--o--o--o--

Chapter 9

Bringing Up Baby

--o--o--o--

"Kazu, you MORON!" Rika bellowed.

"Hey, don't get personal, Rika!" Kazu huffed, "I was just trying to take care of my partner."

"And you thought that 'taking care' of him meant pouring a whole bucket of sake down him?"

"Well, it had all those energy thingies mixed in. It worked okay for Orochimon, didn't it?" Kazu stubbornly kept trying to defend his actions. "There was plenty left over and all the Gekomon were drinking it."

"Yeah," snorted Rika, "and look at them!" She turned and booted one of the unconscious little frog digimon, not very gently, who groaned, rolled over, and began to snore again.

"At least their snoring isn't as bad as their singing. Though their singing is better than some people's," Renamon put in, staring hard at Kazu.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Rika shook her head in despair and sighed. "Oh, never mind. I guess we'll just have to hang around here until Guardromon is fit to travel." She glanced over at the big red robot who was lying on his back and mumbling something unintelligible while waving his hands vaguely in the air. Kenta was bending over him, futilely trying to make some sense of his babbling. Rika turned her back on them and walked off, making a little hand motion that told Renamon to come along with her.

"What amazes me," Rika said to her partner as they strolled down to the lake, "is how hard Kazu had to work to do something so incredibly stupid. Guardromon doesn't even have a mouth!"

"Gives a new meaning to 'down the hatch', doesn't it?"

"Was that a joke, Renamon?"

Renamon looked calmly at her tamer, "If you have to ask-- I suppose not."

"Coyomon's certainly had an effect on you-- you never used to have a sense of humor--always the grim, bad-ass fighter."

"Humor can be a very effective weapon." Renamon said in a deadly serious voice.

Rika stopped and turned to look at her partner. Renamon met her gaze for a moment with a fierce expression and then couldn't help grinning. Rika sighed, rolled her eyes and continued down the path.

"I hope flea-bag can keep his sense of humor when he can't find us where we were supposed to be," Rika said a few moments later. "I wonder how he's doing?"

--o--o--o--

Coyomon slammed hard into the ground and tumbled over and over a few times before bouncing to his feet and shaking sand out of his ears.

"Ooh!" Ceyamon cried out, "I'm sorry! Did I hurt you?"

"Naw," he smiled at her, trying not to wince at the pain in his ribs, "That was a perfect feint! It fooled me even though I knew you were going to try something like it."

"So I did good?" she asked.

"Perfect!" he beamed at his daughter, "You took what I taught you and then, instead of just imitating it, you used it in your own way. That's just what I was hoping for."

Ceyamon gave her father a broad smile of pleasure. "So, I'll be ready for a real fight soon?"

Coyomon laughed. "Sweetie, you were ready before the last bit of your shell fell off of you! I'm just putting a little polish on the gem."

"I want to make you proud of me," she said, "I want to make Renamon proud of me. I hope I'll get to meet her soon."

"You will, sweetie," Coyomon reassured her, "I don't know why they weren't here to meet us but they must have had a good reason to take off. We'll just have to wait here until they get back. If we go off looking for them we might never meet up."

"I know," Ceyamon said a little sadly.

"Hey, no frowning!" Coyomon admonished her with mock sternness. "If you give me a smile I'll show you this nifty combo I learned from a Jackie Chan movie."

Ceyamon grinned-- and then asked, "What's a movie?"

--o--o--o--

Guilmon, Leomon and Jeri were sitting by the edge of the water quietly talking when Rika and Renamon arrived.

"Hey, tamer!" Rika called out to Jeri as she approached.

Jeri turned and smiled. Rika had been calling her "tamer" since she had come up with the novel modify card that had let Leomon finish off Orochimon and Jeri felt a swell of pride every time she heard it "Hi, Rika! How's Guardromon?"

"Still dead drunk and babbling like an idiot."

Leomon grumbled disapprovingly, deep in his throat.

"I guess we're going to have to spend the night here, then?" Jeri asked.

"Looks like it," Rika replied. "Well-- at least we'll get a bit of time to relax." She had barely finished speaking when the proximity alarms of all three digivices began beeping. Rika flipped Renamon's into her hand and activated the info disk. "Me and my big mouth," she grumbled. "It looks like a big one."

--o--o--o--

"It's a big one," Coyomon said to Ceyamon as they crouched on a mesa's edge watching the Dark Tyrannomon stomp across the desert below, "but that doesn't mean much. These dino-types are usually slow and nearly always as stupid as a bag of hammers. They telegraph their attacks and--" he turned to where his daughter had been, "--and I'm talking to thin air, aren't I?"

Sure enough, Ceyamon was already halfway down the side of the mesa, yipping with exuberance at the prospect of her first real fight.

Coyomon leaped after her, biting back a curse. He built up energy for a Fang Flurry-- just in case.

Ceyamon charged straight in, yelling at the top of her lungs, giving Dark Tyrannomon plenty of time to turn around and ready himself for her attack. He sucked in air for a Fire Blast attack but Ceyamon leaped straight up just before he could launch it. He tried to follow her but his thick, inflexible neck wouldn't let him look far enough up. He turned, assuming she was trying to get behind him and whipped his massive tail through the air in a wide half circle. Nothing.

