Roses are red, violets are blue, I don't own Digimon, and neither do you.(Unless you're from Toei and you're reading this.) There we go.
Next Generation:
…And So It Begins (Again)
CHAPTER SIX: CALL HIM BACK
"You idiot!" Sabinemon hissed, smacking MetalDevimon over the head with her bull whip. "This is all your fault!"
MetalDevimon glared at her. "Excuse me, but whose brilliant idea was it to take those Dark Spirals off for the night?"
"Shut up!" Sabinemon paced the floor, her long claws clacking on the stones. "I'm trying to think."
"And I'm sure you'll come up with something just as brilliant as your last plan," MetalDevimon said sarcastically. "I say we just set the whole island ablaze. He'll never survive. And if his pesky little friends show up, all they'll find is a charred, barren strip of land in the Digipacific Ocean."
"And burn down all the Black Domes with it? Are you nuts?" she screeched. "I'd say someone need to remove his head from his butt before the noxious fumes damage his little brain!"
"Hey, an idea is an idea," he protested, "and it's a better idea than yours. We can rebuild."
"Don't be such an ass," she muttered.
Then her eyes lit up.
"Ah!" she said. "I think I might have an idea."
She tossed the Dark Spirals to MetalDevimon. "Upgrade them. We'll need to make them stronger, and besides, you're the one who's better at channeling the darkness than I am."
"I should have drowned myself in the Dark Whirlpool," he muttered, slinking off to his workshop.
"Dee…Dee, wake up," John Lavois called to his niece.
Deanna opened one icy blue eye, then the other. "Wha…"
"It's all right, sweetheart," he said soothingly. "You passed out. Was I that much of a shock for you?"
The girl sat up straight and wrapped her arms around her uncle. "I thought you were dead," she cried into his shoulder. "Aunt Cat was so upset. You should have seen her. She's still upset. What happened? And where's Kibomon?"
John's bright blue eyes clouded over. "Sabinemon killed him," he said bleakly. "He tried to digivolve, but it was no use. There was no way he could have fought her and won. After he was deleted, Sabinemon and MetalDevimon locked me away in a cell. They barely even fed me. I tried escaping numerous times, but it never worked."
Leon jumped in. "I don't even remember how I got in that cell with him and Fangmon here, but I was all banged up. Fangmon was too, but he managed to slash the bars off the window for us. We climbed down the side of the castle, and got down the mountain faster than I thought by just sliding. John thought he saw smoke, so we came to check it out. That's when we found Kinaka just standing out here, and here we are!"
Kinaka grinned and toyed with her necklace. "What can I say? I was just in the right place at the right time."
"Bubby, I can't believe you're back!" Lee cried, hugging her older brother.
"Aw geez, Lee, let me go. And STOP CALLING ME BUBBY!" he groaned, trying to shake her loose.
But he didn't even struggle when Holly came up and flung her arms around him.
Hikaru gasped when she saw a long, winding burn mark on his upper arm. "What's that from?" she asked, horrified.
He shrugged. "If I knew, I would tell you."
Chris's brow was furrowed. "I don't get it," he said. "How could you have forgotten what happened to you in less than a week? Man, you must have the memory of a freaking goldfish!"
"No, but he's got the attention span of one!" Lee cracked. Her reward for this was a light punch in the shoulder from Leon.
Fangmon curled up in front of the fire between Mousiemon and Auroramon. "I'm so tired," he yawned.
Mike and Kiko yawned, too. Both boys looked like they were going to fall asleep.
"Bedtime, Mike," Tina said sharply.
The little boy's bright green eyes were half closed. "But I'm not even tired," he protested.
"Mike, I'll take out my yo-yo again if you don't go to bed," Lauren said, her eyes twinkling. She reached into the pocket of her jeans.
But she didn't even need to take it out. Mike had fallen asleep by the time she finished her sentence.
"Well, I guess he won't mind if I play with it for a minute or so before I go to sleep," she grinned, winding her yo-yo up.
Kinaka rolled her eyes, but said nothing.
"We'll talk to our parents tomorrow, when we're not so tired," Lee said.
