Part 3: Ghost Bustin'!
Date: Tuesday February 23rd, 2004
Time: About 7:30pm
Place: Fuji TV building, Odaiba, Japan...
"I hope this is going to be quick. I feel ridiculous wearing this in public!" T.K. complained, pointing to the metal frame "backpack" on his back. Patamon hovered beside him, studying his reflection in the metal frame with great intent.
"I couldn't agree with you more!" a fuming Tai stated, also wearing a similar metal frame "backpack". He glared at Agumon when he thought he heard chuckling coming from his partner.
"Cool it guys! We've yet to see our target." Izzy exclaimed from in front of the others, Tentomon hovering beside him. Standing in the middle of a fairly-busy office with workers staring bemusedly, Tai and T.K. were not in the mood to be talked back to, but all they could do was fume with indignation because circumstances left them no other viable response.
Izzy shook his head and pulled out a walkie-talkie. He pressed the button and said "Izzy to Matt, Izzy to Matt, come in Matt!"
Izzy let go of the button, and a moment later Matt's voice came back through the device: "I hear ya, Izzy. Haven't found it yet?"
"Afraid not. We've come to a T-intersection and we don't know which way to go." Izzy spoke back.
"If you are where I think you are, the left path leads to the main broadcast center, but that's been rerouted to secondary control while the main room is being rebuilt. The right path leads directly to secondary control." Matt explained through the walkie-talkie.
"Will we be able to reach where you set up from secondary control?"
"Yes, the studio we set up in is right off that room. Just look for the sign with '3-A' on it, that's where we have things set up."
"Roger, over and out."
"We're gonna split up?" T.K. ventured as Izzy holstered the walkie-talkie.
"It's the only way to cover both routes at the same time. Tai and Agumon, you follow me and Tentomon down the direct route to the right. T.K., you and Patamon cover the route to the left. We'll meet up in secondary control and go from there. If anyone sees the shadow, blast it for as long as you can and try to force it to the bait at the studio mentioned." Izzy confirmed.
Izzy and Tentomon proceeded forward, Izzy holding a device that looked like a meter with two dousing sticks sticking out of the top. Izzy held the device out in one direction, then the other, in both cases registering nothing on the meter, and beckoned the others forward. The others complied, having little choice in the matter.
After a quick look back, T.K. and Patamon disappeared down the left hallway, while Izzy and Tentomon started down the right hallway, Tai and Agumon reluctantly following behind them...
On the left path, T.K. took a turn and entered a zone where the atmosphere of repair and rebuilding began to mingle with the clean professionalism of a corporate headquarters. A sign slightly ahead pointed toward a construction zone where the blown-out main broadcast center was being reconstructed.
"No access beyond this point without construction permit and clearance from security office." T.K. read on the sign, which blocked the path ahead.
"T.K., which way do we go?" Patamon nervously asked, the mixed atmosphere beginning to creep him out.
T.K., also visibly unnerved by the atmosphere, looked right and noticed another door. He motioned Patamon to follow him to the door, and read the sign on it: "Construction Bypass – Employee Access Only"
"Should we be going in there?" Patamon reasonably asked.
"We have the guest passes, if anybody asks I'll just say we're trying to get rid of the ghost." T.K. affirmed, grabbing the doorknob and turning it as he spoke.
The door pushed open silently, and T.K. tiptoed into the space, Patamon now landing on his head in order to minimize chance of detection further. T.K. closed the door behind him, and quietly started down the hallway. He went down a left turn, then a right and another left.
The last left dumped T.K. and Patamon at a point where the path continued left and another door off to the right. T.K. said he would try the door first, and he uneasily opened it into a completely dark room.
T.K fumbled for a light switch and upon finding one flipped it. The light illuminated what looked like an employee lounge, judging from the table and couches as well as the kitchenette in the back of the room. The room had not seen much use since the attack, and the table had a thin layer of dust covering it and the magazines which had been strewn across it.
The blonde-haired DigiDestined unholstered the hose from the metal frame backpack he was wearing and flipped a switch on the arc tip. A beep came from the device, meaning it was ready to fire a pulse of energy when T.K. pushed the big red button on the arc tip. Pointing the device all around the room, he began to scan the furniture in the lounge.
