Chapter 26: 'We'
Petimeramon = DemiMeramon
DeathMeramon= SkullMearamon
The night's wind was cutting cruelly into Yolei's skin as she buried herself in Aquilamon's feathers. Her eyes stung from the cold, tearing a bit, but she couldn't bring herself to close them for protection, no matter how quickly.
Another fire column lit up the sky and this time the sound of fighting reached her together with a wave of comfortably warm air. The orange fire didn't disappear for a seemingly long time, and when it did it shattered into hundreds of sparks. Sparks, which she identified through hurting eyes to be the size of torches; too big for leftovers.
Aquilamon, high in the air, circled over her gym once, twice and Yolei was relieved to see that the fighting took place in the yard. There was the flare of electricity, signaling Izzy and Tentomon's presence and as they sunk closer to the ground Yolei managed to see, or perhaps, sense the waves of Darkness emitted by Koichi, who looked nothing like the Human she knew.
Her eyes, suddenly blinded, were drawn to the clump of ice just behind the humanoid digimon. She found it strange, but not surprising that she had seen the creature of Darkness in a dark courtyard faster than a mountain of ice that was sparkling like a diamond from the numerous floating torches, which, at second look, were in truth small flaming digimon.
Shaped like ghosts, the little fire types floated through the air, making noises akin to high laughter as they spotted Aquilamon. Their blue eyes stood out eerily against the otherwise completely orange skin.
Her partner flapped his wings, gaining altitude as he pushed the dangerous digimon away from them with the air currents. Only a startled call of surprise saved her from collision with Nefertimon's paws by making her duck and lean sharp to the side.
Wanting to either curse or grin, Yolei figured it would just be their luck if Kari and she knocked each other out because of not paying attention.
Kari grinned weakly at her and Yolei cracked one in return, but in sync both smiles slid off their faces. Kari looked down, her eyes gaining the expression they only ever had during fights.
Yolei ran her mind back to focus again, too. And immediately she noticed the very obvious lack of Ken and T.K. along with their partners.
"I'm going to look for the others." Kari said, and Nefertimon increased the pace of her wings, flying out of hearing range before Yolei could protest or think of a better plan.
"We need to get to the ground somehow," Yolei decided, as Aquilamon was forced to dodge one of the fire ghosts. As long they were in the air, the little torch digimon had the gigantic advantages of freer movement and element advantage. From the looks of it the fire digimon were at most Rookie-level, but their flaming nature would harm Aquilamon plenty from just a single contact.
Yolei fisted her hands in her partner's feathers reflexively as he rolled off to the side, losing height and pursuers in the same in breath. Still she couldn't help the jolt her stomach gave and the fearful tensing of her muscles when the ground was suddenly that much closer.
But the move did its work and a few seconds later Yolei slid from her partner's back to the ground with still weak legs. Hurrying to Izzy Aquilamon devolved, shrinking back to his more practical form in this condition. Truthfully, none of Hawkmon's evolutions were of much use against these little pests. Unlike Kabuterimon, who was perfectly capable of shooting them down without damage to himself or them.
"What happened?" She asked, right to the point, hoping for coincidence, but not believing it for a second. Two attacks in the real world at the precise right place and with fortunate timing. She hoped, but she was no fool.
"I'm not sure." Izzy glanced at the profile of Petimereamon and then back at the Digimon drifting about in the air. "Two Meramon and all these little ones just appeared suddenly. Out of nowhere." There was a note of frustration in his voice that told Yolei a lot more.
"There has to be a gate open around here somewhere." There always had to be a gate. What shape or form they had might differ as did the lactation, but not their existence. And gates, active or inactive, open or closed, should appear on Izzy's sensors.
"I know." Izzy ranked a hand through his hair and called a detailed card of the surroundings up on his laptop's screen. There were a number of red dots located in the buildings, but none showed any recent activity. "It was the same back at the hospital. I can't find any."
"Damn," she breathed, getting a bad feeling that had nothing to do with the current fighting. Glancing behind them she watched the humanoid Darkness digimon expel a steady wave of energy, akin to a force field, which kept the numerous Petimeramon at bay. While Yolei wasn't sure what all the energy did one in contact it looked to her curiously like the small fire types were simply floated away like leaves in the wind. Tommy's sphere of ice was located inside Lowemon's protection, but she had no desire to seek protection from it. Even if none of Hawkmon's forms could protect her without violence.
She clenched her Digivice in her hand, and turned her eyes away, preferring to watch how Kabuterimon flew around, sending out electricity and making the Petimeramon drift to the ground once hit. The small digimon were huge in number, even more so than what they seemed at first glance. The ground was already thoroughly covered in unconscious or paralyzed shapes and the sky was still alarmingly full.
