A Little Side Adventure

Episode Six: Help and Escape

By Shelli-Jo Pelletier

(ussfantasy@hotmail.com)

***************

T.K. yawned and rolled over on his back, his wings stretched out across the sand. He giggled. "If we had snow we could make snow angels."

"Snow angels?" asked Tokomon, blinking his bright black eyes. "What're those?"

"Oh, lotsa fun!" the little dragon enthused, rolling back over onto his stomach to look at his Digimon. "But we can't play them here." T.K. sighed. He was tired of waiting near the ledge. But Gabumon said that if they weren't there when Sarith got back then she would worry, and that made sense. He just wished she would hurry up!

Koromon, perched on the edge of the cliff where he was keeping a careful lookout, diverted T.K.'s attention. "Here they come!" the little pink head called out loud.

Everyone else scrambled to join the In-Training Digimon. Briefly the dragon wondered if Koromon was talking about Sarith and her parents, but more likely it was Biyomon and Tentomon returning. Why would Sarith be down in the valley?

He was right. It was the parrot and insect Digimon, rising up out of the greenery below. They carried a small pile of that purple fruit on a wide leaf between them. Panting, the two flyers set the leaf on the ground next to a slightly bigger pile of the same fruit. It had taken a couple of trips, but now there was enough for the rest of the Digimon.

Biyomon and Tentomon rested their tired wings—they weren't as exhausted as Sarith had been because the wind had picked up not too long ago and they had shared the weight between them, but they were still pretty tired—as the other Digimon dug in. The duo had eaten on the valley floor so they wouldn't have to carry their own meals up the long climb, and T.K. was still full from earlier. So together they sat and waited for the others to finish.

"Mmmmm!" Gomamon relished, flipping another of the juicy fruit into his mouth. "These are yummy!"

"Sure are!" Palmon agreed.

"Now if only . . . munch munch . . . Sarith would get back . . . munch munch . . . so we could rescue our friends." Koromon swallowed and licked his lips.

Biyomon fluffed her wings with a satisfied smile on her beak. "Now that we've got some good food in us we'll be able to digi-volve if there's trouble," she told the little green dragon. "I mean, as soon as we find Sora and the others." Her cheerful face fell for a moment and she sighed.

T.K. didn't want her to be sad, so he gave her a hug (kind of awkward in his dragon shape) before turning to his Digimon. "Even you, Tokomon?" he asked.

"Yup!" the little In-Training assured just as he inhaled a whole purple fruit, almost as big as he was. His sharp teeth made short work of it, splattering dark red juice everywhere.

T.K. grinned and then decided to watch his tail twitch for a while. It was really interesting. He'd never had a tail before! He wasn't even telling it to; it was twitching all on its own! This of course led to an examination of his wings, which were equally neat. He could make them flap, but it stirred up the dust and Tentomon asked him to stop. They were still a little sore from when he fell off the cliff anyway. Still, it was pretty cool to be a dragon!

"T.K., I asked you to stop making the sand fly everywhere!" Tentomon complained again, trying to block his face with his sickle-like hands.

"It's not me!" T.K. flattened his ears along his head and squinted against the particles whirling around. Tokomon bounded over and crouched by his side, ears quivering alertly. The other feasting Digimon quickly quit their lunch. They looked around for trouble. However, no one thought to look straight up.

Until the gigantic black shadow fell over the entire party.

"Digimon stand ready!" growled Gabumon, taking a protective stance around the green dragon. The other Digimon followed suit, all eyes on the sky. They might not have been able to digi-volve, but they would defend their charge with all their Rookie and In-Training strength.

"No need for such precautions." The words were soft, yet immense. No one had any trouble understanding. And under them was a strong repetitive noise, the swooshing of a great amount of air being moved. As the shadow passed from overheard, the sun shone down again and the swirling sand increased in intensity. Both these factors momentarily blinded them all. There was a dull thump that was felt more than heard, and as the fine particles settled to the ground, silence fell. The voice and noise had stopped. Their eyes cleared.

