Chapter 24:

Any person without hope is basically nuts.

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

Ash was almost falling asleep in the ambulance because he was so tired. He forced himself to wake up as the ambulance screeched to a sudden stop, and then suddenly started again and began swerving all over the place.

"What's going on?" Gatomon asked.

"Some digimon is shooting at us!" the driver shouted.

"Shooting?" Ash asked. He wrapped his fingers around Charizard's pokéball. He burst out the doors of the ambulance and let Charizard out. "Charizard, I choose you!" Charizard jumped out of the pokéball and roared. Ash shouted up to him, "Charizard, use Dragon Rage to stop that evil---well, whatever-it-is." It looked like an Egyptian idol crossed with an evil robot from Star Trek. (A dangerous combination, if nothing else, and I think that it is something else: one of my crazier ideas. But, continuing...) Charizard flew in low to attack, but the eye-dhole fired some wicked-looking, green lasers out its two, gemstone eyes: "Grimn Fota!" Charizard veered off his bombing run to avoid the blasts.

GAZRIITOR:

Nickname: Eye-dhole (Metōru)

Real Name: Igno-tor-nizo

Caste: Var'ka

Special Attacks: Kin Dar, Int Dar, Grimn Fota, Kellaar Don'al

Modes: one

The eye-dhole is one of the stranger ator. Like the ferra-series, it is a man-eater, and shovels food into its mouth with its red, clawed tail. Its slow, stupid-looking gait makes it difficult to take seriously and a sitting duck for an air strike, but its firepower is a serious threat to ground forces. Out its eyes, it can fire all three of heat rays, freeze rays, and repulsor beams. Unlike other breeds of menace machine, its outer structure is not metallic. Its surface is covered with an armor layer of rock to make it look all the more strange and intimidating.

"What is that thing, anyway?" Ash asked to himself. He pulled out his Pokédex.

"Pokémon unknown. No available data."

"Great. Charizard, try Dragon Rage again, bombing him from the top!" Charizard swooped down, and the strategy worked. Oddly enough, the eye-dhole was smashed to bits, but it didn't vaporize. "Thanks, Charizard," Ash sleepily said and called him back into the pokéball. He climbed into the ambulance and said in between yawns, "I got him, whatever he was."

"What happened?" Kari asked.

"I wanted just to knock it out, but that wasn't the way it happened. I think I…killed it."

"…On purpose?"

"I didn't know that Charizard's attack would destroy it," Ash sheepishly answered. "But at least we're safe." Ash rested his head on the stretcher where Tai's legs weren't taking up space. "Ugh! I'm sorry, but I'm so tired that I can't…"

"You should have a rest," Kari answered. "You look like you need it. But what was it? A digimon?"

"Can't be: you said digimon disappear when they die, and this one never disappeared. Its rubble is still sitting there in the street."

"Was it a pokémon?"

"If it was, it was one I've never seen before, and one that Dexter didn't know anything about, either."

"This just gets worse and worse," Kari mewed, rubbing her temples. "And you're right, we do need a rest."

"Hmm…" Ash almost immediately fell asleep.

Misty shuddered at how creepy everything was in the city…and at how chilly the rain made the air around them. "Isn't it just a little spooky that there are no people in a city this big?"

"More than a little spooky," Hare answered.

Ghenki wondered, "What do you think made them leave? A plague? War? Food shortage?"

"The fact that it rains all the time?" Misty offered

"I'd bet that it has to do with the fact that we just passed through a barrier where time moves about five times more slowly on one side than the other," Hare thought aloud.

"Could be," Holly agreed. "In fact, you're probably right. If I knew that there was some time barrier a few blocks from my house, I'd move to another town."

They heard sirens up ahead. "An ambulance?" Ghenki asked.

"Looks like it," Misty said.

"Oh, no!" the driver shouted.

"What is it?" Kari asked.

"There's a whole gaggle of new creatures dead ahead, and there's no other way to get to the clinic!"

"Whoa, boy!" Kari and Gatomon looked at each other.

Gatomon sighed. "As much as I hate the rain, it looks like we have no choice!"

Kari held up the golden egg of light and yelled, "Golden armor, energize!"