Dark Tyrannomon was beginning to turn again, becoming dimly aware that he was facing an opponent that was much more dangerous that he had first assumed, when Ceyamon fell past his head. He bellowed and staggered back from the force of the Whisper Claw attack that sliced down through his cheek and neck. Ceyamon landed gracefully in front of the huge dinosaur digimon and, as his head twisted back, leaped straight up and slammed both fists into the underside of his jaw and followed up with a lightning fast bicycle kick. Teeth the size of paper party hats scattered across the sand.

The dino's massive tail whipped around again and Ceyamon flipped herself over it, doing an immediate jump-turn and hitting the dino in the shoulder with a powerful flying kick using all the strength of both her legs. Dark Tyrannomon not only was knocked over-- he half rolled onto his back from the force of the impact. Ceyamon waited patiently, standing with her hands on her hips as Dark Tyrannomon struggled back to his feet. He faced her, seemingly having a hard time focusing his eyes.

Ceyamon smiled, lifted one hand, and waved. "Bye-bye," she said in her musical voice and her eyes blazed-- literally. Her Razor Gaze attack ripped through the dinosaur digimon's massive head and he fragmented into swirling bits of data. She giggled sweetly as she drew in his energy.

Coyomon gaped at his daughter, letting his attack energy dissipate and feeling a sudden sympathy for Dr. Frankenstein. He desperately wished he could see the readout from a digivice on her.

She danced back across the sand to her father and stopped, uncertain when she saw his expression. "Didn't I do it right?" she asked in a subdued manner.

"Sweetie," he said with real feeling, "you did it perfectly. Better than I could have, that's for sure."

"Really?" Her face lit up again.

"Really." He shook his head in wonder. "I'm a habitual liar, but I'd never lie to you, Ceyamon. That aerial feint was perfect and you hit him just where he wasn't expecting it-- over and over again."

"Then--" she began, suddenly shy again, "-- what was wrong-- just now? I saw it in your face."

"I--" he groped for the right words, "--I was just surprised. You're much stronger than I'd any right to hope for. I think you may be a natural Champion level."

"But that's good, right?"

"Yep," he grinned, "it's great!" He stood silently for a while and then said, "I guess the next thing is to teach you some basic teamwork."

"I get to fight side-by-side with you?" Ceyamon's eyes lit up. "Oh, that sounds like fun!"

They strolled off together, chatting happily, Coyomon outlining the basics of two-on-one fighting and Ceyamon stumbling over herself verbally, wanting all of her myriad questions answered at the same time.

--o--o--o--

Jeri bit her lower lip, struggling valiantly to project the image of a confident tamer, as the huge, dark digimon floated toward the group. It didn't help that her digivice was giving her no information on the intruder. Leomon stood with his arms crossed over his massive chest, eyes narrowed and Guilmon was on his feet, growling.

"Piece of junk!" Rika growled, slapping the side of her own digivice. The info disk flickered for a second but stubbornly remained blank. She heard a sharp intake of breath from Renamon and looked up. The unknown digimon was still too far for her to make out any details but its outline seemed familiar, somehow. "What is it Renamon?"

"Something bad," her partner said grimly. "Get a blue card ready."

Rika didn't hesitate. She flipped a blue card out of her pouch and held it ready between her first and middle fingers. Just as she was beginning to make out some details of the enemy, her info screen came to life. "Yinmon, Ultimate-- specials are Night Rune and Sigil of Darkness. I'm guessing this isn't one of the cuddly types."

"It's Taomon!" Jeri gasped.

Rika's head shot up. "No it's not! It's all black and--" her voice trailed off. There was a resemblance. If Taomon had been night black, dressed in tattered rags instead of flowing robes, and had only a small white triangle for a marking instead of several taijitu--

Renamon suddenly snarled explosively, making both Jeri and Rika jump in surprise. Rika hadn't heard such pure venom in her partner's voice in a very long time. "That's Kunomon-- and she's got Calumon with her!"

"But-- if she's here--" Rika began.

"Where is Coyomon?" Renamon hissed through clenched teeth as Yinmon came within hearing range.

"Misplaced your so-called mate? How careless of you." Yinmon sneered, her ragged clothing slowly flapping and twisting about her form as if there was a breeze moving around her.

"Calumon!" Jeri called up to the shivering little digimon who hung around Yinmon's neck, enclosed in a metal cage barely bigger than he was. "Are you all right?"

"Answer me!" Renamon and Jeri shouted at the same time.

Distain and cruelty disfigured her face as Yinmon smiled. "The little one knows better than to speak without my permission. As for you--" she turned her gaze on Renamon, "--your mate was pathetically easy to defeat."

Renamon froze and her pupils shrunk to pinpoints. Her armguards creaked as her fists squeezed down into, tight, hard masses. "Rikaaa--" she rumbled through bared fangs. Her partner placed the corner of the blue card into the top of the slot in her digivice but didn't slash it.

"He begged me not to kill him," Yinmon's smile grew more twisted, "and he died screaming for mercy."

"Oh," Renamon sighed, taking in a relieved breath, "you lying bitch, you almost fooled me!"

"What?" Yinmon was nonplused. "He's dead, I tell you!"

"Pft! Yeah, right," smirked Rika. "If you'd told us he'd gone out joking or singing, we might have believed you but you didn't do a darned thing to him, did you?"

Yinmon simply stared at her in amazement. She'd never spoken to a human before and now this tiny girl was staring up into her face, confidently mocking her in her mightiest digivolved form.

"But you know something?" Rika gave her the sweetest smile imaginable. "We're still going to kick your lying butt." And she slashed the blue card through Renamon's digivice.