Digital Demons II - Part 1
by Nopporn Wongrassamee
Summary: Jade gets into the mind of another person,
literally.
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine. I'm just
too lazy to look up who they belong to.
"Hey, Henry, what're you doing?"
Henry took a moment from working on his computer to
see Takato and Ryo enter his room. "Hi, guys,"
Henry said, going right back to his computer. He
stared hard at the screen, occaisionally entering
commands. "What brings you here?"
"You heard about Rika's Grandma, right?" Takato
asked. When he saw the back of Henry's head nod, he
plowed on. "Well, I thought we ought to put
together a get well card for her."
"'Card' might be a bit of an understatement," Ryo
added. "That thing's almost as tall as I am."
Henry glanced at them again. He didn't see any
outsized cards with them. "So where is it?"
"Oh, I have Guilmon lugging it around," Takato
replied.
"Where's Guilmon?"
"We left him in your living room with Suzie."
Henry froze in what he was doing. "You left
Guilmon? Alone? With Suzie?" he asked slowly,
horrific possibilities flooding through his mind.
"Yeah," Takato confirmed. "What's the big deal?"
A loud crash was heard from the living room.
"The TV!" It sounded like Henry's mother.
"Heh heh," Takato laughed nervously. "Excuse me a
minute." He ran out to the living room.
After Takato vanished, Ryo turned back to Henry.
"So, I ask again," he began. "What are you doing?"
***
"Rika? Mrs. Nonaka?"
Sitting by Grandma's bedside in the medical ward at
Section 13, Rika and her mother looked up at the
speaker. Yamaki was poking his head in through the
door, wearing his ubiquitous sunglasses. Rika felt
a momentary shiver. For a moment, Yamaki had looked
alot like those 'Invaders' Grandma had talked about
before...well, before she was put into a coma.
Section 13 had even provided a brief introductory
file on Invaders. Rika, her mother, and Renamon had
gone through the scant information in the file, but
there hadn't been much more than they already knew
in it. There had been a photo of Grandma as a
teenager, however. She had been dressed up in a
little sailor suit with a bow and arrow in hand.
Rika had never imagined her so young, even though
Grandma had been older in the photo than Rika was
now.
"What is it, Mr. Yamaki?" Rika's mother asked.
"I've made arrangements for you and your family to
return to Japan, Mrs. Nonaka," Yamaki told them.
"We'll make sure your mother will get the best
medical care available."
"Thank you," Rika's mother said.
"But?" Rika interjected. "I'm hearing a 'but' in
there somewhere."
"Rika!" her mother admonished.
"No, ma'am, she's right," Yamaki sighed. "Captain
Black is insisting that you let one of Section 13's
ah...consultants have a look at Mrs. Ukiya."
"What can this consultant do that the doctors
couldn't?" Rika's mother asked, puzzled.
"Uncle's a Chi Wizard," another girl that was
Rika's age proclaimed, entering the room behind
Yamaki. "If anyone can wake your Grandma, he can."
"Oh, it's you," Rika said witheringly. "Haven't you
done enough...enough..." She stammered to a halt as
a man built like a sumo wrestler - only bigger -
entered the room behind Jade. He seemed to be
carrying a box of supplies. "This is your Uncle?"
she asked faintly.
"No, this is Uncle's apprentice, Tohru!" a high,
ratchety voice corrected. The voice's owner elbowed
his way around to the front of the growing crowd.
He was scrawny, balding old man whose remaining
white hair looked half way between unkempt and
exploded. "I am Uncle. Now, where is young lady who
will not wake up?"
"Young lady? Excuse me..." Rika's mother began.
"Cannot be you. You are awake!" Jade's Uncle
interupted.
"Hey, now, don't talk to my mother like that," Rika
interjected, regaining her poise and coming to her
mother's defense. "It's my Grandma that's in a
coma." She gestured at said Grandma. "What are you,
blind?"
"Little girl should respect her elders," Jade's
Uncle murmured, peering at Rika's Grandma. "Hah! Is
as I said. Young lady!"
