Alpha and Omega
Title: Alpha and Omega
Characters: Louise Valliere, Alphamon, Jean Colbert
Summary: When Louise calls out into the void for a sacred, beautiful, and strong familiar gets what she asks for, only the creature she summons will not bow to a girl that calls him her slave.
Notes: Digimon and Familiar of Zero cross. I am not expecting to write more for this story.
When the smoke cleared, Louise was left staring up at a massive, white caped knight facing away her. Golden, feathered wings fluttered as he turned around, revealing ornate black and gold armor and a black, draconic helm. A positively enormous two-sided axe thing was held in one hand. Louise distantly noted that the inside of it's mantle was the rich purple of royalty.
"You. Girl," the knight - Or was it king? Prince? - who Louise didn't even come up to the knee of, pointed toward her with a gauntleted hand and rumbled with a voice like thunder, "Why have you summoned Lord Alphamon Ouryuken?"
Louise felt faint. This is my familiar? A Lord? "I," she gulped, "I summoned you to be my familiar!" The answer came out as a cross between a squeak and a shout, not nearly as strong as she would have preferred.
"Me? Some slip of a girl dares to try bind me?" the winged knight scoffed loudly, causing the croud to audibly titter behind Louise and the knight to redirect his attention, "And none of you should laugh, since I doubt than any of you have even the wisp of a chance to summon myself, weaklings." He waved them off like someone would a bothersome fly.
Emboldened by the black knight's utter disdain for the others, Louise stepped forward and barked, "Present yourself so you may be marked and gain the honor of being the familiar of Louise Valliere!"
Her attempt to be commanding was met by a dull, contemptuous stare. Alphamon spun his weapon and planted it, blades first, into the stones of the courtyard. It sank in a quarter of the way up the blades and stood upright when Alphamon released it. Alphamon crossed his arms and stared down at her, "Foolish girl, do not tempt my patience. The only way I would deign to even consider such a contract involving me would be if the other party became my familiar."
Louise nearly tipped over. Become a familiar?! "Nobles don't become familiars!" she shouted, shaking her fist, "I summoned you! You are my familiar!"
"So be it," on that final sounding note, Alphamon shook his head and spread his wings, blocking out the light streaming into the courtyard. Time seemed to slow for Louise as her familiar gripped his blade and started to lift off.
In those frozen moments, it sank in that if she didn't do something quick, her divine, beautiful, wise, powerful familiar, who was most definitely not a servant would leave her forever.
"Wait!" she cried, "Wait! Please, wait!"
Alphamon looked down, stopping his ascent and hanging in the air.
Pale, Louise sank to her knees, "I'll... I'll do it! I'll become your familiar, Lord Alphamon Ou- Ouri-"
"Ouryuken," Alphamon said, floating downward. As his taloned sabatons touched the earth, he said, "I am Lord Alphamon Ouryuken, the Dragon King Blade, Louise Valliere. Tell me, girl, do you speak the truth? Would you bind yourself to me as my familiar?"
Deathly white, Louise nodded.
"Speak the words!" Alphamon rumbled.
"Yes!" she said, "I would do it! I would be your familiar, Lord Alphamon Ouryuken."
For a moment, Alphamon looked at her, seeming to search her soul, before he nodded, "Very well." He held out his hand and a bright light shone above it, so bright as to blind someone if they looked at it, almost like a miniature sun. Almost as quick as it had happened, the light vanished, leaving a tiny... something floating above his palm. Slowly, the glowing device landed on the upturned surface and black fingers closed around it.
Alphamon turned his head skyward, "So that is your answer, Lord Yggdrasil?" Louise looked up and though she heard no response, Alphamon nodded, "I see." His hand opened and the black thing glowed again, though less strongly this time, breaking apart into motes of light over and over again until there was nothing of it left.
"Louise Valliere," Alphamon said and lower himself to one knee, but still so much larger than the girl that was his summoner, "By the will of Lord Yggdrasil we are bound in partnership: you as my human, and I as your digimon." He offered the small girl his hand, palm up.
Stunned, Louise stumbled forward, only hesitantly placing her hand over Alphamon's larger one.
Light flared between their joined hands and Louise felt runes carving themselves into her hand, making her cringe and force herself not to scream. When the pain vanished, so did the light, and it was done.
She tearfully looked up into the hard amber eyes. After a moment, they softened and Alphamon's large hands gently wrapped around her own.