Before the speechless group of eight towered a tall, regal being. He was fully the size of Birdramon. Completely pale white in color, almost translucent, his eyes were deep and green and sparkled from beneath heavy ridges. But unlike Sarith and Tok, his huge pupils were rounded, not slits. He didn't have any horns, but he did have a small row of spines running up his snout and between his ears.

He was a big dragon. There was silence.

"Pssst!" whispered Tokomon urgently, nudging his partner and breaking the spell. With effort T.K. wrenched his gaze from the giant and looked down at the Digimon. Tokomon was pointing toward one of the mammoth dragon's front feet. His once-human partner looked.

A mint green dragon with a big grin on her face greeted his sight. She jumped off the foot she had been sitting on—passing claws like huge sickles—and trotted up to them.

"I'm back!" the female dragon announced.

"Sarith!" he cried joyfully, glad to see her wings folded back at her sides. He had been worried that she had broken them or something.

There was a deep rumbling noise from the white dragon. Sarith's ears flattened as she skidding to a stop, her grin turning sheepish. "Ah, I decided against getting my parents," she told T.K. and the Digimon. "This is Brell. He's my teacher."

T.K. gulped, because Brell was staring at him with those big green eyes. The dragon wasn't frowning, but he wasn't smiling either. He just stared.

Sarith craned her head back to look up at him. "Brell? What is it?"

The big dragon rumbled again. T.K. realized that it wasn't an angry sound, but a sigh. "It is true. I had trouble believing that your brother could accomplish such a feat, but it truly is human." His great head slowly shook from side to side.

T.K. wondered how he could tell. He also felt a bit of resentment for being called an "it."

"I told ya, didn't I?" retorted Sarith, starting forward again. At this Brell gave a snort of warning, sending a brief flash of white-hot flame from his nostrils that dissipated in the air. The little mint green dragon whirled, staring up at her mentor with eyes narrowed. Then she deliberately turned her back on him and advanced between Gabumon and Gomamon (the Digimon hadn't dropped their protective circle around T.K. and Tokomon). Only when she stood beside the smaller green dragon did she turn around to face Brell.

"I see," murmured the large white dragon. Sarith nodded once. "Very well."

T.K., afraid Brell would be angry with him, edged closer to Sarith. She favored him with a smile of reassurance as the giant dragon slowly settled to the ground, stretching his long bulk out on the desert sand. His head came to rest a few yards from the small bunch of dragons and Digimon, turned sideways so one of his green eyes could scrutinize them. His pointed ears swiveled toward them. "Describe this thing that chased you again, Sarith."

She launched into the story, starting at the point where they had first seen it, leaving the oasis. She told of how they trekked through the desert, found the hidden valley, and how they had been spared but the others obviously taken. Brell listened to it in silence, and didn't even seem to mind T.K. or the Digimon adding their own parts to the story. When they were done the aged teacher made a contemplative sound.

"We deal with someone who knows what he is doing," he told them solemnly. His eye rolled skyward, as if he was searching the clouds for answers. Finally he slowly stood and looked down at them again. "Human, come forward," ordered Brell bluntly. The dragon's countenance betrayed nothing.

T.K. didn't move. "It's okay," whispered Sarith, nudging his shoulder with her snout. "He's a good teacher. He won't hurt you, T.K. I promise." She made sure she spoke loud enough for the Digimon to hear her too, then dropped her voice to whisper in his ear, "He's just testing you."

Still the little dragon hesitated. He was afraid. Brell was very big, and he didn't seem to like him very much. He could squish him with one foot! But T.K. knew if Matt were here, he would go forward. Matt wasn't afraid of anything. Trying to keep an image of his big brother in mind, T.K. took one shaking step toward the giant dragon. Then another. A third step took him past Gabumon, who spared him an encouraging glance before returning his eyes to Brell. Tokomon, who had been walking beside him, stopped as he passed the dog-like Digimon. A couple more steps and he stood all alone, his friends behind him and the giant dragon gazing down at him.