The small fire types' constant whispers made a chill run down her spine. It sounded too much like an open inferno than small controlled fires.
In a split second she wondered about Takuya and answered the question herself before it was even fully formed. She had failed. They all had failed.
A loud crack, so out of place with the ghostly whispers and Kabuterimon's vibrating wings, made her jump. Unconsciously she tightened her jacket as Tommy's ice split open and crumbled to snowflakes and ice dust, all reflecting the orange light. It would have looked beautiful had Yolei had a mind for it at the moment.
The Yeti like digimon puffed clouds of breath from his nostrils and Yolei had been so transfixed on it that she didn't notice the other walk up to them.
She jerked at the deep voice, so unlike Koichi soft words. "What do you want to do? Sent them all back through a portal?"
His eyes were a deep human brown, but she could not read him at all. "That would be the ideal idea," she replied instead, keeping her tone polite, their last verbal difference still fresh in mind.
Having expected some kind of arguing, possibly pointing out the easier way of slaughtering them all, it came as a surprise when the digimon, which was at least three heads taller that her, simply looked at her with eerily expressionless eyes and agreed in a blank, "understood."
Lowemon then simply turned back to face Blizzarmon and materialized a spear in his hands, saying quietly, possibly even to himself, "this is much more difficult. But it is the right thing to do."
"Funny, coming from you." The words were snapped out, before Yolei even properly registered the thought, yet she couldn't bring herself to regret them. She felt Hawkmon tug on her jeans and Izzy's eyes on her, but she ignored them as anger bubbled inside her and a fresh memory of an ending live flashed in front of her.
"Not at all," Lowemon or Koichi said blankly, glancing back at her over his shoulder, "you just don't know us."
Yolei thought she knew them rather well, but she scratched the thought with a defying heated glare at the two. She didn't know them. She had an image of them, a picture, a stereotype, but she didn't know them. She didn't know what made them the way they are, what reasons they had to act the way they do or how they thought.
She didn't want to know either.
So instead she watched as the two of them wielded their weapons fluidly, knocking the Petimeramon to the ground and leaving them there. Yolei found she was surprised the small flame types didn't bust into data then and there, but pleased as well.
As she evolved Hawkmon to Shurimon and she noticed, form the corner of her eye, because there is no way she'd actually want them to know she was watching, the very careful way they moved.
There were many words she could use for description, she hadn't expected hesitantly to be one of them. Hesitantly or perhaps controlled in a precise way that should be expected from fighters, but somehow wasn't.
Shuirimon was cleaning the school yard, carefully only touching the little digimon with iron parts of his shuriken hands to pile them all up to a mountain ready to be sucked through a gate, but Yolei wasn't watching him work. More and more of her attention was drawn to the two digimon she ought to protect. The more she watched, the more she was sure. There was something distinctively wrong about their movements. Nothing much, of course and nothing bad either, rather it looked like the movements were so focused, so precise, that there was nothing else on their minds.
If anything, should it really be so, that sent warning bells off in her head.
Takuya and his group of friends was nothing if not brutally battle minded. And to fight, to do battle, to be good at it one always needed to focus at least on the surroundings as well. Even she knew that with her second row seat. So then how come it didn't seem like the two of them paid any attention to anything other than themselves and the plenty petimeramon they smacked to the ground. It was distinctively offsetting, because no matter what so far she could not accuse them of not caring about their friends; strangers and innocents were a different matter.
Until Blizzarmon halted, stopping like a machine with a faulty gear, Yolei didn't have any proof for thoughts.
The yeti had his axes raised, flat side poised to smack the petimermon floating in front of him to the round, yet he froze in mid strike, breath puffing, and the longer Yolei watched, definitely uneven.
She was about to call out to him when a blast of fire hit the giant fur covered digimon to his knees and then to the ground. Blizzarmon grunted, and Yolei found her view blocked by her partner as he slipped to guard her.
Automatically Yolei's eyes sought the source of the one intentional aggressive attack and found her eyes lingering in a gap between two school buildings.
Cursing inwardly at how they were in a prime situation to be surrounded Yolei saw blue fire flickering lightening the darkness. The fire gleamed off a blank silver face mask highlighted by two red glowing eyes and a wide black gap for the mouth. Silver chains and rings reflected the light, giving the humanoid, punk styled digimon a disembodied appearance.
"Who are you?" Yolei demanded loudly, and her voice made her once again aware of the silence around them.
"I am the great DeathMeramon!" The digimon proclaimed, in a rumbling but surprisingly high voice. Stepping out of the gap, the newly named DeathMeramon lit a hand on fire not unlike how she had seen Takuya show off. "And I have come for you two." He pointed predictably at Blizzarmon and Lowemon. "Give up or be destroyed!"
