Chapter 13: Reunions

Yolei looked into one of the stores. It's as good a place as any to check for food, she thought to herself. Yolei was very disappointed when she found out that this was a clothes store, not a grocery. But she picked out a few blankets and a few bags for carrying the food back in…not to mention a sweatshirt for Ingrid. The two of them walked out, each with an empty backpack and an empty duffel bag. Yolei sincerely hoped that she'd be able to fill those bags. Her own stomach began to complain about food.

Finally, they found a grocery store where there was some untouched food: it had canned goods in the back that had not gone bad yet. She filled up her duffel bag and her backpack with the cans, and she had filled up Ingrid's backpack when she decided she shouldn't weigh down the poor child with more than was necessary. So she didn't fill up her duffel.

She was just walking out of the store when she saw Metalgreymon fly past. Blinking, she asked herself, "Did I just see that?"

Her first impulse was to run after him, but she realized that running after him wouldn't help at all: he was so fast, she'd never catch up. Yolei groaned and beat her head against the wall of the store. Then, something even more interesting happened: she saw Metalgreymon flying back the other way, with the telltale waves of energy from a giantor following him.

"Okay, lemme see if I can remember how this works…" She pressed the same buttons, and the giantor came to a halt. But Metalgreymon kept going. "Oh, great…I need to get his attention, somehow…this is the craziest idea I've had yet…"

That got Metalgreymon's attention, all right: he stared at the giantor doing the Macarena and his mouth slowly dropped open. Yolei screamed, "Tai! Metalgreymon! Over here!"

"…Yolei? Is that you?" Tai asked.

"It's me, all right! It's good to see you!"

"Likewise! …Boy, you're going on a backpacking trip?"

"I'm taking as much as I can back to the others at the mausoleum."

"Mausoleum? You're staying at a cemetery?"

"Any place to get away from these menace machines."

"I see what you mean."

"Listen, I could use a hand taking this food back to the others. And we might need to take all of it."

"There's still some left in the store?"

"Yeah, there is."

"Great! A chance to get out of the rain!" Matt thought aloud.

"Relax, Matt. I still have a few ponchos from the humanitarian gear Tai and Kari got from that refugee camp. Surprising that there are any left, isn't it?"

"A welcome surprise."

They lugged the food back to the mausoleum…but there was nobody inside. Yolei's mouth dropped open, and tears peeked out the bottoms of her eyes. It was all gone. The gain of finding Tai and Matt was equalized by losing Kari, Moochi, Suezo, and the children they'd had with them from the orphanage. She sat on the steps to the mausoleum, buried her face in her hands, and cried.

"You hear something?" Matt asked.

"Besides her crying? …Maybe," Tai answered. He wrapped his fingers around the handle to one of the drawers of the mausoleum, and he pulled. "It's stuck," he grunted. "Could you give me a hand?"

After a few minutes of pulling, Matt said, "I think it's locked…"

Tai rapped on the drawer, and someone rapped back. "There's somebody alive in here! Yolei, give us a hand, here!"

"Huh?"

"There's somebody in this drawer!"

Yolei grabbed on to Matt's back, who was holding on to Tai's back. All three of them pulled.

Agumon looked at the development, and had an idea. "Pepper breath!" He shot a fireball at the lock of the drawer, and the lock gave way. Tai, Matt, and Yolei all fell backwards as the drawer came open.

Tai looked into the drawer, and there, breathing heavily, was Kari, with Gatomon on her chest. "Tai?" she croaked.

"Kari? How did you get in there?"

"We decided to hide in these drawers until we knew that you weren't a menace machine. But there isn't a way to open them from the inside."

"…Oh… Well, let's get the rest of them open before they all smother!"

******

"Oh, why us?" June mewed. "The day they send us out to find the others, it starts pouring! Why?"

"Oh, there's always rain clouds hovering over your head, June!"

"Thanks a bunch, Tina!" she spat.

"I'm just joking, June. What's got you so ticked?"

"I don't know…I guess I just realized that nothing is stable. That's life: nothing is permanent. We thought that they'd never attack the nuke plant, and they did. We thought the Digiworld would be around for good, and it wasn't."

"Like you say, that's life. You can adapt, you can gripe, or you can sleep it off."

"I'd like to be in bed and asleep, right now!" June muttered. "But then, I don't have a bed, anymore: all I have is a polyethylene rain poncho for a blanket and Tibemon's legs for a pillow!"

"You complain too much, June," Tina muttered.

"Frankly, I think I have a lot to complain about."

"Hey, you're still alive, aren't you?"

"I guess…"

"Tuli Dra Jalnor!"

"Run for it!" Tina yelled, without looking back. A tidal wave of lava splashed after them as they ran, and Tina could feel the dreaded heat coming after her. (She couldn't stand being too hot, and was glad it was raining, because it meant she wouldn't die from heat exhaustion.)

"Oh, great! Two catamarines!" June muttered. "Why do you think they came after us?"

The Unnamed Figure offered, "Because it's a seek and destroy mission, maybe?" He stepped out of the shadows.

"Toast him, Joey!" Tina shouted.

Joey let out his war cry whistle and fired a beam of white light out from his gun at him. The shot narrowly missed him and burned a hole through his cloak. He hid back in the alleyway.

"The catamarines are the real problem, Tina!" June shouted. "Come on!"

"Tibemon, digivolve to…Savamon!"

"Youngdramon, digivolve to…Ikudramon!"

"Ikudramon!"

"Savamon!"

"DNA digivolve to…Mermon!" Mermon immediately began firing torpedoes at the two catamarines at their heads and the joints of their legs.

"You're not beating two urbo-ator-thera!" The Unnamed Figure sneered.

"Don't be so sure about that!" Mermon shouted, getting dangerously close to the two catamarines: right between them!

"Now, you're fish and chips!" The Unnamed Figure sneered, sending a command to the two catamarines to fire at her. But their lava streams went right through her like she wasn't even there, and the lava covered the catamarines' eyes.

"Ha-ha!" Mermon taunted. "I have the ability to change my subspace-flux state: I can let stuff go through me like that at will!" She flew up to The Unnamed Figure and smacked his gauntlet with her ax.

"Aw, man!" he whined. "You and your mother keep taking away my gauntlets!" he muttered at Tina. "That's the second one this week!"

Tina ran up to him and gave his face the hardest slap she could. "All right, you traitor! Where did you see my mother?"

"…In Linonian HQ. She is currently my personal concu---"

"I know when a guy is lying through his teeth! Where did you meet her?"

"The corner of Tenth and Division. I doubt she's still there."

"We'll see about that." Reaching for the hood of his cloak, she added, "And now, let's see your face!"

She didn't see it coming, but The Unnamed Figure grabbed her and aimed his gauntlet at her neck. "Mermon, go back down to your rookie forms or your little friend is dead!"

"I don't think so! I destroyed your gauntlet so that you wouldn't be able to use it for anything! You're bluffing!"

He hurled Tina at Mermon and ran the other way while she was busy catching her.

"Do we go after him?" Mermon asked.

"No. We go back to base and tell the others to look for Mom at Tenth and Division."