Palmon can lift people with her vines, but not when malnourished – have Mimi tell her no.
The lights in the lab turned on automatically in the mornings, when the Gigadramon flew in to replace the food and water and empty the toilets built into the cages.
These things were really well-designed, Ryo had thought even before he found out that one of the areas that was opaque instead of clear must have held knock-out gas. It said nasty things about just how many rookie-level Digimon Millenniummon had experimented on, that he had actually sat down and designed something like this.
"I want a bath," Mimi said, stretching. "I hope you appreciate the sacrifice I made for you, Izzy."
Ryo looked over to the cage to his right to see Izzy clutching his laptop bag protectively.
"Matt and I got shoved into a room where water sprayed from the ceiling," Joe started to say, then looked up. "Oh," he said, and chuckled nervously. They couldn't let Izzy's laptop get wrecked.
"Our efforts may have been pointless. There are sprinklers built into the ceilings of these," Izzy said dejectedly.
"He's probably kept Numemon in them," Kari said angrily from the cage on the other side of Izzy's. "Those poor things."
They could already hear Millenniummon's heavy footfalls before he came into the lab.
"Automatic cleaning and sterilizing would be useful, then," Joe thought. He was the one training to be a doctor. "But then he has the Giga and Megadramon to do all the scrubbing." He looked down at Tai. "How are your arms?"
Tai shrugged. "I think they're fine. I'm not going to mess up your bandages to take a look at them, unless you really think I should."
"I'm sorry-"
Tai put his hand on Agumon's nose. "Yours is a lot shallower than his was, you saw that."
"His claws are huge, though!" So the difference might not be because Agumon had managed to do at least something to help Tai.
The huge metal door – the only way in or out – opened again, after letting out the three Gigadramon. He headed right for the stack of cages, and Ryo hoped it was only to grab him instead of because he had more experiments to do.
The front of Ryo's cage swung open at the press of a claw, and Millenniummon stuck his hand inside, more placing it around Ryo than grabbing Ryo. Ryo stepped on the side of a claw and grabbed another, because it was a lot safer than being grabbed with those huge things, even if they were a little more jagged than sharp.
No: one of them was sharp. Sharpened, it looked like. Was that the one that cut Tai? Why didn't Millenniummon sharpen his other claws? Right, he'd scratch up his equipment that way.
He'd grabbed Ryo before he found out they were partners, even if Ryo had never gotten cut.
"Hey," Ryo asked when he was up on Millenniummon's shoulder, even if he wasn't sure where there were ears in that. "Don't turn on the sprinklers in the cages, but could we get baths? Somewhere with a boys' side and a girls' side," he added, loudly enough for the others to hear. "And towels and soap."
"Shampoo, conditioner and brushes!" Mimi called out. "And two hair-dryers, one for us and one for Gabumon!"
"What's a hair-dryer?" Gabumon asked.
"I should have grabbed my dad's," Matt realized. "It means you can get a bath without either taking your fur off or being damp and reeking afterwards, Gabumon."
"Do you also want me to send you to another room that will be easier to escape from?" Millenniummon wondered, walking over to the communications console he used to take reports and send out orders.
"That'd be great, thanks," Ryo said, finding himself smiling at the joke. He shook himself.
Millenniummon punched in three symbols (letters or numbers) and hit another. A red dinosaurish-looking Digimon with blue eyes looking through a helmet and wristbands like spiked dog collars appeared onscreen. "MameTyramon. Two sets of the multi-type bathing and grooming supplies for a small forward base's rookie worker quarters," that sounded like recently kidnapped slaves of whatever kinds of Digimon were found around there to Ryo – Millenniummon liked things uniform too much to not make sure there would only be certain kinds of rookies in his territory after awhile. The thought made Ryo shudder as Millenniummon went on, "and two of the in-training Digimon holding tanks filled with a half-meter of hot water."
"At once, Lord Millenniummon!" the Digimon said, sounding the way Agumon had: eager, almost pleased or flattered to be singled out by someone so… Millenniummon had called himself a god.
