Malfunction?
Chapter Two – The Attack
Later, Sora could never
recall what exactly had alerted her to the presence of danger. She was fairly sure that she had heard
nothing – which made sense, Izzy had informed her later whilst in computer-dork
mode, as these particular digimon were reputed to move in absolute
silence. Also, there had been no
vibration through the ground. Perhaps a
subtle change in the quality of darkness, a slight unaccountable movement of
air, any one of a number of things could have set Sora's alarm bells ringing,
but it so happened that she raised her head sharply on impulse – and saw a
large black mass bearing slowly and silently down upon her. It was a mere five feet from her crouching
body when her startled brain registered its approach.
Sora shrieked loudly,
tumbling backwards in an instinctive effort to escape. The creature hissed in annoyance; now it had
lost the element of surprise. It gave a
signal with one of its legs – and two more digimon exactly like the first
advanced towards her. But Sora was not
the soccer team's fastest player for nothing. She leaped to her feet.
"Tai! Matt!" she screamed, half-running half
falling down the hill, "Biyomon – digivolve! Hurry!"
Yamato surfaced from an
unformed but vaguely disturbing dream to hear screaming. He turned over to try to shut it out, then
his brain abruptly shifted into gear and he was suddenly wide awake
.
"Sora?" he muttered quietly
to himself, then "SORA!" He leapt to
his feet, throwing aside his blanket, pausing just long enough to grab his
pants before taking off at a run towards the sound.
"Gabumon!" he yelled at the
dog-like digimon who was also beginning to wake up. "It's Sora, she's in
trouble!"
"I'm with you, man!" Taichi
was hopping from one foot to the other, trying to climb into his shorts.
"Agumon, let's go!" At a run, the two
boys and their digimon powered to Sora's rescue. When they arrived at the crest of the small hill, they found
Birdramon already doing battle, lighting up the sky with her fiery Meteor
Wing attacks, but she didn't seem to be halting the progress of the
attackers.
"Oh no – Arachnamon!" the
voice was Tentomon's; Izzy joined them a few seconds later, already tapping
into Gennai's database to find out more. The news was not good.
"Champion, virus-type,
spider digimon with a very tough natural shield which protects it from all fire
and ice attacks. Its Twining Web
attack paralyses its victims by binding them with tough, sticky fibre, whilst
its Poison Spray causes a variety of reactions from mild nausea
to severe illness, depending on the proximity." Izzy's face was grim. "This is not a digimon we can afford to treat lightly. Tentomon, digivolve!"
"How many of them are
there?" asked Yamato. Taichi shook his
head.
"It's too dark to see." He
complained, then turning to his digi-companion, "Hey, Agumon, how about making
us a torch, a real big one, huh?" He
gestured to a small tree halfway up the hill.
"You got it!" returned
Agumon, inhaling hugely, "Pepper Breath!" The tree immediately burst into flames,
illuminating the entire scene and putting a very different complexion on the
situation.
"Oh, man!" breathed Yamato
in horror.
"Geez!" added Taichi,
"Agumon, Gabumon – digivolve, now!"
The whole hilltop seemed to
be literally crawling with Arachnamon. The Champion digimon, now joined by Angemon, Gatomon, Ikkakumon and
Togemon, were doing furious battle, but it seemed to little avail.
"Matt, I can't see Sora,"
shouted Taichi to Yamato above the din. Yamato shook his head then a double-take showed him what might have been
Sora's lucky hat. He started to move
forward, suddenly positive.
"Tai, I've found her! I'm going in. Garurumon, help me."
"Howling Blaster!" responded the wolf-like digimon, leaping into the
fray with Yamato clinging to his neck. Taichi didn't answer; his attention had been drawn away from Yamato by
Izzy who had had an idea.
"Tai, look at the Arachnamon
– they don't like the tree Agumon flamed, they're moving away from it all the
time. Now, we know they are impervious
to fire and ice attacks, what could be the problem with the tree? Also, they took care to attack by night at
the darkest time possible. I think
they're light-sensitive."
"Yeah, you're right, Izzy,
they are moving away!" responded Taichi, "But how's that going to help us get
rid of them?"
"Well, where's our nearest
source of really bright light?" Izzy asked, and when Taichi shrugged, held up
his digivice. Taichi grinned.
