PAUSE FOR BOURGEOIS LEGALITIES
"Digimon" and all characters and situations contained within are
copyrighted trademarks of Bandai, Saban Entertainment and Upper Deck.
Permission is hereby granted by the author to reproduce this document
unless you try to make money off of it; if so, please contact me first at
Calcite_McWhalen@hotmail.com. I may be a grown-up cartoon fan but I do
know my way around Title 17.
****
Other Voices 2
****
It was quite the cheerful day in Odaiba's Central District. The birds were singing, the sun was shining, and Mr. President was dressed down for the occasion. The jacket was already off and the sleeves were rolled up by the time the Assistant made it up the elevator shaft to the top floor. The legs were up on the desk. She padded in, amused despite herself at the antics of her Commander-in-Chief. "Morning, boss."
"Ah, Assistant!" He glanced up from the technical readout he'd been poring over. "Come on over. I was just going over a few things, but they're of no importance." She padded over and jumped on a nearby chair, taking a moment to settle in before consulting the pad she was carrying.
"Here are the morning reports," she said, glancing down the list. "Of eight hundred thirty employees, eight hundred twenty-three are here today; the others have allowable excuses. We're up and running now. All reactors in all places show greenline for the morning. VandeNet servers are also greenlining, except for number 230002, which had a malfunctioning powersupply. Incoming energy is up .013%; outgoing energy is down 1.452%. Current prices for our energy are at $0.24 / hour / watt. Our stock is up .45% in the morning trading and we're currently worth about $239.84 billion dollars." She finished her recitation, then glanced over at the President mock-seriously. "Now what exactly has allowed you to go around like that?"
"Did you forget about the tour group?"
The Assistant thought briefly, then shook her head. "I'm in the dark about most non-company things like that."
"Okay." He pulled himself into a normal sitting position, grunting discontentedly as he did so. "You know how the Americans have been reluctant to take the ED-3 reactor prototypes seriously?" She nodded slowly. "Well, they decided that being six months behind the rest of the world wouldn't do and they're sending in the troops. At about ten o'clock today I'll be taking the American dignitaries through the complex."
"Interesting. I take it I'll be up here?"
"Yes. I need somebody I can trust to keep an eye on things."
"Why exactly are the Americans coming? I thought that they were content with the ED-1s we sold them like four years ago."
The president leaned back, a smirk coming up on his face. "Well, I won't tell if you don't tell, okay?" She nodded, confused. "They're sending a four-star general in with the group."
"Military production." The Assistant shook her head at that. "What do the Americans need with even more toys?"
"It's none of our business what they have in mind," the President scolded her mildly. "We do business with clients. That's all."
"Moving right along," the Assistant continued, "I have an opening report from Koushiro in Lab 32."
The president blinked. "Already? The boy doesn't sleep." He already knew that, of course; Koushiro Izumi hadn't done much sleeping since he signed on with the Odaiba Group four years ago. He was an intense, driven worker who was reputed to be impossible to work with for any length of time. The rate of transfers in and out of his department were impressive, as were the results that Lab 32 submitted. After all, the President reminded himself, Koushiro did design and build the first ED reactors. That could have made him quite the famous scientist on the lecture line. Koushiro always turned down offers to speak, however, which worked very well for the President.
"That's Kou. His new process has been implemented. He said that of 32,000 packets that he sent across he got back about eight. He wanted me to remind you that his initial results are without any kind of experimenting; he was going to try and set up a terminal for testing the Seals' defenses but collapsed of exhaustion. He's currently on the 64th floor recovering." The President fought down a smile at the description; it was the usual way that Koushiro got any sleep.
"I wasn't expecting him to get even that far last night. We didn't get him the assignment until, what, eleven at night?"
"Something like that."
"Make sure to tell him when he wakes up that I don't expect him to wave his hands and punch a hole in the Seals. Tell him to take all the time he needs to do the job right." The President got out of his chair and, regretfully, placed his sleeves back in the right place. Throwing his coat back on, he pressed a button located on the other side. It was the elevator call button and it came shooting up from below, arriving at the top floor as he made it over to it. He stopped at a mirror placed in front of the car and adjusted his hair carefully, shooting his cuffs and smoothing out imaginary wrinkles out of his jacket. His Assistant watched it all amusedly while clambering up onto his chair and pulling it forwards. When the President was satisfied with his appearance he turned back to his Assistant. "Keep things smooth," he said. "I'll be out of touch for most of the morning."
"Sure thing, Chief," she said and he mounted the car, descending into the depths of his building. He stopped at the thirtieth floor, allowing a single passenger to board; a woman with a red dress and silver hair, sporting a pair of sunglasses. The car continued to descend once she boarded.
The President's demeanor changed almost immediately. His eyes narrowed, his figure straightened almost imperceptibly. His mouth turned down. His skin seemed to get a little paler; his suit, darker. "How are our guests?" he asked the woman, another of his Assistants.
She took a moment to respond. "As comfortable as can be expected. They shouldn't be coming around for another few hours."
The President nodded. "Good. Make sure we have the stasis equipment on the twelth floor running before they manage to get into trouble. I don't doubt that they'll attempt to escape. Place Squad A on the job as soon as they report today."
"They won't like the guard duty," the Assistant observed carefully. He shrugged.
"I pay them to help me, and they do what I tell them to do. It's that simple." The President seemed filled with energy; he paced back and forth in the elevator car as it shot down the inside of his building.
This caused the woman to smirk somewhat. "You're certainly energetic."
"I never expected the windfall that accompanied the raid last night," he said in an excited tone. "We have representatives from all but one of the Crests now, do you realize that? All of them but one!"
"It's worth celebrating," she replied coolly. "Shall we give everyone a day off?"
He nodded. "Schedule it for the Friday one week down the road. Nobody works that Friday but us and our guests." She opened her mouth to protest and the words died on her lips as she realized that the President was looking at her with a serious gaze. She hadn't believed that he had actually meant it, but she certainly believed it now.
"Wow," she said in a monotone. "What great kindness."
"You misunderstand," the President replied. "I don't intend on anyone witnessing what we're going to do."
"Ah," she replied in a careful tone. "How are you certain that Hope will appear? We don't have that particular one and there's only one person who fits the bill."
"He'll come," the President answered confidently. "He'll pursue the others. It's what the Chosen do -- they live or die as a team. I expect him here as soon as this afternoon; we'll be ready to begin once he shows up."
"Hmm... I can understand why you would want the place clear of people. That would lead to questions being asked, wouldn't it?"
"It's not everyday that a person changes so dramatically," the President said, and the Assistant smirked when she saw the gleam in his eye. "In fact, it's quite rare. We don't need to give anyone a scare."
"We'll be doing that enough afterwards."
****
A D-3 is a very expensive and delicate piece of equipment, designed along specific parameters to interact with the myraid forces that power the Digital World. It is designed, more specifically, to allow access into the Digital World via an external portal and to allow a person to focus their internal power into useful energy for their partner Digimon. As such, the D-3 is extremely fragile should anything get through the outer casing.
Ken Ichijouji, however, simply popped the case off without another thought and went right to work on it, rearranging things in the back with the help of tools pulled from Chardsy's kit. It was about seven in the morning and still quite dark outside; Ken had woken up an hour ago and started working on his D-3. He had an excellent working knowledge of how the Seals functioned; he decided that it was high time he found a loophole.
Ken shook his head, puzzling out what to do next. He knew all about the Seals because he had designed them, so long ago. He preferred to not think about that particular time in his life, though. Pulling the D-3 up to the light, he used a pair of tweezers to carefully yank on one exposed piece of wiring, pulling it all the way out. He'd just have to keep working.
With the offending wire out, Ken leaded back slightly in his chair. He took a moment to glance around, noting again the large posters for Gardening Sincerity and the lack of pretty much anything else to define the apartment. Chardsy hadn't gone for style when he bought his furniture, Ken thought, he'd simply gone for functionality and he certainly got that. Ken wrinkled his nose; Chardsy did run the place on a generator and there was gasoline in the air to prove it. A loud clank in the back heralded where Chardsy was; the man believed in getting a quick start on the day and had taken a crack at fixing some problem in his car. Ken didn't really understand how the thing worked but Chardsy was determined to fix whatever the problem was.
Ken pulled the chair back up to the table and, leaning over, got back to work. He pulled the final wire out of the left-hand screen and, having it all on the table, took out a splicing tool and stripped the protection of the wire off with a quick flick of the wrist. Ken took the ends of both wires and began working them together, shaking his head slightly to clear it as he did so. He still had vestiges of that paper Chardsy had him read last night floating around in his head. Sighing, he paused a moment to consider it. That paper had been written almost three years ago but it was dead-on accurate on what he believed to be happening to the Real World. The paper first went into the problems; the way that humans were always tired, the odd detachment of everyone that he saw, and how dark it got during the night. It gave a plausible and disturbing explanation of why that was. Combined with what he had discovered it was more than merely disturbing. The paper went on to blame it all on the Odaiba Group, a conglomerate business out in Japan. Ken remembered the name from Chardsy's impromptu lecture the last night but what exactly they were was still eluding him. He'd just have to ask Chardsy --
A smashing sound echoed through the house, followed very shortly by a stream of curses. Ken sighed; he'd ask them if Chardsy survived fixing the car.
Ken fitted the now-spliced wires into the D-3's underside, mentally grimacing as he did so. D-3 components were a little hard to find in the Digital World. Now would not be the time to screw up a wiring job. Focusing a bit, he leaned forward, tightening the struts that held them together --
Abruptly, the pieces glowed briefly and fused together. Ken wiped the sudden sweat off of his head, grinning despite himself. He was right; the Seals treated the gate as a one-way device, and if he started with something inside the Digital World, he could manuever freely through the Seals. As it was, he had attached the signal to his Crest and used that, which always left a piece of itself inside the Digital World, as the anchor to allow his signal to pass. Feverishly now, he labored over the pieces of his modified D-3 and eventually snapped the case back on. He pushed a few buttons and the screen lit up. It displayed two words: Call Pending. Ken settled back to wait, resigned; transferring anything to the Digital World through the Seals was bound to take some time.
In the meantime... He got up and walked over to the kitchen. He'd been given permission to take whatever he wanted to eat from Chardsy before the man dropped off, but Ken was a bit uncertain. Opening a cabinet revealed several boxes of... something that had colorful labels and pictures. Ken took one of them out: it read "Apple Spice" and seemed to be some kind of "Oatmeal". Inside of it were several packets. He split one of them open and the contents fell out, scattering themselves over the part of the kitchen he was in. He raised an eyebrow, then turned and gathered up as much of the stuff as he could, throwing what got on the counter away. The label had directions on it, ones that called for boiling water and a cup. He got the cup easily enough and was about to ponder over what he should use to boil water when a beeping sound came from the other room. Ken abandoned his attempts to cook and ran out into the other room.
