Chapter 18 – Usurped
When the notice came for all port control personnel to be gathered at the auditorium in the morning, there were more than a few confused looks around the building. Most of us didn't even know that there was an auditorium at port control to begin with, since the spinarak we used to send memos around eliminated the need for such a gathering area.
"Auditorium, you say?" Mary asked, raising an eyebrow. "We haven't used that place since three years ago, or thereabouts."
General Harding pursed his lips. "As much as it annoys me to say so, I've forgotten where it is. And you've got to go there too, so I guess we'll just follow you there."
She snorted, "Eh, must be something big, then – the last time we used it was when Datamon came to town."
"Maybe he's here again?" I asked.
"Unlikely," General Harding shook his head. "If he really was coming over, we'd already be seeing him here – he likes to see how things work on the ground."
I shrugged. "Maybe he felt like doing things differently this time."
Mary glanced at her watch, and spoke up, "Well, it's already five minutes to the hour, so I guess we should get going."
Sure enough, the main doors to port control had already been shut and locked, guarded by a pair of machoke and a hovering mechanical creature I'd been told was a tinmon. Through the plate-glass windows of the building's front I could see that the roads leading to port control had also been barricaded. Several tangrowth and mushroomon were standing still as statues and manning the barricades, soaking up the morning sun eagerly.
Slightly unnerved by the beefed up security, I followed General Harding and Mary to the auditorium.
xxx
As it turned out, the auditorium was a large room on the fifth floor that was built to accommodate at least three hundred people. Its walls were painted with a shade of pale beige, and the seats were done theatre-style, with little desk-like attachments that could be folded away between them. All of the seats were built on terraces that sloped down towards the front of the chamber, where a stage was located.
On the stage were several technicians adjusting the sound system, and General Kylie Reardon. Her electivire was standing next to her, keeping an eye on the technicians as they prepped the stage for the people or persons that had called for the assembly, while she herself looked edgy for once. Somewhere in the front rows, I saw her other half, General Claire Williams. He was toying with an electronic device of some sort, and wasn't even looking up.
The three of us got ourselves seats near the back of the auditorium, since it offered us a view of the entire stage, minus the possible risk of being questioned by the speaker. Not a minute after we had taken our seats, the lights dimmed, and the stage lights were switched on.
General Reardon stepped up to the podium, and flicked an errant lock of hair behind her left ear. "Thank you for coming here, although I'm aware that none of you really had a choice in the matter. Today, we have all been gathered for a rather important announcement.
"As you all know, the terrorist threat is still very real. While the general public possibly believes that we have gotten everything under control, you all probably know better than that. Therefore, it has been decided by the... higher powers that additional military muscle will be stationed at all major cities."
She paused, and stood there looking fidgety for a bit. Loosening her collar slightly, she took a look behind her, into the shadowy doorway that led to the backstage room.
"Without further ado, let us welcome officers Arukenimon and Mummymon."
There was some sparse applause as a man in a blue trench coat and a red-dressed woman appeared through the stepped onto the stage. Then came the whispers and murmurs – hadn't General Reardon introduced them as digimon?
The woman – Arukenimon or Mummymon, I had no idea – sauntered up the microphone and leaned against the podium. "Well, good morning to you, personnel of Canalave port control. Allow me to introduce us – I'm Arukenimon, and he's Mummymon."
Mummymon stood silently next to her, a towering giant that swept the audience with his glowing yellow eye. Yes, you heard me right – 'eye', and not 'eyes', since only one was visible through the morass of bandages that was wrapped around his face.
Arukenimon continued with her speech, smirking as she did so. "Like our dear General Reardon has already mentioned, we seem to have a rather extensive terrorism problem over here on Earth. This really can't do, as I'm sure you'd agree.
"In view of the recent events involving some surprisingly coordinated acts of anarchy, we have already initiated the first phase of our anti-terrorism strategies. More digimon have been sent over here as a means of reinforcing the military presence, and also to keep an eye on everyone over here."
