Sunset's Isekai

by Wanderer D

All Alone in the Digilight (Digimon Story: Hacker's Memory - Complete)

Note: Cast in Author's Notes.

Erika Mishima smiled sadly as her brother, Ryuji, tackled their mutual friend, Chitose Imai and started fighting over how best to hack the Eden Server. The pair wrestled on the floor, while their digimon cheered on, safely outside of the scuffle area. 

Before things had escalated, the group was having a picnic in Ueno Park once again, as was their yearly tradition, except with some changes. Usually they would go there just in time for the Cherry Blossoms to bloom on some trees, but not all—they didn't really enjoy big crowds after all, and the park had the unfortunate fate of being the place to go in Tokyo for celebrating the blooming of the sakura trees.

This time though, they were in full bloom, there was no crowd, and they had their Digimon with them to have fun and relax. Them and Keisuke, along with his digimon, although their newest team member was less inclined than the others for a rough and tumble.

Instead, he focused on Erika. "Are you okay?" he finally asked.

Caught in her own musings, she blinked and turned to look at him like a deer caught in headlights. "Y-yeah! I'm fine," she replied, hugging her keyboard/plush toy Memetan closer, blushing slightly when he leaned over to touch her forehead.

The action itself made her cringe and feel conflicted. Yes, on the one hand it was a sweet gesture, given their history together. On the other… she wasn't sick anymore. She hadn't been for a long, long time now.

"You don't look fine," Keisuke said, blunt as ever. He never changed. Never would. "if something is bothering you, let me know what it is! I'll take care of it."

Despite herself, Erika snorted. "As if a n00b like you could do anything I can't."

"Try me."

Erika opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. The world went quiet around them, sakura petals frozen in mid air; Keisuke static in the middle of smirking. Her brother and Chitose were also unmoving, as was the air, the grass… everything except the Digimon, who slowly gathered around her.

The world slowly evaporated into specks of rainbow light, until they were floating over an infinite grid.

"I'm sorry," she said, curling up into a ball, holding Memetan tightly. "I'm sorry. I- it's hard to keep doing this."

Coredramon, her brother's digimon, glanced at the others. "Erika—Hudiemon, you don't have to."

"I want to be alone."

The Digimon once again shared a worried look, and this time it was Meteormon, one of Keisuke's evolved Digimon that spoke up. "I don't think Keisuke and the others would want us t—"

"Please!" Light emanated from Erika's body, blinding the others for a moment before receding to reveal a taller humanoid Digimon with metallic blue armor, helmet, and beautiful, ephemeral butterfly wings that glowed an almost neon-blue in contrast to their surroundings. "Please… I'll try again later."

"But—"

"Come on," Ankylomon interrupted. "Let's give her some space." Chitose's Digimon had more of his old Tamer's temperament than he cared to admit, but right now, he knew, as they all did, that she needed it, as much as it hurt them to leave her.

"You know where to find us."

Hudiemon barely heard Coredramon's words, but a few seconds later, she sensed as the others acquiesced to her demand, and drifted away into cyberspace, giving her the silence and isolation she had requested.

She floated in the space between dimensions, forcing herself not to think; to let time simply pass by and hope that it would take away the pain that came with the bitter truth that everything since the Eater was defeated was a lie.

Finally, she let out a soft sigh and straightened up, stretching her wings. She still didn't know where to go but… "Where did this come from?"

She flapped her wings, moving towards the stone arc that framed a sturdy-looking wooden door decorated with a sun-like yin-yang, coming to a stop just in front of it. She glanced around, confirming that there was nothing else. It was just her, in her little space between Digital Worlds, and the door.

Hesitantly, she raised her hand to touch it. It felt solid. It didn't resonate with her reality… it was something different. Something new.

Sunset Shimmer sighed and stretched before massaging her shoulder, trying to work out the kinks from hunching over all the paperwork for several hours. Her newest idea was slowly taking shape, and with the help of several Twilight Sparkles, as well as Principal and Princess Celestias, she had more than enough material to really get into the details.

