Chapter 21:
Different people are made for different circumstances, and are suited to different stress levels and types of tasks. For instance, you don't send a stonecutter out as a diplomat (usually).
---The Little Teenaged Geek (not that he would know anything)
Ash looked. There was a dark-colored, caped figure again, bent over and holding a boy who looked a year or two older than Ash. This figure looked like the same one he'd seen before when Pixie had been attacked. Ash saw the girls screaming and a drop of blood fall to the ground from the caped figure's arms. Ash guessed that the blood belonged to the boy, and so he looked down at Pikachu and commanded, "Pikachu, Thunder shock!"
Upon impact, the caped figure dropped the boy and turned around, disgusted. "You impudent---"
But Ash was a step ahead of him. He had already called Bulbasaur and Chikorita out of their pokéballs and was telling them, "Chikorita, Bulbasaur! Hold him down with your vine whip while we get Officer Jenny!" The two pokémon held him down, but not for long: he tore the vines off his neck and rose to his full height.
"Awh! What is he!" Ash yelled.
Bulbasaur looked at Chikorita. "Bulba-bulba!"
"Chi-KA!" Chikorita agreed. Bulbasaur's bulb glowed and a white sphere of light appeared in Chikorita's mouth.
"What're you doing? Is that---Solar beam?" he asked. "Well, it's worth a try: Bulbasaur, Chikorita! Use Solar beam!" The two pokémon fired their shots, and Myotismon stood in a daze for a moment before going unconscious. "Well, I guess that worked. Bulbasaur, Chikorita, return!" Ash looked at the girls. "Is he going to be okay---"
One of the girls screamed, "BEHIND YOU!"
Ash turned around, just in time to duck as the stock of a rifle went flying at his head. A mass of strings went flying at him, and the next thing Ash knew, he was entangled in them and pushed aside onto the sidewalk. He looked up. There was a huge, red spider-like woman and a mummy-like man armed with a rifle, and the spider was throwing webs at the cloaked figure and dragging him out of the alleyway. She turned to Ash and spat, "You may be powerful, but there's no way you'll be able to stand up to Myotismon! Come, Mummymon. Let's get out of here!" And the two jumped into a jeep and drove away.
Pikachu hopped onto Ash and bit the webs to break them. After a minute, Ash was free. He walked back to the alleyway and found the two girls, crouching over the boy who was still on the ground. They were saying things like, "Talk to me!" "Please don't die on us, Tai!" "Open your eyes!"
"Hey, do you need some help?" Ash asked.
"We need to get him out of the alley," one of the girls answered.
"There's a bench over there," Ash suggested. Ash, the two girls, and three pokémon that Ash had never seen before picked Tai up and set him down on the bench. Tai was cold, so the girl pulled a blanket out of one of their strangely full backpacks and wrapped Tai in it.
One of the girls said, "Kari, who was that guy with the cape, and what did he do?"
"His name was Myotismon, and he's---essentially he's a vampire. He was draining Tai's blood, and Tai's going to need medical attention. We need to find a doctor right away." Kari pointed to a payphone that was nearby. "Sora, go to that phone and dial 911."
Sora went to call, but she ran back with a worried look on her face. "The phone wasn't working at all."
"Uh-oh."
A grumble of thunder sounded overhead. "Man, this just gets better and better," Ash thought aloud. "Listen, I have a sleeping bag in my backpack that's waterproof. We should put him in that, too, so that he'll stay dry."
Sora began panicking: "Whatdowedo,whatdowedo!"
"Calm down, Sora!" Kari insisted. "We need to find a hospital, and get an ambulance to pick Tai up."
"Well---where is one?"
"I know where one is, but it's too long to walk there."
"You won't need to walk," a pink bird (who was one of the three pokémon) said. "Biyomon, digivolve to… Birdramon!"
Ash's mouth dropped open: this was one big change that this pokémon underwent when she evolved. He would have to catch one of those!
"But…someone has to stay and look after Tai," Sora thought aloud.
Ash shook off the wonder of having seen a pokémon evolve so quickly and stepped forward. "I'll do it."
"You're sure?" Kari asked.
"I've been wandering around this city for hours trying to find some friends of mine, and that hasn't been doing me any good. If I decide to stay in one place and wait for them to come to me, then I might have more success. Beside, like you said, someone has to keep an eye on him, and it might as well be me."
"I'll stay with him, too," an orange, dinosaur-like pokémon added. (He had been with the girls and the pink bird.)
"All right. We'd better move it," Kari said, climbing onto Birdramon's talon. "We might as well leave the backpacks here," Kari added. "They'll slow us down."
