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Lion Heart

(Had this one revised ahead of time. Enjoy :) )

Walking through Route 32, Leo could already see signs of Max and his group walking down this path and knew he was headed in the right direction. What he didn't know, however, is when and where they'd meet up. The lion was just about to walk into the entrance to the Ruins of Alph when he heard Jesse's voice. Right then, he knew that his role in this adventure was coming to a close. "So...you followed me from Violet city? I'm surprised, you must really be confident that you can beat me with how I smacked you around last time." Turning around he, bared his teeth at Jesse.

The trainer looked smug and his eyes had a greater look of animosity about them, even seeming as though they were incandescent. "Oh, last time I had to consult with others... You seem to know a great deal, Leo. That's something we can't allow so we figured...instead of doing the impossible, we'll just convert you and make you work for us." Jesse held his hands forward, smirking. "Come on, Leo, join us! You'll feel so much better when you do."

"Looks like The Darkness tightened its grip around you. When we were on the island you were the one always setting people in the right direction! You had a sound moral compass that few people have nowadays..." Leo commented, recalling events from the past.

2 years ago...

"You guys should really stop trying to pick fights when it's four on one!" shouted Jesse, standing in front of Max who was crying to himself, Nidoran standing beside Max to give him comfort while Jesse confronted the child bullies. The kids looked like they were itching for a fight and one of them even came forward but was knocked down on his back when Jesse swept his leg down at the boy's feet. "Like I said... You should stop trying to pick fights with Max. Because even if it's four on one I can still take all of you." With that, Jesse started cracking his knuckles and a moment later the bullies all scattered, running off to their homes.

Max pulled himself up slowly, sniffling. "Thanks Jesse... I'd probably be all covered in bruises if it weren't for you." With a childish grin, Max raised a fist toward Jesse.

Jesse looked at Max's fist then lifted his own, grinning right back at Max. "We're friends! I'll always have your back!" With that, Jesse sat down looking at the lake near Max's house, sighing. "You know Max... ONE day, I'm going to build a police station here, one that can enforce the rules and keep everyone like you safe."

Max sat back down, wincing as he accidentally ended up sitting on Nidoran's horn. Jesse's eyes went wide before he shook his head, taking Max to his grandparents' house and treating the injury before the poison caused any critical damage.

"Yeesh, there you go saving me again. That horn hurts! But, like I was gonna say at the lake..." Max took a deep breath, sitting down on the couch in his friend's home, cringing at the pain. "I wanna help you make your dream come true! When I'm bigger and stronger, I plan on becoming a Pokémon ranger that way I can enforce the rules of Pokémon and prevent people from misusing them!"

Jesse pulled out two bottles of water, handing one to Max before sitting beside him. "That's why you've been taking the Ranger Course in school, right? Maybe we can build that station together! We'll be our own bosses and protect the rest of the people on the island!" Both shared another bro fist, laughing to themselves as they undid the corks of their drinks.

After another fifteen minutes of conversation, the two of them walked out of Jesse's house, having to pass by Leo's bar when they were going to pick up groceries, Max for his parents and Jesse for his grandparents. But when they got there they spotted Leo at one of the stands, hefting up a crate full of beer. He grinned at Max as he lifted it onto his left shoulder. "Hello there, kiddies. Had to restock on my supplies so I ordered a few crates from this guy. Took a while to get here, though... shipping sucks, eh?" He joked while walking back to his bar. He set the crates down one by one by the door. When he was about to grab the last two crates, Max and Jesse grabbed ahold of one of them together, carrying it clumsily to the bar. "You two don't have to do that, you know... Let the grown-ups do all the heavy lifting alright?" He gave them a wink.

"No way!" Jesse said defiantly as he and Max set down the crate, panting afterwards given the fact that the contents were likely 20 pounds or more. "We're going to be grown-ups one of these days too, you know. And if I'm going to be a soldier of justice that means I have to help anybody who's in need. Even if said person is a buff lion like you!" The three shared a laugh and for their help, Leo gave each of then a ten dollar bill, neither of which actually took it until he persuaded them otherwise.

Present day...

"Jesse, you used to be a kid that wouldn't take crap from anybody. If someone did something that was morally and legally wrong you were always the first one to step up and teach them the errors of their ways!" Leo roared, pointing an accusing claw at the boy. "Your dream was to become a police officer and to run your own station on the island! You and Max were going to protect the island together. When you left, Max gave up his dream of becoming a Pokémon ranger so that he could bring you back to your senses. But I won't let him waste what youth he has trying to save you!" He shot out a Beast King Wave right at Jesse who skillfully managed to leap over the attack.

"You must be joking," Jesse spoke smoothly, eyes still eerily glowing. "My resolve and my sense of justice hasn't changed. I just came to find that all of humanity is rotten. I'm simply repairing our past mistakes and cleansing the world of the impure."

"Bah! Are you listening to yourself?!" Leo roared out, holding out his hands. "If you run by that logic you'll not find a single person that's innocent. We're all different Jesse, if anything is impure in this world it's The Darkness that you're allied with! So fight it!" Leo started to glow suddenly, teeth clenched. "I'll show you that The Darkness isn't for you. Live or die, I'm going to give everything I've got to bring you back!" With that, Leo started to digivolve into that of a Bancholeomon, but like in his Leomon form, he did not wield the Tanto that most in his species usually carried.

Jesse smirked arrogantly at Leo as he wielded his chain scythes. "I'd like to see you try. This time I won't run away like a coward and Nidoking won't get in the way either! So no cheap tricks on my account." He laughed as he charged straightforward at Leo, scythes facing forward as he moved to hack at the lion, but the jacket adorned around his upper body protected him perfectly from the attack.