Boisterous and arrogant attitude did little to reassure Yolei, but she was not one to be intimidated and as soon as her mind got a silent moment she realized that it was a bit strange for a digimon, level Ultimate according to Izzy's mumblings, to come and challenge them alone. In the real world.
It was a move going from reckless to downright illogical.
It made Yolei think that there was probably more to this than what she saw and immediately she flashed back to Kari, who despite the amount of time still wasn't back.
They had problems, too.
The petimeramon were intended to buy time so that Izzy and her couldn't go back them up. That also implied that, as it took this Death Mearamon so long to act, that the situation on Kari and Ken's end was coming or already was closed, and not in a good way.
Yolei's heart skipped a beat and clenched painfully, but she pushed her worry down.
First things first.
Hardly ten seconds had passed.
Blizzarmon was standing upright again, his axes held in a distinctively more aggressive way, and Lowemon and noticed the commotion, holding position now in front of his friend with some kind of shadowy shield on his arms.
"You can't have them," Izzy said frankly and unnecessarily, not even glancing up at the Ultimate, as he scanned through the information his digianalyzer supplied. He didn't have his Digivice in hand and Kabuterimon was still circling above and shooting petimeramon down. AtlurKabuterimon was a bit big to do any fighting here.
That meant it was Kabuterimon vs Petimeramon and Shurimon, Blizzarmon and Lowemon vs DeathMeramon.
Even if there was a difference in level it was quite possible. "Shurimon!"
Her partner unstrapped Kusanagi from his back and threw it. The battle had begun.
Next to Izzy under the protection of Kabuterimon she was save and could spend her attention on watching the fight.
Not unexpectedly DeathMeramon smacked Shurimon's the star shaped weapon aside and it impaled into the ground. But the move and diversion of attention was all invitation Lowemon needed and stabbed forward, his lace clearly aimed at vitals and only missing because DeathMeramon evaded by moving backwards. It proved to be a mistake when it stood with his back to a wall and all of a sudden Blizzarmon came falling from above, the axes' bladed blurring with the speed at which they moved.
It was superb teamwork, as the digimon was trapped only three moves into the fight, but even with Blizzramon's deadly attack, Lowemon's threatening spear only inches away from making contact with skin and Shurimon providing impartial long distance backup from behind DeathMeramon escaped with a startling graceful cartwheeling to the side and then putting space between them by jumping backwards.
Shurimon aimed one of his bladed arms at the landing spot and hit a leg with precision between the silver rings strapped over the back cloth. But DeathMeramon was an Ultimate and Shurimon's throw hardly a scraped the skin, never mind sever the limp as Yolei had feared.
Still, DeathMeramon howled out in rage and with a cry of "Heat Chain" launched one of the chains decorating his torso at Surimon with high speed. Shurimon evaded, barely, but them the chain curved in midflight homing in on Shurimon, who had no way of defense in the air and with Kusanagi still pierced into the ground meters away.
The chain never came into contact with her partner and Yolei hadn't known it was possible to feel that relieved as her eyes sought out the reason for the chain's sudden jerked stop.
Lowemon had pierced his lance into the chain's links and nailed it to the ground with a powerful thrust. To Yolei's surprise he let go of his weapon quickly and crossed his arms over his chest, with his feet digging into the ground. A wave of yellow energy burst from him towards DeathMearamon. The fire digimon countered by spitting blue fire from his mouth.
A pressure wave of wind burst through the air and seconds later when she was able to focus again the fight was over.
DeathMeramon was tied up in Blizzarmon's hair-like strings, its arms and legs spread, with one axe tiled at the neck and one at the ribs.
Except for the whispers of the petimeramon all was silent.
Almost lazily Lowemon pulled his spear from the ground and walked silently over to the blue burning form. He angled his weapon just above the heart, making contact with the skin.
Yolei swallowed.
The air was oppressive with finality.
DeathMeramon's flames flickered in rage and humiliation even as he hissed threatening breath his breath.
"Don't kill him."
Her voice was soft, for once not demanding, but asking, pleading almost, yet it dominated the school yard and drew all eyes to her, human or nor.
There was no verbal reply, but DeathMeramon also didn't crumble into data.
She swallowed past the lump in her throat.
"Yolei! Everyone!"
Yolei looked up, suddenly feeling like she could breathe again. Nefertimon, Pegasusmon and Stingmon were flying in the air, carrying golden net between them. They all looked a bit worse for wear; Pegasusmon's tail was smoldering, Nefertimon's wings were black for some reason and Stingmon was careful one of his arms and a leg.
But they were all alive and well.
And victorious.
