"Beware the Eastern Sun"
Chapter 10
"The great
warrior gave war cries of victory, and
feasted over the blood
of the fallen. Returning home,
he cowered at the
deadly, ice-cold stare of his wife."
-Men are from Myria,
Women are from Kliinasha
"Eggghhhh!!!"
Mimi grunted as she slashed the soft
underbelly of the ox open. Grimacing, she dug both arms into the fallen beast
and began to pull out the intestines. Her plain pants and shirt were covered
with blood, and her arms were buried up to her rolled-up sleeves. A strange
gurgling sounded nearby. In a fluid motion, she swished aside her tangled hair
and looked up.
Joe stood quivering a short distance
away, one hand clutched over his mouth and the other clutched over his stomach.
Mimi merely smiled when she saw the deathly-pale look on his face. Suddenly,
Joe let out a sigh as his eyes rolled back and he collapsed to the ground. Tai,
sitting in the shade of a tree, burst out laughing while Izzy was still staring
in shock at the sight of Mimi. Sighing and shaking her head, Mimi returned her
attention to the ox, making quick work of the job.
She put the intestines in a
waterproofed hemp bag and tied a rope around the ox's neck. As she dragged the
carcass towards camp, Izzy and Tai came up alongside her.
"Um...how...er...you know..." Izzy began.
Mimi kept pulling and responded
offhandedly, "We've been through a lot, Sora and I. We learned to survive.
What more is there?"
"Oh," he replied.
They remained silent for the rest of
the way, Tai and Izzy occasionally glancing at Mimi's small, firm, bulging
biceps.
When Joe returned to camp a half-hour
later, he was rubbing his head. Izzy was sitting at a wooden table, with Tai
perched over Izzy as he typed away at his computer. Joe approached them and looked
at what was absorbing Izzy's complete attention.
"So, what's going on here?"
he queried.
Tai stopped in his pacing and folded
his arms. "Izzy here thinks he's found something. Right?"
Izzy didn't respond immediately. Tai
promptly nudged him. "Hmmm?" Izzy turned his head to look at the two.
"You found something,
right?" Tai repeated.
"Oh, yes," Izzy said.
"Something most curious. While the digital world seems in disarray, it
looks like there's still some remnants of the old network left. Look here."
Izzy pointed to the computer screen. Open on the desktop was a window that
looked like an internet browser-some program he'd been working on to surf the
networks of the digital world. It displayed a tree of folders, files, and
networked drives-just another mess of data to Joe and Tai.
"Well, what is it?" Joe
asked.
"Oh," Izzy responded
suddenly. "Here. This might make things a little clearer." He tapped
away at the keyboard, and the files changed into comprehensible pictures and
links. "This is like a server. It's designed like the internet back home.
Watch. I click here, and takes me to this database. If I click here I can look
at the mountains over there. And when I click here I can talk to..."
He paused, staring at the screen as
the others waited for him to complete his response. "Well, well. Tell
us," Tai said impatiently.
"Wow." Those were the only
words that came out of Izzy's mouth. "Wow." He frowned, and tapped at
the keyboard again. He pinched his lip in thought and kept typing.
"Izzy!" Tai shouted. "You're killing us with suspense!"
"Hmmm? Oh!" he said. "I
think I've just found something interesting. It looks like an account of
everything that's happened over the past few years! Everything that we've
missed! And even, more, I think I've found a hidden organization."
Tai frowned and looked closer, trying
to follow as Izzy typed and clicked, going from screen to screen. "Got
it!" Izzy shouted. "I've found a contact."
"You found them? Are you
sure?" T.K. tried to hide the eagerness in his voice.
"Yes," Angemon whispered.
A knock sounded at the solid, wooden
doors.
"Yes?" T.K. called out.
A muffled voice. "The master
requires your presence."
"Coming." T.K. turned to
Angemon. "Keep an eye on them. Send word out to the field. Only the most
reliable." He headed to the door, but stopped. "Oh, and keep it quiet."
Angemon nodded, smiling for the first
time in years.
"One! Two! Three!"
Thunk! Thok! Crack!
"One! Two! Three!"
Crack! Thak! "Unnngghhhh!"
Tai rubbed his stomach in pain,
keeling over on the ground. "C'mon Tai, you can do better than that!"
Mimi threw down her stick and removed her padded gloves. Folding her arms, she
approached him. "Take a break. We'll work more tomorrow. I can practice
with Sora."
Tai nodded, grunting in assent. He
couldn't believe it. In the first five minutes, Mimi made mince meat of him.
She went easy on him for another twenty minutes, but that still didn't stop the
five bruises, six blisters, two scratches, and three cuts from attaching
themselves to him. And he'd taken three breaks while Mimi kept going! He
would've thought he was dreaming, but the pain was definitely there.
Definitely.
