Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon. I do not own it, Sam, I am.

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

So sorry for the delay in getting this chapter out. I had a pretty terrible winter. Usually, I escape from my problems through writing, but even that didn't seem like much comfort. So... I didn't write all winter long, but I'm back now. I hope this chapter is good enough to make up for my absence. I do already have chapter 24 written and chapter 25 started, so hopefully this is a sign that I am getting back into the swing of things. And most of all, I hope you...

Enjoy!

Chapter Twenty-Three

Davis tackled Cody as the cargo container crashed over the machinery. If he'd been a half-second slower, they both would've been flattened.

Cody got to his feet, desperately looking for Ankylomon in the rubble, when Orochimon spotted him. He yelled, "Gorillamon, get them! Get them before they ruin my milkshakessss!"

Gorillamon barreled toward them. Cody frantically scanned the dust and debris for his partner, thinking with a sinking feeling that maybe Armadillomon hadn't finished digivolving; maybe the little rookie was trapped underneath the heavy pile of metal. Davis grabbed his arm and started to haul him backwards away from the crazy monkey.

Gorillamon was fifty feet away. Twenty feet.

Then a flash of blue came out of nowhere. ExVeemon slammed into Gorillamon's back so hard, he landed on his face. Before Gorillamon could recover, ExVeemon grabbed him by one leg and heaved him into the air.

"Going up!" ExVeemon called.

"AHHHH!" Gorillamon and ExVeemon disappeared into the gloom. The ceiling was too dark and too high to see exactly what happened, but when Gorillamon came back down, he rocketed downward at impossible speeds and crashed into the ground. A crater exploded around him.

The dust settled. Gorillamon was nowhere to be seen. Instead, loose data sprinkled into the air like glitter. Gorillamon had been destroyed.

Cody was not the only one in complete shock. Orochimon stared at ExVeemon. "Why, you… you… Impossssible… We were told that you were weak… Easy to defeat… What is thissss?"

"Looks like you were fed a bunch of lies!" ExVeemon said, hovering in the air in front of him. "Want to rethink which side you're on?"

Orochimon hissed. "Never!"

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kari helping Yolei down off of the line that they had been suspended from. The spider webbing that had been holding them in place hung in shredded ribbons. Next to them, Gatomon worked on releasing Guilmon next, her claws making quick work of the webs. Hawkmon was having a bit more trouble; the flying cargo container had sent their digivices scattering across the dark floor.

"Who are you working for?" ExVeemon demanded. "Why'd you shoot us out of the sky?"

All eight of Orochimon's heads reared back as if ExVeemon had said something very strange. "Shoot you out of the ssssky? You're the one that fell through our roof!"

ExVeemon blinked. "So… you didn't shoot us out of the sky then?"

"No, you imbecile! I was just trying to enjoy the snack that fate had provided me. And then you had to go and destroy a perfectly good minion!"

As if on cue, Dokugumon skittered into the firelight, dragging a tub of milkshake behind her. "Orochimon, I have your milkshake—"

She never got to finish her thought. Ankylomon leapt out of the darkness, catching Dokugumon in the chest. The tub of milkshake exploded like a water balloon as she crashed into it, right into the base of one of the robotic machines. Dokugumon may have been fast enough to avoid Orochimon's eight heads, but she wasn't quick enough to shake off the daze of a surprise attack.

"Tail Hammer!" Ankylomon whipped around, and his iron tail followed, cracking upon impact as it caught Dokugumon in the face. Dokugumon screamed as she was thrown through the air again, but this time, when she crashed into a nearby support beam, she didn't fall to the ground. She stuck there like glue, her body twitching in shock, a metal rod protruding out of her chest.

"Not… fair…" she moaned.

Then she disintegrated into data.

Two digimon down. Cody felt completely conflicted. On the one hand, they were doing a lot better than he gave ExVeemon and Ankylomon credit for, and he felt a bit like the peach boy warrior with his strange assortment of companions. On the other hand, he hated seeing digimon die before his very eyes, especially in such a brutal manner. He tried to remind himself that those two were about to cook his friends without even feeling bad about it, but that didn't completely remove the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Orochimon let out a savage roar. "You destroyed two perfectly good minions and ruined my milkshakessss! I will destroy you for thissss!"

Ankylomon and ExVeemon made the first move and leapt toward him. Orochimon caught Ankylomon midair with his tail and squeezed, causing him to cry out in pain.

ExVeemon hit his mark. "Critical Crunch!" His teeth sank into one of the eight necks of the beast, and the head attached reared back to let out a silent scream before disintegrating. The rest of Orochimon seemed to barely notice. He tossed Ankylomon across the room in one direction before using his tail to grab ExVeemon by the legs, ripped him off the ground, and pitched him across the warehouse like a softball. Yolei and Kari screamed and hit the deck as the two-ton digimon missed them by inches. ExVeemon disappeared into the darkness, followed by a not too reassuring sounding crash!