"Um, excuse me, Lord, uh, Ouryuken?"
Alphamon looked over to see a nervous looking man approaching where he knelt near his summoner and partner. "Yes?" His eyes actually took in the gathering of humans, rather than the quick scan he had given them before. The black cloaks seemed rather oddly similar to a gathering of Wizardmon rather than humans, though they were conspicuously missing the hats if that was what they were going for.
"Mr. Colbert! I can explain!" Louise interruped as she shot upright, reddening with embarrassment.
"Can you, Miss Valliere?" the man asked, quirking an eyebrow.
"Ummm..." Louise turned an even darker red, turning to Alphamon helplessly.
Alphamon chuckled. "It is surprising indeed," he told Mr. Colbert, "She is a fair bit past the typical age that one summons their partner. I myself am quite past the age that I should have been summoned as well. That she called an Ultimate being such as myself, let alone a royal knight... It shows her potential."
"Royal Knight?" she stuttered. This time, Louise's blush was from the pleasure of the compliment. "Really?"
The desperate hope in the words made Alphamon frown behind the concealment of his helmet. "Really," he nodded to her. He didn't like the feeling he got from the shear amount of disbelieving hope embedded in that simple, one-word question.
Mr. Colbert coughed into his hand, drawing attention back to him. "I apologize for asking this, um, Lord, but are you truly nobility?"
Alphamon looked at the man, puzzled. "Among my kind, yes. So far as I am aware, the system of nobility largely fell out of use among humanity some time ago, so you needn't use such titles if they offend," he assured the man.
"Fallen out of use?" Mr. Colbert repeated, stunned.
"Offend?" Louise squeaked.
"Yes?" Alphamon wondered exactly what was going on here.
"I apologize for correcting you, Lord Ouryuken, but nobility has most definitely not fallen out of use," Mr. Colbert informed him.
"Interesting," Alphamon said, "May I ask where I am? To find a place where it is still in place is quite..." Alphamon couldn't quite find the right word for it.
"We're at the Tristain Academy of Magic," Louise piped up.
"In what country?"
"Tristain!" Louise told him, embarrassed that he didn't know such a simple thing.
Alphamon wondered but readily admitted, "I am not familiar with that country. Which continent am I on?" There were small countries, and it would fit that one of them might still practice follow the class system that many countries had done away with entirely.
"You don't know of Tristain?" Louise asked, seeming to wilt slightly.
"I'm afraid not, little one."
Mr. Colbert coughed again, "Tristain is a part of Halkeginia, Lord Ouryuken."
Alphamon frowned. Halkeginia? That wasn't the name of any of the continents...
When Alphamon didn't respond, Louise hesitantly called out, "Lord Ouryuken?"
"You may call me Alphamon, little one," the royal knight told her, then shook his head, "Mr. Colbert... I'm afraid that to my knowledge, there is no such continent as 'Halkeginia.'"
They stood there at impasse.
Eventually, the tension got too much for Louise to handle and she exploded, "What the hell?"
"Miss Valliere!" Mr. Colbert scolded, "Language, if you please!"
"But-!"
"I'm afraid that I will have to ask everyone to leave," Mr. Colbert raised his voice over Louise's objections, turning toward the still stunned and bewildered crowd of students. When the didn't move, tapped his staff on the ground, frowning severely at all of them, "Well? What are you waiting for?"
"Yes, Mr. Colbert," most of the students recited, reluctant to miss what promised to be quite the show, but they still left.
When the last student left, the man pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Mr. Colbert?" Louise hesitantly asked.
"I'm sorry, Miss Valliere, I should be congratulating you for a job well done," he smiled at her, "You have summoned a most spectacular familiar."
"Um..." Louise blushed, "But! I did it all wrong!" She ducked her head and muttered, "Like I always do...
"You summoned something, didn't you," he asked gently.
"Only I'm his familiar," she pointed out.
"We are partners, little one," Alphamon interrupted, "Who is whose familiar... To my kind, it doesn't matter. Neither partner owns the other. You are mine, as much as I am yours. The symbol of our partnership with show itself to you when it is time for you to find it, no sooner." He rested his hand against Louise's back.
She turned around and leaned against his hand. "It doesn't make any sense..." she mumbled, "It's wrong. All wrong... All of it."
Mr. Colbert paled slightly, "Ah! She doesn't mean that, Lord Ouryuken! It is just a very unexpected situation. Unheard of, really."