Millenniummon hit another button and ended the call without saying anything resembling a thank-you. "That reminds me to review the supply situation."
The list that appeared on the screen had one item highlighted in red. Millenniummon's body shifted, lowering his center of mass just a bit, and Ryo heard the cannons behind him adjusting their positioning. He flipped through more screens and read what he found there intently, with an air of restrained menace.
Hunting something. Someone was going to die.
He might be going after rebels, Ryo knew. He should try to distract him, but Millenniummon hadn't felt this deadly when he was only hunting Ryo's partner so he could kill Ryo.
When Ryo was the only one in real danger, and part of Ryo knew Millenniummon wouldn't hurt him, and something was keeping Millenniummon from truly intending to kill him? The way he was going to kill someone now.
Finally, Millenniummon made another call. Instead of the immediate reply, seconds passed before a low-slung green dragon with digging paws instead of wings appeared onscreen.
"Groundramon. Has the Huanglong Ore vein played out." That was not a question.
"No, Lord Millenniumon!"
"Did you not receive the workers you asked for?"
"Of course, Lord Millenniummon! You have been very generous!"
"I've checked the refinery's systems: they report that everything is in working order. Are the shipments of Chrome Digizoid going missing between your refinery and the factory you are responsible for supplying?"
"Yes, Lord Millenniummon!" the dragon said quickly, almost relieved. "Rebels, appearing out of nowhere! They must be using those secret passages to carry away the chrome digizoid!"
"You were ordered to notify me of any such activity."
"I'm sorry, Lord Millenniumon, I was trying to dig into their passages so I could recover the metal without bothering you!"
"I'm sure you were trying to recover the metal. Here, let me take care of that problem for you," MIllenniummon said, and began to walk clear over to the other side of the room to pick up a handheld device larger than a car, ignoring the Digimon on the screen protesting that Lord Millenniummon really didn't need to trouble himself with that.
Millenniumon punched in three numbers, and then hit what looked like enter to Ryo.
The sound of an explosion came from the console behind him as Millenniummon put the remote control back down.
"He wanted to use the Chrome Digizoid to digivolve into Breakdramon," Millenniummon said, and chuckled as he walked back over to the console. "It's a very useful Digivolution, that. The second mega form I ever took, once I decided to prioritize building a power base over solitary exploration and combat and traded Slayerdramon's flight capability for utility value. Dragon-type Digimon are the best to place in charge of mining because they're motivated, but a certain amount of embezzlement is inevitable. Allowing rebels to operate successfully enough to slow down cyborg production so when he finally got around to raiding them he would have enough to reach Mega, take control of the factory's products and challenge me, however, is not acceptable. Now I need to select a replacement. Well, I needed to make a personal appearance either today or tomorrow regardless."
The screen showed the metal walls of Groundramon's office blackened by an explosion. Bits of console littered the room, along with a black spiked ball, like a mace, that dissipated into data as Ryo watched.
"Letting them have precious metal for their bunkers and offices like that instead of using a weaker metal or concrete helps contain the force of the explosion," Millenniummon said, pleased. "They never have checked to see what else the construction drones are installing along with the armor and communications equipment."
That was cold. Making sure he could kill a rebellious underling with the press of a few buttons? "I thought you controlled all your slaves," Ryo said, wanting to think of something else.
"Ringed Ultimates have more chance of successfully resisting my control if they're able to wake up enough to realize they should. A mining engineer needs to be intelligent and able to think fast. Otherwise, setbacks will happen that put them six months behind schedule unless I come out there personally and spend time reprogramming some geography. That used to be a simple matter, but then the mind of the Digital World noticed me and started trying to resist my control. Since then, instead of simply accessing the coding that makes up the Digital World, I've had to hack in and either hide what I'm doing from Homeostasis or override their control in order to accomplish anything. It's far less work to arrange for predictably stupid underlings and take basic precautions."
"Putting bombs in someone's office is a basic precaution?"
