JLGJT Productions Presents...
DDLA Episode 2: "Digiworld 2004"!
Part 1: Center of Evil!
Author's Note: This takes place after the Michi e no Armor Shinka CD drama (which was supposed to have happened the previous day, Valentine's Day) which means that Ken can now Armor Digivolve Wormmon to Pucchiemon and his Crest has become the DigiEgg of Kindness. Some dialog in this part is based on events from the CD Drama, so you may want to read it /archive/index.php/t-79760.html before reading this, all right? :)
Date: February 15, 2004
Time: 1:00 pm
Place: En route to Oikawa's apartment...
A two-car convoy was slowly traveling down the busy Odaiba streets toward an uncertain destination. The first car contained Cody and his family as well as Armadillomon while the second van was driven by Ken's dad and while Ken and Wormmon sat in the front seat. Behind sat Tai, Matt, Izzy, T.K., Kari and Davis with Digimon partners in tow, leading to a very cramped ride and short tempers.
Though everyone else was trying to make the best of it, Davis, in the back row, refused to do anything but sulk. Yesterday, Valentine's Day, had been both bad and bizarre to him, and he refused to come out of his bad mood. Veemon, uncomfortably squished down between Davis's legs so that it would be less likely he would be seen, had given up trying to cheer Davis up and just winced as he heard Davis begin to mutter under his breath again.
"Huh? You say something, Davis?" asked Kari, sitting on the seat beside Davis. Gatomon, perched on Kari's feet, looked up at Davis as well.
"I was saying," Davis replied, his peevishness clear to see, "that if you had given me some homemade chocolates, or even the obligation chocolates, none of yesterday would've happened!" (Obligation chocolate, or girl-choco, is a social obligation for girls to give on Valentine's Day in Japan. If a girl likes a guy very much, she gives homemade chocolate instead of store-bought chocolate.)
"Davis, you're being unreasonable." Kari countered. "How was any of us supposed to know Boltmon and Pukumon decided to show up at that particular day?"
"If you had been home making chocolates instead of shopping with Sora and Mimi, you wouldn't have gotten caught with them!"
"Davis, this was the first time Mimi had been here since the year began. Cut her some slack!" Matt warned.
Davis turned to face Matt, who was in the seat in front of him. "Well, you weren't helping either!" he indignantly yelled out. "No one was helping me. You tossed me out because you thought I couldn't sing, Izzy said I was hurting his computer and Ken had the bright idea to dress up like the Emperor again! Is helping me get a girl too much to ask of the team?!"
At this point, the van erupted with noise as Matt, Izzy and Ken assaulted Davis with counterattacks while Tai, T.K., Kari and the Digimon just tried to keep out of things. The intensity of the argument did not take long before it had an effect on the driver, causing Ken's dad to pull the car over and give the occupants a good berating to "keep the dang volume down!" Meanwhile, the car with Cody's family in it had pulled over as well and Cody had already ran over to see what was the matter, Armadillomon closely behind.
Cody looked at Ken's dad through the window as he pointed angrily toward the back seat. Cody slowly traveled back to see the other occupants laughing at Davis, who was trying to make himself invisible by sliding under the seat but without crushing Veemon in the process, something that was not working for him. Cody giggled and went back to the car.
"What's wrong back there?" his mom asked as he and Armadillomon got back in the car.
"Oh, Davis just blew his top again. It's fine now, nothing to worry about." Cody replied, trying to sound casual but with his grin betraying him. He and Armadillomon tried to suppress snickers, but without success.
"Oh, OK then. We'd better get going." his mom replied with a chuckle, putting the car into gear and looking for the next opportunity to enter the traffic flow...
As the two cars pulled up to the destination apartment building, the occupants noted with concern what was already there: a police car parked next to what looked like a pest control van. Near the van, a policeman was talking with two other men, one wearing glasses and dressed in a suit and tie, the other in a dark green jumpsuit and wearing something on his back. The policeman noticed them and directed them to park in spots nearby that had already been reserved for them by the policeman's partner.
"What do you think's going on in there?" Kari asked no one in particular as she saw the car with Cody and his family park beside the small group of men. The van parked in the adjacent empty slot, and the occupants quickly began unloading, glad to be getting out of the cramped vehicle. Ken and Kari in particular noticed the sign at the head of the spot, which read "Reserved for the Vehicle of: Yukio Oikawa". It seemed macabrely appropriate that they were assigned to that spot.