Glancing between Jade's Uncle and Grandma, Rika
realized that the old man was way older than her
grandmother. So of course he called her a "young
lady"!
"Now, everybody out!" Jade's Uncle ordered, shooing
everone out of the ward room. "Is much too crowded
in here. Uncle cannot work. Only apprentice can
stay." Although not sure why, Rika did as ordered.
For some reason, his was one of those voices you
didn't disobey. Besides, Renamon would keep an eye
on things.
"I want to help!" Jade piped up.
"No, you go out too," the old man told her.
"What?" Jade yelped. "Why?"
"You radiating guilt like bonfire," her Uncle told
her. "Bad chi. Will interfere with Uncle's
concentration ."
"Awww..."
After ushering Jade out, Uncle closed the door
behind him. A few minutes later, it opened again
and Jade's Uncle stuck his head out.
"One more thing!" he began. He scanned the people
waiting in the hall. His eyes locked on Rika. "Take
fox spirit with you!"
"Oh, c'mon," Rika muttered. Then she raised her
voice. "Renamon!"
Rika's Digimon partner strolled out the door like
an insulted prima donna. Her head was held high,
not even deigning to look at the mere mortal who
had ejected her. Not at all caring, Jade's Uncle
slammed the door behind her.
Several more minutes passed before another thought
occured to Rika. She turned to Jade. "What's his
name again?" Rika asked.
Jade shrugged. "He's Uncle," Jade told the other
girl, making it clear that "Uncle" was a proper
name. At Rika's penetrating stare, Jade sheepishly
added, "Hey! I've been trying to figure out his
name for years..."
***
"Cool! So this program will find Terriermon for
you?" Ryo asked. "Will it find Monodramon, too?"
"It's not quite that simple," Henry replied. "I'm
trying to replicate the conditions that brought
Terriermon through to this world in the first
place. But while, I've found lots of Digimon, I
don't recognize any of them."
"Wow, bummer, dude," Ryo said a bit sadly. He
brightened up and slapped Henry on the back. "But,
hey! You might get lucky..."
"Terriermon!"
"Huh, what?" Taking his eyes of Henry, Ryo turned
to see the picture literally leap out of the
monitor. Unnoticed, it grew dark until the only
light was from the a freestanding, two dimensional
image that stretched from desktop to ceiling. What
was pictured was the chaotic space between worlds.
Running towards them were two small figures. The
one in the lead was definitely Terriermon. The
other looked like... "Monodramon!" Ryo cried
happily.
Practically unnoticed were the pair of faint white,
concentric rings on the "screen".
With a flying leap, Terriermon flew through the
screen and into Henry's arms. A digivice appeared
out of thin air and clattered to the desktop.
Monodramon tried to duplicate this feat, but he
didn't make it.
It wasn't that Monodramon couldn't make it through
the screen. He never made it to the screen. A giant
green hand reached out and snagged Monodramon in
mid-leap.
The hand's owner came into view. It was an
incredibly obese green female Digimon wearing what
appeared to be a chainmail bikini straight from
the cover of some bad fantasy novel.
She was joined in a moment by a slightly smaller,
toadlike Digimon. He had a steam age appearance,
mounting some kind of grille on its chest, a jet
pack on it's back, and solid metal boots. On top
of his head was of all things, a beanie cap with a
propellor.
"It's them!" Terriermon cried, his voice full of
uncharacteristic fear.
"Them?" Henry and Ryo echoed.
***
"You have got to be kidding me, Janyu!"
"I'm not kidding you, Dolphin," Janyu sighed. It
had taken a while to reassemble the Monster Makers.
After the D-Reaper, everyone had thought the job
was done. Now? "The Digimon are coming back. The
Digital World has been reportedly been taken over
by eight demons who have turned themselves into
extremely powerful Digimon. And to top it off,
these so-called 'Invaders' have decided to start
wreaking havoc after thirty years of inactivity. I
know it's a bit much to take..."