Brell lifted one huge forefoot into the air, claws gleaming in the sunlight. T.K.'s insides wiggled with fear. He was going to step on him! Sarith was wrong! Too terrified to run away, the little dragon squeezed his eyes shut and waited to be squished.

But it never happened. T.K. chanced a peek just in time to see a milky white light collect around the raised claw, mixed with pale pastel colors. The opalescent glow floated toward T.K. like slow-moving fog, settling around him. Now he watched with both eyes open, and his fear was replaced with wonder. The light made his tummy feel funny, like he was on a roller coaster right before the big drop. And his head felt like when he stayed out in the sun too long.

The fog faded away, and T.K. could see Brell again. He turned around to look for Tokomon and the others, but the movement felt weird and he had to sit down in the sand. That's when he heard Tokomon calling his name and, looking up, saw him running toward him. It wasn't until the little In-Training Digimon leapt into his lap that he realized he was a little boy again, instead of a little dragon.

"I'm back to normal!" T.K. cried, hugging his Digimon. The others crowded around him, exclaiming in shock and saying how great it was to have him back. Sarith grinned and tapped him lightly on his helmet with her tail. Brell chucked deep in his throat at the scene below him.

Hearing the sound, T.K. scrambled to his feet, still holding Tokomon. He turned back to the white dragon and bowed his head, saying earnestly, "Thank you Mr. Brell, sir! Thanks a lot!"

Brell shrugged his shoulders, wings fluttering in the movement. "My student made a mistake, however good his intentions. It is my responsibility to right his errors." But the stern words and tone of voice were softened by a faint smile that lit his snout. "Now, we must hurry. I fear your friends and Tok are in great danger from this evil he sensed hunting you."

T.K.'s eyes shone. "We're going to go save my brother?"

The great white head nodded, and there were cheers from the small party below. Soon Sarith, T.K. and Tokomon were nestled in one of Brell's large forefeet, and the remaining six Digimon in the other. Broad white wings—wider than a house when fully expanded—spread and beat at the dry desert air. Sand blew up all around, but they were safe in Brell's cupped claws. Then they were rising into the air and spiraling up above the endless wasteland, the lush valley that had sheltered Sarith and T.K. shrinking to a tiny green crack below them in moments.

* * *

Tok and the Digi-Destined-turned-dragons jumped to their feet in alarm as the only door to the room unexpectedly opened. Briefly a tan-colored silhouette was seen in the doorway, then something was thrown into the room and the door slammed shut again. The Digi-Destined had gotten so used to seeing each other as dragons that it took them several long moments before they recognized just what, or more specifically who, had been tossed in.

"Izzy!" shrieked Mimi.

The boy on the floor flinched slightly but didn't otherwise respond. His eyes were squeezed shut and he was shivering, his legs drawn up to his chest.

"Izzy, are you okay?" Sora anxiously asked.

Matt chimed in. "What happened, man? What did they do to you?" Still no response. It was as if he wasn't even hearing them.

"Is anyone other than me wondering why he's no longer a dragon?" Joe asked. No one answered.

"He's in shock," Tok murmured into the silence.

"Well un-shock him!" snapped Tai, thrashing about in his cage. "This is our chance to get out of here! Izzy, snap out of it!"

The human's eyes obediently snapped open, but they had a blank, glassy look to them that nobody liked. "Izzy?" ventured Sora softly.

"Yeah. . . ." His voice was distant and hollow. Slowly, he sat up and leaned against the stone wall, staring off into nothing.

"What happened?"

"Don't wanna talk about it," he mumbled shortly.

"Good!" The other dragons all gave Tai looks of disbelief. "Less talk, more action," commanded the blue and orange leader. "Izzy, get over here and see if you can get us down." His face was set in a stern glower.