Ken tried to shove the flashback images out of his mind as he went over to where the rest of the group had converged on the three men talking to each other. His dad introduced him in turn to each of the men: the policeman who had been dispatched to supervise the operation concerning Oikawa's apartment, the man in suit and tie who owned the apartment building, and the man in the jumpsuit dispatched from a pest control company by the owner.
"We've been getting a number of complaints from those living near Oikawa's apartment of a terrible smell coming from it." the owner began to explain to the group as he studied the Digimon with a puzzled expression. His explanation began to trail off as he continued his studying: "Because it was known that he alternated between here and on Mt. Fuji, it was just dismissed... as coming from some food that had spoiled and that he would come back to clean it up. But... after the Mt. Fuji residence was found ablaze and a Missing Person report filed by his boss, the police put the place under lockdown... but now the smell has gotten to the point where something needs to be done..."
"You seem to be the only ones that have answers, so it is to you we are going." the policeman took over for him. Judging from his face, it seemed he had heard of the Digidestined's story before, and now wasn't quite sure whether to believe what his eyes were seeing or not.
"Because of the smell, we have been forced to break our missing person lockdown on their possessions that would normally prevent the legal heirs from taking anything if a person has been declared MPD, missing and presumed dead, until solid evidence of death is presented or the missing person is found alive." the policeman continued. "A pest control company has been hired to find and get rid of whatever is causing the smell. After that is done, we need the legal heirs to tag whatever they want to take for themselves so that it can be treated separately from the rest of the room. It is likely anything left will be damaged or rendered unusable by the strong chemicals they need to destroy any pests in the room, but anything taken out only needs to be disinfected and descented, which may allow it to survive in good condition. You understand this?"
Cody's mom and grandpa (who were the legal heirs) nodded, and then the policeman referred them to the pest control man, who began his part of the explanation: "OK, now I am legally obligated to review some procedures before we go in. First off, everyone is required to where some kind of breathing protection and gloves, both because of the smell and because the chemicals we are using give off fumes which are poisonous if inhaled directly or touched. This includes, uh..." (here he groped for a word to describe the Digimon; like the other two men, he didn't quite know what to make of them) "... your pets, or whatever they are. Secondly, once the smell source is removed, use the red tags we will provide to indicate which items you want to be removed. We will go through the apartment room-by-room, removing things as indicated. Once everything you want has been removed, the room will be sealed off and treated."
"While that is happening, someone else from the same company will disinfect the removed items outside, in the open air." the policeman added. "The job of me and my partner is to make sure everything is accounted for at the end of the day."
The pest control man looked around for a second, then said, "All right, if there are no questions we will get started. You can pick up the masks from the truck, then follow us to the location."
It sounded simple enough at first, but things quickly got complicated. The gas masks either didn't fit or wouldn't stay on some of the Digimon, so after several frustrated and uncomfortable attempts at taping the masks in place they were finally forced to Plan B: Agumon, Gabumon and Patamon forced to have filter paper taped over their mouths, hampering their breathing and effectively preventing Agumon and Gabumon from speaking (lest they tear their filter paper). Similar improvisations using pieces of protective gloves cut to fit were applied to the Digimon as well, adding to the ridiculous look they had already.
Finally, after much wrangling and a few headaches, the entire group set out into the apartment building, a bizarre parade even by Digidestined standards, drawing more than a few stares and amused laughs. They took the stairs up instead of the elevator so as to reduce the number of eyes staring at them. Nevertheless, a lot of faces were red when they got to the room, from embarrassment but not from exertion (the room was only a few floors up, so they didn't have to climb many stairs).
As the approached the room, they noticed the many air freshers and fans positioned near the door. "This was just a temporary solution to try to reduce the smell. As you might have guessed, it has not been particularly effective." the apartment owner explained through his mask.
Ken ran up to the door and pulled off the piece of paper taped to it. Holding it up for the rest of the crowd to see, the paper had various warnings (including ones of the apartment being possible crime scene and biohazard sites) and one all-capitals statement that "no one shall enter this site under any circumstances without written approval of the police, under penalty of trespassing and reckless endangerment!"