Patamon lifted off T.K.'s head again, checking back toward the room's door in case someone (or something) came into the room. T.K. was checking the kitchenette cabinets when Patamon noticed the copier placed near the entrance of the room suddenly turn on.
"T.K.? Something's going on with that machine by the door." he nervously stated, which brought T.K. beside him.
"Weird, why would anybody want to use that copier?" T.K. said, viewing the machine with a suspicious eye as it began to spontaneously print out a sheet of paper.
"Is it supposed to do that?" Patamon asked.
"Usually yes, but there's no one around to tell it to print something." T.K. explained as he carefully walked over to the machine and took the piece of paper that had printed out. The paper had nothing on it but a gibberish mixture of English and Japanese characters, which made no sense to T.K. even as a test print page.
T.K. dropped the page of printed gibberish, and glanced back when he thought something was behind him. He scanned behind him once more, and heard Patamon yelp in surprise. Whirling around, he saw the target, the shadowy humanoid figure, emerging from the copier and slither to a point just outside the doorway!
With Patamon yelling in his ear, T.K. fumbled with his weapon, aimed it at the shadow and fired. A green arc of electricity crackled through the air, hitting the shadow and beginning to make it less distinct and lighter. The shadow immediately moved away and began traveling down the hallway at surprising speed.
"It's getting away!" Patamon exclaimed.
"Not for long. Try to keep up with me best you can!" T.K. grimly exclaimed, taking off down the hallway after the shadow. He began chasing it in the direction he had previously come from, firing the disruptor weapon whenever he got within range of the fleeing shadow...
While all this was going on, Tai, Agumon, Izzy and Tentomon had proceeded down the relatively short hallway to the secondary control room. After the group had done a quick sweep of the room, currently unoccupied due to the current time slot not requiring its use, Tai and Agumon had peaked into a few side rooms filled with equipment, with no success.
Izzy was scanning the room a second time with his ghost detector when its arms began to rise by themselves. He stopped moving, but the arms kept rising: the ghost was coming closer!
"Tai, Agumon, get over here! It's coming this way!" Izzy exclaimed.
Tai and Agumon rushed to where Izzy and Tentomon were, near the entrance door, and asked what Izzy meant.
"It's heading toward this room, maybe spotted the bait! See if you can hit it with the disruptor when it comes in!" Izzy ordered.
"Got it!" Tai stated, arc tip at the ready to fire.
About 10 seconds later, the shadow zoomed into the room. Tai got in front of it and fired, a bolt of green electricity arcing and fizzing out. The shadow quickly backed up and disappeared into a piece of equipment.
"Dang it!" Tai exclaimed. He stopped firing the device and randomly banged on the equipment near where the shadow had went it. The shadow came out, causing Izzy to shout something, and when Tai noticed it fleeing toward the door he fired the device again, accidentally blowing a control board in the process.
T.K. and Patamon stumbled into the room, asking where the shadow had gone. Izzy pointed in the direction of the studio where the trap had been set up, and he and Tentomon followed T.K. and Patamon at full speed out of the control room toward the studio. Tai and Agumon scrambled to catch up, wildly looking around for the shadow.
T.K. lead the others through the corridors behind the shadow and saw it disappear into a studio, "Studio 3-A" according to the sign on the door. The entire group rushed in at full steam into the studio, guessing the shadow had fallen for the trap...
Studio 3-A at Fuji TV was primarily devoted to talk shows, and as such no one was using it now other than the ghost-busting DigiDestined. It wasn't fully illuminated, but it was enough to work by. In the center of the room was a small crystal on a pedestal, the crystal glowing a brilliant white and connected to a wire running into the control room. Focused on the pedestal were two cameras, each connected to an arm coming from the ceiling and controlled from the control room.
When the hunter group rushed into the studio room, they found the ghost cautiously approaching the crystal in the center. Kari and Gatomon, both stationed near the pedestal, rushed for a nearby corner as the shadow approached the pedestal, Gatomon guarding the scared-stiff Kari in case the shadow turned for them.
The hunting group stopped in place. Izzy motioned Tai and T.K. to stand a distance behind the ghost and wait for the signal for the control room. He and Tentomon then crossed along the far side of the stage and turned a corner into the backstage area where Matt, Gabumon, Ken and Wormmon were waiting.