The screen was displaying a tired-looking Biyomon. "Regent?" she asked into the mic. "Are you there?" Ken snatched up the D-3 and saw that she wasn't alone; what looked to be half of the staff .
"Yeah!" Inwardly, he was rejoicing. He'd done it!
"Hey! What do you need, Regent?" Biyomon seemed to lose some of the exhaustion. Ken noticed but his thoughts were a little centered on what he needed to do. "Where exactly are you, anyway?"
He glanced around the room, noting the posters again as he did so. Something was familiar about that redhead... "Welcome to Casa del Chardsy," he said wryly. "First, I need to talk to Agumon and Stingmon. Can you get them in here on the line?"
"Sure!" Biyomon then turned away from the mic and called out instructions. The people in the background moved around, and presently Biyomon looked back at the screen. "Agumon's asleep, but Stingmon's on his way."
"Okay. Thanks, Biyomon."
"Regent... can I ask you a question?" Ken glanced up from what he was ruminating, surprised. Biyomon had a look in her eyes that Ken had missed at first; it was a hungry, forlorn look. Ken couldn't turn her down, no matter what she asked.
"Sure."
"What's the real world... like?" I knew it, Ken thought to himself. I knew she'd ask that.
"It's hard to describe. I mean, there's cars and stores and all sorts of things; there's weird food that I don't know how to cook..."
Biyomon cut him off. "You never did learn how to cook, did you?" she asked, chuckling. "Always trying to help out the world."
"No, I always ate what you guys put in front of me," Ken protested. "Besides, it was good."
"It's gonna be hard on you to settle down." Biyomon chuckled again, but this time it was at Ken's mildly red ears. "Hey, look at that -- the Regent really is human!" With that, she burst out laughing.
"Anyway..." Ken said, and she pulled herself back together while he tamed his ears. "I haven't been very far yet. I haven't found out why the Internet's gone down the tubes, but I have a few guesses. I guess I'd be almost finished here in a wierd way, except for this new problem." Biyomon cocked her head to the left, looking quizzically at him. "For whatever reason, it's dark." She pulled back, dismayed. Ken continued, "It's dark here. I can't put it any plainer than that. I don't know why it happened, but something has changed here in the real world and it's made everything and everyone dark."
Biyomon stared at the video pickup. "That's terrible," she whispered.
"It's like the darkness ran here after we cleaned it out of the Digital World." Ken clenched a fist involuntarily. "It's different here; it isn't like I used to be. It's... I can't even properly describe it. It's like the whole world's just been drained. As far as I can tell, anyway."
Biyomon looked down at the mic, not meeting the Regent's gaze. "Is it... everywhere?"
Ken said, very softly, "I think so."
Biyomon glanced up. There were hints of tears on the edges of her eyes. "Anyway," she said quietly, "Stingmon just came in. Thanks, Ke-- uh, Regent." She pulled back, away from the mic pickup, and the much larger Stingmon came into the picture.
"Hey, Regent!" Stingmon looked very happy. "What's up?"
"Got the D-3 to punch a hole through the Seals. First off, how are things in the Digital World?"
Stingmon pulled out a pad and pencil. "Okay, here goes... the Keeper wanted me to remind you that the season's drawing to a close, and that you need to be back in the Capital for it. That's in two weeks, Regent. Next, Angemon wanted you to know that Whamon's been talking to the Helpers. They've been doing surface stuff -- no big breaks, but the groundwork is there. Datamon's beginning to build a new complex out in the desert for human-digimon relations, for after the Seals go down. It's probably going to be as big as the Seal complex is."
Ken rubbed his forehead. "Please tell me that he's not building a reverse pyramid again."
"Does he ever build any other way? Piedmon's flyers are right on schedule, but a Megadramon decided to fly out a few months early. He got into the flock and chaos ensued; Piedmon took him down quickly enough, but now things between the Devis and the Dramons are really, really tense."
"Keep them apart for now," Ken said. "When you get the chance, have a diplomatic team do something about their problems, but for now just avoid any conflict."
"Got it," the insect replied, and made a note of it. "We've also run into a few problems between people and the Protectors. Clashes between them and people who just want to live their lives. As of yet, we've kept things quiet and local, but before long, things'll be pretty bad."
Ken shook his head somewhat. "Tell me this: is Aquilamon ever mentioned in any of these reports?"
"No. In fact, he seems to be a moderate on the Protectors these days. He even ordered a group of Protectors to fall back when they tried to arrest a Gazimon for stealing."
"Good. I'm glad he's found a way to try and get along with the people."
"He's not that bad, Ken -- it's just, you know, he can't deal with relationships all that well."
"He could find a better way to express that," Ken retorted. "Alright, then, make sure you keep a loose eye on the whole organization. Better yet, cancel the alert. Nobody seems to be passing through into the Digital World, so we shouldn't have to worry about it."
"I was hoping you'd say that, Regent, because I've already done it. Now, what's going on over there?" Stingmon put his pad away and settled into his seat
Ken took a deep breath. "I think that I know what has happened to the Internet. I've been too busy trying to grasp what happened to the world itself, however, to focus too tightly on the Internet yet." Stingmon's gaze was clouded with a bit of confusion. "Sting, there's something really wrong with the real world. Something has happened to make the whole world go dark."
"Uh.. huh? Regent, I don't understand."
"Here's how it works. Keep in mind that I read most of this from an unconfirmed source and combined it with my own observations, so I can't say how accurate this is. First, the humans have these new reactors for power sources. They're called ED reactors and they work better than electricity, and they're a lot cheaper to produce, too; except that they draw on the energy of any humans around for power like my Spore does for its energy. When they have enough, they stop for a while and power devices like TVs until they need more." Stingmon was too stunned to react, and Ken continued: "That's only the first step, though. An Internet - like network entitled the VandeNet is designed to work with the Reactors in that it broadcasts energy through it to everyone who's surfing it. The catch is that it broadcasts the kind of energy my Spore eats."
"Dark energy..." Stingmon uttered, looking shocked. "It's on a computer, which has to run off of a ED reactor... and the humans absorb the energy like a sponge, because they're low on energy all the time..."
"And they get darker," Ken finished for him grimly. "It's bad, Stingmon."
"This is bad," the insect repeated. "Oh yeah it is."
"We need to test the long-term effects of this out, to understand what it's going to do to people."
"Okay..." Stingmon trailed off, getting it back together. "Alright. I'm gonna transfer you over to Datamon. It'll take a few minutes for him to answer. He'll be able to tell you how exactly to test this out -- neither of us are scientists." The insect managed to smile weakly. "Take care, Regent," he said, and the screen abruptly flashed over to read "System Busy".
Ken took the moment to glance up, sweating. Talking about the real world's problems was harder than he had imagined, and...
And...
And he had just noticed Chardsy, standing in the doorframe to his left, grease on hands, incredulous expression on his face, and slack jaw. Ken's mouth set itself in a very thin line.
"What the hell?" Chardsy managed, then made a squeak. He closed his mouth, swallowed, and tried again. "What the hell was all that about?!"
"Would you believe that this is how I contact Harvard?" Ken managed to say. Inwardly, he was kicking himself over blowing his cover. Chardsy reacted to that explosively.
"What the fuck, dude! You were fucking talking to a giant bug, who was talking back! What the hell do you expect me to believe, dude?! You fucking lied to me, you asshole!" Chardsy started pacing around the room, furious, waving his arms around. "You lied last night, and you lied right there in front of me. You ain't no Harvard grad boy. You ain't from around here at all -- you're from that crazy Digital World thing!"
Ken jerked his head up at this. "What do you know about the Digital World?" he asked sharply.
"I know what everyone else knows, dumbass! I knew that there was another world when it appeared in the sky ten years ago, and I saw some people go up there like everyone else! I know about the crazy fog thingie that happened over in Japan at the same time!"
"That was before my time," Ken said. Chardsy didn't seem to have heard him.
"And now, I see some crazy dude who doesn't know shit about what the world's dealin' with come in here and give orders to a giant bug! What the hell is a Regent, anyway?!" Some kind of ruler dude?!"
Ken usually had a large amount of patience to his name, but right now he had been drained of it over what had happened to the real world. "Yes," Ken replied tightly, "I do happen to run the place right now."
Chardsy stopped cold. "You serious, dude? Then why're you here?"
Ken kept the tight expression on his face. "I'm checking out why we lost contact with the Internet."
"Dude, that's..." He trailed off, staring straight ahead. Ken waited for him to finish. "Why me, dude?" he managed after a moment.
"You were the first person I saw that wasn't being affected by the machines, and you responded when I made my little proposition," Ken said. Chardsy looked over at him.
"What do you want from me?" Chardsy asked him.
"I want you to live your life," Ken replied seriously, "and let me tend to the world that I run."
"No dice, dude," Chardsy shook his head. "You get me involved in this, you gotta give a bit more than cash. I can always get cash, dude. This..." He trailed off again. "This is serious shit."
"Then you want to help?" Ken asked, confused and still somewhat upset at being caught. At about the same time, the Digivice went off and the screen cleared from the System Busy sign to reveal the unusual frame of Datamon on the screen. Chardsy stiffened up somewhat at the digimon's more unorthodox appearance.
"Regent, hello," the digimon grated out. "It's quite the surprise hearing from you, what with the Seals and all. You must tell me how you managed to punch through them so easily when you get a chance. We certainly haven't had much to do around here other than that, though; it's been as quiet as a mouse otherwise. Anyway, you wanted me for something?"
"I need to use my D-3 to take energy readings and confirm a report, and I'd like to know how to do it without any major tools." Chardsy closed his jaw, settled back, and watched with the faintest edge of a grin on his face.
"Sure," Datamon said. "I just need for you to put the D-3 down on some kind of surface and I'll send you some tools. After your little retooling of the D-3 I believe that it in itself will be sufficient for a transfer." Ken did so, setting the black object down on the nearby table that he had labored at all that morning. After a few seconds of Datamon manipulating controls in the background the little device's screen suddenly flared with light; both Ken and Chardsy pulled back somewhat, hands or arms raised to block out the light. The sigil for Kindness, a single rose crown, was clearly outlined in the glow; and it quickly resolved to reveal another small device next to the D-3; a small boxy device that had no screen, just scopes and a few dials. Chardsy stared at the new device while Ken picked up the D-3.
"How do I control it?" Ken asked.
