Crossover Omake: A Very Strange Thanksgiving, Part 3

A Very Strange Thanksgiving, Part 3

Tianyu Yue

“What do you think of them?” I asked my beloved as they began to trade blows from within conflicting weather patterns. They were probing shots for now, but even that would have humbled many a great knight in our world.

“They are powerful, for mortals,” my lovely wife muttered softly. She’d conjured a seat behind me and had taken to playing with my ears.

I wasn’t fooled, though. No matter how distracted she seemed by my ears, her attention never wavered from the two sparring above. Large, jade eyes analyzed every move they made.

Sand? Fog? Why would such mundane obstructions work? Neither men could hide from her eyes, no more than they could hide from my ears.

“The shapeshifter is sloppy.”

“That’s because that’s not his real body.”

“That is so, beloved. He adjusts his environment well, as does the foppish one. But the foppish one would be much stronger if he stopped relying on those toys,” she sniffed dismissively.

“They’re called tinkers, I believe, and building weapons is how they grow stronger,” I pointed out.

“Technology is the crutch of the weak. Martial arts can do everything technology can, and better. And as an additional benefit, you cannot misplace your martial arts in a moment of folly or inattention.”

“Of course, wifey,” I said indulgently. I leaned back, placing my head in her arms. “So you think Blake will win this spar?”

“That is likely.”

“Bryce killed two endbringers,” Amy, Bryce’s Amy, said. She’d been fiddling with a meat-fruit in her hand, an odd blend of organic and spiritual bestial concepts. It was, in essence, a fruit that naturally housed a transfiguration spell.

“We’ve never seen an endbringer before,” I told her with an indulgent nod. “Are they strong?”

“Leviathan sank Kyushu to the bottom of the sea and Simurgh mind controls people.”

“They’re okay,” our host interjected. “They have a core that needs to be broken but that core is behind layers of dimensional walls. They’re major threats in the world she comes from, but to people like us, they’re afterthoughts.”

“Blake killed them, too,” aura-Amy said. It was amusing. They “definitely weren’t dating,” but they felt the need to defend their respective partners.

We watched as Blake pulled off something called a Draco Meteor. They weren’t true meteors of course, nothing like the one Doni rode back to Earth once, but they were impressive enough. He also showed quite a bit of control over them.

“That technique, its foundation lies in the dao of domination, does it not?” Luo Hao observed. She directed her question to Aaron, that strange but skilled samurai.

“It does,” he nodded. “Type energy, or aura, can have different notions and ideas attached to them beyond the material. It’s why there is a distinction between rock and steel, ice and water, or fire and dragon. Fire and dragon type auras are both hot, but dragon is… special.”

“It hungers. Fire hungers as well, but that is the need for sustenance and fuel. That blue flame seeks to conquer.”

“Yes, that’s a good way to put it. They say that Arceus, our creator god, made the Jewel of Life using five auras: Ground set the foundation. Water was the cradle of life. Electric was the spark. Grass was the start of the biosphere. And dragon, dragon was the domination, the concept of predation and conquest that set the circle of life in motion.”

“He must be a powerful god. I wish to trade pointers with him. Where might I find this ‘Arceus?’”

“Uh… Please don't?” Aaron said. It wasn't quite begging, but it was close. He, another reincarnated soul, seemed to have some idea of the kind of person my wife really was.

I decided to spare the young man's world from my wife's antics, even if I was also curious. Being a pokemon trainer sounded like a fun way to spend a few decades.

“Look, Luo Hao, what do you make of that?” I pointed. In the arena, Bryce had a golden totem in his hand, one that glowed with an unmistakable holy light.

His Amy bolted to her feet. “That's what he used against Leviathan! What the fuck is he thinking?”

Luo Hao gently tucked her back into her seat. “Hoh? I find myself curious. It is a potent artifact. And you say he created all that he uses?”

“Yes! We have to stop the spar! Blake is going to die!”

“Hmm, perhaps I was hasty in my judgment if he is such an accomplished artificer. Although, I do not believe his opponent is his lesser.”

“Do you believe in miracles?” Bryce asked, a confident grin on his face despite the beating he took.

Blake nodded. “I do.”