"Based on millennia of experience, yes." The behemoth chuckled. His eyes went back to the screen, but Ryo saw the immaterial head above him twist to look at Ryo out of the corner of the indent that passed for an eye.
Millenniummon didn't say anything else, just watched him and worked, until some Gigadramon flew in, carrying two boxes and a couple larger, flatter metal boxes.
"Put one of each at either end of the table with the sample cages," he ordered them. They did, and flew out.
Millenniummon walked back to the remote control and punched in another code.
Screens went black, computer banks whined for a moment and then went silent, lights stopped blinking. Not everything in the lab turned off, and the lights overhead definitely stayed on, but a lot more shut down than usually did when Millenniummon was leaving them alone for the night.
Walking over to the table with the boxes and the Digidestined, Millenniummon undid clasps on the sides of the larger metal boxes, and lifted off the lids to reveal steaming water. Then, he started hitting buttons to open all of the sample cages. Once all the doors were open, he reached up his hand to let Ryo climb on, and then lowered it down to the table. "Let's see how much trouble you can make while I'm gone."
He was smiling, Ryo saw. Millenniummon was smiling, like this was some joke shared between the two of them, like he was expecting to be pleased by Ryo's performance.
It shocked him for an instant, and then it was an effort to scowl instead of smile back. "We will." Or they would, really, Ryo knew. The other kids were the ones who knew what they were doing.
A chuckle, and Millenniummon turned away, stamping towards the door.
Tai, Mimi and TK's cages were on the bottom level. When Ryo turned around, they and their partners were already out and looking up at the other cages. "Patamon, can you carry these blankets up to Kari?" Tai asked, holding a length of tied-together blankets. Kari and Izzy's cages were on the top row, easily six meters up.
"Leave it to me!" Patamon said.
Sora jumped out of her cage on the second level, Biyomon flapping to slow her descent.
"You don't need a rope, I'll use my vines so the rest of you can climb down," Palmon said.
"Just look at those yellow spots, and how wilted you are!" Mimi scolded her. "If you try to support someone's weight like this, what if your poor fingers break? Oooh, just leaving you on a hard metal table like that…"
"No, wait!" Joe said. "Didn't you check the blankets? I tried to tear them to see if I could use them as bandages if I ran out. We can't trust them to hold anyone's weight."
"Right," Mimi said, nodding. "Patamon, bring those back down. Kari, Izzy, throw me your blankets. If Palmon and I braid them, we should have something strong enough."
"Prodigious!" Izzy exclaimed happily as soon as the door closed behind Millenniummon, and Izzy was finally let loose, unsupervised, in the room with all his computers.
"I thought you weren't using that word anymore. TK, I'm stealing your blankets!" Tai called, clearing the last of the cages on the bottom row. Matt pushed his blankets down, timing it so they landed on Tai's head.
"Sure, go ahead!" TK had sat down next to Mimi and started braiding. Tai joined in, pulling on his work every so often to check it. Hadn't they all met at summer camp?
"Well, it is prodigious," Izzy said, throwing down his blankets. "I'll boot up my laptop."
Mimi sighed, "Izzy, I've told you that word doesn't mean what you think it means."
"Ryo," Tentomon asked, flying down to Ryo. "May I borrow your blankets?"
"Sure," Ryo said, and the insect Digimon flew up to Ryo's cage on the top level to drop them down to Mimi.
"I'll go see if there's anything useful in those boxes," Sora said. "Come on, Biyomon."
"Hey, Tentomon, give us a hand getting down," Matt said.
"What about you, Joe?"
"I'll wait until I can test out the rope for them," Joe said, shaking his head. "It's better to fall three meters than six, and I don't want Kari to take the fall. Or Izzy's laptop."
"Is there anything I can do to help?" Ryo asked.
"Give me a hand over here," Matt said. He and Gabumon were lifting up one of the metal lids. "If we lean them against the side of the cages, we won't have to worry about seeing one bath from the other one."
"I'll help out too," said Agumon, coming over.
"I found hair dryers!" Sora called. "Well, fur dryers, I guess. The towels aren't practically see-through the way the sheets are!"
