Interlude - Terriermon
Directory Continent was huge.
Standing at the top of a hill somewhere close to where the ruins of Meditation Dome were rumoured to be located, Terriermon slowly came to realize that Directory Continent was not just more ancient than File City was; it was also much, much vaster.
He took in a deep breath, and smelled nothing but the curious, prairie-esque emptiness that was such a rarity back on File Island.
One more sniff confirmed it. The prehistoric land's air was completely devoid of any of the numerous scents which made up civilization.
Shuddering slightly, Terriermon reached for the small leather pouch strapped to his waist, and withdrew a tiny roll of paper from it. He held up the paper to the sun, and squinted at the black squiggles which gradually revealed themselves on it with the light passing through them.
Once he had determined approximately where Meditation Dome was supposed to be located, he put the map away, and set off towards the ruins.
xxx
Panting, and as softly as he could at that, Terriermon flattened himself against a large rock column, and tried to blend into the shadows. He was small, that much was true, but he was also white, which made it much more difficult for him to hide anywhere in the ruins of Meditation Dome.
It was a shade past twilight just as he'd made it within sight of the ruins, and so he had decided to travel a little later after sunset rather than camp out in the open fields which surrounded the wrecked sanctuary of angelic digimon. At first, settled down in a corner of the dome's courtyard, he had thought he was alone.
When night had fallen, the unmistakable sounds of movement reached his ears. It was slow, but whatever had made the sound was definitely alive.
Cautiously, he had edged his way towards the source of the sound, doing his best to remain silent. It wasn't easy, particularly given that the dome's courtyard was littered with pebbles, twigs, and other debris that had accumulated over time. Still, Terriermon made his way closer to the unknown sound.
It could have been Piddomon. Could have been. And he was all Terriermon was looking for.
When Terriermon finally got a glimpse of who the mysterious digimon was, adrenaline swallowed up his anxiousness over possibly finding Piddomon faster than quicksand.
The creature was shuffling around in front of what had probably been Meditation Dome's central dome, millennia ago. The skeletal forms of dead trees framed the dome-shaped structure, making it appear as though their spidery limbs were keeping it from escaping, and it was near the dome's entrance that the bizarre-looking digimon circled, at a glacial pace.
In the dim moonlight, it was hard to tell if the creature was pink, or simply a shade of red. Either way, it resembled Tyrannomon, save for the obvious fact that it was a living doll. Large, rope-like stitches criss-crossed its body randomly, as if it had been torn apart and sewn back together repeatedly over time, and there were shredded, ribbon-like flaps of skin hanging off its fabric-like body. Occasional movements of the two glowing yellow dots within the thing's perpetually-opened maw told Terriermon where it was looking.
Or so he hoped.
Still hidden in the shadows, he mentally ran through the stories he had heard about Directory Continent and the digimon he might encounter there. A dozen, then a hundred different species flashed through his mind, before a vague memory surfaced.
Ex-tyrannomon.
He frowned, and crouched lower to the ground. Ex-tyrannomon were said to have been extinct since the era of the Blood Knights, and what he knew of them consisted of mere folklore. And unpleasant lore, at that. Nonetheless, he allowed himself to relax ever so slightly, since the rumour that the soft-toy digimon had exceptionally bad hearing and smell did make some sense.
But where had the supposedly extinct digimon come from, and why was it seemingly guarding the entrance to Meditation Dome?
He decided to experiment a little. Picking up a small pebble, he threw it as far as he could towards the top of the dome's entrance. It missed the entrance, and instead went right through it, hitting the ancient building's wall and clattering to the ground.
The ex-tyrannomon's glowing eyes turned pink, and it slowly turned to face the entrance to the dome. With a sound not unlike rustling sheets, it shuffled through the doorway, leaving just its legs and tail sticking out. Somehow, the pink glow of its eyes remained slightly visible through its body, giving it some resemblance to a living lantern. As
Terriermon quietly made his way closer to the hulking plush doll, he saw that the pink glow inside it was gradually becoming brighter.
Suddenly, the ex-tyrannomon's entire body flashed with a searing pink light. The pink shockwave hit Terriermon like a hurricane, rendering him deaf and blind instantaneously.