"I'm not going to be helpless like I was in the last battle, Jesse." He growled, throwing a fist down at Jesse who simply leapt over his form to allow the lion's fist to land, not so harmlessly, against the ground, the power the lion now displayed forming a crater where his fist had impacted the ground. "Last round, I was forced to fight both of you but let me make things perfectly clear to you. In my Leomon form I was nearly impervious to death. Now, in this Bancholeomon form... I'm also resistant to most any attack you can throw at me. You can't so much as leave a paper cut on this body!" With surprising swiftness he grabbed Jesse's left scythe by the blade itself, as if to make a point, then crushed it into several pieces with a squeeze, the act in itself caused Jesse to stagger backwards. "It's like you said, Nidoking won't be getting in the way so you have no way to make an escape. I can do what I should have done last time. I'll expel the darkness inside of you by ending your life." He opened his palm, letting the fragments of the scythe drop to the ground, stepping on them without a care as he picked Jesse up by the neck, the small human writhing and kicking at the lion who had him completely and utterly defeated.

"Release me now you cursed lion!" He yelled out then started gagging as Leo tightened his grip. After a few panting breaths and wheezing via what little air he was getting, he spoke up, "I had no intention of involving you or Max! As far as I could see, you two were the purest of them all. You yourself can't stand humanity so why..."

"Why am I fighting for them?" He snorted, loosening his grip enough to give Jesse a little more air to breath. "I don't fight for humanity, my organization is against humanity for how they treat hybrids like me and my brother. That said, not all of humankind is evil, and it was you who helped me figure that out. So, as thanks for showing me that some humans CAN be pleasant to be around, I will end it quickly and always remember you for the way you were. Close your eyes...you won't feel it for longer than a second," he assured. Jesse did as the lion said, already resigned to his fate when a bolt of black energy shot Leo right through his heart. In the moment he released Jesse due to the shock and growled. "Wha... What was that?!" His eyes bulged for a moment when he initiated reverting back to his original Leomon form. "What...is going on?! Nothing should have pierced the jacket I'm donning...It's supposed to repel attacks..." He clutched at his heart, coughing and doubling over in pain.

"Whew...that was a close one. He almost killed ya. We can't have that..." A red anthropomorphic dragon with smooth-looking scales stepped out from behind a tree, index finger smoking as he blew on it and stepped out into the open toward Jesse and Leo. "Oh, the reason is rather extensive... But I'll explain it in the shortest, simplest of terms otherwise I'd be here all day. Let's suffice it to say that I hacked you... Hybrids are so tricky because they have more than one core, or as us flesh-and-blood creatures call it, our hearts. Makes you difficult to kill if not impossible. So we developed an attack that, instead of killing you, would severely alter your coding. As we speak you're becoming one of us, converting into a being of The Darkness to work for us."

Leo rolled over, clutching his heart even as he glared at the dragon who'd fired at him. "You're a fool if you believe I would ever work for you! I had a feeling something like this might happen..." He panted out every word, his body starting to disintegrate, zeroes and ones disappearing into the air making the red dragon stare at him in confusion. "I've already given one of my hearts away. Tore it out of my own body and disabled my automatic regeneration even before this battle began. It was a safety precaution so that I could not be reprogrammed to fight on your behalf." He coughed out a bit of blood, surprising him, but then again he wasn't a full blooded digimon so, in a way, he also expected it. With an amused grin he lifted a hand up in a shooting position and laughed weakly. "The Darkness isn't as powerful as I thought. Unless more than one of you are working together you're all sitting ducks. I can die knowing that Max and his friends will be able to purify the lot of you." He started wheezing at this point, turning his gaze to Jesse and smiling softly. "Don't let up on your dreams Jesse... Fight The Darkness... You and Max can make this world a better place if you'd just figh--" His face went limp before he could finish and in a brief illumination, his body completely disappeared, nothing but zeroes and ones of binary floating up into the sky, indicating that Leo was no more.

Jesse looked more than just a little disturbed at the scene. He looked at his dragon companion with disdain. "You didn't have to kill him, you know. We could have used him!"

The dragon sighed before pressing his index finger into Jesse's chest and growled. "I didn't mean to kill him, you dumbass. How was I supposed to know he'd outsmart us? We didn't even know a hybrid like him, or a digimon for that matter, was capable of removing their cores." He turned away, looking at Jesse's broken scythe. "Looks like you'll need a new weapon. He completely totaled yours."

Jesse looked down at the broken pieces, picked them up carefully and set them in a jar. "I'll think about that. Anyway, shouldn't you be heading out yourself? You have your own target. Leo was mine!"

Smithy looked down at the box that Leo had given him only hours before and opened it to find that the core that Leo had left with him had started glowing. A couple tears ran down Smithy's cheeks before it became a downpour. To him he'd lost a valuable friend that he could talk to. "Why'd you have to die...?" He muttered to himself, before opening a portal into the digital world to start on his new project.

Max looked down at the city that was now lying down beneath them as they soared through the clouds. They'd finally made it to Goldenrod city but a sudden chill slipped down his spine and he felt a sense of dread creep up on him like he just lost something important. "I don't like that feeling..."

"What feeling Max?" Shouted Flare over the wind blasting in their face. Looking down, he laughed. "Oh, you mean this wind? It is getting kinda chilly, huh? Come on, let's land! Just outside the city, though, so we don't disturb anybody."

"You're already disturbing somebody..." Charmeleon commented, already picking up on Max's uneasiness and staring at him sympathetically. Being a Pokémon he could tell when something was wrong.

Max smiled softly at Charmeleon and just shook his head. He couldn't help but shed a few tears but he didn't quite know why. However, they were in Goldenrod now and that's all that mattered to him. Getting the third badge for his trip into the Johto League was upon him!

To be continued...