Chapter 25:  New Projects

            All Ash could think of was how wonderful it would be to have a Tyranitar, and all Misty could think of was how awful it would be to lose Ash.  She thought of how, after Tyranitar would deep-six Ash, she would be all alone…like a widow whose husband went to sea and never came back.  It was a scary thought.

            Ash didn't have much fear to speak of.  He was too focused on catching Tyranitar.  "Primeape, use Cross Chop!"  The attack looked like it really wounded Tyranitar, and the wounds just made him angrier.  He hurled a slab of rock at Primeape out from one of his fists, but the slab missed.  "Great job, Primeape!  One more cross chop, and we're looking good!"

            Tyranitar was one step ahead of Ash:  he fired a yellow blast of energy out his mouth at Primeape, and Primeape was not looking well after that.  "Awh!  Primeape, return!  Totodile, I choose you!"

            "Ash, let's get out of here while we can!"

            "Misty, Totodile can handle this guy!  Totodile, use rain dance attack!"

            "NO!!" Misty mewed, searching for her raincoat in her backpack.  She huddled under an awning to keep out of the rain and shivered with her coat on to keep warm, but Ash didn't seem to mind the cold, wet weather it at all.  He was either enjoying it or too focused on the battle to even notice.  "Now, use Water gun!"

            Tyranitar was both wounded and very, very angry.  It roared in defiance and hurled slab after slab of rock at Totodile.  Totodile was too agile to get hit, but he had trouble returning fire, too.

            "Hang in there, Totodile!  One more hit should get Tyranitar ready for a pokéball!"

            "Ash, he's charging up for Hyper Beam, again!" Misty shouted.

            "Totodile, quick!  Water Gun!"  Totodile blasted Tyranitar, and the giant pokémon's head tilted backwards.  The beam sliced through the air into the sky, and Tyranitar looked at though it were about to faint.  "Now…pokéball, go!"  Tyranitar struggled against the pokéball's subspace restraints with every ounce of energy he had left…and he broke out.  He looked at Ash and roared in anger.

            Misty let out a loud squeak.  "ASH!!!"

            "Pokéball, go!"  Ash threw a second pokéball Tyranitar, and it struggled again to break free…but he couldn't.  It was useless:  he was captured.  "YEEEEAAAAAHH!  Tyranitar, Misty!  That was one of the most powerful pokémon that exists!"

            Misty wasn't so enthusiastic.  "Ash, get out of that rain before you catch pneumonia!"

            "…Misty?  …Why are you all of a sudden my mother?"

            "Ash, you don't know how dangerous fighting a Tyranitar is!"

            "What're you talking about?  That was a cinch!"

            "It was not!  Look how badly it beat up Primeape!"

            "Okay…but Cleaver can heal Primeape up in a snap.  Come on.  Wait until Gary hears about this!"

            Misty no less terrified than before as Totodile's rain attack wore off, but she didn't say anything about her fear.  Her biggest fear was that all of this might happen again.  But, then…  "Say, Ash?  How could wild pokémon get here?  I mean, this planet is full of digimon, not pokémon, right?"

            "Yeah…so?"

            "So…what if that flood was another time anomaly?  What if it brought pokémon from our universe to here?"

            "Whoa…then there have got to be some more worth catching!"

            "No, wait Ash!  Before you get out the party gear and put a lampshade on your head, let's remember that this is the middle of the city!  How would wild pokémon that are used to the country live in here?"

            "Whoa…they'd be toast...unless…unless a trainer were around to take them in!  Come on, Misty!  We have even more saving to do than we thought before!"

            "But Ash…"  Misty sighed.  Everything she tried to say to convey the heaviness of the situation to Ash turned into wonderful daydreams somewhere between her mouth and Ash's ears.  "Ash, this is bad!"

            "…How?  How is this bad?"

            "All we need is a bunch more unpredictable monsters out there!"

            "Misty, if pokémon are here, then, chances are, they'd get into fights with the menace machines more, and that means fewer machines to deal with."

            "But…what about the pokémon that lose?"

