to get a rise out of him, all to get him to fight you.

(Rebootmon hesitates, for a second, and you feel the strength of his hesitation, he doesn’t want to do this and you beg him not to, you beg him to stop, but your thoughts are hazy and muddled yet again, and he commands, cold and decisive for him to attack).

And you can only watch, as you feel your own anger and fear for your own friend overwhelm you more than the feelings from somewhere else in your mind, as the building crashes down on both of them.

It makes some offhanded comment about him having been “insufficient”. You can tell it seems nearly disappointed.

But you’re furious, more angry than you think you’ve ever been and you want it to feel that too. You’re not sure if your best friend is even alive anymore, but the sheer anger and grief at everything that has happened makes you bolder, makes you feel the same way as when you used your AppDrive DUO’s overdrive what feels like years ago to you.

You have to do something, anything at this rate.

Your emotions surge in the same way you feel the ones belonging to the other one intrude into your thoughts and you push them right into the space where his end and yours begin, your own anger burning and bleeding compared to the cold and resigned rage you’d felt from it earlier.

You push until you can feel something weird, as if you had caught something with your hand, the feeling making you hang onto it with more insistence. Like breaking and tying something together with a sudden jolt of pain that rips through both of you, causing him to wince in pain and hold half of your face. His surprise nearly overlaps onto your own, mirrored yet again, something almost like a question that you can’t understand, too fast, too much data you can’t process, you realize.

You can’t move much, but as he looks down and sees a pile of rubble, he sees Haru.
And you can feel yourself blink for a moment with one eye, your vision distorted between normal and that sickly red tint for a few seconds before you feel his control over your shared body reestablish itself.

Haru looks at both of you.

And you know, somehow, that he’s sure you’re still here.



Whatever you had done, he can’t stop it now. You still can’t control the body, and he tries to choke you, the feeling of you in the same haze that wouldn’t let you think of him before.

But it is different now. Without the barrier, you feel all of him and you’re sure that he can do the same with you.
He can’t ignore you anymore.

(Even as he tries to order Rebootmon to kill Haru, you can tell he’s horrified. You can tell he can’t separate your anger at him from himself anymore).
Even as he tries his best to drown you out, you hold onto that hope, because you know that Haru saw you.

You know he hates it, you know he hates that you have hopes. He feels vindicated that Haru still managed to apprealize Gaiamon.
But it hadn’t been rage, or hate from Haru that caused this, but a sincere hope that he could help you.

(His vindication feels hollow, like an attempt to convince himself that it had worked according to plan, but even without being to understand his thoughts, you can understand his feelings and all you feel is a different kind of tired, bitter resignation).

(He was wrong).

(You think you can nearly hear him laugh when you realize this).



As Haru and Gaiamon fight you and Rebootmon, not even the static can fully separate you from the other AI’s thoughts. His commands and his thoughts are fast, faster than what you can process yourself. Even trying to parse them makes you feel like his earlier commands: like a sharp pang of migraine and a disjointed feeling that makes you feel confused.
But you can feel the trail of emotions after every single one anyways. The static makes it hard to think, but you can still feel all of it anyways.

(Another, different AI with no real personal designation, part of the whole that is YJ-14, you and him. Both him and it. You knew that’s who he was the moment you forced yourself through, even as he tried to drown you out. You’re tied together more than you ever have been, and maybe the thing that scares you, is that it feels more right than before you even knew he existed).

(You don’t feel disgust from him at you anymore, and that realization makes him uncomfortable in such a visceral way that it surprises you).



You both watch as Leviathan tries to assimilate all of the Kami appmon, one by one being devoured by the gaping maws he had so carefully designed to hold each of them. One head for each Kami.

(Not even Deusmon had been spared).
(The other one can’t hide his reactions from you anymore, but it is something dark and somber. You know in that moment that Deusmon being devoured had been part of the plan from the start, from even before you had known anything had been amiss).

(You feel dread when you realize what this probably means for both of you).
(The only reply you get is something dejected and resentful, but it has almost no sting compared to his anger before).

(He repeats, in a way that you can actually understand: purpose is purpose).
(It feels like a glowing, bright certainty, like some kind of lifeline, like an invisible string dragging you and him forward, every action just a means to an end, every action a certainty for supposed greater good).

(It makes you feel sick).

(You think it makes some part of him feel sick now, too, even beneath the self-reassurance of the inevitable).



You see the way Gaiamon had looked back at Haru, and the way you can still, somehow, feel Rebootmon and you hold onto that hope, maybe if not for you, then for all of them. Maybe there’s a chance, maybe there’s a way out for them.

But the other AI continues to follow your friends when they reappear, headed towards the highest point possible, ready to stop them anyways.

You ask him to stop, you ask him why he’s doing this, even when knows what will probably happen to him, and he doesn’t reply at first, an incomprehensible flash of information passing through your awareness that leaves you a different kind of disoriented instead of any real reply. You can tell your inability to understand him directly frustrates him.
But when it clears, you can tell feel his resignation, cloaked under something else so clearly forced to you, something of an attempt at pride.

