#verse 7

Fire. This isn’t the kind of fire that crackles merrily in the grate during cold nights, or tops Shinra’s long since burnt out birthday candles. No, fire is dangerous. Wild. Destruction. Fire is life.

BEAST SPIRIT EVOLUTION!

He is burning.

This fire isn’t the same as what Agunimon’s flames are. It feels like his limbs are melting. his fingers sticking together from five to three. Or two and a wicked clawed thumb. The feet feel strangely stiff and flat. Being pulled in two directions to grow tall and grow a long thick tail. The burning feeling crashes over like a wave of lava, solidifying as armor. Pain. Wings burst forth from the solidifying armor, scattering hot feathers.

Burninggreymon stands in a charred forest, with bodies scattered among him, their fractal code fresh for the taking.

He reaches… to devour the code.

NO!

Takuya sits straight up, screaming out in fear. His heart hammers as he sits there, blinking in the semidarkness. Limbs tremble. Where… where? He doesn’t know where he is! Everything aches like he’s done a double soccer tournament in a row. Something creeps to holding his gloveless hand. The boy jumps, and looks over.

Its Tommy; dusty and bruised but in one piece. His eyes are puffy from crying. A lump forms in the warrior of fire’s throat.

he remembers now. Kumamon was defeated. His spirit stolen.

“You’re awake… you’re ok!” the boy weeps, head-butting his faux brother in the shoulder, clinging to his trembling arm. “I got so scared!”

“Chill little buddy, I’m…fine. Where are we?”

“-hic- Sh-shamanmon’s temple. What’s left, anyway. We had to hide… hide from Gigasmon!” Takuya reaches to pat the kid’s back, before he sees raw red tracks on his skinny little arms.

Claw marks.

Ba bump. A twinge of unease as he traces the drying track. What had done this to a kid?! Takuya retracts his reach, as he sees the same marks on his own skin.

Ba bump. …the memory resurfaces.

He had injured Tommy. It was him. As burninggreymon. Those wicked white claws.

That was no beast spirit. That was a monster.

He’d become a monster.

Pulling his arm free of the boy’s fearful grip, the warrior of fire scrambles away from him, further into the corner where he’d been left. “Stay away!” he yells. Panicking. Everything is closing in around him. Restricting his ability to breathe. “Don’t come… near me!”

His shouts must’ve echoed in the ruins, because others come. No! Don’t… don’t get near me! The warrior of light… wasn’t his name Koji?, approaches regardless of the warnings. Takuya can’t stop shaking. He can’t hear what the boy is saying over the pounding in his head, inside his chest.

Someone puts their hands over his ears.

‘focus on me. On my heartbeat. breathe with me.’

His breath rattles to draw inwards, to expel out faster then needed. Those fierce blue eyes bore into his own. Leading.

In… out… in… out…

Did the sounds of someone’s body always sound that soft? As the pounding in his ears fades, the soft flow of blood inside the hands covering his ears… the occasional sound of flexing tendon or bone… and the gentle beat of a living heart.

Several minutes pass before the hands retract. The panicking energy leaves Takuya physically and mentally exhausted, those hands practically holding him upright as he lists sideways. The hands ease him into laying down… into resting…

“Wh-what just happened?” Tommy asked, his big eyes rounder then plates. He watches the warrior of light checking the now sleeping warrior of fire’s pulse. It was slowly going down. The trembles still present.

“He remembered.” a rough voice answered. The child of ice recalls that the warrior of light had wrecked his voice during his own fight with his beast spirit. Constantly screaming and roaring and just overusing his voice.

The whole group had been not only attacked mercilessly by Gigasmon, but by a possessed Shamanmon and then Takuya, who had dealt the blow to defeat the possessed ‘mon ended up possessed himself, and went completely out of his mind.

Attacking anyone and anything that moved. Beating the other warriors into the dirt repeatedly as they tried to get him to stop. Then grabbing Tommy. Who, being an innocent child, manages to talk a beast into stopping their rampage through tearful words and a teardrop right into the creature’s eye. The rampage against them had stopped, but turned completely onto himself until spent of energy.

Nobody walked away from that fight without some sort of markings to show for it. Junpei was still picking out splinters.

Koji didn’t want to be the one explaining what just happened to a little kid.

“It wasn’t his fault…not really. The beast spirit was making him crazy is all!” the child of ice exclaims. His fingers trace the drying tracks but he holds a brave face. “Do…do you think we’ll all act like that when we get our beast spirits?”

“I don’t know.” - “If you insist you have one more splinter, you’re doing the rest yourself.” Zoe declares loudly. “But Zoeeeey, I do have another splinter!” “Get it out yourself!” she snaps angrily.

“She’s angry!” “Thanks for the obvious observation…” “Why is she angry?” “Ugh… come along Neemon…” “Oooh, where are we going!”

Grumbling audibly, Junpei washes out his kerchief collection in the lake outside the destroyed temple. He wasn’t lying to get her attention, there are a few small splinters left that are hard to reach! Not his fault to be thrown into a pile of dead trees. The screaming roars of Burninggreymon echo in his ears. Thank goodness being Blitzmon gave him a much stronger amount of armor then the rest, so he could take being hauled around like that by the head without so much damage. Probably why he only walked away with splinters instead. He could see the pile of destroyed rocks and trees across the lake, occasionally marked with a torn out orange feather, missing several barbs. Junpei glances occasionally at the temple. Had Takuya woken up yet? Must’ve because Koji was coming back out of the temple, reluctantly shepherding Tommy along, before going back inside. What was he, some sort of watchdog? He has come back out, supporting Takuya until he was able to keep his footing properly. -

Takuya’s luck runs dry when Gigasmon kidnaps Tommy and sinks the rest of the team into a mud pit up to the shoulders while traveling in the forest. Nobody was getting out to help him, and Agunimon wasn’t strong enough to fight the monster mole-mon.

“Only a beast spirit can stand up to him!” “But what if I go berserk again?!” “Just keep calm and think things through!”

Easy for him to say.

The slide evolution doesn’t hurt nearly as badly as the first turn. Fire crackles under the lizardine armor. Slamming into a tree, swatting Gigasmon away, Burninggreymon catches Tommy before he hits the ground in those wicked sharp claws.

“Are you ok?” ‘Thanks to you, I’m in control’ the beast spirit of flame answers, exhaling a hot breath to ruffle the boy’s hair. He’s being careful of those claws of his.

The two beast spirits fight and finally Kumamon’s spirit is reclaimed. Grumblemon escapes before Kazemon’s can be reclaimed, but by then Burninggreymon’s energy has burnt out.

“How did it feel?”

like he was burning alive. The pent up energy of rage and destruction eroding his sense of self until only the thoughts of destruction remained. To escape the burning, he tried to claw his way free…. but it only burned out when he regained his own human body. The power of fire… scares him.

‘Like I had stepped into my worst nightmare, and everything was burning, including myself.’ he finally decides.

~Fire

Notes: Thats all folks! I hope you enjoyed my oneshots about how it feels for spirit evolution. In my mind, burning greymon’s possession and subsequent rampage takes a massive mental toll on poor Takuya. He’s used to being in control of his own situation, and couldn’t do anything to stop himself.

Digitaldreams on ao3′s Frontiers Unexplored is a beautiful piece of work I had some inspiration from, they go quite deep into beast spirit evolutions and such, and I love it. Go check them out. Do take care, read the warnings posted when they pop up.

Happy Frontierfest!