Edan came around again, this time, his face was hurting. Before another rock could come crashing down on him, he scrambled away, and hit the opposite wall in his confusion.
"Arggh," he said, holding his head and trying to stand. The tunnel was high enough - his ears were dragging on the ceiling. Except for the throbbing in his brain, everything was normal.
A few seconds later, his mechanically-augmented healing started taking it's effect, and the pain started clearing up.
"Okay," he said to himself. "Where am I?"
The dead tunnel provided no answers. Well, it was a tunnel. Tunnels led to other places, didn't they?
Edan reached behind his head, and ran his claw over a very specific piece of skin. His right eye had been reconstructed, and was augmented with light receptors. He blinked as the tunnel suddenly brightened for him.
"Hmm," he said, looking closer at the walls. There was something in them that sparkled, even in the dim light. He guessed it was a crystal compound, probably formed under high temperature and stress.
Then he took another look at the tunnel. Black.
"Black, glitter..." he said to himself, starting to walk forward. The ceiling felt very rough against his ears. It was a very distinctive feel... Suddenly it clicked.
"Volcano," he said to himself. His immediate reaction was a mild panic, but when he realised that there was actually no red hot lava in the tunnel, he relaxed.
"Inactive," he reminded himself, then started walking forward again. This tunnel had to lead somewhere...
---------------------------
About twenty minutes of walking had revealed nothing, except more and more tunnels, branching off in every imaginable direction - even up and down. He had dodged the falls, looked at the ceiling gaps, and tried finding a way out, but it was of no use. His Chelone communicator obviously didn't work down here, but he left it to scan just in case.
But was "down" even an appropriate description? Volcanoes tended to stick up out of the ground. So he was probably way above ground level right now. All the weight above him, though, seemed to be pressing down on him. For all he cared, he could have been a million miles under the ground.
He kept walking, at a slightly faster pace. There was a way out of here, and he was going to find it.
------------------------
Ten minutes later. Still nothing. He was beginning to wonder if maybe he wasn't walking in circles. Every step against the black, charred igneous rock was starting to hurt, his ears were getting rubbed raw, and he couldn't stretch his arms in the confined space.
Then he stopped. There was something lying on the ground, a different color from the rest of the tunnel. It was about the size of his own head, and it took two hands to lift.
A boulder.
But ... wasn't this the boulder that had knocked him out?
It was. He recognised a metallic scratch on the rock, caused by his reinforced skull.
A wave of despair settled over Edan, as he looked back, realising that in the last half hour, he had gotten nowhere.
---------------------------
"Help!" he yelled into the tunnel as he ran. Maybe, hope against hope, there was someone else down here; someone who could help.
"HELP!"
He was getting panicked. Where was he? How far down, how close to the core? Why couldn't he hear anything except his own breathing and footsteps?
Suddenly, it was as if he was right back where he had began. He was beginning to see little boulders everywhere - reminders of his trapped situation. He closed his eyes and ran harder, straight into a wall that he swore hadn't been there.
The impact knocked him dizzy, and he spun around without knowing it - running back in the direction he had come.
Less than ten seconds later, he was properly lost in the labyrinth, and slowly becoming terrified. He was keeping his eyes trained on the path ahead, and tripped over something.
The boulder.
He freaked.
--------------------------
"I'm in position," Jet said. He was hovering over a massive volcano - one of the points that RED had pinpointed.
"Okay," Flame's voice crackled over the communicator. "You know what to do."
"Sure," Jet said, as he dropped altitude, and headed straight for the volcano's cone.
--------------------------
Edan smacked into another wall, and this time he fell.
When he realised he was down, he panicked even more, clawing against the walls.
"Let me out of here!" he yelled, scratching fruitlessly at the walls. He started hammering, tears falling...
"LET ME OUT OF HERE!"
He headbutted the wall, recoiling at the unexpected hardness, but then he kept going. Bang ... Bang ... Bang ...
Eventually, bruised and bleeding, he stopped. His anxiety had been replaced by a numb feeling in his soul, and he was somewhat able to think.
"Okay," he gasped through stretched lungs. "Edan, you need to calm down."
He took another deep breath, letting the oxygen fill his lungs.
"There we go, buddy," he said to himself. "Just relax..."
He exhaled again, and drew in another fresh breath. When he exhaled it, he was almost back to normal.
----------------------
"Engaging echolocation."
A piercing scream tore through the volcano, vibrating all the rock, and causing more than one crack in the cone wall. Jet grimaced at the noise, and after fifteen seconds, turned the emitter off.
----------------------
Edan slumped against the wall of his new prison, defeated. He wasn't getting out of here soon. As the adrenalin wore off, he started to think of home...
A low vibration came out of nowhere, startling Edan. It made the tunnel hum slightly. He tried to figure out where the noise was coming from, but it seemed to be coming from everywhere.
