Chapter 4: Deceive & Detect
There was a school that was unseen in the early parts of the tale of deceit. There was a room full of desktop computers in addition to three more creatures. All on a bookshelf asleep, there was a yellow ball with wings with a quirky-looking face. A second creature with with wings was cute orange piglet with the last one being wingless. That was a miniature blue imp that you could cuddle in your sleep. They were rather cute. Suddenly, the door to the room slid open. A brunette young man sporting an afro entered the room, prompting the creatures to awaken. The young man wore a blue jacket and light-brown shorts. He looked toward the creatures who saw him back. The man peered around, spotting no one else. "Say, guys, have Kari and Yolei made it back?" he asked. The three glared at each other, hoping someone saw the two girls. No luck. They're with Ash in the deserted Town of Pallet.
"Can't say we have, Davis," the mini-imp replied with a bit of concern. Davis gawked a look over to a computer, seemingly worried about the girls.
"They should have been back by now. What's going on?" The creatures shared concerned looks amongst each other. Davis didn't want to wait. "Forget that there's a schedule of patrolling against Ken. I'm going in after them!" He dug into his pockets for something, but...
"Not while the Digidestened veteran is around, Davis," someone spoke out. From behind the computer that Davis was facing, a blond boy in a fisherman's cap rose from hiding. Davis jumped, spooked by the sudden appearance of this veteran.
"What the heck are you doing here, BS?" The blond sighed, already flustered by the angered rant of that nonsense.
"Now, you're just being ridiculous. The name's TK." Way off what Davis gawked. "Anyway, I'm fully aware of your intentions of chasing after Kari, and I was summoned to keep watch by Yolei's request." He was making sure that no one stepped out of line. How polite of him. Davis wanted to address his concern about the girls' failure of return.
"While I do appreciate that you're listening to Yolei, haven't you noticed that the girls haven't come back yet?" TK had to have been aware. Davis did spit it out when he entered the room.
"I was about to e-mail Kari about what was keeping them from getting out of the DigiWorld. I sure hope Ken hasn't spotted them." In a sense, TK had the same fear that Davis verbally vomited.
"Okay. See about that e-mail being sent out, while I alert Cody about this." The orders were set. However, there was a sudden interruption of the wicked kind.
"Well, well, hello again, insects of the DigiWorld," sneered another young man. The two and creatures glared at the computer screen, seeing a spiky violet-haired youngster in that tacky get-up from the last segment. The boys were quick on identifying him.
"Ken!" This was Ken? The name wasn't intimidating.
"What have you done with the girls?!" TK ordered an answer. Ken seemed to smile, as if any humanity that this guy had was dead.
"Right to the point, I see," he snickered. "Well, here's the bad news: those girls are gone." Thinking that Kari and Yolei were dead, Davis and TK began to fume with anger...until Ken threw this up. "I'm not even sure on where they are, now." Take a breather, you two. The girls were fine.
"Don't scare us like that," Davis complained. "You could've given me a heart attack."
"Just a mere shock treatment to make sure you understand." That worked. They understood a little too much for a sec. "I do have good news, but I wanna know if you're willing to do your rescuing duties." To TK, it felt like a trap. To Davis, those girls became a first priority.
"What rescuing duties?"
"I have the videotape of where they may have gone." Keep in mind, Ken did the video editing, but the boys had no idea about this sinister ploy. Davis was more interested with this tape.
"Show us." The tape played, showing Yolei telling Kari and the Digimon that there was a secret passage in the cavern. After they entered...there was Ash and Pikachu! "What the?" Of course, they had no clue on those two. Worse, the video had no audio. Ken made it look rather convincing. It appeared backwards to what actually occurred, which was Ash and Pikachu entering before Yolei pursued shortly then returned to bring Kari along. What Ken did was cut the last part and made it look like Yolei discovered something new and wanted to show Kari. It also made Ash look like a kidnapper. Davis and TK seemed outraged that someone would be in that world freely and take the girls for granted.
