Malfunction?
Chapter Four – Crossing Boundaries
As soon as it was light,
Taichi quietly roused the others and told them to eat as much of the food left
from the previous evening as they could.
"We won't get anything more
to eat until we've rescued Matt and Sora, so eat all you can and put the rest
in your pockets in case you get hungry later." What they could not carry, they covered in a blanket and stowed in the
corner of the cave.
When all the digidestined
were standing expectant, ready to move out, Taichi stood up and faced
them. Despite the urgency of the
situation, he paused before beginning. They could see the strain this particular adventure was putting upon
him: he looked tired and drawn, there were black circles under his eyes and he
lacked his usual hyperactive bounce.
"I have to tell ya, this one
isn't gonna be easy." He began. "Izzy
and I have been up half the night talking about it. Izzy's found one of Gennai's programmes which is helpful, but
it's not going to rescue Matt and Sora for us; we've got to do that ourselves,
and it's going to take everything we've got. I tell ya, these digimon are no pushovers, and we can't expect to get
out without digivolving to ultimate!" The others looked round at each other in dismay. For Taichi to be so serious, so lacking in
his "attack first, ask questions later" strategy, this had to be bad – very
bad.
"I'll leave Izzy to explain
his plan of attack to you all – in this area, he's the leader now – but before
we go any further, those of you who weren't totally zonked last night may have
wondered why Tentomon hung a blanket at the back of the cave. Well, I think you'd better come over and see
just what we're up against". Silently,
the others followed Taichi to the back of the cave and, with a small sigh, he
pulled the blanket away. There was a
long pause.
"That's it – I'm outta
here!" announced Joe, backing away from the window.
"There are millions of
them! Ick!" squeaked Mimi, her hands to
her face. TK could only stare in
fascinated horror, and of the four only Kari remained relatively composed. Gatomon stayed at a distance,
expressionlessly manicuring her claws, but the other digimon crowded around the
window.
"Now, just calm down, Joe."
began Izzy.
"Are you kidding?" Joe was
practically freaking out. "Quite apart from the fact that I'm allergic to
anything with more than four legs, even when it's small – and these are
definitely large – we don't stand a chance in there. We might just as well tie ourselves up on the doorstep and ring
the bell. I tell you there is no
way we are going to get within several miles of Matt and Sora – always
assuming that they're somewhere in that crawling anthill."
"Joe, ants are insects,
spiders are arachnids." continued Izzy patiently, "And Sora and Matt are
definitely in there, I would stake my life on it. Now just stop panicking, sit down and listen to my plan." He put his hands on Joe's shoulders and
apparently effortlessly, forced the older boy to sit down. Dumbfounded, Joe obeyed; the others followed
suit.
"Have you found Sora yet?"
piped Yokomon wistfully. The limpid
blue eyes of the small pink creature, who resembled nothing so much as an
oversized radish, were shadowed with worry. Izzy smiled at her.
"Yes, Yokomon, I have." He
replied simply, "And, Tsunomon, Matt is with her." The single-horned in-training digimon jerked to attention.
"I am very pleased to hear
of your achievement," He replied formally, "And I will be greatly relieved to be
with Matt again very soon." Izzy held
up his right hand.
"Woah! Let's not go at this thing straight off
without even thinking about it. There
are a large number of potentially very dangerous situations between our friends
and us, so we had better make sure we know the problems in advance and have
adequate strategies for dealing with them. Okay?" The children and their
digimon all nodded solemnly: Izzy had their complete attention. He began to speak.
Yamato started to turn over
and groaned loudly. Man, I ache in
places I didn't know I had places! He thought through the agony. He began to turn over again, this time a
little more carefully, and made it on to his back without too much extra
pain. He rested for a short while, then
cautiously tried sitting up. He made
it, but the room began to spin almost immediately. Yamato gritted his teeth and rode out the resulting nausea and
dizziness until his head seemed to have returned to normal. It was a little hard to tell what was normal
and what was not as this cell appeared to be even darker than the previous one.
