I still don't own Digimon!
Spirits of Ages
Chapter 13
"Oh hell no." Ken said, looking at the sign Davis pointed at. "How the hell did we end up here?"
"From that I assume you know where we are?" TK spoke as he joined them at the sign.
"Afraid so…" Ken said. "We're in Antwerp. As in Antwerp, in Belgium…" (AN: just couldn't resist but they won't stay for long.)
"Why is that bad?" Tai asked as he wobbled over to them. "Oh wait, let me guess… the entire country is overrun with zombies?" Everyone just stared at Tai.
"No zombies then…" Tai said, trying to think straight once more before he made another suggestion.
"Well let's put it this way." Izzy started. "We left Saturday night in Japan and now we're in Europe. Tuesday. " He added that last word, shocking everyone just a bit.
Tai's eyes bulged. "Did the same thing happen last time you went binging?" He asked them.
"Pretty much…" TK said, picking Patamon up off the ground. He couldn't really remember when the rookie had shown up. "We ended up on a cargo ship, leaving to Australia."
"And Joe lost his pants." Davis said. "Don't forget that."
"The seagulls took it!" Joe yelled in his defense. Tai was trying his best not to laugh out loud. Mostly because it would cause his skull to split in two if he did.
"Okay, drunken stories aside. Let's keep track of our priorities." Izzy said. "We need to find a way to get back in Japan."
"Don't worry my nerdy friend." Davis said. "I know exactly what to do."
"See? I told you it would work." Davis said smugly.
"Davis, I highly doubt that your 'plan' helped at all." TK said. "You making a plate with 'Japan or bust' written on it didn't help as much as Izzy's credit card." Ken supplied.
"And the other plan was even worse." Cody said.
Flashback
After Davis's first scheme had failed miserably he felt that it was time for striking up a conversation with the natives.
"Greetings!" He yelled at a few men working at the docks. "I am Davis!"
The workers raised an eyebrow. Who the hell was this guy?
"We kind of got stuck here when we snuck aboard a boat to this Antwerp!" He pointed at the plate that said 'Antwerp.'
"Snuck aboard?" One of the workers asked. "So you're a stowaway?"
"Yes! I mean, no! We have an excellent explanation for that happening!"
"Which is?" The man made a gesture, urging Davis to continue.
"We were incredibly drunk." He sweatdropped.
End flashback.
Off course that only worked against him.
"Everyone's against me." Davis sulked.
"Oh cheer up, at least we'll be home in about two days." Cody said. "We were lucky the captain recognized us as the stowaways from two days earlier."
"We're also lucky that he has a good sense of humor, else he would have called the harbor police." TK said as he sat down on a rather cold chair in one of the somewhat habitable rooms aboard the ship.
"Hey at least we're on our way home." Joe said. "And besides, we had fun these last few days, right?"
"Wish I could remember." Cody said.
"This boat trip left a huge dent in my bank account." Izzy muttered.
"This was the last time I'm going anywhere with the likes of you." Tai muttered. He had actually turned a rather strange shade of green. "Move that crate over here will you."
"Why?" Joe asked as he shoved said crate to Tai. To their surprise he jumped on it, flipped it and crawled under it.
"It helps with the hangover." TK whispered with a satisfied smirk on his face. "Tai just can't hold his alcohol…"
His only response were a few angry grumbles coming from within the crate and a chuckle from the other men in the room.
"But serious now, does anyone remember what happened the past few days?" Ken asked.
"Not really." Davis said.
"No."
"I remember fighting Godzilla." Joe supplied. "Joe, that was a man in costume." Izzy said, the memories of the past days coming back to him one by one.
"So we didn't save the world again?" Joe was met with a few shakes of the head. "Damn…"
"That word sums up our situation." Ken said.
"Oh it gets worse." Davis said in a sing-song way. "For a few of you that is."
"What do you mean?" Cody asked.
"Let's just say that at this point, I'm glad not to be married." Davis said, an evil grin on his face.
Cody, TK and Ken sweatdropped. Patamon would have too but he was too busy being unconscious.
"So any sign off our husbands and teammates?" Kari asked. She was worried to death but still knew that they would be home soon. Call it a gut feeling if you will.