"That was mostly written up to keep out snoops who would mess up potential evidence of a crime out of the room. Now the smell does that job for us." the policeman sardonically explained. "We found a spare apartment key hidden in his section of the apartment storage room. We know that it works in unlocking the door, but we have kept it locked to further discourage intrusion. Now we need to know what is going on in there..."
He pulled out a key, attached to a keyring with a "Yukio Oikawa" ID tag, and put it into the front door lock. He turned the key to unlock the door, removed and returned the key to the place he got it out from. He briefly looked around before grabbing hold of the handle and turning it, slowly pushing the door open to reveal...
The wave of stench was immediate and powerful, even through the protective filtering. Without protection, the smell probably would have knocked out most of those exposed. Peering into the apartment, the reason for the stench was not long in being recognized: food, and a fair amount of it, had been left out on tables in the living room and kitchen, which over the course of two months had begun to decay and attract various critters. The net result was that the apartment had been overrun with various pests, and that most surfaces in the apartment (including the floor) were now too unsanitary to be safely touched with bare hands.
The group quickly pulled back, and the pest control man pulled out his two-way radio, using it to bring up his partner and also some plastic sheeting. "What happened in there? Why did Oikawa leave food out like that?" Kari asked no one in particular.
"I don't know, but I don't think it was an accident." Izzy answered. He would be proven right when, after plastic sheeting had been laid down on the floor to make it clean enough to walk on, the pest control men began removing the decaying food and giving the room a preliminary disinfecting to make stuff clean enough to touch.
The men had finished spraying the living room and were going over the kitchen when one of them noticed familiar looking containers in the trash bin. "Rat poison containers in the trash. Lots of them.", was the terse report to the policeman and the Digidestined group.
"Are you sure?" the policeman asked.
"Positive. We use the same stuff on some of our calls. It's definitely poison."
"Could the food have been poisoned with it?"
"Maybe, the stuff's too decayed now to tell for sure. We haven't found anything yet besides bugs and mice, so we don't know for sure what the poison has been used on. Once we go over the other rooms, the apartment should be safe enough for the others to enter."
"Will your spray affect computers if you spray them?" T.K. quickly piped up.
"They shouldn't if the spray isn't direct. Besides, we make it a policy to minimize collateral damage to property." The Digidestined breathed a collective sigh of relief at hearing this.
Shortly afterward, the Digidestined group huddled down the hallway while the pest control men brought up more plastic sheeting and chemical sprays. "Any theories, suggestions?" Tai quietly asked. They saw further down the hallway the building owner trying to shoo onlookers away, holding up a warning sign that told people that chemicals were being sprayed and that they shouldn't stick around unless they had some kind of breathing protection. This scattered the crowd but made the already ridiculous situation even more so.
Izzy sighed and rolled his eyes with the rest of the group before giving out his theory: "This may have been Oikawa's Plan B if his attempt to open a gate to the Digital World had failed completely on New Years Eve. He would have used Arukenimon and Mummymon to lure us here, then take at least the Digimon out with the poisoned food. He knew that our Digimon wouldn't be able to resist the treats he had left out, and he intended to use that against us."
"How can you be so sure, Izzy? I mean, could you even tell what the food had been?" Matt asked.
"Some of the stuff I recognized as treats like the ones sold in Yolei's store, the ones we used to smuggle to the Digimon in the computer lab. And some of the food wasn't human food, but cat food."
"How does that make a difference?"
"Well, I think that like what happened with the Dark Spores, Oikawa's behaviors and attitudes were altered by Myotismon's control of him. By possessing him, Myotismon would have imparted to Oikawa more than just a desire to get into the Digital World."
"You mean, things like what he likes and hates, what he would prefer to do given a choice, things like that?"
"Well, not just that, but also in memories as well. Oikawa may have Myotismon's memories as well as his attitudes. He didn't got antisocial or become like Myotismon in every way, otherwise we probably would have heard of him earlier, but I would guess the effect would be enough that some things would be recognized if we found them." Izzy concluded.
"Like in hating cats because of Gatomon?"
"Exactly. Gatomon would have been a specific target, hence the poisoned cat food."
"All right, Izzy; care to comment on that, Gatomon?" Matt asked the feline Digimon. She just shrugged, probably because she felt silly wearing a gas mask that was almost too big for her and/or the fact that she didn't want to talk about the subject.