"Man, if it weren't for
gravity, I'd find it hard to decide which way is up!"
"I know. I think where we were before was fairly near
the outside world. Now I think we're
quite some ways into the ground, or below it, or something. At any rate, there's even less light
here." Yamato hadn't really been aware
that he had spoken out loud, but he greeted Sora's reply with intense relief.
"You're okay – thank
goodness! Metaldevimon's parting shot must
have put paid to at least seven of my nine lives. I was afraid we would both be badly hurt." Sora shook her head in the darkness.
"I blacked out for a while,
but coming to wasn't nearly as bad as after the spider poison." Yamato was silent for a moment, then as his
eyes adjusted to the gloom, he said in a thoughtful voice:
"Sora, what is our prison
made of?" Sora chuckled weakly.
"I'm way ahead of you,
Matt," she replied, grimly, "I've been awake for a while. Our cell is made almost entirely of spider
web – thick, coarse stuff, which feels like basketweave or woven rope. The walls are made of it, the ceiling is
made of it – even the floor appears to be made of it."
"What about the door?"
"There is no door, Matt; the
Arachnamon merely tear some of the fibre apart to get in, then mend it with new
stuff when they go out. I've tried to
tear it or unravel it myself – no use." Yamato rose carefully to his feet. He tested his legs – they seemed to work – his head stayed on his
shoulders. As far as his general health
was concerned, that was all he could say on the positive side; he felt
absolutely lousy. However, he could
function, that was what mattered. He
walked over to the nearest wall and put out a hand. Hmmm, the stuff was pretty rough to the touch. He tried to use his fingers to separate out
a strand from the others.
"Hey, ouch!" he whipped his
hand away, automatically putting his thumb and index finger to his mouth. Sora smiled, grimly – he could see her now
faintly in the gloom.
"I could have warned you, if
you'd asked." She said, "I tried that too, with the same result." She was standing by him now, pulling the
injured hand away from his mouth and examining it.
"Hmm," she said, bending her
head close to try to see better, "Just superficial scratches,
fortunately." She looked up, still
holding his hand. "I rubbed all the
skin from my hand just trying to shift some of the fibres." She held up her own hand. Yamato caught hold of it to examine the
injury and suddenly noticed a warm red glow emanating from the girl.
"Hey, Sora, your Crest is
glowing." She looked down in puzzlement.
"It did that out of the blue
last night, for no apparent purpose. I
wonder if it's trying to tell me something, warn me …" She trailed off. Yamato was still holding her hand, but he
was staring straight into her eyes with an expression she did not
understand. The rosy light of the Crest
of Love illuminated Sora's pretty face, hiding the injuries of the past two
days and giving her a gentle radiance. Yamato, as if hypnotised, began to draw her closer.
"You're beautiful, really –
beautiful." He murmured, stroking her
hair. Sora couldn't believe this; she
simply couldn't take it in. Here they
were in the middle of an enemy stronghold, bait for the rest of their friends,
with certain death awaiting them once the rest were captured, and Yamato was
freaking out on her.
"Matt, please …mmm!" His mouth sought out hers with a strength
and passion quite at odds with his usual laid-back persona, and his arms moved
slowly around her waist until he was running his fingers gently up and down her
spine. Sora was at first rigid with
shock, then, try as she might, she found she could not end the contact and was,
in fact, responding with no faint emotion herself. Matt's mouth was like quicksilver, soft and sensitive, teasing
her lips into a frenzy as his hands stroked her body with equal effect. She quivered then opened her mouth to
receive the gentle caress of his tongue, her arms snaked around his neck and
she buried her fingers in his chaotic blond hair, so smooth and silky to her
touch.
"Sora." breathed Matt,
harshly as he released her lips to trail his own lightly down her throat.