"Sounds good," Kim agreed. "And Hikaru, you and Kiko can check on how your mom's doing."
Hikaru nodded. It was clear she was worried about her mother, who had been very ill after she had Kiko.
Long after everyone had gone to bed, Jenna was still wide awake.
Why can't I sleep?
she wondered, rubbing her eyes. She pressed a button on her D-X, and it lit up. It was 2:17 in the morning.Damn. Maybe I should get up and go outside or something.
So she got up and walked out, being careful not to step on anyone, especially Pikkimon.To her utmost shock, she wasn't the only one who had decided to go outside that night.
"Hey," Leon greeted her. "Couldn't sleep either, could ya?"
Jenna let out a little cry and stepped back.
"Don't be scared. I don't bite…not hard, anyway," he added for fun.
She laughed, a bit nervously. "Uh, OK."
Leon leaned back against a tall tree near the mouth of the cave. "It's so quiet out here," he said. "I've never been anywhere so quiet in my life. In the city, it's so different, what with the cars and that."
Jenna nodded. "Uh huh," she said. Oh, smooth, she thought. Bet he thinks you're reeeaally smart now, Ichijouji. All you've really said is OK and Uh-huh. You haven't even thanked him for saving your life, you big idiot!
She cleared her throat. "Uh, Leon," she said, feeling a bit foolish, "I kinda want to thank you. You know, for saving me. I still can't believe you took that hit for me."
"Think nothing of it, Jenna. I had to protect you. Who knows, you might not have escaped from the castle on Infinity Mountain if you had been kidnapped instead of me. Besides, I never pass up the chance to save a pretty girl like you."
Jenna felt a hot blush creep across her face.
Leon pulled out his D-X. "Hey, it's pretty late!" he exclaimed. "Maybe we ought to go back in."
"Uh, sure, whatever."
TK paced the waiting room nervously. It had been ten hours, and still nothing had happened.
"TK, calm down," Yolei said from the bench. She and Ken had driven him and Kari to the hospital. "Kari will be just fine. She's done this before, hasn't she? And what's that old saying, something like three time's the charm?"
Still he paced. "I'm not going to relax until I know for sure she's OK," he replied. "I just have this weird feeling that something's gone wrong."
Ken got up, and five minutes later, returned with a steaming paper cup of coffee. "Maybe you should have some," he said, handing it to TK. "I remember when Yolei was in here for Jenna, I had about fifteen cups. It helped."
TK laughed and drank the whole cup down. Who knows, it might help, and he was willing to do anything to calm himself down.
"Rise and shine!" Cleo yelled. "Somebody's gotta come fishing with me, otherwise I'll end up carrying all the breakfast back."
"Cleo…" Jenna groaned.
"Up, up, up," she told her sister, poking her with the toe of her sneaker. "Up you get! You too, Lee and Kim. We're goin' fishing."
"Sounds fun," Lee grumbled. "Seeing as we don't have any fishing line, or poles for that matter. What are we gonna fish with?"
Cleo tossed a bundle of long, sturdy sticks that she'd been collecting all morning, since before the sun even rose. "If we have any thread or anything, we can tie it on."
"Sounds good, but what about hooks?" Kim queried.
"Hmmm…"
Fangmon got up and grinned. "Maybe I can help. I have claws. Claws equal hooks. Hooks equal food! I'll come with you and help you out, OK?"
"OK," the girls agreed.
With Fangmon's help, they managed to catch a whole lot of fish that would feed the crowd of fifteen people and fourteen Digimon. By the time they got back, Tina and Chris had got the fire going, and Lauren had the laptop booted up.
"How come you left us alone?" Pikkimon asked Jenna.
Jenna mussed the top of Pikkimon's furry little yellow head and grinned. "You looked like you were having such a nice dream."
Lee brought her brother to the screen. "Mom! We got Leon back!" she cried.
"Oh thank God," Sora sighed. She suddenly looked a lot better than she had when she found out Leon was missing.
Kim pushed her way over to the laptop. "Hey, Dad!" she greeted Davis, who was looking plenty worried. "You look kinda like a Mack truck hit you. Is everything OK?"