Swirling waves of pink light felt as if they were trying to burn their way into his eye sockets, and his ears rang with a shrill whistling sound that was slowly rising in pitch. Disoriented, Terriermon tried his best to turn and flee, only to end up running into what felt like a massive padded pillar.
Despite the agonizing screaming in his ears, he could hear the ex-tyrannomon's muted growl as it caught sight of him. Before he could even attempt to respond, a mass of roughly-woven fabric wrapped itself around him, and he was hoisted into the air.
His vision was still mostly pink, but in the painful near-blindness, he could see the rough outline of the ancient digimon's head as it held him up before the doll's jaws which passed for its head. The beast's glowing eyes were like miniature suns within a dark cave, scorching in their intensity.
Tightening its stuffed claws around his torso – for all their soft appearance, Terriermon still felt what could have been his ribs protesting – the oversized toy dinosaur roared in his face. Even through the painful echoes of its earlier attack, Terriermon heard the unnatural, muffled roar, and smelled the putrid air which blasted out of the creature's stitched throat.
With a growl of his own, which turned out to be more of a whine thanks to the grip around his chest, Terriermon let loose with a Bunny Blast straight down the ex-tyrannomon's gullet.
All at once, the assault on his eyes and ears ceased, as the ex-tyrannomon reeled backwards, letting him fall to the ground. Though he still saw spots, he could clearly see the tattered remnants of the fiend's lower jaw from where he had fallen. Only one of the thing's two eyes was still glowing, and it was making a strange, wheezing noise as one of its claws swiped at the air in front of its head.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Terriermon flew at its clawed feet, ears whirling about in a furious Terrier Tornado, just as Willis had taught him. He struck home, ripping almost cleanly through the ex-tyrannomon's ankle joint. Letting out a muffled shriek, the fabric beast toppled over onto its side, a furious pink glow visible through the wreckage of its head. White fluff flew everywhere as the frantic beast thrashed about, covering the ground as snow would have just months later.
Barely realizing what he was doing, Terriermon threw himself to the ground, lunging in the opposite direction. The world around him was briefly illuminated by the deadly pink light of the ex-tyrannomon's attack, but save for a piercing squeal that felt like a dart to the back of his head, he was mercifully unaffected.
Seizing his chance, Terriermon ran for it, half on his feet and half dragging himself on the floor, somehow finding his equilibrium and hurtling through the doorway into the dome which the ex-tyrannomon had been watching over.
Somewhere behind him, he heard the creature roaring again.
A second later, when he heard whirring machinery and a shrieking cry, he forced himself to run even faster, almost tripping over his feet in the process.
For a moment, pink light filled the ancient hallway of stone, and Terriermon saw what could only be the shadow of something which was flying after him down the corridor.
He didn't look back.
xxx
Deep in the destroyed halls of Meditation Dome, Terriermon found Piddomon's broken scepter.
Deeper still within the desecrated hallways, he ran into the giromon that had been pursuing him. Apparently, the chainsaw-wielding cyborg hadn't thought to search for him in the main meditation chamber. Left with no choice, he had blasted the ceiling between them, causing a massive cave-in that presumably crushed the mechanical terror before it could get within cutting range.
Somewhere in the distance, he heard more footsteps, and what sounded similar to rattling chains.
He ran and ran, and before he knew it, he was running past the fallen ex-tyrannomon, whose deflating corpse was already beginning to disintegrate.
Terriermon ran as fast as he could, away from his last real chance at finding Willis.
xxx
Months passed. Terriermon's belief that he would somehow find his way to Willis didn't.
He hid in the belly of the beast, smack in the middle of File Island. Getting back to File Island had been difficult, but he had taken his chances with the convoluted tunnels of the Circuit Board, and the risks had paid off when just eighteen days later, he had emerged somewhere close to where Digitamamon's restaurant had been.
The distant sight of Spiral Mountain did little to affect him – it only made sense, after that night at Meditation Dome, and the many days afterward. He didn't miss the fact that Piedmon's band was missing from the mountain's rippling slopes, leaving a massive chasm between Machinedramon and Metalseadramon's bands.
