Chapter 8:  Limited Success

            "…So, Mom, I really need to go out there and do this for her!"

            Yolei looked into Tina's eyes to try and see if she was lying.  She shook her head.  "You're not going."  Tina looked down at the ground.  Her heart had just begun to sink when she heard her mother say, "I am."

            Tina looked up at her.  "You…you will?"                   

            "Sure.  Like you said, you don't know any more about her than you can tell me, so me going won't hurt the chances.  But you owe me for this."

            "I seem to owe everyone one way or another."

            "That's true, you do.  There's…one other thing.  You didn't go out without telling anyone; you told Davis.  ...I'm sorry I was so hard on you before."

            "Thanks, Mom."  The two embraced each other.  "So, does this mean I can leave the building?"

            "No.  This hasn't changed the fact that there are bloodthirsty robots outside."

            "That's true, but if you let me out there, that fact would change!"

            "Uh-huh.  Save it for the rowdier orphans, kiddo."  Yolei lightly slapped Tina on the shoulder and walked off to find Hawkmon and an available companion:  it wasn't altogether safe to travel outside the power plant alone.

            She got for a traveling companion a small, armadillo-like creature named Moochi.  He was kind of cute (in her unspoken opinion), and seemed to be an overall cheerful person.

            As they were walking along, Moochi piped up, "Hare told me about the digi-eggs, chi!"

            "He did?  …What about them?"

            "They work on us Monsters, too!  All we do is touch them, and then we module-evolve!"

            "Really?  'module-evolve?'  …Well, hopefully, we won't have to find out if it works on you too terribly soon.

            As they walked towards the mall, the weather again did something strange to them.  The air around them was warm and very dry, but the clouds above them looked the opposite:  they were black, loaded down with rain, and there were flashes of lightning every few moments.

            "Is the weather always going to be this weird, chi?"

            "Maybe…we don't know.  That's one reason why I don't want my twelve-year-old daughter out in it."

            "---But you look like you're about twelve, chi."

            "Well, I am and I'm not.  Time is completely messed up on this planet.  Before time got messed up, I was an adult.  But now…it changed me, so that I look and feel like I'm twelve again.  It's weird, talking to my daughter eye-to-eye.  We're exactly the same height, and the same age."

            "That is weird.  Looks like everything is weird here!"

            "I know what you mean."

            Hawkmon cut in, "How, precisely, do you expect that we'll be able to move the cargo once we get it?"

            "Well…I was thinking on your back as Aquilamon."

            "That will certainly be enjoyable...What exactly will we be getting?"

            "Tina said it was 'for a tomboy girl who has nothing…except a cuteness-hating attitude.'  That's all we know.  I know that there will be a limit on how heavy or how big we can make our delivery, but I don't think that we'd end up getting something too big."

            "I certainly hope not."

            Once they had arrived at the store and gotten a small pile of cargo to take back to the plant, Yolei held out her digivice.  "Ready, Hawkmon?"

            "Ready!  …Hawkmon, digivolve to…Altairmon!"  Altairmon looked a little different from Aquilamon:  Aquilamon had two horns, while Altairmon had only one.  Her strength and firepower were the same as Aquilamon's, so the change wasn't really any trouble.

            The trouble started when a few saberstrikes caught wind of the fact that there was a target flying above them.  Then… "Ferra-tor-grend'l, noh kreshnaiona djom…Ferra-tor-cknii!"  The saberstrikes combined into several spiderstrikes.  The spiderstrikes transformed into their flight modes and flew after Altairmon.

            They didn't even notice the spiderstrikes until there were yellow laser beams flying down at them.  Altairmon was so weighted down that she could barely dodge, let alone return fire.

            Moochi began returning the spiderstrike's shots:  "Moochi Cannon!"  But the spiderstrikes were too agile for Moochi to land a hit, and agility was a thing that Altairmon most unfortunately lacked.

            "I think we ought to drop the boxes!" Altairmon suggested.