Her expression hardened, and she took her aviator sunglasses off, revealing a pair of yellowish eyes. When I really paid attention to them, though, I saw that each of her eye sockets had three eyeballs in them, much like the compound eyes of some bug pokemon.
Mummymon stepped up to the podium, and took the microphone from her. "As you have probably figured out by now, we suspect that there are leaks in our intelligence. Too much has transpired in too short a time for this to be mere coincidence. And if the terrorist attacks were all extensively planned even a long while ago... well, that just serves to prove our point now, doesn't it?
"Henceforth, all activities at port control will now be under our jurisdiction."
You could practically hear the collective inhalation from his audience upon hearing those words.
"Present rank-holders and officers at port control will be retained, but all reports will be submitted to us," Mummymon went on. "And you can trust me when I say that we have the means of processing every bit of data that comes our way."
Arukenimon leaned over and spoke into the microphone, "We'll be setting up our base of operations in the meeting room on the fourth floor. As such, I'd encourage anyone with any information about the terrorists to approach us there – anonymity is guaranteed."
She stopped to think for a moment. "Well, there's no need to remain anonymous, really. If you inform us about any terrorists in our midst, we'd have them apprehended and interrogated within five minutes, anyway.
"Thank you for your time, and I'd advise you to not disturb any digimon troops you see on the fourth floor – some of them are quite temperamental."
She and Mummymon left the stage after that, vanishing through the backstage entrance and leaving General Reardon alone up there with her electivire. General Harding nudged me, and when I turned to look at him, merely raised an eyebrow in response.
Only then did I recall his concerns about the digimon intervention in our government.
Somehow, that was enough to send a chill running down my spine.
xxx
It didn't take long for most of us to settle back into some semblance of routine. Most of the port control personnel ignored the digimon troops that patrolled the corridors, and for the most part, nothing particularly noteworthy occurred.
For my part, I didn't miss the resentful looks that a significant number of people cast towards the digimon. Also, it might have been my imagination playing tricks on me, but I sometimes thought that I might have seen some trainers in our midst – General Fen, for one – subtly doing things to make the digimons' collective lives miserable, such as discreetly switching the lids on the salt and pepper shakers down at the mess hall. And none of the digimon troops dared to mess with Babamon after one of them somehow turned out to be stupid enough to accuse her of being a human-sympathizer.
Presently, to the best of my knowledge, the digimon troop in concern was still on extended medical leave, after she literally cracked its skull with her walking stick and a decent bit of force.
Of all people, though, General Harding was the one who turned out surprisingly indifferent to the digimons' presence among us. Despite his clear distaste for the fact that he now had to submit reports on all his activities during office hours to Arukenimon and Mummymon, he was generally quite unfazed by their presence.
Once, I even walked into his office to see him whistling cheerfully while compiling his daily report before he clocked-out. Upon noticing my bemused facial expression, he merely raised an eyebrow and shrugged before signing the report with a flourish.
"You seem a little happy today, sir," I noted, as I approached his desk and dropped-off the armload of folders I had collected from the fourth floor.
"Kid, those fuckers have already made this place a miserable mess," he sighed. "You think I'm going to let them get me down? Fuck says no."
I could only shake my head in bewilderment over his last sentence. "If you say so, sir."
"We're done here, anyway – time to drop this shit at the assholes' office and head back," he said, standing up and stretching. "Oh, and one more thing?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Stop calling me sir," he yawned.
I smirked. "Yes, sir."
"God damn you."
xxx
Given how openly hostile a minority of the port control natives were towards the digimon, it probably was only a matter of time before an actual fight broke out somewhere at work. For the record, Babamon's bludgeoning of the hapless troop didn't count, since she was a digimon. When it finally happened, though, it didn't really surprise anyone that the actual fight took place down at the docks.
We had all been starting our morning normally, when a furious bellow was heard from the docks' general direction. The various bird pokemon that were perched on the cranes and ships took to the sky in a massive feathery cloud, even as we pressed up against the nearest available window to see just who had angered our dear friend Timothy Kirrin.
Really, the man's bellow was quite distinctive, once you got the hang of identifying his voice after your ears stopped ringing.
