Chapter 15: On The Other Side of Town…
There was quite a hustle and bustle in the nuke plant the following morning. Izzy had a new type of menace machine to have the research team catalogue, and so did Tina and June.
"Now, when you say they had a 'thing' on their chests, what kind of a 'thing'?"
"It was...I dunno; it looked kind of like an old radio," Tina said.
"It was more of a micro-radiator kind of a thing," June added.
"I dunno...micro-radiators don't have a little green light on them."
"Micro-radiators don't exist," Youngdramon cut in.
"And that wasn't a little green light, it was a medium-sized green light," June shot back.
"You call this medium?" Tina asked, holding her fingers up in a square.
"That light wasn't that tiny!"
"I looked smaller than that, I thought," Tibemon said.
"It did not! It was...well, maybe a little bigger," Tina admitted.
"No-no!" Youngdramon spat. "It couldn't have been that big! I shot it with my Dragon Bomb attack, and that is an energy sphere that is exactly 5.67 cm wide. That light wasn't half that big!"
Tracy shouted over the argument, "Girls, it doesn't matter. Any light less than 10 cm wide won't show up on my sketch: this machine was almost two stories tall, from what you told me before!"
"...No, it wasn't!" June said. "That was the giant gorilla; we're talking about the human-sized shock troops!"
Tracy stared at them blankly for a moment, and then crumpled up the sketch he had been working on and threw it in the recycle bin. "I wish you wouldn't confuse me like that."
"This is a pretty confusing crowd," Youngdramon said.
...After a long day, Tina flopped down on her bed and sighed. Rika was on the top bunk, not responding at all to Tina's entry. Rika wanted Tina to think she was asleep, but Tina knew better. "Hey, Rika!"
"Hmm?"
"You're not missing much, not being on seek patrol. We saw three new types of menace machine, and not one human being. And we almost got covered in wet sand---more than once."
"Hmm."
"All we did was wear ourselves out," Tina added with a yawn. "I can't believe how tired we are! We didn't do all that much walking…but then, since time is messed up, I can see why we'd be so tired. I mean, time might've made us feel like we walked for five hours when we only really walked for two."
"Hmm."
Tina unfolded the room's changing-screen, started changing into her pajamas, and continued talking: "It's getting tougher to fight these things. They keep DNA digivolving into higher forms and getting too powerful to fight! This'd be so much easier if I had a DNA digivolving partner!"
"Hmm."
"One question: you're the Digidestined on your world, right? So, how did you go to ultimate?"
"Hmm."
"…Ah, that wasn't the kind of answer I was looking for."
"♫Good Ni-ight!♪" Rika shot back, rolling over.
Tina frowned…but there was nothing to be done: Rika would push her away again if she asked, "Why do you always push me away?" Tina shook her head and took Rika's advice, going to sleep.
******
Pixie kept looking around the city for some sign of life. What few people were wandering the streets were as clueless as she was. The wound on her neck hadn't been serious and had healed over the few weeks since she'd met Ash. (Myotismon hadn't managed to break any arteries; he bit her where a human being's arteries would be, and---since she wasn't human---there were no arteries there.) She and Big Blue had been attacked more than once, but it had never been enough to get either of them seriously hurt.
There was one person she met who was in a condition she didn't expect: he was suspended by a pair of chains that weren't attached to manacles: the chains were attached to sharp rings that were actually going through his arms. She didn't know much about this planet, but she knew that he was being tortured to death, for whatever reason. (1) She flew up beneath him and saw that, on the pedestal where his feet were bound with jagged manacles, there was a plaque with something inscribed on it in huge letters, but those letters weren't of an alphabet she'd ever seen before. She asked him, "What're you up there for?"
He gasped, and one word came out of his mouth: "Trap!"
Pixie wheeled around just in time to see that another group of gorillouts were about to attack. She put her arms together and began firing at them.
"Tornado!" Big Blue shouted, whirling himself into a twister and sending the remaining machines flying.
Pixie asked a second time: "Who put you there to torture you to death?"
"I…don't know. They were these…little creatures…like gremlins…"
Pixie looked him over. Without medical help, she knew he'd die. "Come on, Big Blue…help me get him down."
"But, milady, what are we to do with him once he is down?"
"He's lost a lot of blood. We need to find a healer, or at least some place where we can keep him until he recovers."
"As you wish." Big Blue carried the young man in his arms as he and Pixie searched for a place to keep him.
"What's your name?" Pixie asked.