"Where are my parents?" Cleo asked.
"And is my Mommy OK?" Kiko yelled out above the din.
"Whoa, one at a time!" Mimi called out.
Izzy answered Cleo first. "Your parents drove Hikaru and Kiko's mom and dad to the emergency room," he replied.
"Has my dad or anyone else called with any news?" Hikaru asked eagerly.
Matt sighed. "TK called a little over an hour ago," he told his niece, looking a bit grave. "She seems to be having a really hard time. They think something's wrong with the baby."
Hikaru's breath caught in her throat, and she couldn't speak.
Kiko started to cry. "But Mommy will be sad if something bad happens," he wailed. "And she has all sorts of stuff for the baby, and she's got names picked out and everything. Why does something gotta be wrong?"
Hikaru knelt down and put her hand on her little brother's shoulder. "Now you listen to me, Kiko," she said firmly, though tears were slowly welling up in her eyes. "You have to be brave. Don't think that something's going to happen to the baby. Just think about it living, and think about going home to see it and about being a big brother. Be like Daddy and have hope."
The little boy sniffled back his tears. "OK, Hikaru. But…what if something happens to Mommy instead?"
He'd voiced Hikaru's deepest fear: what if her mother got sick again?
A tiny cry pierced the tomb-like silence in the waiting room, around one in the afternoon.
"Am I hearing things?" TK asked quietly. "Did I just hear a baby crying?"
Ken sat up. "I head it too."
"Well, if we all heard it, we didn't imagine it," Yolei said.
TK ran to the door of the maternity ward, to be knocked over by it swinging open.
"Hey!" he cried out indignantly. But before he could tell off who knocked him over, he noticed that three doctors were wheeling a cot down the corridor.
It was Kari. And she had an oxygen mask over her face.
"Kari!" he yelled. "Where are you taking her? KARI!"
"Something's wrong," Kinaka said softly. She was playing with her pendant again, wrapping it around her fingers and twisting the chain almost into a knot.
"Don't scare me," Hikaru moaned. "I'm already scared enough."
"Kina, do you have another one of your funny feelings?" Auroramon asked Kinaka.
"I do," she replied. She twisted her chain a little harder. "It's like something got thrown off balance. Like the darkness is eating away at the light." Then her eyes grew misty. "I just hope Aunt Kari's OK. After all, she's got the Crest of Light and she'll be the most affected."
Kiko whimpered, but didn't say anything.
"Are you done yet?" Sabinemon yelled, later that night.
"Stop nagging me! I'll be done in a minute," MetalDevimon called back. "Slave driver," he muttered under his breath.
"I heard that!"
"Good for you!"
He picked up the two objects he'd finished making. "Perfect," he cackled. He'd just modified the Dark Spirals, and had made them into long black chains with amulets on them. One had a black pearl on it, and the other had an onyx on it. Both gems were surrounded by silver Digi-code.
Sabinemon poked her head into the room. "You'd better have made them stronger."
"Oh, but I did," he cackled, showing her. "They're Dark Amulets now. The pearl is from an oyster I found in the Dark Whirlpool, and the onyx was passed down from my father, Wrathmon. Both are imbued by the very darkness that infects every dark corner of the Digital World, and I intensified that power six hundred fold."
She nodded. "Uh huh. And will they drain our escapees of their power once we put them back on?"
"No, they won't," he assured her. "I tested them on a few of our weaker slaves. See?" And he pointed to a far corner of the room, where several small Digimon were writhing on the floor in agony. Only a few seemed to be all right.
"It's a good thing we're evil, or I'd feel sorry for them," Sabinemon said glibly. "Now let's get going. We have to catch those little rugrats off guard."
It was past midnight. Only a few of the Digidestined were awake, since they were on guard duty. Kinaka had insisted on staying up, Hikaru couldn't sleep with her worry anyway, and Lauren and Holly were just simply told to stay on guard. Lauren was plenty mad that she had to stay up with Kinaka, but Tina barked at her, "Get over it!"
Kinaka suddenly stiffened. "We have to get out of here!" she cried. "And I mean now. Sooner than now. I don't care if almost everyone's asleep."