            "…Okay, that's not so great.  But come on!  We need to tell everyone at the base about this."

            "…About what?"

            "About how there are pokémon around, now...and about how I caught a Tyranitar!  Come on!"

            Misty covered her eyes and bit back the urge to sob.

******

            Tina and Youngdramon were taking on a new project:  they were putting wallpaper up on the walls to make it look like a scene with a rainbow piercing a blue sky.  (It would look ten times better than the dull, gray lead that walled the reactor.)  And they were amusing themselves by singing, although this wasn't a particularly obnoxious song.  But right after the bridge of, "I Can See Clearly Now The Rain Is Gone," Tina heard a noise like the aftermath of a bean festival.  She looked up to see Youngdramon in mid-flight, hovering close to the top of the wall.  She was duct-taping a torn inside-out pillow to the blue wallpaper to look like a cloud. "With a silver lining!" Youngdramon smiled, pointing at the gray duct tape that circled the fluffy whiteness.

            "Youngdramon!  You don't go doing noisy work while I'm in the middle of a performance!  A whoopee-cushion sound effect does not go well with this song!"

            "Oops...sorry."

            "Incoming!" Joe hollered into the orphanage.

            "Hello!  Code seven, ditch the wallpapering!" Tina shouted.  She took off her work apron and work gloves.  "What's the story, Joe?"

            "Eleven kids, four baby digimon, and three in-trainings."

            "Clean bill-of-health?"

            "They're all hale and hearty, besides being undernourished."

            "Good to know."  She slid a cardboard box of jackets up to the children.  "Pick out a coat!" The children were a little shy, at first. "No need to be shy. It gets cold in here, sometimes. You need to pick out a coat." One-by-one, the children began rifling around in the box, until there was a crowd with their arms inside.  "---No need to fight over them!  There are plenty of the same of each kind of jacket."  Tina slid another box, out from which rose a few whimpers, mews, and yips.  The children peered into the box and saw, to their amazement and delight, that the box was full of kittens and puppies.  "Each of you, pick one out."

            "What's with the kittens?" the leader of the children asked.

            "Standard protocol," Tina explained.  "Each kid gets a waterproof jacket in case we ever have to evacuate the building, and they all get a puppy or kitten to keep them warm, too.  There are usually enough blankets for everyone, but some kids sometimes have to share."

            The leader sighed.  "I volunteer to go without."

            "Not necessary today!"  Tina turned and yelled to June.  "Hey!  Go-fer!  Get the new shipment of comforters from storage!"

            "Comforters?" the leader asked.

            "We just found a whole bunch of blankets in one of the department stores in Tokyo, and these are so warm, they're hot!  Your bunch won't need to worry about keeping cozy."

            She sighed in relief.  "I can't thank you enough.  I mean, we were almost starving to death---"

            "Don't mention it.  Duty calls," Tina joked, straightening her beret and fake-saluting.

            Both girls chuckled.

            "By the way, what was your name?" Tina asked.

            "Natasha."

******

            "Listen, I'm getting a little nervous, here," Kari thought aloud.

            "Oh, you know that lightning in the sky doesn't mean anything!" Yolei assured her.

            "But through a clear blue sky?"

            "You know that that doesn't mean anything, either, chi."

            Yolei, Kari, Moochi and Suezo were once again on seek patrol.  They were checking the warehouses around the bay to see if anyone was hiding in there.

            "There's plenty I don't like about our current situation, but you know what I like about this?" Suezo asked.  "It's that Golem has never thrown me into the air to let me look around since we found out that we were on another planet."

            "Did he do that before?" Kari asked.

            "Yeah," Suezo sighed.  "The idea was that he'd catch me afterwards, but, in practice, that just didn't happen."

            "I see…I don't think that throwing you into the air would help, anyway.  If there are any people here, they're in hiding."

            "So we have to go out and find them?" Suezo asked.

            "Hence the name, 'seek patrol'," Yolei remarked.