"You know who that boy is?" TK questioned. Davis shook his head, denying any information about Ash. He wasn't alone.
"While I have little knowledge of that intruder, I can give you the last coordinates of your women," Ken slyly pointed out. This made TK more uneasy. Why would their enemy provide information about where Kari and Yolei were last seen so freely? It sounded too good to be true. Davis looked, as though, any information given to him would help "save" the girls.
"What are you willing to accomplish?" TK wondered. Davis wanted to get moving to find Kari and Yolei.
"Who cares?!" he stormed. "What matters are those girls. Get Cody here while I get the coordinates." Being left no choice, TK got on a small white computer, typing frantically to reach this Cody.
"I have a bad feeling about this," the winged piglet groaned, worried that they would do something that they may regret. Meanwhile, back in desolate Pallet Town, Ash, Kari, Yolei and the creatures arrived at the one house that Yolei observed with the binoculars. Was this Prof. Oak's home? The gates were locked.
"Ash, not to sound like a snitch, but don't you think this is a bit excessive to trying to find the truth?" Hawkmon wondered with consequences on his birdbrain. Ash walked over to a stone pillar and lifted...a false brick? Inside was a key. Who knew that there was a hidden compartment within a pillar?
"Hawkmon, two things," Ash gruffed as he snatched the key from the compartment. "One, Prof. Oak and I are pretty good friends, despite the half-century age difference. And two, this is an emergency, which overrides any type of common breaking and entering." He used the key, unlocking the gates to grant access into the house. Inside, the group got upstairs to a computer geek's paradise. All sorts of technology at one's fingertips. Charizard, who came in when Team Rocket attacked his friend and the girls, flew in from the window, joining the rest at a big, big, computer, screen about 60 inches. "This is it." Ash activated the CCTV icon, popping up a screen to reveal a three-by-three grid of the different camera shots. No sudden activity. On the bottom of the grid, there was a blue strip with a ball at the end, and a timer reading "LIVE/4:04:00:00." That's rather unusual. Ash got to work on the keyboard, hitting a few keys. That's when the "LIVE" became "4:04:00:00/4:04:00:00." The red LED lights from the security cams turned off, meaning the cameras weren't in operation.
"Four days and four hours?" Yolei read?
"That's right. 100 hours of CCTV footage." In short, in Ash's world, there are 24 hours in a day, just like on Earth. Kari had an ominous feeling to Ash's information.
"I don't know if it's just me," she pictured. "But is it a coincidence that this world is possibly aligned to our world and the digital world?" It could be considered a coincidence but right now, it's not important. Using a mouse, Ash dragged the ball from right to left of the strip. The screen became black as it read "BUFFERING..."
"Give it a few minutes to buffer the whole scene. 100 hours of data stored into a computer like this won't be a snap." Four days plus-full of data...that sounded about right. Gatomon was awed by Ash's ways with computers, wondering how he knew so much at the age he looked.
"How are you so adapted to computers?" she pointed out. That was a pretty fascinating question. Ash wasn't worried about any false premonition with this amount of wonder.
"Well, a few years before I started my career as a Pokémon trainer, there were two things that I enjoyed, though helping my elders with computers became a hobby. At the tender age of seven, I knew every device, even helped assemble a few and learning it's components." Ash...a tinkering kid? Seriously?
"Should have had him around for a few of Izzy's equipment," Kari laughed. Yolei agreed giggling to the funny fact. Gatomon and Hawkmon groaned, disregarding the notion. That's when Kari felt something squishy coming from her foot. It was a weird squish. "I hope I'm not stepping on Charizard's droppings." Yolei and the creatures gazed upon Charizard, who saw something else. Kari thought twice about Charizard's disposal issues, but looked down to make sure. There, a pile of purplish sludge had smothered Kari's foot. Then, it..had a face!