            "There's something else we can do!  Module-evolve!" Moochi insisted.

            Yolei nodded.  "All right.  There are two digi-eggs in my backpack, Moochi.  See if you can reach them, I have to hold on to Altairmon, or else I'll fall off."

            Moochi began fishing around, and, before Yolei knew it…

            "Moochi, module-evolve to…Turtledove!"

            "Turtledove?" Yolei wondered.  She looked back, and what she saw looked like Moochi with his arms replaced by wings, a shell on his back, and a helmet over his head with the crest of love painted on it.

            "Time to show these things they can't just go around attacking people!" Turtledove flew away from Altairmon and began to dogfight the spiderstrikes.  Agility was a thing he seemed to have in huge amounts, not to mention firepower:  "Tempest Cannon!"  He fired red bolts of energy out his mouth at the spiderstrikes, and they all bit the dirt one-by-one.  He flew back onto Altairmon's back.  As he regressed back to Moochi, he shouted, "Wait until Hare hears about this, chi!"

            "Wait until Tina hears about it."

******

            Rika was almost scared to crawl back into her bunk:  she was afraid that she'd wake up to find that Tina and her partner-in-crime had pulled an even worse practical joke on her.  But there was nothing to be done:  she had to sleep, and there were no available rooms for switching.  She reluctantly climbed in.  She was awake for hours, hoping that there wouldn't be a noise or anything to wake her up.  She fought fatigue---that evil fiend of the mind---for hours before it had her down for the count and asleep.  She had a dream that she was buried alive in rubble.  She couldn't breathe, and rocks were pressing onto her face and her chest.  She turned this way and that way in her prison, but she couldn't break free to reach an air pocket.  She began pushing the rocks out of the way, but more kept falling onto her and smacking her in the face.  She was running out of air, and she knew that she had to do something, or she'd die.

            She shot into a sitting-up position, and something rolled away from her.  She looked around.  There were Youngdramon and Tina, and they were holding boxes.  Rika looked at her bed, and it had been covered with similar boxes.  As she had pushed the boxes off herself, Tina and Youngdramon had been putting them back.  Each box contained something she would have enjoyed having:  stuff like violent video games and more sets of clothes.  She looked down at Tina.  "What's…what's all this about?"

            Tina looked at the ground and put her foot in a circle.  "We…we're sorry.  We didn't know that you'd take the duct tape prank like that."

            "How did you expect me to take it?  Did you think I'd ask you to tape me up again?"

            Tina let out a guilty sigh.

            "Let me guess:  there are rubber snakes in each of these boxes; there's no clothes or video games in here!"

            "It's not like that at all!  ---Open it for yourself!"

            "You open it!"

            "Okay, I will."  Tina tore open the bag and showed her.  It was just a pair of jeans.  "It's not a rubber snake!  It's clothes!  Look, I'm sorry I---"

            "You've said that a bajillion times."  Rika got up out of her bed, sending another half-dozen boxes careening to the floor.  "Excuse me, I have to eat."  Rika looked down at Renamon, and Renamon was asleep.  Rika didn't care to go outside the room alone, so she stomped hard on Renamon's tail to wake her up.  Renamon awoke with a sound that was somewhere between a whimper and a yelp.  "Renamon, some friend you are!  You can't even tell that there's someone pulling a prank on me!  You'd make a swell guard dog!"

            "Rika, I did know that Tina and Youngdramon were up to something last night.  I made sure that they weren't doing something worse than tying you up in duct tape.  This isn't a prank...not this time."

            Rika shook her head and stormed out of the room.  "C'mon Renamon.  Breakfast is getting cold."

            Of course, breakfast was served in heated trays, so everyone in the room knew that she was making excuses to leave.

            BAM!  The door slammed behind them as they left.

            Tina looked at Youngdramon.  "So…did it kill her, or cure her?"

            "I don't know; I think we need a third opinion."

            "No kidding.  …Boy, Mom will sure be ticked once she hears how well this rolled over."