Izzy scrambled into the backstage control room and displaced Ken at the control chair, where he rapidly began typing instructions into his laptop that he had set up there.
Both Ken and Matt watched anxiously as the shadow edged closer to the pedestal and eventually surrounded the crystal. "It's taken the bait!" Ken exclaimed when he saw it surround the crystal, seeming to become well defined as a result.
Izzy snatched the microphone from the stand beside where the laptop was placed. "Matt, throw the polarity switch! Ken, send as many disruptive pulses as you can down from the laptop! I'll tell the guys out there to fire their disruptors." Izzy ordered to the others in the room.
Izzy stood up from the chair and Ken quickly took his place by the laptop. Matt threw a switch on the control board, and the monitors showed the crystal changing from a brilliant white to a blazing green. "Fire the disruptors, NOW!" Izzy fairly yelled into the microphone, and the monitors flared with green as Tai and T.K. both fired at the shadow at the same time.
Kari and Gatomon winced as Tai and T.K. grimly fired off their disruptors at the shadow, green flashing into their eyes. Kari covered her ears as the crackling and hissing of the arcing electricity filled the room, focused on the shadow on the floor near the crystal.
The shadow itself twisted and writhed in agony as it tried to get away from the crystal (which now generated disruptive energy instead of the previous constructive energy that had drawn it in) and the disruptor blasts. It made for the door, but Tai and T.K. got the beams between the shadow and door and blasted it back toward the crystal.
The monitor cameras above rotated to get a better view, and Izzy was heard through the speaker barking orders from backstage: "Matt, keep those cameras on the shadow and away from the disruptors! Ken, step up your pace with those pulses! Tai and T.K., don't let up on the blasting for even a second!"
Kari now sunk to a squatting pose against the corner wall and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to make everything go away. Gatomon however, stayed alert, watching as Tai and T.K. moved their beams in response to the shadow's movements. The shadow itself was becoming increasingly less-defined and lighter, trying without success to dodge the beams and the radiation the crystal emitted.
Gatomon now decided to try to add her own disruptive psychic pulses to the weaponry being thrown at the shadow, and she tried to psychically "lock on" to the shadow to throw disruptive pulses at it. When she got the "lock on", she was surprised to find it contained a mix of the psychic "signatures" of five Digimon. She recognized four of the parts: pieces of Agumon's, Gabumon's, Patamon's and her own psychic signature. But there was also a fifth part, highly distorted and scrambled, but recognizable as a Digimon...
Her heart skipped a few beats when she recognized the distorted fifth part. Everything had to stop. NOW.
Gatomon immediately reaimed her disruptive pulse toward the disruptor weapons Tai and T.K. were using and "fired" it with a pulse of her tail ring. No one saw her do this because everyone else was transfixed on the degrading shadow. The disruptive electricity immediately stopped, taking Tai and T.K. by surprise.
"What's going on in there? Why'd you guys stop firing?" Izzy yelled through the speaker, the cameras focused on the pair hurriedly trying to get their disruptors firing again while their Digimon partners just watched the shadow in concern. The shadow backed to a distance away from the crystal but did not try to flee, apparently too weak to try.
Matt watched Tai and T.K.'s frustrations and finally concluded that the disruptors were being jammed somehow. "How is that possible? There's nothing...!" Izzy began a response, before being cut off by Ken yelling his name.
Izzy turned to the monitor screen to see the crystal turning back from green to white. He looked down at Ken, who fruitlessly pounded away at the laptop keyboard and yelled "It's no use! Nothing's responding, there's an override in place!"
Izzy was near panic, not being able to understand what was overriding the system other than the ghost itself. Out in the studio, Gatomon breathed a silent sigh of relief; with the crystal changed back to constructive energy, the shadow was safe from destruction for now. Just like before, it began to surround the crystal and become more defined as it drew in the crystal's energy.
The trap and destroy attempt dissolved into chaos. The shadow, now a fairly well defined if still vaguely shaped figure, began traveling up the monitor line toward Izzy's laptop. Through the speakers was heard panicked phrases from Izzy and Ken as the laptop stopped responding.