"Devices? I want one to examine," Izzy said, leaning out of his cage with a hand on the door.
"There's two in our box, so there should be two in yours. There are a few other things that look like they may be devices, too. I'll send you one of them."
"One, two, three!" Gabumon counted, and Ryo heaved. Matt got under the lid to push it up.
"Alright, walk it towards me…" said the blond Digidestined.
"Ok, Patamon, take it up to Joe!"
Joe leaned out to grab the rope. "Kari, watch me tie this knot, okay?"
"Um-hum," Kari nodded, leaning out over the edge of her cage's floor to look down with her partner's head next to hers.
Next to her, Biyomon landed in Izzy's cage, handing him one of the unidentified devices.
Tai joined in pushing on the metal plate. "Hey, let me get out from behind here," Matt said, squeezing to the side so he didn't get stuck between the lid and the cage wall.
"We should bring the second lid over here, I don't think this is big enough," Tai said.
Joe slid down the rope carrying Gomamon. "Well, it held both of us, so Izzy and Kari should be ok." He put his partner down and walked over to the edge of the table, looking down. "Mimi, how long is that rope?"
"Nowhere near long enough. Sora, how many spare towels do you think we have?"
"We'll have to knot them securely," Joe reminded them. "So the length of the rope will be a lot less than the total length of the towels."
"Joe, I can't untie your knot!" Patamon said, flying over to him.
"Right, I'll walk you through untying it," Joe said, and walked back over to the cages. He and Mimi ducked into her cage as Matt, Tai, their partners and Ryo walked past carrying the other lid to brace it next to the first lid. "Gomamon, where are you?"
"The water's great!" said the seal Digimon, a waving flipper visible over the edge of the tub. He put his flippers on the rim and pushed himself up to add, "It's really warm but it's not hot enough it hurts, and the bottom and sides are padded."
"So we have awhile before it cools? How nice," Mimi said, sounding relieved.
"Between Biyomon and Tentomon, the rope shouldn't need to be strong enough to bear the full weight of an adult. Not that I'm an adult," Izzy added as Gatomon climbed down, checking the rope before gesturing for Kari to join her.
"Is there anything else I can do?" Ryo asked once the lid was braced.
"That's what I'm wondering too," Matt said as Tai ran over to stand at the bottom of the rope ready to catch Kari in case those blankets did what they were designed to do and broke under the weight of an escapee. "I guess Gabumon and I should get a head start on bathing so he can dry off."
"If there's water in my fur, I'll be a lot heavier," Gabumon agreed. "I wouldn't want Biyomon and Tentomon to get worn out lifting me if we get a chance to escape."
"Oh, right, and we need to start laundry so we can get it dry," Tai realized, coming over. "If all the blankets and towels are getting turned into a rope, there goes the toga idea."
"I should have brought my bag with me instead of leaving it at Gennai's," Matt said, frustrated with himself. "Hey, Joe, Izzy, Mimi, Sora! You guys have your bags with you, how many changes of clothes do you have?"
"Oh, right, I can use my sweater for the rope!" Sora realized.
"I don't think he'll let us keep the rope," Ryo said. "I don't know how we could possibly hide it from him in those." The cages were mostly see-through for a reason.
Joe and Mimi looked at each other. Mimi nodded. "Ryo's right, that's why I'm not using the camouflage sheets."
"Camouflage sheets?" Joe snapped his fingers. "Right, that tan sheet you used to hide us when we needed to sneak up on that pyramid in the desert!"
Mimi nodded. "I stole it from that cruise ship while we were running from Kokatorimon, and it worked so well I decided to bring more patterns, when I was thinking of what fabrics I should bring to make something for Palmon. Gennai said we were fighting someone who used to be Machinedramon, so most of what I have is urban camo. It doesn't look very pretty," she said apologetically, "but I did waterproof it!" So that should make up for not looking good, a bit at least.
