Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon. Or Heroes of Olympus. I'm sure you're tired of seeing me say that!

Author's Note: Written for the Novel with Prompts Challenge found on the Digimon Fanfiction Challenges forum. The prompt for this chapter is "wooden".

This is the longest chapter so far, almost the same length as my chapters over on my Blurring Boundaries story. Sorry for the delay on getting this chapter out! The next chapter - Chapter Twenty-One - has not been setting well with me, so I've decided to rewrite it. I was hoping to get it completely rewritten before posting this chapter, but it's been a while, so here you go! Hopefully the length makes up for the wait.

Enjoy!

Chapter Twenty

Yolei screamed as she tumbled through the sky. Far below, she saw city lights glimmering in the early dawn, and several hundred yards away a little red body that looked a lot like Hawkmon was spinning out of control, his wings limp, and feathers trailing behind him. She tried to yell for him, but her voice got drowned out by the wind.

Two bodies shot past her – Takato and Guilmon, screaming and frantically grabbing at clouds.

"GUUUUUUIIIILMOOON!"

"TAKATOOOO!"

She tried to call to them, but they were already too far below.

Somewhere above her, a voice – Stingmon – yelled, "Yolei, level out! Extend your arms and legs!"

It was hard to control her fear, but she did what he said and regained some balance. She fell spread-eagle like a skydiver, the wind underneath her like a solid block of ice. Then Ken in Stingmon's arms was there, wrapping his arms around her waist.

Thank god, Yolei thought. But part of her also thought: Great. First time he's wrapped his arms around me and held me this tight, and it's because I'm plummeting to my death!

"We have to get the others!" she shouted. "And Hawkmon! I saw Hawkmon falling!"

The wind around them was blowing harsh and freezing against Stingmon's wings, making him lurch up and down every time he nearly got blown off course.

"This is going to get rough!" Stingmon warned. "Hold on!"

Yolei turned in Ken's arms to cling to the front of his jacket as Stingmon shot toward the ground. Yolei probably screamed, but the sound was ripped from her mouth. Her vision blurred.

And then, thump! They slammed into another warm body – Takato, still wriggling and fighting in his grasp.

"Stop fighting!" Ken said. "It's us!"

"Guilmon!" Takato screamed. "We've gotta save Guilmon!"

"And Hawkmon!" Yolei sobbed.

Stingmon was already struggling to keep the three of them aloft, but he did didn't waste any time before swooping through the air. Takato caught Guilmon's flailing form, and Yolei continued to scan the sky for where Hawkmon could have gone. Before she could even try to guess a direction, she heard a scream just as Cody and Armadillomon fell past them. Ken cried, "CODY!"

They darted down once more, sending Yolei's stomach into her throat, and Ken and Yolei both spared an arm to catch the young boy around his waist. Stingmon's face grew red with strain as he tried to keep them in flight, but intermittent slow-downs were the best he could manage. In the distance amongst the clouds, Yolei was pretty sure she saw ExVeemon with two dark shapes in his arms. She could only hope that Kari or Davis had grabbed Hawkmon on the fall down.

Rather than free-falling, it was like Stingmon was bouncing them down a giant staircase, a hundred feet at a time, which wasn't doing Yolei's stomach any favors. Takato groaned, "I think I'm going to be sick."

"I don't feel so good," Guilmon agreed.

As they wobbled and zigzagged, Yolei could make out details of a building in the middle of nowhere. It seemed to be some sort of factory with smokestacks and barbed-wire fences around the lot. They were still high enough that hitting the ground would flatten them into digital pancakes when Stingmon gritted out, "I can't—"

And they dropped like stones.

They hit the roof of the only building for a hundred miles and crashed into darkness.

Unfortunately, Yolei tried to land on her feet. Her feet didn't like that. Pain flared in her left ankle as she crumpled against a cold metal surface.

For a few seconds, she wasn't conscious of anything but pain – pain so bad that her ears rang and her vision went red.

Then she heard what sounded like big metal doors being thrown open and echoing through the building from somewhere below. "Guys! Guys, are you okay!?" Davis's voice said from about the same location.

"Stingmon!" ExVeemon cried. "Stingmon, can you hear me!?"

"I think I took on too many people," Wormmon's voice groaned. "Ken, are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Takato?"

"Yeah, I'm good. Guilmon?"

"I'm okay, Takato. I landed on something soft."

"That would be me!" Armadillomon's voice groaned.

"Oops. Sorry."

"Sounds like we might be okay," Cody's voice said.

"Wait!" Kari's voice cut him off. "Where's Yolei?"

"Here," she managed, her voice a whimper.