In the control room, the shadow entered the laptop, causing the computer to bluescreen and begin to give off high-pitched noises. This drove out everyone in the room, the humans and Gabumon trying to block out the noise best they could. At the same time, Tai pulled Kari away from the corner (not bothering to look at what Gatomon was doing) and went with T.K., Patamon and Agumon toward the control room in some attempt to help the situation.
Gatomon saw the two groups run right into each other, collapsing in a confused heap of bodies, and saw her chance. She scrambled across the stage, over the confused heap and into the backstage area, where the monitors were pulsing rainbow colors and high-pitched sounds were still being emitted from the laptop.
It took a minute to get everyone untangled from the collision and check over for injuries. The shadow was nowhere in sight, but neither was Gatomon. The entire group rushed into the backstage area, only face the same loud noise as before. There was Gatomon though, eyes and tailring glowing, seeming to "tune" the noise as if it were a bad radio or TV signal.
Before anyone could ask (other than mentally) what the heck Gatomon was doing, the noise stopped, as did the flashing colors on the camera monitors. The laptop monitor turned from a bluescreen to a blank screen, and a figure appeared on it.
The entire group crowded around the laptop screen, Izzy and Ken closest to it. The highly pixelated figure itself seemed to be a Kimeramon-like composite of several Digimon, a mixture of parts from Agumon, Gabumon, Patamon and Gatomon. The figure suddenly turned very angry and loud noises began coming from the laptop again, but stopped after a few seconds, apparently after the figure itself realized that the noise was not understandable.
The Digidestined watched as the figure seemed to pound the bottom of the screen in frustration, then sigh in sadness. Words began to print on the screen above the figure: "It's no use. No wonder you attacked, you couldn't understand me. The degradation was worse than I thought..."
Izzy pushed aside Ken and began typing at the keyboard. He typed: "Who are you? And what are you talking about?", the question appearing a line below the previously generated words.
"SHE knows. SHE saw what I was at the moment I most needed to be recognized. SHE will tell you. I want to talk to HER." was the response that printed out.
It was obvious now the figure was a Digimon, somehow, talking to them through Izzy's laptop. But the references to "SHE" and "HER" were very puzzling, and the DigiDestined looked at each other in confusion.
This lasted until Gatomon squeezed her way through the crowd until she was beside Izzy at the laptop. She stared at the figure curiously, and more words printed out: "Good. SHE is here. They do not know who I am, tell them who I am."
Gatomon pushed a surprised Izzy aside, and slowly typed out a word that would pierce each and every witness through the heart: "Wizardmon."
The figure smiled as the collective attitude of the entire group sunk to dreadful shame at the thought of nearly having destroyed one of their most profound benefactors. More words printed out on the screen: "You see, she recognized even the degraded and confused parts of what's left of my data pattern."
"Data pattern?" Izzy typed in response, having been allowed back at the keyboard.
"The organization of data that gives a Digimon their properties. The ghost was a manifestation of my pattern, which was still there because I could not be reborn." the figure responded through the printing words.
"Why was your pattern degrading?" Izzy typed again, striking up a conversation as a result.
"I've been exposed to highly disruptive signals since the day I lost my physical form to save Gatomon and Kari. The data pattern survived because there is no place to be reborn in this dimension, as did the patterns of the other Digimon that died in this world. All those patterns were absorbed by Myotismon, and I only escaped that fate by fleeing high into this world's atmosphere where he could not find me. I saw Myotismon defeated a second time because I noticed his pattern floating about below, then occupy a human body."
"That human was Oikawa. You saw it, you tried to warn us about him."
"Yes, but it didn't work. I only had one try, on the anniversary. The rest of the time, I had to stay far away to avoid detection by Myotismon's spirit. And it seemed that you could not make the connection at the time. Or you were too emotionally involved in my appearance. It seems from what you've recorded on what happened on this laptop a lot of trouble might have been avoided if this had not been the case."
"Why didn't you try multiple times?"
"Because it exposed me to potential detection and retribution by Myotismon's spirit as well as much pattern degradation from all the wireless signals being sent and received from here. It was not worth more than one try."
"Why didn't you manifest after Myotismon's defeat then? Why did you wait so long?"
