NOTE: Religious content near the tail end
Chapter 32: The Trappings
Ash caught himself on the siderail of the ship and found himself staring right into the open mouth of the crackone. Like a real squid, the tentacles of this robot fanned out from the beak, so the squid took up Ash's entire view. He felt like he was surrounded on all sides by this creature. He tried to climb away from the crackone, but it was no use: one of its tentacles smacked him back towards the open beak.
Misty let out every pokémon she had to fight this beast, and she ran towards the crackone to pull Ash out of there---even if it would kill her to try. At this point, her vocabulary shrank to one word: a panicked, loud, "ASH!!!"
"Tibemon, digivolve to…Savamon!"
"Youngdramon, digivolve to…Ikudramon!"
Tina raced down to give Misty a hand in the tug-of-war while the pokémon and the two champion digimon kept the tentacles busy. It was a hard-to-call tug of war; the arms that the crackone was using to pull Ash in weren't the strongest hydraulics ever seen. First it looked like Ash would make it out, then it looked like Ash was about to get his leg bitten off.
Then, the ultimate horror happened: Misty began to lose her grip. "ASH!!!"
"This isn't going that well, is it?" Tina asked.
Yolei screamed as she saw that Tina was in the line of fire. She grabbed Tina around the middle and started trying to pull her away from the crackone.
"Hawkmon, digivolve to…Altairmon!"
"Hey, June! I could use a hand, here!" Tina shouted.
"I don't wanna get any closer to that thing!" June squeaked, keeping away from the crackone by staying at the bow of the ship.
"If we don't DNA digivolve, then it'll eat all of us!"
June whimpered and slowly crawled towards the fight.
"Are you going to hurry up, or what?!"
"Just…coming…but I---AAAAAAAA!" June screamed as she slipped on a stray fish. She went sliding down towards the crackone.
"Aw, great!" Tina decided it was worth the gamble to jump for June's digivice.
Yolei made the mistake of blinking at this point: after a split-second of having her eyes shut, she found that she was tightly gripping an arm that didn't belong to Tina. She was tugging on Ash, and Tina was catching June. Tina touched her digivice to June's.
"Ikudramon!"
"Savamon!"
"DNA digivolve to…Mermon!"
"Tina!" her mother yelled. "Get out of here!"
"Not this time, Mom!" Tina got behind her mother and pulled, trying to get Ash out of the crackone's grip. Mermon wasn't sitting still; she was trading shots with the crackone's laser eyes.
Finally, it happened: one of the tentacles splashed water on Ash, Misty, and Yolei. The water made everything too slippery to hold on to. Ash felt his leg go into the crackone's mouth.
"You're not getting this one!" Mermon spat. She charged at crackone. "Mer Poleax!" She drove her axe into the crackone's body and killed it. The entire robot began to sink into the water, and Ash held onto the boat's railing for all he was worth. The crackone sank away from him, and his leg came out of its mouth. He looked down at the place where the squid was sinking. It was making a pretty big splash as it went down. He was breathing heavily, as were Yolei, Tina, and Misty.
Misty didn't wait for anyone to say anything. She threw her arms around Ash and squeezed him almost so hard he couldn't breathe. Between sobs, a squeak rose from Misty's mouth: "Ash!"
What Misty didn't bother to notice was that, what with Ash not actually being on the boat, they were in great danger of falling off. Before Misty knew what was happening, she was treading water.
Mermon flew down and scooped the two up. She set them back down on the boat and regressed back to Tibemon and Youngdramon.
"How much more of this will we need to put up with?" Youngdramon asked.
"Not much…I can see the shore," Tina answered.
Yolei immediately began scolding Tina as furiously as she could. Tina knew her mother was wrong and overprotective, so she ignored her mother's long, angry lecture. She looked out across the water's surface, and she saw another vessel, just like their own fishing boat. She remembered vaguely that this was their own boat, just from an earlier time period. She heard her earlier self yell to her, "Any advice for me?"
Thinking about what just happened to Ash, Tina shouted back, "Beware the sea-faring man with one leg!"
Suddenly, Tina realized that this was what she had heard when she'd asked that question before. So Tina burst out laughing and couldn't stop.
"That was quick!" Brock shouted as he tied the ship to the dock.
"Actually, there must've been some kind of time anomaly, because we saw ourselves going out, just now," June yelled back.
"So you arrived and left at the same time?"