After about fifteen seconds, it disappeared, as mysteriously as it had come.
His curiosity piqued, Edan stood up and brushed himself off. There had to have been a reason for that - and close by, too. He started searching the volcano again, this time, looking for the source of the noise.
-----------------------
"Echolocation negative," Jet said from his hovering position.
"Okay," Flame said. "Get out of there."
"Kay."
----------------------
Fifty meters down the tunnel, Edan found something new. A crack in the wall, that looked as if it had always been there. He stuck his nose to the millimeter crack, sniffing intently.
He picked up a scent, but it didn't register as first. It was the last thing he had expected to smell in a volcano. He drew another deep whiff, and let his brain sort it out.
He came up with the same answer, and backed away from the crack, mystified.
"Motherboards?"
------------------------
"Engaging echolocation."
Flame turned on the transmitter, and screwed up his face as a powerful wave of sound crashed through the volcano. It tried to tear into his head, but he fought back with everything he had.
Fifteen seconds later, he turned the emitter off, and activated the sonar readout. If there was any life down there, he would be able to spot the movement against the vibration of the rock, by the distortions it caused.
--------------------------
Edan felt that low hum again, and this time, he was able to guess where it came from. Through the crack. The sound pushed a wave of wind in front of it, and Edan could feel it against his face.
His curiosity overcame the danger of his situation, and he stood back. He was going to tear that wall down. He didn't attempt it earlier, for fear of creating a cave-in, but he was certain there was open space beyond that wall.
He went into the attack-ready stance, tensing all his muscles. He would only have one blow at this.
As he geared up for his assault, he felt the familiar white wisps of light building around him. Ever since the day he had discovered his latent HEAV abilities, he had lost no time - and no effort - in disciplining himself in it's use.
The white glow settled over his body, and he could feel the boost in power. He stared the wall down - this was it.
"HEAV activate!"
The glow burst into a cacophony of light around him. He brought his arm up, rallying it all into a central point in his fist. Then he ran forward, bringing his arm back, propelled by the pure energy...
"ROCK BREAKER!"
-------------------------
Kaida was standing at the lip of the volcano's cone, looking down. There seemed to be little dancing lights down there. It was probably just a trick of the distance, she thought, as she looked at the sonar emitter in her hands - a silver object about the size and shape of a football.
"Preparing to echolocate," she said, flipping a switch on the side of the device. There was a high-pitched whine as the capacitors charged, preparing for the intense fifteen second burst.
She looked down the volcano's pipe again. She would toss the emitter in, and immediately go to sonar. The structure of this volcano's rock was more brittle than the others, and wouldn't hold a sonic vibration. However, she was prepared to forfeit the emitter, because she knew that the other two had failed.
This was the only volcano that Edan could possibly be in.
She hit a five-second timer switch on the side of the device.
"Engaging echolocation!" she yelled.
Immediately following that, there was a massive explosion down in the volcano. She could see red flames - and white HEAV traces - filling up the cone. In those three seconds, she completely forgot about the transmitter.
It kicked into gear right next to her head, blasting her with more power than her eardrum could handle. The shock threw her off her feet, and down into the mouth of the volcano.
Were it not for the sheer blast of sound now following her down the volcano, the Digimon below would have heard her screaming. And had it not been for the blast of flame and smoke, they would be looking up.
As it was, they were staring down a battered Guilmon that had literally just popped out of the wall.
---------------------------
Edan didn't know what he was expecting to find, so somehow, he wasn't surprised to find a remote Military command post. A massive plasma display had been set up on one end of the volcano cone's floor, and several racks of speakers stood next to them.
The noise had come from them, he thought. They probably had subterranean sonar here, to monitor the area, and they were probably picking up distant disturbances.
In the middle of the floor was a holographic projector, currently switched off. Several Digimon were standing around it, now all staring at Edan as he had landed from his fall.
Three seconds later, there was another explosion, as Kaida hit the ground. The sonar emitter stopped with a splat, and Edan rushed for the nearest Digimon, intending to disable him.
The nearest Digimon turned out to be an ExVeemon, and before Edan could launch into a fight, he was ready. His first kick failed to connect, as did his second. But by the time he came around for the next kick, the ExVeemon was gone. Confused, Edan looked down, where the ExVeemon lay sprawled, a bullet hole though his head.
Edan stablilized and looked up, just as Jorcy landed out of goddamn nowhere.
"Boo!" Jorcy yelled, letting rip with his pistols. About 0.37 seconds later, every enemy Digimon in the room was dead.
Edan looked at Jorcy, who looked back at Edan. Edan looked at Jorcy some more, who turned away to look at Kaida, who was also looking at Jorcy.
Jorcy scratched his head, looked at Edan, Kaida, and the dead Digimon. Suddenly, it dawned on him.
"You weren't expecting me, were you?"
-----------------------------------