Chapter 46: Mission Briefing
"Yikes…this guy isn't human at all," Cleaver thought aloud. "Just looking at the wound Veemon made, I can tell that he's an android. Look: wires and metal are in the wound, not flesh and blood. This thing isn't Takato. It's not even organic."
"Did we kill him?"
"Let's see…" Cleaver began peeling away the fake, plastic skin on the android's body. He saw that most of the components were still working. "Doesn't look like it, no. But---hmm…Looks like most of the wires go from the spot where he got hit to the motors working his arms and legs…so…I think that he's still alive; he just can't move."
"Better fix that," Davis thought aloud.
"Right." Cleaver got out a scissors and a pair of insulated gloves, and he began madly cutting wires in the android. It wasn't long before the components stopped.
"Good riddance," Veemon thought aloud.
"No kidding. Now, I can get around to dismantling this guy and figuring out what makes him tick us off." Cleaver chuckled.
******
Tina wondered how strange it was that this base was built for tiny creatures, and yet the halls were not made for tiny creatures: they were big enough for her to walk through.
Joey all of a sudden motioned for a halt. "Praze-ator-epio!" he hissed. He began running in the other direction and hid in a doorway. Tina did the same thing and pressed her back against the wall so that they wouldn't see her as they marched past. She saw that they were mandroids, and that they were marching through the halls, two-by-two.
She looked down at Joey after the mandroids had passed. "How do we stay away from those things?"
"Joey think disguise would work. Lookit!" They entered the room they had ducked into, and they found that it was a scrap yard for discarded menace machines. Tina left the room with the outer metal shells of a mandroid tied to her with loose wiring. It was tough to guess who this disguise would fool, but it was better than nothing. She felt like she was in a medieval suit of armor, and she had to walk on tiptoes to fit the full length of the mandroid's legs. She walked through the halls quietly, trying to remain as inconspicuous as she could.
"So," she whispered to Joey, "Where would you say the agazriitato are keeping Guilmon?"
"Joey not know."
"Well, I need to find him, my digivice, and my digi-egg."
"Joey would think they keep things they take from Tina in pagasht' rewenutha."
"Where would that be?"
"There," Joey answered.
"Where?"
"There!" Joey snorted in frustration. He didn't know the words for "left" or "right", so he jumped out of the mandroid disguise and hopped to the door, looking inside to point it out.
Tina walked in, and there were several objects in transparent plastic containers. She looked at them, and saw that several were Takato's digi-modify cards. Another was Takato's D-Arc. Still more were Takato's backpack and the humanitarian gear and emergency clothes that had been inside his backpack. More were samples of clothing whose owners she'd never known. But the two that most interested her were her digi-egg of adventure and her rust-colored digivice. She opened the containers and pulled out the digivices, cards, and her digi-egg. "Some good these do me without Youngdramon."
"When Tina get back to other house, Tina can see Youngdramon again."
"But we need to find Guilmon first. Where would he be…" Tina slapped her forehead. "Of course! If I were an alien, I'd put my prisoners in my lab!"
"Lab?"
"Place where they study guys that are alive."
"Alive?" Joey snorted. "Duh! Guilmon in khneretato!"
"Where's that?"
"Joey not know."
"Joey say when he sees it," Tina suggested.
"Okay…" Joey jumped into Tina's pocket again. The two of them had a long, scary stroll through the rest of the complex until they finally found the khneretato that Joey had mentioned. There were a few scientists inside the lab, and they were surprised to see a mandroid walk in while they were working. Joey let out a war-cry whistle and jumped down, non otawawo in hand. He began madly firing at the scientists, and Tina joined in. Once it was apparent that all the scientists were unconscious, Tina took the mandroid's armor off herself.
"So…what do you think's going on, here?" she asked Joey.
"Why Tina think Joey know? Joey is little digimon. Not know what agazriitato doing."
"Hmm." Tina tiptoed around the lab, and came upon the forms of several humans, floating in huge, cylindrical, plastic vats. The strange thing was that the humans were covered in strange suits that completely covered their skin, and those suits had tubes running from them that seemed to slowly tap some kind of fluid away and collect the fluid in a vial. Tina looked at a vial's contents, and it didn't seem to be blood or plasma. So…what was it?
She picked up the vial and opened it. A waxy, biological smell hit her in the nose. "What is this stuff?"
"Stuff Joey don't have that humans have. If Joey had this, wouldn't need wear petrolatum."
"Huh? Is this…skin oil?"
"Yep-yep."
"Why would they be taking skin oils from people?" Tina wondered out loud.
"Joey not know."
Tina sighed. "This is all way too weird."
******
They were in a staff meeting, and they were planning a search-and-rescue mission. "How are we supposed to find them?" Kari asked. "We don't know if the enemy base is anywhere near Japan!"
"That's easy. Izzy?" Yolei asked.
Izzy pulled out his laptop and switched on the overhead projector. "Gennai gave me a radar program for my laptop while we were still fighting the Dark Masters in the Digiworld. It would let me find Tina if she were anywhere on Earth, but we don't know how the time anomalies would affect the program. So far, we've gotten five, brief signals from her digivice. Three out of five of the signals have come from here," Izzy motioned with his laser pointer. "It's the most logical place to have a base-of-operations against digimon and humans; it's a sparsely populated island south of Honshu Island---or it was sparse before the time anomaly took over. There are probably no people there, now, considering what the time anomaly did to the rest of the world's population. …And the fact that they would kill anybody who was there…"
"So we attack there?" Davis asked.
"With all the D-3 Digidestined and their digimon, except T.K. and Cody. They'll hold down the fort at base with Brock and Misty and the originals. Ash and Tracy will be with us. The Monsters Moochi, Suezo, Tiger, and Hare are coming along with us, too."
"When do we leave?"
"Right after we eat."
******
"Hawkmon, digivolve to…Altairmon!"
"Altairmon!"
"Gatomon!"
"DNA digivolve to…Swampangemon!"
"Swampangemon, mode-change to…giga mode!" Swampangemon picked up the Digidestined, pokémon trainers, and Monsters and put them in her pockets.
"Time to get our daughter back!" Ken insisted.
"Hang on, Tina!" Yolei said aloud.
It was a while before Swampangemon made it to the island. When she was nearly there, a few green shots from a crackone greeted her. She answered with a few of her own: "Static pulse!" She hurled orange-red beams of electric fire back at the giant squid, and it wasn't long before she'd sunk it.
"Looks like the welcoming committee's well-aware of us," Kari noted, looking at the incoming c-birds.
"Time for a little action, huh?" Hare asked.
"I'm with you!" Suezo agreed. "Toss me the digi-egg! Suezo, module-evolve to…Saw-grass!"
"Hare, module-evolve to…Firabbit!" The two Monsters flew out of Swampangemon's pockets and began taking pot shots at the incoming c-birds.
"This could get ugly, too," Ash thought to himself, clutching Charizard's and Pidgeot's pokéballs.
"No kidding," Tracy agreed.