Which was why he dove like a comet, straight for Bryce. Wise. Miracles existed, my existence was proof of such.

The air thundered with his sudden acceleration. His azure flames took on the shape of a great dragon. “Dragon Rush,” Aaron called it, an unrestrained show of the type energy's inclination towards violence. The flashy technique earned him a hum of approval from my darling wife. She always did have a flair for the dramatic.

Bryce did not hesitate. He already had his gun in his offhand and fired a single laser. The beam was different from the freeze rays he'd relied on so far. And, Blake couldn’t dodge at the speed he was moving. Had the laser been anything conventional, he likely would not have had to.

The beam made contact and the dragon shrank to the size of a grain of rice. Some of us with lesser senses lost track of him entirely. The young tinker surprised me; I had no idea that a weapon completely devoid of mana could have such bizarre effects. I had to give him credit. It was a hell of an ace to have. 

And yet, it proved only to be a distraction. Bryce held up the golden totem and shouted, “SAINT! Let's run wild! Armor jogress! Magnamon!”

A column of light pierced the fake sky. For a moment, the world was bathed in radiant gold. I could feel it, immense power gathering around Bryce as he and his duck-like pet were transformed.

Gold was the final element. It was the ambition of every mortal alchemist, and thus the element which best represented the art as a whole in the mortal consciousness. As the Jade Rabbit and Grand Alchemist, I was intimately aware of such things. Maybe the parallel was a complete coincidence, but I couldn’t help but draw these conclusions. 

His ridiculous outfit, some kind of cross between a Power Ranger, a caped superhero, and a marine admiral’s dress suit, vanished into a subspace. His body lengthened and grew until he stood about twelve feet tall. Human flesh was replaced with azure and white scales, the hide of a dragon. And over it all, golden armor loaded with unknown technology formed as if it had been forged into existence by a smith god.

“Huh… That’s new…” our host muttered, loud enough for us to hear. “Say, is that normal? You know, turning into a digimon. Can you do it too?”

“Definitely not,” Amy, Bryce’s Amy, replied dryly. “It took him all month just to code that, one digi-egg.”

“Digi-egg?” I rolled that world in my mouth. It must have been called that because it was the beginning, from which a “miraculous warrior” was born.

“Yeah, that’s what they’re called. Or digi-metal, apparently. I’m not sure why it has two names.”

“Because one is Japanese,” John said. With a wave of his hand, he topped up our drinks of choice. “Did you know they have Digimon card games and virtual pets where I come from? Magnamon’s a pretty big deal if the kids I saw in front of the game shop are anything to go by.”

“Are we really going to judge how impressive something is based on how many kids want its trading cards?” Riley said skeptically. “It looks really gaudy, though I’m curious how it turned a human into a dinosaur.”

Bryce’s Amy took over the explanation. “Bryce isn’t entirely human anymore, at least on a biological level. I said I didn’t eat a zoan. He never said the same.”

“There’s a blue dino-man zoan? Ooh, is there an ankylosaur zoan? They’re my favorites.”

“No, though I could probably make one…” she shook her head, dispelling thoughts of crimes against nature. “Later. Talk to me later. We might have to rob the Smithsonian though.”

“Why? I’m in the Illuminati. We’ll just find a different earth where the ankylosaurs haven’t died out yet.”

“Deal. Anyway, Bryce didn’t eat a dino zoan. He ate a porygon zoan.”

“That makes sense,” John nodded sagely.

His wife gave him an odd look. “Husband, I don’t know how to tell you this, but that is not a duck.”

“No, but I think there were different kinds of evolution in Digimon. One is that armor thing. The other is when two digimon fuse to make something else. A third lets the protagonist become a digimon…? I don’t know, that sounds about right.”

“Ah, I see what you mean. If they are distinct methods of gaining power, then they may not all be compatible. A human might not be able to withstand the power of the golden armor for example. But, if Bryce was already a digital entity to begin with, then it might provide enough of a bridge to allow him to use it successfully.”

I smiled. Being a Tinker of Fiction sounded pretty neat in hindsight. It looked like Bryce had used multiple specializations to leapfrog his way to power. And, to his immense credit, Magnamon was powerful. I didn’t know how, but that thing had divinity. It wasn’t quite the same as that of a heretic god’s but it was there. 

