43) Moving in with Yamaki
"Jurrrriiii. Culu?"
Calumon had finally gotten a reaction from Juri. It wasn't much, but at least it was a start.
"Destiny", was all she said.
(Juri watched with her father as a doctor in a white lab coat pulled a sheet over her mother's head.
"It was destined", the doctor said. She looked up into a featureless face with glowing eyeglass lenses.
"Yes", her father said in resignation. "We have to accept it".
"No!", a five year old Juri protested.
She ran from the room and out into the hallway. It was oddly distorted, the hall very dark, the walls curved as though viewed through a fish eye lens.
"You can't run away from destiny", a nurse told her, the only features glowing eyes.
"Accept your destiny", another faceless nurse or doctor told her.
"No!", Juri called out. "This can't be happening!"
"Just give up", another advised.
"You can't change destiny", yet another told her as she ran past.
Nearing the end of the hall, she was brought up by a figure of her ten year old self. She had her hand puppet. As her older version turned, Juri saw she had no face, just a mouth filled with fangs dripping saliva. The hand puppet opened a mouth with the same fangs, also dripping with saliva.
"It's destiny, woof!", the hand puppet said.
She backed away from the frightening apparition, only to back into someone: another white lab coat clad figure. He was flanked by endless columns of identical figures:
"Destiny. Destiny. Destiny...", they chanted in chorus)
The black Hypnos vans were packed with the Tamers, their partners, and their parents.
"Depending on the location, it's growing at a rate of one to one-and-a-half kilometers every day", one of the techs was briefing them. "its rate of growth is accelerating".
"My neighborhood", Ruki said, as she watched the real time map. It was encroaching on her street, and would probably reach her home by sundown.
"It isn't safe there anymore, so we're moving you in with Mr. Yamaki. It's less than ideal, and living will be tight. They're also transferring the operations site. I don't know for how long our temporary headquarters will be safe... I wish there were some other way..."
Hypnos Temporary HQ
"So I'll put the onigiri here?", one of the Hypnos techs asked. They were busy preparing for the arrival of their live-in guests.
"OK, thank you", another replied.
"The miso soup is done too", yet another announced.
"We need hot hand towels"
It was organized chaos, as this was not one of Hypnos' purposes. Amidst this chaos, Yamaki and the Wild Bunch were trying to take care of business. It wasn't easy, to say the least.
"Look at this", Daisy was saying as Babel and Yamaki looked on.
She clicked the mouse four times, producing images of a nose piece, a tail piece, and two bat-like wings.
"Pretty cool, isn't it?", Babel asked.
"Not just the design, but also the chrome digitizoid - a virtual metal from the Digital World", Yamaki explicated.
"We will power up the Ark with this..."
"No! No! No!", it was Impmon. "You got it all wrong", he complained. "That's not the configuration of a Violet Zone fighter. You totally fucked it up!".
Impmon and his partner had arrived early, as they were consulting with Impmon on the modifications they were doing to the original Ark.
"Then how would you do it?", Daisy asked.
"In the first place, it doesn't have a bird head... Here, let me show you", he asked. Daisy relinquished her seat for Impmon.
"Can you...", she started to ask.
"I was in the Air Defense Corps, remember. I have about 10,000 hours in these birds, and know the specs forward and backward".
"OK, then, how would you do it?"
"First of all, the nose piece: think dolphin, not bird", as he drew a curved canopy that curved gently to a narrow nose.
"As for the wings, they're not straight like that, but sweep back, like this", he removed the bat wings, replacing them with long, thin wings that swept back towards the tail. "And the profile is recurvant". He showed thin leading edge that started out with a normal camber, but the trailing edge swept back up.
"Aileron and elevator function are combined... And yaw is controlled by winglets", he added the thin vertical winglets Daisy's original design lacked.
"The turbojets are mounted on external nacelles behind the wings", he added these. "The closest thing you have here in the Material World is Jet-A. It's still not quite right, but if you don't push 'em too hard, they won't blow apart on you".
"What about vectored thrust?", Yamaki asked.
