The Fate of the World: Bus Pass
by Creedogmon
edited by Godeerc VanDrey
Category: Digimon
Genre: Fantasy, Action/Adventure
Rating: PG
Language: English
Summery: The demon is gone but far from dead. How is the team to stop the deadly menace?
A/N: Hey, why not start a new part? This is the turning point of the story. Let's just hope I can keep the momentum, if I ever had any.
"Wicked…" says C.J.. "What was that thing? And what were you guys doing?"
For the most part, we're all speechless, except Eric. "That thing? We don't know either, but we sure couldn't destroy it. And we are the DigiDestined."
I cover my face and groan. You can never trust Eric for a normal answer, no matter how right he was.
"C.J.," I hear myself say, "that was some creature; we're pretty sure it's evil. And… okay, here it goes…"
: : :
The story doesn't take long, but C.J. is greatly perturbed.
The gang looks around, wondering what to do. Many of them stare at the column, which Katmondu has taken to scratching on, until a large portion of it collapses, leaving an open area. The rest of the column doesn't collapse. It's hollow, we discover. The ceiling and floor that were hidden by the column is scorched. Katmondu, though initially spooked by the collapse of the paper-thin column, decides to jump in. Immediately, his digivice collar begins to glow, as does the floor he's standing on. A beam emerges from the screen and wanders, snake-like, around inside the column, but disappears as the bored cat leaves the area.
Inspired, Anna and Justine step in. This time, a column of light surrounds them. The digivices both emit snaking beams which find each others' digivices. Now, the two girls begin to glow, but oddly enough, the light… shatters. They exit, still curious, but defeated. C.J., however, approaches the column, looking at it with an oddly sense of scientific curiosity and… familiarity. He runs his hand across the inside wall.
Daniel looks around, "Now what?" He gets no answer. Exasperated, he continues, "Are you telling me that we just traversed halfway across the state to stop a vile menace who we feared was a threat to all mankind, and he disappears and leaves us with a floor-to-ceiling cocoon?"
"I don't think it's a cocoon," C.J. states, still standing in the broken column, I think it's a portal. Seeing that the ceiling and floor are still intact, I'd say it's interdimensional."
"Are you sure you haven't been reading too many comic books, C.J.?" Matt asks.
"I just witnessed you all, glowing in light, fighting with supernatural power against a foe that was emerges from a black substance. Excuse me for having a case of Mulder Syndrome." This shuts him up.
Trying to resolve what I can, I ask, "What do you think, C.J.?"
"That monster obviously went somewhere. He didn't go through the ceiling or the ground, because they're both still here. And he surely didn't go through these walls. They're several inches of cement-hard plaster. It had to travel to another dimension."
"Any clues where?" Matt asks, half serious.
"No, he didn't exactly leave a road map, unless…" at this, C.J. rubs the inside of the cave again.
"Chris, tell me what you think of this." He shows me the wall. Examining it closely, I see what he's talking about. Though the column has a rough texture, they're visible indentions and protrusions, almost circular, and in a repeating pattern. "Bump, bump, bump, bump, dent, bump, dent, dent, dent," I mumble. Then, it hits me.
"James, tell me about codes in series of eight that have two opposite characters."
"Computer byte-code. Binary, to be specific."
Daniel peeks his head in to the column, "You're telling me you think that there's computer code in the walls?"
My brow ruffles, "Well, I guess it could be. It kinds of looks like it's going in a spiral pattern."
C.J., who is still staring at the wall. "Notice how many of this pattern is here."
"No, I haven't been staring at them. What is it?"
He points to me and I point it out to James. He reads it, "11110100. It's a big number. No! It's negative. Negative thirteen."
"Negative forteen. Straight 1's in negative one. It's ahead." I state.
Jessica muses, "It there any significance to -14?"
"No," a voice comes from elsewhere, from Justine. "Trust me, there's no signifance. I'd have heard about it," she claims with a sarcastic edge to her voice.
I pull my digivice from my belt loop and hold it up to the wall. It immediately lights up and the light presses against the way before fading away. "It doesn't want to read it."
Matt looks amused, "Sorry, I know this is serious important situation and all, but he just asked his digivice to read the code. I don't know why I'm in such a mood today."
