Chapter 21:  Man…This Is Hurting Everyone!

            Hare, Davis, and Ken were all on seek patrol, and they were trying a new part of Tokyo, this time.  So far, they hadn't found anyone, but they were trying… It was a monotonous silence that hovered between the five of them, and Davis felt he had to break it: "Say, Ken, I was just wondering…why do you keep that Digimon Emperor outfit on?  I mean, I thought you thought it was a symbol of everything bad you did as the Digimon Emperor."

            "For a while I thought so, yeah.  But this is bigger than symbols, and I'm not the Digimon Emperor, no matter what anyone says or thinks.  But this outfit is a little more functional than other clothes."

            "Example?"

            "You remember how Pegasusmon used that Mane Wind attack on me, and my cape deflected it?"

            "…I see.  Yeah, that is functional."

            "I bet it's a lot cozier in there when the weather gets bad," Wormmon cut in.

            "Well, it is insulated and waterproof.  That's another plus about it."

            "But what's with the whip?" Davis asked.

            "That?  …If there's anything we can use to defend ourselves with, we should try to use it."

            "If you say so."

            Hare suddenly stopped.  "Hello!"

            "What is it?"

            "I hear something…kind of like wings beating, but it's really fast…it's coming from…over there!!"

            They whirled about and looked:  there was a spiderstrike flying their way.

            "Aw, great!" Veemon muttered.           

            "Shall I?" Hare asked, pointing to the digi-egg of courage.

            "Might as well," Davis agreed, tossing him the egg.

            "Hare, module-evolve to…Firabbit!"

            The spiderstrike fired:  "Dar Kamna!"

            "Clinker Beam!"  The two shots cancelled each other out in the middle, but the spiderstrike was gaining ground:  the point where the two beams were canceling out slowly came closer and closer to Firabbit until the Dar Kamna ended up disabling Firabbit's cannon.  Looking at the mangled weapon, Firabbit muttered, "Aw, great!  …Plan B, then:  Bludgeon Blade!"  The three blades that adorned his right gauntlet extended into a long, sharp, club-like weapon.  Firabbit flew up into the air to face the spiderstrike.

            "Dar Kamna!"

            Firabbit stuck the blade between himself and the beam, and the beam reflected off the blade and away from the fight.  He wound up for a smack with his bludgeon, and he knocked the rotors off the spiderstrike's back.

            The spiderstrike instantly fell to the ground, but the fall wasn't enough to kill it:  "Ferra-tor-cknii, noh unukreshnaiona djom…Ferra-tor-grend'l!"  The spiderstrike became a trio of saberstrikes.

            "Three of those, huh?  Doesn't scare me!"

            "Garem Non!" all three growled, firing blasts of sound at Firabbit.  He tried to deflect the shots with his bludgeon, but the shot went through the bludgeon like it wasn't even there.  The sonic blasts hit Firabbit in the stomach, and Firabbit suddenly felt sick.  He slowly descended to the ground.

            "Ugh!  ...That didn't go so well…"

            The saberstrikes had made the mistake of focusing all their attention on Firabbit:  Veemon and Wormmon were still free to attack.

            "Sticky net!" Wormmon shouted, immobilizing a pair of the saberstrikes.

            "Vee boomerang!"  Veemon hurled his shot and knocked the head off from the remaining saberstrike.

            "Quick, Firabbit!  Now's your chance!"

            Firabbit tried to shake off the feelings of nausea, and he picked up the stuck-together saberstrikes and dropped them form a lethal height.  Firabbit still looked a little dizzy as he landed and regressed back to Hare.

            "Are you okay?" Davis asked.

            "Not really, no."  Hare groaned.  "They hit me with some kind of attack that messes up your insides!  I feel like I'm about to vomit!"

            "Are you really about to vomit?"

            "You never know, do you?"

            "Yeah, that's true; you don't."

            "Maybe some walking will help you work it off," Ken suggested.

            "Maybe…ugh!  I just hope we don't have to meet any more of those things!"

******

            "What made you think that we should come here?" June demanded.  The weather was anything but cooperative:  a cold wind whipped rain and mist at the two girls as they stood by the riverbank.  " 'The only place to get clean water,' you said.  Let's think about that:  does the word 'mud' mean anything to you?"

            Tina asked, "How was I supposed to know that the water here would look like chocolate?  And how was I supposed to guess that the weather would turn icky?"