"Not yet but when Ken shows up I'm going to clobber him to hell and back!" Perhaps it was in Ken's best interests to stay away for a bit longer…
"Joe can better show up within the next few days." Gomamon grumbled. "I'm a digimon, not a babysitter." He said to the others who had gathered in Kari's house. His right eye was twitching for some reason.
"You can handle huge water serpents and Dark Masters but one little girl and her digimon are to much for you?" Gatomon raised an eyebrow.
"Sure, now they look all innocent." Gomamon said, pointing a flipper at the supposedly innocent daughter of his partner. Hinata sat on the couch next to him with her Bukamon on her lap. "But when she's away from the public eye she turns into a vicious hell raiser!" Okay, even Gomamon knew he was exaggerating but hey, a mon has his limits.
Hinata pouted, Bukamon did her best not to laugh and Mimi burst out laughing.
"Sure laugh it up." Gomamon said. "I'm holding you personally responsible for her change in attitude."
"How is that?" Mimi asked, trying her best to keep up her own 'innocent' image.
"She started acting up whenever she got back from you watching after her, she only does it when her dad isn't around and last week she dyed my hair pink, because someone told her that it would look perfect with my eyes." Gomamon gave his reasons. The pink still hadn't washed out and because of that he currently had pink hair with a few splotches of his normal orange, there were the dye had been washed out.
"I think you're busted Mimi." Palmon said. Mimi turned red but didn't say anything.
"Anyone being able to reach Davis and the others?" Veemon asked. He too had shown up at the rendezvous point, as he had nothing better to do anyway.
"Not yet. Gatomon said. "Oh Patamon is so gonna get it when he gets home." She muttered.
"Trouble in paradise he?" Veemon laughed. He had given up on chasing after Gatomon a long time ago but that didn't stop him from making jokes about his 'eternal rival' Patamon. "He hasn't been in this much trouble since he joined the army." Gatomon tapped her foot in frustration.
"What do you mean you joined the army?" Tai yelled out from under his crate. Patamon had joined the world of the living once more.
"Another one of the side effects of going along with TK's bachelor's party." Patamon said from on top of the crate. "Eight years in service, recon and espionage unit." He said proudly. "Got an honorable discharge after they figured they no longer needed my services." (AN: has absolutely no idea if this can happen)
"Hey Patamon, when did you show up anyway?" Davis asked. He had being wondering about that for a while now.
"You don't remember?" Patamon asked. "Somewhere when…" He trailed off as he remembered Saturday night.
Flashback
"Come on guys, time to go home." Patamon said to the obviously intoxicated middle-aged men. And Tai off course.
Tai was still on Joe's head for some reason, almost as if he never left it.
"Okay-okay." Tai said, his voice a bit slurred. "But let Davis and Matt finish their song first."
"Okay then… wait, what?" Patamon turned to the stage to see Davis sitting on a chair on it with a guitar in hand, along with Matt, who was broadcasting live from outer space again.
"This can't be good." Patamon said.
"This is a song we wrote about last time we went binging." Davis started. "It doesn't really have a name." Matt continued.
"But we'll play it anyway!"They yelled at the same time. Most people in the crowd were wondering where the hell these two came from all of a sudden. The manager did the same but allowed them to take the stage. He'd just throw them out later.
Patamon landed at TK's table and prepared to cover his massive ears as Davis and Matt started playing.
We ride with kings on mighty steeds
Across the devil's plain
We've walked with Jesus and his cross
He did not die in vain, NO!
We've run with wolves, we've climbed K2
Even stopped a moving train
We've traveled through space and time my friends
To rock this house again, rock!!
We ride and we ride and we'll never subside
And we'll ride till the planets collide
And if you say that we do not ride
I'll tan your f'ing hide, ride!!
(Tenacious D's History, which I don't own but thought would be funny to use in this fic.)
As the two of them finished up the bouncer stepped up to the stage, picked Davis and the computer up and threw them out of the bar.
"That's one way to end a good night out." Patamon said, a sweatdrop forming as Davis 'flew' through the doorway.
"Oh please, we've only just started." TK said as he stood up.
End flashback
"And that's about it." Patamon concluded. "Things went downhill from there on."