Since Bryce had Pokemon as a specialization before, and pokemon were apparently real, I could assume that each of those specializations allowed him to tap into a true, extant reality somewhere else in the multiverse. If that was the case, then there might well be digimon out there, and Magnamon was likely their equivalent of a god, or perhaps the paladin of one.

I considered stopping the match, but no one else made a move to do so. In fact, Blake’s Amy looked rather placid. She hadn’t said anything, but nor did she look especially concerned.

As we watched, tiny missile ports opened on his armor. They fired orbs of golden plasma, each with the output of cruise missiles.

They homed in on Blake but that earlier shrinking ray worked against Bryce here. He was tiny, and that garchomp form was unexpectedly agile in the air. He moved like a rice-sized fighter jet, swerving in and out of the air currents created by Bryce’s attack.

Unfortunately, his attempt at retaliation didn’t do much. A full-on Dragon Rush made him so fast that he was almost invisible to the naked eye. Normal humans like young Violet only tracked him by the trail of azure fire left in his wake.

He crashed into Magnamon, only to bounce off his armor with a distinct plinking noise. Force was acceleration and mass, after all.

“Ow, should’ve seen that coming,” I heard him mutter. With my hearing, I was likely the only one, though. He sounded adorably squeaky from here. 

He zipped up and landed atop Magnamon’s head. His golden helmet had neat, V-shaped horns, perfect for hiding in. Except, judging by the way Blake held his claws, he wasn’t going to hide until the timer on that shrink ray ran out, if it had a timer at all.

No, he was getting into position.

“Alright, fine. Here’s a miracle of my own, then,” he growled. Then, with a surge of power that rivaled the digi-egg, he shouted, “Legend’s Mirage, Zygarde, Keeper of the Balance!”

“Yes!” Blake’s Amy leapt to her feet with a vicious grin that didn’t match her nominal job as a healer. Then again, Aisha was a healer and my sister was arguably the most troublesome of all us Campione.

The bounded field Tamamo made for us strained against the pressure of two titans. The viewing screens she set up for the relatively mundane among us glitched out into static. Which was fine, because no one needed those to see Blake anymore.

However the shrinking ray worked, it didn’t work across transformations. Or maybe across this transformation.

An orb made of black and green hexagonal plates covered Blake. They then expanded, swiftly gaining mass. Magnamon tried to escape, but a colossal hand burst out of the sphere, palming his entire head like a volleyball.

Bryce got spiked into the ground for the second time this fight, raising another column of dust. At the same time, the sphere expanded and split open, revealing a humanoid yet alien figure.

Blake, this “Zygarde,” was an intimidating sight. He now stood well over twice as tall as Magnamon, and seemed to be made entirely from those hexagons. He had four, streamer-like wings and a tail, with something that looked akin to a mouth on his chest. 

“Care to fill us in?” John asked Amy. “What’s a Zygarde?”

“It’s an endslayer, like Victini,” Amy said. “He used that form to beat Leviathan. It’s crazy powerful.”

“So it seems,” my wife said softly. “What function does it accomplish in your world?”

“Uh… I don’t really know, sorry. I mean, that’s a pokemon. Wrong world.”

“I can answer that. Zygarde is capable of fragmenting itself into cores and cells, a hundred of them. It is said that he watches over the ecosystem and intervenes only in times of great crisis to restore the balance,” Aaron chimed in. “I didn’t think Blake could turn into Zygarde, though. A raikou is one thing, but Zygarde?”

“He’s Arceus’ favorite, whatever that means.”

“Yeah, I can tell. I’d be jealous, but that sounds exhausting.”

“All power comes at a price, be it in the form of personal harm, obligations, or powerful foes,” Tamamo nodded sagely. She leaned into her husband’s side and received her due in ear scritches. “That’s why I’m a housewife. Being the nine-tailed fox is such a pain.”

X

Blake Isley

I hadn’t taken this form in a while. Truthfully, Zygarde wasn’t my favorite Legend, even if he was the strongest I had. He was my last resort, the one I pulled out when I really needed something dead.