"ExVeemon!" Davis dashed into the darkness after him.

Cody was struck at that moment by two thoughts. The first one being that he didn't really feel so sick anymore about what happened to Gorillamon and Dokugumon. Maybe it was shock setting in (or wearing off), but he was instead overcome with a numb acceptance of what had just happened. The second one was that a milkshake-deprived Orochimon was not someone that you wanted to fight with two champions and a prayer. Their victory was not looking so certain anymore.

"I'll destroy you all!" Orochimon roared. "Inferno Blast!"

For a moment, Cody thought Orochimon had just shot completely wild. The flames didn't seem to be pointed at Ankylomon or in the direction that ExVeemon disappeared into. And then – much too late – he realized that they were headed straight for him. He threw his hands over his head and squeezed his eyes shut, waiting to be roasted.

"Don't worry, Cody! I'll save you! Guilmon digivolve to… Growlmon!"

Behind his eyelids, Cody saw a flash of bright white light before he was consumed by overwhelming heat. He thought he was toast until he realized that despite the heat, he wasn't experiencing any sort of pain. He cracked his eyes open. For a moment, he thought he was staring at Guilmon's back, and then he realized that Guilmon had grown five times his normal size.

His eyes widened. "G-Guilmon?"

"He… he digivolved!" Yolei gasped. "Without Takato!"

Cody turned toward her and saw that she was completely right. Takato was still passed out, his head currently sitting in Kari's lap while the girls stared agape at Guilmon's new form. Hawkmon looked just as flabbergasted a few feet away, their D-3's clutched in his claws. Only Gatomon hadn't stopped to stare as she was too busy releasing Ken from his restraints.

"Orochimon!" said Guilmon's voice. "You threatened Takato's life and the life of our friends, and for that, I cannot forgive you!"

"Forgive me!?" Orochimon hissed. "You think I care about being forgiven? I only share about my milkshakesssss! Inferno Breath!"

Growlmon dodged right while Cody raced left toward Kari and the others. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the fiery breath missed Growlmon by a mile and the back of the warehouse exploded with flames. Growlmon whipped around and shot out a fireball of his own. "Pyro Blaster!"

"We need to get out of here!" Cody cried as he climbed up onto the conveyer belt to join the others.

"No duh!" Yolei said. "But how?"

"I think I have an answer to that!" Hawkmon announced as he dropped Yolei and Kari's D-3's in front of them.

"Way to go, Hawkmon!" Yolei cheered.

"That's still not going to do it," Kari said as she grabbed her digivice. "Takato and Ken are hurt, and Orochimon is putting up a really tough fight. There's no way we're going to be able to get away like this!"

"Yeah, not unless we leave someone behind as a distraction," Gatomon agreed.

"That's not going to happen!" Cody snapped.

"I wish I knew how Guilmon was able to digivolve…" Wormmon said, his eyes looking over Ken.

Cody looked back. ExVeemon and Ankylomon had rejoined the fight. The brief upper hand Growlmon had provided them was disappearing rapidly. Even three-on-one wasn't enough to phase Orochimon. Davis came running up to them.

"Dudes, what's the plan!?" he asked, sounding just as desperate as Cody felt. That didn't reassure him one bit. If even Davis was starting to feel the pressure, they were all screwed.

For a moment, Orochimon only had four heads thanks to quick work by ExVeemon's claws and Ankylomon's Rock Hammer, but just as quickly as they disappeared, they rematerialized as if nothing had happened. He looked absolutely menacing from the murderous glares in all sixteen of his red eyes to the fact that he was at least twenty feet tall. The only digimon able to meet him eye-to-eye was Growlmon, and Cody let out a cry of distress as Orochimon sent him flying across the room as if he were no bigger than ExVeemon.

"We're short on plans, Davis!" Gatomon said. "So if you've got one hiding up the sleeve of yours, now is the time to tell us!"

"Uhhh…"

Orochimon let out a laugh. "This is almost amusing! Got any more trickssss?"

Cody glanced around the warehouse. His eyes landed on a spot toward the ceiling – the engine block suspended on chains by a rusty hook… Cody couldn't tell for sure from this angle, especially from so far down, but his instincts (and a desperate sense of hope) told him that it was suspended directly over Orochimon's head. He jumped to his feet and raced toward the catwalk with the sounds of his friends shouting behind him.

"Heck, yeah, we've got tricks!" ExVeemon said from the warehouse floor below. "We're just getting started! Right, guys?"

Growlmon groaned as he shook the debris off of his body from where he'd fallen. "Yeah… tricks…"

"If you wanted to play, Orochimon, all you had to do was ask," Ankylomon said. "You didn't have to threaten to eat us."

