Chapter 7
It was not a peaceful night.
*Dream Sequence*
Ken was running, but he didn't know why. He was running into pure whiteness, dressed in his Kaiser outfit. All of the sudden, he stopped and looked around. He could hear foot steps echoing.
"Who's there?" Ken yelled angrily.
"Tsk, so young, so angry." A familiar voice said.
Ken swiveled around to look into the eyes of his dead brother.
"Sam." Ken said, as though dead people come to life everyday. "I don't want to talk to you, so stop following me."
"Ken, what are you doing with your enemies?" Sam asked, ignoring the comment.
"We need to work together." Ken scowled
"They'll make you weaker."
"Yeah, well, Ryo and you worked together, but Ryo was weaker."
"It was different then, dear brother." Sam said gently. "Besides, you have no idea what your getting into."
"What's that implying?"
"Vexilmon is closer than you think, Kenny."
"Huh?"
Sam reached out to pat Ken's shoulder, but as he did so, the moving hand turned into a liquid that held shape, like Vexilmon. As soon as the hand touched Ken's body, a burning sensation was felt. The acid spread over his entire body, until Ken felt like he was in a furnace.
*End dream*
Ken woke up in a sweat. He instantly sat up, gasping quietly for air. Nobody heard him and woke up, and Wormmon, who was sleeping at his feet, didn't feel the movement. Ken felt incredibly hot, so he got out of his bed, careful not to disturb the people sleeping on the floor in his small room, and walked out. Ken, still in his night suit, opened the door to the dome and walked into the cool desert climate. The moon was out, so he could see, and Ken moved toward the empty and barren land. All of the patrolling digimon had gone back to their holding cells to be let out tomorrow. When Ken was about a hundred feet from the entrance, tiredness washed over him and he sat on the sand in silence, staring into space. He was there for about five minutes, then with out a sound, a figure dropped in that startled Ken to no end.
"Vexilmon!" Ken whispered harshly. "Trying to kill me by giving me a heart attack?"
unfortunately, no. Though that is tempting. Vexilmon said in his thought speak.
"What do you want then?" Ken asked, backing up slowly, getting ready to run.
I'm giving you a proposition. Join me and help me eliminate these digidestined
Ken stopped walking backwards.
"Even if I did trust you, which I don't, after what you did to me, there is no way that I'd join you. Besides, weren't you trying to kill me?"
Plans change, Kaiser. You must join me, for I must have your digimon slaves. Vexilmon said in a firm tone
"Let me spell it out for you. N-O." Ken said maddened.
The mega digimon sighed.
Then you leave me no choice.
With that, Vexilmon took his liquid arms and before Ken could even move, they went into his ears.
Controlling humans is much more difficult than digimon. This is going to hurt, but don't worry, when it's done, you won't feel a thing.
The liquid arms went deeper into Ken's ears until he was sure they were in his brain. Ken was completely paralyzed, unable to even vibrate his vocal chords to let out a scream. Then his head, no, his brain felt like it was burning. But Ken couldn't even wither in agony. Soon his brain felt like it was engulfed in flames, and the burning started to enter his brain stem. But when it did, a sharp stinging pain was felt in the back of Ken's neck. At that moment, Vexilmon loosened his paralyzing grip and Ken started to yell with all his might.
NO! Vexilmon cried. It can't be.
Soon, Ken's scream was in unison to Vexilmon's. Ken thought he saw a flash of green light, then Vexilmon's connection with Ken's brain was ripped out. Ken sank to his knees, clutching his head in pain.
"Great. Vexilmon fled again." Davis said disappointed.
When Vexilmon had screamed, he woke all the digidestined up. When they found that Ken wasn't in his bed, they ran outside and Patamon digivolved. Now Kari, Yolei, Cody and Davis were huddled around Ken while TK rode on Pegasusmon looking to find Vexilmon and fight him.
"Ken! Ken, talk to me!" Yolei cried
"Are you hurt?" Davis asked worriedly
"Leave me alone." Ken whispered in pain. "I don't need your help."
Ken then stood up, but the action made his migraine hurt even more and he got dizzy from it. Ken teetered on edge, then collapsed into Davis, who caught him.
