Zhuqiaomon

Zhuqiaomon is one of the four Sovereigns - four Mega level Digimon with incredible power that protect the Digital World and its inhabitants. Each is put in charge of one section of the Digital World - north, south, east and west. Zhuqiaomon, the phoenix sovereign, is in charge of the southern sector. He has helped against the threats of the Digital World numerous times, including helping the other Sovereigns defeat the Seven Demon Lords and Parallelmon. He considers himself to a be just Digimon, but he takes his prejudices very seriously. The main example of this is his irrational hatred of the human race. Despite the fact that humans created Digimon, Zhuqiaomon felt nothing but hatred towards them, considering Digimon to be far superior to them in every way. For this reason, he also hated every Digimon that aligned itself with humans, especially those who gained such close bonds as to become partnered with a Tamer.

Zhuqiaomon was the leader of the twelve Devas, twelve Ultimate level Digimon that served only him, and the majority of which held up and agreed with his views. Zhuqiaomon sent the Devas after the Tamers, sending them to the Human World to kill the Digimon that had partners and load their data, and then destroy the Tamers to. But the destruction of the Tamers would merely be an added bonus, as his true objective in doing this was to get the Tamers to digivolve their Digimon so that the monkey Deva, Makuramon, who was posing as a human, could find and retrieve the Catalyst - the power which allows Digimon to digivolve. Once Makuramon obtained the Catalyst - Calumon - Zhuqiaomon called back his remaining Devas. But Zhuqiaomon is far from evil. He believed that the only way to defeat a powerful being called the D-Reaper, also known as the True Enemy, was to obtain the Catalyst and overcome the humans, becoming more independent from them. It took a lot to change his mind on the human race, including the destruction of all but one of his Devas, with the last becoming a partner Digimon, a temporary defeat by the biomerged form of Terriermon and Henry Wong, a long explanation by the fellow Sovereign Azulongmon, and for Renamon and Rika to biomerge and hold back the D-Reaper single-handedly for a brief time. After that, Zhuqiaomon grudgingly admitted that the humans were not as bad as he believed them to be, though he still treated them with contempt. He then helped fight the D-Reaper by assisting the other Sovereigns in pulling it back into the Digital World after it managed to infiltrate the Human World.

Facing the Tamers

 * "Digimon and humans digivolve together? This is an abomination. You have tainted the very core of the Digital World, and you will pay!" - Zhuqiaomon after MegaGargomon is formed.

During the first stage of his attack on the Digimon Tamers, Zhuqiaomon held them in high contempt and barely believed them to be worthy of his efforts, despite the fact they had destroyed most of his powerful servants. When a few of them; Takato, Guilmon, Henry, Terriermon, Rika, Renamon and Lopmon came up to his castle to confront him, Zhuqiaomon let them in to face him. However, he didn't allow Lopmon to explain the situation to him, and instead he waited for his attackers to Digivolve to Ultimate before using his weakest attack, Phoenix Fire, on them whenever they moved to attack him. He seemed to enjoy inflicting pain on them, sending a continous stream of flame at WarGrowlmon's back, while he himself was protected from all their attacks by the sheer heat of his body. He also turns on his former Deva, Lopmon, although not before trying to get her to defect back to his side again. When she refused, he attacked her too. He also constantly insulted the humans, referring to them as "filthy," "disgusting" and "maggots," while giving their Digimon a vicious beating, managing to get Rapidmon to de-digivolve back to Terriermon. Despite this, he seemed to be fair, and did not attack the Tamers when they were not attacking him, even allowing them to have several minutes of conversation.

When MegaGargomon was formed, Zhuqiaomon was utterly repulsed by the idea of human and Digimon in the same body. He turned up the heat, using another attack. Desolation Blast, to bring his own castle down on top of the Digimon. But he was unprepared for the the strength of MegaGargomon, and was severely injured by his attacks, until the floor caved underneath him and he fell into the ground, thus giving MegaGargomon a temporary victory. But he burst up again later, claiming that the Tamers had underestimated him too. After using Sonic Zephyr to send them flying, he proceeded to repeatedly ram the shield that Taomon put up to protect them, instead of attacking them directly. However, when Guilmon and Terriermon leapt out to confront him, he knocked them down and sent his most powerful attack, Blazing Helix, at them.

Fortunately for his assailants, Azulongmon appeared and prevented the attack from hitting its mark. Azulongmon proceeded to try and talk Zhuqiaomon out of his attack, but the phoenix Sovereign was incensed by Azulongmon's interference and an aerial brawl began between the two. Eventually, Azulongmon started the argument with words again, claiming that Zhuqiaomon'a vendetta was pointless and that his plan to defeat the True Enemy may not be right at all. Zhuqiaomon retorted that the Digimon were meant to be free of humans and that his ideals had managed to get him in possession of the Catalyst. Azulongmon suggested that perhaps humans and Digimon were meant to fight together, referring to MegaGargomon at the time. Zhuqiaomon refused to think along those lines and ended the argument by trying once again to kill Guilmon. Only a timely biomerging with Takato saved Guilmon's life. Gallantmon and Zhuqiaomon began to battle, although the battle seemed to favour Zhuqiaomon. Azulongmon interrupted once again and pressed Zhuqiaomon to give the humans a chance. Seeing how powerful Gallantmon was, Zhuqiaomon grudgingly relented.