Unfortunately, that also meant that she had much, much MORE than enough material to get into the details of. The danger of placing two or more Twilight Sparkles in the same room and having them go over the project was not only several hours of (technically) self-congratulatory reassurance between princesses, but also an array of corrections and suggestions that had eventually forced Sunset to pull out a Focus, connect it to a quantum server, and just have it record the whole conversation for later analysis.

She just hoped her server didn't somehow become self-aware through sheer content.

But, as things were, it seemed like she was off to a good start. Lena, Ahsoka, Freya and Dani all seemed to think so, while Rarity had simply muttered something about re-arranging space and time to better fit her new project.

Immortality was both a boon for time, and an invitation to stagnate after all, so action needed to be taken and decisions needed to be acted on with decisiveness. 

Still, she had been working at this for hours on end and she really needed a break now, and so she had started piling the notes in as orderly a fashion as she could, when the door opened, making the silver bell at the entrance produce its crystalline-clear chime announcing a new arrival.

Sunset paused, looking up from the table at the humanoid form peeking into the bar. She appeared to be a teenager, with thin arms and legs, and body-fitting armor, topped with a furry collar around her neck and an insectoid-like helmet with large golden eyes that matched the details of her armor at the knees and elbows. A pair huge butterfly wings seemed to grow out of her helmet, and as she turned this way and that, Sunset noticed that it seemed as if a girls long, blue hair had simply taken the wing shape and the space between filled with shiny, gentle blue and purple light, a shimmering skirt of sorts resembled the wings, falling around the girl's waist gracefully down to her knees.

"Hello there," Sunset said, standing up slowly and picking up her notes. She smiled at the startled look the Digimon (for it couldn't be anything else) gave her. "Why don't you come in?"

The Digimon hesitated for a moment before seeming to gather her courage and stepping inside. A plush whale of some sort appeared in her arms as she did, and she held it tight as she walked down the short corridor into the bar proper.

By the time she had made it through, Sunset had already walked around the bar and put down her papers, motioning for her guest to come closer.

"Welcome to Sunset's Isekai!" she said, her hands making a gentle, sweeping gesture to encompass the whole place. "My little bar, drifting across the multiverse. My name is Sunset Shimmer, and I'm delighted to have you as my guest today."

The Digimon considered her for a moment before sitting down at the bar. "My name is… Hudiemon." She glanced down as Sunset provided her a menu. A moment later, Hudiemon started glowing gently, her entire shape becoming light that slowly pulled into itself, revealing not a digimon when it faded away, but a young teenage girl with long black hair and golden eyes. She was wearing a blue and yellow hoodie around her shoulders almost as if it were a cape and a yellow summer dress.

"Well." Sunset cleared her throat. "That's unusual."

"This place… it shouldn't… I can't believe it's real, not after…" the girl's voice trailed of as she jumped out of her seat and started looking at things. The flowers; Sunset's pet symbiotic spider, Bernard; the many, many pictures on the wall. "There's Digimon here!" she said, gasping. "And humans… and monsters and creatures I read about in books! Is this really… real? Am I dreaming again?"

"Not a dream," Sunset said with a smile. "My bar is as real as it gets. It transcends time, space, dimensions… it goes beyond the multiverse, to the realm of fantasy, and back to the realm of science. It exists… beyond a shadow of doubt, beyond the limits of imagination." She gently touched the bar's surface. "It's there in the collective subconscious of the metaverse, in the soul of the omniverse… at the heart of what should be impossible but cannot be defined by limits such as comprehension."

The young girl shook her head. "You've been practicing that one."

Sunset grinned. "It doesn't make it any less true… but yes."

"Hmph." Hudiemon… or whoever she was, crossed her arms, slightly amused. "You need to make that delivery a little less obvious."

Sunset laughed. "Well, it's a work in progress. Now, come over and take a seat. My bar usually appears when you need it in some way or another… and please don't feel offended, but when you walked in, I could tell you needed an ear."

The girl sat down again, placing her whale plush across her lap, and perusing the menu before stopping at a particular item. "I would like this… matcha latte."

"Coming right up!" Sunset said, pulling out a mug and ingredients. "So, I hope you don't mind my saying, but you're not a traditional Digimon, are you."