"You're on, man. Hey, Joe, Kari, Mimi, TK – over here, and
get your digivices ready!" The others
ran over to Taichi and Izzy, digivices at the ready.
"I sure hope this works as
well as it did on Centarumon," quavered Mimi, "Or I'm going to be getting a
really icky new outfit of spider silk!" The five digidestined kids held out their digivices towards the
Arachnamon, which obligingly burst into unbearably bright light. An unearthly keening suddenly came from the
spider digimon as the light laced through their eight eyes with excruciating
agony. They began to retreat, beating
the air with their front legs, staggering away from the source of the pain.
"Hey, where's Matt?" shouted
Taichi, above the noise. Joe answered.
"He said he'd spotted
Sora. He and Garurumon went to rescue
her."
"Well, I hope he manages to
clear the area before he gets trampled in the rush. These things really do kick ass!" replied Taichi, looking
appreciatively at his digivice.
Finally, all the Arachnamon
had retreated back over the hill, and in the light of the still burning tree,
the digidestined children and their digimon climbed the hill in search of
Yamato and Sora. What they found was
not encouraging: Garurumon had dedigivolved all the way down to Tsunamon and
was lying stunned behind a small boulder. Yokomon was still conscious, but out of her mind with worry as she could
not find Sora. Neither was Yamato
anywhere to be seen.
"So what do we do now?" Mimi's plaintive question was voiced in the
light of the hastily re-kindled fire back at the campsite, "The Arachnamon are
sure to have taken Sora and Matt away and tied them up with one of their icky
webs. Ugh! How horrible!"
"Mimi, let's not get too
graphic about this, okay?" responded Joe in a pained voice, "I'm allergic to
spiders, and just talking about cobwebs brings me out in hives." TK raised his head, his expression grim.
"We've got to find them." He
stated flatly, "Goodness knows what those creatures are doing to them – I don't
even wanna think about it." Kari put
out a gentle hand and patted his arm comfortingly.
"We'll get them back,
TK." She said with such faith and
assurance that the boy looked at her gratefully, "Come on: we've never run out
on each other, have we? Let's get some
rest. We'll have fresh thoughts in the
morning, and maybe we can come up with some sort of a plan. Let's sleep on it." Izzy stirred from where he had been tapping
furiously into his laptop for the past half hour.
"Got it!" he announced,
triumphantly and turned towards the group in excitement.
"What's that, Izzy?" Taichi
raised his head from his arms.
"I know where the Arachnamon
have taken Sora and Matt! You see,
bearing in mind that they cannot bear light and therefore are unlikely to be
out in the open during daylight hours, they must be holed up somewhere underground. I have analysed the geology of the
surrounding area, taking into account that they must be able to reach their
shelter before sunrise, and there is only one possible place they can be." He pointed towards his laptop. Everybody gathered round the small screen
and peered at the map. Obligingly, Izzy
zoomed in on the place.
"It's about five kilometres
away as the crow flies. The terrain's
not that good, though: it'll take us quite a while."
"What is it, Izzy?" asked
Taichi, squinting in puzzlement at the screen.
"It's an extinct volcano."
replied Izzy, "An absolutely perfect refuge for light-hating Arachnamon."
The set out as soon as it
was light. Only Taichi managed to grab
another half-hour's sleep, the rest simply sat around the fire and talked in
low tones. Taichi awoke as soon as it
was light enough to see and after a hasty breakfast of fruit gathered the
previous day, the digidestined left their campsite and started to trudge north,
following Izzy's directions. The ground
soon became harder on the feet and more difficult to negotiate. Eventually, they climbed into the foothills
of the volcano itself, and the going was a lot slower. During a brief pause to catch their breath,
Joe gazed into the sun, squinting, trying to assess the lie of the land higher
up.
"You know, guys," he
commented, "I don't believe we're going to find much in the way of food up
there – it looks pretty barren – and I imagine the water situation isn't very
much better."
"Don't worry about water,
Joe," said Izzy, consulting his computer map, "There's a freshwater spring
halfway up – it might taste a little sulphurous, but it's drinkable. You've got a point about the food
though." Takeru spoke up.