She heard shuffling and grunting, then feet pounding on metal steps.

Her vision began to clear. She was on a metal catwalk that ringed the warehouse interior. The others had landed on the ground level and were now coming up the stairs toward her. She looked at her ankle, and a wave of nausea swept over her. Her foot wasn't supposed to point that way, was it?

Oh, god. She forced herself to look away before she threw up. Focus on something else. Anything else.

The hole they'd made in the roof was a ragged starburst twenty feet above and had rain falling through it from the storm apparently raging outside. They would have never survived the drop in the Real World; it was one of the perks of being made out of data at the moment, but that apparently wasn't enough to save her foot. Not completely anyway. Hanging from the ceiling, a few electric bulbs flickered dimly, but they didn't do much to light the enormous space. Down in the warehouse, she could make out huge machines, robotic arms, and weird looking devices that seemed to have no real purpose. The place looked like it had been abandoned for years.

The others (including Veemon who had also de-digivolved from ExVeemon) reached her side.

Davis started to ask, "You okay…?" Then he saw her foot. "Oh no, you're not."

"Thanks for the reassurance," Yolei growled.

"You'll be fine," Ken said, though Yolei could hear the worry in his voice. "Cody, did you bring a first aid kit?"

"Yeah—yeah, of course." As Cody dug around in his backpack, Yolei thought about mentioning that she had one as well, but considering she had used her backpack as a cushion, she figured it was probably broken amongst her crushed snack foods. Great. He pulled out an elastic bandage, some aspirin, and a bottle of water.

"That's all you have?" Davis asked incredulously as he looked at the supplies.

Cody shot him a glare. "Yes, Davis! That's the best I can come up with. Do you have anything better?"

"Well… no," Davis admitted, "but, dude, you're supposed to be like Joe! Where's your overly prepared for anything kit?"

"I guess I left it in my other bag," Cody said dryly.

"I didn't know you had a kit like that, Cody!" Armadillomon said cheerfully.

Takato, meanwhile, looked like he might be the one to throw up if Yolei didn't. "Is she going to be okay?"

"She can hear you," Yolei said through gritted teeth.

Takato winced. "Sorry."

Cody shook out two of the aspirin and handed it to her. She tried to sit up and ended up needing Ken's help so that she could take the water bottle and swallow them both down. It definitely wasn't working quickly enough for her. She held out her hand.

"More."

Ken frowned. "Yolei, I don't think that's a good idea. Maybe we should try to set your ankle."

Yolei's stomach fluttered. "Have you ever done that before?"

"Uh… not exactly."

Takato turned about five shades of pale. "You aren't seriously about to do this, are you? We should get her to a hospital!"

"Digital World injuries are a little different to Real World injuries," Cody explained. "Because we're data right now, there's always the possibility that we can kind of… right ourselves."

"Izzy explains it like rewriting a line of code," Kari said quietly. "Typically… it's just harder for us to get hurt… and when we do, we just heal faster… as long as we're in the Digital World."

"You guys are really serious about this." Takato looked a bit faint.

"Takato, do you have super healing?" Guilmon asked.

Cody found an old piece of wood and broke it in half for a splint. Then he got the elastic bandage ready.

"Hold her leg still," Ken instructed. "Yolei, this is going to hurt."

When Ken set her ankle, Yolei flinched so hard she punched Davis in the jaw, and he yelled almost as much as she did. When her vision cleared and she could breathe normally again, she found her foot pointing the right way, her ankle strapped to a wooden splint, and an elastic bandage wrapping it all up.

"Ow," she squeaked.

"Jeez, Yolei!" Davis rubbed his jaw. "Why the face!?"

"I'm glad I wasn't sitting there!" Veemon said.

"You probably deserved it!" she snapped.

"You did great, Yolei." Ken handed her the water bottle again. After a few minutes, her stomach began to calm down.

Once she wasn't screaming in pain, she could hear the storm going on outside. It sounded like a tornado raging in the courtyard, and after their meeting with Caturamon, anything tornado-related was the last thing Yolei wanted to see.

"What happened to Hawkmon?" she finally asked. "And Gatomon? Where are they? Where are we?"

Kari's expression looked about ready to cry all over again. "I—I don't know… I was asleep, and then…"

"Something just went wrong," Veemon explained. "One second, we're flying fine. Next second, it's like they hit an invisible wall and de-digivolved."

"Luckily, Wormmon and Veemon were awake and reacted instantly," Ken continued. "Our backup plan probably saved our lives."

"I saw Gatomon for like two seconds," Veemon said sadly, "but then I lost sight of her. I don't know where she landed."

"Hawkmon just fell too fast," Wormmon continued. "I'm sorry, Yolei."