"Oh, I don't have any problem with that," Dolphin
said blandly. "It's that Yamaki wants us to work
on two projects at once! One, he wants us to come
up with improved digital weapons to be used against
these so-called demon sorcerers of which we know
practically nil. We have absolutely no data on how
they're the same and how they're different from
ordinary Digimon. At least with the D-Reaper, we
had a clue about what we were dealing with."
Janyu opened his mouth to reply, but Dolphin drove
on.
"And there's the side project where we're supposed
to try and decipher Invader communication signals,
something I remind you all that no one has been
able to do in thirty years. And it's no wonder
because we haven't the first clue what makes them
tick. We don't know what protocols they use, what
they're transmiting or recieving, or even how their
hardware functions. What we need is a live Invader
so we can see how they work, but wait! We can't
capture Invaders because it's a) impossible to hold
a live one prisoner and b) they disintegrate when
they die."
"Dolphin, are you saying we can't do it?" Daisy
asked as the man paused in his ranting to take a
breath.
"No, I'm saying we can do one or the other. But not
both," Dolphin said, apparently calmed down now.
"What does Yamaki think we are, some kind of
miracle workers?"
"Oh, so the problem's only technical," Janyu said,
rubbing his chin thoughtfully. This was a far more
familiar field than demons and Invaders and
whatever other stuff Yamaki had run into in
America that required Janyu to readjust his world
view again. Besides that, a mere technical problem
was child's play. "I can live with that. What do
you say, Shibumi? Shibumi?"
"Huh?" Shibumi said, startled. He had been staring
intensely at the photo of the Digion that had
called itself HyperHsiWuMon. It was a grainy
picture from a Section 13 security camera. "Oh,
yeah, sure, whatever Dolphin said. I agree."
"Shibumi, have you even been..." Janyu began. He
was interupted when Yamaki's assistant barged into
their work area. "Riley? What is it?"
"Sorry to interupt, Mr. Wong," Riley apologized,
"but we've had another bio-emergence."
"I thought after that last fiasco, we agreed that
you could handle bioemergences yourself," Janyu
said, frowning. Since Guilmon, there had been
a few "routine" bioemergences similar to those
recorded before the Devas. They'd been more or less
harmless.
"Well, sir, this one might be important to you,"
Riley replied. "It's in your apartment."
***
"I don't believe this," Rika muttered for the
thousandth time as she paced the hallway. "We're
relying on a witch doctor to wake Grandma up."
"Hey, Uncle's not a witch doctor," Jade objected.
"He's a Chi Wizard."
Rika paused in her pacing to give Jade an icy
stare. "I am not talking to you," she said evenly.
Jade wilted. Rika resumed pacing.
Eventually, the door opened and Uncle stepped out,
followed by Tohru. Uncle seemed tired.
"Mr. Chan?" Yamaki inquired. "What's the
prognosis?"
"Not good," Uncle said slowly. "I examine young
lady, but not do anything."
"What? Why not?" Jade asked, her hopes crumbling.
"I not ever see anything like young lady's
condition before," Uncle sighed. "Is like someone
took lady's soul and broke it into many pieces like
a fragile vase."
"What?" somebody exclaimed. Maybe it was everyone.
"But...but, can't you do anything?" Jade asked
desperately. This was worse than she had feared.
"Must do research," Uncle replied. "Lot's of
research. Lady's soul must be put together like
jigsaw puzzle, but I not sure if there is even chi
spell for that."
"Huh! A quack! I thought so," Rika commented. Uncle
wacked her on the back of her head. "Ow!"
"Little girl should respect her elders," Uncle
scolded.
***
After Uncle and Tohru had left, the comatose
Ruriko was left alone in her ward room. This lasted
for less than a minute, In a swirl of snow flakes,
a girl in a white kimono appeared next to the
patient.
"The now passes into then, and what is disappears
forever into memory," she said sadly. A resolved
look grew on her face. "But the now has yet to pass
and you are not yet a memory. Much remains yet to
be done."
In another swirl of snowflakes, she vanished as
quickly as she had appeared. But she left behind a
small gift for her friend.
Moments later, Rika charged in to make sure Uncle
hadn't done anything bad to Ruriko. She spotted the
gift right away.