Sure enough, he was actually holding a frantic-looking divermon against the side of a shipping container by its neck. The merman digimon looked as if it were about to pass out – something that was to be expected, since Kirrin had its air hose in his free hand. A dazed-looking pelipper was lying on the dock, flapping one of its wings feebly. The pool of blood that it was lying in didn't escape my notice.
"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING TO THAT POKEMON?"
The divermon flailed in his grip, unable to retaliate against the chief mechanic since its harpoon was on the ground some five feet away from it.
"Kirrin!" General Harding snarled against the window pane. "You bloody fool!"
"Sir, why aren't the digimon-" I began, only to catch sight of Kirrin's mightyena and machamp holding back the digimon troops that had tried to come to the divermon's assistance. "Oh."
Down on the dock, two of Kirrin's fellow mechanics were already trying to pry the divermon out of his hands. Or, to be specific, they were trying to make him release its air hose – the fish-like digimon's face was already turning a shade a blue that matched its scales.
"Kirrin, let go!"
"It's not worth it!"
"The hell it isn't!" he snapped. "That pelipper may never fly again, just because this sick fuck here fancied some harpoon practice!
"Why don't you," BANG, "sick," BANG, "fucks," BANG, "just get the hell back to wherever you came from?"
Kirrin finally dropped the divermon and stalked off towards the wounded pelipper, leaving a massive dent on the side of the container. He gently picked up the grounded bird, and made his way out of our sight.
The two of us stood silently by the window for a while, watching as the near-unconscious divermon was picked up and carried away by its buddies after Kirrin's machamp and mightyena had backed off. Several of the dock workers lingered about the area for a bit, before returning to their respective tasks, and within a couple of minutes, the dock had more or less returned to its usual state of activity.
General Harding pursed his lips and let out a sound that seemed to be a mixture of distaste and frustration. "Well, this isn't going to end well for Kirrin, will it?"
I could only nod mutely, unable to take my gaze off the little puddle of pelipper blood that was slowly congealing on the dock's concrete surface.
One week later, Timothy Kirrin was fired as the chief mechanic at Canalave port control. We never did find out what happened to the pelipper that he had tried to save, or where he went after he left port control.
xxx
Kirrin's sacking seemed to worsen the already sour relationship between the digimon and everyone else at port control. After the incident, people and pokemon alike could be heard hurling insults at the digimon troops all over the place. Shows of contempt and aggression towards them were also not unheard of.
If any of the aforementioned scenarios bothered Arukenimon and Mummymon, they didn't show it. The two of them merely went on with their daily duties, and pretty much ignored everything else at port control.
Or at least, that's what most of us thought. I myself was of a similar opinion, until I chanced upon a rather interesting conversation in the corridors sometime after working hours.
I had been heading to the fourth floor to file away the day's paperwork, and had chanced upon Arukenimon heading towards the stairs at the back of the building. Considering that those stairs linked all the floors together – they were meant to be used in the event of a fire, really – this was indeed an unusual sight. After all, she and her bandage-clad colleague tended to take the elevator to go wherever it was they need or wanted to be.
And so, I quietly began tailing her. Fortunately for me, the hinges on the stairwell's doors were always kept well-oiled.
Slowly stepping up to the landing's edge, I peeked over the railing, and saw that Arukenimon had somehow... morphed into a grotesque being of some sort. She now resembled a spider that had a woman's torso sticking out of its back, and it was only the creature's red coloration that made me realize just who it was – it was the same shade as the dress she always wore.
Arukenimon scuttled down the stairwell, sometimes walking on the walls instead of the stairs. I followed at a distance, being very careful to not make a sound as I descended the stairs, and keeping my eyes on her back.
Suddenly, she stopped at the ground-floor landing, and slowly began to turn her head around. I quickly flattened myself against the wall, holding my breath and praying to whatever deities there were out there that she wouldn't come back up to investigate. Had she heard me? Or was it those thrice-damned compound eyes of hers?