The awkward silence that followed was broken moments later by what sounded like a loud pounding coming from the room. The huddle quickly broke and the building owner met them at the door. Looking in, it was quickly determined that the pounding was as a result of trying to open one of the doors.
"You have the key? I think the door's locked!" the pest control guy was heard saying. The policeman, next to him in the room, began talking to himself as he fumbled for the key. He produced it and tried it in the lock, but to no effect.
The policeman sighed and scratched his head before peaking around the corner of the short hallway he stood in and noticed the group by the door. "One of the doors has been locked, and the main door key doesn't work." he explained to them.
"That's weird. The key should open any door in the room." the building owner said to himself.
"Could any locks have been changed in the room without you knowing?" Ken asked him.
"Maybe. I'm just an absentee owner; I'd have to get the building manager, as he'd be the one with those kind of records."
"Could you do that please?" the policeman asked the owner, to which the latter nodded and went down the hallway toward the elevator.
After the owner was gone, the policeman fished out from his belt a lockpick and said, "All right, let's see what we can do while the owner is getting that information." As he began to work, the group of Digidestined slowly began to file into the room, always making sure to step on the plastic sheeting.
Much of the room was obviously dusty and dirty with the product of 2 months unchecked infestation. Many objects, mostly the furniture, had been already been black tagged, the tag "Must be destroyed due to overwhelming infestation." Cody's mom and grandpa ruefully began to red tag a few electronic items and knick-knacks that hadn't been too badly damaged while Cody himself began to study a collection of videos that had been stored in a nearby cabinet. The cabinet itself was black tagged, but the videos stored inside were still in relatively good condition.
Most of the video cassettes were horror movies, and Cody recognized several titles. He carefully reached in (the filth of the room in general was combining with memories of Oikawa to make him very nervous) and pulled out one title, a vampire movie judging from the cover art.
"What you got there, Cody?" Armadillomon, who was beside Cody, asked him.
"I think it's a vampire movie." he ruefully replied.
"Golly, I don't understand why people why would want to watch things as scary as Myotismon was."
"Well, people usually do it because they like the scare it provides, but I think in this case Oikawa did it for some kind of satisfaction for Myotismon." Cody replied as he opened the case. Inside was a videotape, only partway rewound, and a small slip of paper that read "Play at 1:00:00". This mystified him, but it also made him determined to keep it. Once he showed it and the paper slip to his grandpa, the video was quickly red tagged to preserve it for future analysis.
The group was now split into three parts: Ken, Izzy, Tai and Davis with their Digimon watching the policeman work, Cody with his family and Armadillomon tagging things, and the rest (Matt, T.K., Kari, Gabumon, Patamon and Gatomon) in the kitchen, waiting for the computers to be found.
Bored and on edge, the group in the kitchen began looking around in drawers and cabinets, trying to determine which dishes were clean enough to be taken and sanitized for later reuse. Matt, trying to relieve tension, attempted small talk: "Uh... well, I feel bad that the memorial got destroyed. We all worked so hard on that thing, and one stray grenade undid everything."
"I remember that your dad said it was 'a total loss'. And now we can't even get up there to remove the ashes or start rebuilding." Kari replied, giving him a critical look.
"I know you can't, but Ken and Dad just might. The dome itself is stable, and most of the windows have already been replaced, so once they reopen the access route up there it should be OK."
"Yeah, but every day that goes by worries me more and more. I mean, this is Wizardmon we are talking about here."
"That's a good point, and Dad has mentioned that at random times and areas in the building a voice unexplained by other means is heard."
Kari and Gatomon were instantly riveted to Matt. "You think it's Wizardmon?" Kari asked.
"T.K. and I think so, and so does Dad, but no one else believes him. And we can't be sure ourselves because only Dad has heard the voice."
"Did he hear what it said?"
"No, just something like gibberish. If something is trying to be said, it's not coming through. And because most of the electrical systems are off or not working, we can't know if the 'shadow' is happening again."
Kari looked at him with confusion, but Gatomon piped up with "Let me look around. Maybe something will happen when I'm around that won't otherwise."
Matt looked down at the feline with pain in his eyes. He empathized with her desire, but knew that it couldn't be fulfilled quickly. "I'm sorry, but the building is off limits for at least another 2 weeks, and even then I don't know what would happen with you around..."