"Waterproof? We could use them to make tents! And ponchos!" Joe said excitedly. "I know we were supposed to be able to stay in File City, but if we go back there now once we escape, he'll follow us… If it's even still there," he muttered, worried, before looking up at the cages. "It's warm enough in here with all these computers that I think we can do without the blankets. We haven't really needed them so far."
"Except for privacy," Mimi corrected him. "He has those dragons to do maid service anyway. I certainly hope they're programmed to swap out the blankets every so often. There's, well, something of a bathroom in those things, but young Digimon would be so terrified, imprisoned in those and getting experimented on."
Unless they had black rings making them happy to be there. Ryo wasn't the only one to think that, he guessed from the shudders.
"Oh, yes, thinking of that no-good Kokatorimon reminds me. Ryo!" Mimi said, waving to be sure she got his attention. "Pick out a good-sized towel, fold it around your digivice to keep it dry and keep it with you at all times while you take your bath, alright? When bathing in the Digital World, it is extremely important to always know where your towel is. I can't even remember how many times we've been attacked in the bath by Digimon trying to ambush us when they think we don't have our digivices." She clicked her tongue: how very inconsiderate of them.
"Hey, laundry!" Matt shouted. "It's a lot of work to get down under Gabumon's fur, so Tai and Ryo are volunteering!"
Tai frowned, looking at Matt and then around (and up, at Tentomon carrying down Izzy's laptop as his partner came down the rope. "Yeah," he concluded. "We'd better do the laundry. Mind giving me a hand, Ryo?"
"Sure," he said, a little relieved.
Izzy needed to get over to the computers and see if he could do anything. Sora and TK had flying Digimon, when they'd need scouts to figure out where to send Izzy – and help get Izzy there. Mimi and Joe were hip deep in rope and rope components trying to figure out how far they could safely stretch what they had.
"We have enough food to last us through lunch, but not enough for dinner," Tai said, to Matt, the two of them walking over to where Joe and Mimi were so they could hear them. "I really don't think he's going to let one of those drones open that door just to feed us while he's gone and we're loose in here."
"He might want to get us hungry and tired out," Joe said. "That was what Machinedramon did, remember?"
Matt shook his head. "He could do that by reducing the rations a little. Tai's right – he'll be back by dinner. He's not going to give us more time to work with than that."
"Everybody does need to take the time to bathe, though," Joe reminded them.
"Dragon Digimon can track their prey by scent," Agumon said, "and he's got lots of them."
"Yeah, that's another reason to do laundry," Tai agreed. "My socks reek by now."
"I bet Izzy's forgotten all about bathing," Mimi said. "Someone should make him take one now, while we're working on the rope and Biyomon and the others are looking for a place for him to try."
"Right." Gabumon nodded, and walked over to poke Izzy on the shoulder and get his attention away from his laptop and a partially disassembled device.
"This is an instant water purification device," he told them when he looked up. "There are a lot of Digimon like Zurumon with toxins and other things that are harmless to them, but would be a problem for whoever was next."
Joe groaned. "Do you know how much I wanted something like that while we were in the Digital world before, and you're telling me they existed all along?"
"I guess if we can hold onto these, that'll let TK trust the water here," Matt said thoughtfully.
"It won't save us from the food or the air," Joe said pessimistically, "but at least it's something."
"Making sure the bathwater's safe? That's… thorough," Tai said finally. "That's the kind of thing… Hey, it literally is the kind of thing Joe would think of!" Since he'd just told him he had.
"Most evil Digimon wouldn't care if their slaves accidentally killed each other," Gatomon agreed. "It would get rid of the weaklings."
"All of this is standardized," Izzy said. "I don't think Myotismon or the other Dark Masters had ever heard of the concept of mass production, but this is highly efficient."
Tai nodded. "Yeah. I didn't think about it when we fought Machinedramon because I thought it was just… like Megaseadramon's territory was ocean, or Puppetmon had that spooky forest and mansion just for fun. I thought it was just Machinedramon's theme, that he was making everything match because of his ego, the way the other Dark Masters were."
The others clearly agreed with Tai: was he their leader?