Zhuqiaomon and Azulongmon began to explain about the D-Reaper to the Tamers. Once that was done, the two Sovereigns moved to save Calumon, who was in danger of being devoured by the D-Reaper at the time. Zhuqiaomon attempted the more direct approch of diving into the giant chasm he'd placed Calumon in to confront the D-Reaper, but he was beaten back by the D-Reaper's Chaos. He remained to one side after that, but he was still outraged when Azulongmon consented to help the Tamers down by letting them abseil on his beard. However, after Zhuqiaomon saw the power of Sakuyamon at work when Rika and Renamon biomerged to hold back the D-Reaper, he finally relented, stating that "They did alright. For humans."

Zhuqiaomon, along with the other Sovereigns, asked Calumon to give the light of Digivolution back to them. Once Calumon had caused the Digivolution of many Digimon of the Digital World up to the Mega Level, Zhuqiaomon confronted the Tamers' Digimon again. He said that he still hated their decision to join with the humans, but that he would respect it and he allowed them to leave for the Human World. After this, he continued to battle the D-Reaper in his own world, before helping the other Sovereigns to haul the part of it that entered the Human World back into the Digital World.

The Ogudomon Debacle
During this stage of events, Zhuqiaomon's role in it was far smaller than he would have liked. By this time, the majority of the Devas that had perished fighting the Devas - those that had not been absorbed by other Digimon - had been reborn, but had been split among the four Sovereigns, leaving Zhuqiaomon with Pajiramon, Sandiramon and Indramon. During the previous Ogudomon crisis, when the last two Demon Lords, Barbamon and Leviamon, had DNA digivolved to create a Super Demon Lord capable of nullifying the attacks of Digimon with malice in their hearts, Zhuqiaomon was able to help because he and the other Sovereigns had an immunity to Ogudomon's power, placed in them by their creator, Fanglongmon the Digimon God. But because of Ogudomon's immense power, they couldn't destroy him, so they imprisoned him underground in a cell made of solid Chrome-Digizoid. However, the D-Reaper was able to weaken the walls of the prison and allow Ogudomon to break free.

Zhuqiaomon sent two of his Devas, Pajiramon and Sandiramon, with a couple of other Devas and the surviving Megas from the Shining Digivolution to the Human World, to act as an Advance Guard to help the Tamers fend off Ogudomon, who knew now that he could not take over the Digital World and so would go for the human one, until he and the other Sovereigns arrived to lend aid. However, just before the Sovereigns could reach the portal to the Human World, it was destroyed by Belphemon, who had been awakened by Ogudomon ahead of schedule. Belphemon also destroyed the last of the Digi-Gnomes in front of the eyes of the Sovereigns, so they could not use them to create another portal. Enraged, Zhuqiaomon and his fellow Sovereigns obliterated Belphemon on the spot. But they were now helpless to aid the Tamers against Ogudomon. Fortunately, Ogudomon was eventually destroyed by Sakuyamon Miko Mode, MegaGargomon and Cherubimon, fulfilling a prophecy about the rise of Fanglongmon, so the Digimon God could put everything back to rights again.

Tamer Visit
Half a year later, when the prophecy trio were sent to another universe by the evil Digimon Parallelmon, Impmon remembered something that Lopmon said about Zhuqiaomon fighting him in the past. As a result, Impmon, Ai, Mako, Ryo and Cyberdramon journeyed to the Digital World to talk with Zhuqiaomon about Parallelmon, in order to find out more information about the mysterious Digimon that made their friends disappear. Pajiramon and Sandiramon guided them into his rebuilt castle, and Zhuqiaomon listened to their story, after getting into a slight argument with Impmon over his past as one of the Demon Lords. Once Zhuqiaomon heared Parallelmon's name, he was so enraged that fire exploded across his body and he roared loudly for over a minute, before demanding that the Tamers tell him the whole story.

Once he heard it, Zhuqiaomon explained that he had indeed faced Parallelmon in the past, when the evil Digimon had rampaged across the Digital World and sent several of the indigenous Digimon to alternate dimensions with his Absorbent Bang attack. Eventually the Sovereigns had confronted him and destroyed him, or so they thought. But they had been unable to retrieve any of Parallelmon's victims because the only Digimon capable of dimension-travel were Parallelmon himself, Anubimon - who nobody could find because he lived in his own dimension anyway, and GranKuwagamon - who had no control over which dimension his portals opened into. But, after the Tamers suggested that they could take GranKuwagamon back to HYPNOS, who may be able to use GranKuwagamon's ability to create a more reliable machine that could open portals, Zhuqiaomon told them where to find the Mega-level bug. He departed on good terms with the Tamers, flying off to warn his fellow Sovereigns that Parallelmon had not been destroyed as previously thought.