"Why?" Holly asked.
"They're coming for him," she replied. "They're going to come soon to take Leon back. Sabinemon and MetalDevimon are coming down Infinity Mountain right now!"
"Kinaka, are you on drugs or something?" Lauren asked. "You've been acting strangely all night. We're not going to leave just because of another of your stupid 'funny feelings', that's for damn sure!"
"Lauren!" Kinaka flared. "If we don't get out of here now, we are all going to get killed. I guarantee it. They'll block off the cave's entrance and we'll all be stuck in here to die." She went right up to Lauren's face and stared her down, her eyes icy-green in the firelight. "Do you want to be the one to stick around and find out?"
Hikaru stepped up next to her cousin. "Look, Lauren, Kinaka has always had these 'funny feelings'. I have never had any reason to doubt her, and I'm not doubting her now!"
Lauren cursed under her breath. "All right, but if you're bullshitting me…"
"Now why would I do that?"
Within minutes, everyone was herded out of the cave.
Kiko and Mike, who had just gotten to sleep, could hardly keep their eyes open. "What's going on?" they kept asking.
"It's OK," Hikaru told Kiko, holding him close. "Don't worry. Kinaka just thought we should get out of there."
"What is the meaning of this?" Deanna's Uncle John asked angrily.
Deanna put her hand on her uncle's arm. "Calm down, Uncle."
"Why did she make us all get up?" he continued, still looking mad.
Lee paled and pointed into the sky. "I think they were the reason!" she cried.
Up in the sky, flying closer and closer, were two dark shapes. Sabinemon and MetalDevimon.
"Leon, go hide somewhere and take Fangmon with you!" Lee cried over the sound of the rushing wings.
"I'm not leaving you guys alone!" Leon yelled back.
"Don't worry, we'll hold them off." Lee looked and sounded quite sure of herself.
"How?" Kim asked.
Cleo grinned. "Kim, ever hear of a little something called digivolution?" She held out her D-X. "Go for it, Mousiemon!"
"Mousiemon digivolve to…"
But something blocked her.
"Hey! What gives?" Mousiemon squeaked indignantly. "Why can't I digivolve? Something really screwy is going on, Cleo."
A sort of rumbling noise interrupted her.
"Oops," she said sheepishly. "I'm pretty hungry. I haven't eaten in about six hours, and I'm starved!"
Chris shook his head. "I bet that's why she can't digivolve. If you've noticed, our Digimon digivolved for the first time after they'd had a good meal. Maybe, just maybe, they have to be well-fed before they can do anything that takes up such major energy, such as digivolution."
Tina jumped in. "Sorry to keep you from coming up with brainy theories, but THEY'RE COMING!" she shrieked.
They were. Now they were beginning to descend from the sky, their red eyes glowing like embers from a fire.
"Great idea, Kinaka! Now they're probably going to kill us all!" Lauren yelled.
"They might have blasted the cave, and caused it to become sealed off. Or they might have set a fire to the outside entrance so we'd be trapped. You don't know! At least out here we have a fighting chance!" Kinaka's eyes were hot with fury.
"What chance? Look around you, Kina. Our Digimon are hungry, and they can't digivolve. We have two evil Digimon coming, and…"
"Hello," Sabinemon purred from behind Lauren. "So nice to see you again."
"What do you want, Sabinemon?" Deanna yelled.
MetalDevimon cackled. "We're just here to collect what's ours. Come here, boy." He pointed at Leon with one of his long, clawed fingers.
Though Leon tried to fight it, his legs began to move forward on their own.
"What are you doing to me?" he cried. "Stop it!" He thrashed his arms, tried to hold his legs still, but it didn't work. "Fangmon, help me!"
Fangmon ran toward Leon and grabbed his wrist, but he only ended up being dragged along with Leon.
Right toward Sabinemon and MetalDevimon.
"Now we have you, you little brat!" Sabinemon grinned as she snatched hold of Leon. "Now, do it quickly!"
"Can do," MetalDevimon said, slipping the chain over Leon's head. He put an identical chain over Fangmon's head, too.