            "What're you talking about, 'icky'?" Tibemon asked.                           

            "You know what we mean," June insisted.  "And look at this river now!  It's at flood stage, and the water looks like coffee!  I wouldn't drink that unless I was dying of thirst, and if I were dying of thirst, I'd just tilt my head back, open my mouth, and grab a couple hundred liters!  And besides---" June let out a yelp of surprise as she saw the water licking at the heels of her work boots.  "The river is rising!  Nobody in their right mind would stick around!  …Tina, that's our cue to beat it!"

            "Hey, you're right.  But that water is rising too fast for just the rain to account for…so…what's causing this?"

            "I don't know!  Let's get out of here!"

            The two girls scurried away from the rising, mocha tide.  They had no trouble outrunning the water, but it was shocking how fast it was rising.

            "Okay, there is no way that this can be natural," June spat.  "There has got to be something artificial at work, here, like a dam, or something!"

            "But if civilization as-we-know-it is gone, then who would be able to build a dam to block the river?"

            The two girls looked at each other, and it occurred to them that the faceless enemy who had caused all this might be the same party that had built the dam.  They raced downstream to find out where the dam was and what to do about it.  They saw a collection of boxy-shaped menace machines, stacking themselves higher and higher and wider and wider to continue blocking the flooding river.  There were only a handful of spots in the dam where water spurted out, and the machines were no doubt converting the water pressure into hydroelectric power to further fuel their attack on the river.

            "If they keep this up, they'll send the flow of the water straight through downtown Tokyo!" June shouted over the storm.

            "And look at what it's doing to the forest!" Tina pointed out.  There was a young deer that was sitting stranded on an island in the rising river.  Tina's heart was too big to let that deer drown:  she approached the bank and waded into the fast-moving water.  It is not a good thing to be in fast-moving water to above your knees:  she immediately began to lose her footing in the muck.

            Youngdramon flew past her:  "Polymer coil!" she shouted, letting a trail of duct tape fly into Tina's hands.  Tina grasped the tape and pulled herself onto the dry ground with the fawn.  The fawn was very confused, and almost as afraid of Tina and Youngdramon as it was of the water.

            Tina slowly crept up to the fawn.  "Easy, little guy…no one's going to hurt you…"

            The fawn let out a cry for its mother as Tina gently stroked its fur.  There was no answer; the mother had already succumbed to the menace machine's plot of destruction.  Tina kept stroking the fur of the fawn, trying to calm it down.

            "Aw…isn't this just like a scene from a tree hugger's movie?" Youngdramon crooned.

            "Bigger problem!" June shouted, pointing to an approaching catamarine.

            "Youngdramon, digivolve to…Ikudramon!"

            "Tibemon, digivolve to…Savamon!"

            "That thing is almost as strong as a mega!" June yelled.  "We need to DNA digivolve before we have a hope of taking it on!"

            "Our digivices need to touch to do that!  Either you're going to have to come here, or I'm going to have to come over there!  And I can't move this poor animal!"

            "Then I think I'd better move the poor animal!" Ikudramon yelled, looking at a wave of water that was flying down the river at them.  The fawn screamed as Ikudramon scooped up it and Tina and set them down beside June.

            June fished a blanket and a poncho out of her knapsack and covered the fawn with them to keep it warm.  "Don't worry, little guy…you'll be fine…"

            "He won't if we don't DNA digivolve!" Savamon pointed out.

            "Oh---right."

            "Ikudramon!"

            "Savamon!"

            "DNA digivolve to…Mermon!"

            "Go get 'em, Mermon!" Tina shouted.

            June began to see why Tina was so attached to the fawn:  she had to admit it was one of the cutest things she'd ever seen.  Of course, cuteness wasn't the biggest of their concerns right then:  a giant, robotic, lava-spouting panther was much more important.

            Mermon tried the same tactics Swampangemon had used:  she shot the joints in the legs and the head with her missiles, but it just didn't seem to hurt the catamarine.  The problem wasn't getting any prettier:  June, Tina, and their little rescued hostage had to keep moving uphill to stay ahead of the rising water.

            Mermon wondered if the catamarine was the real threat, after all:  the dam began firing strong beams of yellow energy her way.  It wasn't long before it occurred to her:  use the dam's firepower on the catamarine!  She flew down close to the dam and brandished her ax.  "Come on!  Shoot me!" she shouted to the robotic dam, not expecting it to understand her.