"Hey!" she souted to the people outside. "What's
with the snowman?"
Yamaki stuck his head in. "Snowman?"
***
"Well, what have we here?" the frog like Digimon
asked.
"Is it good to eat?" the obese Digimon added,
looking closely at Monodramon.
"Hey, don't you hurt him!" Ryo ordered, leaning
against the screen. While letting Terriermon come
through, the screen was pretty solid for Ryo. "Let
him go!"
"Someone speaks?" the frog like Digimon said. He
turned to the other Digimon. "It wasn't you, was it
MassPoKongMon?"
"No, it wasn't me, GayXiao... GahXiao... Gazoo..." MassPoKongMon began, stumbling over the other's
name.
"GaleXiaoFungMon," the other supplied.
"Bah, these Digimon names are stupid, Xiao Fung!"
MassPoKongMon complained. "A demon should just have
one name and stick to it. Not these silly multiple
names for every form and incarnation."
"But we're Digimon now," Xiao Fung or whatever his
name was protested. "We should use Digimon names."
"Hah! Tso Lan agrees with me," MassPoKongMon
countered. "You can take your Digimon names and..."
"Hey!" Ryo cried interupting, pounding on the
screen. "I said let Monodramon go!"
The two Digimon looked around, searching for the
source of the voice. "Now I know that was not you,
MassPoKongMon," GaleXiaoFungMon said.
"My name is Po Kong," the other corrected ansently.
Her gaze locked onto Ryo and Henry. "Ah! Humans!"
Ryo suddenly found the screen filled with a single
massive, glowing red eye as Po Kong looked closely
through the screen at them. "Hello, little morsel."
"Let me see, sister," GaleXiaoFungMon insisted. The
red eye disappeared from the screen. Ryo could now
see them all again. GaleXiaoFungMon peered closely
at the screen, but not so close that he clocked
everything in view. "Ah, you must be one of these
'Tamers' I have heard so much about."
"Yeah, and you're one of those so called Demon
Sorcerers I've heard about," Ryo shot back. "Now
let my partner go!"
"Ah, you know who we are then?" GaleXiaoFungMon
glanced at MonoDramon then back at Ryo. "You want
your Digimon? Come get him."
"You got it!" Ryo replied. He drew back and charged
shoulder first into the screen.
"Ryo, wait!" Henry cried, reaching for the other
boy.
He was too late. An instant before he hit the
screen, the rings on it subtly changed colors. Ryo
tumbled through completely without resistance. The
screen collapsed and vanished, leaving Henry
staring at a perfectly ordinary computer monitor.
"Oh no," Henry whispered. "Rika's gonna kill me."
"Hey, Henry," Takato said, coming back into the
room. "Your dad's on the phone."
"Oh no," Henry moaned again.
"Where's Ryo?"
"Oh no!"
***
Nothing! Sitting morosely in her room back home,
Jade reflected on the fact that hours of research
had revealed nothing on chi spells for the soul.
Apparently those sort of spells fell under the
heading of Evil Magic.
Stupid books. All Jade wanted was to heal a soul.
"The egg is broken, and all the King's men and all
the King's horses know not how to put the egg back
together again," someone said next to Jade.
Jade snapped out of her funk and saw a gitl her age
in a white kimono was sitting right by her. She
appeared to be around Jade's age. The girl had an
open book of nursery rhymes open in her hands.
"Who are you?" Jade demanded. "How'd you get here."
"The egg is broken," the strange girl continued,
ignoring Jade. "But can Mary and her little lamb
succeed where the all the King's men and all the
King's horses could not?"
"What?" Jade said, confused. In reply, kimono girl
vanished, taking the nursery rhyme book with her.
One second she was there, the next she was gone.
Jade looked around, but she was alone.
"Great, now I'm going crazy too," Jade muttered to
herself. Thinking about the what the hallucination
had said, an idea began forming in her head. It was
risky in the extreme, but Jade felt she owed it to
Rika's Grandma to try. She wouldn't tell Uncle or
Jackie or anybody. They would all just tell her no,
it's too dangerous.