"I don't think Millenniummon is the kind of Digimon that would worry about other people's safety just to keep them safe. Those must have been made part of the kit because it happened, enough times to make it less trouble to just make the equipment standard than try to give the… drones detailed instructions on what not to do," Joe said, tugging on a knot.
"Gennai didn't give us all that long to pack, and I knew that every minute I took would be a day here," Mimi said. "I had to pack in a hurry, but I knew what to pack because I knew what I would need from when we went to the Digital world before."
"He's built up a library," Izzy said, most of his attention on whatever was on his laptop screen. "I mean, in the computer sense. A collection of programs and functions he's already written, so he can just use those programs to handle a situation that comes up a second time, instead of having to waste time reinventing the wheel. That means he can spend his time writing new programs for new things that come up. Once he does, he'll add them to the library and be even better prepared for the next attack."
"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," Joe quoted. "If you can prevent emergencies, then you don't have to scramble to solve them."
"And if you're not dealing with emergencies, it's easier to solve the other problems that come up and keep them from becoming emergencies." Matt frowned. "When we were in his territory, he could focus on us, even though he was ruling half of what was left… No. There weren't any people in Piedmon's territory. He was ruling where almost all the Digimon still living in the digital world were hiding, and even though there was a resistance, they still weren't enough of a problem. He could still focus on us, because his empire ran itself."
"If someone he… not that he trusted," Ryo said, "but that he gave power tried to rebel against him, he'd already have bombs in the place they think is the safest." Behind all that metal shielding.
Joe grimaced. "With the dark rings, we can't get his victims to rise up and help us fight him without a lot of work that'd draw attention to ourselves. We can't really hope that the bad guys will get distracted fighting each other if he can kill his guys that easily. We know he's willing to bomb large areas just to get at us: he doesn't care about collateral damage, even to his own bases and factories. He can just have the drones rebuild."
"Well, this is making me feel a little less bad about needing divine intervention to beat him last time," Tai said, trying to sound upbeat. "Kari, Gatomon, would you mind helping me get the laundry together and sort the girls' things out of it for us?"
"Oh, yes, good thinking Tai," Mimi said.
Gomamon and Izzy passed them in the other direction as they went into the bathing area on the other side of the lids, Izzy's hair all poofed up from using the hairdryer to be sure he didn't get his laptop wet. Gabumon was sitting on the ground next to the pool, covered in suds. "There were tubs in the supply bin over there," Matt said, shirt off and fingers deep in Gabumon's blue and white fur.
"Great," Tai said, dumping the first load a few meters away from Matt and heading to the bin.
"I'll get the other side of it," Ryo said, putting down his own load to help Tai with the bucket. It wasn't heavy now, but they'd have to dip it in the pool to fill it with water, and then it would be heavy.
"Thanks, Ryo. I think we have enough time to dump them in to soak: that's a lot less work."
"A lot less work," Matt said, reminiscing. "A lot more time, though, and since we never knew when we'd be ambushed we had to do it the faster way. Couldn't go too long without doing the laundry, either, or else we couldn't hide from evil Digimon. At least it was great for my arms," he said, holding up his bicep for inspection.
"Seriously. Mimi has all that stuff that's hand-wash-only. She looks at the labels too, so she's actually choosing to buy things that she can't just stick in a machine, so she has to do this all the time, even outside the Digital World? You'd think her arms would be bigger than mine," Tai said, shaking his head.
"Girls are weird."
"It's usually us and Sora doing the laundry," Tai told Ryo, dumping clothes in the tub. "There weren't any poles in there, so we'll have to use our arms and Agumon's tail," he said as Agumon came around the makeshift wall carrying another bundle of clothes on his head. "I remember, well, the second time I got home from the Digital World. My mom asked me to give her my clothes because they were dirty – we hadn't been able to risk it for awhile, hanging around Myotismon's territory – and first I thought 'It's not safe for us do laundry without Agumon, that's way too dangerous,' and then I remembered that it wasn't. No one was going to attack her while she did the laundry. That was when I really realized that I was home, safe… or mostly safe," he added, looking downcast for a moment before he pulled his head back up. "Hold on, Agumon, let's get some more tubs."
