Chapter fourteen

:30~ Kyer, do you recognize the name "Lisa Ryder"? She was on Forever Knight at one point and stars as Captain Beka Valentine on Andromeda, but she ain't a redhead anymore ^_^.

Scarecrowmon opened his eyes to stare directly into the eyes of a crew of BIG humans. Not to mention a screaming headache. Before any of the people could bend down to touch him, the spellcaster started backing away in a crabwalk, trying his HARDEST to get away.

A little amused, a little sad, the source of the Digimon's pain muttered, "Rev, this is...a new friend of sorts. He...uh...knows the woman that came from the sky."

The priest blinked and bent down to seize Scarecrowmon, who retaliated by means of a fire spell, just harsh enough to allow him to slip away.

:30~ "On a hot summer night, would I offer my throat to the tiger with the red roses? On a hot summer night, would I offer my throat to the tiger with the red roses? On a hot summer night..."

"How long has he been doing that?" the half-Magog asked the skinny, Oriental, human female.

Kari shrugged, "Since you let him get away in the conference room. It's like...Harper said the thing that lets him talk only translates random thoughts, so he is trying-"

"-not to think about something that could get us all killed," Ken finished for my friend.

All of us, Kari, the alien, and me, turned around and stared at him where he just came down a ladder to gawk at a red humanoid facing a wall and chanting a warped version of Meatloaf to himself.

The dark-haired boy shrugged, "Think about it, we would be sitting ducks if not for him. We wouldn't know where Sarabi was, and she'd have blasted us. Clearly, he uses this talent to find out secrets, but he keeps his own. Now that the situation is reversed, he feels a little scared. Now why would that be?"

I shrugged, too. The former genius had a point, but...I had a hard time thinking of cute, little, red Scarecrowmon of withholding secrets that could get us killed.

Wait a sec, how much did I know about him? We were slaves together, and yet he withheld the most important secret of his life, knowing full well that I was just like him THE WHOLE TIME!

Or perhaps I wasn't just like him. Scarecrowmon could read minds in all forms. If Genaii *had* toggled with the little one's data, why had he not done the same with every one of us? Was it simply because Scarecrowmon was made for Sarabi, his goddaughter, and the first? Or perhaps is something so small, fair, and...cute the guardian of more firepower than one can deal with?

I remembered Trance, the golden alien, and wondered if perhaps this was her curse as well.

About that time, the big dark-skinned man, Tyr, thudded his way down the hall with his brows knitted. He paused a few feet away from Reverend Bem and simply stared for a few seconds. We stared back, the deathly silence only marked by Scarecrowmon's incessant rambling.

The Nietzchean finally drew a breath and said, "Our captain wants the children to come to the home planet of the Haigira."

:30~

Ken we couldn't pry away from the Maru's windows. He wanted to see all of the thousands of glittering, shiny stars. We were all like that, eager to learn all there was and absorb all its beauty. Rev Bem laughed and our youthful innocence and explained to us the workings of Slipstream, but we couldn't get it anymore than they could grasp the workings of Digiworld.

We must have looked like idiots to the natives.

Scarecrowmon was the only one who seemed unenthused. He immediately crawled under the "dashboard" of the ship and started messing with stuff. Beka didn't seem to mind until music started blaring.

*It was a hot summer night and the beach was burnin' there was fog crawlin' over the sands/when I listened to your heart I heard the whole world turnin'/I could see shooting stars goin' through your velvet hands/*

"Hey!" Beka shouted. "Get out of there!"

I couldn't pry Scarecrowmon from his hiding space. He went oddly silent with his eyes glazed and, though he unhooked Harper's device, he seemed to be singing with it.

*You took the words right out of my mouth/oh, it must have been while you were kissin' me*

Beka fiddled with a switch and the music wouldn't turn off.

"Well, the kid must like this song," Ken Huffed. Wormmon smiled and danced with the music. Kari seized Scarecrowmon by his hands and tried to dance with him.

He looked a little startled at first, but since he could levitate, he had no problems.

"Okay, guys, settle down, we're about to go into Slipstream. You, uh, may want to grab onto something," Beka ordered over her shoulder.

Scarecrowmon stopped dancing and held is place in midair, I sat on Kari's lap as she wedged herself and Wormmon into a corner.

Ken was the only one who didn't listen and he was knocked flat by the twisting.

:30~

I smelled blood as we landed. As soon as Rev stepped from the ship, he hung his head.

"The Haigira are a peaceful people. They didn't deserve to die."

Gently, Scarecrowmon took the priest's hand and whispered through his mechanical vice box, "In you they live."

Rev smiled at the boy and pointed to where a bunch of makeshift tents clustered together.

Inside them was a horror story. Every writhed in pain on beds, clawing at their stomachs and screaming. They were pale and sweating, some even begged to die, other simply chanted, "In they I live. In they I live. In they..."

"That's how Magog reproduce, by placing larvae inside living hosts."

It was nothing to Scarecrowmon and I, who had seen things just as bad, but Ken, Kari, and Scarecrowmon ran outside the tent and I heard the sounds of them being violently ill.

I thought that it was Kari and the others coming back, but when I turned around, this hair *thing* was staring at me.

He paused at me for only a few seconds and then turned to Rev and handed him a small device, saying, "The creature left this behind. I was spared because I was instructed to give it to you."

Soldier's guilt, I realized. The guilt of having lived when your comrades died.

Rev stared at the small metal object for a few minutes and then muttered, "I must show this to Dylan."