"I didn't dare to even try such a manifestation. The degradation had become so great that trying may have lead to total pattern loss. I would've been gone even as a ghost. Out of desperation, I came to your residences based on the signals from your partners and copied parts of their patterns to replace what had degraded away. You thought they were attacks because you couldn't see my degraded pattern as Wizardmon and I couldn't tell you who I was. Your well-intentioned scheme nearly destroyed this composite pattern you see now."
"So now you're not Wizardmon?" Izzy asked.
"I don't know anymore, but at least I'm still alive. I'm stuck as a prisoner on this laptop though, the pattern is so badly degraded that if I leave, it will completely disintegrate. And if this laptop loses power, it will not be able to save the pattern."
"What can we do to make it up to you?"
"Get me back to the Digital World. Maybe this confused pattern can still return to Primary Village to be reborn as something physical. But it's all up to you." the words printed out, the figure taking on a scared expression.
"All up to us?" Izzy typed in with alarm. The alarm was also on the face of every other DigiDestined watching the conversation.
"Yes, my fate is still in your hands. If you succeed, you may yet see me again in a form that can be touched and embraced. But if you fail, or I cannot be reborn, I will leave a file telling you everything from my perspective, my side of the story. Spread this file far and wide, let me not be forgotten. I will be waiting here for you..." the figure typed out, it's last words it would type. A video file icon appeared in the upper-left corner of the screen, and the figure appeared to lay down and go to sleep.
Instantly all the DigiDestined huddled in the crowded conditions of the backstage area, looking for options on what to do next. The now-useless disruptors and ghost detector were taken off and tossed aside, left for whatever Fuji TV would make of them. Izzy stated out front that he had no idea how long his laptop battery would last, so that they needed to plan out the route ahead of time before making a mad dash to a Digital World portal.
T.K. suggested the school computer lab they used to use as their main entry point, but Matt said it may be too far away and had no guarantee of success of entry. Tai suggested one of the Fuji TV computers, but that idea was nixed for being too much of a liability (they would be seen using it to enter). Ken suggested a home computer of the DigiDestined, presumably his own, but again it was knocked down for being too far away and with no guarantee of success.
"What do we do then? We just can't do nothing!" Kari exclaimed after those suggestions had been exhausted.
"Dad is covering our presence here, by saying he was going to interview us for the nightly news or somethin'. We need to find him in order to find a computer terminal outside the usual work areas. We need to be quick though." Matt suggested.
"Even if we do find somethin' though, how do we know it will work?" Tai objected.
"Hey, it's better than doing nothing at all!"
"All right, all right, chill! I'm just sayin'..."
"There's no guarantee of success here at all guys. None." Ken stated, looking grimly over at Kari and a barely-composed Gatomon.
"Matt's plan at least has the advantage of staying in the building. Tentomon and I will stay here with Kari and Gatomon, everyone else spread out and try to find Mr. Ishida. Hurry!" Izzy stated. All of the other Digidestined acknowledged this and exited the backstage area.
"I don't want this to end badly." a visibly scared Kari said to Izzy, she clinging to Gatomon as much for support as it was to keep the feline Digimon from a breakdown.
"Neither do I, Kari, neither do I." Izzy replied with grim frankness, his voice showing an unusual hesitation which made the words all the more grim.
A moment later, Izzy looked over at the disruptors and detector that had been hastily (and with much guilt) tossed aside. Even though he had made those things, he hated them now. He felt the others with him watching from behind as he picked up the detector. Even though they couldn't see it, he looked over the device with a mixture of disgust and dismay, and finally hurled it against the nearby wall.
The detector hit the wall with a hard "thunk", then clattered to the ground. A panel on the back popped open, and a rectangular green crystal tumbled out of the device. Izzy picked up this crystal and looked it over, thinking of a chance for absolution while Kari and Gatomon grimly watched the sleeping figure on Izzy's laptop monitor...
Time: 8:30pm...
After an impatiently long wait, Izzy finally got a message via walkie-talkie: Ken had found Matt and T.K.'s dad, but he was clueless to help in the situation. All that had been said was that there were some network control terminals down in the building's basement that received very little use but were constantly on to monitor the building's internal network for problems. The area was supposed to be under security access only, but the security system was put offline during the Ankokuwa attack and it would be months before a replacement could be installed.
"There are supposed to be some guards patrolling around down there instead, but he didn't know how many or what they were armed with. With any luck, we can avoid them. If not, we're gonna have to blow past 'em somehow." Ken finished his transmission.