I was fortunate in that I didn’t have to split my attention a hundred ways. That said, contrary to common belief, Zygarde had six cores, not one. There was the head, of course the primary, but each of its four wings and tail also ended in a minor core of their own.

That was both a boon and a curse. On the plus side, they could act independently of me. They could transform into absolutely any weapon I wanted, fire attacks, or defend me as necessary. But, they were still cores that I had to be aware of, independent sub-minds that were more distinct than a metagross’ fourfold partitions.

I didn’t let him get up. Though the dust obscured his form, it couldn’t block out the golden light. He was fine; a hit that would flatten city blocks had only managed to annoy him.

I rushed down just in time to meet his rising fist with my own. And, though I had the benefit of gravity and mass on my side, we were evenly matched. Whatever the fuck a “Magnamon” was, it had enough brute strength to surpass many Legends.

His armored skirt flared with golden light, launching him in a twisting spiral around my left. He tucked in his legs and thrust his knee outward in an attempt to smash it into my face.

My two left wings were already waiting. One folded again and again until its core was surrounded by a razor-sharp, scalpel-like edge. The other flattened and spread out, forming a hexagonal shield that parried the rising knee.

Bryce caught the blade on his bracer, sending a shower of sparks through the air. At the same time, his opposite hand reached for my face, a golden orb of plasma ready.

I floated a little higher for leverage and countered. My hand grew and morphed until it resembled the maw of a sharpedo. Black aura cloaked it as I chomped down. The plasma fizzled away in the darkness and it was only his instinctive reaction time that spared him his hand.

Undeterred, he released a barrage of punches and kicks. Every one struck like small meteors, only to be parried by my wings. I learned two things in this exchange:

First, his armor was stupidly hard. I got a few hits on his unarmored parts, but it was as if there was a golden barrier that kept his squishy bits safe anyway. Worse, the golden metal was denser than my own, black scales. The sparks earlier had not been from me scratching his armor, but from his bracer chipping mine.

That was absurd. Zygarde, at his best, could overwhelm Xerneas and Yveltal and hold his own against Ultra Necrozma. The last battle that killed me would have been a lot easier had we managed to gather his cores in time. It was one of the many reasons I’d made accomplishing the quest he assigned for me a priority in the past several months.

The second thing I learned was that I was the better close quarters combatant by far. He was well-practiced, especially with a twisting, kicking style that emphasized centrifugal force, but as expected of a tinker, that wasn’t really his focus. At a guess, I suspected that he had too many demands on his time for him to achieve true mastery like the scary kung fu lady.

He made up for it with his agility. As a shrunken garchomp, I’d been able to maneuver between his attacks. Now the situation was reversed. I was more than twice his size and he had thrusters hidden all along his armor, giving him incredible mobility in all directions.

Even before this, he’d been unusually agile. He said over dinner that he had something to help him keep balance, some kind of super-soldier serum he’d made for himself. It made me wonder how great he could have been at martial arts had he dedicated himself completely to that instead.

As it was, he couldn’t dodge out of the way of my tail. Its core acted independently of me and transformed into a large, dragon-headed cannon. The Dragon Pulse clipped his side and detonated like a missile, flinging him back.

We stared each other down. Though both of us had our faces covered, I could tell we were both grinning ear-to-ear. Finding someone who could take everything I had and dish out the same in return was rare. I suspected he felt the same way.

Then, the moment passed. He engaged once more with his arms spread wide. “Magna Blast!”

My own wings morphed into cannons of my own in response. “Thousand Arrows!”

Golden meteors collided with countless, emerald fireflies. They exploded like pretty fireworks, belying their immense destructive power. The shockwaves washed over us but neither of us budged.

I tried a few more salvos but ranged combat was where he shined. Thousand Arrows. Dragon Pulse. Even the always-accurate Swift. They just weren’t very effective against his own unending rain of plasma. He always managed to shoot down or evade the bulk of my attacks, and what landed failed to even scratch his ridiculous defense.

That was fine. Truthfully, up close was how I preferred things. I assigned my lesser cores to continually harass him, but I directed the bulk of my power towards the staple of dragons everywhere: Dragon Dance. Every cell in my body burst into azure flames. Even the ones that had been let loose via Thousand Arrows ignited. Once again, the temperature spiked as I tapped into the most temperamental of auras.