Mere danger never stopped Jade before.
by Nopporn Wongrassamee
Summary: Jade gets into the mind of another person,
literally.
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine. I'm just
too lazy to look up who they belong to.
"Hey, Henry, what're you doing?"
Henry took a moment from working on his computer to
see Takato and Ryo enter his room. "Hi, guys,"
Henry said, going right back to his computer. He
stared hard at the screen, occaisionally entering
commands. "What brings you here?"
"You heard about Rika's Grandma, right?" Takato
asked. When he saw the back of Henry's head nod, he
plowed on. "Well, I thought we ought to put
together a get well card for her."
"'Card' might be a bit of an understatement," Ryo
added. "That thing's almost as tall as I am."
Henry glanced at them again. He didn't see any
outsized cards with them. "So where is it?"
"Oh, I have Guilmon lugging it around," Takato
replied.
"Where's Guilmon?"
"We left him in your living room with Suzie."
Henry froze in what he was doing. "You left
Guilmon? Alone? With Suzie?" he asked slowly,
horrific possibilities flooding through his mind.
"Yeah," Takato confirmed. "What's the big deal?"
A loud crash was heard from the living room.
"The TV!" It sounded like Henry's mother.
"Heh heh," Takato laughed nervously. "Excuse me a
minute." He ran out to the living room.
After Takato vanished, Ryo turned back to Henry.
"So, I ask again," he began. "What are you doing?"
***
"Rika? Mrs. Nonaka?"
Sitting by Grandma's bedside in the medical ward at
Section 13, Rika and her mother looked up at the
speaker. Yamaki was poking his head in through the
door, wearing his ubiquitous sunglasses. Rika felt
a momentary shiver. For a moment, Yamaki had looked
alot like those 'Invaders' Grandma had talked about
before...well, before she was put into a coma.
Section 13 had even provided a brief introductory
file on Invaders. Rika, her mother, and Renamon had
gone through the scant information in the file, but
there hadn't been much more than they already knew
in it. There had been a photo of Grandma as a
teenager, however. She had been dressed up in a
little sailor suit with a bow and arrow in hand.
Rika had never imagined her so young, even though
Grandma had been older in the photo than Rika was
now.
"What is it, Mr. Yamaki?" Rika's mother asked.
"I've made arrangements for you and your family to
return to Japan, Mrs. Nonaka," Yamaki told them.
"We'll make sure your mother will get the best
medical care available."
"Thank you," Rika's mother said.
"But?" Rika interjected. "I'm hearing a 'but' in
there somewhere."
"Rika!" her mother admonished.
"No, ma'am, she's right," Yamaki sighed. "Captain
Black is insisting that you let one of Section 13's
ah...consultants have a look at Mrs. Ukiya."
"What can this consultant do that the doctors
couldn't?" Rika's mother asked, puzzled.
"Uncle's a Chi Wizard," another girl that was
Rika's age proclaimed, entering the room behind
Yamaki. "If anyone can wake your Grandma, he can."
"Oh, it's you," Rika said witheringly. "Haven't you
done enough...enough..." She stammered to a halt as
a man built like a sumo wrestler - only bigger -
entered the room behind Jade. He seemed to be
carrying a box of supplies. "This is your Uncle?"
she asked faintly.
"No, this is Uncle's apprentice, Tohru!" a high,
ratchety voice corrected. The voice's owner elbowed
his way around to the front of the growing crowd.
He was scrawny, balding old man whose remaining
white hair looked half way between unkempt and
exploded. "I am Uncle. Now, where is young lady who
will not wake up?"
"Young lady? Excuse me..." Rika's mother began.
"Cannot be you. You are awake!" Jade's Uncle
interupted.
"Hey, now, don't talk to my mother like that," Rika
interjected, regaining her poise and coming to her
mother's defense. "It's my Grandma that's in a
coma." She gestured at said Grandma. "What are you,
blind?"
"Little girl should respect her elders," Jade's
Uncle murmured, peering at Rika's Grandma. "Hah! Is
as I said. Young lady!"