"Hush, little one," the great knight said softly, "Sleep..." Alphamon slowly nudged Louise closer to him until he could pick her up in his cupped hands, "You need no fear, Mr. Colbert. The slightest incautious word will not give me cause to smite you."
"I'm sorry if your first impression didn't exactly convey that," Mr. Colbert shot back wryly, the paled at his own daring, "Lord Ouryuken."
Alphamon's head jerked up and stared for a moment, long enough for the man to start to sweat, before he threw his head back and laughed. "True enough," he said, nodding, "but I heard the words of my summoning." When Mr. Colbert cringed, Alphamon nodded, "'Oh slave who lives somewhere in the universe,' indeed. Summons have gone horribly awry in the past, causing a great deal of heartache, and the summoner calling the one she is summoning her slave?" Alphamon slowly shook his head, "As a royal knight and an ultimate being, I could not allow the power I command to come under the control of a corrupted heart. If she did not recant her words... I would have left her, even if she is part of my being."
Mr. Colbert scrubbed his face with one hand, "I... I have many questions, Lord Ouryuken."
"Understandable," Alphamon said, "as I also have many questions as well. As this is not the human world I was expecting to be pulled, the information that I have as to the state of that world does not necessarily apply in this one."
"This world...?" Mr. Colbert started, then raised his hand, looking like a migraine was coming on, "I apologize, but every time you say something, a dozen more questions spring to life..."
"My apologies, then," Alphamon countered with a hint of humor.
Mr. Colbert sighed, "What a day."
Alphamon huffed, looking down at the sleeping human girl resting trustingly in his hands. "Agreed. Where do we go from here, Mr. Colbert?"
"We don't exactly have accommodations for someone of your... stature," the man said thoughtfully and somewhat embarrassed, "Either by size or by rank. We weren't exactly expecting to have a lord visiting at this point in time. Familiars typically reside with their masters but you won't exactly... fit."
Alphamon gave Mr. Colbert a searching look, "I think... I might have a solution for the size problem in the short term, and I am not particularly picky about accommodations. For now, anything will do."
Some of the weight on Mr. Colbert's shoulders lifted, "That's good. Do you have some sort of shrinking spell or...?"
"No," Alphamon told him simply, "Please watch over her for a moment." He set her down gently and stepped away. He raised his black and gold weapon and it turned into a swarm of see-through greenish cubes that quickly dispersed into nothingness. Mr. Colbert watched as Alphamon stood there motionlessly for several long moments, before he felt the hair on the back of his neck begin to rise.
Alphamon's dark armor transformed into light all at once. One moment, there was large man-shaped being clad in armor, and the next he was a massive glowing... egg of sorts. And it was growing even larger.
Mr. Colbert was gaping when the egg shape exploded in an ultimately harmless flash of light and a blast of wind that revealed a dragon shaped creature larger than any he had ever seen before. It was unlike any dragon he had seen before in more than just size, since it was covered in red and black fur rather than scales, four wings, and an oddly shaped nose horn that looked more like a blade than anything natural. "You're a dragon?"
Red eyes with a cat's eye pupil focused on him, and the dragon spoke, "Sometimes." He shook his head, fur ruffling, "Two more transformations to go."
"Two?" Mr. Colbert consciously shut his hanging jaw, "You're going to get even larger?"
The dragon laughed, and the human man realized that even despite the size increase, Alphamon sounded, strangely, younger than before. "No. This is actually a less powerful form than before. Like this, I am merely a perfect being."
"Merely perfect," Mr. Colbert muttered sarcastically, "Like it isn't anything special."
The dragon laughed again and burst into light, only this time, instead of growing, the orb of light shrank until it revealed a creature that was roughly the same size as Sylphid, the wind dragon that one of the students had summoned. This time, it seemed that the transformations were headed in the right direction, as the oddly shaped dragon creature had become smaller than he had started off as. Without pausing to chat, he burst into light yet again and shrank even more, until Mr. Colbert saw the final shape.
He was a royal purple color, but where the previous forms had all had large enough wings to fly, this new shape only had tiny, diminutive wings too small to get off the ground with. He looked... young. The other shapes had looked like adult creatures, but this one's eyes were just too large for his face, the proportions telling him that whatever sort of creature this was, it wasn't done growing yet. Alphamon was still rather large for a familiar, being roughly the same size as Guiche Gramont's mole, but thinner and longer.
Alphamon peered at himself, "Is this sufficient?"