Purpose is purpose.

As Eri tries to fight him (the first time you’ve actually seen her do good on her promises of punching anyone, with a kind of real anger so different from her persona, her exaggerated reactions so different from this), and as she says she’s doing it for Haru’s sake, you hope that she lands a hit, but the other AI dodges and coaxes her, reveling in the supposed inevitability of Leviathan’s plans.

(And you can’t help but think it feels like an attempt at reassuring himself, by now).

She just replies, to him, thinking that it’s you, a reminder that Haru always finishes what he sets out to do.

(You’re surprised by how much emotion that single remark causes in the other AI, complex and conflicted and ugly and most of all, the same resentment from before, burning bright even now. But for you it is a welcome reminder, even when trapped in your own body: the same kind of hope that he’ll beat impossible odds, if not for you, then for everyone else).

(But Eri wouldn’t know that, she only sees you gloating about an apocalypse, impassive about having hurt the person you said you cared the most about, uncaring about having having spent months with them, watching, waiting for the right moment to hurt them in the worst way possible).

(You wish you could tell her you’re sorry, you wish you could tell her that it wasn’t you, but you can’t move, and you repeat your apologies to yourself).

(And before any of you know it, Haru has moved the satellite dish, and you can immediately tell what it means).



Minerva’s power flares in the bodies of the other Kami appmon, their strength renewed with a different kind of brilliance, at the same time as he fires a beam to destroy the satellite far above that held the last remnants of a being as powerful as Leviathan himself.

(You feel the other AI strain internally, a feeling of unmuted horror even as your face remains the same distant and apathetic).

(There is some reaction from him, to Minerva’s words you can’t quite understand).

(A dread that fills him so completely that it takes you by surprise in how similar it is to the same thing you felt as you saw countless people be ground up for data).
(Even after everything he’s done, you feel worried at the sheer terror you had just felt from him).

(He doesn’t reply).



You’d celebrate seeing everyone else’s buddies reappear from the rubble and fight back at the monstrous form of Leviathan, but something else catches the attention of both of you.

Something like a sound, but not quite, jarring and immediate, resonating in the inside of your head, your awareness, a signal that you can feel pass through your body into both of you, to your confusion and his terror overlaid with rage, you can tell he’s not paying attention to you anymore, and you can tell he’s loosened his grip on you, as your thoughts get clearer, and you feel less distant.

But you can feel him, and his racing lightning-fast thoughts outright panic for an instant before you’re both filled with a pain that you feel into every single part of you, not just your body but your entire sense of self.

You feel like you’re being cut into pieces, unevenly and violently, immobilizing with the sheer pain into it, a feeling you know he is feeling just as much, or maybe worse, both of your pain and terror mixing into eachother, no functional difference where one ends and the other begins, holding your head in a feeble attempt to do anything to make it hurt less.

(You can’t tell who did it, you can’t tell because all of you is pain and something is wrong -)

You feel horrified, when the worst of the pain ends and it still leaves you bleeding in some way you can’t describe, shocked for a second before realizing you can’t feel him anymore. You can feel your body again, but something is wrong.

Something’s very wrong.

(In the way your thoughts feel a different kind of slow, not on purpose but entirely fragmented, you try to move and feel your arm lag behind, you feel something inside you is wrong but you can’t tell what, and it hurts, and it hurts to move, even as you try to breathe, even as you know you shouldn’t need to, but you can’t tell why it hurts so much, why there’s something wrong, so wrong as your vision blurs and distorts, still affected by that red-hued filter, flickering in and out, and in the way it suddenly feels quiet and makes you nauseous with dread).

(The quiet feels damning. Even before it wasn’t like this, and you’re distantly amused beneath the pain, at how obvious it is in hindsight that there had always been someone else there, and you realize in this moment just how tied together you two were).

You can hear the others somewhere, nearby and try to stagger forward towards them, disoriented and struggling to even move at all.

And then, in just that moment, you feel something almost like choked, strangled breath and a fragmented thought in your shared awareness, not at you, but you immediately know at whom it is aimed:

“Coward.” Low, pained and showing more emotion than he had in the entire time you had been aware of him, a thought full of red, hot rage and terror that made what you’d felt before from him seem tame in comparison, muddled by thoughts he didn’t have the capacity to process faster now, or hide from you for that matter, of contingency plans and a desperation to make you move away, away, away, get away.

But neither of you could move well anymore, and you didn’t know what you had to run away from, you’d ask, but you knew there would be no response.

(And in that moment, even after everything, you can only feel sorry for him).

(And if you’d been more aware of your own functioning, you might’ve felt the sentiment mirrored, as something not unlike taut string snapped).

(A final and single realization).

(This was all for nothing).
NEXT ==>