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Digimon so please refrain from suing me for writing fan fiction. Thanks and enjoy!
Within Dreams—Chapter 14
Jim Kido walked down the hallway to Joe's room slowly. Why are mom and dad so worried about Joe? He's not going to sneak out again. In fact, I'd bet anything he's still sleeping, he thought. It made perfect sense to him, as he'd only awoken about a half hour ago.
The conversation that took place only minutes ago was still fresh in his mind. Jim especially remembered how his parents were dead-set on having Jim check on his brother. Of course they didn't say what they were thinking aloud, but Jim could easily tell their reason. They wanted to make sure Joe hadn't snuck out again. But that's not what they'd tell me, he thought. They don't want me thinking Joe's run away again. Oh, no…we couldn't have that now, could we?
He paused outside the door. Quiet. He's probably going to be upset about being woken up, Jim thought. For a brief instant, he considered just going back out to the family room and telling his parents that Joe was still sleeping. He could practically see the relief flicker through his mother's eyes and see how his father would nod without looking up from his newspaper. But then he decided he might as well be 100% certain.
Very quietly, he twisted the door handle and pushed open the door. He walked inside. Everything was as it had been last night. The bed was still slashed, the air mattress still inflated and Joe was, as he had assumed still sleeping.
Jim turned to leave, then stopped. He suddenly realized just why his parents were so worried. Joe never sleeps this long, he thought. He's always up before me! He looked down at his brother again, but saw only the steady rise and fall of his chest. He seemed to be perfectly fine.
But something was bothering him…something…something wasn't right. But what was it? Everything looked normal…. The room, quiet, clean, rather orderly. Joe was sleeping. Sleeping deeply. Too deeply.
Now Jim was beginning to feel a little uneasy. He knelt down next to his brother and shook him gently. Joe did not wake up. "Hey," he whispered, giving his brother another shake. Still nothing.
This is weird, he thought. "Joe!" he shouted. "Hey, come on! Wake up!"
Joe stirred in his sleep and mumbled something nearly inaudible. Jim barely caught it. And he wasn't sure about what he'd heard. But it had sounded like: "a…dream?"
"Joe, wake up!" Jim shouted, giving his brother a hard shake. Joe did not open his eyes. He was sleeping, all right. He was sleeping way too soundly. And now Jim was scared….
~*~
Tai sighed as he followed Vitriol out of the dungeon, the chains around his hands and feet clanking loudly with every step. It had taken Vitriol about five minutes to explain how to be a slave. Five minutes. I never knew it could take just five minutes for everything in your life to fall apart, he thought. And that was exactly what had happened. His friends were dead. Kari? Dead.
The rules were pretty simple: don't get anyone mad at you and stay alive. Tai remembered asking Vitriol what would happen if he just refused to do what he was told. Vitriol had just smiled, answered: "care to find out?" and left it hanging at that. Having tortures left to your own imagination was far worse than being warned ahead of time. He had no desire to find out about punishments.
He was brought out of his reveries when Vitriol quite suddenly stopped and he smashed into her. Vitriol turned and calmly stated: "you know, you'll really have to learn to check your clumsiness. Malign's not nearly as lenient as I am."
"Why'd we stop?" Tai questioned. Not that he really cared. Nothing in his life mattered anymore, so why should he care about why they'd stopped?
"This will be your room," Vitriol said, opening a door in the wall of the long corridor. It was extremely small. No windows. One bare light bulb hung from the ceiling to provide light. An unbelievably tiny bed was shoved precariously into the corner and a single hard chair was sitting against the wall across from the bed.
Tai stepped inside without a word. He sat down on the bed and didn't even care when he realized it was hard as a rock. He covered his face with his hands and just sat on the bed in silence.
Once again, Vitriol felt a pang of guilt. "You'll—you'll learn to like working for Malign—I mean the master. Really, you will. You won't have to wear the chains forever," she said, half to try and make the boy feel just the smallest fraction better and half to make herself feel better as well.
Tai looked up quite suddenly and said: "how—how did they—" he trailed off and his eyes gleamed with tears.
Vitriol knew what he meant and quickly made up a lie: "they all died on the ship."
Tai nodded, but didn't reply. Vitriol said: "I'll be back later. Just wait here" then closed the door, walking down the hallway.
And inside his room, Tai stretched out on his hard bed and stared up at the ceiling, trying to get used to the feeling of the chains around his ankles and wrists.
~*~
"So this is a dream where whatever happens to us in it happens in real life?" Joe repeated once the explanation had been made.
"Yeah," Matt confirmed.
"And we have to beat Malign now to wake up?"
"That is correct," Izzy answered.
Joe sat down hard and muttered: "why can't I just be a normal kid?"
"I don't mean to rush you into this, Joe, but when you showed up we were about to siege Malign's castle. I think we should do that now," Rea said. Nobody said anything, so she continued: "OK, like I was saying before, this is about five miles away from the actual castle. Close enough to walk, but just outside the first wave of defenses."
"Kind of heavy security, don't you think?" Sora interjected.
"Well, a lot of people in this world are against him, so he need strong defenses unless he wants his castle pummeled to the ground," Rea explained. "Anyways, he's got really tight defenses. And they are really not what you'd expect. The first line is motion sensors."
"Motion sensors?" Mimi repeated.
"Motion sensors," Rea confirmed. "He's got the set up in a pattern that is totally impossible to penetrate without setting one off."
"So how do we get through?" TK wondered.
"We short them out. As I already said before, my powers are rather limited, but I should be able to short out the motion sensors' circuitry. Once those are out, there will be a few lines of armed defenses, but as long as we're very quiet we should be able to get through them. Plus, if we're lucky, they'll be distracted by the motion sensor's shorting out. That's the first half. Unfortunately, I don't know about the second half, so we'll have to just figure that out as we go along. So…are we all ready?"
Matt nodded tensely, along with the other seven former Digidestined. He didn't want to fight any more than any of his friends did, but it was the only way for them to return home. He watched as Rea took a deep breath and fired one short, sharp blast of electricity behind a tree they were standing in front of.
"I got it!" Rea happily cried as smoke billowed from behind the tree. From far away, there was an electrical crackling, then more smoke billowed from behind a bush. Then it happened behind a rock, then from under the ground….
"Oh, no,"
Izzy cried.
"What?" his seven companions
demanded.
"Why didn't I think of this sooner!? Rea, the whole castle isn't
on the same circuit system, is it?"
Rea's face paled and she muttered: "you're
right."
"What's wrong with that?" Mimi
questioned.
Joe gasped, catching on and said: "if the whole castle is on the same system and Rea just shorted out the motion sensors…the lights in the castle will go out, too."
There was a grim silence and Matt muttered: "Houston, we have a problem…."