Hungry, wounded, and alone, he nonetheless muddled along until he got to what had once been File City, in the hopes that perhaps Jijimon had survived the purging of File Island's inhabitants.
Empty houses, ruined towns, and the ominously silent wreckage of Shogungekomon's palace went by without much notice, but when he saw the charred remains of Jijimon's house, he had simply fallen to the ground in despair.
Terriermon, being the only living thing within a half-kilometer radius, was quickly detected by a passing patrol, and efficiently captured.
A mere two hours later, he stood in chains before none other than Skullmeramon and Bluemeramon, who seemed amused to see him.
"So, that's the last of the Digidestined's consorts," rumbled Skullmeramon, as he got to his feet, his seat creaking audibly once his weight was off it. "Pretty good timing, since we finally rounded up those escapees, right, chum?"
Bluemeramon let out a rasping laugh, "Anything you want to say to us before we lock you away, bunny?"
After half a minute of silence, the pair of fiery digimon nodded in unison, and got a tekkamon guard to pick Terriermon up. They proceeded to a massive underground dungeon – surprisingly enough, using the Circuit Board – and deposited him inside a cube built of what appeared to be glass. Terriermon saw hundreds of other such cubes whizzing about on a complex rail network within the chamber, each with at least one digimon occupying it.
Even as the recent disappearances began to simultaneously make sense and raise more questions in his mind, his cube was sealed, and sent back into the mass of moving cells.
xxx
There was no way to tell how much time had passed since he had been placed in the silent hell that was his prison. He was almost always in motion by virtue of his cell's randomized movements along the chamber's rail network, and the only time the cubes would stop moving was when the cubes were being inspected or undergoing maintenance.
Still, the fact remained that he was confined to a space which he estimated was no more than a two-meter cube.
For the most part, he was immobile thanks to a pungent gas that was periodically pumped into his cell, but he could still see what was going on around him. Based on his observations, the other cubes' occupants were similarly paralysed most of the time, and it was obvious from day one that the cube was soundproof.
However, there came that fateful day when part of the cube network was taken offline for
maintenance, and he had the good fortune of his cell being next to Digitamamon's. Their cells were just two of eight which had been directed to a parallel rail track, around which Nanimon and a group of Tinmon engineers were bustling about.
"Can you hear me?" the armoured egg had asked him, its usual booming telepathy reduced to a mere murmur by the barriers between them.
Realising that Digitamamon couldn't hear him anyway, he nodded.
"Good. I don't have long, so I'm just going to get you up to speed," Digitamamon said, "since there's going to be an escape attempt soon."
That certainly got his attention.
"We've observed that they take the cubes offline systematically for servicing. By our reckoning, they'll most probably be servicing Andromon's cube sometime soon," continued the sentient egg, pacing a little in its cell. "Andromon's only pretending to be paralysed. He's been off the gas for weeks, and they haven't caught on yet."
Duly impressed, Terriermon feigned disinterest. Outside his cell, a Tinmon was inspecting a set of digital readouts that had appeared on the cube's side.
"Once he's out, he'll blast the control booth," Digitamamon whispered. "The blast should stop all cubes in their places, and release the seals. It probably won't be too long before their redundancy system kicks in, but we should have perhaps ten seconds before the cubes are sealed again after the system kicks in."
He might have said more, but Nanimon must have noticed that something was up, for Digitamamon's cell was promptly filled with the paralytic gas that they had all become intimately familiar with. The egg digimon fell onto its side, rolling about sluggishly as gravity and immoblisation met.
Terriermon sat down and pretended to scratch at his ears – something which wasn't deemed threatening enough to trigger a dose of stun gas – while discreetly casting glances towards the control booth, which was currently occupied by Bluemeramon. It was a significant distance from the service rails, perhaps twenty meters away, and the glass walls of the booth were probably as durable as the cubes themselves. Considering that he'd seen the cube walls resisting a raging Leomon's battering once, Terriermon wondered just how Andromon was planning to proceed with his escape plan.