"Won't need it. You can damn near hit Mach One with this design, but you can land at about fifty knots ground speed. This is a close support fighter, and doesn't go supersonic. It's light and nimble, just the thing you need for ground support and low altitude dogfights. Just the thing we need for engaging hostile flighted digimon. It's been a couple years since we impmon had to fire a shot in anger, but that wasn't always the case. If necessary, you can vertical drop, but expect something to break if you hit the ground that way", Impmon explained.
"Forch, this design doesn't 'death spiral' even if you have a flame out - unlike every other fighter design I've seen here in the Material World. That's one problem we've solved, and you haven't".
"How is that possible?", Yamaki asked.
"It's the wing contour", Impmon explained. "flying wings are highly unstable because you have no counter force. Pitch is controlled by the sweep back. Move the center of lift backwards, and you force the nose down, and vice versa. It doesn't give you much leeway. The recurvant wings give you two forces that balance against one another, and much more control.
"You also can't hardly stall. Pull the nose up, drop forward airspeed, and instead of a stall, a vortex forms above the wings. That keeps the stall from happening, unless a sudden gust blows the vortex off the wing, that is. Otherwise, you simply drop with little forward airspeed. It simply can not be forced into a spin that can develop into a death spiral. As for weapons systems..."
"We aren't including any just yet", Yamaki explained. "I'm calling it 'Zero Arms Grani'..."
"Why the hell not!"
"I don't see the point. We have the digimon, and with their capabilities, what more do we need?"
"Extra help, you never know".
"OK, we'll think of something", he promised.
"Our guests are arriving", Shibumi announced as he wiped powdered sugar from his mustache and beard.
"Can I borrow your Ark?", he asked of Jen.
He handed it over: "I'll never get used to that: calling the digivice an 'Ark'... my old man did that too".
"Well, that's what we originally intended to call 'em", Shibumi explained. "It's that our project never got that far, and we never marketed them".
"What do you intend to use it for?", Jen asked. ...
"Hey!", Koichi called out as he caught a glimpse of a familiar figure.
"Oh hi", the girl dressed in all black replied. "Didn't expect to see you here".
"Likewise... Sorry we never got to say 'Thanks' for bringing us Dobermon".
"Indeed, we're...", the anthrovixen was just now joining them.
"My partner, Renamon. She doesn't speak English. She says to say 'Thank you' too".
"You were kind'a busy... Alice... Alice McCoy".
"Ruki!", he called out.
She came over and recognized Alice as well.
"Ruki Makino...", he introduced, "and her partner, Lutramon".
"I hoped we'd meet again", she said in passable English. "Glad you showed up when you did. Lutramon gives thanks too".
"You're all welcome", Alice announced.
"You're an American too?", Alice asked.
"Yep", Koichi answered.
"My granddad, Dolphin, brought me here when he came to work with Mr. Yamaki. I've never been out of the country... well, except for a vacation to Canada three years ago. I was thrilled he asked. I thought it would be an adventure, and it sure did turn out to be one, what with meeting Dobermon, and you guys. I never would'a thought..."
"Same here: I was never expecting to meet up with Renamon".
"I... wish I had a partner... although I never considered it until I found Dobermon, but he had a different mission".
"You into the Goth scene?", Koichi asked to change the subject.
"Yeah, you?"
"I'm another one of your fellow outcasts and nonconformists: I'm a Furry. Though I do like Evanescence, London After Midnight, Mephisto Waltz".
"We have a few at my high school... Yeah, sometimes it isn't easy, not always going along, especially for freshmen".
Ruki had no idea what they were talking about: "Ummmm, never heard of them... Any good?"
"It's different", Alice said.
"If we ever get through with this, I'll burn you some CDs", Koichi promised.
"Yo! Takato!", Koichi called out with a loud whistle to get his attention.
"Oh...", Takato said.
"You were there, at the overpass?", Guilmon asked.
"Alice McCoy: Takato and Guilmon", Koichi introduced. "Alice McCoy, Dolphin's granddaughter".
