Chapter 35: The Arrival of Impmon
"What do you mean she's gone?" Joe asked.
"We can't find her anywhere. We've been looking all over the place all morning, and there's no sign of her," Tai said.
"She wouldn't just run off on her own without telling us," Kari said. "I'm afraid something bad happened to her."
"Calm down everyone, let's not panic here," Izzy said. "I'm assuming you saw her before going to sleep last night, right Kari?"
"Yeah, but when I woke up, she was gone," Kari said.
"Was there anything unusual that you noticed, either last night or this morning?" Izzy asked.
"No, nothing. Do you think she could be in the digital world?" Kari asked.
"Perhaps she got dragged there by something, like when Gomamon and I were," Joe suggested.
"But what would have done it? Kari's crest wouldn't seem to have a good reason to," Izzy said.
"Do you think Demidevimon's involved?" Mimi asked.
"I suppose it's possible, but unlikely, seeing as Gatomon is so much stronger than him," Izzy said.
"Is there any way you can search the digital world for her, Izzy?" Tai asked.
"Actually, there may be," Izzy said. He sat down at a computer and booted it up. "Hm," he thought for a second, and then pulled out his laptop and connected it to the computer.
"Kari, give me your D-3," Izzy said. Kari promptly handed the device over. Izzy placed it in a special port that Gennai had added to his laptop and began typing. After a few minutes, he smiled.
"Prodigious! I've actually managed to match the signal from the digivice with a corresponding signal that Gatomon's data is giving off. Now I should be able to trace her signal just like the digivice's!" Izzy exclaimed, typing furiously.
"How long is it going to take?" Tai asked.
"Well, that depends on how difficult it is to transfer the signal into my tracking program. It could take a few minutes, though," Izzy said as he continued to pound away at the computer's keyboard.
"Okay, but hurry up," Tai said. "We're going after her as soon as you can get that thing to work."
"Well, we're still not sure that Gatomon is even in the digital world, but I should be able to . . . what the . . . something's blocking the tracing program!"
"What?" We all said at once.
"There's some kind of interference with the program, it won't let me run the tracer in the digital world!"
"Can you fix it, Izzy?" Ken asked.
"I can try, but . . . wait it's not even that, something's hacking my laptop!" Izzy yelled.
"Can you fix it?" Tai almost screamed in alarm.
"I'm trying, but it won't be easy," Izzy said. "Wait, what's this?"
"What is it, Izzy?" Tentomon asked.
"It's a message from the hacker. He says he wants to talk to us!" Izzy exclaimed
"Talk to us? About what?" Matt questioned.
"He claims to be a soldier in Daemon's army, but he can help us," Izzy told us before he continued reading. "He says that Gatomon was kidnapped by Daemon, but that he's willing to free her if we'll make a deal with him. He says that Daemon isn't involved in the deal at all."
"Somehow I doubt that this guy is really willing to betray Daemon like that. Did he say what he wants?" Matt said.
"No, he just said to meet him on the beach on File Island," Izzy stated.
"It sounds like a trap to me." Tai said.
"But remember Demidevimon? We thought that was a trap, too,' Matt reminded him.
"Well as long as Daemon doesn't have the earring, we can fight him on equal terms. I say we go find out what this guy wants," I suggested.
"Sora's right, there's a chance that this guy may be telling the truth. If he is, then I think it's worth the risk in order to get Gatomon back," Yolei said.
"Okay, then let's get going before he changes his mind," Davis said. Everyone nodded in agreement.
"Wow, it seems like we haven't been here in ages," I said as I looked around at the forest. The digital world had a variety of plant life, but the forests on File Island were unique and sometimes strange, even for the digital world. The trees grew in strange shapes, and we would often find randomly placed objects which would be perfectly normal were they not in a forest. The objects included anything from refrigerators to telephone booths, and any number of random buildings. The digital world was full of these random abnormalities, but File Island seemed to be the strangest of the strange.
"I wonder if Andromon's factory is still here." Izzy said. "And I wonder if it's still putting stuff together just to take it apart again."
"Don't worry, Izzy. I'm sure we'll have time to visit once we find Gatomon and defeat Daemon," Tai said.
"Those are our primary goals right now," Cody agreed.
"C'mon guys, the beach is just a little farther!" Gomamon yelled. He had run up the path ahead of us, and now disappeared around the bend again. We all quickened our pace slightly in order to catch up with him.
The beach was exactly the same as I remembered it. Near the shoreline was the pile of smashed telephone booths from when Shellmon attacked us here five years ago. Agumon had digivolved to Greymon for the first time in order to defeat him. I kept thinking back to the first time Biyomon digivolved. She had to defend a village of Yokomon from Meramon, who was affected by a black gear. It all seemed so ancient now, as we walked along the beach.
Far ahead, we could see a tiny figure standing alone on the beach. It looked like a little kid wearing black one-piece pajamas, but the fact that he was holding a fireball in his hands disabused me of that notion immediately.
"So who are you?" Tai asked as we walked up to him.
"My name is Impmon, and I'm glad you decided to show up. You certainly took your time," the digimon said. He had a somewhat squeaky voice, punctuated by an accent which implied disdain for everything that he was talking to.
"Look, you said you could free Gatomon, right?" Matt demanded.
"Of course I can, but not for free. There's a lot of risk involved in defying Daemon, and I have to receive ample compensation for my risk," the little digimon said.
"Alright, so what do you want from us?" Ken asked, staring down at the digimon.