"It's simple," Datamon said smugly. "You merely have to place the device in the general vicinity of any kind of energy source and it will be able to parse what kind of energy it is and the amount. It can also tell how much energy the source should have -- that's what the second dial is for, on the left." Ken tossed the device over to Chardsy, who caught it and examined it with wide eyes.
"Christ," he muttered to himself in amazement.
"Thanks, Datamon. I'll send the results over to you when I can obtain them." Ken was about to turn the device off when Datamon held up a hand, stopping him.
"Make sure you get a good, solid sample," Datamon said. "To do an accurate survey, you need no less than ten thousand people."
"I know," Ken said. "Oh, and don't build an upside-down pyramid this time. Goodbye, Datamon," he said, and cut off the transmission before Datamon's startled response could be sent through. "Well?" he asked Chardsy.
"I don't know, man, this just isn't what I could have ever expected..." Chardsy dropped the reader on the table next to Ken's D-3 and collapsed in a nearby chair. Ken remained silent, allowing Chardsy to collect himself. After some time, Chardsy's lip twitched upwards and he glanced at Ken. "So.. you, uh, gonna do somethin' about Odaiba?"
"If they're at fault, then yes, I will," Ken responded. "I have a new problem, though. Do you know where I can find ten thousand different people?"
"Yeah," Chardsy said, and he sounded better. More like the man that Ken had met the night before at the pizza place. "Yeah, I know exactly where we can find that many people. More. A lot more."
At Ken's quizzical glance, Chardsy indicated the large cardboard cutout in the corner. "We're gonna go to a concert, man. We're gonna see Gardening Sincerity live."
****
Miyako Inuoe was ready to take on the world. She was dressed as a simple secretary, with clearances up to the twentieth floor of the Odaiba Group, she had a recording pad, she had an assistant of her own -- a well- dressed and still slightly dazed Takeru Takaishi, now clad in a hat to hide the dressing -- and she had an assignment; follow the American tour group around the lower parts of the building, take notes, and turn in her observations to her supervisor, Mr. Nakamura, when she was done.
She had no intention on doing that for its own sake; she was here for her comrades! She and the others were ready for battle, too -- they carried miniature versions of the tasers that the team used when it was hitting buildings. They wouldn't last as long nor stun as hard but they'd be quite sufficient for the task at hand. Miyako had no illusions on whether she'd have to use it. The only question was when and on who.
Miyako knew quite a bit about the way the Odaiba Group operated. It was a huge building of hundreds of employees; it had perhaps twenty vice presidents and almost eighty supervisors. Each supervisor was responsible for ten people under their direct command, and the twenty vice presidents were responsible for four supervisors. It was a smooth chain of command, except for one thing: Miyako had a mole in the organization at the supervisor level; a careful, thorough, well-respected supervisor without ambition named Jyou Kido. Jyou was twenty-two and the only supervisor allowed on the 64th floor; it was his personal medical wing. He had been chosen for that by the President because of his medical knowledge.
He had allowed her to slip inside the headquarters unnoticed before, and the two of them had drilled the thing to a science. It was harder for him to take on four people, and he was worried, but he had allowed Miyako to do it, this one time only. He knew, of course, that there were prisoners inside the Odaiba Group, and had told them where they were being held; in the basement laboratory, which was run by scientists that may as well have been robots, so focused was their concentration. Jyou was expected to be on the 64th floor for the day, taking care of one of the scientists -- Miyako didn't know which one -- but had managed to slip her a pair of card keys for the basement. They were generic things and completely untraceable.
Of course, if she didn't do her part well, he would pay the price. Miyako didn't know what that would be but she had no intention on finding out.
The tour group rounded a corner and the man in the front -- she didn't recognise him -- waved a hand at the wall on the right, explaining some minor thing about the company's ED-3 reactors. There was an appropriate chorus of "oohs" and "ahhs" from the crowd, and Miyako jotted down what the specific reactions of the people she was assigned to watch. Beside her, Takeru's camera whirred as he shot another ten megs of digital film. The group stopped there, to watch the preprepared video of what was happening, and Miyako allowed her mind to wander somewhat.
Aya was down below in the basement already. She was assigned as a custodian for the science labs and had been down there for almost five hours now. Miyako was worried about Aya's restraint; she had to deal with rude scientists and endless dusting; that wasn't good for a person's relaxation. Kevin was a receptionist for the basement floor. It was a match made in hell but Kevin's humor should have been enough to keep all but the most upset people thinking that he was merely incompetent rather than a spy.
The tour group turned towards the elevators and Miyako realized that they had made it to the twentieth floor; her assignment was over. Her schedule, prepared by Jyou, had an hour-long slot open for lunch. Takeru was her assistant in this and as such he had the break too. The large man led the group into the elevator and Miyako and Takeru, along with almost twenty other people, were free to go for the moment.
Miyako wasted no time. "Come on, Mr. Takaishi, we need to get to lunch." She dropped off her accumulated notes in a nearby basket while striding towards the stairway.
Takeru dropped his camera in the same basket, walking slowly. He was still a bit woozy, but he remembered his lines. "Yes, Ms. Inoue," he spouted faithfully and dumbly, and followed her to the stairway. She zipped her card on through and it obligingly unlocked. She moved through it, closing it behind her, and Takeru mimicked her action with his card. The door also acknowledged his presence and they both went down the concrete stairs to the first floor.
She slid her card on through the reader and opened the door, letting it fall shut without passing through. Takeru did the same. Now, the building's computers had acknowledged the two of them outside of any secure area, and Jyou's job and reputation were safe. Pulling out the special cards, ones that Jyou had created for this kind of sneaking around, she walked over to the door marked "LAB/STORAGE: CLEARANCE EMPLOYEES ONLY" and slid the card through the red-lit slot. It beeped once, the lock's red light changed to green, and the door unlocked itself.
She stepped through the entrance and said, "Okay. You go and find Kevin; I'm gonna meet up with Aya. Catch you on the other side, Takeru." He nodded.
"Try to keep her under control." With that, he strode down the hall to the reception / relaxation area that the scientists maintained. She went the other way, towards the labs themselves.
She encountered Aya on her third trip through the halls. Aya was dressed as a generic custodian and was covered with dust; it made her look tired and ghastly. "Hi," she managed to say. "I hate this." She coughed.
Miyako said, "Well, finding the others and we're getting out of here. We need to find a quick and easy exit."
"Your spy didn't know?"
"He's always up on the higher floors; he doesn't know much about the basement level." The two of them started away from the area, walking out towards the stairway that Miyako and Takeru had arrived in. They had crossed the middle of the area when they turned a corner and encountered something neither of them had planned for; one of the President's Assistants was coming through. He was a huge man, dressed in a solid black Armani tuxedo, and rumored to be kindly, but he was an Assistant to the most ruthless man Miyako had ever known. Despite Miyako's suddenly wildly beating heart she, along with Aya, managed to keep ahold of herself and moved politely out of his way. He walked past them without a second glance. Trailing in his wake, though...
Trailing in his wake were people she had known in a previous life. Behind him were two members of the elite Squad A: the redheaded Sora Takenouchi and the blue-eyed blond Yamato Ishida. Both wore no expression and simply followed the hulking Assistant down the hallway towards some place in the labs. Sora, whom she had had beside her to laugh and yell and be girls around; Yamato, who had shown her an artist's perspective on life and people, one of the rare guys that she could be mostly relaxed around. The shock and her already high heartbeat became too much for Miyako; the three of them seemed to fuzz together into one spinning blob...
Miyako slowly became aware of Aya waving her hand in front of Miyako's face and she shook her head; it seemed suddenly clogged up. "Miya?" Aya was asking worriedly. "Are you alright?"
"What happened?" Miyako asked dimly. "I feel dizzy."
"You collapsed in the hallway," Aya grunted out, "and I dragged you into an empty lab before anyone could see us."
Meanwhile, Takeru had managed to make his way over to the reception area, which was completely empty; the scientists being at work. Still a bit woozy, he had sat down for a minute or two to clear his head. While he was down, someone came up from behind him and glanced down at him. "Hey there, TK."
Takeru glanced up, surprised. "Kev?"
Kevin grinned. "You're the best thing that's happened all day around here. I've never been so bored in my life." He made a face. "So when do we get everyone out?"
"You know where they are?" Takeru replied, astonished.
"Sure," Kevin said, his grin edging towards a self-satisfied smirk. "They're all in that room over there. When do we pull them out?"
"Right now," Takeru replied, and got up carefully. He adjusted the hat ever-so-slightly and nodded towards the door marked "STORAGE: CLEARANCE 3" and, pulling out one of Jyou's cards, walked right towards the door. Kevin followed him nervously. "How did you find out, anyway?"
"It was in the morning reports that I had to read." Kevin shrugged. "I'm surprised it was there too, but more power to us, right?"
"Convenient," Takeru said, and swiped the card into the reader; once it beeped, he pulled the door open, walking into the area. Unsurprisingly it was an enormous warehouse-style room, and they stood on a catwalk above it, able to see all of the well-lit room beneath them. He and Kevin walked quietly over to a dark corner, letting the door close quietly behind them. The area was littered with Odaiba Group personnel, some of them with guns. Thankfully, none of them seemed to have picked up on Takeru and Kevin's arrival. Directly below them, however...
Takeru had to bite his lip to keep from calling out. Below them, in a constuct roughly similar to a crude cage, were all of the others from the base. He immediately saw Hikari, off to one side with only Iori to keep her company, and she didn't look happy. His heart made a strange pang and he took his eyes off of her, trying to focus. Beside him, Kevin said, "Eighty-six people there. Everyone's there, all right. It's a miracle that nobody got killed or hurt in that raid other than you, TK."
"I'll say," he breathed out. "How do we get past the guards?"
"Easy," Kevin said. Takeru glanced at what Kevin was doing. Holding up the wired device, Kevin said, "We cause confusion and take them in the haze."
Takeru's eyes were wide. "Alright, Kevin. I didn't even think to grab one of those things."
With that, Kevin pulled the pins out of the four smoke grenades and tossed them on the floor, snapping up tiny goggles as he did so. Takeru ran over to the door and swiped his card, propping it open and allowing the light to shine through The grenades hit the ground smoking and made it all but impossible to see in the room. The prisoners, not sure what was happening, put up an enormous fuss, one that the room's size and design multiplied to impossibly loud. Meanwhile, Kevin roamed around the room with a miniature version of the group's heavy tasers in his hand, shocking guards who were too confused to fall back onto their training. After the first one, he scooped up the guard's assault rifle and carried that around with him too. The ones that ran towards the door in an attempt to go somewhere useful met Takeru's own taser and were shocked into unconsciousness.
