Chapter 45: Say Goodnight, DoneDevimon
The towering, miasma-drenched monstrosity thrashed against the ruined landscape. Mega-level DoneDevimon. Looking at the chaotic, writhing mass of dark data, one had to seriously question if such a grotesque transformation could even be considered an "digivolution."
While ascending to this form had caused his raw destructive power to surge exponentially, it came at a steep, irreversible price. The cold, calculating intellect that had once defined Devimon was entirely gone, replaced by a hollow, raging beast. Was it truly worth sacrificing one's own mind just to grasp at madness-fueled power?
It was impossible to tell what, if anything, remained inside DoneDevimon's shattered consciousness. Yet, the bitter irony of his sacrifice was laid bare for all to see. Even after surrendering his sanity for this overwhelming might, he was still being utterly suppressed. Worse than suppressed—he was being effortlessly toyed with by BeelStarmon.
Every frantic swing, every desperate roar only made his dark ascension look ridiculous. It was, quite frankly, pathetic.
"Damn you... LadyDevimon!" DoneDevimon's voice was a distorted, overlapping screech of static and malice. "Hehehe... Die!"
"So noisy!" BeelStarmon clicked her tongue, her tone dripping with casual disdain. "Is screaming like a lunatic and flailing around the only thing you know how to do?"
A massive, miasma-infused claw crashed down, threatening to crush her into deleted data. BeelStarmon didn't even blink. She pivoted gracefully on her heel, letting the devastating strike miss her by mere inches. In the same fluid motion, she brought up one of her gun-blades, the razor-sharp edge flashing in the dim light as it cleanly severed one of the beast's grotesque fingers.
"How disappointing, I say—ugh." She froze mid-stance. Realizing her childhood verbal tic had just slipped out completely unprompted, BeelStarmon's pale cheeks flushed a sudden, vibrant pink.
Despite possessing the striking, dangerous allure of a tall, mature woman clad in black leather, she instinctively slapped a hand over her mouth in sheer embarrassment. It was an incredibly cute, entirely uncharacteristic gesture. The stark contrast between her deadly, elegant exterior and this sudden flash of flustered innocence only amplified her overwhelming charm.
Unfortunately, her audience was severely lacking. Aside from Mizuki, who was watching with an amused glint in his eye, no one else could appreciate the sight. Taichi Kamiya was still far too young to understand such complex appeal, and DoneDevimon was far too lost in his mindless rage to care.
"La-dy... De-vi-mon!" The monstrous Digimon roared again, thrashing his remaining claws against the earth and kicking up a storm of debris. BeelStarmon lowered her hand from her mouth, her embarrassment instantly replaced by a sharp, annoyed frown.
"Honestly, are you completely deaf?" she snapped, her grip tightening on her twin handguns, the Rizoma de Loto. "Can your rotted brain not process basic words? My name is BeelStarmon now, I say—ugh!" She bit her lip, cursing her own tongue for slipping up again.
She had wanted this to be perfect. She had envisioned securing a flawless, stunning victory to show off her incredibly cool new Mega form to Mizuki. She wanted him to be dazzled. But this mindless, drooling beast was completely ruining the aesthetic. DoneDevimon wasn't a worthy opponent; he was just a violent nuisance.
"Doesn't this make all my dramatic posing seem like a total waste?" she muttered, her eyes narrowing dangerously.
Her figure blurred into a dark streak. The long, multifunctional scarf wrapped around her neck suddenly unfurled, shifting and expanding until it took the shape of a pair of jagged, pitch-black wings. Catching the turbulent air currents, BeelStarmon launched herself forward. Moving with stunning elegance, she skimmed right along the length of DoneDevimon's outstretched, grabbing arm, using it as a runway to close the distance to his main body.
As the gap vanished, BeelStarmon spun into a deadly dance. She wielded her twin handguns with lethal precision, the sharp bayonet blades attached to the barrels carving through the air. Every slash and twirl painted a beautiful, bloody masterpiece of violence across the battlefield.
[Double Claw!]
Two blinding arcs of cold silver light flashed through the dark miasma. With a sickening tear of digital flesh, DoneDevimon's massive, tree-trunk-sized arm was cleanly severed from his shoulder, dissolving into fragmented data before it even hit the ground.
Yet, the agony of amputation did not register as fear in the monster's hollow mind. Instead, the blinding pain acted as a catalyst, pouring gasoline on the raging inferno of his ferocity.
DoneDevimon threw his head back and unleashed an ear-splitting screech. The two colossal, spectral claws formed entirely of dense, toxic miasma on his back flared to life. Combining them with his one remaining physical arm, the beast lunged. Three gargantuan hands tore through the sky, converging on BeelStarmon's airborne figure from all sides in a desperate bid to crush her.
But his frenzied madness only served as a dark canvas to highlight her overwhelming superiority. Facing the three-pronged death trap closing in around her, BeelStarmon didn't even bother to glance over her shoulder. Suspended in mid-air, her back still turned to the towering monstrosity, she simply flicked her wrists. The gun-blades spun in a blinding vortex of silver steel. In a fraction of a second, all three attacking limbs were shredded into a burst of useless, glowing polygons.
Watching her perfect, gravity-defying acrobatics from the ground, Taichi's eyes were practically sparkling with starry-eyed admiration. "Whoa... so cool, BeelStarmon!" he cheered, pumping his fists.