"I was hoping we'd meet some day", he said. "We really appreciate what you did for us... Too bad Dobermon couldn't deliver our power without the self sacrifice".
"Yeah...", she said wistfully. "I still miss him..."
"What say we get some of that chow before it's all gone?", Koichi asked.
"What're you gonna do with it?", Jen asked.
Shibumi had opened a slot on top of the digivice to reveal a USB port connection.
"I need it to materialize Grani", he explained. "You know what the materialization was, originally?", he asked.
He brought up a graphic on his work station: "From the Digital World, to the Material World, it's a type of quantum 'teleportation' - information transfer. The original information is destroyed from the Digital World, but is recreated here in the Material World. The transferred information exists as a proxy, or 'information energy', but needs something to turn it into a physical presence. The Ark holds the key for that. Do you get it?"
"Yes, so you'll be needing to make a copy of the digivice's program?"
"Perzakly", Shibumi replied. "Not often I get to see someone who knows what I'm talking about... I guess you got it from Tao?"
"I don't know where else", Jen agreed. ...
"Takato!", Guilmon called out.
"Ehhhh? What's up?"
Guilmon pointed out the man and woman standing apart from the others.
"Who're they?", Ruki asked.
"Juri's parents", Takato explained.
"They were worried and came all the way from Matsumoto", one of the techs explained.
"I see...", Ruki replied. "Doesn't look like they're too happy about it... I guess they heard?"
Takato ran after Hajime. He looked really pissed off about something. Not exactly the sociable type.
"Juri...", Ruki said.
"Ruki?", Lutramon asked.
"Please don't be angry with Juri", Takato pleaded as they waited for the elevator.
He just glared back at Takato without saying a word.
"It wasn't her fault!", he continued explaining. "That's the truth! Please believe me!"
The elevator arrived, and he glared back before stepping into the elevator.
"Anyway, Juri didn't do anything wrong!"
The elevator door closed, and Takato suspected he'd been wasting his time, trying to reason with this asshole.
"I feel awful about this", Shizue was telling Rumiko. "I want to apologize somehow to Juri's deceased mother".
"I understand how you feel...", Rumiko was saying as she realized what a faux pas this was. "I mean... uhhhh...". It was hopeless. She watched as Ruki was climbing the stairs towards the balcony overlooking the main floor.
Ruki sat at an outside deck, just her alone, pondering.
"I felt so much self pity over my situation, but my father's still alive. I could see him any time I wanted..."
"Ruki?", Lutramon joined her.
"Juri... I killed her partner".
"We'll do what we can for her. It's all we can do, keep going forward".
"I'll find a way to show her I care"
They returned to the main floor.
"What's this?", Kenta asked Janyu, "an old video game?" Kazu and Marineangemon were looking on.
"The D-reaper in its original state", he explained.
The screen showed something looking a lot like Pacman devouring "food pellets". Not very impressive.
"So how did this...", he pointed to the screen, "...become that?", as he pointed out the window to the Chaos Mass.
"It evolved, somehow, like the digimon", Janyu explained.
"It looks like information is gathering there", Curly commented to Dolphin, as she looked over his shoulder.
"That's what I was thinking... it looks like this is the Kernel", he said, referring to the red sphere between the twin towers. "Could it be the D-reaper's 'brain'?", he asked. "If it is, then all we have to do is destroy it".
"Then we could eliminate the whole D-reaper?", Curly asked.
"You can't!", Takato objected.
"Why?"
"Inside, Juri's trapped in there", he explained. "If you destroy it, you destroy Juri... You can't!"
"You're certain of this?", Dolphin asked.
"Absolutely. If you don't believe me, ask Renamon: she was there; she saw it for herself, and she helped Calumon get inside".
"Ummmm... that does complicate things", Dolphin and Curly agreed. "You have to understand, and as much as I hate to say it, we may have no choice... But, for now, we don't have the means..."
"Give us a chance to get her out!", Takato insisted.
0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
Hajime leaned hard on the horn as he sped at a road block.
"Stop!", the police officers demanded.
They leaped aside as they realized that the driver had no intention of stopping. He smashed the wooden saw horses. ...
