Chapter 18: Toadstools

" 'Comb the woods', you said," June complained. " 'We'll find their secret bases', you said. Now, did it ever occur to you that combing the woods might mean wading in the rain through knee-deep wet leaves?"

Tina was skipping along, humming to herself. "Are you kidding? I think it's perfect out. The air smells wonderful, it's just the right temperature, and---"

"And we could die of pneumonia!"

"Oh, cope!" Tibemon grunted. "You complain about everything, June! We're sick of hearing you complain."

"And I'm sick of it raining all the time and us not being able to enjoy a little sunshine once in a while!" she sobbed.

Tina's heart suddenly became at odds with her sense of humor: does she help her friend in pain, or does she have a little fun with her? Youngdramon made the decision for her: "June, there's a skunk behind you!"

June froze. "What do we do about that?"

"Don't move. Usually, they won't spray if you don't move."

"Is he going away?"

"Nope. He's coming closer to you."

"EEEE!!"

"Ssshh! …He's crawling up your leg!"

"…I can feel it…!" (This was all in June's head.)

"He's about to bite you on the bottom!"

"EEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!"

"HE…never existed."

June looked like she was about to explode. "Hey, I didn't sign up for 'let Youngdramon torture me' duty!" She sighed. "I need to sit down," she said through gritted teeth. Fortunately, there was a big red mushroom nearby for her to sit on. And it looked just like a metal mushroom stool in a kid's playground. It even felt like a big metal stool. In fact, it was metal, but it wasn't meant to be a stool. June didn't know this, tough; she sat down on it and kept griping and sassing, not realizing that a pair of laser guns was sticking up out of the ground and beginning to aim at her.

"Dragon Bomb!"

"Shark bite!"

The two laser guns exploded, much to June's surprise. The mushroom fell over limp and dumped June into the wet leaves. After a squeal of surprise, June picked herself up. "What was that?!"

"Menace machine?" Tina suggested.

"Looks like they have more here than we bet on!" Tibemon thought aloud.

"And I'm liking this less and less…okay, so we have more information! Let's get back to base and write it down before something else happens to us---"

"Oh, right! We learn about one new menace machine, and you want to call it quits?"

"I'll take any excuse for getting out of here!" June spat.

Tina rolled her eyes. "I've heard that these digivices have radar on them, or something like that," Tina thought aloud, taking her digivice out of her pocket. "Maybe this can tell us something… Hmm…I know that red blips are digivices, blue blips are digi-eggs, but I can't tell what those orange blips are…?"

"Orange? …Orange blips are dimensional anomalies," Tibemon answered.

"Then I think it's time we paid those orange blips a visit," Tina mused.

"Do we have to? I mean, finding a portal into their dimension (or finding out that they have a dimension, for that matter) would be great, but we aren't the best of fighters for this, are we?" June begged.

"I'm not planning to fight," Tina shot back. "All we do is watch from a distance."

June sighed. "Okay, but the second there's trouble, I want out of there!"

As they walked along, Tibemon suddenly whispered for them to hide. There was space enough under one of the nearby trees for them to hide.

"And I'd rather not get out from under here," June added as she shut her umbrella and crawled under.

"What're we hiding from, anyways?" Tina whispered.

"Lift-tor," Tibemon answered. Tina carefully peeked out from under the tree, and she saw a crane-like menace machine, lifting an M-shaped tangle of wires and lasers that looked like it had a red mushroom head---exactly like the mushroom June had sat on. There were a few throwbacks there as well, and the throwbacks were cutting down trees and digging in the ground. They were making a clearing in the woods, for some reason.

Finally, the lift-tor lowered its strange payload into one of the holes in the ground. Then it picked up another M-shaped tangle of wires and laid it down. And another, and another, until there were six in all.

"Clave-tor-purea, noh kreshnaiona djom…Clave-tor-d'dohr!"

"What was that?" June asked.

"It looks like…there are lift-tors and throwbacks building something over there. They're making a clearing in the woods and they're putting some machines like the one you sat on in holes in the ground, and then covering them up so that only the mushroom head is sticking up out of the ground."

"You mean those things are immobile menace machines?" June asked.

"Yeah, and it looks like they aren't supposed to move, either," Tina agreed. "And you get six of them in a ring, they evolve together! After they evolve, their mushroom heads are different: these are blue. The one you sat on was red."