"Who's there?" she rasped, making several clicking sounds not unlike that of a ninjask's mandibles.
Obviously, I didn't bother answering her.
Time seemed to come to a standstill as the two of us stood silently in the stairwell, trying to listen for any signs of each other's presence. Well, I hoped that she hadn't picked up on my presence yet.
After what felt like a brief spell of eternity, she continued heading downstairs. I slowly let out a relieved sigh, trying my level best to keep it from being too audible. A somewhat distant slamming sound told me that she'd most likely exited the stairwell at the basement level, and I stopped to consider my next move for a moment.
It was only then that I realized that I was still holding the stack of folders that I was supposed to deliver to the paperwork department.
With a relieved smile to myself, I headed down to the basement – at least, with those folders on me, I could cook up some excuse about having to check on something from the archives before submitting the documents.
xxx
The large metal door at the archives department was, for once, unlocked. Persiamon typically left it unlocked right before she finished her work for the day, and Castor the whimsicott usually hid the keys somewhere in its cottony fleece. Ford the ariados would stay in the musty old room at night, serving as the unofficial guardian of the archives.
However, I had seen Persiamon leaving earlier, and so I was pretty sure that no one was inside the archives department save for Ford.
And as I mentioned earlier, the arachnid pokemon definitely didn't keep a copy of the department's keys on him.
Warily stepping into the hairspray-scented room, I looked around for any signs of Arukenimon's presence. Aside from some stray strands of webbing, though, there didn't seem to be any sign of her or Persiamon's ariados.
"What are you doing here?" came her raspy voice out of nowhere, causing me to jump.
"I uh," I stammered, trying to come up with a reasonable reply, "I was looking for Persiamon. Some of these documents seem a little ambiguous on the facts."
A shadow passed briefly over me, and Arukenimon jumped down in front of me. So she had been hiding on the ceiling, it seemed.
She tossed her webbing-like hair over her shoulder, before narrowing her eyes at me. "And why would there be any ambiguity in the facts, soldier?"
"Just to double check," I answered, a little more confidently. "Something about the last shipment of ores from Iron Island; you know how fiddly those can be."
"Hmm," she nodded. "Persiamon has left for the day, but I suppose those documents shouldn't be delayed. You have five minutes."
"Yes, ma'am," I offered her a brief bow, biting back the shudder than ran down my spine once I had noticed that there seemed to be some kind of unidentifiable stain around her fang-lined mouth – it looked quite similar to dried blood, and I really didn't want to know just what she had been eating.
While I may have hurried over to the appropriate shelf, I nonetheless kept my ears open. Within mere seconds of me disappearing behind the first row of shelves, she made a series of clicking sounds that rather surprisingly resembled Ford's usual vocalizations. A scuttling sound echoed throughout the archives room, and experience told me that it could only be one thing – Ford was making his way across the ceiling.
"Ford?" I called out softly, trying to determine if he was anywhere close to me. He didn't respond, though, and I begin to wonder if Arukenimon was somehow communicating with him.
Behind me, I could hear her making more of the clicking sounds, and as I had expected, Ford spoke up.
Luckily for me, it seemed that she had forgotten about the translating chips implanted within my inner ears.
"What is it?" he asked her, sounding bored. "Nothing much happens down here."
Several more clicks.
"Hmm... nothing out of the ordinary, really. Just personnel referring to records where needed."
I stood up a little straighter upon hearing that – so Ford was spying on visitors to the archives, it seemed. And he was reporting to Arukenimon, directly.
Realization hit me like a truck driven by a gang of hyperactive ambipoms. "They're both spiders!"
Unfortunately, I said that last bit a little too loudly – Arukenimon's voice cut through the hairspray-saturated silence like a knife. "Are you quite done yet?"
"Finished," I called back, even as Ford appeared over the top of the shelf on my right, and began eyeballing me. "And Ford, can't you ever leave me to browse for documents in peace?"
"I'm watching you," he deadpanned. "Especially if Tammy Silvas' records are involved, I'll have you know."
