Chapter 20:

A blank canvas can say a lot.

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

Are you having trouble interpreting the previous statement? …All right, who am I kidding! It means that I have temporarily run out of ideas for these quotes! But there will be more...eventually.

Misty wondered what her next move should be. She and Ghenki had just had a long talk about the definitions of "pokémon" and "Monster", and thoroughly explained to each other the forms and attacks of each one available for demonstration. Ghenki had also described their battle with Moo and their quest for the Phoenix, both of which had seemed to come to an end…only to be replaced by this, whatever it was. Misty had explained her pokémon journeys with Ash, and how he owed her a new bicycle.

But now that those explanations were over, there were a few more questions that needed explaining. They were, "Where are we?" "Why aren't we where we last remember being?" and "Where is everybody else?" These questions didn't have any immediate answers to them, so the only choice was to explore the city and see if they would be able to find any answers. Misty decided not to split up with them; she was lost enough as-is without being alone, too.

They explored around, trying to find some hint of intelligent life. They found a short person made totally of stone. He seemed frantic. They tried to ask him a few questions to no avail; he just kept ranting on about not being able to find his landlord or his car, and the strange decay that had suddenly enveloped his apartment.

So they moved on, hoping for answers elsewhere. On the way, the giant bunny ("Hare," as Ghenki had called him) walked to Misty's side and nudged her. It made Misty jump a little: she wasn't used to speaking with creatures that weren't human. But she decided to get the conversation over with as soon as possible, apologized for being startled, and asked Hare what his question was.

He asked, "You remember that little stone guy we saw a few minutes ago?"

"What about him?"

"He didn't look very much like a golem, to me."

"Me either. Unless he's a baby golem."

"He didn't look like a baby golem…or sound like one. What I wanted to ask was, does he look like a pokémon to you?"

"None that I know of."

"If he's not human and he's not a Monster and he's not a pokémon, then what is he?"

"I don't know."

"What planet are we on, anyways?"

Misty thought about it. If she was on a planet besides her own, how would she be able to live? What friends did she have, and how would she ever see any of her loved ones again? Her face gradually shifted to one that might leak tears. Sensing that his question was causing the poor girl grief, he set his paw on her shoulder reassuringly. Reassurance wasn't the effect his paw had on her, though: a zing ran up her spinal column and she stood up very straight for a moment: the feel of a big, furry, padded paw on one's bare shoulder is not usually reassuring. It's more like scary. But, either way, it got the fear and despair of not ever seeing her family again out of her system.

Just as Hare was apologizing for all this grief he was causing her, Ghenki stopped and said, "Whoa, look up ahead!" There was a wall of rain cascading from a sky that was suddenly black and foreboding. What was even stranger was that the clouds stopped a little ways in front of them, as though a wall was blocking them. Beyond this wall (which was also above their heads), a starry sky smiled down.

"What on Earth?" Misty asked. She gradually walked towards the wall and stuck her hand through it. After leaving it inside the rain side of the wall for a moment, she cried, "Ow!" Her arm suddenly hurt and was pale, so she withdrew her hand. It came out drenched, and needed to be massaged for all the pain.

"Are you okay? What happened?" Ghenki asked.

"I don't know. All of a sudden, my arm hurt really badly. It felt all cold and---weird. It seems to be getting better, now."

"That is weird," Holly commented. "I wonder what could cause that?"

Suddenly, their conversation was interrupted by a loud cry of pain from Golem.

"Golem? What is it?"

"Somebody's…fire attack!" he groaned.

"What!" They looked behind him, and there was a slagster with weapons poised.

"What is that thing?" Misty asked.

"I don't know. I've never seen a monster like that before!" Holly answered.

"Why is it attacking us?" Hare shouted.

"I don't know, but I don't think it'll stop!" Ghenki answered.

The slagster fired another gob of magma out his arm. It missed, but the magma began to melt the pavement. "Hey! What're you shooting at us for?" Holly shouted. The slagster only fired again.

"You're not getting through to him!" Hare insisted. "Are we going to fight back, or what?"

Moochi hopped forward and shot a red beam out his mouth at the slagster. The slagster was destroyed surprisingly quickly; Moochi's shot pierced right through the slagster and made a visible hole in its chest. After a second, its arms hung limp and its head tilted backwards. It was dead. "Chi?"

"That was weird. Why would he attack us if he had such a small chance of winning?" Ghenki asked.

"All we're getting in this city is 'weird'," Misty thought aloud. "Was that thing a Monster?"

"No. Monsters get turned into disks when they're destroyed; this guy didn't turn into anything."

"And it didn't look like any pokémon I know. So…what was it?"