("Boo!") it roared groggily. What the heck?! Scared, Kari screamed and leaped into the air, right onto Ash, knocking the chair of its wheels and ejecting the two to the hard upholstery floor. Ouch! Everyone, even the living clutter of garbage got worried that Ash and Kari were in pain.
"Ash, Kari you okay?" Yolei feared.
("Speak to us!") Pikachu called out. Kari recovered from that sudden tackle only to see that moving gunk again. Snap, she lifted Ash to a seating position in order to protect her from that muck. Ash was upset with Kari's brief jump until he felt the heavy shaking and saw the slimy living thing...and smiled.
"Relax, Kari, he's just being friendly," he calmly eased. Some way of being friendly. The pile acted very jolly to the scene. "Still hanging around without Tracy or the professor to smother, huh Muk?" Muk saddened when it heard the professor.
("Oak...gone,") it frowned. Pikachu and Charizard felt sympathy for Muk. However, something about this was off. The town was pretty much barren. Yolei suddenly had a hypothesis about Muk being here, but no one else.
"Ash, remember the headline?" she backtracked. "The citizens have been missing for over a day. What if the Pokémon are still around?" Fascinating! The Pokémon...here? Yolei was onto something, and Ash wanted to jump onto her bandwagon.
"There's a very likely possibility," he believed. "I'll go into the ranch to see if, by any chance, they're there." Pikachu and Charizard wanted to join, as was someone else.
"Is it alright if I come with?" Kari asked. A Digidestined, willing to see more Pokémon?
"Of course." Aw, that's so sweet of him. Yolei wanted to view the 100-hour tape, hoping to get to the bottom of this caper.
"I'll stay here and see what I can find," she chose. Ash wanted to see the tape for himself, but with assistance that the girls were providing, he didn't mind this move.
"Okay, Yolei. Hawkmon, Charizard, keep an eye on her and signal us if she finds something important."
"You got it," Hawkmon obeyed. Charizard went along with it, too. Acknowledging the agreements, Ash, Kari, Pikachu and Gatomon raced out of the lab and out the back door. They saw nothing...so far.
"So, approximately how many Pokémon are here in the ranch?" Kari wondered.
"I don't necessarily keep count," Ash admitted. "You see, we don't keep track of other trainers who've been enlisted under Prof. Oak under the scrutiny of jealousy and raucous concerns. Sort of a safety tactic." Okay, so no illegal Pokémon sharing details. They strolled to a lake, but didn't spot anything. Ash dunked his head, hoping to find something. He looked, but no sign. Head resurfacing, he wasn't happy that life was not existing. Whatever happened here, it really scared everyone and everything from the area, or worse. "Something is definitely amiss. Muk's here, but that's it." Kari placed a forgiving hand on Ash's shoulder, trying to tell him that it's going to be okay. Suddenly...
("Ash, is that you?") a grumbling voice echoed. The group turned to a small blue creature with a giant green bulb on its back. It ran up, happy Ash and Pikachu watching.
"Bulbasaur!" Bulbasaur lunged into Ash, who embraced it in a hug. This was a happy sight. At least one more creature was found. "It's good to see you safe. Where are the rest?" That's when Bulbasaur's smile flipped. It instantly became worried.
("It took them.") It? Everyone looked toward each other, wondering who "it" was. Then, flames shot out of the lab's window. The group spotted the flames. Yolei must have found something.
"That's the signal," Gatomon noticed. They raced back to the lab and when they did, Yolei had the floor.
"As you know, yesterday, the entire town became abandoned," Yolei reviewed. "I did copy some pictures since Ash should be known to recognize them. Ash, if you could?" Using the mouse, Yolei double-clicked a clip, where there was a burly brunette man in a curly beard, a lab coat and sandals. Ash was familiar to this guy.
"That's Prof. Birch," he identified. Yolei bobbed a nod as she labeled his photo. Next photo: a younger raven-haired boy with glasses, wearing a green polo t-shirt and shorts. "Max, Caroline's son." Yolei was ready to go onto the next photo. This one had Prof. Oak with a brunette woman in a pink button-down shirt and whitish skirt. To Ash, this was embarrassing. "That's...my mom." That's his mother? Kari, Yolei, and the Digimon were flabbergasted.