"Why did one of your vans run a roadblock?", the officer was complaining to Yamaki.
"The van is gone!", the driver announced just at that moment. "It's all my fault! I left the keys in the ignition", he explained.
"Thank you for reporting it", Yamaki said to the officer, as he hung up.
"I'm sorry", the driver said.
"Just who would...", Yamaki asked himself.
"I have a pretty good idea", Takato explained, "that's why he left when he did, Juri's father. Where is this roadblock he ran?"
0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
"Juri... Juri...", Hajime was saying to himself as he stopped about a block from the Chaos Mass. He got out, and took off his jacket, as it was uncomfortably warm, so close to the D-reaper.
"JURI! JURI! JURI!", he called out repeatedly.
"Juri, culu, someone's calling for you, culu?", Calumon had heard.
Hajime got no answer. He remembered: he wasn't very good with very small children, recalling an incident where he'd been rougher than he'd like, undressing a toddler Juri.
"It's because I was so awkward", he recalled.
"Tell her that if such a selfish daughter wants to come home, she can come by herself", he recalled that phone conversation with Yamaki's assistant.
"I'll go...", her step mother suggested.
"I told you to stop doing that. If you forgive her that easily, nothing will change", he objected. "It's for the best for both of you: you and Juri"
"Why did I say such things?", he asked himself as he stood in the street.
"Destiny... Destiny... Destiny..."
"J... Juri?", he asked as he looked all around. It was unmistakably Juri's voice, but she was no where to be seen.
Koichi, Takato, Ruki, and Kazu came up. Koichi had driven them there, in another borrowed Hypnos van, and Yamaki arranged for them to pass the roadblock. The cops were waiting, and told them where the other van was headed. Koichi quickly found it, parked in the middle of the lane.
"Mr. Katou, that's not your daughter", Takato explained. "It's the D-reaper"
Suddenly, another "agent" burst forth from the Chaos Mass. This one was the same red color, tall, with a vaguely anthropomorphic form: two hands with five fingers. The head bulbous and featureless. The head and body covered with yellow, hemispherical mouths. a half dozen tendrils extended from the "neck" of the thing.
"Destiny... Destiny... Destiny...", all these mouths said in chorus.
"That voice... Where are you, Juri?!", Hajime called out again.
"It's not Juri!", Takato told him. "The D-reaper's using her voice".
"Destiny... Destiny... Destiny...", it continued.
"Stop using Juri's voice!", Takato demanded of it.
"Let's go!", Takato called out.
"Wait", Renamon said, as one of the tendrils shot forward. From the end, projected the video camera the D-reaper had taken from the SDF soldier. It pointed at Hajime.
"Huh?", he asked, as it began giving him a good looking over.
"Comparing with Juri's memories", it said in its own voice. "Search complete. Identified: Hajime Katou. Human. Father", it said. "Father".
"What is it doing?", Guilmon asked.
"It's researching", Renamon explained. "The digimon familial system is different, and it doesn't understand the concept of 'father'".
"Researching?!", Ruki asked with indignation. It seemed all to cold-blooded and uncomfortably familiar.
"Searching other memories", it announced. It came up with Juri's memory of coming down to the bar and grill to get a glass of orange juice for Leomon. The way her father had roughly reprimanded her for doing so during business hours. The way he demanded her to not forget to wash the glass.
"I beg you", Hajime asked tears running down his cheeks, "Please... let Juri go. She's my beloved daughter. You can have me instead, just let her go. OK?"
"Process interrupted", it announced. "Behavior is remarkably inconsistent with Juri's collected memories. Why? Why? Why?"
"How could you understand how Juri feels?!", Ruki challenged it.
"Why? Why? Why? Why?", the mouths asked in chorus.
The camera began to retract back into the tendril.
"No! Wait!", Hijime called out. "Return my daughter!", he demanded.
In desperation, he grabbed onto the tendril, holding on for dear life as the agent tried to shake him off.
"Renamon!", Koichi called out.
Renamon Matrix Evolve! ...
... SAKUYAMON!