"Gatomon, golden-armor digivolve to…Quadrigamon, the chariot of light!" Quadrigamon looked more like an angel than anything else, and she was covered in Greco-roman-looking golden armor, and strangely shaped wings extended from her shoulders. On her arms were circular shields, and in her hand was a flaming whip. "Hopefully, this'll be enough to scare them away…"

Rika had blundered: she and Renamon were lost again. Rika was exhausted from walking all day, and the rest she had gotten from sitting on the bench with that Agumon and those other two boys was wearing off. She collapsed into a park bench beneath a red, sunset sky. A chilly breeze bit her on the cheek, so she pulled up the hood of her poncho and hoped it would help her keep a little bit warmer. She leaned onto the back of the bench and thought. She was too tired to go on and had no clue where she was. Every phone she'd tried failed to work. She felt doomed.

All of a sudden, she realized that her stomach felt awful. She hadn't eaten since lunch, and she had been walking around for several hours. The lack of food for that day caught up with her, and she began to feel horribly nauseous. She thought to herself, What's the deal? I'm not sick; why should I feel like throwing up? But she did feel like throwing up, and she couldn't fight the nausea, as hard as she tried. She leaned forward and threw up what little stuff was in her stomach.

Renamon was shocked. "Rika, are you all right?"

Rika coughed. "I think I need to find some place with antacid," she groaned. "I feel like I---" her stomach rudely interrupted her, and she began heaving again. There was nothing left for the stomach to throw up, but her stomach was trying anyways, which made Rika feel all the more sick.

"Rika, we need to get you to a doctor."

Rika shot back, "I don't need some---" but her stomach interrupted her again. The awful feelings of weakness and nausea overcame her shell of vain pride. "Okay, maybe it won't hurt to---" she couldn't stop vomiting long enough to get a sentence out.

Renamon picked her up. "Now, where would we find a doctor…?"

Rika barely got in between vomiting spells, "Phone…directory!"

Renamon set Rika down on the bench again and raced to a phone. She looked up hospitals in the directory and found one not far from there. She tore the page and the map out of the book, picked Rika up, and raced as fast as her legs would take her to the hospital's address, hoping that Rika would make it there.

Renamon was dying to whisper words of encouragement and hope to Rika, but she knew that Rika had a shell of inflated, unsteady pride that Renamon would damage if she tried to act like a beacon of hope to her. She knew that Rika would push her away, and that was the last thing she wanted. So she held her tongue and kept running…

Mimi, Michael, Suezo, Tiger and Brock were all tired, worn-out, and scared. They had taken refuge in the basement of Mimi's apartment building, along with a few families and a few individuals who were also living in the building.

Brock was holding a boy who had been orphaned in the attack. He was crying for his mother, but not so loud so that the creatures above ground would hear. The fact that it was raining outside was a help; the noise of the rain would at least partly mask any sound they made.

There wasn't much conversation; the sight of monsters attacking people mercilessly was too much to take in. Mimi had spent a few minutes crying into Michael's shoulder. There was hardly a dry eye in the basement, in fact.

Suezo whispered to Tiger, "So, this is what all-out war is like, huh?"

"Looks like it, yeah."

"You think we're safe in here?"

"Probably. Maybe not; I dunno."

There was a short pause.

Mimi, just drying her tears, decided that it would help for her to talk with someone about all of what was going on. "We've been in fights before."

"There are lots of wars like this?"

"Not at all, no. In fact, our world has seen peace for almost a decade."

"Hmm. Then…were there wars before?"

"Sort of." Mimi recounted the entire story of what had happened with Malomyotismon and Apocalymon. It was a long story, but they had time to hear it.

"Wow. Sounds kind of like what we went through with Moo."

"Who's Moo?"

Tiger explained, "He was a tyrant that was trying to build an empire on our world. ---A very dangerous tyrant. We were freedom fighters who tried to oppose him, and we were about to beat him once-and-for-all, too, right before something picked us up and dropped up here."

Mimi sighed. "Why is it that there's nothing but problems here?"

"I don't know. But we have to hold on," Michael said, rubbing her back.

"What's there to let go of?"

"I don't know. But we'll find out if we let go, and that'll be finding out the hard way."

Brock set the child who had been crying down; the child was asleep. Brock fished his raincoat out of his bag and wrapped it around the child to keep him warm. "Maybe we'd have some answers if we knew what those things up there were."

"Right now, I don't care about answers, I just wish we had some food," Mimi said.

Brock pulled a few cans out of his bag and said, "I don't have a way of cooking these, but there is food."

Mimi sighed. "Thanks. I'm famished."

"So…what do we do now?" Brock asked.

Michael thought about it and answered, "We're all tired, and we'll need our strength if we're going to need to fight again. We should try to get some rest---and hope that those things up there don't find us."