NOTE: There is hinting on Christian content in this chapter.

Chapter 8:

The words "weird" and "normal" are two of the group of words that have no definite definitions: what's normal to me might be weird to you. (That's more likely to be true than you think.)

The Little Teenaged Geek (not that he would know anything)

He'd been cramped in the escape pod for seven days, living off the bad-tasting rations that the pod was stocked with. Even worse, he had no way of washing the wax off himself except to put on more wax to replace the dirty wax.

He looked out the window. His pod was closer to Earth than it had been before. It was over the bluish, reflective, level plains that the child guessed were the water that flooded the surface. "Ooooh! I hope I don't land in the water!" he cried. He could just imagine it: his skeleton being found decades later by a survey team, in the escape pod at the bottom of the ocean. He was torturing himself with thoughts of his own death.

Finally, the pod drew in closer and closer, and he could see the red, burning heat that from the friction of the atmosphere against his pod. He wasn't over the water anymore---not by a long shot; he had passed the water hours ago. But the planet shadowed him from the sun, and he wondered what the planet would be like? Would it be cold? Dark? Or would it be too hot to live in? What kind of creatures populated this world? He shuddered as he wondered what awaited him on the surface.

He kept looking out the window at the ground. He began seeing more and more detail, he could make out squares of different colors, thin, gray lines between the squares, and large clusters of star-like light sources peeking up at him. He could feel the planet's gravity, pulling him away from the window. And, all of a sudden, he realized that he'd have to open the emergency parachutes if he was going to avoid crashing. He slid down the pod's curved wall (which was scalding hot from the friction), and he hopped to the emergency deploy control. He yanked on the handle, and it gave way.

BAM! Gravity seemed to suddenly increase. The child slid away from the controls, but he wasn't injured. The windows were too far away for him to see anything, and the gravity was too strong for him to make it back up to the windows. He was falling and blind, which scared him even more. He felt more and more scared as the walls of the pod cooled to what felt like freezing, and he wondered how cold this world would be. Finally, he felt a thud: the pod had landed. After a few moments, the reality of his situation began to sink in. He felt weird and awful from all the fear and confusion; he was in a situation he'd never found himself in before: he was on a strange, wet planet that he'd never even heard of before his father had told him they'd be going there. He didn't know what to do at first, and was just about paralyzed with fear. But after a while he came to his senses and opened the hatch. He decided that he needed to get rid of the cube his father had given him by giving it to one of the planet's inhabitants---whoever they would be. Hopefully, they'd know what to do with it. And, hopefully, they'd be able to get him a ride back to the homeworld.

As the hatch opened, he felt a rush of chilly air: this planet was a great deal colder than his own. He sniffed the air, and it was a lot more humid than the air on his world. This planet was entirely new to him, and his body wasn't built for it. He felt glad that he had a layer of wax between his skin and the cold, wet air around him.

The child rethought the situation: he knew that his father was dead, and that he was completely alone on this forbidding, cold planet. His escape pod landing hadn't had any problems, which was the only good thing that had happened so far. He ran as quickly as possible to the lights he saw in the distance, hoping that there would be some sort of civilization when he got there. He bounded faster and faster.

This world was extremely strange to him. Huge, brown structures rose high above his head, and he was so curious that he had to stop and look at one---they were larger than the escape pod he had left. The brown structures had strange-looking, puffy, multi-colored tops, flakes of which would occasionally float down. Beneath his feet, the flakes made crunching noises and stuck to his greased feet. He grimaced at how filthy he was becoming from the bits of flake that covered him.

