Reader was one of the first humans to get a digiegg, and everything went downhill from there. Years later after the both of you and others have been tormented by the government your egg finally hatches, and brings the apocalypse(mon)
Nobody had heard of ever heard of a digimon twelve years ago, so when the first digieggs started to appear it caused a global incident. Children were snatched from their homes by officers in full body hazmat suits, with geiger counters and other gear, homes were put in large plastic covers, family members scanned for radiation blood taken records ran and reran for suspicious behavior jobs activity anything.
The children never came home. Parents screamed for their sons and daughters making public appeals, begging the government to give back their children, to let them write, to see them, anything!
If you tried to search for them in the following years all information was scrubbed, hospital records, graduations, attendance, like they never existed disappeared forever with hush money or threats.
The kids were kept in isolation, yourself included, they didn't know what'd happen if you were placed together, didn't want you to have that power. Some of the eggs hatched, some of the eggs broke, some of them were split open by tools built for shaping diamond. Yours survived, but hadn't hatched yet. It grew duller and darker each day, gradually so gradually, they only noticed when it was greyed out. Presumed a dud but still it gave off energy readings.
They drew your blood, took hair, skin, even organ samples, scanned every inch of you until none of your body even felt like your own anymore categorised in a system as number and codes a spreadsheet of your anatomy to study and scrutinise. Any discrepancy they started again.
They strapped you to machines head gear secured too tightly studying your brain waves, how your brain reacted to stimulus, pain fear laughter (not that you could muster a laugh too scared of what they'd do to you), how your brain processed seeing your digiegg be shocked, probed threatened to determine if there was a psychic link.
They put you under the knife when a digivice materialised itself from an electronic device too close to you one session, they'd taken the digivice apart and determined to get more answers they'd sewn what appeared to be the main systems into you, above your heart. At this point you weren't human to them, just an experiment.
You heard about some of the others dying, pushed too hard by the experiments the surgeries all of it. You barely hung on even as their tests devolved into more cruel human endurance, being kept awake for hours at a time or woken before rem sleep, because they could because you didn't exist anymore, to see if that paradoxical egg of energy and code responded.
Said egg, grew heavier without any input seemingly didn't change in size, but it grew denser, and denser.
And then it split.
The red lights and alarms had been blaring for hours now, for the first hour of it you and the other subjects, because that's all you were subjects were shut down completely overwhelmed by the sound and lights, believing it to be another cruel test. The building shuddered and there was a loud boom, alarms cutting out suddenly but the rooms and halls still bathed in a disturbing red glow.
Your body was trembling and head pounding from the agony on your senses, clutching your forehead, bandages around your midsection bleeding through from another culture surgery, the only thing stopping you from remaining dead on the floor was an iv drip offering minor pain relief. Your gown was bloody and ruined and you'd no doubt be dismissed and degraded for getting it covered in blood, legs shaking as you pushed yourself up to stand using your iv drip for support.
You watched in slow fear and confusion as another subject shuffled past your glass doors, a strange creature floating besides them with flowing tendrils, 5 fingered hands, and a large mouth. They didn't even look at you shuffling by as you stood before slowly you approached your door and finding it ajar, unlocked tapping it open slowly caution overwhelming your senses that this was a trap.
But, you slowly moved shuffling in bloody gown with an iv stand for balance, the halls were empty, it was weird, the building seemed to have no power save for the red warning lights but the lift chimed to you softly opening up and presenting an inviting soft glow, you couldn't see the other person from before did they also go this way? You couldn't take the stairs, so, you shuffled in.
The doors closed slowly without pressing any buttons but you didn't feel trapped, the speakers hummed a tune you recognised from somewhere as the mechanisms shifted lift going up, taking you out of your lower experimental layers. You never would've realised they'd built a skyscraper office building on top of the facility they used to torture countless children, or maybe that was the point it was a tech company after all, unbeknownst to you having used everything they ripped out of the digimon and digivices to make leaps and bounds ahead of any competition, their fortunes pathed in your blood sweat tears skin organs everything and they'd never give you the grace of your name, of a new blanket. All those millions. Squeezed out of a dozen or so kids.
The doors pulled open and you shuffled into what looked like an office, squinting as it was dark up here, all light vanishing as the elevator closed, the sky outside was a deeper red than you'd seen, like a denser old blood, you'd never seen the sky so, angry. Did it always look that way? Flickering memories struggled to surface, as you were subconsciously drawn to the window and the patio outside, sliding door clicking softly and pushed aside and you shuddered at the cold burst of wind enough to make you yelp to yourself and whimper, the lab wasn't warm but it wasn't freezing, your gown whipped at the storm raging outside.