            Looking up at one of the fishing boats, Kari asked, "You think that people would try to hide in one of those?  I mean, it doesn't look like the kind of thing a saberstrike or a canis-tor would try to squeeze into."

            "It's worth a try," Yolei agreed.  She slowly climbed into the boat's deck and looked around.  There was no one to be seen inside the cabin, in the hold, or in any of the storage lockers.  After a few minutes, she shouted down, "Nobody in this one."

            "Are we going to have to look in all of them?" Kari asked.

            "That would be a problem.  Especially if---" Yolei's sentence trailed off as they heard strange, loud noises rising up from the bottom of the boat.  Gatomon and Hawkmon stepped forward, in case this was a threat.  It sure seemed like a threat:  a dolphmon jumped out of the water, screaming his lungs out.  He landed on the dock, panicking and screaming all the more for his inability to move.  "Hey calm down!  Calm down!" Yolei insisted.  "What is it?"

            "IT WANTS TO KILL ME!!!"

            "It?" Kari asked with a gulp.

            A blue beam sprang up from the water, narrowly missing the dolphmon.

            Gatomon's claws glowed.  "Lightning Claw!"  She fired a pair of lightning bolts into the water, hoping that those would be enough to kill whatever was attacking.  The attacks stopped.  "Did I get him?"

            "Looks like it."

            The dolphmon was still panicking.

            "Hey, cool it!" Yolei insisted.

            " 'Cool it?'  I CAN'T MOVE!!!"

            "You don't have to get all jumpy about it!" Yolei spat.

            "Do you want us to put you back in the water?" Kari asked.

            "Actually, I was hoping that you'd put me on a spit, roast me, and eat me with tartar sauce and malt vinegar.  YES I WANT YOU TO PUT ME BACK IN THE WATER!!!"

            "You don't have to be so unfriendly about it, chi!"

            "Easy, Moochi!" Kari said as they tried to push the dolphmon into the water.  She managed to get out of her mouth between grunts of effort, "We're all scared, here---what with baby-eating monsters everywhere---so you can expect people---even us---to act a little---high-strung!"

            KER-SPLOOSH!  Dolphmon hit the drink and splashed water on all of them.

            Gatomon let out a disgruntled hiss.  "So much for staying dry!  And this is saltwater!  It would've been better if it had started raining, because rain is fresh water!  Saltwater leaves the salt behind in my fur when it dries!  Now, I have to do the most desperate thing ever:  I have to take a shower!  I can't clean this off with my tongue, or I'd die of thirst!"

            As it started to rain, Gatomon's face took on a much angrier frown.  "Great.  Now, I have two choices:  soak even more, or become a walking, furry saltlick!"

            "Gatomon, do you always have to be so pessimistic?" Kari asked.  She pulled an umbrella and a towel out of her backpack and began rubbing Gatomon off.  "You know it could be worse, right?"

            "Oh, yeah?"

            A huge ball of green energy leapt from the water before Yolei and Hawkmon could fish their ponchos from their backpacks.  "Why did I have to ask?!" Gatomon moaned.

            "Hawkmon, digivolve to…Altairmon!"

            They stared at the water's surface, and there was a huge, robotic squid in the water.  It was firing those balls of energy out its head.

            "Lightning Claw!"

            "Moochi Cannon!"

            "Blast Rings!"

            The crackone was little more than knocked backwards.

            "Looks like we need a extra firepower, here!" Yolei shouted.

            "No kidding:  look!"  Gatomon pointed to a huge, metal bird that was flying in low and firing at them.

            "Teleport!" Suezo shouted, beaming them out of the way of the shots.

            "We need to DNA digivolve!" Kari shouted.

            "Altairmon!"

            "Gatomon!"

            "DNA digivolve to…Swampangemon!"

            "I don't think Swampangemon can take them both, chi!  Let me module evolve!"

            "Right!"  Yolei touched the digi-egg of love to Moochi's forehead, and…

            "Moochi, module-evolve to…Turtledove!"

            "Whoa.  I need to get a transformation like that!" Suezo thought aloud.  Shaking rainwater off his back, he added, "Not to mention working raingear!"