Eventually Kevin ran out of guards to pop. Picking a part of the cage at random, he smashed the bar with his gun and strode inside. The others were afraid of him when he entered, as he was wearing tiny goggles and carrying a gun -- but he put that to rest when he took off the goggles and, picking a person at random, told him, "Geez, if you guys got all worked up like this when I was gone, I can't even imagine what the guards had to deal with!"
Iori was the first to figure it out. "Kevin?"
"It's me," he replied jovially. "Let's go, guys... Miyako's got the way out under control." He smashed other places in the cage and, as one, the group sped towards the only place they could make out in the smoke -- the lit, open door that Takeru was manning. Happy murmering spread through the crowd as they went up the stairs and out the door with Kevin and Iori in the lead.
Hikari was one of the last ones through the door; she stopped at Takeru, looking at his hat. "You're still hurt!" she scolded him, but hugged him desperately anyway, grinning wildly. After a moment and more quietly she murmered into his chest, "I didn't think I was walking away from this one. Thanks, Takeru."
He smiled down at the brunette in his arms. "Of course I was coming for you," he said quietly, then broke the embrace. He held Hikari at arms' length and said, "We've gotta go -- there isn't time for this stuff now!" With that, they ran back to join the others in a mad push for the middle area. "I only hope that Miyako came through for us!" he shouted over the din of ninety people running forwards.
The back door of the Odaiba Group was more of a shipping / receiving area, accustomed to nothing besides the occasional pizza delivery breaking up the monotony of trucks coming in and trucks coming out. The elderly security guard was, therefore, completely unprepared for Iori leading a yelling mass of people to hurtle towards his area, carrying with them in the press perhaps a half-dozen real employees. They surged towards the open shipping door -- large enough for two tractor-trailers -- and scattered upon getting into the open. The only thing that he did before being swept aside by the crowd was slam a fist onto the ALERT button on the wall.
Miyako had managed to get over the initial shock and was moving again, Aya behind her. "Jyou didn't tell me much about this place. Any idea where there would be an emergency exit or something?" Miyako asked while glancing down a long hallway. They walked past closed doors and quiet laboratories. Nobody paid the slightest bit of attention to either of them.
"Who were those people?" Aya asked.
"They were some people I used to know," Miyako said, irritated and upset still. "Are you going to answer my question?"
"No idea," Aya said. "I guess we'll just have to use the stairs, presuming we find them."
Miyako shook her head. "I hope that somebody careful got everyone up out the back door already. This is taking too much time. I don't think they're he--"
It was about then that the worst thing that could have happened happened: the alarms went off. Jyou had shown her an alarm going off before and it was loud, obvious, and the whole company was trained in what to do. She swore, knowing the consequences: that meant that Kevin and Takeru had gotten them out faster than she thought! She wasn't ready to get outside! She broke into a run, turning corners hard and moving towards the stairway.
Aya didn't follow her. Not having Miyako's training, she could only stare at the alarm. To her, that meant that they had failed; the Odaiba Group knew that they had been there! Even now, security forces would be swarming all of her friends and new family... Aya's fear transformed into rage. She resolved to go down swinging and made her way towards a particular room she had noticed earlier, thinking only of how to hurt the Odaiba Group.
She moved to the right and ran for the far guard station; there was one on each floor but this particular one didn't seem to be manned by anyone. It was a place that she had cleaned earlier. She knew it was full of guns and grenades and other implements of destruction. She broke the window in the door, reaching around through the new hole and opening the door. She ran inside, fully intending on going out in a blaze of glory... only to find a small critter of some sort inside. It wasn't very tall or very big; it merely had huge eyes and white/black fur; it reminded Aya vaguely of a cat. While she was staring at it, it glanced up at her. Curiously, its eyes seemed to glow slightly; they flared up with light once, and the world quickly spiralled away for Aya.
Miyako got as far as Lab 32 when the security doors started slamming shut. She dived inside the lab before its doors came crashing down; she knew that her bogus cards wouldn't work on the Odaiba Group doors now, and being somewhere was better than being stuck out in the hallway. She glanced around wildly, searching for something to find a way to escape -- and saw the far screen, still on even though the room was unoccupied otherwise.
Takeru was at the tail end of the group, but he had let Kevin use the card key -- had given it to him when he'd run by where Takeru was holding the door -- and the group had mostly streamed out of the reception area, up the stairs, and out of the building's rear entrance when it all went bad. The alarm had sounded moments before but it was a little too late; the vast majority of the group had already made it outside and even now Takeru could see the open door; with Iori at his side he pressed forwards, attempting to make it outside.
He never made it.
Kevin had stayed behind to keep an eye on the area, brandishing the assault rifle at any employee that came close to them. However, on the far side of the hallway, hidden by the curve of the hallway, a Squad 1 member carefully lined up Kevin's chest in his sniper sight. He squeezed the trigger ever so slightly, allowing the recoilless gun to emit a little puff. On the other side of the scope Kevin dropped his gun and went right over, crashing down on his head. There was no blood.
Iori gasped when Kevin went down. He ran over to his friend, grabbing the body and pulling it towards the door; Hikari and Takeru joined him, and that's all that the sniper had been hoping for. Three short puffs later all four of them were down on the floor. The sniper made his way casually over to the downed foursome, pulling out a device and dropping his tranquilizer rifle as he went. Pulling the needle out of Kevin's chest, he scanned him with the little device; when it came up with a negative beep the sniper, Tai Kamiya, pulled out another needle and pressed it into Kevin's arm. He then pulled out his radio and called for pickup, even as the suddenly lifeless body of Kevin began to stiffen.
Miyako looked across at the screen and realized that she'd sat in front of it before she knew what she was doing. It was running some kind of test -- one that looked familiar somehow. It displayed cycling lines of text underneath a picture of some kind of on-screen box item, one that flickered with a grayish light, similar to a TV without a signal. Computers were her old specialization and she clicked a few times, trying to figure out what kind of program it was. It was familiar and comforting somehow, and even as her brain clamored at her to do -something- other than stand around and mess with computers she couldn't help it. She brought the machine to a screen that read: "Test? 1)Y 2)N"
The door opened.
Miyako spun around, grasping for her taser, and stopped abruptly, her breath coming out of her in one long gasp. She couldn't see the creature on the other side of the room well enough to be sure, but Miyako discarded any idea of that when the person came into the light. Except it wasn't a person, really; it was white from the chest up, and solid black from the chest down. It was small and obviously feline; on its tail was some kind of ring.
"Gatomon?" Miyako whispered, hushed, and sat down on the keyboard hard, forcing the computer behind her to beep. "What happened to you?"
The cat smiled grimly. "Glad you remember me, traitor." She jumped up on a nearby desk, glaring daggars at Miyako. "Or do you really remember me any more than the others do? I doubt it."
"You're -- we thought --"
"Thought what? That the Emperor had killed me? He can't do a thing now; he was killed by his own creation, just like you and the others left me and Daisuke and V-Mon to die at that thing's hands!" Gatomon shrieked. "It thought that it would be worse for me to live, so it threw me out into the real world! Only the Odaiba Group took me in -- nobody else would even bother!"
Miyako had gone extremely pale. "We had to run!" she yelled. "Daisuke told us to run!"
"You abandoned us!" Gatomon shrieked back and threw back her left paw. "You'll pay right now -- LIGHTNING CLAW"
A powerful blast of light tore its way out of her left paw as she brought it forward, the scything energies slamming into and through Miyako's right shoulder with a loud crunching sound. Miyako screamed and fell backwards, knocked by the force of the attack's impact into the computer screen --
--which was brightly lit, running its own test that she had initialized when she sat on the keyboard--
--and she fell through the screen, shrieking in terror and pain, and hearing Gatomon's frustrated yowl as her target went somewhere she couldn't follow even as the room above exploded into light and smoke.
****
Miyako fell through a sea of stars. She tumbled down a waterfall, through an oddly glistening ocean, falling deep down, through a layer of stone, and into another sky. She felt nothing; not even her shoulder, as she dropped through another waterfall, this one with seemingly no end. Ahead of her, however...
Ahead of her was a patch of distorted space, where there was no waterfall or light. Ahead of her she could see where something had taken a piece of the place that she was falling through and twisted it beyond recognition. Ahead of her she could hear a dull thrumming and feel a faint vibration in the air, one growing worse and worse as she approached the area and it was getting so bad she couldn't hear herself think if only it would go away go away go...
Miyako passed out and fell into the grasp of the Seal.
****
Another day, another three-mile run around the Chamber, the Keeper mused to himself.
He was tall and relaxed, thin and quiet, honest and open with himself and those around him. He was wearing a simple robe, as opposed to the heavy one he wore most of the time or the loose uniform he wore for the season. At one point in time in his life he had run five miles a day, but he never really got anything else out of it that he couldn't get out of three.
He rounded a corner and stopped, slowing down as he approached a door in the Chamber. The Regent had sworn to get back in time for the end of the season, Stingmon had said, and if there was nothing else the Keeper could say for the Regent it was that he knew how to keep his word. Still, it was the Keeper's carefully considered idea that the Regent had never learned how to relax to the point of having fun. It was too bad, too; he coulda been a heckuva player, if he'd just chill a bit.
The Keeper opened the big heavy door, slowing down somewhat. When he had become the Keeper the Chamber of the Chosen was like a sanctuary; now that he was used to it he still thought of it as a sanctuary, just one that he was used to. Yeah. He walked through the area, noting the Acolytes along the right side of the place. They wanted to help out and clean around the Chamber, and who was he to say no? They were very thorough and they weren't hard on the eyes at all, either. He chuckled a bit at that and went on through, to the innermost part of the Chamber.
It was here that the Digieggs that Gennai had stolen from Piedmon had been incubated and the Digimentals had been constructed. It was here that he went, every day, to keep an eye on the crests and sigils of the Chosen. It was a disappointing time because he could tell how closely a Chosen was following their sigil and, lately, that wasn't happening much. He shook his head at his own cynicism and walked forward...
And stopped dead. There, in front of him, clothes torn and shoulder blasted, unconscious and bleeding on his floor, was a lavender-haired woman from the mildly distant past. She was one of the few Chosen who's sigil was still shot through with color but her breathing came erratically; even from this distance he could tell she was barely managing to breathe at all. He ran to her side, pulling out a small flask out of his robe as he did so and pouring the contents onto her wounded shoulder. It glowed briefly, pulsed once, then faded away. The bleeding stopped and her breathing became more relaxed almost immediately. He leaned back, sweating despite himself, then gathered up the woman in his arms and walked back into the main area.