"If Yokomon could digivolve
to Biyomon, we could gather some food today, leave it here hidden in a blanket
and send Biyomon down to pick it up for us once we had climbed the mountain."
"That's a really good idea,
TK," said Yokomon, sadly, "But I'm afraid I can't digivolve without Sora – not
even as far as Biyomon."
"But I still have my
wings!" exclaimed Tentomon, "And if necessary, I can digivolve to Kabuterimon
should the load be too great for me to carry."
"That's a great idea, TK!"
said Taichi, his face splitting into a huge grin for the first time since the
Arachnamon had kidnapped Sora and Matt. "Hey, everybody, we could do with a break from walking. Let's see what we can find around here to
eat."
Taichi found a tree
virtually full of apples and spent a good half hour picking enough to last
several days. Gomamon, with his almost
infallible affinity for water, discovered a tiny pool, little more than a
puddle, but from which he managed to produce enough fish for their supper. Mimi and TK unearthed a mass of what looked
like tree roots, but which proved surprisingly tasty, something like a cross
between a radish and a potato, which they roasted in the ashes of their fire
for the evening meal. They left most of
the apples and the rest of the raw tubers wrapped in a blanket for Tentomon to
retrieve when they had reached a place to sleep, hopefully near the heart of
the volcano.
"The Arachnamon must be
inhabiting a cave somewhere in the side of the volcano." said Izzy,
confidently. "We should be careful we
don't come upon them by accident." Almost as soon as he had said this, the children noticed that the going
was getting considerably easier; in fact, they appeared to be travelling on
what looked like a road. Joe didn't
like this at all.
"Tai, don't you think we
oughta be getting undercover or something." He said worriedly. Taichi gave him an irritated look.
"Joe, where do you think we
can get undercover here? Under the
rocks? Up in the sky? Get real, man, we got no choice but to take
this road." Joe nodded unwillingly.
"Yeah, yeah, but we have to
find somewhere safe to sleep – we're all of us tired, Tai, TK's almost asleep
on his feet. There's just no way we're
gonna tackle the Arachnamon tonight. Besides, the digimon need to sleep and to eat too, otherwise we might
just as well knock on the door and say 'Hey, Mr. Spider, sir, me and my
friends, we just thought you might like to take us prisoner too, so we'll just
walk in, shall we?" It wasn't very
funny, and Joe didn't mean it to be; he meant to shame Taichi into allowing
them to rest and sleep through the night. Izzy murmured into a mutinous Taichi's ear:
"We'd better find somewhere
to sleep soon because there's no way we can carry on walking this path in the
dark: we'd end up pitching headfirst back to our old campsite, Tai – and I
don't think the experience would be very comfortable." Taichi gave in.
"Okay, everyone," he sighed,
for once allowing his own fatigue to show, "Let's find somewhere safe to rest –
and I don't mean in the trees, Tentomon!"
"No, Tai," protested the bug
digimon, hovering at eye level, "That's not what I meant. I merely thought I could see a cave of some
sort behind that ledge above us. I'll
go look, shall I?" Without waiting for
confirmation, the bug digimon flew upwards to land lightly on the ledge
above.
"If the ledge offers
adequate shelter, it would be a very advantageous place to bivouac." Announced
Izzy, looking up from his laptop. "The
spring I was telling you about is very near to it." Seconds later, Tentomon returned.
"Tai, Izzy," he said in a
choked voice, "I really think you need to see this." With Palmon's help, the two boys climbed up to the ledge, Taichi
extending a hand to Izzy as he reached the top first. They both lay panting on the ground, catching their breath.
"This had better be worth
it," muttered Taichi, "Or when we get home, I'll be taking a can of bug spray
to that six-legged jerk!" They got to
their feet and moved quietly over to the cave. Tentomon led them down into its depths, making no sound except a faint
whirring of wings and cautioning the boys to be as quiet as possible. No one saw the faint flash of white as
Gatomon, silently and without permission, followed them into the cave. Increasingly, they became aware of a faint
light in the distance that gradually resolved itself into a rough circle.
"It's a sort of – window."
muttered Taichi, "Wonder what the light is?" He soon found out.
"Oh, wow!" breathed Izzy,
staring in fascinated horror.
"Geez!" whispered Taichi,
unable to tear his eyes away, "Oh, man - we're dead!"