Yolei grinned. "Kari! Ken! T.K.!" She greeted back, waving. There were only a dozen pertimeramon remaining or so were not enough or even remotely fast enough to get close to the trio.
"Brother!" Twin voices wailed from the golden net suddenly and Yolei didn't need to look hard to identify a Meramon and a BlueMeramon.
"Brothers!" The DeathMearamon wailed back from his captivity, sounding a lot less threatening than before.
The net was set to the ground, next to the pile of defeated petimeramon and her friends all set foot back on the ground. Immediately her friends' partners devolved, shrinking back to their In-training forms; a level lower than usual. Kari held Plotmon, who has a paw at an odd angle and who was colored strangely reddish, tenderly in her arms. T.K. set Tokomon on his head, though that doesn't mean the little bat like digimon wasn't injured, while Ken let Minomon hang from his outstretched arm. It looked somewhat funny, but Yolei interpreted it, considering the enemy, that Minomon was covered in burns, which made simple touch hurt.
"We found these two," Kari stated, as all their eyes drifted over the scene; DeathMearamon just one move away from execution, pertimeramon all piled up or still riddling the ground, Yolei, Shurimon, Izzy, Kabuterimon all unhurt. "We figured out it was a distraction half way, but couldn't come back. Luckily it doesn't look like we were needed."
"You weren't," remarked Izzy and Yolei saw him set up a gate on his screen. "Let's finish up here and go home. I still want to work on the Black Box."
"Agreed. We need sleep." Ken glanced at Lowemon and Blizzarmon. "You too."
"Fine," grumbled a deep voice and Yolei remembered with a startle that she hadn't heard Tommy in digimon-form talk yet. The voice didn't fit the young, bright boy at all.
The next thought she had was a startled realization that she hadn't noticed Blizzarmon and Lowemon move closer at all. With that size and fur color that was a surprise.
An even bigger surprise was when Blizzarmon tightened his bindings and Lowemon moved in to loom over their captive, giving off an aura of...not evil; closer to power, but definitely dark.
His spear pierced skin and blood ran down the metal till it dropped to the ground. "Where is the castle?" Lowemon growled. "Who sent you?"
All appreciation Yolei had for the other group flew out of the window and the anger she associated with them by now bubbled back up strong and fierce.
Still, she didn't interfere, clenching her fists instead, averting her eyes and seeking out Hawkmon at her legs. Because these digimon talked with their own words and own mind, because they thought with their own head and formed a strategy that while simple was still good, because they had character that made them worry about each other.
These digimon were not controlled. They were free and attack out of their own notion.
It made them their enemy, if not evil.
And they needed information.
The DeathMeraramon didn't seem like it wanted to cooperate and spit fire in Lowemon's face. Lowemon was having none of it and had already disappeared from reach; the blue fire scorched the ground. Blizzarmon's axes dug into the skin till the fire stopped.
Both Digimon repeated the process. First with DeathMeramon, then with the BlueMeramon and with the Meramon. Nothing worked, not even when they were threatened with each others safety.
This wouldn't do.
"Hey!" She called, suddenly unable to hold her anger back and she took one step after another till she could spit the Ultimate in the face. She utterly ignored the warnings from her friends and the stiffening of Blizzarmon as she got close. "Why are you doing this?" She demanded loudly. "You are digimon! Why are you helping destroy your world?"
In the back of her mind, the part that was still able to think rational and not ruled by anger, whispered to her that this personal line of questioning was going to get results much easier than demands on the bigger scheme and wasn't she smart to do that.
And indeed, answers she got after the DeathMeramon tried spitting at her. Tried being the keyword as she smashed her fist into the digmion's jaw and sent the fire distinctively off course. Her fist hurt like hell, but she was still too angry to care.
"Power. Respect. There is nothing we wouldn't deserve."
The way he said was telling. Not only would they not get anything more out of them, but it also hinted at something more. The way it pronounced the 'we' implied he was talking about only the numerous petimeramon, the one Meramon, the one BlueMearamon and itself, or it hinted at a larger group.
Yolei had a feeling it was the latter, but what kind out group she couldn't even begin to guess.
She was still thinking it over by the time the sky turned from black to gray as she sunk into bed and started thinking about it again first thing as she woke up after one poor hour of sleep to go to school.
This chapter wasn't exactly hard to write or anything, but I simply couldn't focus on Digimon. First I was stuck in a Star Wars fever and then now with Naruto. It made it incredibly difficult to simply think about what the hell was going to happen in this chapter. Which is why I upload this chapter for February as the last hours of said month are ticking away. I even seriously thought about postponing and only publish next month, but I said I'd make one for February and so I had to. Alas, this is the result.
Please leave a comment and a vote. :)