I then offloaded the mental burden of upkeeping the Dance to my tail. Six cores. Six parallel thoughts. They weren’t quite as sophisticated as a metagross’ partitions, but they were much more independent, and perfectly fine with continuing what was already being done.

My main core needed to stack something a little more relevant: Extreme Speed. I became a streak of black, green, and blue, only visible thanks to the draconic trail I left behind.

I had the pleasure of seeing his eyes widen in panic as I appeared instantly in front of him. We engaged in another close quarters slugfest. I hit him with everything I had. For several seconds, an eternity for combatants of our speed, I completely overwhelmed him with my speed.

And I accomplished virtually nothing beyond chipping my own scales. It was as if his golden armor was immutable in its radiance. My draconic flames clung to the surface, only to burn fruitlessly against its mirror shine. I began using different aura types to see if one might work better.

The darkness of Crunch was burned away in its light. Iron Tail did fuck-all. Brick Break and Focus Blast were a little better. I had no luck breaking that armor like a coconut shell, but I could tell the impact sent vibrations through his body. Whatever bullshit his armor was, the blue dragon beneath wasn’t so invincible.

I grinned and reached out, grabbing his arms and legs with my four wings. Holding him spread-eagle, I rained punches and kicks down on him with Brick Break as we plummeted towards the earth. Vibrations? I could do that.

We landed with enough force to wipe Brockton Bay off the map. My knee was on his chest, driving him down with all of my considerable bulk.

At the same time, I summoned as much ground type aura as I could and shoved it straight through his chest and into the earth. “Land’s Wrath!”

The earth imploded. Had we been out there, in Earth-Bet, entire maps would have had to be redrawn. Dragon still feigned anger over the last time I cut loose like this. I was the reason Canada’s northern reaches looked different from the one in Earth Aleph.

Bryce roared in pain as the full weight of the technique coursed through his body. Enough force to shift tectonic plates wracked his bones. The golden supermetal armor failed to protect him, not from something like this.

But to my surprise, he didn’t give up. If anything, he was getting stronger. Golden light gathered around him. It reinforced him, as if melding into his scales and bones. For a moment, I saw a glowing “M,” just like the crest that strange totem had. He managed to work one arm free and decked me in the face before detonating a plasma bomb at point blank range.

I reeled back in pain. The scorching flames burned with the heat of the sun. The punch impacted with the force of a meteor. That single blow, delivered without leverage, would have made Solgaleo proud. Yes, he was definitely getting stronger.

That gave him the leverage to get his feet against my chest. The thrusters beneath his boots roared to life, punting me at hypersonic speeds into the fox’s barriers. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Andy and his strange lamb-girl and misty wolf flit around. He was security, just in case anyone died. He said he wanted to be in the arena because he wasn’t sure if Tamamo’s bounded field could interfere with his own spell.

I grunted in annoyance, which probably sounded rather alien coming from my many cells. He called that golden totem the “miracle,” which implied victory in spite of overwhelming odds. Maybe it was something like Victini’s Victory Star, or Jirachi’s Doom Desire, the alteration of reality towards victory. The idea that a tinker could bottle miracles was honestly a little terrifying.

The specifics didn’t matter. What I knew for certain was that he was getting stronger, seemingly without limit. Oh, those limits probably existed somewhere, but I was having a hard enough time hurting him through the metal anyway. I needed to end this.

There was one thing I thought might work. Zygarde wasn’t just physically stronger than Xerneas and Yveltal. Brute strength alone wouldn’t make him the Keeper of the Balance. No, it was his ability to suppress Life or Death in favor of the other that earned him this crown. Magnamon wasn’t either of those, but it was worth a shot.

Dragonfire gathered in the maw on my chest. Azure sparks mixed with emerald-green. Hexagonal plates formed in front of my maw, acting as auric focuses to shape the beam.

Down below, Bryce understood what I was doing. Maybe it was a bit cliche for us to end the battle with a beam-off like in one of Mark’s animes, but cliches were cliches for a reason. Besides, I had a feeling this kind of flashy climax was right up his alley.

He stood and motes of golden light pooled all around his armor. Space itself compressed as the “light of miracles” revealed its full power.