Glancing between Jade's Uncle and Grandma, Rika
realized that the old man was way older than her
grandmother. So of course he called her a "young
lady"!
"Now, everybody out!" Jade's Uncle ordered, shooing
everone out of the ward room. "Is much too crowded
in here. Uncle cannot work. Only apprentice can
stay." Although not sure why, Rika did as ordered.
For some reason, his was one of those voices you
didn't disobey. Besides, Renamon would keep an eye
on things.
"I want to help!" Jade piped up.
"No, you go out too," the old man told her.
"What?" Jade yelped. "Why?"
"You radiating guilt like bonfire," her Uncle told
her. "Bad chi. Will interfere with Uncle's
concentration ."
"Awww..."
After ushering Jade out, Uncle closed the door
behind him. A few minutes later, it opened again
and Jade's Uncle stuck his head out.
"One more thing!" he began. He scanned the people
waiting in the hall. His eyes locked on Rika. "Take
fox spirit with you!"
"Oh, c'mon," Rika muttered. Then she raised her
voice. "Renamon!"
Rika's Digimon partner strolled out the door like
an insulted prima donna. Her head was held high,
not even deigning to look at the mere mortal who
had ejected her. Not at all caring, Jade's Uncle
slammed the door behind her.
Several more minutes passed before another thought
occured to Rika. She turned to Jade. "What's his
name again?" Rika asked.
Jade shrugged. "He's Uncle," Jade told the other
girl, making it clear that "Uncle" was a proper
name. At Rika's penetrating stare, Jade sheepishly
added, "Hey! I've been trying to figure out his
name for years..."
***
"Cool! So this program will find Terriermon for
you?" Ryo asked. "Will it find Monodramon, too?"
"It's not quite that simple," Henry replied. "I'm
trying to replicate the conditions that brought
Terriermon through to this world in the first
place. But while, I've found lots of Digimon, I
don't recognize any of them."
"Wow, bummer, dude," Ryo said a bit sadly. He
brightened up and slapped Henry on the back. "But,
hey! You might get lucky..."
"Terriermon!"
"Huh, what?" Taking his eyes of Henry, Ryo turned
to see the picture literally leap out of the
monitor. Unnoticed, it grew dark until the only
light was from the a freestanding, two dimensional
image that stretched from desktop to ceiling. What
was pictured was the chaotic space between worlds.
Running towards them were two small figures. The
one in the lead was definitely Terriermon. The
other looked like... "Monodramon!" Ryo cried
happily.
Practically unnoticed were the pair of faint white,
concentric rings on the "screen".
With a flying leap, Terriermon flew through the
screen and into Henry's arms. A digivice appeared
out of thin air and clattered to the desktop.
Monodramon tried to duplicate this feat, but he
didn't make it.
It wasn't that Monodramon couldn't make it through
the screen. He never made it to the screen. A giant
green hand reached out and snagged Monodramon in
mid-leap.
The hand's owner came into view. It was an
incredibly obese green female Digimon wearing what
appeared to be a chainmail bikini straight from
the cover of some bad fantasy novel.
She was joined in a moment by a slightly smaller,
toadlike Digimon. He had a steam age appearance,
mounting some kind of grille on its chest, a jet
pack on it's back, and solid metal boots. On top
of his head was of all things, a beanie cap with a
propellor.
"It's them!" Terriermon cried, his voice full of
uncharacteristic fear.
"Them?" Henry and Ryo echoed.
***
"You have got to be kidding me, Janyu!"
"I'm not kidding you, Dolphin," Janyu sighed. It
had taken a while to reassemble the Monster Makers.
After the D-Reaper, everyone had thought the job
was done. Now? "The Digimon are coming back. The
Digital World has been reportedly been taken over
by eight demons who have turned themselves into
extremely powerful Digimon. And to top it off,
these so-called 'Invaders' have decided to start
wreaking havoc after thirty years of inactivity. I
know it's a bit much to take..."
