Chapter 5: And What Comes Of It?
Misty clutched Starmie's pokéball, hoping that she'd be able to survive this fight. Brock had the same attitude with Steelix's pokéball, but neither of them saw what (or, more to the point, who) was coming: they only saw his effects. A row of saberstrikes exploded and bits of them went flying.
"What was that?"
"You got me," Brock answered.
He didn't stop there: a pair of red fireballs and a tornado of black smog finished off the rest. A figure landed atop the wreckage, and Misty recognized him.
"You're…uh…"
"Who is this guy?" Brock asked.
"He's one of ours…but I can't quite place the name---"
"Blackwargreymon," their dark defender cut in.
"Oh, right! Black-war-gore…man…"
"Blackwargreymon," he repeated.
"…Whatever."
Blackwargreymon shook his head. "How did you manage to find this kind of trouble?"
"It's more like the saberstrikes found us," Misty answered.
"Should I escort you back?" Blackwargreymon asked.
"Dar Kamna!" a spiderstrike interrupted. The yellow beam hit Blackwargreymon squarely. He staggered for a moment, then returned fire and destroyed the spiderstrike.
"…Considering, yeah," Misty answered. "That'd be great."
******
"Tina, how many times do we need to tell you: don't go off on your own!"
"Mom, I wasn't on my own! June was with me!"
"That makes the situation all the more dangerous!"
"Mom, June and I made it there and back without a problem. Tibemon and Youngdramon never took a hit from those menace machines."
"It doesn't matter. In the future, do not go outside this building without telling either Izzy or your father or me. Understand?"
Tina sighed. "Yes, Mom."
"Good. …And don't give me that look! This is a lot more dangerous than Minnesota was!"
Tina rolled her eyes. "And you wouldn't even let me leave the house there. So imagine the restrictions when there is actual danger!"
"Don't take that sarcastic tone with me, young lady! I don't want you to become one of those half-eaten cadavers that these things leave lying around!"
"I won't, Mom!"
"That's right, you won't, because, in the future, you are to stay in this building unless Izzy or I tell you otherwise."
Tina's mouth dropped open.
"Don't look at me like that, Tina! This is for your own good!"
Yolei walked away, leaving Tina gaping. She had done something to help, and she was getting punished! What's up with that?!
Tina walked back into her room and flopped down on her bunk. She sighed. "Youngdramon, why is it that I get yelled at and punished for every good thing I do?"
"I don't know. The system is messed up?"
"Must be."
There was a loud sigh coming from the top bunk. It was Rika; she hadn't moved from that bunk since Tina had left the room four hours ago.
"Join the sad-club," Tina said.
Rika was terminally bored (as the Little Teenaged Geek's mother so appropriately and repeatedly puts it). "What is there to do around here?" she asked.
"That's a question that I asked myself four hours ago. And I came to the conclusion that the answer was 'nothing.' So guess what I did?"
Rika didn't really care about what Tina had done, but she was bored, so she asked, "What did you do?"
"June and I went to an electronics store, we loaded up a forklift with all kinds of toys, TV sets, and video games, and drove back here. That got the children in the orphanage something to do, and we have a forklift to use for building new stuff in the empty reactor chambers. Sounds like a bonus to you?"
"Sounds like something they'd enjoy having." Rika added sarcastically, "Did you get a medal for doing all that?"
"Actually, I got punished."
"Wow. You get punished for doing something good. Maybe you'll get rewarded for doing something bad."
"It's worth a try. Anyway, if you want, it's okay by me if you go play some of the video games that we have set up in the orphanage. The kids might like it if somebody older was playing with them."
Rika shook her head. "I might as well," she murmured, hopping off her bunk and walking off to the orphanage. After a few minutes, she came back. "Those weren't exactly my kind of games."
"What would you prefer?" Youngdramon asked.
"Something a little more gory. I'm thinking Captain Blood vs. Adrenaline Man VII…stuff like that."
Youngdramon and Tina looked at each other as if to ask, "What's with her??". Youngdramon asked, "Are you one of those feminists who does things just to break stereotypes?"
"No. I actually enjoy playing violent games, where I can fill up the arena with my opponent's bodily fluids."
Youngdramon and Tina gulped. "You aren't a little sensitive about blood and guts when you just saw that kind of thing in reality in the hospital in Montana?" Tina asked.
"Shut uu-uuup!" Rika moaned, climbing back into her bunk.
"Why is it that every time we ask a personal question, you push us away and tell us to shut up?"
"Shut up!"
"Man, she's like a broken record!" Youngdramon commented.
"She is a broken record. She's like Mom, only without the power to punish us!"
"I hear that!" Rika thundered down at them.
"Then stop listening!" Tina shot back.
Rika began trying to get to sleep, and Tina did the same. But in the middle of the night, Tina felt a nudge on her shoulder. It was Youngdramon. "Youngdramon, what is it?"
"I have an idea how we can get Rika to lighten up! She's sound asleep, so we can…" Youngdramon began whispering into Tina's ear.
"Great idea!" Tina whispered back.
In the morning…she was a mummified cocoon of duct tape.
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
This must be why people sleep on the floor in Japan: it's easier to get out of situations like this when the duct tape hasn't been wrapped all the way around you and under the mattress, too.
Yes, Youngdramon is still bad with the duct tape. In fact, it's one of her special attacks: Polymer Coil. She runs around her opponent and turns him into a mummified cocoon. Rika shouldn't spas out about this; she's always cocooning, so she should be used to this kind of thing! :þ
I bet that you're thinking that it was the worst idea I've ever had to make June a Digidestined. But, then again, she came this close to sticking her nose into the Digidestined's operations several times in season 2. It would've been cool to see just what would have happened if she'd actually found out about Davis and his friends' adventures in the Digiworld, but the writers never pulled that stunt. So I will: Ha!
(Murmuring to himself): Man…she looks like a prepped-up Merle from Escaflowne, doesn't she?
Anyway…you may have noticed that I called Tibemon "she" instead of "he". Tibemon was male in Endgame, but not here. And Tibemon has different champion and ultimate forms from the Tibemon in Endgame. What are those forms? Read on and find out!
And one last thing: that "þ" symbol? You make that on an IBM compatible by holding down ALT and pressing the numbers 0, 2, 5, and 4. When you release ALT after punching in those numbers, the symbol should appear. The uppercase for that symbol is ALT and 0, 2, 2, 2. It's cool for smilies, especially in Japan, since sticking the tongue out seems to have to do with laughing. If there's a way to make that symbol with a Mac or a Sun Workstation, I don't know what it is. The only Apple computer I have any experience with is the //c. Not very deep computer knowledge, is it?