Suddenly, he heard a loud, low booming noise. It sounded a little like a bomb exploding. He turned around. There was no smoke from the bomb, or flame, or radiation that he could see. The only weird thing was that there was something big in the sky, and it was blocking the stars. He had never seen anything like it before; it didn't look like a starship or a military weapon. It didn't even look like it was alive; it seemed as inanimate as a stone, except that it was moving slowly through the sky, drawn by the wind. He stared at it for a few moments, and then he decided that, whether it was a threat to him or not, he really ought to find civilization, so he turned around in the direction he had started in and kept going, hoping that there wouldn't be a problem. There was another boom, and this time, it was accompanied by a crooked streak of light in the sky. "It there a war going on here!" he wondered. "Is that weapons fire?"

He moved faster and faster. He wondered to himself, Dad said that this was a very wet world, and I can smell humidity in the air---but didn't he mention liquid water? Where is it? He found out quickly: a shower of water fell out of the sky. He was very glad to have a layer of waterproof gel between his sensitive skin and the water: if he got wet, his skin might crack and bleed. He kept hopping, and the lights finally seemed to be getting closer to him. But, to his horror, a creature three times his size was prowling the area. It bared its teeth at him and roared a low, insidious hiss.

Out of paralyzing fear, he curled up into a ball and let out a shrill scream. The monster came towards him and slashed at his back. He squealed again and, de-petrified by the pain, started running again. The monster ran after him. He kept squealing, and, more than once, tripped and fell into a puddle of mud and mixed gritty pebbles with the gel he had on. He was getting scratched from the pebbles as he ran along, and wondered if his skin would ever survive. Finally, the monster wasn't following him, and he stopped to catch his breath. He shuddered from the cold, as the water around him was carrying heat away from his body.

He suddenly felt as though he were being watched, so he looked about. There were two black, round, smooth objects resting on the ground before him, one right beside the other. There seemed to be something above them, so he looked up…and his mouth hinged open in horror: a much larger creature loomed above him, and the two, black objects were its feet. It was colored an unnaturally bright yellow, and looked down at him with white, pearly eyes.

He squealed again and curled up into a ball, shivering pitifully out of sheer fright and cold. He waited for the creature to kill and eat him. "Oh, Eternal One, HELP!" he squealed. Slowly, he felt the water cease to shower over him, but he heard a lot of low, hideous noises from the yellow creature and a second monster that seemed to be next to it. The noises scared him even more, so he didn't move a muscle. "Eternal One, HELP!"

Suddenly, the child got the urge to look up and see just why he wasn't getting rained on. The large, yellow creature was holding another yellow dome over his head. The water didn't penetrate the dome, and the dome kept him dry.

He looked at the giant creature. It was looking straight at him, watching to see what he'd do next. So was the smaller one that had appeared next to it. Suddenly, it occurred to the child: his father said that the inhabitants of this world were larger than he was…could this be one of the inhabitants? Then…what was the smaller one?

Finally, he decided to try an experiment: he very slowly tried to move out from under the dome, to see how the large creature would react. The large creature moved the dome along with him to keep covering him. He slowly moved to the left and to the right, and the larger creature kept covering him. He chewed over in his mind what he was seeing. This monster was compassionate, whatever it was, and might be able to help him with the data cube he was carrying. Maybe it could take him to the inhabitants of the planet, even if it wasn't one of them. He slowly walked up to it until he was under it. He pulled the cube out of his pocket and held it up to the larger creature. There were some more intimidating, low noises from the two creatures, but, finally, the larger accepted the data cube and picked him up.

"Whoa, Hawkmon! He's greasy!"

"Why would that be?"

"I don't know. But he's covered in petrolatum and he's all dirty! I think he needs a bath." Tina continued to hold her rainhat over the tiny kangaroo as she carried him indoors. She kept on her raincoat as she walked into the bathroom and began filling the bathtub with hot water, as the little guy might splash around in the bathtub, and she didn't care to get petrolatum all over her pajamas. She set him down on the counter as she waited for the tub to fill. The little kangaroo-like creature kept looking from the bathwater to Tina, as if asking what was going on. He began to get the idea when she picked him up and began moving him to the water. He thrashed violently while she dunked him, and, more than once, he let out a shrill squeal. But, finally, Tina succeeded in getting him clean and free of the petrolatum jelly. She rubbed him dry with a towel, and noticed that his condition was awful: he had scratch marks all over his body, and a few of them were the obvious work of a cat. He was also shivering, as though he was still cold, even though she had dried him thoroughly. Tina had immediate pity on this creature. "Aww! Come on," she said, scooping him up.