"I want whatever you've got. Jewelry, money, gift cards, whatever you've got on you right now is fine," the little digimon said. He held out a bag that he had been carrying. "Throw everything in here."
"Are you kidding? You want to rob us?" Tai asked.
"I'm not robbing you! Daemon kidnapped your precious little kitty. I will get her back, but you have to pay for my services. Of course, I could just disappear and you'd never see your poor little Gatomon again," the digimon sneered.
"Just a second," Tai said. He signaled for everybody to gather around.
"Well, what do we do?' he asked bluntly.
"I don't have anything that valuable on me right now," Mimi said. "Quite honestly I'd be surprised if he accepted it.
"Does anyone have anything of value on them?" Matt asked. Everyone shook their heads. Ken quickly translated, and the four who spoke only English also shook their heads no.
"In that case, let's go for it and see what he does," Joe said enthusiastically. We all turned back to Impmon.
"Alright, give us the bag," Tai said. One by one, we passed the little sack around, dropping in the little cheap jewelry and small amounts of money that we happened to be carrying. All the while Impmon just sat there and watched, almost disinterested, until the bag came to the last person, Shark. Shark looked at Impmon for a brief second, threw a few coins from his pocket in, and offered the digimon the bag.
Impmon looked at him for a second, surprised, and then pointed up to his ear. "You forgetting that, kid?" the digimon asked, indicating the earring. He said it in Japanese, so Shark could only give him a quizzical look.
"He doesn't speak Japanese, only English" Will told Impmon.
"That's fine, I'll tell him in English," Impmon said. "Kid, you've still got an earring on!" the little digimon screamed at Shark angrily.
"What, this? This is just plastic. It's a gift from my little sister. She's three, and she wanted me to wear it to remember her," Shark said coolly.
"No it's not, you made that up!" Impmon accused.
"I'm pretty sure it's plastic," Shark said with a small smile.
"It's made of bone and rubies, and you had better put it in the bag!" the tiny digimon said.
"You're a silly little guy. My sister bought this at the toy store. She promised to wear the other one," Shark said, folding his arms.
"You're a liar! That earring doesn't have a match!" Impmon yelled.
"And how would you know that?" Shark questioned.
The look on Impmon's face as he realized what Shark had just done was priceless. Even though I hadn't understood the conversation, I knew by that look that Shark had done something that freaked him out. The handful of kids that could speak English were all either staring in amazement or trying desperately to keep from laughing.
Shark withdrew the bag from Impmon and stared down at the digimon in triumph. Impmon was silent, unable to think of a way out of the situation. Shark had to break the silence.
"So this is Daemon's earring, huh?" he said, tossing it up and down in his hand. "How about you get the fuck outta here before I slit your throat," he said, suddenly pulling his switchblade on the digimon, his face no longer bearing the amused smile, but instead a serious, deadly stare that sent shivers up my spine even though he wasn't looking at me.
Impmon didn't waste time responding. He turned and bolted at the sight of the knife, knowing that he couldn't get the earring now. His tiny form streaked away from us down the beach until it disappeared over the horizon. As he ran, Mimi translated the conversation for the rest of us, and we all spent a good five minutes laughing about it.
Shark started explaining how he got the earring for real, and Will happily translated for him. "I don't even have a sister," he grinned. "I found that thing in the gutter last year at Christmas. I was waling home after buyin' my mom a little Christmas present, and I saw it. I took it to a pawn shop and the dude wouldn't give me anything for it, so I kept it." He put it back in his ear. "I suppose now we gotta smash it, right?"
Tai nodded after Will had finished translating. "I think that's the next step. We'll go back to the real world first and then we'll just find some way to break it."
"A hammer would work pretty well," Matt said.
"Forget that, one of the digimon can just break it," Joe said.
"Alright we'll try that first," Tai said. Will informed Shark of the decision and he took the earring out again and set it down in the sand.
"Alright Agumon, give it your best shot," Tai said.
"Pepper Breath!" Agumon said as he sent a fireball screaming toward the earring. It kicked up a cloud of sand upon impact, scattering it away from Agumon in a shower of tiny particles. A small crater, smoothed by the slow sifting of the sand back into it, remained where the blast had struck the beach. We all looked down into the crater. The earring was still there, half buried by the sand but completely unharmed.
"That thing's tough," Joe observed.
"Maybe we just need a harder surface. The sand might have absorbed some of the impact," Izzy suggested.
With this in mind, we walked up the beach until we found a large flat rock near the tree line. The earring was placed in the center of the rock and the digimon lined up to attack it.
"Alright, everybody at once now," Tai said.
"Pepper Breath!"
"Blue Blaster!"
"Spiral Twister!"
"Boom Bubble!"
"Super Shocker!"
"Spirit Fang!"
We waited expectantly for the dust to clear, hoping that this time they had been more successful. Once again, we were disappointed.
"Jeez, is this thing invincible?" Tai complained.
"It would appear that we'll need some other method of destroying this thing," Izzy said.
"Okay, I'll hit it with a sledge hammer when we get home. Then we'll go save Gatomon, kill Daemon, and call it a day!" Matt said.
"While both of the latter will require slightly more planning than you've implied, I suppose the sledge hammer idea will suffice," Izzy said as he pulled out his laptop.
Kari sighed. I looked over toward her, and she gave me a worried smile.
"Don't worry, Kari. We'll find Gatomon soon. She's a tough kitty, I'm sure she'll be okay," I said.
"I know," Kari said. "Everything will turn out fine, as long as we stick together."