Upon entering the area all activity outside stopped dead as his Acolytes all stared at the woman in his arms. "Prepare a recovery room," the Keeper said wryly. "It seems we have a guest."
****
****
Other Voices 2
****
It was quite the cheerful day in Odaiba's Central District. The birds were singing, the sun was shining, and Mr. President was dressed down for the occasion. The jacket was already off and the sleeves were rolled up by the time the Assistant made it up the elevator shaft to the top floor. The legs were up on the desk. She padded in, amused despite herself at the antics of her Commander-in-Chief. "Morning, boss."
"Ah, Assistant!" He glanced up from the technical readout he'd been poring over. "Come on over. I was just going over a few things, but they're of no importance." She padded over and jumped on a nearby chair, taking a moment to settle in before consulting the pad she was carrying.
"Here are the morning reports," she said, glancing down the list. "Of eight hundred thirty employees, eight hundred twenty-three are here today; the others have allowable excuses. We're up and running now. All reactors in all places show greenline for the morning. VandeNet servers are also greenlining, except for number 230002, which had a malfunctioning powersupply. Incoming energy is up .013%; outgoing energy is down 1.452%. Current prices for our energy are at $0.24 / hour / watt. Our stock is up .45% in the morning trading and we're currently worth about $239.84 billion dollars." She finished her recitation, then glanced over at the President mock-seriously. "Now what exactly has allowed you to go around like that?"
"Did you forget about the tour group?"
The Assistant thought briefly, then shook her head. "I'm in the dark about most non-company things like that."
"Okay." He pulled himself into a normal sitting position, grunting discontentedly as he did so. "You know how the Americans have been reluctant to take the ED-3 reactor prototypes seriously?" She nodded slowly. "Well, they decided that being six months behind the rest of the world wouldn't do and they're sending in the troops. At about ten o'clock today I'll be taking the American dignitaries through the complex."
"Interesting. I take it I'll be up here?"
"Yes. I need somebody I can trust to keep an eye on things."
"Why exactly are the Americans coming? I thought that they were content with the ED-1s we sold them like four years ago."
The president leaned back, a smirk coming up on his face. "Well, I won't tell if you don't tell, okay?" She nodded, confused. "They're sending a four-star general in with the group."
"Military production." The Assistant shook her head at that. "What do the Americans need with even more toys?"
"It's none of our business what they have in mind," the President scolded her mildly. "We do business with clients. That's all."
"Moving right along," the Assistant continued, "I have an opening report from Koushiro in Lab 32."
The president blinked. "Already? The boy doesn't sleep." He already knew that, of course; Koushiro Izumi hadn't done much sleeping since he signed on with the Odaiba Group four years ago. He was an intense, driven worker who was reputed to be impossible to work with for any length of time. The rate of transfers in and out of his department were impressive, as were the results that Lab 32 submitted. After all, the President reminded himself, Koushiro did design and build the first ED reactors. That could have made him quite the famous scientist on the lecture line. Koushiro always turned down offers to speak, however, which worked very well for the President.
"That's Kou. His new process has been implemented. He said that of 32,000 packets that he sent across he got back about eight. He wanted me to remind you that his initial results are without any kind of experimenting; he was going to try and set up a terminal for testing the Seals' defenses but collapsed of exhaustion. He's currently on the 64th floor recovering." The President fought down a smile at the description; it was the usual way that Koushiro got any sleep.
"I wasn't expecting him to get even that far last night. We didn't get him the assignment until, what, eleven at night?"
"Something like that."
"Make sure to tell him when he wakes up that I don't expect him to wave his hands and punch a hole in the Seals. Tell him to take all the time he needs to do the job right." The President got out of his chair and, regretfully, placed his sleeves back in the right place. Throwing his coat back on, he pressed a button located on the other side. It was the elevator call button and it came shooting up from below, arriving at the top floor as he made it over to it. He stopped at a mirror placed in front of the car and adjusted his hair carefully, shooting his cuffs and smoothing out imaginary wrinkles out of his jacket. His Assistant watched it all amusedly while clambering up onto his chair and pulling it forwards. When the President was satisfied with his appearance he turned back to his Assistant. "Keep things smooth," he said. "I'll be out of touch for most of the morning."
"Sure thing, Chief," she said and he mounted the car, descending into the depths of his building. He stopped at the thirtieth floor, allowing a single passenger to board; a woman with a red dress and silver hair, sporting a pair of sunglasses. The car continued to descend once she boarded.
The President's demeanor changed almost immediately. His eyes narrowed, his figure straightened almost imperceptibly. His mouth turned down. His skin seemed to get a little paler; his suit, darker. "How are our guests?" he asked the woman, another of his Assistants.
She took a moment to respond. "As comfortable as can be expected. They shouldn't be coming around for another few hours."
The President nodded. "Good. Make sure we have the stasis equipment on the twelth floor running before they manage to get into trouble. I don't doubt that they'll attempt to escape. Place Squad A on the job as soon as they report today."
"They won't like the guard duty," the Assistant observed carefully. He shrugged.
"I pay them to help me, and they do what I tell them to do. It's that simple." The President seemed filled with energy; he paced back and forth in the elevator car as it shot down the inside of his building.
This caused the woman to smirk somewhat. "You're certainly energetic."
"I never expected the windfall that accompanied the raid last night," he said in an excited tone. "We have representatives from all but one of the Crests now, do you realize that? All of them but one!"
"It's worth celebrating," she replied coolly. "Shall we give everyone a day off?"
He nodded. "Schedule it for the Friday one week down the road. Nobody works that Friday but us and our guests." She opened her mouth to protest and the words died on her lips as she realized that the President was looking at her with a serious gaze. She hadn't believed that he had actually meant it, but she certainly believed it now.
"Wow," she said in a monotone. "What great kindness."
"You misunderstand," the President replied. "I don't intend on anyone witnessing what we're going to do."
"Ah," she replied in a careful tone. "How are you certain that Hope will appear? We don't have that particular one and there's only one person who fits the bill."
"He'll come," the President answered confidently. "He'll pursue the others. It's what the Chosen do -- they live or die as a team. I expect him here as soon as this afternoon; we'll be ready to begin once he shows up."
"Hmm... I can understand why you would want the place clear of people. That would lead to questions being asked, wouldn't it?"
"It's not everyday that a person changes so dramatically," the President said, and the Assistant smirked when she saw the gleam in his eye. "In fact, it's quite rare. We don't need to give anyone a scare."
"We'll be doing that enough afterwards."
****
A D-3 is a very expensive and delicate piece of equipment, designed along specific parameters to interact with the myraid forces that power the Digital World. It is designed, more specifically, to allow access into the Digital World via an external portal and to allow a person to focus their internal power into useful energy for their partner Digimon. As such, the D-3 is extremely fragile should anything get through the outer casing.
Ken Ichijouji, however, simply popped the case off without another thought and went right to work on it, rearranging things in the back with the help of tools pulled from Chardsy's kit. It was about seven in the morning and still quite dark outside; Ken had woken up an hour ago and started working on his D-3. He had an excellent working knowledge of how the Seals functioned; he decided that it was high time he found a loophole.
Ken shook his head, puzzling out what to do next. He knew all about the Seals because he had designed them, so long ago. He preferred to not think about that particular time in his life, though. Pulling the D-3 up to the light, he used a pair of tweezers to carefully yank on one exposed piece of wiring, pulling it all the way out. He'd just have to keep working.
With the offending wire out, Ken leaded back slightly in his chair. He took a moment to glance around, noting again the large posters for Gardening Sincerity and the lack of pretty much anything else to define the apartment. Chardsy hadn't gone for style when he bought his furniture, Ken thought, he'd simply gone for functionality and he certainly got that. Ken wrinkled his nose; Chardsy did run the place on a generator and there was gasoline in the air to prove it. A loud clank in the back heralded where Chardsy was; the man believed in getting a quick start on the day and had taken a crack at fixing some problem in his car. Ken didn't really understand how the thing worked but Chardsy was determined to fix whatever the problem was.
Ken pulled the chair back up to the table and, leaning over, got back to work. He pulled the final wire out of the left-hand screen and, having it all on the table, took out a splicing tool and stripped the protection of the wire off with a quick flick of the wrist. Ken took the ends of both wires and began working them together, shaking his head slightly to clear it as he did so. He still had vestiges of that paper Chardsy had him read last night floating around in his head. Sighing, he paused a moment to consider it. That paper had been written almost three years ago but it was dead-on accurate on what he believed to be happening to the Real World. The paper first went into the problems; the way that humans were always tired, the odd detachment of everyone that he saw, and how dark it got during the night. It gave a plausible and disturbing explanation of why that was. Combined with what he had discovered it was more than merely disturbing. The paper went on to blame it all on the Odaiba Group, a conglomerate business out in Japan. Ken remembered the name from Chardsy's impromptu lecture the last night but what exactly they were was still eluding him. He'd just have to ask Chardsy --
A smashing sound echoed through the house, followed very shortly by a stream of curses. Ken sighed; he'd ask them if Chardsy survived fixing the car.
Ken fitted the now-spliced wires into the D-3's underside, mentally grimacing as he did so. D-3 components were a little hard to find in the Digital World. Now would not be the time to screw up a wiring job. Focusing a bit, he leaned forward, tightening the struts that held them together --
Abruptly, the pieces glowed briefly and fused together. Ken wiped the sudden sweat off of his head, grinning despite himself. He was right; the Seals treated the gate as a one-way device, and if he started with something inside the Digital World, he could manuever freely through the Seals. As it was, he had attached the signal to his Crest and used that, which always left a piece of itself inside the Digital World, as the anchor to allow his signal to pass. Feverishly now, he labored over the pieces of his modified D-3 and eventually snapped the case back on. He pushed a few buttons and the screen lit up. It displayed two words: Call Pending. Ken settled back to wait, resigned; transferring anything to the Digital World through the Seals was bound to take some time.
In the meantime... He got up and walked over to the kitchen. He'd been given permission to take whatever he wanted to eat from Chardsy before the man dropped off, but Ken was a bit uncertain. Opening a cabinet revealed several boxes of... something that had colorful labels and pictures. Ken took one of them out: it read "Apple Spice" and seemed to be some kind of "Oatmeal". Inside of it were several packets. He split one of them open and the contents fell out, scattering themselves over the part of the kitchen he was in. He raised an eyebrow, then turned and gathered up as much of the stuff as he could, throwing what got on the counter away. The label had directions on it, ones that called for boiling water and a cup. He got the cup easily enough and was about to ponder over what he should use to boil water when a beeping sound came from the other room. Ken abandoned his attempts to cook and ran out into the other room.