Yolei already had tears in her eyes, so she figured it was no big whoop when a few slid down her face. She really hoped Hawkmon was okay. She couldn't imagine what would cause Hawkmon and Gatomon to just fall out of the sky, but if she ever figured out who did it, she hoped she had a chance to punch them in the face too.

"As for where we are," Cody said, "Nefertimon said we were getting close to the Network Ocean Channel that we need to cross to get to Folder when we dropped like rocks."

Takato glanced down at his D-Power. "That's like… maybe three-fourths of the way to Circuit. If Gatomon and Hawkmon are really hurt, we're going to be stuck traveling overland."

"No way," Davis said. "It isn't safe."

Kari sniffled. "He's right. Besides, Yolei can't walk like this. And I think we already proved that having ExVeemon and Stingmon fly us isn't going to work…"

"Sorry," Wormmon muttered miserably.

"Hey," Ken said, pulling Wormmon into his arms. "You did great."

"What I want to know is what happened," Davis said. "Did they just fall asleep or something?"

"Davis!" Yolei snapped.

He held up his hands in surrender. "I was just asking…"

"Well, one thing's for sure," Armadillomon said, "we won't know until we find them."

"It was my fault," Kari said suddenly. She looked like she felt terrible. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she had tears running down her cheeks. Yolei realized that she had her D-Terminal in her trembling hands for the first time, and she kept fiddling with it, throwing it open and closed as if hoping a new message would appear at any moment.

"Kari," Ken said gently, "you were asleep when everything happened. It couldn't be your fault."

"Yeah, you're just shaken up," Davis agreed.

Kari looked like she so badly wanted to say something, like it was ready to just burst from her lips. But then she buried her head into her hands and the words died in her throat. Yolei felt bad for her best friend; she wished she knew what she was hiding.

Davis stood. "Look… why don't the rest of you stay with Yolei? Veemon and I will go look for Hawkmon and Gatomon. I'm sure they're around here somewhere, just taking a cat nap or something."

"You shouldn't go alone," Ken said.

Cody rose to his feet as well. "I'll go with him."

"Awesome," Davis said, perhaps a little too quickly, and Yolei realized that he was a lot more shaken up than he was letting on. "You guys don't run off without us."

Cody reached into his backpack, pulled out a flashlight, and led Davis, Armadillomon, and Veemon down the stairs.

Ken gave her a smile, though he looked kind of nervous. It was the exact expression he'd had on his face after he'd given her his sweater outside of the high school – with his hair falling into his face so that she had to search for those dark blue eyes that the girls at school absolutely loved. The memory gave her a warm feeling. Then she remembered that she was lying on a catwalk with a broken ankle and Hawkmon probably hurt too, and that feeling vanished.

"You look better," Takato offered awkwardly.

Yolei had forgotten he was even there. She knew that he must mean her foot, because she was pretty sure that her appearance had to be something awful. Her jeans were tattered from the fall through the roof. Her boots were splattered with mud. She didn't know what her face looked like, but it was probably equally horrible.

She wished she was more like Kari. Despite all of Kari's moping and lack of sleep the last few days, she still looked fresh-faced and gorgeous. Absolutely not fair. Even her hair, despite having been tossed about by the winds, had fallen perfectly back into place. And yet the girl never even picked up a fashion magazine unless Yolei threatened to smack her.

But, hey, Makuramon had been more interested in Yolei than Kari… She shuddered at the reminder. That didn't exactly boost her confidence.

She decided to focus on her ankle instead. As long as she didn't move it, the pain wasn't too bad. "You looked like you were about to faint," Yolei told Takato. "I'm guessing you've never really done much first aid, huh?"

He shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine."

"I thought it was weird!" Guilmon said. "Do all human ankles do that?"

"They're not supposed to. That's why we're concerned," Wormmon explained.

"Oooh…"

"But you're starting to have some memories, aren't you?" Yolei continued. "Like back at Baihumon's palace, you said you'd heard of the Devas before."

"It's fuzzy," he said. "Like hearing the word ignites something that I should know, but I don't… not anymore. Like when you forget a word or a name, and it's right on the tip of your tongue but you can't get it out? It's like that – only with my whole life."

"It will be okay," Ken said quietly. "You'll figure out what you're forgetting. I'm sure of it."

"But how can you be so sure?" Takato asked.

"Ken forgot who he was once, too," Wormmon explained. "He didn't remember who he was for a long time, but he found his way back. If Ken can do it, I'm sure you can too."

"You really think so?" Guilmon asked.

Wormmon nodded. "I do."

"Me too," Ken said.