            Turtledove went after the c-bird while Swampangemon attacked the crackone.  As Turtledove and the c-bird traded shots, Swampangemon dove beneath the surface of the water…and she stayed under too long for comfort.  Occasionally, an orange beam would fly up from the water, proving she was still alive and firing her Static Pulse attack.

            It wasn't long before Turtledove finished the c-bird.  He flew down and regressed back to Moochi.  "What's happening to Gatomon and Altairmon, chi?"

            "We don't know…it looks like they're still fighting that metal squid-thingy," Yolei answered.

            "Have you ever seen that thing in one of Cleaver's books?" Kari asked.

            Yolei shook her head.  "Never.  We'd better report this…"

            Swampangemon went flying up out of the water, propelled by a beam of purple light.  She landed on the shore with a gasp, and shouted, "The opening…the opening where he shoots out those green things!"

            "Huh?"

            The squid crashed into the dock, knocking everyone off their balance.  Yolei's backpack came open, spilling humanitarian gear and her digi-eggs into the water.  Having no hands, Suezo fell into the water, too.

            "Aw, great!" Kari moaned…

GAZRIITOR:

Nickname: Crackone (Takotōru)
Real Name: Eflo-tor-oot'le
Caste: Yon Ro Var'ka
Modes: One
Special Attacks:
Ro Dar Tarrwawo Trii
Tuli Telo Non Tarrwawo Don
Comments:
The crackone is composed of several different lower menace machines. In combination, the constituent ator's firepower is combined into one large attack: Tuli Telo Non. The attack fires out a vent in the crackone's head. Other than Tuli Telo Non, the crackone retains all its constituent's attacks, including torpedoes, chainsaw arms, laser eyes, and the ability to eat flesh. Similar to its constituents, it is solely designed for the water.

GAZRIITOR:

Nickname: C-bird (Kazedatōru)
Real Name: Riidae-tor-viioh
Caste: Ro Var'ka To'rel
Modes: One
Special Attacks:
Yon Dar Gazrii
Comments:
The C-bird is roughly equivalent in overall power to an ultimate digimon. It is quick in both air and water, but not very maneuverable. It is armed with two laser cannons, which it mainly uses to fight large ships and digimon; It is not programmed to attack human beings. The two purple insignia on its wings probably mean that it was designed by some high official, or that it somehow has an above-average status.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

I bet you're wondering how I get alien names for these menace machines...well, actually, I look up scientific names of stuff on Encyclopædia Britannica to get some of the names. C-bird is an example of this; I looked up the scientific name of a seal to get the chain-name for the C-bird.

Also, I structured alien the names in a specific way. I saw that all digimon have names that end in the syllable "mon", and I wanted something like that when I designed the menace machines. So, all menace machines' names have the syllable "tor" in the middle, the evolution chain name before the syllable "tor", and the species name after the syllable "tor". As for caste, the caste essentially tells what the machine's job is. "Var'ka", for example, translates to "patrol", "Nut'ka" translates to "assault", etc. You can probably figure out the rest if you look at the machines and their descriptions...I'm going to need to publish that alien-English dictionary, sometime.

As for how I came up with the Japanese names...well, a handful of them are simply one word attached to the syllable "tōru". Mandroid's Japanese name is "Hitōru", and the word "hi" (pronounced more like the english word "he") looked to me like it had something to do with a person or a human being. There are, or course, others. For instance, the e-gull's Japanese name is "denkimo", which combines two words: the word "denki" which has something to do with electricity, and the word "kimo" which means "chicken liver". ...Needless to say, the name puns are just as bad in Japanese as they are in English. I guess that was something like what I was aiming for... I got these Japanese words from "Say It In Japanese", a book I picked up at Barnes and Noble. And I tried to make sure that none of these names were swear words by sending them to Róisín Ward, webmistress of All That Is Ishida, a site that so graciously hosted Endgame, my other fiction. It was nice of her, especially considering Endgame's length. As for the Japanese letters (katakana) I get them from www.kids-japan.com/kata-chart.htm