"Ryo, are you holding up okay?" the little yellow dinosaur asked him as he put the clothes in the second tub Tai and Ryo had filled and brought over.
"It sucks to be stuck with way too many people," Matt said sympathetically. "It's even worse to be stuck with too many people and feel left out. I can't wander off somewhere when we're captured like this."
They could still hear voices from the other side of the wall – the rest of the group was working on figuring out how get Izzy over to one of the more likely places, not to mention picking one.
It really shouldn't have felt all that private, not when there were still four other people here, but… "Yeah, this is a little better," Ryo said. "Thanks."
"I'm still making you help with the laundry," Tai said, "but yeah, I kind of figured. You were talking a lot to distract Millenniummon when he brought us here, but you haven't been talking as much." Since he found out who his partner was.
"Matt really didn't handle having a lot of danger and new things to deal with very well, at first, at least not when he had to be around everyone else too," Gabumon said. "It tires him out."
"Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't." Matt said, sounding a little frustrated, pushing back blond hair with a soapy hand. "I realized after we got back that sometimes it was energizing, exciting, to be in a crowd, or to have everyone watching me? I don't know if I just never noticed that it was good to be around people sometimes, or I had to learn to like it to keep you guys from driving me up the wall." He pulled Gabumon's ear.
Gabumon said "Ow," but they were both smiling, so it was ok. "And he was worried about TK."
Tai shook his head. "The more I learn about the rest of you guys, the weirder you are. Is everyone this weird, and we just never find out, or is it just us?"
"It's just you," Matt grinned.
"Is it okay that I'm here, if you need to be alone?" Ryo asked.
Matt and Gabumon looked at each other, Gabumon wonderingly and Matt a little surprised. "Tai's okay," Matt said.
"It was a lot of work, but I grew on him," Tai said proudly.
"Like athlete's foot," Matt said, throwing a soapy washcloth at Tai's goggled head.
Tai caught it, said "Right," and started to take off his shirt. "You too, Ryo."
Gripping his shirt, Ryo paused. Speaking of taking things off…
Gabumon blushed. How was it visible through that coat he was wearing? "It does come off, but… I hate having people see me without my coat," he explained, embarrassed.
"There's not a lot of privacy here, so I don't mind washing it while it's on him," Matt said. "It's kind of part of him and kind of not. The Digital world is weird."
"Speaking of stuff to hide our birthday suits, Agumon, did you count how many shirts and pants Joe had?"
"Izzy has two sets of clothes, Joe has seven," Agumon said.
"So that's thirteen for six of us," Tai counted. "Good thing Joe's a year ahead of us; it'll all fit, we might just have to tie back some cuffs or something." So they didn't get tripped up.
"I'd say I wished TK had his bag," Matt said, "Except I don't want Millenniummon to get any ideas about attacking Gennai's to steal our stuff."
"You know Gennai," Tai said. "He wouldn't let Millenniummon get his hands on our stuff. Like our IDs." That would reveal where their families lived. "He's done this before too, you know. Whenever we get out of here, he'll find us eventually." He looked at Agumon, and noticed he was looking at Ryo. "Sorry about leaving you out of the conversation."
"I don't really have anything to say. I was wondering why he wasn't giving you guys a way down from the cages, but then I realized he must have known that you would get down on your own," Ryo said.
"Well, if you were on the top level, you would have found a way to get yourself down, right?"
Ryo nodded, shrugging his shirt over his head. "I would have used the doors."
Tai echoed his nod. "See? You've got the right instincts. Kari's not tall enough for me to let her do it that way, even though it'd be no problem for Gatomon, and Izzy's a bit of a klutz when he's thinking and we need him thinking. He also needs to guard that laptop."
"Giving us ladders or something is what a polite person in our world would do," Matt said, annoyed at Millenniummon. "This is the digital world. We're used to having to improvise. It's how things are done here, but you haven't been here long enough to learn how it works yet."