"Gotcha!" She was just in time to catch Hijime as he fell from too high, as he lost his grip on the tendril. Otherwise, it would have been a nasty fall.
"It's your father, culu?", Calumon announced to Juri.
"Dad?", she asked herself. She'd seen from inside the Kernel Sphere, but found it hard to believe he cared that much. "Dad", she said again.
"Detecting unusual activity: Juri's thought processes have entered active mode", the agent announced. "Beginning memory retrieval"
"Get the FUCK out of Juri's head!", Takato demanded.
Guilmon Matrix Evolve! ...
... DUKEMON!
Lutramon Matrix Evolve! ...
... HOUOUMON!
Impmon Matrix Evolve! ...
... CUCHULAMON!
"Royal Sabre!", Dukemon blew off one of its hands.
"Dammit!", he called out as he watched the missing hand regenerate. It shot forth, capturing him. As if that were bad enough, he discovered that the yellow "mouths" could be shot out from a tendril. Dukemon narrowly dodged a couple as they took swings at him.
Hypnos Temporary HQ
"Why is the D-reaper so interested in the parent-child relationship?", Curly asked. "Isn't deleting everything its main purpose?"
"I think it's pretty obvious", Shibumi explained. "The D-reaper is becoming self aware. It's not just another program run amok. Curiosity is a product of self awareness. It wants to learn. There's also another possibility: it's afraid..."
"Afraid?", Yamaki asked.
"Why not? Do we not fear the unknown?"
"If that's the case, can we negotiate with it?", Yamaki asked.
"Perhaps", Shibumi theorized, "if it has more than just a rudimentary self awareness, and if it holds off its destructive imperative long enough to develop to that stage, but that's a big if... There's also a more sinister implication: it's trying to learn more about us to discover our weaknesses. A malevolent, self aware enemy is that much more formidable. It's already seen we're not exactly push-overs. The D-reaper may not have a better nature to which we can make an appeal".
"How much longer?", Terriermon was complaining. "Everyone's fighting".
"Just a little longer", Janyu told him. The process was 70% complete.
At the Chaos Mass
"Crimson Flare!", Hououmon severed the arm, freeing Dukemon.
"All together! Let's go!", Sakuyamon called out.
This didn't work out so swell. Those "mouths" shot forth, grabbing them all by arms, wings, legs...
"They're in trouble, culu?!", Calumon was giving Juri a running account of what was happening outside.
"Keep trying! Dukemon! Sakuyamon! Cuchulamon! Hououmon!", Calumon called out.
"It's useless", Juri said. "It's useless because it's destiny".
"It's destiny... It's destiny... It's destiny... It's destiny...", the otherwise unoccupied mouths repeated.
"Bullshit!", Sakuyamon called back, "we choose our own destiny!"
For that, the four mouths holding her tried to pull her apart. She screamed.
Hijime decided he had to do something, and that something was to crash the van into the thing. He jumped at the last moment, though he could seriously hurt himself, and he got a nice case of road rash from it.
"You bastard!", he called out as the van slammed into its leg. He was disappointed to see what little damage it had done, but it was enough. All the mouths dropped the digimon and aimed for Hijime for his effrontery.
This gave Dukemon the chance to skewer all the mouths with his lance, like stringing beads. Once he had all of them corralled, with himself inside a big ball of "mouths"...
"Hero's Light!", Cuchulamon fired at the main mass.
"Crimson Flare!", Hououmon severed all the tendrils connecting the "mouths" to the main body of the thing. It burst apart into Chaos Mass.
"Juri! I'm coming for you!", Takato called out.
Hypnos Temporary HQ
"OK, now let's bring Grani to life", Shibumi announced.
"How?", Jen asked.
"The usual way", he replied, "a Blue Card", which he produced.
"And why are you calling it 'Grani'?"
"I named it after the war horse of the legendary knight: Siegfried", Yamaki explained.
He scanned it through Jen's digivice.
"Digital field forming right where we want it", this being a small airport just north of Shinjuku. Grani was programmed to land at that field, where Hypnos staff were waiting.