I heard Tamamo yelp in panic. Such was our strength that the bounded field began to unravel from our presence alone. She clasped hands with her husband and six phantom tails appeared behind her to match the three she normally wore. The field reasserted itself, many times sturdier than before.

I laughed. Truly, it was a good idea to come here. I got a fantastic dinner, met interesting people, and now got to cut loose against an equally strong opponent.

Primary jaw open wide, I roared. “Core Enforcer!”

Bryce rose into the air. The compressed space expanded all at once in a tsunami of searing light. “Shining Gold Solar Storm!”

Twin beams of blue and gold met in the middle. Mine could suppress the abilities of most pokemon. His was the “miracle,” the power to overcome anything.

The collision was enough to create a spatial anomaly at the center. Either attack would have erased an endbringer, dimensionally layered flesh be damned. It was the prettiest apocalyptic disaster I’d ever seen. Fortunately, every single person inside our little bounded field could take it. I could only imagine how much of the world would be left had we fought in Earth-Bet.

Then, inch by agonizing inch, I began to gain ground. Core Enforcer overwhelmed his golden laser until it planted him right back in the dirt. The thunderous explosion that followed hid him from view, and this time, the golden light vanished entirely.

Andy did something that summoned a winter squall. With a single gesture, it was as if he’d personally invited an articuno here. It blew away the smoke, revealing a colossal pit that stretched the full diameter of the arena. Inside was Bryce, on his back and ridiculous black outfit in tatters. He wore a satisfied grin on his face, one I knew was mirrored on my own.

Our referee held out his blue scissor-blades towards me, a silent declaration of my victory. There was no roar of the crowds, we didn’t have enough spectators for that, but the polite clapping I got was more than sufficient. Given many of the audience, I was happy to receive that much acknowledgement.

I breathed heavily as I floated there. Even my wings and tail drooped, the lesser cores of like mind. That shit was the most exhausting thing I’d done in a long time, murdering endbringers included.

Slowly, I began to lose altitude. The black, hexagonal scales that made up my form flaked away as I shifted back into my regular armor. I headed over and helped him up.

“Good fight,” I said with a fanged grin.

“Good fight,” he replied. “You’re bullshit, you know that? Mecha-Zygarde? Really?”

“What about you? Since when can tinkers build whatever the fuck that was?”

“Magnamon’s special. I’m still not sure I’ve got the Power of Miracles right. Depending on the universe he appears in, he’s either way stronger or way weaker than I am.”

“Bullshit.”

“You too, Blake.”

“Craziest Thanksgiving I’ve ever had.”

“Yup, we should do this again.”

“Definitely.”

Author’s Note

Finally done.

There are several types of digivolution in Digimon. Biomerge, jogress, and armor are three distinct things. I decided to have some fun with it though. The Royal Knights version of Magnamon is largely featless. As such, this is Davis Montoya’s version in Adventures 02, wielded by someone with a bit more combat experience than Davis. The series conveniently includes both armor and DNA digivolution methods.

There is a scene in the anime when Davis and Magnamon both get planted on their ass next to each other. He seems to be about twelve feet tall here relative to Davis. In the anime, Zygarde seems quite a bit taller than that so I just decided to make him about as tall as Leviathan.

Yup. Zygarde is such bullshit. Each appendage is independent. They change shape. All cells can become invisible and transmit information amongst each other at will. Even excluding the sheer depth of its movepool, just its physical structure is pure nonsense. I workshopped this just before ZA came out and I was too lazy to include the mega. Meh.

In contrast, Magnamon has a very limited movepool. Sure he’s strong and fast, but he’s got lasers, missiles, and that’s about it. What he does have going for him is chrome digizoid, the kind of unobtainium that would make Wakanda weep with envy.

Gold digizoid specifically is a metallic-organic hybrid that grows with the user. It even resists “data disintegration,” which is Digimon-speak for “insta-death hax.”

The Digi-Egg of Miracles also imparts the “metal” element to the digimon. This might be another reason why Blake found it so hard to crack Bryce’s armor.

Animal Fact: Butterflies taste with their feet to determine whether a flower is food, or suitable for laying eggs.