Matt was interrupted by a sudden sound of a muffled "poof", followed by yelling and the policeman racing to the apartment's entry door and slamming it shut. The others in the apartment quickly looked down into the short hallway to see Ken and Izzy trying to avoid stepping in a blue powder that covered stripes on the floor by their feet. Judging from the pattern of the stripes, the powder had drifted from the opposite side of the door through the small cracks between the door itself and the frame as well as from under the door.
"What happened?" T.K. asked as the pest control man changed his sprayer for a vacuum and began sucking up the powder on the floor.
"The policeman had picked the lock and was about to open the door when something went 'poof' inside the room and blue powder began to drift through the cracks in the door." Ken explained, still looking a little shaken up by the surprise. "The policeman said it might be cyanide so he's not letting anyone near the door until it's been all vacuumed up. Even then, the apartment is going to have to be boarded up once everything that has been red-tagged is removed."
"That's right. The released cyanide has made this place even more hazardous than before." the policeman wearily replied as he returned from the main door. "Because there's no way to vent this place without endangering the other building occupants or the public in general, the only thing that can be done is seal this place off until we can get a decon crew to certify that there are no more poisons hidden somewhere. I'm sorry, but anything in this apartment that isn't red-tagged will have to be destroyed to prevent a public health hazard."
"And the apartment itself?" Cody's grandpa asked him.
"Stripped to the framing and rebuilt from scratch. Nothing can be saved, not even the wallboard. Someone will have to tell the owner about this right now." the policeman replied before pulling off his two-way radio and telling his partner down on the street to look for the building owner. All that filled the silence afterward was more waiting and more worrying; how many more deathtraps could have been laid for them, and what was behind the booby-trapped door?
As it turned out, the powder had spread over the majority of the back surface of the door and an area of the carpet inside near the door, but did not travel far from the burst-open tin that it had been stored in because of it being a heavy power. This meant most of the things in the room had escaped contamination and might be salvageable later.
Peaking into the room, the Digidestined saw glimpses of what seemed to be some kind of control center, with several computers lined up in a row on one wall and a cot-like bed on the other. All the computers appeared to be on some kind of low-power mode, and the room had far fewer pests, apparently due to the dusty but otherwise relatively clean condition the room had been left in.
The pest control man eventually cleared them to enter what appeared to be Oikawa's bedroom, putting down more plastic sheets on the floor and warning not to touch anything that had blue powder on it. Ken, Izzy, Tai and Davis entered the bedroom with their Digimon while the others stayed behind to help Cody's family salvage items from the other rooms (the living room, kitchen and bathroom).
Immediately upon entering the room, they had the feel they had entered a command center suddenly and inexplicably abandoned. Three computers were lined up in a row along the back wall and a convertible couch that had been folded down to act as a bed was opposite the door. Next to the computers was a large rack filled with thick books, the topics varying from genetics to anatomy to programming languages.
"Oikawa's reference library." Izzy concluded as he looked the books over, marking the books with the red tags he had been allowed to use. "We can use these to help in research and other things."
The others in the room barely heard him as they were studying the computers in front of them. Each computer monitor had different colors and numbers of stickers attached to it: the leftmost one had four stickers (one on each side of the monitor frame), the middle one had two stickers on the top of the frame of its monitor, and the rightmost one had a single black sticker on the top of the frame of the monitor belonging to that one.
Each person took a computer, Izzy on the leftmost one, Tai on the middle one and Davis on the rightmost one. All the computers were restored from their standby mode through mouse movement and, just as had been suspected, the three computers did indeed all have separate but coordinated functions.
All three computers were physically linked together in a network, and small windows in the top corners of the screen showed a status summary of the other two computers. None of the computers showed a typical desktop screen, but instead varying displays covering most of the screen. The left computer showed a map divided into four sections based on the compass points, each section having a colored overlay; the eastern section had its blue overlay flashing while the others had overlays that were constant. The middle computer showed two status bars in the middle of a black screen, both bars flashing with "TERMINATED" written over each one. The right computer showed the same map as the left one, but in black and white outlines with a black grid imposed over the map; the top middle of the screen showed a white square " 100" and, below it, a black square " 0".