Deciding that he would just have to wait, he lay down, and gazed through the roof of his cell, at the chamber's ceiling.
xxx
As it turned out, Andromon's four-meter cube was taken offline for maintenance a mere three cycles later. What made it all even better was that the control booth was being manned by Warumonzaemon during that cycle, given that the ursine digimon was easily the most incompetent of all the booth's operators.
True to his word, the lanky cyborg had opened fire on the inside of his cube with sufficient force to throw it off its rails, crushing the Tinmon that had been inspecting it. Sirens wailed as the engineer disintegrated, and the top of Andromon's cell – now its side – opened up as the Tinmon's connection with the cube was severed.
Nanimon and a few of his engineering crew rushed towards Andromon, even as Warumonzaemon frantically locked down the booth. Unflinching, Andromon had fired a blast directly at the oncoming engineering crew, which scattered before the pulse shot could hit them. Instead, the blast hit a Tinmon that was just disengaging from Chuumon's cell.
From his vantage point high about the chaos, Terriermon watched with bated breath as Andromon charged up his weaponry for a massive shot, and as a newly-released Chuumon pounced on Nanimon. His cell was still moving along the rails, so he tried to keep facing the action without moving too fast and setting off the stun gas.
Andromon fired, the shot being powerful enough to disintegrate three Tinmon without losing momentum. It hit the bottom of the control booth, turning the ground around it into gravel instantly. A second, weaker shot was enough to plow through the gravel and destroy the booth from below.
In his panic, Warumonzaemon unlocked the booth and tried to get out.
Chuumon, having finished mauling Nanimon's face, went for the black bear's heavy-lidded eyes.
Andromon, already grappling with one of the two remaining Tinmon, squeezed off a shot in the booth's general direction.
All of the imprisoned digimons' eyes were on the shot as it hit the control booth's doorframe, and exploded with a bright shower of sparks.
He had missed.
What felt like despair began to rise up in his gut, but Terriermon didn't miss the sight of Warumonzaemon stumbling backwards and slamming into the booth's walls, his eyes bleeding and mangled thanks to Chuumon's assault. The last Tinmon had gotten one of its clamp-like hands locked onto Chuumon's tail, and was dragging him away from Warumonzaemon. Several of the operational cells were beginning to fill with stun gas as their occupants pounded on their walls out of frustration, and tekkamon guards could be seen rushing into the dungeon through its main entrance.
Suddenly, there was a brilliant flash of light, and the rapidly-disintegrating remains of a Tinmon flew into the control booth. Upon impact, the engineer's corpse exploded, Andromon's projectile weapon having carried it forward by means of sheer momentum.
Instantly, every cell ground to a halt, and hundreds of ceilings opened with their usual vanishing act.
Pandemonium erupted as nearly all the captive digimon surged out of their cells. Copious clouds of stun gas were billowing out of the opened cells and sinking lower to the ground, immobilizing some of the tekkamon guards, even as some of the escapees forced entire cells off their rails, tipping over entire cubes full of the noxious fumes.
Terriermon took all of four seconds to jump out of his cube once it opened, his ears flapping out to their maximum wingspan and lifting him out of the stun gas cloud that belatedly followed his ascent. Soaring on the thermals generated by the melee that was unfolding on the rail network below him, he made his way towards a door that had just opened in the side of the chamber to reveal Skullmeramon and Bluemeramon.
While their usual guards were being overwhelmed, Skullmeramon and Bluemeramon were both brutal and frighteningly efficient. Between the two of them, they subdued over a dozen of their wards in just a matter of seconds. Their flaming skin seemed to repel the stun gas that was covering the entire chamber's floor just about then, and so their progress towards the heart of the riot was unimpeded by paralysis.
In their haste, they didn't shut the door to the Circuit Board.
Bracing himself for full acceleration, Terriermon shot forward like a rocket, and was through the doorway in the blink of an eye. Using a hastily-fired Bunny Blast to regain altitude once he was in the Circuit Board, he barely managed to avoid being swiped out of the air by a hulking digimon in golden robes that was rushing towards the opened door.
"Stop right there!" thundered the robed digimon as it discharged a gout of suspiciously familiar gas in his direction.
He didn't bother to reply, and instead let loose with another Terrier Tornado, putting another five meters between him and the strange digimon before it could do anything to get in the way of his escape.