The girl shook her head. "No… you can call me Erika, if you want. It's… easier in this form. Erika Mishima."

"Nice to meet you, Erika."

"Same, I suppose," the girl responded, withdrawing a little. "You said this place was… a bar that moved between dimensions? How is that possible?"

Sunset grinned, wiggling her fingers as the ingredients mixed right in front of Erika. "Magic. It's at the heart of everything."

Erika snorted. "Of course." Still, the girl smiled a little when the cup gently hovered down to settle perfectly in front of her, the emerald green contents accentuated by a frothy white sun yin-yang on it. "This looks nice."

"Well, it should taste even better."

"I will be the judge of that," Erika stated, picking up the cup and giving the contents a gentle sip that left the top of her lip with some green foam. "Okay," she admitted, allowing the smile to grow, it does taste better than it looks."

Sunset grinned, crossing her arms proudly. "I practice a lot."

Erika sipped more of her tea as she took in again the bar and its pictures. "You've been to a lot of places."

"Well, sort of. Most of those people came here to me, rather than me visiting their worlds. Comparatively, I've been to very few places. Sometimes I spend a couple of decades in one dimension or another, taking a break from my routine."

Erika studied the bartender. Sunset Shimmer didn't look much older than her. Maybe in her early twenties, yet her comment implied that she was older than that, and she said it so casually it also implied on some level that a 'decade or two' were inconsequential periods of time for her.

It would be rude to ask her age, but if she went by that comment, assuming at least one picture out of ten, or even twenty, on the wall came from one of those decade-long vacations, they were talking hundreds of years at a conservative guesstimate.

And if it was as casual as she made it sound… "Are you immortal?" she asked.

Sunset gave her a considering look, before shrugging. "As far as we know, yeah."

"I see." Erika held her cup between her hands, considering her situation. "Don't you ever despair about what you've lost?"

Sunset sighed, walking around the bar to sit next to her. "Sometimes, I miss friends that have passed away. It's hard in the multiverse… a friend you lost in one dimension, is probably alive in another, but they don't know me… and I don't really know them."

Erika's breath caught in her chest. She understood. "How… how do you deal with that?" she whispered, staring intently at her cup. "How do you lose those you love and face them again, when they're just not... "

"Do you want to tell me what happened?" Sunset asked gently.

Erika lowered her head. "A long time ago… my brother Ryuji and I got in a car accident… our parents died and I… I almost did too. The only thing that saved me was a corporation called Eden managed to figure out a way to keep me alive… by linking my brain to a super computer tied to their virtual world."

Sunset whistled. "Was it their version of the Digital World?"

Erika sniffed, smiling a little. "No… but when they developed it, they opened a gateway to it. It allowed certain things to come through, along with Digimon. A sort of fourth dimensional cyber entity called the Eaters. But, we didn't know that. The portal was closed shortly after and other than some whispers of things happening… time just passed." She licked her lips, her mind going over the facts. She didn't want to dwell too much on it… not after doing so for what felt like years now.

"My brother and his best friend Chitose, were hackers, they almost died once and later on managed to pull themselves together to build Hudie with me… our hacker team. Later on, a newbie named Keisuke came in with a unique problem… and that's when our lives turned upside down even more."

Erika drank a little of her tea, thinking back on the events of her previous life. "He was the first of us to discover that Digimon were not just programs. He introduced me to Wormmon… he… cared for me. We fought a great many battles, eventually coming head to head with the Eaters… I became Hudiemon after an Eater almost destroyed the world using my link between worlds, and at the same time a group of tamers managed to defeat the Mother Eater and the whole world started to be remade… but if I stayed, I would have died… so I chose to live… and I took the memory of the world that would have existed with me."

She bit her lip. "Time and space changed in my original world. There I was never born. My parents never got into an accident… the only person that remembered I had existed was Keisuke, but I couldn't stay with him…" she wrapped her arms around herself, resting her forehead in the soft material of Memetan. "All I have is memories."

Sunset got up and walked around the bar, picking up the now empty cup and pulling out a new one, where she poured more tea for her, setting it down within reach, although Erika didn't make any attempt to drink it.