"Given our current condition, I say that's an understatement." Tai's voice was heard.
"That didn't make any sense." Davis said. "I can't even play the guitar."
"And what happened to Matt?" Cody asked.
"I have no idea." Izzy said, pulling his laptop out of nowhere and opened it up, before cleaning off the dirt that it obtained after being tossed out of the bar.
"Matt do you hear me? Matt?" The screen was covered in static for a while, before Matt's head suddenly popped up.
"Finally!" He yelled. "I thought you'd never open that laptop again."
"Sorry Matt, I don't even remember what happened after the bar incident, let alone when I closed this thing up." Izzy said.
"Do you know what else happened?" TK asked, still a bit freaked out by seeing his brother on the tiny screen, while he was actually on Mars.
"Or were you too hammered to remember as well?" Davis asked.
"Nah." Matt answered. "We only have freeze-dried beer here." He said, holding out one of the stick-shaped beer 'cans'. "Tastes like crap."
Davis smirked. "Oh and by the way, Davis. When I get back to earth you are so joining my band. We've been looking for a new lead guitarist since Susanoomon left."
"Osamu." Ken corrected. "Osamu, right." Matt said, he had always called the mega digimon by his digimon name, seeing as it was his name for about ten thousand years.
"Eh guys?" Matt had noticed the room they were in. "Are you in jail or something?" He commented, pointing at the grey walls.
"No, we're on a cargo ship." TK said. "Heading our way home mind you."
"Again huh?" Matt had his trademark 'cool' smirk on his face.
"Again." TK said. "Where did you end up this time?" Matt asked.
"Europe, Belgium more precisely." Cody answered.
"At least now I can say I've been there." Tai said, still from under his crate.
"Hey Tai, you okay?" Matt asked. "You sound rather sick."
"That's what you get for going onboard a boat like this." Joe said. "A hangover combined with seasickness is a bad idea."
"Now you tell me." Tai said sarcastically.
"Anyway, I was about to tell you about what happened." Matt ignored Tai's remark and thought back to that night.
Flashback
"You guys are so wasted." Matt laughed from the computer. "Too bad I can't be there with you."
"There should be some astronaut's beer in the care package we send." Izzy laughed.
"Ever tried that stuff?" Matt asked. "Tastes like cardboard."
"Could be worse." Izzy said. "How?" Matt asked as he tapped the 'beer' on his own computer screen a few times.
"No beer at all." Izzy said bluntly.
"Oh my god!" Someone suddenly yelled. Matt recognized that voice as Ken's.
"What's going on?" He asked.
"That!"
End flashback
"So what was happening there?" Davis asked. Ken though for a second. "I vaguely remember yelling that but not really what actually happened."
"Good thing I taped it then." Matt's evil smirk arose.
"Wait!" Tai yelled as he scrambled out from under the crate. "I want to see too." With that said Davis picked Tai up and placed him on an empty chair, so he too could see it.
"As a warning first." Matt started. "This video contains weird and possibly dangerous images, to the normal mind that is. So you should al be fine."
"Just roll the damn tape." TK said, rolling his eyes at his supposedly cool brother's antics.
The file opened up and showed something that would be burned into their mind for ever and ever and ever.
"Joe!" The computer counterpart of Patamon yelled at the doctor. "Put your pants back on!"
"Never!" Joe yelled as he ran off as fast as he could with a limp and being intoxicated. Not to mention the fact that Tai was still on his head, holding on for dear life.
"Okay…" Tai said slowly. "Let's never watch or speak about that video ever again."
"I agree." Was the reaction of most of the population of the room. "Hell no!" Davis yelled. "Matt, send me a copy of that! I'm putting that on Youtube!"
That earned him a solid hit with the CoW! The Cane of Wrath!
"Hey that hurts you know." Davis said, rubbing the sore spot on his head. "Sorry, I was just trying to knock the stupid out of you." Joe said, in a perfect doctor like way that made it seem like you really needed that. (you know what I mean, all doctors do that, mine especially after getting blood drawn for tests.)
Davis just grumbled something about obnoxious doctors and their canes.