Sabinemon tossed Leon to the ground like he was a rag doll, and MetalDevimon did the same to Fangmon. Both fell to the ground with a thud.
"Now, ATTACK!" Sabinemon commanded them.
Leon got up slowly and faced the other Digidestined. His eyes were pitch black, with no whites or irises. "Do it, Fangmon," he said in a mechanical voice, holding out his D-X.
"Fangmon digivolve to…Darkmon!"
Darkmon closely resembled MetalDevimon, only he was buff and had four huge, black wings.
Sabinemon and MetalDevimon started laughing. "We've got you, Digidestined, and your little Digimon too!"
"Leon!" Holly screamed. "Leon, don't do this!"
But he paid no attention. "Kill them, Darkmon," he said.
"Shadow Beam!" Darkmon cried out. He sent a wave of darkness at them, which missed them all narrowly.
"We've got to get out of here!" Mike cried, tears streaming down his cheeks.
Jenna marched boldly up to Leon. "No. We're not going until I can get this thing off him!" she declared, trying to pull the Dark Amulet off him. But the moment her fingers touched the chain, she screamed in pain and pulled her hands away. Both of them were red, raw, and blistered.
"Jenna, get out of there!" Pikkimon yelled. "Pin Zapper!"
Pikkimon's attack slammed into Leon and pushed him far away from Jenna.
"Screw this, let's go!" Lauren cried. "Kinaka, I'm going to kick your ass, I swear I am, as soon as we get out of this mess!"
They all ran off into the forest, not even caring where they were going.
Darkmon began to spread his wings to take flight, but Leon stopped him.
"No," he said. A tiny flicker of light appeared in his eyes. "Don't go after them."
"Do something! He's gone soft!" Sabinemon hissed.
MetalDevimon took a strange little box with a dial on it out of a pouch at his side. He gave it a twist, and suddenly Leon was on the ground.
"Master, please, have mercy!" he screamed in agony.
"All right." MetalDevimon turned the dial the other way around, and he stopped screaming.
"Now, my slave," he said, "come with us. We're going to let those kids hide—"
"WHAT?" Sabinemon screeched.
"—and then we're going to seek and destroy them," he finished.
"Kinaka, do you realize we almost got killed?" Lauren yelled at Kinaka. "All your little 'funny feeling' did for us was get us out of that safe, warm cave, where we only ended up getting Leon captured again!"
The Digidestined were deep in the forest now, with just Cleo's pen light keychain and a small fire that Rubymon had lit for light.
"We also might have died if they'd have trapped us in the cave," Kinaka said with venom clear in her tone. "Think about it. A tiny cave, no air…I'd rather let one of us get captured than have all of us die and the whole Digital World and Earth as well fall into chaos."
Lee and Holly looked furious. "That's our brother you're talking about!" Holly yelled. "Do you have ice water running through your veins instead of blood?"
The arguing went on for a lot longer. Finally, after about half an hour of a full-blown screaming match, a long, shrill sound cut through the argument.
"Shut up! All of you, just shut up!" Kiko cried.
Everyone gaped at Kiko, who had a camp whistle dangling around his neck.
"I agree with Kinaka, it's better that we had Leon captured than all of us die," he continued, sounding more mature than his eight years. "But Lee and Holly are right. She shouldn't be so cold. Leon's a part of this team too."
Nobody spoke for a long time.
Hikaru finally broke the silence by saying, "Well! Good speech, little brother. Now, we oughta get to bed. We can go up Infinity Mountain to look for Leon tomorrow."
"Now wait just one second!" John said. "You're all just children."
Lee grinned. "Sorry, but we've got to go."
"Then in that case, I'll have to come with you."
"All right," everyone agreed.
"Now that all this is settled, let's sleep," Cleo said.
Once everyone had gone to sleep for the night, Jenna was still awake.
We have to find him,
she thought. I don't care how evil he is now. I don't care if my hands are so swollen right now that I can barely use them. I don't even care if we die trying to fight him. We just have to get him back.With her palms throbbing, Jenna eventually drifted off into a troubled sleep.