Before I could give him a piece of my mind, Arukenimon stepped into the aisle we were in. She narrowed her eyes, and pointed a silk-wrapped hand at me.
"What is this about Tammy Silvas' records?" she asked brusquely. "And just who is she?"
I hesitated. Should I tell her that Tammy was a long dead person? What if she asked me about my curiosity on the matter? Would she go after General Harding if she knew what he did most nights?
"Answer the question, damn it!"
"Well," I paused for a moment, "I'm in the water pokemon department, you see... and she was... my predecessor! So I wanted to know more about her."
"Your predecessor, you say?" Arukenimon echoed. "What happened to her?"
"Accident while training a tentacool," Ford offered. "She got poisoned."
For a few moments, Arukenimon remained silent, merely flicking her gaze between the two of us. The two of us remained silent, wondering just how the wheels were turning in her head. Or at least, that's what I was thinking about; I had no idea if Ford shared my concerns.
Finally, she shook her head and gestured for me to go away. "If she's dead, then the matter is closed. Get out of my sight."
I was only too glad to do so.
xxx
A few days later, Arukenimon dropped by General Harding's office. While that in itself wasn't something unusual, what she said caused the two of us to stare at her out of curiosity for a bit. Thankfully, she was in her humanoid form when she decided to come by for her visit.
"Persiamon's ariados has gone missing," she said plainly. "Do you have any idea where he might be?"
"And you are asking my assistant this question... why?" General Harding asked, raising an eyebrow.
"He does your archive work for you, and the ariados seems to know him quite well," she shrugged. "So, do you happen to know anything about his disappearance?"
I shook my head, trying to ignore the sense of dread that was building up in my gut. "No idea, ma'am. The last time I saw him was in the archives department."
With a harrumph, she left the room, not even shutting the door behind her. General Harding stared at her retreating back while it was in sight, before turning to face me.
"Just what did you do, kid?"
I shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant even though my stomach was tying itself into all manner of complicated knots. "I just went to the archives and referred to some documents, and she happened to see me talking to Ford. That's all."
He drummed his fingers on his desk. "I swear, this place is getting worse by the day."
"Maybe you'd manage to get out soon, sir?" I said, feeling a glimmer of hope emerging within myself.
"Eh?" he looked puzzled. "And why would I leave?"
"You had family problems, didn't you?" I reminded him. "Or have they been resolved?"
General Harding looked blank for a moment, before snapping his fingers and exclaiming, "Thanks for reminding me, kid – need to settle that, and fast!"
Without saying another word, he dashed out of the room, leaving me alone with a stack of requisition forms that he was supposed to sign.
"Sir, wait!" I called after him, but no avail. Sighing out of resignation, I scooped up the pile of forms, and headed to the door.
Just as I had reached the doorway, however, I was hit head-on by a pink and yellow blur. The requisition forms all flew up into the air, even as I fell over backwards and the blur revealed itself to be Persiamon. I fell onto my butt, and winced as I felt the sharp jolt upon impact.
"Persiamon!" I groaned. "Those forms took forever to organize!"
"Ford is-"
"Missing, I've heard," I cut her off. "And I haven't seen him in a few days already, so I'm afraid I can't help you there."
She looked almost on the verge of tears. "Oh! Alright then... But where could he possibly have gone? The archives room was locked when I arrived, and he sleeps in there."
"Wait, he disappeared from a locked room?" I asked her sceptically. "Are you sure he didn't get into the vents or something?"
Persiamon looked thoughtful for a moment. "We do have vents down there, but they're all locked with grilles... but one of them may have gotten loose! I'll get down and ask the maintenance crew about it!"
She whipped about and dashed down the corridor, leaving me shaking my head in bewilderment. First Arukenimon ran off, then General Harding, and now her? Everyone seemed to be a mighty big hurry.
Still... what Persiamon said made little sense. Ford was missing, and had effectively vanished despite being locked into the archives department at night. Arukenimon was looking for him also, and I had a nagging suspicion that she had her own reasons for wanting to find the feisty ariados.
I really hoped that he was lost somewhere in the ventilation pipes.