"Oh, Matt!" she
murmured. She shivered involuntarily
and closed her eyes to focus more intensely on the incredible sensations he was
producing in her nervous system. Abruptly, he sank to his knees, drawing her down with him. His hands were beneath her teeshirt, drawing
little tingling circles on the skin of her back. His fingers reached the fastening of her bra and seemingly with
no pause in his attentions, it was suddenly loose and he was caressing her bare
shoulders. Sora seemed to lose her
balance because of something Matt did, and found herself being held and lowered
towards the rough floor. She scarcely
registered his hands gently unfastening her clothes, through the
all-encompassing flood of arousal. The
Crest of Love glowed steadily, bathing the two overwhelmed by their passion, in
its glorious radiance.
"Now, is everybody absolutely clear what we're up against?" Humans and digimon nodded solemnly. Izzy sat back on his heels away from the
diagrams he had been drawing in the dust of the cave's floor to make his
explanations clearer.
"Okay," he concluded, "Now,
just one more thing." Taichi sighed in
exasperation.
"Why is it that I want to
throw up every time you say 'just one more thing'?" Izzy ignored him.
"Gennai's programme is very
accurate, and I will be updating our information every inch of the way, but it
can only provide us with information, not protection. It can track our friends and pinpoint their position to within a
few inches, it can warn us about booby traps, sentries, enemy digimon, but it
can only give us information on things we expect to be there and are asking it
to search for." He stopped speaking and
looked towards Taichi for verification. The older boy nodded in agreement.
"Izzy and I have gone
through every possible trap or potential enemy attack that we could think of,
and we've been up half the night checking and re-checking, but ultimately it's
not enough. We've got to be vigilant,
take no chances and above all follow instructions, or we're dead - and
Sora and Matt with us." A short silence
followed this chilly speech, then as one the humans and their digimon rose from
the ground, dusted themselves off and prepared to move out on the most
dangerous mission they had yet embarked upon.
Once through the window,
Taichi, of course, took the lead with Izzy by his side, checking and
re-checking Gennai's programme for any updated information as they went. Kari and Mimi walked together just behind
them, and TK and Joe brought up the rear. Yokomon and Tsunamon had struggled valiantly and without complaint
throughout the journey so far, but once the group realised how entirely without
light the Arachnamon's stronghold was – except for that strange sickly
phosphorescence – Taichi had detailed Mimi and Kari to carry them. Mimi, for once, made no complaint about
Yokomon's extra weight and was strangely subdued, as though the atmosphere of
the place was really getting to her.
For it was a curiously eerie
experience to be walking these strange corridors. To begin with, they made very little sound - just a faint
scrabbling on the fibrous floor, the occasional sound of breathing, and the
whirring of Tentomon's wings. Every so
often Taichi would look questioningly at Izzy to receive a thumbs-up
gesture. So far, so good. Izzy was following a route plotted by
Gennai's programme towards two pulsing specks of light in the top right hand
corner of the screen. As they drew
closer to the specks, Izzy zoomed in, obtaining more detail of the route and
revealing a great deal more about their surroundings than mere eyesight could
provide in the semi-darkness. The
trudging on seemed endless, their surroundings unchanging, and they hardly
seemed to care when Taichi called a halt for a rest, they were so hypnotised by
the never-ending hike. Izzy sat down
closely next to Taichi and murmured quietly in his ear.
"I don't like the smell of this,
Tai. We've passed three places where,
according to Gennai's programme, there should have been problems: a booby trap,
a sentry and a deep pit. We've
encountered none of those things because they seem to have mysteriously
disappeared just before we stumbled upon them. Even the pit was suddenly covered by this thick, fibrous matting stuff –
I know it was there because it registered on the programme; it just wasn't a
danger to us any more." Taichi
considered.
"You think – they're on to
us? You think the Arachnamon expected
us to come looking for Sora and Matt, and now they're – how would you put it? –
luring us into some kind of trap by making things easy for us?"
