Chapter 31: Undercurrents Upwelling
Rika was asleep on Tina's bedroll…that was a good thing; she wouldn't notice him. He kept his hormones and predatory instincts in check as he crept up to her, hoping that her mod-cards would be somewhere that he could get them. He found them in a leather holster, and he easily spotted the metallic gleam of the warp-digivolving card. He pocketed the card, and began to walk away. He bumped into Tina on the way out. "Oh…excuse me."
"Guess what? We'll be testing a new digivolving process that we stole from this one guy who was working for the enemy. Something called Co-Op digivolving. We're gonna need some pokémon to test it out. You want to give it a go?"
"Uh, thanks but no thanks," he answered. "I need to…uh, get some sleep."
"Okay, then. G'night."
"Good night." Man, I sure hope they don't catch me in the act again! he thought to himself.
He climbed down the ladder to the humanitarian HQ, and he found a spot to sit and slept there. In the morning, he was about to go out on control spire-destroying duty again when he found that he'd been reassigned: he was now working with T.K. and Cody. So off they went, in search of control spires, and it wasn't tough for them to find one.
"So…which one of us takes it out?" Terrance asked.
"I'll handle this one," Cody answered. "Digi-armor, energize!"
"Armadillomon, armor-digivolve to…Digmon, the drill of knowledge! Rock cracking!" Digmon shouted, drilling into the ground and sending a crack flying towards the obelaser. The obelaser toppled.
"I don't think that'll stop it," Terrance cautioned.
"Why do you say that?" Cody asked.
"I…uh…"
"Ota V'ver!" the obelaser shouted, firing a purple beam at them.
"That's why," Terrance answered, dodging the beam.
"Gold rush!" Digmon yelled, firing a few drill rockets at the obelaser. The rockets bounced right off. "Well, this is certainly going well," Digmon sighed.
"Time to radio-digivolve!" Cody yelled, pulling out Ash's sun stone.
"Digmon, radio digivolve to…Excavatemon, the diamond drill of knowledge!" Excavatemon had a whirling drum of digging tools in front of him, along with drills on each of his front legs. "Time to take care of this thing! Cask crusher!" He drove into the obelaser with his drum and ground it to pieces. "That was easy enough," he said with a grin.
"Don't hold your breath," Terrance answered.
"He's right. You should stay in your current form so that we can fight the next one."
"Okay…climb aboard," Excavatemon said. "Going up!" Excavatemon hovered across the city to the next obelaser. "Diamond rush!" he shouted, firing a pair of drill missiles at the obelaser.
"Ota V'ver!" it shouted back, blowing up both missiles.
"Well, isn't that dandy?" Excavatemon muttered. "Oh, well…Cask crusher!" Again, he flew straight at the obelaser's top pyramid. It fired another laser shot at him, but to no avail: the beam reflected off of Excavatemon's spinning blades, and he still destroyed it. "At this rate, we'll have this island cleaned up in no time!"
"If you can keep this up, yeah," T.K. answered. "But how long can you stay in this form?"
Patamon cut in, "I've been able to stay in my armor form for a long time. Excavatemon is no different."
"Why, thank you," Excavatemon beamed. "Before you know it---"
"Non Kamna!" a spiderstrike fired a yellow beam down at Excavatemon. It narrowly missed.
"Hello!" Excavatemon shouted, beginning to run evasive maneuvers.
The three humans on his back looked up at the flock of spiderstrikes that were bearing down on them. "There are way too many for my pokémon to take," Terrance said.
"Relax, Terrance!" T.K. said. "So long as there isn't a control spire around, they don't stand a chance!"
"What do you mean?"
"Watch-and-learn! Ready, Patamon?"
"Ready as I'll ever be! Patamon, digivolve to…Angemon!"
"Let's hope Tina was right about our crests being back," Cody said.
"Angemon, digivolve to…Magnaangemon!" Similar to Angemon, Magnaangemon was only a bit different from his previous form: he had a white robe covering his body, but the same armor jutted out from his robe as before.