"So we have a problem on our hands?" June asked.

"Yeah. And…hold on a minute," Tina said, pulling her digivice out of her pocket again. "There's a new orange blip that just came on screen…right where they just put all those mushroom machines. I wonder if---??" Tina's sentence came to a halt as she saw a cloud of light above the ring of mushrooms. Out from the cloud came a canis-tor.

"What? What do you see?"

"Those rings of mushrooms let them teleport in reinforcements! We need to trash this installation, and we need to do it now!"

"Do we have to?" June moaned.

"Yes! Come on!"

"Youngdramon, digivolve to…Ikudramon!"

"Tibemon, digivolve to…Savamon!"

"Ikudramon!"

"Savamon!"

"DNA digivolve to…Mermon!" Mermon flew into the clearing. "Destructor torpedo!" she shouted, firing a few missiles at the lift-tors to get them out of the way first. The lift-tors didn't go down without some work, but they went down.

"Gazriota!" the throwbacks began throwing laser fire up at her.

"Mer poleax!" she shouted, spinning her ax like a propeller in front of herself. The laser shots ricocheted off her ax right back at the throwbacks.

"YoNon H'vekk!" A six-voiced shout rose up from the half-buried ring of mushrooms, and twelve laser bolts went flying at Mermon.

"Mer poleax! …Boy, I'm starting to think we should've gotten reinforcements!" Mermon thought.

"We have to get rid of the mushrooms!" Tina shouted up to Mermon. "Shoot the ones they haven't installed yet! Those won't be as strong!"

"It's worth a shot! ---And a shot is going to be tough to get in; I need my ax to keep reflecting the enemy attacks away!"

"Then we'll have to take care of them!" Tina shouted.

"We don't have any special attacks! How do you expect us to destroy those things?" June cried.

"There is a very simple answer to that question: 'no'."

"Uh…you're not making much sense…"

"You'll see what I mean in a minute. ♫Oh, Joey! ♫"

Joey stuck his head out of Tina's overalls pocket. "?"

"Could you shoot those mushroom-thingies for us?"

"Mushroom? Joey not know word for 'mushroom'. Is room that mushes?"

"No. I'll show you." Tina took Joey to the mushroom that they had destroyed before. "It's like one of those!"

"Oh, Tina mean clave-ator-purea."

"Yeah, whatever…just shoot them, will ya?"

"Okay." Joey aimed his laser cannon at the rings of buried mushrooms and shot a few of them. For a brief second, the ring stopped shooting.

"Destructor torpedo!" Mermon shouted, firing at the heap of uninstalled mushrooms. She managed to get a few pot shots in at the rings of active mushrooms, too.

Tina looked at her digivice. "Mermon, that takes care of all the orange blips---there aren't any more dimension gates! We can head for home now!"

"I think we should; this place is a little too hot for my tastes!" she muttered, referring to the laser fire she kept having to deflect away.

"And I'm dying to get out of this rain!" June screamed.

"Then let's get out of here, already!" Tina yelled. They two girls grabbed on to Mermon's ax handle and they flew off. "So…mission accomplished, I'd say," Tina sighed.

"What was that? Get soaking wet?"

"June, you complain too much! …No, not get soaking wet. If I wanted us to do that, I'd take us to the beach. We found a new type of menace machine, and now we have some idea of where all these menace machines are coming from. All we have to do to free Earth is to find all the mushrooms and destroy them!"

"Oh, easy task!"

"Quit complaining, June!"

GAZRIITOR:

Nickname: Cyst-M (Tetsumasshū)
Real Name: Clavi-tor-purea
Caste: Jolii Var'ka
Modes: One
Special Attacks:
Non H'vekk
Dra Wisht'
Comments:
The Cyst-M is an immobile tor that lives underground. It is armed with two laser weapons, and its mushroom head is capable of draining the energy of any SI life-form that steps on it. The two boxy structures at the ends of the Cyst-M are its power cells, which, if severed from the CPU that is beneath the mushroom head, will remove all power and all life from the Cyst-M.