"Sometimes memories is all we keep," Sunset said eventually. "We have to live on with them and honor them."

"I know!" Erika said, trying to figure out how to explain things to Sunset. Even after so long she was a loner, it was difficult to figure out what to say to explain what she felt. She glanced up, still holding on to Memetan. "I… I have the power to create the world again… a version of it, from my memories."

Sunset grimaced. "I see."

Erika snorted. "Yeah. I can be happy, I suppose, if I can learn to live in my memories… but memories can keep me from the truth only so far." She sighed. "It's not real. And the worst thing is… they're alive!" She looked up, feeling the tears welling up, and fighting back the urge to let them fall. "They are alive and well and happy and they don't know I'm here with the memories of all we lived together! All we ever did, all we suffered and experienced… all our successes and our tears… I remember, and they don't know I even exist."

"Do you regret it?"

Erika shook her head. "No. I've never regretted the sacrifice in order to save them… it's just sometimes I wonder if I'm punishing myself this way."

"Sometimes memories are there to remind us that we need to move forward," Sunset said after giving her a moment to calm down. "They're a chapter of our lives that shaped us in some way or another… living and reliving those memories, twisting them into a fantasy of reality is not honoring them. It twists your world into a parody that leaves you empty because in the end you know it's not real."

Erika snorted. "Tell me something I don't know."

"Maybe… that you've reached the natural conclusion to your experience with them."

Okay, that was different. "What do you mean?"

Sunset took a moment to gather her thoughts, which Erika appreciated. There was nothing worse than a torrent of ideas with no logical order and an uncertain conclusion, after all, you didn't program anything without some sort of structure.

"Despite all the time I have spent in the multiverse," Sunset said, "I still look back at where I began to understand better how to listen, learn and help others. It's too easy to assume I know everything… and when I have thought I have the right answer, that bubble bursts in very painful ways, reminding me of how fallible I am… I have learned a lot, but I am still Sunset Shimmer… and I have a lot more to learn. 

"The memories I have… of my time as Celestia's student… of my time after I abandoned her… of my time as a villain, a demon, a saiyan… every experience shapes me, and the memories put it into perspective… but each memory is a step, and at the same time, the next memory is the hand offered to pull me up." She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, relaxing as if the simple action took weights off her shoulders. 

"You've lived an interesting life."

Sunset chuckled. "I still am… all of those pictures on the wall? They're not just for decoration. Each and every one of them is a memory. A lesson. A friendship… it's time I can't get back, but that started something new, be it understanding that redemption has to be a constant work in progress, to knowing when I am not ready to help someone through her problems." She took Erika's hands in her own, looking at her straight in the eyes. "Your memories are invaluable, they are the building blocks of your future, not the walls around you. There's pain, sometimes, and joy, but both are what make you... you. The multiverse… the omniverse is vast, and you have the ability to go beyond where you are, so do so. I have a project that might interest you."

Erika blinked. "What are you suggesting?"

Sunset grinned. "Bring your memories… and help me create new ones. Start a new story, and be part of the ones that will be created here."

It took her a moment to find the words. "That's an awful amount of trust on someone you barely know."

"I'm a good judge of character," Sunset countered. "And my bar would not let a bad person in." She shrugged. "And while it's true that we barely know each other, I have all the time in the multiverse… and so could you. I have a family across space and time… you could find one too."

Ah. "I already had a family." 

"I know… and my offer stands, if that family would have wanted you to move on. I know full well the dangers of getting stuck in the past, Erika."

"And if I don't like it?"

Sunset's grin turned a gentle smile. "You'll still have a place here to come back."

Erika felt a slight tug at her heart. Was she really ready to move on? The memory of Keisuke's smile flashed across her mind. Gentle, and with a firm nod of encouragement. She might not end up fitting in with Sunset and her friends… but at least it was new… and she wouldn't run from her memories here.

She'd  take them in. Carry them with her. Turn them into a future.

"So, what's your plan?"

Sunset grinned, reaching behind her bar to pull out a stack of papers. "Oh, I think you'll like it."