Cody ran across the catwalk to the service ladder and started to ascend toward the ceiling, one rung at a time.

"But I always like to play with my food before a good meal," Orochimon grinned.

"As you wish," ExVeemon said. "Vee Laser!"

"Dragon Slash!"

"Tail Hammer!"

All three attacks hit Orochimon head on, causing three heads to explode. A few seconds later, they regenerated.

"What is with this guy!?" ExVeemon complained.

Cody carefully moved from the ladder to the support beams along the ceiling, balancing on his hands and knees as he crawled toward the center of the warehouse. He reached the chain keeping the engine suspended in the air and carefully climbed down onto it.

"It's just like climbing rope in gym class," he murmured to himself.

He tried to ignore the tremor in his own voice as he lowered himself down each chain link until he reached the top of the engine. He reached for the knob keeping the hook in place and tried to turn it to release the engine, but the chain had been left there for far too long, through so many years of rusting, that the metals had all but melded together.

"Nice trickssss," Orochimon snickered. "Now let me show you mine! Inferno Breath!"

Fire consumed half of the room. ExVeemon and Growlmon were thrown back against the wall. Ankylomon avoided the attack by inches.

A firestorm was erupting beneath Cody. He could feel the heat rising up toward him through his sneakers. Orochimon cackled in delight. ExVeemon and Growlmon made no immediate moves to get back up.

"I can't watch this!" Hawkmon said.

"We've got to help them!" Gatomon agreed.

Orochimon turned toward Ankylomon, and Cody called out, "Ankylomon! Up here!"

Cody wasn't sure if Ankylomon had always known where he was within the warehouse or if he just reacted out of pure instinct. Orochimon let loose a breath of flame toward him, and Ankylomon used the strength of his back legs to leap into the air straight toward his partner.

"I've got you, Cody!" Ankylomon wrapped his arms around Cody, pulling him off of the chain, just as he twirled in midair. "Tail Hammer!"

The spin was so sudden that it nearly gave Cody whiplash, and the sound of the iron tail cracking against the metal hook sent ripples through the warehouse.

Ankylmon landed safely a few feet from Davis, Cody cradled safely in his arms. The sound died. Nothing happened. Orochimon laughed. "Nicccce try, digidestined! But no puny human'ssss plan is going to defeat me! Not again!"

The chain failed – years of rust and weight and abuse finally accumulating to it just snapping in half – and the engine block fell, deadly and silent.

"You might want to rethink that," Yolei said cheerfully.

Orochimon didn't even have time to look up.

Smash! No more Orochimon – just a cluster of loose data escaping from under a five-ton engine block.

"Cody, you did it, dude!" Davis cheered.

"Way to go, Cody!" Wormmon cheered.

"That was really smart," Kari said.

Cody stared down at the ground, still in Ankylomon's arms, his head buzzing. He'd just had his hand directly in the death of a digimon. Orochimon was gone because of his plan. He hadn't had a choice, and yet, it still didn't feel right.

"Cody?" Ankylomon said gently. "You did really good. TK would have been proud."

He looked up at his partner. He hadn't thought of it that way, but he immediately knew that Ankylomon was right. TK would have known – without a shadow of a doubt – that Orochimon had to go to protect the lives of their friends. And somehow, as unimportant as that thought was in the grand scheme of things, it instantly made him feel better.

By the time they dug Guilmon and Veemon out of the smoldering wreckage and retrieved their supplies from the catwalk, Ken had mostly woken up. They trickled a bit of water down Takato's throat, and he groaned, which Cody took as a good sign. At least the color was returning to his face.

"Yeah, he's got a nice thick skull like me," Davis said. "He's going to be fine."

"Must be the goggles," Veemon said cheerfully.

"Thank god," Kari sighed.

Cody started to smile, but his sense of relief was ruined when he noticed something behind the girls. Loose data – the data from the destruction of one of the three digimon that had attacked them, Gorillamon maybe – was swirling in the air like an invisible wind was pushing it back together.

"What is that?" he asked.

The others turned.

"That's their data," Wormmon explained. "It should be making its way back to Primary Village so that they can be reborn as digieggs."

"I think somebody forgot to tell them that," Yolei squeaked.

Cody watched, blood draining from his face, as the data collected in a pile, then very slowly started to spread out, forming into the shape of a pair of two very hairy ape-feet.

"Oh, god." Kari turned pale as well. "Baihumon said something about this – about horrors that we would encounter. 'When digimon no long remain deleted and digimon are no longer reborn…' How long do you think we have?"

Cody thought about TK, Takato's appearance, Davis's dragon, and the three digimon they had just encountered – they seemed to be coming across plenty of horrors so far.

"I don't know," Davis said. "But let's get out of here before we find out."