"Good." Joe said as Davis didn't attack him, physically or verbally. Too bad for Joe he didn't notice him mouthing 'send that to me' to Matt on the screen. Matt just stuck up his thumb and smiled his cool guy smile.
"Hey Joe?"Tai suddenly asked. "What was up with that scar on your leg?" He had seen it a while ago on the video, a rather big jagged scar running down Joe's left leg, stopping just past the knee.
Joe raised an eyebrow. "Sure you want to hear that story right now? It's a real tearjerker you know."
Tai just nodded, needing to know what it was. Perhaps this was what had changed Joe like this.
Joe sighed. "There's no way out of this, is there?"
Tai shook his head. "If you don't want to tell it, it's fine by me." Tai didn't really mean that but if it made Joe too uncomfortable he'd wait till another time.
"Nah, it's fine." Joe waved his hands in a dismissive way. "It was bound to happen soon, might as well get it over with."
"It all started with a girl, a young women more precise, that I met after I graduated. I was working in a small hospital, you know those little ones for minor injuries or to wait for an ambulance to bring you to a 'real' hospital." Joe thought back at those times, better times actually.
"One day she walked through the door." Joe suddenly found the lamp on the ceiling very interesting and decided to stare at it for a while.
"She was covered in blood, filth and who knows what else." Joe continued. "She had been forced to carry a man nearly twice her size to our miniature hospital because the ambulances couldn't get through because of the traffic."
"Sounds like one hell of a women." Tai mused.
"She sure was." Joe continued. "Anna was her name." He continued, only now realizing that he hadn't mentioned her name before. "She came from England and moved to Japan for various reasons."
"After stabilizing that man to the best of my abilities and sending him off to the real hospital we started chatting. And a long story short is that even though she was younger then me by almost five years, we got married and got a beautiful daughter."
"Hinata, right?" Tai had seen the little girl cling to his nephew for some reason.
Joe nodded and was about to continue his story when an alarm went off. Red lights started flashing.
"That doesn't sound good, does it?" TK asked.
At that time the boat started shaking, sending the computer, crates and digidestined crashing into the wall.
"Ouch." A voice muttered from underneath the pile of people. "Would you mind getting off of me?"
"Sorry Tai." Cody said, as he had fallen almost directly on top of Tai. He stood up and picked the rookie level up from between the rest of the rubble.
"Everyone okay?" Joe asked. In situations like these his instincts acted up, causing him to immediately scan for injuries amongst his team.
"We're good." TK said. The sound of metal being crushed was heard. "But for some reason I doubt that will stay that way."
"We have to make our way to the deck." Davis said. "I sincerely doubt that this is just some stormy weather."
The majority of the room nodded and started making their way to the deck. "Seems like I'll have to finish my tale later on." Joe said as he too started to climb the stairs.
"I'll keep you to that." Tai said as he ran past Joe.
A few staircases and dead ends later they ended up on the deck. It was dark outside but a few lights were on, along with a bunch of huge search lights. For some reason the light was reflected from the deck itself. TK bend down and ran his hand over the floor. "Ice?" He asked out loud, breaking a piece of it off.
"What the hell is going on here?" Davis asked, now seeing that the entire deck had been turned into a glacier. "That!" Patamon yelled.
Wrapped around the huge ship was an even bigger sea serpent!
"This just can't be good." Cody said, seeing how the creature reared its head and sent forth another barrage of ice, slowly but surely incasing the entire ship in a thick layer of ice.
"Crap." Izzy said. "If this keeps up we'll sink. This ship is already loaded and won't be able to carry both its cargo and all this ice."
"But what is that thing?" Joe asked. "It looks like Seadramon but…"
Indeed it did look like Seadramon. It had a yellow scaled head along with the streamlined greenish body but something seemed wrong with it.
"There's something wrong with its head." Joe said. "The teeth are all wrong."
"What are you, a dentist?" Davis asked.
"No, but I've spend enough time in the jaw off one of those to know its jawbones like the back of my hand." Poor Joe was referring to a time where he had been forced to climb down a Seadramon's mouth to pull a rotten tooth. Being a digimon doctor made sure you visited the weirdest places.
"Yeah yeah yeah, you can look at its teeth all you want once I knock them out of his mouth." Tai boasted.