"How long do you think this will all take?" Izzy asked through the walkie-talkie.
"Half an hour, 20 minutes if we're lucky. Do you have a plan back there?"
"Yeah, I got one. Find as many of the others as you can and tell them to head where Matt's dad told you to go. If any of you get there before we do, try to find a computer and open a DigiPort on it. If it doesn't work, tell us as soon as you find out and double back to this room for Plan B."
"Roger. Over and out."
Izzy holstered the walkie-talkie and looked at the still-sleeping figure on the laptop screen. The situation was stable with the laptop drawing power from the wall sockets, but he had no idea what would happen with even a fully charged battery running this "life support system". Naturally, he always kept his laptop battery well charged, but that was no guarantee of success.
"Are we going now?" Kari asked from behind Izzy.
"Yes, here's what we're going to do." Izzy began to explain. "We're going to get down to a network monitoring area in the building's basement. With any luck, we'll be able to open a DigiPort and save our friend trapped on my laptop. I ordered Ken to find everyone else and get them to head down there. We'll need to take the stairs so that we're not constantly running into people, and we need to move FAST because I have no idea how long the battery will last once I disconnect power from the wall socket."
"We need to get to the computer before your battery runs out?" Kari ventured.
"Correct. Or find another wall socket and wait a few hours for it to charge the battery again, but we don't have that kind of time. We only have one shot at getting this right."
"What about the others?"
"We don't have the time to wait for them to come back here. With luck they'll get there ahead of us and open a DigiPort to go through. If not, you'll have to use your own D-3 to open it for us."
"Understood."
"Ken said the whole thing will take us a half-hour, so we should plan for that. It's going to be running all the way, no stopping. Hopefully the battery will last that long... Gatomon, I suggest you ride on Kari's shoulders so that you don't trip either Kari or myself by accident. Tentomon, stay to the back so that you don't get in the way."
The Digimon acknowledged the commands. Gatomon carefully climbed up Kari's back onto her shoulders while Izzy asked if anyone knew the quickest way to the emergency stairs.
"Yes, I saw an access door down the hallway leading to the room. It's to the left and straight down from the studio entrance."
"Very good, Tentomon. Head for the studio door and open it for us." Izzy stated.
"What about the gear?" Kari asked, Gatomon now on her shoulders.
"Leave it, we can come back for it later. We're going NOW."
As Izzy spoke, he yanked the laptop's power cord from the socket, then pulled the connector on the laptop itself off. A large battery icon with a percent number above it appeared on the screen beside the sleeping figure. It was "100.0%" at first, but slowly began to tick down to "99.9%", "99.8%", "99.7%"...
Izzy scooped up the laptop, balanced it against his chest, and took off like a bullet, Kari fast on his heels. The two sped out the backstage area, across the studio, out the opened door, down the hallway (now joined by Tentomon staying behind) and into the stairwell. Down the stairs the DigiDestined flew, trying to beat the clock for the undoing of their mistake...
Thus began what was later informally called "The Great and Desperate Race". Though they were moving down the stairs at top speed, Izzy noticed the battery life dropping at a steady but fast rate, a few percent every minute. This gave very little margin for error; if the plan didn't work, they were sunk because there was not enough time to implement a Plan B.
About halfway down to the objective (and about 65% left on the battery), the building's PA system suddenly came on, telling all visitors under the age of 18 "and their companions" to report to the basement security area. Because the voice was of Matt's dad, both Izzy and Kari realized that he had, on his own initiative and probably risk, alerted all the other DigiDestined in the building down to the objective point. This lifted their flagging energies and pushed them further on.
Approaching ground level, Izzy and Kari saw other DigiDestined entering the stairway area and fanning out to locate the underground access point. Izzy and Kari arrived at the ground level stairs, but were hung up waiting for the others to figure out which way to go next. Finally, Ken found the right door, and he and Wormmon joined Kari and Izzy in the "race" with about 35% left on the battery.
Whooshing through underground corridors, they ran into several dead-ends in their haste before finding the right way, which had a pair of inactivated security doors with human guards supposedly standing in the way. Nearing each of those doors in turn, a small explosion was heard from somewhere nearby in the underground tunnels, apparently caused by the other DigiDestined to draw away the guard and allow passage unhindered.