GAZRIITOR:

Nickname: Unfairy-Ring (Rinumasshū)
Real Name: Clavi-tor-d'dhor
Caste: Atat nem tor
Modes: One
Special Attacks:
YoNon H'vekk
Dra Yon Wisht'
Comments:
The unfairy-ring is the combination of six Cyst-M's. The unfairy-ring networks its CPUs together and forms a little digiworld of its own, along with a portal into Earth's dimension. In this digiworld, it constructs crony ator and teleports them in the middle of the ring. It is still capable of dispensing six times the firepower of a Cyst-M and draining other SI lifeforms quickly.

******

"Tina, I really wish you'd be more careful."

"Mom, I've heard that enough. I'm your daughter, but I'm also a Digidestined. And I need to answer my calling, whether there's danger or not. But, like I said, June and I found a whole bunch of new menace machines, and the Linonian Empire is using them to either beam in or manufacture other menace machines."

"And we both know that this means that we'll be facing even more machines."

"Basically, yeah."

"That is not good. We need to start finding and destroying them."

"There's one other thing, Mom. They need dirt to make them work. Loose dirt. That means they won't be in the cities."

"…The country…"

Tina nodded. "The one place that they didn't get us before. Now they got us."

Yolei rubbed her temples. "What else could they be planning?!"

"We don't know, Mom. That's why, as soon as Youngdramon and Tibemon are back on their feet, June and I will be doing some more scouting."

Yolei sighed at the thought of her daughter back outside, in danger, but she was in no mood to argue with her on the subject. She just ended, "Go get some rest."

******

Misty shuddered at the heavy rain that enveloped the wooded landscape. She, Ghenki, Moochi, Ash---and even Pikachu were all wearing raincoats with their hoods up, and, in the dark and spooky air around them, they looked like faceless wraiths from a medieval movie. She couldn't see her friends' faces because of the shadows, and she imagined that they couldn't see hers, either.

Pikachu couldn't pick up any scent of menace machines in that cold, wet environment, so they were pretty much on their own, and had to rely on sight to find anything worth destroying. That wasn't an easy alternative, either, since visibility was low, and the only light they were using was from the two, creepy, full moons that shone so brightly that their light pierced straight through the clouds.

They were on a mission to find out more about these unfairy-rings that Tina and June had reported seeing. But they weren't finding anything at all, except mud puddles and decaying vegetation on the forest floor. The trees above them looked like they were straight out of a winter scene, without any leaves on them and bare, twisted bark frowning down at the ground. Misty didn't wonder that the machines kept away; this was a place unfit for man nor beast nor SI life form.

"Ash, there's nothing here…I think we ought to go back."

"Misty, if you're scared, then…well…"

"I'm not scared Ash."

"You sure sounded like it."

Pikachu climbed up into Misty's arms and began licking her face. "Chu, ka pika pi chuuu…."

"I've got to admit this is creepy," Ghenki said.

"Chi…"

"Misty's right, though…there's nothing here. We should find some other place to look. They're probably in some clearing, since the trees would really get in their way."

They walked for another few minutes, hoping to find some sign of where the forest ended. All of a sudden, Pikachu let out a low hiss.

"What is it? Hear something?" Ash asked.

"Pi-ka-chu!" he answered. He dashed forward towards the source of the noise, and it wasn't long before the humans heard it, too. It was a loud clamor of unfairy-rings fighting with something. They looked, and---in the middle of the battle was a large, blue cat.

"What is that thing?"

"No Monster I've ever seen!" Ghenki answered.

"Then it's either a pokémon, or a digimon…and he looks vaguely familiar…" Ash took out his Pokédex and aimed it at the cat.

"Suicune, the aurora pokémon. Legend says that the north winds blow whenever it appears."

"That's a pokémon?" Ash asked.

"He's not doing very well," Misty moaned. "That's a water type?"

"According to the Pokédex, yeah."

"Then…" Misty's sentence trailed off. "Then I'm going to catch him! Pokéball, go!" Misty tossed out a pokéball, but it hit one of the unfairy-rings instead of Suicune.

"At least that's one ring down," Ghenki said, drawing his weapon.

"Moochi Cannon!" Moochi shouted, firing at another of the unfairy-rings.

"Tauros, I choose you!"

"Golduck, go!"

"Tauros, us Earthquake to break up those unfairy-rings, before they make more menace machines!"

"Golduck, use Confusion waves to mess up their circuitry!"

Suicune took this opportunity to try to run, but it was knocked down by a lift-tor, and the lift-tor stepped on its hair, not allowing it to move. The more Suicune struggled, the more pain it felt. It cried out in pain with horrifying, heartrending roars.