"Better," Mr. Colbert managed.
"It is odd," the strange, shape changing being said thoughtfully, "being a child again."
"This is what you looked like as a child, Lord Ouryuken?" Mr. Colbert asked.
Alphamon looked up, head tilting, "Ah. Right. You are unfamiliar with digimon. We have multiple names over our lifetimes, Mr. Colbert, one for each form we take. Like this, as a child, I would be called Dorumon. As an adult, I would be Dorugamon. In perfect form, it would be Dorugreymon. And of course, I introduced myself to you as Alphamon, though I could transform into an alternate form in which I would be called Dorugoramon."
Mr. Colbert frowned, "Do you mind if I continue to refer to you as Alphamon?"
The "child" shook his head, "It isn't convention, but I suppose that it would be okay, since I still have the power to be Alphamon. If I was injured badly enough to be forcibly reverted to a lesser stage, then I would have to request that you refer to me by the proper name."
As Mr. Colbert digested that convoluted explanation, "Dorumon" trotted over to Louise and peered at her. He murmured something and the pink haired girl glowed a faint green before she floated slightly, drifting over until she landed on Alphamon's back, arms dangling over his shoulders, head lolling against his neck, and her legs held in place by the long fox-like tail. "Could you have someone direct me to her quarters?"
"Of course," Mr. Colbert said, pointedly ignoring the picture the two made. He headed for the door to the courtyard, "Come this way please."
"Mmmmmm..." Louise buried her face into her pillow. Her eyes blinked open, "...Wait." She snapped upright, "Oh no!" She looked around frantically and found herself lying on her bed, fully dressed.
"What?" she grabbed her cloak between two fingers and pulled at it, momentarily puzzled before she remembered her first waking thought. She shook her head violently side to side, pulling her long pink hair in distress, "Wait. I don't know if I was expelled! Oh no, oh no!"
"Little one?"
"Eeeek!" Louise tumbled back and off the far side of the bed.
A white and purple snout poked around the edge of the bed and large golden eyes blinked at her, "Are you well?"
"What are you?" Louise squeaked in surprise.
The... kind of cute creature tilted its head, "I'm your partner, silly."
Louise stared, "So it was a dream? I didn't summon that super powerful Lord, person, thing but you instead?" What an awful dream.
The purple, fox-tailed creature frowned at her, "It wasn't a dream, little one. And I would appreciate not being called a 'thing' again. I am Alphamon."
Louise gaped, "But... What?"
"What, what?" the supposed Alphamon asked, sitting back on his haunches and curling his tail around his hind paws. And was he smirking?
Louise scowled at him, "Are you smirking at me?"
"Not at all," he replied loftily, much to Louise's irritation.
"What are you playing at?" she yowled at him, hands curling into fists, "There's no way you could possibly be Alphamon!"
His head tilted in the opposite direction, "And why not?"
"It was a dream," she said, turning up her nose as a rationalization of the whole situation occurred to her, "There is no way I summoned a noble, so there is no way that could have actually happened. That means that you're my familiar and I'm not going to be expelled!" Thank the Founder! She frowned at him, "Now what should I name my familiar?"
He gave her an unreadable look.
"Fuzzy?" she wondered aloud, peering at its fluffy coat, "Nah. That's not properly dignified for a familiar spirit of a daughter of the House of Valliere..." She thought, "You, Familiar! What is your element?"
The unreadable look became flat and rather unfriendly. He said nothing.
"Well?" she demanded testily at her familiar's obstinacy.
"I am wondering if I should not have left you there on your knees, no matter how much you pled," the friendly voice went cold, and together it was like a slap to the face that Louise's familiar of all creatures would say such a thing to her.
She went pale, staring at the suddenly frightening beast that had taken the place of the cute, fuzzy creature that it had been moments prior. The golden eyes glared at her with narrowed eyes and bared fangs. The triangular ruby upon his forehead glowed with a magical light. She crab-walked backward from the sudden aura of righteous anger. Familiar righteous anger. This was Alphamon.
A familiar spirit was supposed to be the best thing that could happen to a mage, so what was so wrong with her that even her familiar spirit hated her?
The creature, no, Lord Alphamon, snorted and rose to his feet. He shook his head, "You should learn humility, girl." He turned around and left, leaving Louise sitting alone on her bedroom floor, scorned by the one creature that she had thought would never do anything of the sort.
The tip of the creature's tail vanished through the door and Louise curled into a ball and cried.