"Oh, I don't have any problem with that," Dolphin
said blandly. "It's that Yamaki wants us to work
on two projects at once! One, he wants us to come
up with improved digital weapons to be used against
these so-called demon sorcerers of which we know
practically nil. We have absolutely no data on how
they're the same and how they're different from
ordinary Digimon. At least with the D-Reaper, we
had a clue about what we were dealing with."
Janyu opened his mouth to reply, but Dolphin drove
on.
"And there's the side project where we're supposed
to try and decipher Invader communication signals,
something I remind you all that no one has been
able to do in thirty years. And it's no wonder
because we haven't the first clue what makes them
tick. We don't know what protocols they use, what
they're transmiting or recieving, or even how their
hardware functions. What we need is a live Invader
so we can see how they work, but wait! We can't
capture Invaders because it's a) impossible to hold
a live one prisoner and b) they disintegrate when
they die."
"Dolphin, are you saying we can't do it?" Daisy
asked as the man paused in his ranting to take a
breath.
"No, I'm saying we can do one or the other. But not
both," Dolphin said, apparently calmed down now.
"What does Yamaki think we are, some kind of
miracle workers?"
"Oh, so the problem's only technical," Janyu said,
rubbing his chin thoughtfully. This was a far more
familiar field than demons and Invaders and
whatever other stuff Yamaki had run into in
America that required Janyu to readjust his world
view again. Besides that, a mere technical problem
was child's play. "I can live with that. What do
you say, Shibumi? Shibumi?"
"Huh?" Shibumi said, startled. He had been staring
intensely at the photo of the Digion that had
called itself HyperHsiWuMon. It was a grainy
picture from a Section 13 security camera. "Oh,
yeah, sure, whatever Dolphin said. I agree."
"Shibumi, have you even been..." Janyu began. He
was interupted when Yamaki's assistant barged into
their work area. "Riley? What is it?"
"Sorry to interupt, Mr. Wong," Riley apologized,
"but we've had another bio-emergence."
"I thought after that last fiasco, we agreed that
you could handle bioemergences yourself," Janyu
said, frowning. Since Guilmon, there had been
a few "routine" bioemergences similar to those
recorded before the Devas. They'd been more or less
harmless.
"Well, sir, this one might be important to you,"
Riley replied. "It's in your apartment."
***
"I don't believe this," Rika muttered for the
thousandth time as she paced the hallway. "We're
relying on a witch doctor to wake Grandma up."
"Hey, Uncle's not a witch doctor," Jade objected.
"He's a Chi Wizard."
Rika paused in her pacing to give Jade an icy
stare. "I am not talking to you," she said evenly.
Jade wilted. Rika resumed pacing.
Eventually, the door opened and Uncle stepped out,
followed by Tohru. Uncle seemed tired.
"Mr. Chan?" Yamaki inquired. "What's the
prognosis?"
"Not good," Uncle said slowly. "I examine young
lady, but not do anything."
"What? Why not?" Jade asked, her hopes crumbling.
"I not ever see anything like young lady's
condition before," Uncle sighed. "Is like someone
took lady's soul and broke it into many pieces like
a fragile vase."
"What?" somebody exclaimed. Maybe it was everyone.
"But...but, can't you do anything?" Jade asked
desperately. This was worse than she had feared.
"Must do research," Uncle replied. "Lot's of
research. Lady's soul must be put together like
jigsaw puzzle, but I not sure if there is even chi
spell for that."
"Huh! A quack! I thought so," Rika commented. Uncle
wacked her on the back of her head. "Ow!"
"Little girl should respect her elders," Uncle
scolded.
***
After Uncle and Tohru had left, the comatose
Ruriko was left alone in her ward room. This lasted
for less than a minute, In a swirl of snow flakes,
a girl in a white kimono appeared next to the
patient.
"The now passes into then, and what is disappears
forever into memory," she said sadly. A resolved
look grew on her face. "But the now has yet to pass
and you are not yet a memory. Much remains yet to
be done."
In another swirl of snowflakes, she vanished as
quickly as she had appeared. But she left behind a
small gift for her friend.
Moments later, Rika charged in to make sure Uncle
hadn't done anything bad to Ruriko. She spotted the
gift right away.