"Looks that way."
"Wow. Hey Ash!" Brock shouted. "I kept your hat safe for you!"
"Thanks," Ash said as he climbed out of the boat onto the dock. "I would've lost it if I'd brought it with me."
"I believe it! And---PEE-UUU!!! Ash, you smell like a dead fish!"
"That's what we've been surrounded with for the past five hours!"
"How can you stand that?" Brock suddenly noticed that Misty didn't look so great. "…Misty, what happened to you?"
Misty was still in shock, so she mewed, "It was awful! But Ash…he's alive!"
Brock looked at Ash, as if to ask, "What happened?"
Ash explained, "A giant robotic squid almost got me back there."
Brock was about to ask, "Why would that scare her so badly?" but he saw Tina first…and his hormones immediately kicked in. But what was strange was that she was laughing---hysterically. "H-hey Tina!" Brock said, with his cheeks tomato-red.
"You'll never guess what happened!" Tina laughed.
"What? What happened?"
"Well…" Tina didn't finish her sentence before she burst out laughing again.
"Personally, I don't think it's so funny," Youngdramon said to Brock.
"What happened?"
"While we were passing our past selves going out, she had a conversation with her past self. Her past self asked her future self if she had any advice for her. And the future Tina told her to 'Beware the sea-farin' man with one leg!' "
Tina laughed all the harder at Youngdramon's impression of her.
"Tina…you're scaring me. You need to stop, but how can we get you to stop…" Youngdramon wondered. "Oh! Wait! I know how to snap you out of it! ♫♪Oh, Yo-leeeeiiiii?!! ♫♪ Tina's got an evil plan to go swimming with some crackones, later today!" That got Tina to stop.
"So…how do we get this load of fish back to the orphanage?" Altairmon asked.
"You," Yolei answered, after she was done with scolding Tina.
"…Could you rephrase that?"
"Sure, we'll rephrase it," Yolei answered, beckoning Kari. The two of them clapped their digivices together.
"Altairmon!"
"Gatomon!"
"DNA Digivolve to…Swampangemon! …I'm starting to see what you mean," Swampangemon answered. "Swampangemon, mode-change to…giga mode!" Swampangemon kneeled and opened her pockets. "Climb in! You'll have a comfortable ride in here."
"No kidding?" Tina asked as she slid down into the pocket. "Wow, she has this pocket lined with something!" Tina sighed and felt the soft, plush fabric against her skin. "I could fall asleep on this stuff---"
Brock was at the top, listening to all this. All he could think about was how romantic it would be to have Tina leaning on his shoulder while she was asleep with an innocent, young girl's smile on her face. He was about to slide down into the pocket himself, but Ash said, "You may not want to do that, Brock. If you go in there with the rest of us, you'll probably get fish juice all over your clothes."
Brock muttered in his hormone-induced stupor, "Aw, who cares about a little fish juice?"
Realizing Brock was high on hormones, Misty snapped out of her shock, took Brock by the ear, and threw him into a different pocket. "Lose it, Brock!" she shouted.
"Good to have you back, Misty," Ash said.
"Good to be back."
Yolei slid into the pocket after Tina, and shouted down to her, "Don't go to sleep yet, Tina; you and I need to have a talk."
Tina rolled her eyes.
"Don't look at me like that, Tina!"
"Mom, why is it that you punish me for everything good that I do? I got the orphans video games and toys, and you yell at me. I get us info on a dam that's about to wipe out a whole forest and Tokyo and I save someone who's about to drown in it, and you demote me. I save that boy's life, and you yell at me again?"
"Tina…you take too many risks!"
"So, next time, I heroically let the guy get eaten by a squid, leave Tokyo to drown, and let the orphans cry themselves to sleep each night…is that about it?"
Yolei slapped her daughter across the face. Almost crying, she yelled back, "Don't talk to me like that, Tina! I'm not going to lose you to one of those menace machines, even if I have to chain you up in that orphanage to keep you safe!"
"…Mom!" Tina shouted. "This isn't about risks, is it? You're just scared to lose me, aren't you?"
"That's right, I'm scared!" Yolei half-shouted and half-sobbed. "That's why you're not going anywhere!"
"…Mom, I have a duty to perform as a Digidestined! Do you think that I'd have Youngdramon if I wasn't supposed to be out there fighting?"
"Tina, please stay in that orphanage. You can follow your calling in less dangerous ways."