"Ash, look at what that crane is doing to poor Suicune!" Misty shouted.

"We'll have to worry about him later! We've got these machines to worry about…especially if some of their created machines show up!"

"You had to say that, didn't you?" Ghenki asked as he hurled Magna's boomerang at one of the saberstrikes. He neatly took its head off.

"Cherry Blossom Blizzard, chi!" The barrage of flower petals knocked more of the saberstrikes to pieces.

"Ash, we need to take care of that big one! He's shooting at Suicune while he's down!" It was no lie. The menace machines weren't squeamish about kicking a man when he's down, because they had no concept of honor. (There were few things that they had a concept of.)

"I'll handle this! Snorlax, I choose you! Use hyper beam!" Snorlax's yellow ray sliced right through the lift-tor, and the lift-tor toppled over, dead.

Suicune didn't feel grateful for this help: he raced away from the battlefield with full speed.

"Ash, he's hurt! He'll never survive if we don't catch him and heal him up!"

"You're only after him because he's a great water-type, aren't you?"

"Okay, I want him in my collection…but still, he needs our help if he's going to survive!"

"She's right, chi!" Moochi cut in. "I saw how bad that thing hit him!"

"…All right. But this'll be a fast chase; Suicune runs a lot faster than most pokémon, but if he's injured, we might be able to keep up. Tauros, Snorlax, return! Pidgeot, I choose you!"

"Golduck, great work. Return. Starmie, I choose you!"

Ghenki pulled the digi-egg of love out of his pocket. "Now I get to see how it feels for me to evolve another monster!" Ghenki crowed.

"Yeah, but you're missing out on the rush of evolving yourself, chi! Moochi, module-evolve to…Turtledove!"

The three of them flew after Suicune, and Suicune was panicking for being chased and injured. He was panting for breath, and couldn't keep from tripping over weeds and fallen-off branches as the two pokémon trainers and Ghenki rode after him. Fortunately for them, he was uninterested in a fight.

"Pidgeot, use quick attack!" Pidgeot flew at Suicune and knocked him for six.

"Starmie, use tackle!" Starmie attacked the same way, and Suicune began to feel faint. "Now, pokéball, go!" Misty hurled the ball at the injured pokémon, and she had him captured.

Misty let out a squeal of delight. "I can't believe it! I have what every water pokémon trainer dreams of! I have the Suicune!"

"Boy, she's sure…enthusiastic," Ghenki said.

"You're not putting it strongly enough," Ash answered.

Misty was oblivious to their murmuring. "I know just how to get off on the right foot with him!"

"Huh?" Ash asked.

******

Suicune lay sprawled out on the floor of the storm sewers, with a soft, fuzzy comforter between himself and the cement floor. He still hadn't come to from the fight he had with the machines and the trainers. But they had sprayed super potion on his wounds, and he was healing nicely.

Misty wanted nothing more than to keep him as comfortable as possible, so she used her own lap as a pillow for him. She put her fingers through his hair. It didn't feel like hair; it felt like she was dipping her hand into water. But when she pulled her hand out, there wasn't a drop of moisture on it. She was amazed at this, as she was at just about everything else about this pokémon. She felt his skin, and it was smooth like a dolphin's skin. Other than the watery hair on its head, it had no fur at all.

Suicune began to come to. Misty's mouth dropped open, but---before awe took control of all her mental functions---she realized that she needed to make a good impression on Suicune to "get off on the right foot" with him. So she began gently stroking his skin and singing just as gently…

******

Natasha was hungry. It had been too long since she had eaten, and there wasn't enough food to go around in the storm sewers. She knew that nobody wanted her to go hungry, but there just wasn't any food around; nobody was grinding the grain to make flour or bread…at least, not at that moment. She wondered what could be done---if anything---to get another meal. She came to the conclusion that there was nothing she could do, so she just sat tight and hoped that there would be something to eat in the next little while.

Her train of thought derailed as she heard something like water splashing and a surprised scream in the other room. A few moments later, another girl that she only vaguely recognized walked out of the room holding a red and white ball and with her pink sweatshirt drenched---not to mention a look of shock on her face. "Whoa…have these time anomalies finally done the ultimate weird thing and started making in rain indoors?" Natasha asked.

"No!!"