"Something like that."
Affirmed Izzy. The older boy shook his
head.
"It doesn't make sense,
Izzy. Why take Sora and Matt in the
first place? Why keep them alive at
all?"
"No reason - unless they're
being used as bait for the rest of us. Remember, it's their vital signs that we're tracking: if they were dead,
we would have no reason to enter here – except perhaps to recover their
bodies. It all fits, Tai, like a hand
in a glove. We're being set up!" There was a long pause.
"What else can we do but
walk into the trap?" asked Taichi, at length, "We can't turn tail and run just
because we suspect we're being set up, and even if you're right and they're
deliberately making the way easy for us, it's still the only way to where
they're holding Sora and Matt." Izzy
was nodding.
"Exactly. We're damned if we do, and we're damned if
we don't." Taichi sat a while in
thought then he turned decisively to Izzy.
"We go on," he said,
authoritatively, "And we don't tell any of the others about this. Okay?" Izzy hesitated fractionally then nodded in agreement.
"Okay, Tai, I'll keep it to
myself." Neither noticed a glimmer of
white as the cat digimon slipped thoughtfully back through the darkness to her
mistress.
Taichi looked at his watch –
twenty minutes had gone by since they had stopped to rest; that was barely
enough, even under the present circumstances. Well, it would have to do.
"Okay, let's get moving." He
called, quietly, amid a chorus of soft groans.
"Hey, prodigious!" an
excited exclamation from Izzy caused Taichi to break off bullying the others to
get started and turn to the redhead. Izzy looked up, a grin spread across his face.
"We're within range for the
digivices." He explained, typing furiously, "I think I can contact them if I
just … there!"
An insistent beeping finally
penetrated through Sora's mist-filled mind. She was drowning, drowning in desire for Matt, with Matt, everything was
Matt, the longing was urgent, she needed him to go on, on, just a little more,
his hands … wait a minute. Still with her lips glued to his, Sora
reached to the pocket of her jeans for her digivice.
"Matt, Matt!" she came up
for air and started to push him away, "Matt! It's my digivice; it's beeping. It must be the others trying to contact us. Matt!! Please, listen to
me!" Finally, she pushed him so hard he
fell away from her and she was able to scramble to her feet, frantically
straightening her clothes, trying to restore some semblance of normality.
"Sora?" came Izzy's voice,
uncertainly, "Sora? Are you there? Please answer."
"Izzy! Oh, Izzy! You've found us. Thank God!"
"There's a lot of interference
– you're very muffled, and you keep breaking up."
"You're as clear as daylight
– if I can remember what that's like. Where are you?"
"We're coming to get you and
Matt, Sora. We'll be with you as soon
as we can, within the next few hours. Just hold on."
"Izzy, there's something
you've got to know. We're all in great
danger. We thought Angemon had killed
him, but it seems he'd backed himself up before the battle …"
"Sorry, you're breaking up,
I can't hear you … Sora? Sora?" The
line went dead.
"Izzy? Izzy, it's Devimon, he's come back …" Sora
shook the digivice then sighed in frustration.
"I didn't get through! Oh, I hope he makes contact again, we've
just got to tell them about Metaldevimon!" She gazed hopelessly in Matt's direction, only to notice him staring at
something.
"Your Crest," he said, "It's
– losing its glow." Indeed, the Crest
of Love was pulsing feebly and finally went out as Sora examined it. Suddenly, her cheeks flamed just as brightly
as her crest as the full force of what she and Matt had nearly been doing hit
her.
"Matt, what have we …" He
swung angrily away from her.
"I don't want to talk about
it, right?"
"But Matt, I think we should
…"
"Just leave it, okay?" his
face was as red as hers, but with fury as well as embarrassment. "Just forget
it happened – I don't want to know." He
turned on his heel and found the farthest corner of the cell to sit in. It was at least an hour before Sora could
decide what to do.