The screen was displaying a tired-looking Biyomon. "Regent?" she asked into the mic. "Are you there?" Ken snatched up the D-3 and saw that she wasn't alone; what looked to be half of the staff .
"Yeah!" Inwardly, he was rejoicing. He'd done it!
"Hey! What do you need, Regent?" Biyomon seemed to lose some of the exhaustion. Ken noticed but his thoughts were a little centered on what he needed to do. "Where exactly are you, anyway?"
He glanced around the room, noting the posters again as he did so. Something was familiar about that redhead... "Welcome to Casa del Chardsy," he said wryly. "First, I need to talk to Agumon and Stingmon. Can you get them in here on the line?"
"Sure!" Biyomon then turned away from the mic and called out instructions. The people in the background moved around, and presently Biyomon looked back at the screen. "Agumon's asleep, but Stingmon's on his way."
"Okay. Thanks, Biyomon."
"Regent... can I ask you a question?" Ken glanced up from what he was ruminating, surprised. Biyomon had a look in her eyes that Ken had missed at first; it was a hungry, forlorn look. Ken couldn't turn her down, no matter what she asked.
"Sure."
"What's the real world... like?" I knew it, Ken thought to himself. I knew she'd ask that.
"It's hard to describe. I mean, there's cars and stores and all sorts of things; there's weird food that I don't know how to cook..."
Biyomon cut him off. "You never did learn how to cook, did you?" she asked, chuckling. "Always trying to help out the world."
"No, I always ate what you guys put in front of me," Ken protested. "Besides, it was good."
"It's gonna be hard on you to settle down." Biyomon chuckled again, but this time it was at Ken's mildly red ears. "Hey, look at that -- the Regent really is human!" With that, she burst out laughing.
"Anyway..." Ken said, and she pulled herself back together while he tamed his ears. "I haven't been very far yet. I haven't found out why the Internet's gone down the tubes, but I have a few guesses. I guess I'd be almost finished here in a wierd way, except for this new problem." Biyomon cocked her head to the left, looking quizzically at him. "For whatever reason, it's dark." She pulled back, dismayed. Ken continued, "It's dark here. I can't put it any plainer than that. I don't know why it happened, but something has changed here in the real world and it's made everything and everyone dark."
Biyomon stared at the video pickup. "That's terrible," she whispered.
"It's like the darkness ran here after we cleaned it out of the Digital World." Ken clenched a fist involuntarily. "It's different here; it isn't like I used to be. It's... I can't even properly describe it. It's like the whole world's just been drained. As far as I can tell, anyway."
Biyomon looked down at the mic, not meeting the Regent's gaze. "Is it... everywhere?"
Ken said, very softly, "I think so."
Biyomon glanced up. There were hints of tears on the edges of her eyes. "Anyway," she said quietly, "Stingmon just came in. Thanks, Ke-- uh, Regent." She pulled back, away from the mic pickup, and the much larger Stingmon came into the picture.
"Hey, Regent!" Stingmon looked very happy. "What's up?"
"Got the D-3 to punch a hole through the Seals. First off, how are things in the Digital World?"
Stingmon pulled out a pad and pencil. "Okay, here goes... the Keeper wanted me to remind you that the season's drawing to a close, and that you need to be back in the Capital for it. That's in two weeks, Regent. Next, Angemon wanted you to know that Whamon's been talking to the Helpers. They've been doing surface stuff -- no big breaks, but the groundwork is there. Datamon's beginning to build a new complex out in the desert for human-digimon relations, for after the Seals go down. It's probably going to be as big as the Seal complex is."
Ken rubbed his forehead. "Please tell me that he's not building a reverse pyramid again."
"Does he ever build any other way? Piedmon's flyers are right on schedule, but a Megadramon decided to fly out a few months early. He got into the flock and chaos ensued; Piedmon took him down quickly enough, but now things between the Devis and the Dramons are really, really tense."
"Keep them apart for now," Ken said. "When you get the chance, have a diplomatic team do something about their problems, but for now just avoid any conflict."
"Got it," the insect replied, and made a note of it. "We've also run into a few problems between people and the Protectors. Clashes between them and people who just want to live their lives. As of yet, we've kept things quiet and local, but before long, things'll be pretty bad."
Ken shook his head somewhat. "Tell me this: is Aquilamon ever mentioned in any of these reports?"
"No. In fact, he seems to be a moderate on the Protectors these days. He even ordered a group of Protectors to fall back when they tried to arrest a Gazimon for stealing."
"Good. I'm glad he's found a way to try and get along with the people."
"He's not that bad, Ken -- it's just, you know, he can't deal with relationships all that well."
"He could find a better way to express that," Ken retorted. "Alright, then, make sure you keep a loose eye on the whole organization. Better yet, cancel the alert. Nobody seems to be passing through into the Digital World, so we shouldn't have to worry about it."
"I was hoping you'd say that, Regent, because I've already done it. Now, what's going on over there?" Stingmon put his pad away and settled into his seat
Ken took a deep breath. "I think that I know what has happened to the Internet. I've been too busy trying to grasp what happened to the world itself, however, to focus too tightly on the Internet yet." Stingmon's gaze was clouded with a bit of confusion. "Sting, there's something really wrong with the real world. Something has happened to make the whole world go dark."
"Uh.. huh? Regent, I don't understand."
"Here's how it works. Keep in mind that I read most of this from an unconfirmed source and combined it with my own observations, so I can't say how accurate this is. First, the humans have these new reactors for power sources. They're called ED reactors and they work better than electricity, and they're a lot cheaper to produce, too; except that they draw on the energy of any humans around for power like my Spore does for its energy. When they have enough, they stop for a while and power devices like TVs until they need more." Stingmon was too stunned to react, and Ken continued: "That's only the first step, though. An Internet - like network entitled the VandeNet is designed to work with the Reactors in that it broadcasts energy through it to everyone who's surfing it. The catch is that it broadcasts the kind of energy my Spore eats."
"Dark energy..." Stingmon uttered, looking shocked. "It's on a computer, which has to run off of a ED reactor... and the humans absorb the energy like a sponge, because they're low on energy all the time..."
"And they get darker," Ken finished for him grimly. "It's bad, Stingmon."
"This is bad," the insect repeated. "Oh yeah it is."
"We need to test the long-term effects of this out, to understand what it's going to do to people."
"Okay..." Stingmon trailed off, getting it back together. "Alright. I'm gonna transfer you over to Datamon. It'll take a few minutes for him to answer. He'll be able to tell you how exactly to test this out -- neither of us are scientists." The insect managed to smile weakly. "Take care, Regent," he said, and the screen abruptly flashed over to read "System Busy".
Ken took the moment to glance up, sweating. Talking about the real world's problems was harder than he had imagined, and...
And...
And he had just noticed Chardsy, standing in the doorframe to his left, grease on hands, incredulous expression on his face, and slack jaw. Ken's mouth set itself in a very thin line.
"What the hell?" Chardsy managed, then made a squeak. He closed his mouth, swallowed, and tried again. "What the hell was all that about?!"
"Would you believe that this is how I contact Harvard?" Ken managed to say. Inwardly, he was kicking himself over blowing his cover. Chardsy reacted to that explosively.
"What the fuck, dude! You were fucking talking to a giant bug, who was talking back! What the hell do you expect me to believe, dude?! You fucking lied to me, you asshole!" Chardsy started pacing around the room, furious, waving his arms around. "You lied last night, and you lied right there in front of me. You ain't no Harvard grad boy. You ain't from around here at all -- you're from that crazy Digital World thing!"
Ken jerked his head up at this. "What do you know about the Digital World?" he asked sharply.
"I know what everyone else knows, dumbass! I knew that there was another world when it appeared in the sky ten years ago, and I saw some people go up there like everyone else! I know about the crazy fog thingie that happened over in Japan at the same time!"
"That was before my time," Ken said. Chardsy didn't seem to have heard him.
"And now, I see some crazy dude who doesn't know shit about what the world's dealin' with come in here and give orders to a giant bug! What the hell is a Regent, anyway?!" Some kind of ruler dude?!"
Ken usually had a large amount of patience to his name, but right now he had been drained of it over what had happened to the real world. "Yes," Ken replied tightly, "I do happen to run the place right now."
Chardsy stopped cold. "You serious, dude? Then why're you here?"
Ken kept the tight expression on his face. "I'm checking out why we lost contact with the Internet."
"Dude, that's..." He trailed off, staring straight ahead. Ken waited for him to finish. "Why me, dude?" he managed after a moment.
"You were the first person I saw that wasn't being affected by the machines, and you responded when I made my little proposition," Ken said. Chardsy looked over at him.
"What do you want from me?" Chardsy asked him.
"I want you to live your life," Ken replied seriously, "and let me tend to the world that I run."
"No dice, dude," Chardsy shook his head. "You get me involved in this, you gotta give a bit more than cash. I can always get cash, dude. This..." He trailed off again. "This is serious shit."
"Then you want to help?" Ken asked, confused and still somewhat upset at being caught. At about the same time, the Digivice went off and the screen cleared from the System Busy sign to reveal the unusual frame of Datamon on the screen. Chardsy stiffened up somewhat at the digimon's more unorthodox appearance.
"Regent, hello," the digimon grated out. "It's quite the surprise hearing from you, what with the Seals and all. You must tell me how you managed to punch through them so easily when you get a chance. We certainly haven't had much to do around here other than that, though; it's been as quiet as a mouse otherwise. Anyway, you wanted me for something?"
"I need to use my D-3 to take energy readings and confirm a report, and I'd like to know how to do it without any major tools." Chardsy closed his jaw, settled back, and watched with the faintest edge of a grin on his face.
"Sure," Datamon said. "I just need for you to put the D-3 down on some kind of surface and I'll send you some tools. After your little retooling of the D-3 I believe that it in itself will be sufficient for a transfer." Ken did so, setting the black object down on the nearby table that he had labored at all that morning. After a few seconds of Datamon manipulating controls in the background the little device's screen suddenly flared with light; both Ken and Chardsy pulled back somewhat, hands or arms raised to block out the light. The sigil for Kindness, a single rose crown, was clearly outlined in the glow; and it quickly resolved to reveal another small device next to the D-3; a small boxy device that had no screen, just scopes and a few dials. Chardsy stared at the new device while Ken picked up the D-3.
"How do I control it?" Ken asked.
"It's simple," Datamon said smugly. "You merely have to place the device in the general vicinity of any kind of energy source and it will be able to parse what kind of energy it is and the amount. It can also tell how much energy the source should have -- that's what the second dial is for, on the left." Ken tossed the device over to Chardsy, who caught it and examined it with wide eyes.