Pixie, Big Blue, and Ash were, for the time being, traveling together. They weren't exactly friends, but they definitely weren't enemies. Pixie and Big Blue were still wondering if this was Moo's doing: that metal creature wasn't one of Moo's Monsters; it wasn't even a Monster. If it had been a Monster, then it would've turned into a disc when they had destroyed it. Instead, it turned into a pile of scrap metal. Pixie and Big Blue were very wary of the city, but they saw no real evidence that gave them reason to believe that the story Ash had told them wasn't true. But they agreed secretly that, if they were attacked again, then they'd try to leave Ash behind.

It was a while before they were attacked again. But, when they were, once again, it didn't seem to be a Monster: it was a strange, black-colored figure that they never got a good look at.

He dove at Pixie from behind, and tried to fly away with her in his grasp. He bit her in the neck, all of a sudden spat, threw her away from himself, and yelled, "You're not human! What are you!"

"I'm Pixie!" she shouted back, letting her wings catch her in flight. She shot a few balls of lightning at him.

He stretched out his hands, and the balls disintegrated before they even touched him. "Nice try, 'Pixie', but you won't be able to defeat me! I'll take my leave now," he spat, flying quickly away.

Ash ran under Pixie and yelled up to her, "Are you okay?"

"He---injured my neck," she answered, holding a hand up to the wound to cover it.

"Are you going to be okay?"

"Yes, but I'll…need to find a healer to patch it up. Since you're looking for your friends and I'm looking for a healer, we have two different goals. I think we ought to split up, now."

That logic didn't make sense to Ash, so he figured that she was getting away from him for some reason that she didn't want to explain to him. He shrugged and answered, "Okay. Take care of yourself."

"We will. Come, Big Blue."

"Yes, milady."

Kari's digivice beeped in her pocket. She pulled it out and looked at the screen: there were three red blips on the screen that represented her digivice, her brother's digivice, and Sora's digivice. But there was a blue blip, too. What it could represent, she had no clue. "Say, Tai? What do you make of this?"

"That looks like a digi-egg to me," he answered.

"A what?" Sora asked.

"Didn't we explain armor-digivolving to you?" Kari asked.

"No, you didn't."

"Well, it's kind of like normal digivolution, except that the digimon grow into the digi-eggs and the digi-eggs become armor for them."

"Huh."

Gatomon cut in, "Only about five digimon were ever able to armor-digivolve, and I was one of them. But if this isn't the right digi-egg, we won't be able to use it."

"Well, I guess it's worth a look," Sora thought aloud. "But, if you don't mind, I'd like to hurry to Kari's apartment. I'm dying to get out of these wet clothes, and I need a hot shower."

So they went to see what the egg was going to be. It was in a narrow alleyway, according to the digivices, and they could see a metallic object with a yellow gleam to it resting in the back corner of the alley. Kari and Sora cautiously approached it, while Tai took up the rear. He yelled to Kari, "What is it?"

"I don't know," Kari answered. "It has the crest of light on it, so I guess it's mine. …And I can pick it up, so it must be mine. But this is a golden armor digi-egg. The egg of light, my egg, wasn't gold, so how can this---"

Kari was interrupted as she saw something black come flying at Gatomon. It hit Gatomon and paralyzed her. Similar blasts of black energy caught Agumon and Biyomon, too. She looked up, and saw the most horrific silhouette that she'd ever seen before in her life, gripping Tai by the shoulders and with his mouth to Tai's neck. He said, "I'm so starved, that I'll take any human! Not just a girl!"

Kari screamed at the top of her lungs, and Sora joined her, not that Sora had any clue who this was. Kari knew who it was, and she was terrified by the thought that he could be back again…

So Ash was walking on his own, calling out the names of his friends. He spent the better part of the morning doing that, without finding anyone. Finally, he sat down on a park bench and sighed, taking off his shoes. "I don't know about you, Pikachu, but my feet are killing me."

"Ka."

"How do you suppose we got here, anyway? I mean, we were out in the middle of nowhere when that light put us out, and so why would we wake up in the middle of a city?"

"Chuuuuuu…"

"I know. And I hope we find Brock and Misty and Tracy soon, too. I mean, look at the sky. I feel like it's going to start raining at any minute." Pikachu shook his fur off, as though were wet, to express how he felt about getting soaked. Putting his shoes back on, Ash answered, "Well, I'm not a big fan of being wet, either, but there are worse things than that. I mean---"

He was interrupted: there were screams coming from an alley not far away. "Uh-oh."

"Pika, pi pika chu pi pika Chu."

"Yeah, I know that doesn't sound like Misty, but you don't sit around when you hear girls screaming." Ash turned his hat around so the bill faced backwards. "Let's go check it out."

"Pika!"

The two rushed to the scene, hoping they wouldn't find something too horrible…