Matt growled. "You . . . you unfeeling jerk! Who do you think you are!? We're not your soldiers to be ordered around, Tai!" The golden dragon's cage swung with the force of his anger. "And even if we did jump at your beck and call—which we don't!—can't you see something happened to him? You are such a—"

"No, Tai's right." Izzy's low voice cut right through Matt's tirade. The auburn-haired boy was finally focusing his eyes on his six imprisoned friends. He blinked a few times, then continued. "We have to leave immediately. I'm not positive how much time we have remaining, but it can't be much. And Tok's life is in danger."

The real dragon swallowed. "Lucky me," he said flatly.

Using the wall as leverage, Izzy managed to stand up straight. He took a couple of steps away, shook his head to clear it.

The pink dragon made a small worried noise. "Are you okay, Izzy?"

"I'm fine," he told her absentmindedly, studying first the row of cages, then looking about the room. "But I can't reach you at your present height, and there's nothing in this room to stand on." He made his way over to the door and tried the handle, but it was locked. Having exhausted these two possibilities, Izzy tried the next most sensible—for him—thing. He took out his laptop, plopped back onto the ground, and began furiously typing.

Mimi sighed. "Well, it's been nice knowing you, Tok," she said, slumping back down in the bottom of her cage.

"For your information," Izzy informed her, sounding a lot more like his old self with every passing minute, "I'm attempting to discover a program that might assist us in escaping." His dancing fingers momentarily froze as a window popped up on the laptop's screen.

"What is it?" Tai asked, annoyed that he couldn't see.

The boy resumed his typing, calling up file after file. "It's the hieroglyphs I've found in two distinct different locations on Digiworld so far," he told the dragons, continuing to tap away as he spoke. "When I first came across them in the factory on File Island, I observed that the different symbols each pertained to different elements of the surrounding location." His black eyes lit up with inspiration. "If the same is true for Server. . . ." Abandoning his laptop, he scrambled back to his feet and approached the wall, digging his metallic paint pen out of his pocket. Quickly he redrew the squiggly symbol he had first experimented with in the factory. The dragons watched with fascination, having no idea what it was he was doing.

Izzy capped the pen. "Now, if this works. . . ." He used his finger to rub out part of the hieroglyph.

The room plunged into blackness.

"Prodigious!"

"Congratulations, Izzy," Tok said dryly. "You can turn out the lights."

Izzy shot him a look, which was missed in the darkness. By the glow of the laptop screen he fixed the symbol and the single small lamp mounted on the wall brightened again. "That was merely an experiment to determine if the physical properties of this room can be altered using the hieroglyphs," he explained, returning to his computer. "Now I just have to deduce what symbol we can utilize to get us out of here."

"How long is that going to take?" Sora asked.

"I have no idea."

The dragons sighed.

Twenty minutes later (time that Tok spent trying to ask Izzy questions, for a change, and that Izzy spent mostly avoiding them by saying he was attempting to concentrate), the boy sat up straight. "Got it!" Izzy exclaimed.

"All right!"

" 'Bout time."

"Can we get down now?"

"What did you find, exactly?"

Ignoring the various comments for a minute, Izzy returned to the spot on the wall where the symbol for light was drawn. Next to the squiggly shape he drew a square crisscrossed with six lines, like a star in a box. "This," he said without preamble, turning to the dragons, "is the symbol that regulates metal, just as the other regulates light. If my translations are correct, that is. Which I'm fairly certain they are."

"Great. He's 'fairly certain,'" groaned Joe. The others ignored him.

"When I disrupt the sequence, all the metal in the room should vanish, just as the lights went out when a piece of the symbol for light was removed," Izzy continued. "That would take care of the problems of both the cages and the locked door."

"Not the mention the Inhibitors," muttered Tok.

"Wait a minute," Sora spoke. "What about your laptop, Izzy? Isn't it made of metal too?"