"I wonder what Vexilmon did to him? An why'd Vexilmon scream like that?" Davis said, looking at his fallen enemy and now ally. TK and Davis took both of Ken's arms and supported him back to the base. Ken staggered over to his bed.
"Thanks." He said in a whispered voice.
"What were you doing? And more important, what was Vexilmon doing?" TK questioned.
"I was just getting some air. Vexilmon came up and asked me to join him. When I refused he...he..." Ken held his head in pain and moaned. "Can someone get me a pain killer from the bathroom?"
Yolei walked out of the room to get the Tylenol. When she came back, Ken was telling what he saw in his head.
"I know what Vexilmon is." He said. Ken looked at Kari. "I saw what he used to be. Kari, I know that you battled the digimon called the 'Dark Masters'. Vexilmon was one of them, in fact, his part of infinity mountain was the framework which held the mountain together. He emptied his memories into me for some reason. I was able to see and feel the fear from Piedmon being defeated; I saw him grow happy when he realized Venomyotismon was defeated; for Myotismon was vexilmon's worst enemy. I felt his resentment toward the digidestined for putting him in hiding. I saw his hatred toward me for coming closer than him to conquering the Digital world, but there's something else there. Another reason why Vexilmon hates me, but I don't know what that is. We have to defeat him, or he will kill us."
Just then a huge tremor rocked the base.
"What's going on!?" Cody said. Ken drag-walked himself over to the control room and sat in his chair. He switched on a screen and pressed a few buttons. The screen loaded up a picture of the prisons in the bottom of the base. There, around ten cells of digimon were blasting up the place. The screen jumped to outside, and quite a few Tyrannomon were sending fireballs at the dome.
"Those digimon have dark spirals on them." TK exclaimed
"Yes, but it doesn't matter. They are under Vexilmon's control." Ken said angrily.
"Hey, where is the guy anyway?" Yolei pointed out. Ken hit a few more buttons and the screen showed pictures of various places until Ken stopped at one.
"There he is!" Davis said, pointing. Indeed, Vexilmon was in the screen, laughing to himself as he watched the base be destroyed. Ken thought how strange it was that Vexilmon was only forty yards away from the exploding base. Ken then noticed how interesting it was that only so many digimon could be under his control in the base. He decided to put the two together and test a theory.
"I think I have something." Ken said excitedly. If what he thought was true, than maybe they could defeat Vexilmon after all. Being a genius did have it's benefits. Ken turned on another screen and loaded up a map of the area they were located. He placed a dot at Vexilmon's location and another at the farthest digimon controlled by Vexilmon. Ken then connected the two lines together and used that line as a radius. Using Vexilmon's location as a centerpoint, Ken drew a sixty yard circle which covered most of the land on the map and a small portion of the base. The theory had worked. Ken's lips coiled into a small smile.
"He can only go so far. That idiot just gave away his greatest weakness, his Achilles' heel."
"What do you mean?" Davis asked, confused.
"Vexilmon's greatest power is his ability to control other digimon." Kari explained, understanding. "But, if his power can only go so far, we could use other digimon to help shoot energy beams at him without the fear of Vexilmon controlling them."
"So how does that help us in this situation?"
"Easy, take some digimon who have beam attacks and start shooting. All we have to do is make sure that they don't get within sixty yard's of him. TK, me and Yolei will use our digimon for close attacks. I'm betting that the Airdramon are the best digimon in these circumstances." Kari said, smiling
"Right" Everyone said. Ken turned back to the screens to get some Airdramon for fighting, while Kari, TK an Yolei ran to the exit and their digimon armor digivolved. Soon the battle raged, Tyrannomon shooting at far away Airdramon, Armor digimon shooting their beam attacks at the mega. Vexilmon started to move toward the base to control more digimon
"Computer, emergency evacuation. Voice identification: digimon Kaiser." Ken shouted into a microphone. As soon as he did that, the floor jerked beneath them and all the digidestined except for Ken were sprawled on the ground. Outside, the ground cracked and faulted until the whole underground base just lifted right up off the ground. Vexilmon stared in shock at it, then all of the beam attacks hit him at once and he decided that fighting wasn't worth his time right now. Vexilmon sped away at an incredibly fast speed, yelling at the digidestined that by daylight, he will be back. The base speed off in the opposite direction, slow, compared to Vexilmon, but at least they were leaving. The ground digimon who had been under the control of Vexilmon just snapped out of their trance and walked away.