"Divine inspiration," Justine comments, but even she finds her own words strange.
"Matt, you're a genius. The digivices don't need instructions how to get to the DigiWorld. You'd think that'd be hardwired in. C.J., are you…?"
"This output, not input. The wall, the marks. It's telling the portal where to go."
"And if it's burnt into the wall, then this repeated mark is…"
"Positive thirteen," James adds.
"New line break statement," Justine predicts.
"A list of commands… sending him… where?" I deduce.
Daniel sighs, "Where do you think?"
"DigiWorld," James comments, "why? He seemed pretty intent on attacking us. And if he wanted to get to the DigiWorld, why he visit?"
"Maybe he didn't know how to get there." C.J. grabs my digivice. "I think that this little bugger might know how to get there. He just… hacked the coordinates, shall we say?"
"Okay, fine," Anna admits, "but if these things can take us to the DigiWorld, and they have before, why aren't they doing it now. I mean, I'd like as much as the rest of you to forget this ever happened, but there's nothing from stopping that thing from coming back. My conscience tells me we gotta do something."
C.J. hums, "Even more than that. That thing can destroy a lot. If it can destroy a dimension, it may take the rest of God's creation with it."
"Who's to say it can destroy a dimension? This thing has been doing some standard bomb destruction. No tearing the fabric of the universe," Justine observed, "Oh gosh, I sound like an X-Men geek now."
"If you don't count the whole David Copperfield thing, yeah," C.J. states, still absorbed in the column.
James interjects, "Question at hand. I've been a DigiDestined for only two weeks now, but I gotta say, we're stuck. That thing was trouble and I'm thinking that Superman's not coming to beat his butt into the ground for us. Once more, how do we follow that thing?"
"Your digivices engulfed the column with light," C.J. says with unnatural expertise, "my guess, it was sucking in digital code to get to the digital world. If you guys wanna get there, we'll have to build a portal."
Jessica steps up. "Wait a second. You expect us to build a column like this thing?"
"Actually, no," C.J. replies, "this thing knew how to contact the digivices. We build a cement building around you, you'll sit there staring at each other. My theory is the first time you got slingshot to the DigiWorld, the digivices invoked an autonomous portal call."
"English…" Anna sings.
"Like AutoPlay on your computer," I clarify, "you put a disk in the drive, and the computer automatically runs it."
"Even if we could invoke a call to the digivice, I find All-Black-And-Evil's method rather primitive. I'm mean, it's not like I've researched this, but interdimensional teleportation might be rather callous."
Anna clears her throat. C.J. repeats the word "slingshot."
"If we could get a controlled dialogue to the digivices, we might be able to set the parameters for, uh, sending you there."
Matt looks at his green digivice skeptically, "And who speaks D-3?"
C.J., pulls out my blue-green digivice, looking at the base, "If we lucky, I think we can simply Plug-and-Play it," indicating an electrical jack on the bottom of the device.
I smile, then I feels somebody tapping my shoulder, and a soft voice saying, "Um…"
It's the girl I saved on stage. She's a pretty girl, petite and with dusty, disheveled hair. I see the remnants of once-good make-up job on her face. "I would, uh," she begins, nervous and a little shaky, "like you for… saving me back there. I appreciate it." She gives me a forced smile.
Taken aback, I mumble back, "Uh, no problem. All part of the job I guess," I say with probably a complete lack of confidence."
She turns her eyes to Matt, who looks back, "And my friend would like to thank you, too." Matt gives her a confused look. She clarifies, "Red hair. A little taller than me."
Matt nods, "Oh, yeah, tell her she's welcome."
I comment, "I thought you'd be running away in a panic by now,."
She smiles, "Oh, yeah. I'll be all over that in a second. Trust me. But I just had to get the thank- you in."
"Well, thank you…"
"Halley," she states, "Halley DeMallora. Again, thank you."
With this she runs off.
C.J. nudges me in the ribs, giving me a coy smile afterwards.