"Hey!" she souted to the people outside. "What's
with the snowman?"
Yamaki stuck his head in. "Snowman?"
***
"Well, what have we here?" the frog like Digimon
asked.
"Is it good to eat?" the obese Digimon added,
looking closely at Monodramon.
"Hey, don't you hurt him!" Ryo ordered, leaning
against the screen. While letting Terriermon come
through, the screen was pretty solid for Ryo. "Let
him go!"
"Someone speaks?" the frog like Digimon said. He
turned to the other Digimon. "It wasn't you, was it
MassPoKongMon?"
"No, it wasn't me, GayXiao... GahXiao... Gazoo..." MassPoKongMon began, stumbling over the other's
name.
"GaleXiaoFungMon," the other supplied.
"Bah, these Digimon names are stupid, Xiao Fung!"
MassPoKongMon complained. "A demon should just have
one name and stick to it. Not these silly multiple
names for every form and incarnation."
"But we're Digimon now," Xiao Fung or whatever his
name was protested. "We should use Digimon names."
"Hah! Tso Lan agrees with me," MassPoKongMon
countered. "You can take your Digimon names and..."
"Hey!" Ryo cried interupting, pounding on the
screen. "I said let Monodramon go!"
The two Digimon looked around, searching for the
source of the voice. "Now I know that was not you,
MassPoKongMon," GaleXiaoFungMon said.
"My name is Po Kong," the other corrected ansently.
Her gaze locked onto Ryo and Henry. "Ah! Humans!"
Ryo suddenly found the screen filled with a single
massive, glowing red eye as Po Kong looked closely
through the screen at them. "Hello, little morsel."
"Let me see, sister," GaleXiaoFungMon insisted. The
red eye disappeared from the screen. Ryo could now
see them all again. GaleXiaoFungMon peered closely
at the screen, but not so close that he clocked
everything in view. "Ah, you must be one of these
'Tamers' I have heard so much about."
"Yeah, and you're one of those so called Demon
Sorcerers I've heard about," Ryo shot back. "Now
let my partner go!"
"Ah, you know who we are then?" GaleXiaoFungMon
glanced at MonoDramon then back at Ryo. "You want
your Digimon? Come get him."
"You got it!" Ryo replied. He drew back and charged
shoulder first into the screen.
"Ryo, wait!" Henry cried, reaching for the other
boy.
He was too late. An instant before he hit the
screen, the rings on it subtly changed colors. Ryo
tumbled through completely without resistance. The
screen collapsed and vanished, leaving Henry
staring at a perfectly ordinary computer monitor.
"Oh no," Henry whispered. "Rika's gonna kill me."
"Hey, Henry," Takato said, coming back into the
room. "Your dad's on the phone."
"Oh no," Henry moaned again.
"Where's Ryo?"
"Oh no!"
***
Nothing! Sitting morosely in her room back home,
Jade reflected on the fact that hours of research
had revealed nothing on chi spells for the soul.
Apparently those sort of spells fell under the
heading of Evil Magic.
Stupid books. All Jade wanted was to heal a soul.
"The egg is broken, and all the King's men and all
the King's horses know not how to put the egg back
together again," someone said next to Jade.
Jade snapped out of her funk and saw a gitl her age
in a white kimono was sitting right by her. She
appeared to be around Jade's age. The girl had an
open book of nursery rhymes open in her hands.
"Who are you?" Jade demanded. "How'd you get here."
"The egg is broken," the strange girl continued,
ignoring Jade. "But can Mary and her little lamb
succeed where the all the King's men and all the
King's horses could not?"
"What?" Jade said, confused. In reply, kimono girl
vanished, taking the nursery rhyme book with her.
One second she was there, the next she was gone.
Jade looked around, but she was alone.
"Great, now I'm going crazy too," Jade muttered to
herself. Thinking about the what the hallucination
had said, an idea began forming in her head. It was
risky in the extreme, but Jade felt she owed it to
Rika's Grandma to try. She wouldn't tell Uncle or
Jackie or anybody. They would all just tell her no,
it's too dangerous.
Mere danger never stopped Jade before.