"I'm already considered that," he returned. "After you're freed I'll simply reconstruct the symbol and everything should return to normal. Including my laptop."

"But isn't the paint you drew those hiero-things with made of metal too?" Matt pointed out with a frown.

"Yes, but since the metallic paint is actually what is used to construct the programming, it should remain unaffected." He had clearly thought all this through.

Joe wasn't assured. "There's that should again," the gray dragon sighed gloomily. He had been keeping track; there had been three. In his opinion that was a lot of "should" to ride a whole escape plan on.

Too bad for him no one was particularly interested in his opinion. With Tai's impatient, "Well what are you waiting for then? Get on with it!" Izzy reached out and erased part of the symbol.

Many things suddenly happened at once. The cages, as predicted, vanished. For Tok this wasn't a problem. For the others it was. Most of them managed to land on their feet. Tai even managed to glide to the ground. At that same moment the handle and lock disappeared from the door, leaving a circular hole in the wood. The door creaked open a few inches. There was also a thunk as the laptop fell apart, it's metal components gone. And the room was again plunged into darkness as the metal base of the wall lamp evaporated. Fortunately Izzy was standing right under it and as the glass bulb fell he caught it before it hit the ground.

"Ow . . . man, you could've warned us," Matt's voice grumbled in the darkness.

"I thought I did," Izzy replied. "Tok? I could use some light to redrawn the symbol."

"Not a problem." There was a bright flash as a ball of indigo-colored fire exploded in the air. Izzy quickly scribbled the missing piece back into the hieroglyph.

A ripple passed through the room, felt but unseen because of the darkness. Tok snorted and another burst of fire lit the blackness. He used the moment of illumination to approach the human boy and take the light bulb from his gloved hand. With a flap of his golden wings he rose into the air and screwed it back in to the metal fixture that had reappeared.

The brightness made all seven prisoners blink and rub their eyes. When they could see again they found six empty cages hanging from the ceiling in a row, the restored laptop sitting on the ground where Izzy had left it, and the door standing slightly ajar. There were six leather collars lying on the ground as well. Without the metal stud to hold them together and keep the spell active, the Inhibitors had become nothing more than normal strips of leather, and when the stud returned they were no longer around the necks of the dragons.

"I think my legs are broken," Joe announced, staring at them fixedly with his dark blue eyes as if they might jump to life by themselves at any moment. Sora, after helping Mimi to her feet, came over and told him flatly that she wasn't going to stand around and listen to him have another pity-party. Sheepishly the gray dragon stood up.

Tai was having a small problem with his wings. Having unfolded them to catch the air for his short glide, he couldn't quite remember how to fold them again. Finally he wrestled them back into place and, with a satisfied smile, approached Izzy and Tok.

"Izzy, you're a genius," he said earnestly, at the same time slightly annoyed that he had to tip his head back to look up at the boy's face. "If I ever tell you you're not pulling your weight in this group you have my permission to knock me on my butt." Izzy grinned at this, because he was the last person who would ever knock someone on his or her butt.

"If you ever tell anyone they're not pulling their weight in this group I'll knock you on your butt whether you give me permission or not," Matt retorted, coming up beside them. "Now let's get out of here and find T.K. and the Digimon."

Tok's blue-green eyes widened. "Sarith," he breathed, spreading his wings and taking to the air. He hit the door hard enough to make it fly open and slam against the stone wall of the hallway, eliciting alarm and irritation from the Digi-Destined. Hovering in the doorway for a moment, he motioned them to follow, then disappeared. The other dragons looked at one another, shrugged, and started heading for the door. Izzy came after, first packing up his laptop and pocketing his pen. It felt slightly strange being the only human being in the group, but his thoughts were more occupied with the sudden worry that they might run into Jakamon or Zophia or. . . . Shuddering, he ordered his brain to stop thinking so much for a change and hurried to catch up with his friends.