"Y-y-your mom?" Yeah, who knew?
"I can't believe how young and beautiful your mom is, Ash," Kari awed. Flustered with the humility, all Ash could do was blush at the inspiring compliments of the girls. Yolei reclaimed the floor after she straightened out.
"Anyway, I was swiftly going through the moments leading up to the vanishing when I came upon this." She hit the play button to a sky view of the town, even seeing the sun. That's when a black formation began to overlap the sun.
"A solar eclipse?" The eclipse continued to over lap when suddenly, the pictures became lost in a snow of static, the picture degenerating.
"There was a 15 minute loss of film, and when the view was restored..." The picture was back on where there was no more activity amongst the roads. So, during those 15 minutes of missing film, there was a solar eclipse and that everyone and everything disappeared. The mystery deepened. What happened to that window of a quarter-hour that everyone vanished into thin air?
"15 minutes isn't a long time to dispatch an entire town," Gatomon offered some information.
"Even so, any sort of anomaly would convert to such a widespread amount," Ash pointed out. "Somehow, whoever jammed the frequency wanted to acknowledge a scare tactic that seemingly succeeded." A scare tactic...can someone provide an example? Yolei pondered on that basis of theory.
"If that's the case, then they may be in a confined area which we may have overlooked," Yolei hypothesized, before a brainstorm hit her. Was it something she said? She growled, like there was a prime suspect that they excluded before. "Like the tunnel to the DigiWorld!" Everyone's eyes widened. That cavern...how long had it been since it showed up. Kari heard her friend, knowing someone who would want to inflict harm.
"Ken, right?" she guessed. Yolei swung her head for a nod.
"Wouldn't let that guy alone for a second." Ash thought that this was unfair treatment and he had a reason not to suspect Ken.
"How can you guys be sure that Ken had something to do with the townspeople's disappearance?" he countered. "There's no definitive proof that he made everyone move out of Pallet." Yolei didn't seem too concern that Ash wasn't suspecting their enemy.
"Perhaps, but knowing those control rings that he keeps flinging around, the proof's in the pudding." Control rings? Still, Ash defended his word, saying that accusing Ken for the vanishings couldn't fit the crime. Yet, he had no idea about what caused Pallet to be deserted.
"I still say that this was too fast for Ken to roundup everyone in the short span of 15 minutes. What we need is something to 'defrost' all this snow and confirm the whereabouts of Pallet's people. None of Prof. Oak's machines can do that job." Immediately, Kari had an answer to that.
"We'll need Izzy for this task," she suggested. Izzy? Yolei was with Kari on that extent.
"Yeah, he's got what we need," she agreed. Majority decided, Ash chose to join instead of oppose the thought.
"Well, looks like a road trip for all of us," he surrendered with a smile. "Let's head out before Team Rocket tries to make an encore performance." That's a good point. All exited the lab and, eventually, Pallet Town, process on the cavern. As Ash reached the cavern sight...
"V-Head butt!" a voice screamed out. That's when a large blue bullet zipped at Ash. Making his best impression of a baseball base runner, Ash slid under the bullet, which was actually a grown blue imp like earlier. Coming out of the slide, Ash got on his feet as the imp ate dirt, face first. That's tasty. "Okay. That was a nice reflex." Thanks. Before Ash could puzzle what it was...
"You stay put, kid!" Davis ordered angrily. Ash turned, seeing Davis, TK, a short brunette boy, the winged piglet and...an armadillo? What happened to that yellow ball at the start? Davis was ready to take Ash to town, pun intended. He had no clue that Ash was innocent and that the girls weren't harmed. Could Ash be fighting his way to safety? Was Ken responsible for the disappearance of the townspeople?
TO BE CONTINUED...