Speeding through the second door, the battery was now down to 10% and falling fast. The rate of power drain had sped up when the figure woke up and began flailing around in panic, and Izzy could see the numbers precipitously ticking down as they continued through the corridor. Finally, Izzy, Kari and Ken, along with their Digimon partners, spilled out into a small, dimly-lit room, choked with dust and gungy smells.
"Get a Digiport open!" Izzy yelled. Kari and Ken split up to try the computers lined up in the room using their respective D-3s, while Izzy noted the battery tick down past 9%. The screen blinked once, the battery gauge display disappeared (leaving just the battery percent number) and the panicked figure began to lose color and become monochrome. Panicked help text began printing on the screen, speeding the battery drain.
Kari and Ken tried one, two, three computers each, with no success. Izzy tried to type to the alarmed figure to calm down to reduce the battery drain, which only made the problem worse. Angry male voices were heard in the corridor leading into the room, causing the entire group to duck under a covered table.
In the hot, dusty conditions under the table, Izzy reported the battery was 8% and still dropping fast. Ken peaked from under the table cover, seeing the two irritated guards storm into the room. They circled the room, passing the hiding place without noticing their presence.
"You think you can get a stealth shot on 'em, Wormmon?" Ken turned back to ask. Wormmon replied with a shrug.
"Down to 6%!" Izzy mentioned, pointing to the now-grayscale figure on the monitor. It had collapsed onto all fours and seemed to be trying to will itself to survive.
"Wormmon, you gotta try!" Ken all but pleaded.
"But I don't know if I can hit them from here." Wormmon replied with a shameful blush.
"Then put a sticky trap! Do what you can without being seen!"
"5%, we're losing him!" Izzy stated again, pointing out that the figure was beginning to "derezz" – go blurry and have pieces scatter off the main figure.
With panic in their throats and hope fading fast, the DigiDestined hiding under a dusty table may have given up trying altogether. But they trusted their allies and friends to still come through for them. And they did.
A muffled explosion (probably a fire extinguisher exploding) was heard from the hallway. The guards sped out of the room. The group peaked out from under the table, heard the guards yelling as they ran from "monsters" in a panic, then a sound of running feet with Tai's voice ordering everyone down the hallway.
The group already in the room emerged fully from under the table, and the other group of DigiDestined lead by Tai and Agumon spilled into the room. "GET THAT PORT OPEN NOW!" Tai commanded in his most authoritative voice, and T.K. immediately began trying his D-3 on the rows of computers.
"3%! Hurry, the figure is going fast!" Izzy yelled, as T.K., Kari and Ken each tried a computer in turn. One try, two, three... nothing. None of the computers seemed to be able to open a Digiport to get Izzy through. Tai and Matt looked back out the hallway, checking to see if the guards were coming back.
"2 percent! It's almost gone!" Izzy now yelled, seeing the disintegrating figure gripped in total agony. Just like the war game with Diaboromon, he felt totally helpless to prevent a total disaster. Yells (mostly from Gatomon and T.K.) echoed in his ears as the number continued its downward tick to zero.
The three DigiDestined with D-3s kept trying the computer terminals, moving down the rows methodically. Finally, almost miraculously, one of the computers T.K. was trying flared white as the Digiport opened. T.K. rapidly moved out of the way and Izzy almost dived into the port with his laptop in front of him. It closed behind him, and the other DigiDestined crowded around the computer to see what had happened.
On the monitor, they saw Izzy get up from his swan dive as a colorful stream of data bits emerged from the laptop, heading for an unclear destination presumed to be Primary Village. Izzy picked up the laptop after the stream stopped, took one look at the monitor, and flashed a gleeful victory sign. "Point three percent away from death! That's how close it came." he was heard to say through the computer speakers.
The DigiDestined breathed a collective sigh of relief. They weren't out of the woods when it came to the figure that Wizardmon had taken on, but at least he hadn't been totally lost. But now, the questions of explaining things and hoping they hadn't been too late cropped up in their minds. They would have hell to pay when Davis and Yolei found out what they had nearly done...
Disaster has been averted... at least it seems. Is it really? Find out in Part 4, "Restoration!"