"That went well." Ken said sarcastically. He looked at his D-3 and saw the time. "Two o'clock in the morning, three hours before the sun even rises. I should start working on that digi-port again."
Ken turned away and started opening the gate.
*Real world*
Izzy couldn't sleep. He had been working on a program in his head for hours and now he was going to try and execute it. Izzy turned on his computer, looked at the time (one o'clock) and got into the digi-port program. After an hour of failures he got in.
"Prodigious." Izzy whispered. He then looked at a blinking icon that popped up. "What?"
Izzy clicked on the icon. When he did, what looked like an instant messenger box came up, programmed from the digital world. The userID: worldruler01. Izzy typed in a message and pressed enter.
*The Digital World*
"What!" Ken exclaimed. He had only been on the network for a few minutes and there was another person on.
"Yolei!" Ken called. "Take a good look at this."
The userID was Knowledgebug, and this time he was on at the same time Ken was. Ken clicked the little icon and a message box was brought up. Inside, there was a newly sent message:
Hello- I'm Izzy. It seems that whoever you are, you have a programmable computer. I need your help. Some friends of mine are in dire need of a computer. I can't stay long, but if you wish to create a visual link, log on at 1500 hours (3:00) today. We wish for a friendly encounter. Thank you.
"How nice, they want to see me face to face." Ken said sarcastically. In response to that, Yolei took the keyboard and typed a response message:
Of course I'd like to meet you. A video-cam will be fine, I'll be there.
Before Ken could pull her away, Yolei sent the message and smiled slyly at Ken.
"You better get ready for your first talk with the digidestined." Yolei said, silently laughing at the dumbfound expression on Ken's face. She walked away to tell the other's that they had made contact with the real world.
***
Three o'clock came too quickly for Ken. Using the same clothes Davis gave him yesterday, Ken got dressed. Prior to the meeting, Kari and TK prodded Ken into disguising himself so the older digidestined weren't alarmed. At 2:59, Everyone, digimon included, was huddled around the screen in which a computer camera was hooked. They were all excited; they would be seeing friends and siblings that they haven't seen in two days. When the clock hit three, Ken, who had his hair tucked into TK's hat and Kari's small sunglasses on, turned on the computer and logged on to the network. The screen was incredibly staticy and fuzzy at first, but Ken uploaded a program that widened the bandwidth and cleared the picture. Soon, Ken could see not only the owner of the Agumon he had captured, but other people he had seen fighting against him. Ken started to walk away so that the others could talk, but Kari and Yolei took his shoulders and shoved him up to the screen. Ken coughed and cleared his throat.
"Hello 'Knowledgebug'." Ken said into the microphone. The older digidestined looked at him.
"Hey. My name is Izzy, and these are my friends: Matt, Tai, Joe and Sora. I am glad we have met. We have decided that if you do not wish to revel you identity, we will not push it." Izzy said smiling, obviously not recognizing his hated enemy.
"That is good, and I assure you that I am doing everything in my power to rectify this crisis. If you have no further questions, your friends would like to talk to you."
Ken moved aside so that everyone could see the screen.
"Kari!" Tai yelled "You're OK!"
"TK!" Matt said with the same enthusiasm. "I was so worried that the Kaiser would catch you."
"Yeah, I think we all had that concern. I'm surprised you were able to meet up with someone who had a computer. But right now, we need to know what's going on." Izzy said.
"We have a new enemy named Vexilmon. He's a digimon and was one of the Dark master's we didn't know about. However, he seems to be very weak compared to any of the others, except maybe Puppetmon" TK said.
"And your friend?"
"He is our ally, OK." Kari told them in a tone that said don't peruse the issue.
"Fine, but how can we help you?" Sora asked. Before anyone could answer back, the screen split into two pictures and a face appeared that had not been seen by the digidestined in years.
"GENNI?" The older digidestined and Ken exclaimed.