He finally gathered up the strength to
lift himself up and make his way uphill to the camp. There, he saw Izzy, once
again, working on his laptop. Joe was helping Sora make some repairs to the
huts. Mimi was sitting casually at the wooden table, looking like her normal
self. When he approached she smiled and waved at him like nothing had happened.
The first words that came out of his
mouth were, "Why don't you do this to any of the others?" He waved
his arms at Izzy and Joe.
"Well," Mimi began, as if
she had already prepared a response, "Joe doesn't have to for the obvious
reasons. We all know he isn't the strongest of people, and that's not likely to
change. Besides, he would probably get an asthma attack every five minutes.
"Izzy, well him..." She
paused for a brief moment in thought. "He's busy with other things. And
besides, the workout would ruin his cute face." She turned and gave Izzy a
big hug, which scared him so much fell off the bench. Tai stared on in shock as
Izzy sat on the floor blushing and nervously smiling. He tried to get up a few
times, but kept tripping over himself. Mimi reached down, pulled him up off his
feet, and set him straight.
"I...uh...." Izzy began.
"Did I do something?" he asked, turning an even deeper shade of red.
Mimi just smiled at him and giggled.
Tai slapped his hand to his forehead
and shook his head in utter disbelief.
Tai stared at the setting sun from his
seat at the wooden table. His chin was resting on its surface and his arms
folded above his head. Inside, he felt a strange, indescribable feeling. The
best analogy he could come up with was that he felt like a neutered dog,
castrated and bereft of his manhood. He sighed. There was no real reason he
should feel this way-the female sex has many muscular representatives-but his
nature took over. After all, he was a male. The experience with Mimi just hit
so close to home, though...
"Tai?"
Tai did not move as Sora took a
position beside him. She remained silent, waiting for a reaction.
"Tai?" she called, chanting out the syllables of his name as if he
were far away. "If you're wondering, you're still a man."
Tai closed his eyes and groaned.
"Oh, get over it, big boy," she said. "You weren't like this
that time in second grade when I..."
"I get it, I get it," Tai
interrupted.
Sora smiled. "So you are alive,
are you?" She mussed his hair. "Look. Things aren't so bad. You know
that."
Tai sighed deeply. "I
guess." He lifted his head up and looked at Sora. "But Mimi..."
"Oh you!" Sora chided,
pushing his head away lightly.
Mimi watched the two bantering in the orange
glow of the setting sun. Their giggles echoed through the landscape, their
silhouettes dancing back and forth. Finally, Mimi turned away and walked on the
grass alone. She looked down at her feet. The grass softly gave way under her
shoes, springing back up to life behind her. Silently, she shuffled into the
night.
Stopping, she looked into the sky to
see the first few stars appear. She extended her arm up into the sky, opening
her palm as if reaching out for something distant. There was only the sad,
lonely twinkling of the pinpoints of light, and the solitary maiden in the sky,
shining her pale face down upon the world. Letting out her breath, she dropped
her head and walked on. As she receded into the darkness, she reached out
beside her, grasping the darkness. She almost caught a hold of something.
Matt felt a cool touch upon his hand.
Looking down, he saw nothing. He closed his eyes and thought hard, thinking of
that strange feeling of ecstasy he felt. It was but gone. For a moment, his
heart had been touched. But only for a moment. He flexed his mechanical right
hand, and was off into the darkness of the night.
* * *
They came upon a midnight clear.
The shadow grew into the figure of
Matt. Kari felt an icy chill down her spine, as she wrapped her jacket closer
around her. She held back the gasp when she saw his arm. He must've noticed the
tension in her eyes, because he instinctively flexed his mechanical right hand.
As he approached, he wore a smile of friendship, inviting her forward. She
hesitated, held back by some instinctive feeling, but finally rushed forward to
greet him.
"Matt!" she cried.
"Kari!" he called back, his
smile broadening. He opening up his arms as Kari embraced him.
"It's been so long," she
said, her voice full of sorrow and uncertainty.
"Everything's OK now, Kari,"
he said, squeezing her. "We're all back at the castle, and it'll be just
like old times. Why," he continued in a dreamy fashion, "when
the snow comes, you
and T.K. can play. And we'll build a snow man, decorate a Christmas tree, and
there'll be plenty of food to eat..."
She was entranced by his comforting
talk as she burrowed her face in his warm, protective body. Her cheek touched
his cold arm, though, and it caused the hairs on the back of her neck to
prickle. But she was too overwhelmed with relief to pay much attention. She
dismissed it as the wind. "Come on, Matt," she said, looking up into
his confident smile. "Let's go. It's so cold here."
Kari quickly gathered her things and
followed Matt towards the forest trail where Garurumon was waiting. "Come
on Gatomon!" Kari called back.
Gatomon followed silently. There is
a strange smell here...