"Looks like she was right," T.K. said. "Now, show 'em what you've got, Magnaangemon!"
"Gate of Destiny!" Magnaangemon shouted, waving his laser sword in a circle. The spiderstrikes were too stupid to avoid flying into the vacuum-like vortex, and the whole flock was demolished in one fell swoop.
Terrance's mouth dropped open: Magnaangemon was clearly another priority target. If he could destroy eighteen ferra-tor-cknii in one attack, then he had to be dealt with. He disguised his horror as surprise and said, "Wow! It's a wonder that we are even afraid of these machines!"
"No kidding," Magnaangemon said as he regressed back to Patamon.
"Here," T.K. said, pulling a candy bar out of his jacket pocket. "If you eat now and recover quickly, then there's a better chance that you'll be able to fight if another bunch of those shows up."
"Good idea," Patamon said. "Boy, do I have the life! Fight, eat, sleep."
"Sounds like a great lifestyle to me," Excavatemon said as he sniped another obelaser at long-range. After another hour of flying around and attacking these spires, Excavatemon regressed back down to a dog-tired Armadillomon, and they began to head back to base.
As the walked, it began to snow.
"Whoa," T.K. said, pulling a blanket out of his knapsack. "I hate it when this happens!"
"I thought you liked snow," Cody said.
"Not when it sneaks up on me!"
"It could be worse, you know."
Cody should not have said that. A group of throwbacks appeared out of nowhere and began taking potshots at them.
T.K. held up the golden digi-egg of hope and shouted, "Golden armor, energize!"
"Patamon, golden-armor digivolve to…Metatronmon, the angel of hope!"
"Magneton, I choose you!"
Metatronmon and Magneton had no trouble dealing with the throwbacks, but there was a problem that none of them saw: behind them, there was a saberstrike looming for the kill. It roared just soon enough for Cody to see it winding up its sonic attack.
"Get down!" he shouted, lurching at Terrance and knocking him to the ground just as the sonic blast fired.
"Houndoom, use flamethrower on that thing!" His dog-like pokémon spat a stream of flame into the saberstrike, and that was it for the saberstrike.
"Are you okay?" Cody asked.
"I'm fine but---uh-oh. Your hands look pretty scratched-up."
"I know; I need to start wearing gloves, like all the other Digidestined. But better my hands than all of you."
"Yeah…thanks…"
It wasn't long before they were back at base, and Cody was getting his hands bandaged up in Joe's "office". They had found one room in the sewers that was relatively clean, and they were using that room for medical treatment. Cody was surprised when he saw Tina burst in with an even-happier-than-usual look on her face.
"What is it, Tina?"
"Well, Cody, Youngdramon and I had been thinking that we needed a little holiday to break the monotony."
"You and Youngdramon aren't taking a vacation."
"I know that we aren't; I mean that we need something like a carnival, or an event---you know, something that comes around only once a year."
"You mean something like Christmas?"
"Well, yeah, but let's not do Christmas. Christmas is overdone; let's do Easter."
Cody shook his head. "It's too soon to do Easter. There hasn't been Lent, yet."
"Lent is a tradition, not an absolute, Cody. And besides, there are basically two traditions for Lent: you either give up chocolate until Easter, or you give up eating any meat except fish until Easter. This is Japan, without any global trade: there hasn't been any meat besides fish…which is ticking me off! And about the chocolate? I checked with my mom: we haven't found any candy at all. …Until now, I mean."
"And the candy is safe?"
"Quality tested!" Tina answered. She stuck out her tongue and her tongue was covered in a gooey, brown-colored substance.
Cody let out a disgusted, low, "OH!!!"
"It's just chocolate," Tina said.
"I know that it's chocolate, but I also know what it looks like." He sighed. "Why exactly did you come to me about this?"
"Well, someone has to narrate the pageant, and you're the most logical choice."
"Pageant…?"