Chapter 14:
It's been said that nobody can take an experience away from you, but whoever said it knew very little about time travel. (Then again, I don't know so much, myself.)
The Little Teenaged Geek (not that he would know anything)
Kari and Tai were both scared and almost refused to believe what their eyes told them: they had both become children again, and each of them was around twelve or thirteen years old. "Tai…tell me it's not you," Kari said.
"I wish I could, sis…"
Gatomon was speechless. It took her a few moments to gather herself and say, "HOW!"
"Gatomon, we don't know any more than you about this."
Gatomon's paw had apparently fallen in the mud when she blacked out, as it was covered in dirt. She gradually slid her green poncho off herself so that she'd have an easier time wiping herself off. Kari looked over at Gatomon, in the hopes that she might have some kind of reassurance. She didn't: as she slid her poncho off, it was revealed that her fur, which had been plain white, now had black tiger-stripes. Gatomon began to look pale and as though she was about to faint. Kari ran over and picked Gatomon up. "Gatomon…it's okay. All three of us are scared."
Gatomon, still almost speechless, asked, "Kari, what is going on, here?"
"I don't know," she answered. "But we really have two choices: we can sit here and be scared, or we can find out." Kari was right, and all three of them knew it. Finally, Gatomon had gathered herself enough to start scrubbing the dirt off her paw. Kari looked at Tai. "So…last I remember, Sora was with us when we blacked out. Should we try to find her?"
He nodded. "I'd like to know where Agumon is, too."
"I know," Kari answered. She walked to the pile of clothes that she'd just taken off and fished her raincoat out of the bottom. She pulled a rain jacket out of a box marked "TTC". She tossed it to Tai.
"Uh, Kari, wasn't this meant for the refugees?"
"Aren't you technically a refugee?"
"…Good point," Tai answered.
Gatomon looked up from trying to rub dirt off her arm. "I think that's as good as I can get it," she thought aloud. She tied her ears back again so that her head would fit inside the hood of her poncho and slid the poncho on. "I guess…there's nothing to gain from sticking around here."
"No, there isn't," Kari answered.
They looked around for Agumon and Sora for a few minutes, and it didn't take long to find them. However, they weren't in as good condition as Tai and Kari had been: she, too, had been reduced to a young teen, but…
"Tai!"
"Sora, not you, too?"
" 'Not me' what?"
"You've been turned into a kid, too."
"Turned? What're you talking about? I've been a kid since I stopped being a baby! And…where are we, anyway? And where are Matt, and Izzy, and T.K.?"
"Sora…? Can't you remember?"
"Remember what? What're you talking about?"
"Sora, you and I had volunteered to come here!" Kari answered.
"Volunteered?"
"This is the refugee camp! The Digiworld was destroyed, remember?"
"But…aren't we in the Digiworld?"
"Sora, we're on Earth! …What's the last thing you remember, Sora?"
"We…were…in a Yokomon village…Biyomon had just digivolved to Birdramon and saved the village from Meramon…"
"Sora, that was thirty years ago! We've grown up, and we made it back home! It's not 1999 anymore, it's 2028!"
"Tai…you're scaring me."
"Sora, it's true!" Biyomon insisted.
Sora buried her face in her hands. With a wavering voice, she spat, "It's not right to play tricks on a girl who's scared, cold, hungry, and alone!"
"Sora, we're scared, too," Kari answered. "And…don't worry, there has to be some food around here, somewhere."
Agumon whispered to Tai, "I can't remember anything past then, either, Tai."
"This is just too weird," Tai thought aloud. "There has to be some reasonable explanation for all this!"
"We aren't going to find it sitting around here," Gatomon thought out loud. "And we aren't going to find Sora, Agumon, and Biyomon any food standing around here, either. C'mon. Let's get moving again."
"Is all going according to plan, Sergeant? Have we finished construction of the base?"
"Yes, Sub-Major."
"Then I think it's time we implemented phase three of our plan."
"Yes, Sub-Major. We shall begin sending right away."