"…Matt…"
******
Tina and June were out there again, searching for intelligent life, and Tina was doing something obnoxious, as usual: she and Youngdramon were singing The Elements (2) song. "♫♪There's Antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,"
"♪And hydrogen, and oxygen, and nitrogen, and rhenium, ♫"
"And nickel, ♫ neodymium, neptunium, germanium,"
"And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium! ♪"
"…Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium, ♪"
"♪And lanthanum and osmium, and astatine and radium,"
"And gold, protactinium, and indium, and gallium, ♫"
"And iodine, and thorium, and thulium ♫ and thallium."
"…There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium---"
"SHUT UP! That's an-noy-ing!" June spat, covering her ears.
"…Considering that Rika is our roommate, you'd think we've already had fair share of sticks-in-the-mud, wouldn't you?" Youngdramon asked Tina.
"June, doesn't such a beautiful day just make you feel like singing?"
"First of all, not that song. Second, I do not have a good singing voice at all," June shot back. "My singing is so icky that it would fit in more with a rainy day."
"I guess a lot of people must be the same way, because lots of people sing while they're showering," Youngdramon thought aloud. "So you don't have to feel bad: you're part of the majority, and Tina and I are the exceptions."
"Heh, funny. And one other thing: aren't you forgetting that the weather can change in the blink of an eye? In fact, for all we know, it might start pouring while there are still no clouds in the sky!"
"That might make it even better! I mean, sun plus rain equals rainbow, right?"
"Personally, I'd rather be dry than get to see a rainbow. But that's just me."
"That is just you," Tibemon cut in. "I can't stand things getting too dry. I'd be happy with some rain, about now."
"Well, anybody that's here to be rescued probably wouldn't be too happy to get wet," June muttered.
"If you hate water so much, then why did we go so far to search for people in this water park?" Youngdramon asked.
"Because there are lots of places to hide in here, and you have to hide to live, what with the menace machines everywhere."
"But what would they do for food?" Tibemon asked.
"Can you say, 'concession stand'?" Tina pointed out. There was a small pile of empty food wrappers sitting outside the window of one of the vending stations, so maybe someone was living in there, throwing their garbage out the window.
"So…how does one introduce oneself in a situation like this?" June asked. "I've never been that good at making new friends. …Especially when they're singing The Elements song!"
"I don't think you'll have that problem with this batch," Tina answered. She knocked at the door to the vending station. "Hello? Anybody in there?"
A woman's voice answered, "No!" and a girl's voice, also inside the station, began whispering furiously.
"…I'd like to make a purchase!"
"We're…closed."
"Just like everything else in this city! You wouldn't happen to be hiding from bloodthirsty, man-eating robots, would you?"
"What if we were?"
"I'm a Digidestined! I know a place that's safe!"
The young girl answered, "This place is safe enough for us! Go away, before you attract them here!"
"Listen, it's not as safe here as it is there! We don't know why, but the menace machines won't go within half a kilometer of the nuclear power plant south of here!"
"We're fine where we are!"
"I wouldn't be so sure about that!" Tina retorted as she noticed a few luftwaffles, attracted by the sunlight…
(1) If you're planning on reading this footnote paragraph, it's better to read all of it so that you won't get anything out of context. If you're a nerdfact database like I am, then you'll know what was really happening to Matt: he was being crucified. Now, before you even think anything, I'd like to let you know that this was not for religious implications at all: crucifixion was the worst way to die ever devised by humankind. That's one of several reasons why Jesus died that way. Crucifixion did two things: it tortured the criminal to death, and it made an example of the criminal. In fact, Adolph Hitler wanted to revive the practice of crucifixion to use as propaganda against anyone who wanted to defy him. Whatever tyrannical party is working against the Digidestined was cruel enough to want to do this to Matt because they caught him and wanted to make an example of him for resisting their regime.
Now I've given away too much information, but I figured I'd better do some explaining for the sake of the people who have been trained by their literature classes to read so far between the lines that the story almost loses its entertainment value. (I might have become one of you if I'd paid attention in literature class.)
(2) The Elements was a song written by Tom Lehrer, from the album "An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer", published by the Reprise Record Company, 1959, #6199. I have all six-and-a-half annoying verses memorized. It's not annoying the first time I sing it; people are usually amazed that I can remember that much of it. It has a total of 102 elements listed, but it's not tough to see that there can be more verses to add. I'd write them myself and send them in to Reprise if I didn't have to keep an eye on my evil clone.
"…♫Ununubium, Unnilennium, Lawrencium, Seaborgium,
And maybe Unnilquadium, and Hassium, and Bohrium,
And also Rutherfordium, and Hahnium, Ununnilium,
Nielsbohrium, Meitnerium, and finally Unununium."
I used Encyclopædia Britannica as my source to get those element names, their 1997 version. Maybe there are more elements than this; I don't know. As Mr. Lehrer's song ends: "♫These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard, and there may be many others, but they haven't been discovered.♫"
(I bet I mentioned an element twice in that verse…)