"How're we doing?", he asked.
"They say they see it, and it's coming in... Like Impmon said, not flying very fast..."
"OK, they've secured it at our hangar".
"Let's go have a look", Shibumi announced. ...
"As soon as you finish up the status check, set it up so we can add the new equipment", Riley was telling Daisy.
"Looks pretty good", Impmon was saying of the dark red digitizoid craft. "Just like the ones I flew back home".
Shibumi patted the red craft: "You did well, getting this far", he told it.
"Are you tired?", Guilmon asked the new fighter. "You hungry?", he asked. "Would you like some Guilmon bread?"
"More like Jet-A", Impmon told him. "Same fuel biz-jets use, and we have storage tanks full, so's that won't be a problem".
"Why are you talking like that?", Riley asked.
"It's still the same Ark", Guilmon explained, "and it is self aware, like any other digimon".
"That's gonna take some getting used to", Impmon said. "Our fighters didn't have any special self awareness. We had copilots for that", he explained.
Daisy gasped.
"What?"
"Riley, I'm sending you something", she said. "This was recovered from Grani's memory".
It was a video, at the Hypnos offices, the rest of the Tamers and their partners gathered around, the same as Impmon, Guilmon, and Shibumi at the hangar.
"That's the Digital World?!", Jen asked. It looked nothing like he remembered. The landscape completely barren, explosions in the background, Chaos Mass bubbling from fissures, the sky black with smoke, and large columns of smoke rising in the distance. Cities were burning. No signs of life anywhere in the immediate area.
"It's... horrible!", Ruki said.
Kenta and Kazu gasped, speechless.
"It won't last much longer", Koichi said.
"Zhuqiaomon!", Lopmon called out as he saw his former master fly past.
"If this data is accurate, and we have no reason to believe it's not, 47% of the Digital World has been deleted".
"Any idea where this is?", Impmon broke in. "What of the Violet Zone?"
"No idea", Dolphin told him. "This data isn't complete as the Ark was running very low on power when this was made. It's not a complete record, I'm afraid".
"Enough screwing around", Impmon announced, "time to kick the tires and light the fires. Let's see how Grani performs".
"You heard him", Shibumi ordered the rest of the support techs. They brought over fuel hoses with quick connect fittings.
Hypnos Temporary HQ
"We're back", Koichi reported to Yamaki. "One less van though..."
"I'm sorry", Hajimi explained, "I didn't know what else to do... she's my little girl..."
"Don't worry about that", Yamaki replied. "Understandable, given the circumstances. I can make problems like that go away. I'm just glad you weren't seriously hurt".
"Chief...", one of the techs began.
"Ruki?", some vaguely familiar man was saying. Rumiko and Seiko were with him. Lutramon hung back.
"Dad?", she recognized him mainly from Catsuramon's memory retrieval.
Koichi and the others made a discreet exit to let them have their space.
"Yes, Ruki, your father".
She didn't know how to feel about this. He had abandoned her, hadn't seen her since the divorce. She knew what the old Ruki would have done. She threw her arms around him.
"How...", she began to ask.
"Been following your adventures on the cable", he explained. "I never would'a imagined... I knew I had to come. Your mother and I, while you were gone... we decided to set aside our differences. That's not important... you are...
"Let me get a look at you", he said as he stood back a couple of steps, "How you've grown...", he paused. There was much to regret, missing out on literally half her life. "I'm... I'm so proud of you".
Ruki really had conflicts. If only he knew.
"I watched you in those Tamer Tournaments. Your second place finish, then when you won it the next year. I should've sent congratulations. I almost did; I regret I didn't..."
"You're here now", Ruki said. "That's all that counts... You haven't met my partner", she waved the anthro-otter over. "Lutramon: my Dad", she introduced.
"Lutramon", as he took her offered paw. "You take good care of my Ruki".
"I shall as I've sworn to protect my partner with my life if necessary, by the Digimon Code of Honour. It's nice to meet you".
"Come", Ruki invited, as she led the way to the roof patio. "There's so much to talk about"