Takato smiled. "Thanks, guys."

"The letter in your pocket," Yolei said, unable to keep her mouth shut. "Is it from someone from your past?"

Takato's face turned an interesting shade of pink.

Kari managed a small smile. "Ignore Yolei. She can sometimes forget that she shouldn't be so nosy all the time."

He shook his head. "No, it's okay… It's just one of the many mysteries I'm trying to figure out. It's from somebody named Jeri. I think I knew her… pretty well. I think I cared for her a lot, too. But… well… that's really all I know."

"I think I remember that she's really, really nice," Guilmon offered. "But… that's all…"

Takato let out a frustrated breath. "I just want to know everything that I'm forgetting already! But… at the same time… I'm not sure I want to find out the truth. Is that crazy?"

"No," Kari said. "Not at all."

Her eyes were on her D-Terminal again as she continued to fiddle with it. Her hands still hadn't stopped shaking, and she seemed almost anxious for something to happen with the little device.

Yolei put a hand on her knee. "Kari? What's going on?"

Kari swallowed thickly. "I'm just… trying to get a hold of Tai…" She looked from Yolei to Ken. "Have either of you heard from the others?"

Ken and Yolei shared a look.

"No," Ken said slowly. "Not since we left."

"Why?" Yolei asked. "Do you think something's wrong?"

Kari blinked rapidly, trying to keep sudden tears at bay. "I… Yes, I think… There's something I need to tell you… I think… I think Tai might be–"

She didn't get the chance to finish. Somewhere below, metal clanged against metal, like a door slamming shut. The sound echoed through the warehouse. They all froze and stared at each other uncertainly for several silent beats.

Then Ken stood. Wormmon moved to his shoulder as Ken peered over the railing. "Davis?" he called.

No answer.

He crouched down next to Yolei. "I don't like this."

"The others could be in trouble," Kari said. "We need to check on them."

"I'll go," Ken decided.

"No," Yolei said. "You can't go alone, even with Wormmon by your side."

Takato raised his hand. "I could go with Guilmon."

Yolei glared at him. "Don't be such an idiot, Takato. You're one of us now. If I say Ken can't go alone that means you, too."

"Yolei," Ken said patiently. "You and Kari can't go. Ignoring the fact that you're hurt, you don't have your digimon with you."

"You should both go," Kari said.

Takato blinked. "We can't leave you alone."

"We'll be fine." Yolei felt terrified, but she wasn't going to admit it. She knew that Kari was right. The boys had the best chance if they went together, even if that did leave the two of them feeling like helpless little kittens. She dragged her butt quietly across the catwalk so that she could reach for a lead pipe. "If anyone gets close, I'll give them a concussion."

Ken hesitated. "If something goes wrong—"

"Panic?" she suggested.

"That sounds like a good idea to me," Wormmon whimpered.

Ken managed a smile. "Alright. Ready, Takato?"

"Ready." Takato pointed toward the closest staircase. "I'll go down that way. Why don't you go down the other staircase so that hopefully we can catch them by surprise?"

Looking completely serious as he planned for attack with his wet hair clinging to the side of his face and water droplets glistening off of his forehead, Ken looked hotter than usual, and Yolei resisted the urge to swoon at the sight. The two boys nodded and went opposite directions before disappearing into the dark.

Kari moved closer to Yolei so that they could hold hands while they waited. Yolei counted her breaths, trying to gauge how much time had passed without glancing at her D-3 and possibly bringing unwanted attention to them from the light. She lost track at around fifty-six. Then something in the warehouse went boom!

The echo died. Yolei's heart pounded, but she didn't call out. Her instincts told her it might not be a good idea. She clung to Kari tighter.

She looked down at her ankle. It wasn't like she could run, but maybe Kari would have a fighting chance. As she turned to tell her to go, Kari glared at her: Not a chance.

Boom! The sound was closer this time, directly below them. Kari fed Yolei's arm across her shoulders and slowly pulled them both to their feet. Hesitantly, Yolei flexed her ankle against the splint. A shot of pain went up her leg, but definitely not the amount she would expect with a broken ankle. It was something. Kari started to slowly lead her toward the back staircase that Takato had taken when they froze. There were heavy steps coming up the stairs – like a sumo wrestler.

Had it been five minutes? Longer? The steps didn't sound like Ken or Takato, but maybe it was one of the digimon. Maybe they were carrying one of the others. Finally, she couldn't stand it. Hugging Kari tightly, she called out, "Ken?"

At the top of the stairs, a face appeared out of the darkness – a hideous black face with white fur all over his body and a bazooka for a hand.

The gorilla digimon grinned. "Well, well. Look who's come to dinner."