As Birdramon flew away, Ash suggested to Pikachu, "You'll be dryer inside the sleeping bag, and your body heat will help Tai."
"Pi-KA!" Pikachu answered, saluting.
Ash fished his raincoat out of the bottom of his backpack and sat down next to the dinosaur on the bench. He sighed. "So…what's your story?" Ash asked.
"Well, it's a long one."
"I think we have some time on our hands."
"I guess you're right. Well, we've been walking for two days to get here from the refugee camp."
"Refugee camp? What happened to you?"
"Don't you watch the news on TV?"
"I'm a pokémon trainer, and I'm almost always on the road, so no."
"Then haven't you heard that the Digiworld is gone?"
"The what-world?"
The dinosaur gaped. "Are you even from this planet? There is no way that you don't know what the Digiworld is."
"Listen," Ash said, "I'm definitely not from around here, since there are pokémon that I've never seen before---"
"I don't think I've ever seen a pokémon before, unless that yellow guy you called Pikachu was a pokémon."
"He was. But aren't you a pokémon?"
"No, I'm Agumon."
"Agumon, huh? Then that pink bird was Biyomon? …And she became Birdramon when she evolved?" Ash scratched the back of his neck.
"It's called digivolving, not evolving," Agumon answered.
"Well, do a lot of---whatever you guys are generally called---can you all speak?"
"Most of us, yeah. And we're called digimon."
"Hmm. Because most pokémon can't speak. And I can't believe that you've never heard of a pokémon before. It is almost like we aren't from the same planet…
Rika awoke in a green, beautiful park. It was very warm, so she tied her jacket around her waist. She looked around. It was a gorgeous day outside, and she was---for some strange reason---the only one in the park. But how strange it was that park would be deserted on such a lovely day wasn't quite as important as the fact that Rika had no clue where she was. She began walking down one of the streets, hoping that she'd see something familiar. After all, she couldn't have gone far from the park where Growlmon had beaten Etemon. But nothing was familiar in this city; the signs were all written in English, none in Japanese. She couldn't tell where she was, or if she was even in Tokyo anymore. She wouldn't admit it to herself, but she was afraid.
Suddenly, a cold breeze bit her on the arm. She put her jacket back on, wondering how on Earth the temperature could have dropped ten degrees so suddenly. She kept walking, but it did her little good: she seemed to be going around in circles. She wondered if she should ask someone for directions---no! She was smart; she'd be able to find a way home soon enough. So she kept walking. She heard some boy's voice calling out, "Misty! Brock! Tracy! Where are you?" and a smaller, shriller voice added, "Chu! Pikaaa! Kachu!" Rika was mildly curious, but didn't figure it was worth her bother to investigate.
After a few hours, she was tired from all that walking. So she sat down on a bench by the side of the road to rest. It was a mystery to her what direction she should be trying next. She was at the end of her rope. So it was settled in her mind: she'd call her mom and have her send someone to pick her up. Of course her mother would be worried, but she might believe her story: "I was hit by lightning so I fainted, and then I got lost." It was the truth (as far as she knew) whether it was believable or not, so she walked over to a payphone and put the receiver up to her ear---only to find that there was no dial tone. That wasn't good. So she tried another phone. It wasn't working, either. Not one of the phones in the bank worked, so Rika spat, "Huh! Must be disconnected." She kept walking, hoping to find another bank of phones. She did, but none of those worked. More frustrated than ever, she leaned against the phone with her eyes shut and uttered a disgusted sigh.
Suddenly, something in her world changed: a huge, gray cloud covered up the sun and robbed her of the sun's warmth. She could hear low grumbles of thunder, and knew that it was about to rain. That was not the kind of weather that she wanted to find herself lost and alone in. She looked around---and, suddenly, something looked familiar: the awnings of the stores matched the ones that she remembered from a street that was only a kilometer from her house. She remembered the way from here on, and decided what she would do: she would sprint the distance from here to her house, and hope that she didn't get so wet that she'd be scolded for not taking an umbrella.
She ran as fast as she could command her legs to take her. Just as she was beginning to feel tired from her sprint, a few huge, icy drops of rain began to go splat on her back. The rain soon became a harsh downpour, harder than Rika could ever recall seeing. So much for not getting scolded, Rika thought to herself. But her legs suddenly ached from the day's walking. A sudden coldness came over her, and her skin was covered in goosebumps. She urged her feet onward, thinking, "The sooner I get home, the sooner I can take a hot bath and get out of these wet clothes!" But her strength ran thin, and she very soon felt too exhausted to continue…