"If we couldn't get out of a situation like that by now," Agumon said cheerfully.
"That would be sad," Tai agreed.
"He thought we were pathetic," Matt remembered, frowning as he looked at Tai. "Even last time, when we were actually able to stay ahead of him for awhile."
All four of them looked at Ryo.
"I noticed. He was expecting me to impress him."
"Not your fault you're the new kid. Man, I feel like Izzy," Tai realized. "So that's how it feels to be way ahead of people. You're trying to figure all this out now, you'll catch up."
"I hope you don't," Agumon said sadly. "I'm the one who dragged you into this, so it would be nice if you didn't have to learn what evil Digimon are like and what to do when you're attacked."
"I feel like I'm the one who dragged you guys into this."
Tai and Matt nodded. "I didn't want other people getting involved when it was me and TK."
"Or me and Kari," Tai agreed. "He's your partner, so you're going to feel connected to him. Responsible."
"You're going to care about him, even if you don't want to," Matt said, tugging on one of Gabumon's ears again. "Think about this from our perspective. First we thought we took care of him and we were wrong, then he kicked our asses. We're your senpai, and this is our job: you're the new kid who got dragged in to clean up our mess." His hands dug into Gabumon's fur again, with enough force to rock the Digimon forward a little bit. "You're here because we couldn't cut it."
"We couldn't beat Myotismon without my little sister getting dragged into everything," Tai said, eyes shadowed, confident smile gone.
"We needed TK to save us from Devimon, and Angemon had to pay for it, and then I couldn't defeat Piedmon without him." Matt was scowling now.
"Matt and I are usually… Most of the time, we've been the most powerful. The heavy hitters. Well, us and Sora. It's our job to… Well, it's not just our job, but…"
"And it's harder to get over ourselves and stop feeling like it's our job when so often when we can't win, someone else has to pay the price," Matt said darkly. "So sorry, but you're going to have to put up with us worrying about you. Don't even think about sacrificing yourself to Millenniummon or something. Not because of us."
"Maybe Kari," Tai quipped.
"Well, TK," Matt admitted, smirking at Tai.
"My partner is, is him."
"You know who I feel sorry for?" Tai asked thoughtfully.
Yep, Matt was thinking what he was thinking. "If even evil Digimon have partners, then somewhere out there some poor bastard was stuck with Myotismon." Tai and Matt shuddered.
"After what he did to Gatomon? If Myotismon managed to catch some poor kid because we failed to kill him again?"
"Wow," Matt said, staring off into space in detached horror. "This could have been so much worse, huh."
"Millenniummon just uses the dark rings," Tai explained, "because he doesn't care enough about Digimon to want to spend time breaking them. Myotismon messed with Digimon's heads by… we saw the dungeons while we were looking for the gate." Once again, Tai shuddered. "My little sister's partner was in there. And he kept sending her back because she had the will to break through and still have some defiance."
"The difference between Millenniummon and Myotismon is that Myotismon would have taken off Mimi's legs with a cheesegrater."
"No, a cheesegrater? He'd have something in that dungeon for that."
"Tai?" Agumon put a clawed hand on Tai's arm.
"Yeah," Tai said, taking a deep breath. "I should stop thinking about it. I know that he was too afraid of Kari to leave her alive so he could do any of that to her." Another deep breath. "Your partner's not the worst out there, Ryo. He might be one of the tougher ones to beat, he might have enjoyed hunting us down, but he's not going to chain any of us to a wall and whip us bloody for kicks."
"If he did have to do it, he'd complain about having to waste his time on an insect," Matt agreed. "Or nah, he'd make one of the drones do it."
"Matt, I thought the point was to make Ryo less upset," Gabumon wondered.
"Yeah, you're looking a little green, sorry about that," Matt said, examining him. "Millenniummon being like this doesn't have anything to do with you. You're just the one stuck with it because he's your partner, the way TK's my brother. It's not fair that I got Gabumon and you got someone who was off building a machine to make kids hand him their lunch money when the consciences were handed out, but no one thinks it's your fault or anything."