The kangaroo had no clue what was going on as the large, yellow creature picked him up and carried him out of the chamber. But, even stranger, it took a yellow mass off from itself and ceased to be yellow. It seemed to be wearing clothes! This was strange; it was as if wearing clothes was second nature to this species! To his kind, wearing clothes was awful, and only done when it was absolutely necessary.

The large creature set him down on top of a large, boxy structure that was a little softer than the ground had been. There seemed to be a removable cloth on the boxy structure, the same way that there had been one on the large creature. The large creature tucked him inside the cloth along with itself. The child was very unsure what was expected of him; the large creature made smooth, low cooing noises at him that he couldn't understand. Finally, the temperature inside the blanket grew to an acceptable warmth. He was glad of this, but still…that planet was strange to him, and he wondered how he would ever survive…

The days turned into weeks in the military's camp. Everyone was both bored and on edge. It was more than anyone could bear. Finally Yolei, being the most outgoing of the six, demanded of one of the lieutenants who was in charge, "Look…it's obvious that no attack is coming, and we're sick of sitting around here."

"Speak for yourself, Yolei!" Davis shot back.

"You're not helping, Davis!" Turning back to the lieutenant, she continued, "Can we please go home, now? My husband and I have a daughter and a digimon at our house who are worried to death because we aren't there!"

"I'm sorry, Miss Ichijouji, but intelligence and my superiors disagree with you. We do not believe that a reasonable time has elapsed to safely say that no attack is coming. We know that this is a strain---"

"Strain! This isn't a strain, this is torture! Isn't it illegal for you to torture people!"

"---Please, Miss. We know that this is a strain, but it is necessary to ensure the safety of the citizens of the Digiworld." Once again, the lieutenant said this in a way that was to make the army's actions seem justified.

Yolei almost started pulling her purple hair out of her head for frustration. Not caring to be around while Yolei was fuming, Davis excused himself to the portable lavatory. Ken held his wife. "Yolei, I'm sorry about all this. I didn't want this to happen either."

"Honey, I can't take one more minute of this."

A soldier, who was manning a monitor station, answered, "You won't need to: get your digivices ready! Here it comes!"

All six Digidestined had their digivices ready and aimed at the computers. "Where to?"

"I dunno!"

"What do you mean, you don't know, corporal?" the lieutenant demanded.

"Sir, there are reports coming in from all over the Digiworld: the doomsday virus digimon are everywhere!"

"Then open digiports to the most populous cities!"

Each Digidestined opened a port to a different city, and into the camp poured digimon and humans of all sizes and backgrounds. The Digidestined had to lurch out of the way to avoid getting trampled to death---except Davis, of course: he was still in the portable toilet. He was just opening the door to the lav to get out when a Tyrannomon slammed into the side of the lav and forced the door shut, hurling Davis back in. Davis decided to learn from that mistake and didn't try to get out of the toilet again until he no longer heard the sound of digimon refugees pouring into the camp. He then slowly peeked out the door and crept out. He joined the other five in staring out at the now full camp. Like them, he was stunned at the number of people who had just been rendered homeless by calamity---it was an unexpectedly large number, too large for the camp to handle as it was. The lieutenant finally said, "There's nothing more you can accomplish here. You may go home, now. We will have vehicles take you back to the airport."

It took a few minutes for Kari to get what the lieutenant had said through her brain, but she finally answered, "That's not necessary for me, I live in the city a few miles away."

"Good to know. We'll have a jeep drop you off at your apartment building."