A deep bellow, or rumble maybe? Vibrated through you in a way that almost, no, it did have you sinking down to your knees with a soft hiccup of fear, your brain only able to know that that something was big, and deadly and you were so scared. The world lurched as something heavy walked, was it nearby or far away? You couldn't tell. And then the faint jangling of chains, metal clanking softly on itself and a humans voice in distress.
You looked up and could make out, a shape, a literal shape, like a dodecahedron or something floating there with floating clawed appendages on chains and at the top a deep blue humanoid figure with a deep black cape, it flowed in the harsh wind and you could only imagine something like Batman before noticing what looked to be a scientist from the clothing they wore held around the chest by a large hand, they might have been begging for mercy you didn't know, you couldn't hear, it was all so much.
The humanoid face turns into a repulsed sneer as the clawed hands move with snapping speed grabbing the man's flailing limbs and, he just, disintegrates, like he's been sliced apart into tiny paper thin slices, shredded from existence on this world. Your breathing is shallow and you choke on your own fear, your exhales a wheeze, and the figures head turns to you their golden eyes focusing on you all at once.
He looks to be, stuck to the shape, tubes and wire like body, and for a moment he looks like he's ready to shred you from this world too, and then he stills, even the cloak defies the storm, moving with a silence that was uncanny he approached the wall of the outside patio that stopped someone falling to their death, chains clinking as they curled around themselves like anxiously wringing hands.
They slowly drag over your shoulders down your forearms, his mechanical hands though triangular and sharp don't even draw welts or blood, as the clawed blue hands of his human form extend downwards, offering you assistance to your feet. It's strange, you take those hands, they're so warm, feeling completely safe and at peace as they aid in delicately lifting you with the subtle strength that would imply he could hoist you up in the air or tear your arms from their sockets, the mechanical claws still touching dragging softly pinching your gown and adjusting it more proper on your form not crumpled, eyes flicking to the blood as he makes a quiet sneer.
You don't know why, but you squeeze his hands so much bigger than yours to comfort and reassure him you're okay and his eyes come to your face tilting bird like to one side, his helmet did almost look like a beak, one hand slips free and you touch the warm black metal with golden markings, stroking softly as though petting him noticing the grey silver hair sticking out the back and that the cape is fused to his skin and that his arms have zippers like they were zipped on.
You'd never seen any such creature like him before, this man, was he a man? Was a stranger to you, and yet, "apocalymon,," your mouth murmurs before your brain catches up, his wild and feral golden eyes soften and become half lidded almost looking as though a sudden peace has taken over him at the fact you named him.
Your hand still rested on his large palm is gently secured thumb on your fingers as his fingers pressed up to your palm bringing your hand up to his face his paler blue lips touching your knuckles so delicate so softly and you felt him breathe in a deep inhalation as though trying to draw in the scent of you through the back of your hand.
Everything about this should've freaked you out, made you afraid made you pull away, but he wasn't a scientist, he wasn't a scornful cruel individual hiding their cowardice behind a mask a sense of righteousness, he wasn't a human, and he wasn't here to hurt you, you felt for the first time in a long long while, safe.
There was faint growing light in the distance and it illuminated a great beastial form of 6 legs and talk, jagged teeth and horns before the energy was expelled in a great blast, multiple buildings torn down in its wake, had you seen it you'd have likened it to a kaiju like godzilla or some such, the great beast stomped releasing that same low bellow, but you didn't crumble this time.
"Armageddonmon," his deep voice rasped, "they are on our side," and though he never specified you knew, it was you against the rest of humanity. The rest of the world could burn. You felt his hands shift to take you from the patio and to hold so cautiously by his chest, a clawed mechanical gripping the iv.
"will we?"
"Not yet, there are others inside, they will join us soon," he answered soft without you needing to ask the whole question, the other experiments were still inside, and so the building still stood, but you realised now there was more beasts flying roaming around as each of the former children found their footing to leave that prison, and the creatures no further understood than they were years ago were waiting.
If you asked somebody years ago what a digimon was, they'd ask if it was a game or a new tamogachi type thing. If you asked somebody what a digimon was after this day, they would say monsters from another reality, great demons unleashed on the earth. And they'd be right, they were digital monsters, made in the echos of the cruelty they'd suffered, morphed from the agony and suffering of their other halves, protectors of the two worlds crafted into the human worlds own destruction.