: : :
The group looks outside. It's still deserted, but numerous sirens can be heard in the background. Phillip remarks, "We'll never get anywhere without being questioned by the cops." Sure enough, a cop car drives down a nearby street, at around ten miles per hour, likely scanning for injuries. And a building with an entire wall destroyed is rather conspicuous, especially with eleven teenagers, a toddler, and several small animals, a few not earthly, standing in the void.
"I doubt they'll see us," comments Jessica, as a police car turns onto the street. Distracted by Jessica's comment, we freeze instead of trying to hide. The car slows to a stop in front of the building, twenty feet from where we're standing.
"Damn, Jerry, look at that," a police officer steps out the car.
"Whole wall's blasted out. We'd better check for survivors."
I turn to Jessica. Her milky eyes tell me why the police have failed to notice us. I motion to Matt and Daniel to carry Jessica, and we move in mass away from the building as the police approach us, looking right through us. So this is what it's like to be invisible.
It's a short walk across the knoll, but it takes forever. We see that the monster seems to have left quite a bit of destruction in his pass. The roadway from which he erupted is beyond repair, nothing but an even pile of furniture-sized chunks of asphalt. The eruption caused a multi-car wreck and, of course, is swarmed with police and the fire department. I don't see any ambulances.
Feeling it safe to talk, Phillip finally says something, "Where're we going?"
"I got an idea," states Matt. "Follow my lead." Since he's carrying Jessica, this is easier said than done, but we finally arrive…
"Wal-Mart?" James is in utter disbelief. "Why?"
"It's deserted. All of Atlanta's left en masse. It's got computers and probably the wires we need."
"And supplies," Justine notes.
It's yet to occur to us that if we are going to take a trip to the DigiWorld, it wouldn't be a bad idea to stock up. In fact, it's nearly necessary.
"C.J., here's my digivice." Matt hands him the green-paneled apparatus. "Do what you can."
"I'm on it," he states, but there's definite uncertainty in his voice.
: : :
The backpack on my pack is heavy. James and Matt decided to take the initiative to plan our packing. Being in Wal-Mart, we have unlimited access to water, non-perishable food items, flashlights, and so on. You gotta love Boy Scouts.
In addition, I brought along a laptop. I tipped C.J. off about trying to use a computer to open a digital interdimensional gateway. He said he'd thought of that and agreed. And I though Eric was a little off-kilter.
I dropped the filled book bag to the ground. Somehow, I'd managed to pack a notebook and other trinkets. C.J., between the soda pop aisle and the bagged chips aisle near the back of the store, has set up an elaborate computer network of three laptops hooked up to each other by long hanging cords. There's also a small vertical tower machine of some sort plugged in and running.
"Well, I've had quite a field day. Your digivices as you call them actually have a lot of data stored into them. Once I hooked them up, I was able to reformat them to a regular operating system. Boy, was that a surprise." It's not for all of us.
"The digivices have a full anatomical scan of your bodies in them and I think that's what they use to grab you and pull you through the gate. All of them had the DigiPort program ready to be transferred, and I've got them on these computers. I've set it up so that all three computers will open the gate at the same time, grab you, and send you to the DigiWorld without any of them crashing, which could be fatal. But other than that, no worries!" He adds to the end, but we're all pretty speechless.
Anna, who seems still processing C.J.'s spiel, "Go back to that part about full anatomical scans…"
"Yeah, the scan did include a visual model. And, yes, because clothes are variable, default was none. I started with Matt's, so, unfortunately, I knew better than to look at the rest of them."
Justine catches it, "Unfortunately?"
"Fortunately, I mean," C.J. replies, his cheeks understandably red, "and just so you don't have to ask, I didn't download them. The entire digivice was locked."
There is a long silence, "What's that?" I ask, referring to the small machine on the ground.
"Oh, it's an ionizer. You put it into hotel rooms to help sanitize them. I though it would help make the portal easier to materialize." He pauses for a moment, then, "Shall I fire them up?"
: : :
A/N: Okay, these last few chapters have been rather drawn out, but it's about to get crazy. So, hang in there. Just be glad I'm actually starting to post the ones I have, 'cause as the time of writing this, I'm so behind in posting.
(Sonriso) - Wait a second, you're telling me that all they needed was a computer to create the DigiPort. Where were they during Season 2?