"Christ," he muttered to himself in amazement.
"Thanks, Datamon. I'll send the results over to you when I can obtain them." Ken was about to turn the device off when Datamon held up a hand, stopping him.
"Make sure you get a good, solid sample," Datamon said. "To do an accurate survey, you need no less than ten thousand people."
"I know," Ken said. "Oh, and don't build an upside-down pyramid this time. Goodbye, Datamon," he said, and cut off the transmission before Datamon's startled response could be sent through. "Well?" he asked Chardsy.
"I don't know, man, this just isn't what I could have ever expected..." Chardsy dropped the reader on the table next to Ken's D-3 and collapsed in a nearby chair. Ken remained silent, allowing Chardsy to collect himself. After some time, Chardsy's lip twitched upwards and he glanced at Ken. "So.. you, uh, gonna do somethin' about Odaiba?"
"If they're at fault, then yes, I will," Ken responded. "I have a new problem, though. Do you know where I can find ten thousand different people?"
"Yeah," Chardsy said, and he sounded better. More like the man that Ken had met the night before at the pizza place. "Yeah, I know exactly where we can find that many people. More. A lot more."
At Ken's quizzical glance, Chardsy indicated the large cardboard cutout in the corner. "We're gonna go to a concert, man. We're gonna see Gardening Sincerity live."
****
Miyako Inuoe was ready to take on the world. She was dressed as a simple secretary, with clearances up to the twentieth floor of the Odaiba Group, she had a recording pad, she had an assistant of her own -- a well- dressed and still slightly dazed Takeru Takaishi, now clad in a hat to hide the dressing -- and she had an assignment; follow the American tour group around the lower parts of the building, take notes, and turn in her observations to her supervisor, Mr. Nakamura, when she was done.
She had no intention on doing that for its own sake; she was here for her comrades! She and the others were ready for battle, too -- they carried miniature versions of the tasers that the team used when it was hitting buildings. They wouldn't last as long nor stun as hard but they'd be quite sufficient for the task at hand. Miyako had no illusions on whether she'd have to use it. The only question was when and on who.
Miyako knew quite a bit about the way the Odaiba Group operated. It was a huge building of hundreds of employees; it had perhaps twenty vice presidents and almost eighty supervisors. Each supervisor was responsible for ten people under their direct command, and the twenty vice presidents were responsible for four supervisors. It was a smooth chain of command, except for one thing: Miyako had a mole in the organization at the supervisor level; a careful, thorough, well-respected supervisor without ambition named Jyou Kido. Jyou was twenty-two and the only supervisor allowed on the 64th floor; it was his personal medical wing. He had been chosen for that by the President because of his medical knowledge.
He had allowed her to slip inside the headquarters unnoticed before, and the two of them had drilled the thing to a science. It was harder for him to take on four people, and he was worried, but he had allowed Miyako to do it, this one time only. He knew, of course, that there were prisoners inside the Odaiba Group, and had told them where they were being held; in the basement laboratory, which was run by scientists that may as well have been robots, so focused was their concentration. Jyou was expected to be on the 64th floor for the day, taking care of one of the scientists -- Miyako didn't know which one -- but had managed to slip her a pair of card keys for the basement. They were generic things and completely untraceable.
Of course, if she didn't do her part well, he would pay the price. Miyako didn't know what that would be but she had no intention on finding out.
The tour group rounded a corner and the man in the front -- she didn't recognise him -- waved a hand at the wall on the right, explaining some minor thing about the company's ED-3 reactors. There was an appropriate chorus of "oohs" and "ahhs" from the crowd, and Miyako jotted down what the specific reactions of the people she was assigned to watch. Beside her, Takeru's camera whirred as he shot another ten megs of digital film. The group stopped there, to watch the preprepared video of what was happening, and Miyako allowed her mind to wander somewhat.
Aya was down below in the basement already. She was assigned as a custodian for the science labs and had been down there for almost five hours now. Miyako was worried about Aya's restraint; she had to deal with rude scientists and endless dusting; that wasn't good for a person's relaxation. Kevin was a receptionist for the basement floor. It was a match made in hell but Kevin's humor should have been enough to keep all but the most upset people thinking that he was merely incompetent rather than a spy.
The tour group turned towards the elevators and Miyako realized that they had made it to the twentieth floor; her assignment was over. Her schedule, prepared by Jyou, had an hour-long slot open for lunch. Takeru was her assistant in this and as such he had the break too. The large man led the group into the elevator and Miyako and Takeru, along with almost twenty other people, were free to go for the moment.
Miyako wasted no time. "Come on, Mr. Takaishi, we need to get to lunch." She dropped off her accumulated notes in a nearby basket while striding towards the stairway.
Takeru dropped his camera in the same basket, walking slowly. He was still a bit woozy, but he remembered his lines. "Yes, Ms. Inoue," he spouted faithfully and dumbly, and followed her to the stairway. She zipped her card on through and it obligingly unlocked. She moved through it, closing it behind her, and Takeru mimicked her action with his card. The door also acknowledged his presence and they both went down the concrete stairs to the first floor.
She slid her card on through the reader and opened the door, letting it fall shut without passing through. Takeru did the same. Now, the building's computers had acknowledged the two of them outside of any secure area, and Jyou's job and reputation were safe. Pulling out the special cards, ones that Jyou had created for this kind of sneaking around, she walked over to the door marked "LAB/STORAGE: CLEARANCE EMPLOYEES ONLY" and slid the card through the red-lit slot. It beeped once, the lock's red light changed to green, and the door unlocked itself.
She stepped through the entrance and said, "Okay. You go and find Kevin; I'm gonna meet up with Aya. Catch you on the other side, Takeru." He nodded.
"Try to keep her under control." With that, he strode down the hall to the reception / relaxation area that the scientists maintained. She went the other way, towards the labs themselves.
She encountered Aya on her third trip through the halls. Aya was dressed as a generic custodian and was covered with dust; it made her look tired and ghastly. "Hi," she managed to say. "I hate this." She coughed.
Miyako said, "Well, finding the others and we're getting out of here. We need to find a quick and easy exit."
"Your spy didn't know?"
"He's always up on the higher floors; he doesn't know much about the basement level." The two of them started away from the area, walking out towards the stairway that Miyako and Takeru had arrived in. They had crossed the middle of the area when they turned a corner and encountered something neither of them had planned for; one of the President's Assistants was coming through. He was a huge man, dressed in a solid black Armani tuxedo, and rumored to be kindly, but he was an Assistant to the most ruthless man Miyako had ever known. Despite Miyako's suddenly wildly beating heart she, along with Aya, managed to keep ahold of herself and moved politely out of his way. He walked past them without a second glance. Trailing in his wake, though...
Trailing in his wake were people she had known in a previous life. Behind him were two members of the elite Squad A: the redheaded Sora Takenouchi and the blue-eyed blond Yamato Ishida. Both wore no expression and simply followed the hulking Assistant down the hallway towards some place in the labs. Sora, whom she had had beside her to laugh and yell and be girls around; Yamato, who had shown her an artist's perspective on life and people, one of the rare guys that she could be mostly relaxed around. The shock and her already high heartbeat became too much for Miyako; the three of them seemed to fuzz together into one spinning blob...
Miyako slowly became aware of Aya waving her hand in front of Miyako's face and she shook her head; it seemed suddenly clogged up. "Miya?" Aya was asking worriedly. "Are you alright?"
"What happened?" Miyako asked dimly. "I feel dizzy."
"You collapsed in the hallway," Aya grunted out, "and I dragged you into an empty lab before anyone could see us."
Meanwhile, Takeru had managed to make his way over to the reception area, which was completely empty; the scientists being at work. Still a bit woozy, he had sat down for a minute or two to clear his head. While he was down, someone came up from behind him and glanced down at him. "Hey there, TK."
Takeru glanced up, surprised. "Kev?"
Kevin grinned. "You're the best thing that's happened all day around here. I've never been so bored in my life." He made a face. "So when do we get everyone out?"
"You know where they are?" Takeru replied, astonished.
"Sure," Kevin said, his grin edging towards a self-satisfied smirk. "They're all in that room over there. When do we pull them out?"
"Right now," Takeru replied, and got up carefully. He adjusted the hat ever-so-slightly and nodded towards the door marked "STORAGE: CLEARANCE 3" and, pulling out one of Jyou's cards, walked right towards the door. Kevin followed him nervously. "How did you find out, anyway?"
"It was in the morning reports that I had to read." Kevin shrugged. "I'm surprised it was there too, but more power to us, right?"
"Convenient," Takeru said, and swiped the card into the reader; once it beeped, he pulled the door open, walking into the area. Unsurprisingly it was an enormous warehouse-style room, and they stood on a catwalk above it, able to see all of the well-lit room beneath them. He and Kevin walked quietly over to a dark corner, letting the door close quietly behind them. The area was littered with Odaiba Group personnel, some of them with guns. Thankfully, none of them seemed to have picked up on Takeru and Kevin's arrival. Directly below them, however...
Takeru had to bite his lip to keep from calling out. Below them, in a constuct roughly similar to a crude cage, were all of the others from the base. He immediately saw Hikari, off to one side with only Iori to keep her company, and she didn't look happy. His heart made a strange pang and he took his eyes off of her, trying to focus. Beside him, Kevin said, "Eighty-six people there. Everyone's there, all right. It's a miracle that nobody got killed or hurt in that raid other than you, TK."
"I'll say," he breathed out. "How do we get past the guards?"
"Easy," Kevin said. Takeru glanced at what Kevin was doing. Holding up the wired device, Kevin said, "We cause confusion and take them in the haze."
Takeru's eyes were wide. "Alright, Kevin. I didn't even think to grab one of those things."
With that, Kevin pulled the pins out of the four smoke grenades and tossed them on the floor, snapping up tiny goggles as he did so. Takeru ran over to the door and swiped his card, propping it open and allowing the light to shine through The grenades hit the ground smoking and made it all but impossible to see in the room. The prisoners, not sure what was happening, put up an enormous fuss, one that the room's size and design multiplied to impossibly loud. Meanwhile, Kevin roamed around the room with a miniature version of the group's heavy tasers in his hand, shocking guards who were too confused to fall back onto their training. After the first one, he scooped up the guard's assault rifle and carried that around with him too. The ones that ran towards the door in an attempt to go somewhere useful met Takeru's own taser and were shocked into unconsciousness.