"Patamon, you up to some old school style ass kicking?" Tai asked the flying digimon next to him.
"After you kiddo." Patamon smiled. He'd never admit it but even he enjoyed a good fight every now and then. Let's just hope that he hasn't gotten rusty.
"Fine by me." Tai said as he took off, running towards the sea serpent, that opened its maw and fired a blast of ice at the rookie. Tai smirked and simply faded into smoke to allow the ice to pass him.
"Patamon, go help him." TK said. "We'll go and get the captain and his men out of here." He referred to the men who were desperately trying to defend their ship, using any means possible. But their guns weren't effective against Seadramon's armoured skin.
Patamon nodded and flew off.
"Patamon digivolves too…" The golden light engulfed Patamon, like so many times before, shifting his data around to form…
"Angemon!"
The angelic digimon landed next to Tai. "Nice seeing you again." Angemon was a rather welcome ally in a battle like this, mostly because Tai couldn't fly.
"Shouldn't you digivolve?" Angemon asked, before taking to the skies again.
"Good idea." Tai rolled his eyes. 'Okay, I can do this." He thought. 'I'm not dependent off my nephew to digivolve.' He had tried a few times to digivolve but never succeeded, there was always a thick barrier, keeping his energy from flowing freely. But that was only to get to his rookie form, he hadn't tried to become Lowemon yet.
"DemiSphinxmon digivolves too…"
Tai felt the energy coursing through him, only to find the same barrier as before...
He grinned.
It was much weaker then before.
'Barriers are meant… to be… BROKEN!' Tai yelled out in his mind, forcing energy through it like a tank through cardboard boxes.
And so did the barrier in Tai's system broke, allowing his energy to flow freely again.
A long distance away from this scene, in the house that TK called home, something weird happened.
Taichi was chatting with Gomamon, when suddenly his digivice gave off a high-pitched tone.
"What's going on?" Gomamon yelled, covering his ears quickly. "No idea!" Taichi yelled over the sound as he pulled out his digivice. The screen was white and the entire thing seemed to glow.
"Aaah!" Taichi cried out in pain, dropping the digivice. "It burns!"
And so did the digivice fall to the floor, a crack forming in the screen.
Immediately the sound stopped and the light faded. Kari, having heard the commotion, like anyone else off course, came into the room and picked up the device.
"This can't be good." She said, running her finger along the crack in the screen.
Meanwhile back on the ship.
The light coming from Tai was bright enough to light the darkness of the night.
"What's taking him so long?" Ken asked. "I don't know but he'd better hurry up, in this state he's incredibly vulnerable." Izzy remembered all too well what had happened to Greymon and Kabuterimon when they were attacked halfway through their digivolution.
The light coming from Tai suddenly disappeared, drenching the deck in darkness again, the only sources of light being the search lights installed on the boat, which were currently aimed at Seadramon.
"Lowemon's back in business." They heard Tai's voice. "Wait, what the hell happened to me?"
Dun-dun-dun! What happened to Tai? Find out in the next chapter of Spirits of Ages!!!
And don't take the part about Patamon joining the army to serious. I just wanted an excuse to dress him in camouflage later on.
Lol funny thing about this fic is that I wanted to send them to Belgium, right? You know the zombie remark that Tai made, I was going to have Izzy answer that question with a small lesson in possible future's for Belgium. A civil war was one of the first things I wanted to put, as Belgium is a rather f'd up country. Serious, we have like six governments. And our prime minister was booted a few weeks ago, so we have a new one. But the problem is that no one wants to friggin cooperate with each other!!
If this isn't solved quickly I fear there might actually be a civil war between Wallonia and Flanders. Things are seriously tense here.
Anyway, I'm only answering a few reviews with questions today, okay because I should have been asleep like two hours ago…
Reviews:
Martiny the one and only: it's a difficult word for CPR
Lord Pata: she'll never truly stop doing that you know ^^
Princess jaded: she has one because she's filthy rich! And she's married to Matt, so she's bound to get a few stalkers after her.
Beth: Antwerpen or Antwerp in English is the biggest port of Belgium and one of the biggest in Europe. Davis just couldn't pronounce it correctly.
Later people! R&R!