Tina thought it over. She knew her mother was wrong, but she didn't want to see her hurting… "Mom…maybe you're right…"
"Thanks," Yolei whispered, wiping away another tear.
******
When Tina entered her room, Rika was inside. Her shift had ended as watchdog, and so she was trying to get to sleep. Rika found sleeping a difficult job, and her job got more difficult when she heard the noise of Tina and Youngdramon loudly coming in and an annoyingly loud snort of disapproval from Renamon. It became especially tough after the smell of dead fish reached her nose. "Oh!" Rika shouted. "For crying out loud, take a shower once in a while!"
Tina snickered. "I bet you're glad you didn't have to come along on that fishing trip!"
"If that's what it smelled like, then yes. I am glad."
"Well, you get used to it after a while."
"I'm not getting used to it! Change out of that thing and get it to the laundry, already!"
Tina tore off the suit and tossed her pajamas over her shoulder. "That's just what I'm planning to do. Excuse us."
"I was wondering if I shouldn't excuse you when you first walked in," Rika muttered.
Rika began to try to get to sleep again, and it just wasn't working. It was a long time before she managed to doze off, and when she finally did, Tina barged in and ruined her siesta. Rika groaned. "Why do you have to be so loud?! I've been trying to get to sleep for the past five hours!"
"What? We haven't been gone more than a half an hour!"
"My watch said it was nine when you left, and it says it's two in the morning, now."
"Wha---! Time fields inside the nuke plant?" Tina stammered.
"Well, is there really anything that can stop time fields from going anywhere?" Youngdramon said.
"Good point. Time to look into this." Tina pulled on another pair of overalls and a sweatshirt. She walked out of the room and began asking around to see if other people had felt the effects of the time field, and she deduced that there was a time field in the women's bathroom. This was not good.
Tina walked into her mother's office, and Yolei immediately stood up and spat, "You're supposed to be in bed, young lady! You can't just---"
"Mom, this is important!"
Yolei let out a disappointed sigh. "Okay, but make it quick."
"…Quickness is kind of the problem. You see, there's a time field in the girl's room. It's slowing time inside it so that when someone goes in, they think that they've been in there a few minutes when it's really more like an hour."
"…Whoa…it's good that you told me about this, but, in the future, respect your bedtime and leave the investigating to your father. Now, get to bed…I mean now! You have a duty shift in the morning at the orphanage."
Tina looked down at the ground and sighed. "Okay, Mom."
A few hours later, Yolei and Ken were talking. "Honey, you know how…I don't mean to insult you, but you remember how you kind of went astray while you were the Digimon Emperor?"
Ken looked at her, surprised. "What about it?"
"I…I'm afraid that Tina might've gotten some of those going-astray genes from you---not just the smart genes."
"It's just wanderlust, Yolei. Tina's a growing girl, and she's going to be looking for more freedoms from us."
"That's the point; how can she get freedoms from us and still stay here in the nuke plant?"
"If she has my smart genes, then she'll know not to leave the nuke plant. But if you restrict her in here too much, then she might learn not to think for herself---or she might outright decide to disobey you whenever you tell her to do something she doesn't want to do."
"What're you saying?"
"I'm saying…maybe it's not such a good idea to keep her off seek patrol forever."
"But…but…"
"I heard from several people what happened with Ash and that crackone. If it hadn't been for Tina, Ash would be dead, right now…and maybe June, too. She knows how to handle herself in battle, and she can keep a cool head. She might do us more good out there than in here. I know she's a sunbeam, and that the little ones in the orphanage need someone like her to spread hope and joy, but she's also a good fighter."
Yolei buried her face in her hands. "You know what happened with that deer!"
"That shows that Tina has a big heart. Maybe it was a bad judgment call, but we can have June or someone else make the decisions when we send her out."
"I couldn't stand to lose her!"
"Honey…I don't want to see her die any more than you do. But it wouldn't be fair to hold her back. How many other parents have lost their children, or how many children are orphans? She's a Digidestined, just like you and me. That means that she has responsibilities to this planet and to God, and it's not right for us to hold her back."
Yolei buried her face in her hands. Ken sat down next to her and wrapped his arms around her. "It's nothing we need to take care of tonight, honey. I'm scared of what'll happen if we put her back on seek patrol, too…"
"But…!"
Ken sighed. "Yes: but…"