Eventually Kevin ran out of guards to pop. Picking a part of the cage at random, he smashed the bar with his gun and strode inside. The others were afraid of him when he entered, as he was wearing tiny goggles and carrying a gun -- but he put that to rest when he took off the goggles and, picking a person at random, told him, "Geez, if you guys got all worked up like this when I was gone, I can't even imagine what the guards had to deal with!"
Iori was the first to figure it out. "Kevin?"
"It's me," he replied jovially. "Let's go, guys... Miyako's got the way out under control." He smashed other places in the cage and, as one, the group sped towards the only place they could make out in the smoke -- the lit, open door that Takeru was manning. Happy murmering spread through the crowd as they went up the stairs and out the door with Kevin and Iori in the lead.
Hikari was one of the last ones through the door; she stopped at Takeru, looking at his hat. "You're still hurt!" she scolded him, but hugged him desperately anyway, grinning wildly. After a moment and more quietly she murmered into his chest, "I didn't think I was walking away from this one. Thanks, Takeru."
He smiled down at the brunette in his arms. "Of course I was coming for you," he said quietly, then broke the embrace. He held Hikari at arms' length and said, "We've gotta go -- there isn't time for this stuff now!" With that, they ran back to join the others in a mad push for the middle area. "I only hope that Miyako came through for us!" he shouted over the din of ninety people running forwards.
The back door of the Odaiba Group was more of a shipping / receiving area, accustomed to nothing besides the occasional pizza delivery breaking up the monotony of trucks coming in and trucks coming out. The elderly security guard was, therefore, completely unprepared for Iori leading a yelling mass of people to hurtle towards his area, carrying with them in the press perhaps a half-dozen real employees. They surged towards the open shipping door -- large enough for two tractor-trailers -- and scattered upon getting into the open. The only thing that he did before being swept aside by the crowd was slam a fist onto the ALERT button on the wall.
Miyako had managed to get over the initial shock and was moving again, Aya behind her. "Jyou didn't tell me much about this place. Any idea where there would be an emergency exit or something?" Miyako asked while glancing down a long hallway. They walked past closed doors and quiet laboratories. Nobody paid the slightest bit of attention to either of them.
"Who were those people?" Aya asked.
"They were some people I used to know," Miyako said, irritated and upset still. "Are you going to answer my question?"
"No idea," Aya said. "I guess we'll just have to use the stairs, presuming we find them."
Miyako shook her head. "I hope that somebody careful got everyone up out the back door already. This is taking too much time. I don't think they're he--"
It was about then that the worst thing that could have happened happened: the alarms went off. Jyou had shown her an alarm going off before and it was loud, obvious, and the whole company was trained in what to do. She swore, knowing the consequences: that meant that Kevin and Takeru had gotten them out faster than she thought! She wasn't ready to get outside! She broke into a run, turning corners hard and moving towards the stairway.
Aya didn't follow her. Not having Miyako's training, she could only stare at the alarm. To her, that meant that they had failed; the Odaiba Group knew that they had been there! Even now, security forces would be swarming all of her friends and new family... Aya's fear transformed into rage. She resolved to go down swinging and made her way towards a particular room she had noticed earlier, thinking only of how to hurt the Odaiba Group.
She moved to the right and ran for the far guard station; there was one on each floor but this particular one didn't seem to be manned by anyone. It was a place that she had cleaned earlier. She knew it was full of guns and grenades and other implements of destruction. She broke the window in the door, reaching around through the new hole and opening the door. She ran inside, fully intending on going out in a blaze of glory... only to find a small critter of some sort inside. It wasn't very tall or very big; it merely had huge eyes and white/black fur; it reminded Aya vaguely of a cat. While she was staring at it, it glanced up at her. Curiously, its eyes seemed to glow slightly; they flared up with light once, and the world quickly spiralled away for Aya.
Miyako got as far as Lab 32 when the security doors started slamming shut. She dived inside the lab before its doors came crashing down; she knew that her bogus cards wouldn't work on the Odaiba Group doors now, and being somewhere was better than being stuck out in the hallway. She glanced around wildly, searching for something to find a way to escape -- and saw the far screen, still on even though the room was unoccupied otherwise.
Takeru was at the tail end of the group, but he had let Kevin use the card key -- had given it to him when he'd run by where Takeru was holding the door -- and the group had mostly streamed out of the reception area, up the stairs, and out of the building's rear entrance when it all went bad. The alarm had sounded moments before but it was a little too late; the vast majority of the group had already made it outside and even now Takeru could see the open door; with Iori at his side he pressed forwards, attempting to make it outside.
He never made it.
Kevin had stayed behind to keep an eye on the area, brandishing the assault rifle at any employee that came close to them. However, on the far side of the hallway, hidden by the curve of the hallway, a Squad 1 member carefully lined up Kevin's chest in his sniper sight. He squeezed the trigger ever so slightly, allowing the recoilless gun to emit a little puff. On the other side of the scope Kevin dropped his gun and went right over, crashing down on his head. There was no blood.
Iori gasped when Kevin went down. He ran over to his friend, grabbing the body and pulling it towards the door; Hikari and Takeru joined him, and that's all that the sniper had been hoping for. Three short puffs later all four of them were down on the floor. The sniper made his way casually over to the downed foursome, pulling out a device and dropping his tranquilizer rifle as he went. Pulling the needle out of Kevin's chest, he scanned him with the little device; when it came up with a negative beep the sniper, Tai Kamiya, pulled out another needle and pressed it into Kevin's arm. He then pulled out his radio and called for pickup, even as the suddenly lifeless body of Kevin began to stiffen.
Miyako looked across at the screen and realized that she'd sat in front of it before she knew what she was doing. It was running some kind of test -- one that looked familiar somehow. It displayed cycling lines of text underneath a picture of some kind of on-screen box item, one that flickered with a grayish light, similar to a TV without a signal. Computers were her old specialization and she clicked a few times, trying to figure out what kind of program it was. It was familiar and comforting somehow, and even as her brain clamored at her to do -something- other than stand around and mess with computers she couldn't help it. She brought the machine to a screen that read: "Test? 1)Y 2)N"
The door opened.
Miyako spun around, grasping for her taser, and stopped abruptly, her breath coming out of her in one long gasp. She couldn't see the creature on the other side of the room well enough to be sure, but Miyako discarded any idea of that when the person came into the light. Except it wasn't a person, really; it was white from the chest up, and solid black from the chest down. It was small and obviously feline; on its tail was some kind of ring.
"Gatomon?" Miyako whispered, hushed, and sat down on the keyboard hard, forcing the computer behind her to beep. "What happened to you?"
The cat smiled grimly. "Glad you remember me, traitor." She jumped up on a nearby desk, glaring daggars at Miyako. "Or do you really remember me any more than the others do? I doubt it."
"You're -- we thought --"
"Thought what? That the Emperor had killed me? He can't do a thing now; he was killed by his own creation, just like you and the others left me and Daisuke and V-Mon to die at that thing's hands!" Gatomon shrieked. "It thought that it would be worse for me to live, so it threw me out into the real world! Only the Odaiba Group took me in -- nobody else would even bother!"
Miyako had gone extremely pale. "We had to run!" she yelled. "Daisuke told us to run!"
"You abandoned us!" Gatomon shrieked back and threw back her left paw. "You'll pay right now -- LIGHTNING CLAW"
A powerful blast of light tore its way out of her left paw as she brought it forward, the scything energies slamming into and through Miyako's right shoulder with a loud crunching sound. Miyako screamed and fell backwards, knocked by the force of the attack's impact into the computer screen --
--which was brightly lit, running its own test that she had initialized when she sat on the keyboard--
--and she fell through the screen, shrieking in terror and pain, and hearing Gatomon's frustrated yowl as her target went somewhere she couldn't follow even as the room above exploded into light and smoke.
****
Miyako fell through a sea of stars. She tumbled down a waterfall, through an oddly glistening ocean, falling deep down, through a layer of stone, and into another sky. She felt nothing; not even her shoulder, as she dropped through another waterfall, this one with seemingly no end. Ahead of her, however...
Ahead of her was a patch of distorted space, where there was no waterfall or light. Ahead of her she could see where something had taken a piece of the place that she was falling through and twisted it beyond recognition. Ahead of her she could hear a dull thrumming and feel a faint vibration in the air, one growing worse and worse as she approached the area and it was getting so bad she couldn't hear herself think if only it would go away go away go...
Miyako passed out and fell into the grasp of the Seal.
****
Another day, another three-mile run around the Chamber, the Keeper mused to himself.
He was tall and relaxed, thin and quiet, honest and open with himself and those around him. He was wearing a simple robe, as opposed to the heavy one he wore most of the time or the loose uniform he wore for the season. At one point in time in his life he had run five miles a day, but he never really got anything else out of it that he couldn't get out of three.
He rounded a corner and stopped, slowing down as he approached a door in the Chamber. The Regent had sworn to get back in time for the end of the season, Stingmon had said, and if there was nothing else the Keeper could say for the Regent it was that he knew how to keep his word. Still, it was the Keeper's carefully considered idea that the Regent had never learned how to relax to the point of having fun. It was too bad, too; he coulda been a heckuva player, if he'd just chill a bit.
The Keeper opened the big heavy door, slowing down somewhat. When he had become the Keeper the Chamber of the Chosen was like a sanctuary; now that he was used to it he still thought of it as a sanctuary, just one that he was used to. Yeah. He walked through the area, noting the Acolytes along the right side of the place. They wanted to help out and clean around the Chamber, and who was he to say no? They were very thorough and they weren't hard on the eyes at all, either. He chuckled a bit at that and went on through, to the innermost part of the Chamber.
It was here that the Digieggs that Gennai had stolen from Piedmon had been incubated and the Digimentals had been constructed. It was here that he went, every day, to keep an eye on the crests and sigils of the Chosen. It was a disappointing time because he could tell how closely a Chosen was following their sigil and, lately, that wasn't happening much. He shook his head at his own cynicism and walked forward...
And stopped dead. There, in front of him, clothes torn and shoulder blasted, unconscious and bleeding on his floor, was a lavender-haired woman from the mildly distant past. She was one of the few Chosen who's sigil was still shot through with color but her breathing came erratically; even from this distance he could tell she was barely managing to breathe at all. He ran to her side, pulling out a small flask out of his robe as he did so and pouring the contents onto her wounded shoulder. It glowed briefly, pulsed once, then faded away. The bleeding stopped and her breathing became more relaxed almost immediately. He leaned back, sweating despite himself, then gathered up the woman in his arms and walked back into the main area.
Upon entering the area all activity outside stopped dead as his Acolytes all stared at the woman in his arms. "Prepare a recovery room," the Keeper said wryly. "It seems we have a guest."
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