            "Ota Kamna!" it shouted at her.

            "Mer Poleax!" she shouted back, reflecting the beam off her axe and into the catamarine's head.  That did it:  the catamarine began to look dizzy, and it only took a couple more missiles to finish it off.  There was still the issue of dealing with the dam, though…

            "Ota Kamna!"  A multitude of beams shot from the top of the dam and flew at Mermon.  Not one landed a hit, as Mermon was a very slippery fish, but the beams forced her to dive underwater, into the lake that was quickly forming.  Big mistake:  the water was swarming with creatures the like of which she'd never seen.  In fact, she never saw them, because the water was so murky that she couldn't see more than a meter away.  Green balls of energy flew at her from the cloudy, chocolate mess below, so she immediately flew up out of the water towards Tina, June, and the fawn.

            "This place is getting too warm for my tastes!" Mermon shouted over the storm and the shots that were ringing out.  "I need to fly you guys out of here!"

            "How can you take both us and the fawn?!"

            "I can't!  You'll have to leave it!"

            "No!"  "You can't leave the poor girl out here in---" "How can you even think about leaving this poor little thing where she'll get eaten---"

            Mermon spat, "It's either you or an animal!  What makes you think that---"
            "But she's so little!  What'll happen if---" "It's mother is gone!  It's just like any orphan that we're always finding in the cities!  It's our duty to---" "Look at her!  She's lonely, cold, wet, afraid---"

            Mermon stifled the conversation:  "Okay!  O-kay…!  …So…which one of you two wants to get left behind for the return trip?"

            June held her tongue:  she didn't want to be left out in the pouring rain any longer than necessary.  Tina, however, wasn't so quiet:  she said, "I'll stay behind."

            Mermon had originally meant for her previous question to be a psychological trick to talk them into leaving the fawn behind, but Tina was too outgoing and had too big a heart to allow the fawn to be left out where it wasn't safe.  Mermon felt defeated.

            "Don't worry about me!" Tina insisted.  "The visibility out here is zero.  There is no way that any of them are going to see me, hear me, or smell me.  And it'll be easy to find a place to hide in these woods.  ---One that the water won't get to, I mean."

            "Your parents are going to kill us for this," Mermon thought aloud.

            "No kidding," June agreed.  She unclipped her umbrella from her wrist pad and handed it to Tina.  "There's no way I could use it in mid-flight, anyway."

            "Thanks."

            As Mermon flew away with June and the whimpering, confused fawn tucked under her arms, she said, "I just know that we're going to regret this.  Leaving a girl defenseless in a hurricane while there are man-eating monsters and a rising river?"

            "Wouldn't sound like a good idea to me, either," June admitted, "But the alternative is to leave this poor, defenseless creature there!"

            "I'm sure Yolei would rather hear about an animal dying than her own daughter."

            "Do you have to keep calling that poor, confused little girl 'an animal'?"

            "Well, isn't that what it is?"

            "…Okay, it is, but still---!  You don't have to make her sound worthless!"

            Mermon sighed.  "You know, I really wish this weren't a democracy, and that I could've decided this instead of you and Tina.  This is just not a good plan!"

            Mermon was more right than either of them thought or hoped:  Just as Tina was about to crawl into a hole beneath a tree stump to take shelter, she heard the growl of a hungry saberstrike behind her…

GAZRIITOR:

Nickname: Tor-bine (Tōrubain)
Real Name: Enib-tor-oide
Caste: Weroh Gazrii
Modes: One
Special Attacks:
Dar Grimn F'
Comments:
The tor-bine is a specially designed menace machine: an army of this type stacks itself into a huge dam to block a river and flood an area, not to mention generate hydroelectric power for other machines. It has firepower between the champion and ultimate levels, but has very little along the line of defense; it wouldn't take much to destroy one. Theoretically, the tor-bine could use its turbine to fly, but this has never been seen.

GAZRIITOR:

Nickname: Hover Dam (Hābedām)
Real Name: Enib-tor-tejah
Caste: Weroh Gazrii
Modes: One
Special Attacks:
Ota Kamna
Comments:
The hover dam is the combination of any number of tor-bines. It generates hydroelectric power by allowing water to flow out of a few of its turbines. It can control the flow of water through a river, and can allow a great deal of water to flow, or none at all. Its firepower rivals that of mega digimon, although it can only fire from the top.