Brock had felt better than he felt right then. He was flitting between consciousness and sleep, and was barely thinking. He felt a nuzzle on his neck and let out a low grunt, as if to tell whatever nuzzled him, "Go away!" A moment after the grunt, the nuzzling started right back up again. This was a rude awakening, whatever it was. He opened his eyes and, once he had managed to focus, he was staring right in the face of a strange-looking dog or wolf of some kind. It had blue fur and odd-looking horns coming out of his head. A bead of sweat trickled down the back of Brock's neck: if this was a pokémon, it wasn't one he'd ever seen before.
The situation only got worse when he heard this creature speak to him. He didn't even catch what it had said because he was so shocked.
"Hello? Are you okay?"
"Huh?"
A second voice sounded behind him: "Did you get hit so hard you can't hear us?" Brock turned. The second creature that was talking was even stranger than the first: he had one eyeball that seemed to take up most of the space in his head, lacked arms, and hopped around on a single foot.
"Uh…I can hear you just fine."
"Then why didn't you tell us where we are like we asked?"
Brock looked around. For the first few moments, he had been so absorbed in wondering what these creatures were that it didn't occur to him that he wasn't at the pokémon arena where he had passed out. "Ah…because I don't know, either."
Both creatures sighed in unison. "One question:" the large, yellow eyeball-creature said. "This is a big city. So how come there are no people?"
This was yet another thing that had not occurred to Brock thanks to the sheer weirdness of his wake-up-call. "Uh…that is a good question."
"Is there anything you do know!" the eye-creature spat.
"Not…really, no," Brock answered. "Uh, this might sound like a dumb question, but…what are you?"
The eye looked at him as though he were nuts. "I'm Suezo!"
"That's what your kind is called?"
"Yeah."
"…Then who's your friend?"
"I wouldn't call him a friend."
"Me either," the wolf shot back. "I'm called Tiger. I take it that you're not from around here if you haven't seen Monsters like us around."
"I wouldn't say that I'm familiar with this city."
"Well, join the club," Suezo answered. "What is this place, anyhow? …And how did you end up on your back in the middle of the street, anyway?"
Brock thought it over. "I was watching Ash and Gary having a pokémon battle, and then there was this light in the sky, and I blacked out."
Suezo and Tiger looked at each other, then back down at Brock. "Who're Ash and Gary, and what's a pokémon battle?"
Brock's jaw dropped. "You don't know what a pokémon is? Pokémon are all over this planet!"
"Are they?" Tiger asked.
"Last time I checked!"
"But what is a pokémon?"
Brock could hardly get his mind around someone not knowing what a pokémon is. He let Vulpix out of its pokéball. "This is a pokémon."
Tiger looked at the tiny creature. He sniffed it, and Vulpix, apparently not liking being sniffed, hopped behind Brock's back.
"That little fox-thing is a pokémon?" Suezo asked.
Vulpix turned, and saw Suezo's huge eye. He panicked and tried to blow a flamethrower attack at him. Suezo jumped out of the way.
"Vulpix, return!" Brock called Vulpix back into its pokéball. Scratching the back of his neck, Brock apologized. "Sorry…I guess you startled him."
"Well, he startled me!" Suezo spat. "It's tough to believe such a little guy can shoot so much flame!"
"No kidding," Brock answered.
"I noticed you called him Vulpix, but you said he was a pokémon," Tiger observed.
"Well, Vulpix is a type of pokémon. There are over two hundred different types, you know."
"Actually, I didn't know, but---" Tiger's sentence was cut off as he heard some bloodcurdling roars.
"What was that?" Brock asked.
"I'm not sure I even want to know," Suezo answered. But the three crept up to the scene. They heard loud, unintelligible shouts, and suddenly there were a huge, red snake with a golden helmet, and a smaller, plant-like fairy fighting off a huge array of other, robotic creatures.
"Are those pokémon?" Suezo asked. "Because I've never seen monsters like them before!"
"If they're pokémon, they're ones I've never seen before, either!"
Their conversation took a new turn as they saw one of the robots brutally attack and kill one of the many human bystanders. "Uh-oh!" Suezo thought aloud.
"You think these could be Moo's goonies?" Tiger asked.
"Dunno; I don't see any badges on them…"
"What're you talking about? Who's Moo?" Brock asked.
"Never mind. We have some Monsters to take down!" Suezo and Tiger hopped into the fight…