"Uh... Taichi..." A heavy, metallic sigh rumbled through the air. "I can be cool too, you know..." Right as Taichi finished his enthusiastic praise, MetalGreymon's massive head drooped. The giant cyborg dinosaur's voice dripped with a very obvious, almost comical sense of dejection.
Hearing his partner's blatant jealousy, Taichi blinked, suddenly realizing his mistake. He scratched the back of his messy hair, offering an awkward, apologetic chuckle. "Ah! O-Of course, MetalGreymon! You're super cool too! The coolest!"
"Um, but speaking of which—" Seeing the giant cyborg immediately perk up, his metallic tail wagging slightly at the praise, Taichi quickly seized the opportunity to change the subject before he dug himself any deeper. "If I remember correctly, BeelStarmon has guns, right? She can shoot?"
"Hmm?" Hearing the boy's question, Mizuki finally tore his gaze away from the beautiful, lethal figure dancing through the sky. He glanced down at Taichi and nodded. "She can. What's wrong?"
"It's just... I haven't really seen her shoot much." Taichi frowned, trying to mentally replay the entire battle. "If I'm not mistaken, she only fired a few shots right at the very beginning of the fight. Ever since then, she's just been rushing in and slicing him up with the blades attached to the barrels."
Mizuki paused. Now that Taichi mentioned it, he ran through his partner's combat history in his head. He had to admit, the kid was entirely right. Actually, it went deeper than that—this had been her exact fighting style ever since she was LadyDevimon.
Even back then, despite possessing Darkness Wave—a highly effective, long-range, wide-area attack—LadyDevimon had almost never used it. Instead, she always preferred to close the distance at terrifying speeds, opting to brutally hack her enemies to pieces in visceral, hand-to-hand combat using physical strikes and dark energy blades.
A girl who constantly slipped up and used soft, cute verbal tics like "~, I say," yet possessed an insatiable bloodlust for brutally carving her enemies apart in close-quarters combat... The sheer absurdity of the contrast played out in Mizuki's mind. A warm, thoroughly amused smile tugged at the corners of his lips.
"What does it matter?" Mizuki chuckled, his tone light and completely unbothered. "At least she's cute, isn't she?"
"Cu... cute?!" Taichi choked on his own spit. He whipped his head around to stare at Mizuki, absolute, unadulterated bewilderment swirling in his wide brown eyes. Cute? Who? BeelStarmon?!
Slowly, mechanically, Taichi turned his gaze back to the bloodbath unfolding in the sky. Right at that exact second, BeelStarmon was driving her knees forward, viciously sinking the bayonet blades of her twin handguns deep into DoneDevimon's thighs before violently ripping them outward, cleanly amputating both of the monster's legs in a shower of dark data.
Through the glowing, scattering polygons of the severed limbs, Taichi caught a clear glimpse of BeelStarmon's face. She was wearing a chilling, slightly unhinged smile of pure, predatory ecstasy.
Suspended amidst the carnage, she looked exactly like a blooming black rose—breathtakingly gorgeous, outshining everything around her, yet exuding an aura of absolute, deadly danger. She was the kind of terrifying beauty that instinctively warned you to stay away, even as it magnetically pulled you closer.
'He calls THAT cute?!' Taichi's mind short-circuited as Mizuki's casual declaration echoed in his ears. He stared at the terrifying leather-clad woman dismembering a giant demon, then back at Mizuki's fond smile. After a long, agonizing moment of mental gymnastics, the boy just heavily shook his head. He didn't understand adults. He didn't understand Mizuki. He just didn't get it.
While Taichi was busy having an existential crisis over Mizuki's warped tastes, the battle above was reaching its climax. After enduring a relentless, one-sided butchering at BeelStarmon's hands, the sheer, agonizing trauma finally managed to pierce through DoneDevimon's corrupted digicore. Slowly, a tiny sliver of the cold sanity that had been drowned beneath oceans of madness began to resurface.
There is an old saying that the joys and sorrows of the world are never truly shared. The same cruel rule applied to Digimon.
As the fog in his mind cleared just enough to process his surroundings, DoneDevimon heard the casual, relaxed banter floating up from the humans below. He only found it deafeningly, infuriatingly noisy. His crimson eyes darted wildly. He couldn't comprehend it. They were both Mega-level entities. They had both reached the pinnacle of digivolution. So why? Why was the chasm in their strength so impossibly vast?
BeelStarmon wasn't even breathing heavily. She hadn't even tapped into her true reserves, yet she was dismantling him with the casual ease of a child plucking the wings off a fly. This impossible disparity made every sacrifice he had made, every shred of sanity he had burned away, feel utterly, humiliatingly pointless.
A suffocating wave of intense unwillingness and bitter frustration flooded DoneDevimon's shattered digicore. He wanted to scream. He wanted to tear the world apart. But no amount of rage could alter reality.
Click-clack.
The crisp, metallic sound of a heavy round being chambered echoed through the tense air. DoneDevimon looked up. BeelStarmon was hovering right above him. With a ruthless, elegant stretch of her long leg, she planted the stiletto heel of her boot directly onto the center of his forehead. The hidden gun barrel built straight into the heel was aimed point-blank at his brow.
She looked down at him, her golden eyes cold and devoid of mercy. "Say goodnight, DoneDevimon."
"You—!" The demon choked out, his eyes widening in sudden, absolute terror.
BANG!!!
A deafening gunshot shattered the silence of the digital wasteland. The heavy-caliber round tore through his skull at point-blank range, and with a sickening crack, DoneDevimon's corrupted digicore shattered into a million pieces of fading light.
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