Davis immediately noticed the similarity between the display on the right screen and the monitor screens that had been used to show how much area Ken had controlled as the Digimon Emperor, and it was agreed that this was Oikawa's equivalent of that program, his way of monitoring the success (or lack thereof) of the initial scheme. Tai guessed that the middle computer probably had been Oikawa's way of tracking Arukenimon and Mummymon, who the two status bars had represented. But it was the left screen that drew the most attention.
Noting the colored divisions of the map on that monitor, Izzy formulated his theory as he cautiously tried the mouse and various keys to see what happened while hoping he didn't mess things up: "The colored divisions... correspond to the divisions that the Harmonious Ones control... The flashing blue division is Azulongmon's territory, and we know he escaped his prison... BlackWarGreymon's destruction of the Destiny Stones must have weakened control enough that we could break him free from the program's control... which is why the blue region is flashing. This must show the status of the prison program holding them captive... and if I can get a help menu or something like that, maybe I can shut this thing off..."
Izzy passed Tai two red markers, and Tai used them to mark both the center and rightmost computers while Izzy grabbed another one and stuck it on the computer he was working on. Izzy quickly called Ken over and between the two of them slowly began to figure out the program's operations and functions.
After several nerve-racking minutes of trial and error, with the prospect of messing things up irreparably always a worry, the two finally figured out how to bring up the screen that disabled all the divisions. Izzy clicked the "disable all" button, but was hit with a enter password dialog box. He first tried "Oikawa", then "Guardians", neither of which worked. Ken, on a hunch, then tried "Myotismon" as the password.
The box disappeared, the entire screen flashed once, and then the colored overlays slowly faded away, leaving only the map. The other computers went black, then began to reboot. "Did we do it? Did we free the other Harmonious Ones?" Ken asked Izzy.
"I don't know." Izzy cautiously replied. "But what I do know is that I want to see how all this works together. Keep an eye on these computers while I get my laptop from outside; I want to get as much data off of these things before they have to be disconnected and taken away..."
Meanwhile, somewhere in the Digital World...
There was a sudden pause, something grabbing his attention. It was voices, the voices of his partners that he had not heard in so long. This could only mean one thing in his mind: the program that had held them prisoner had been deactivated, and now it would not take much to free them! He immediately summoned someone who had been a friend of the Digidestined, someone they would recognize if they met.
"Yes, what is it you desire of me?" the summoned Digimon replied.
"Contact the Digidestined and bring them to the Digital World. The day when the Crests shall be returned to them is not far off now that I can hear the cries of my counterparts in their prisons. Tell the Digidestined was has happened and their fondest wish may one day soon be granted."
"As you wish, O Sovereign One!"
Elsewhere in the Digital World...
Another sudden pause, but this one provoking anxiety rather than hope. "What was that?" the assistant said to his leader, both staking out at a certain spot
"Oh, nothing to bother about. Now stay focused! That little pink thing is pesky enough without being able to pull a disappearing act!" the leader replied.
Nearby but unseen, the "little pink thing" had also paused for a moment. "Something has happened, something important! I must go find Gennai and see what has happened, yep yep!" he said.
A hole appeared in the arid sky, leading into what seemed like a rich jungle with huge flowers growing out of the ground. Out of the hole emerged the "little pink thing", right in front of those stalking him!
"Aha! I've got you at last, my little pink pest!" the lead stalker declared.
"What what? Now see here, you are being most rude and improper!"
"Oh, don't be ridiculous! I cannot have you going around throwing your magic bombs into my works. Which is why I need you to come with me, right now!"
"I'm not going anywhere with you, nope nope!"
"Oh contraire, my little pink pest!" the lead stalker said, holding up a green crystal in his right hand. The crystal was a bright emerald green and seemed to glow from within. The pink Digimon instantly collapsed on the ground, allowing the assistant to pick him up without resistance.
The assistant was handed the crystal and ordered to take the Digimon to "the Holding Tower" to be imprisoned with the others. As the assistant began to do so, the leader said to himself. "That was the last one against me out here. Now all I need is to get that troublesome caretaker out of the way and I will have all the data I need to execute my plan!"
What exactly will happen in the Digital World now? And what is both the plan and identity of the mysterious ne'er-do-well and his assistant? Find out in Part 2, "DigiWorld Return!"