Episode 109: Gimme Sympathy
About two dozen blocks south of the high school football field where Harpymon was battling Todd and BlackAgumon, Joshua and Penguinmon were standing in an alleyway and eating their lunch. Like Emily and Lynn's group, the two of them had spent the days since the fight with Sagittarimon trying to locate a tamer and his Digimon, namely Paul and Dracmon, and having just as much luck as the girls. Unlike the others, they lacked access to a car and were thus left with Joshua's bike or their feet as their only modes of transportation. Joshua and Penguinmon's search for their quarries had taken the form of long, aimless rides around some of the neighborhoods and lakes closest to Joshua's house. After two days of this, Joshua decided that he and Penguinmon had to target areas with more people, namely Minneapolis proper.
Joshua took them to the area around his high school first, and Penguinmon lacked the grounds to raise any objections. By noon, the Digimon was regretting not saying anything. The summer heat nearly had him molting inside of Joshua's backpack, and Joshua only had a few more blocks in him before his legs might give out from under him. Before Penguinmon's complaining could get too heated, Joshua diplomatically suggested that they stop for lunch.
After locking up his bike where he could still keep an eye on it from the glass storefront, Joshua stepped inside of an air-conditioned Jimmy John's restaurant and ordered two sandwiches. For Penguinmon, it was tuna because the only thing that he would even consider eating was fish. For himself, Joshua opted for roast beef. His normal standby was turkey, but his appetite for poultry had vanished almost altogether over the last few weeks. Once he had their food, Joshua moved his bike into an alleyway and freed Penguinmon from his backpack. After Joshua handed him his sandwich, Penguinmon wasted no time in tearing it apart so that he could scrape every last morsel of tuna which it contained and then told Joshua he was done with his meal.
His own appetite vanished at the sight of Penguinmon's display, so Joshua threw away what was left of their lunches and returned to learn against one of the dirty brick buildings bordering the alleyway. "Are you sensing any other Digimon?" he asked.
Penguinmon stood up a little straighter and then cautiously raised his beak to sniff at the air. Without bothering to hide his relief, Penguinmon shook his head and told Joshua, "I do not exactly have a lot of practice, but I am not aware of any other Digimon near us right now. Although it would not be easy, especially with all of these people about." As if to emphasize Penguinmon's words, a blaring chorus of honking cars sounded form the nearest street as someone performed an illegal [U-turn]. "How can you humans live like this?"
"Don't you have any cities in the Digital World?" asked Joshua.
Penguinmon gave the best shrug his round body could manage and replied, "Not where I lived. We only had snow, ice, and water. Nothing like this."
Before Joshua could ask another question, his phone buzzed four times in rapid succession. Joshua fumbled for his cellphone and relayed to Penguinmon, "It looks like we've got two Digimon on the loose! There's one just a few blocks away!"
He looked up only to find that Penguinmon did not share his excitement. "Please tell me that we will not try to handle it on our own."
"Of course not!" came Joshua's defensive response. "I'm not stupid! We'll go towards one of them and wait for the others to join us." Penguinmon still looked skeptical, so Joshua made a production out of typing out a message on his white and blue Digivice and even read it aloud before sending it. "Satisfied?"
Penguinmon gave a heavy sigh as he started to climb back into the tamer's beaten-up backpack, delivering another one as Joshua zipped him up until only his bright orange beak was jutting out. But that was the closest to complaining that Penguinmon came as Joshua loaded them up on his bike and started pedaling towards where the new Digimon had appeared.
After only two blocks of biking, the early June heat suddenly became much more oppressive, with the air above the streets shimmering in front of Joshua's eyes. Joshua had thought that his body would not have any sweat left to give biking from his house to uptown Minneapolis, but he soon felt his thick dirty blonde hair grow even heavier as the moisture collected on his forehead, back, chest, and under his arms. As mortified as he was by the thought of soaking through his shirt in front of Lynn, Joshua's discomfort was nothing compared to Penguinmon's, who was already hyperventilating inside of Joshua's backpack.
To Joshua's credit, as soon as he heard Penguinmon's frantic breathing, he veered off of the main stretch of road and onto an empty bike path. Once they were out of sight of the cars and few pedestrians on Lake Street proper, Joshua unzipped his backpack and Penguinmon tumbled out. The two of them rested for a minute, with Joshua fanning his shirt feebly and Penguinmon lying on his back, wheezing. After a brief scuffle over what was left in Joshua's water bottle, the two of them started moving towards the heavy wall of fog that was only a few yards away.
Both of them knew what the fog meant, and Joshua and Penguinmon exchanged nervous looks as they crept closer to the heavy white mist, the temperature of the air rising with each step they took. A thin two-lane bridge ran over a hill that was bisected by the strangely opaque barrier, and below it seemed to be the best way to approach the fog. However, the two's careful approach was halted when a line of fire erupted form the other side of the fog which nearly singed Joshua's eyebrows and added to the already unbearable heat. Joshua and Penguinmon wordlessly agreed to retreat rather than continuing to advance towards the fog and the unknown Digimon lurking within it.
Their agreement lasted only a few seconds, as it was abandoned as soon as a bout of swearing came from inside of the mist. Instantly throwing caution to the wind, Joshua ran towards the sound, trailed by a very reluctant Penguinmon.
Like the other times that he had crossed a wall of peculiar white fog to find a Digimon, the young man felt the energy in the air, a kind of electricity that made the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand at attention. Once he had fought his way through the cloying fog and emerged on the other side, the source of the string of curses became apparent.
Inside of the fog, Paul was standing under the shade of the bridge and pulling off his burning shirt while Dracmon came to help him. He threw it to the ground, and then stomped out the flames as they licked at his heavy black boots. Paul stopped swearing as he noticed Joshua and Penguinmon's presence and he turned to face them. "Joshua?"
"Paul," Joshua replied automatically while he struggled to tear his eyes away from the gallery of scars, burns, and cuts that covered Paul's bare torso. Before Joshua could say anything else, a new set of eyes, beady and amber-colored, fell upon him. Despite its fiery aura, the long red Digimon's stare was as chillingly reptilian as the rest of its features. It sized up Joshua and Penguinmon and then opened its mouth grotesquely wide to bellow, "Heat Breath!"
While the two boys had been focused on each other, both Penguinmon and Dracmon had been watching the larger Digimon carefully and so when he attacked, they were both ready. Joshua and Paul were roughly pushed to the side by their companions as the fiery Digimon attacked with a powerful torrent of rushing flames which left the surface of concrete pillar holding up part of the bridge partially warped from the intense heat.
When he had regained his bearings, Joshua shouted, "What is that thing?"
"Salamandemon," Paul answered as he picked himself up off of the ground. As he offered his hand to help Joshua up, he added, "It's a little-known Champion. I wasn't expecting it at all."
"Where are the girl scouts?" Dracmon asked even as he kept an eye on Salamandemon.
"The what?" Penguinmon interjected, only for Joshua to answer.
"They should be here soon! All we have to do is stall for time and then we can figure out a plan together!"
That earned Joshua a contemptuous snort from Paul. "I'm not worried about getting help from them, I'm worried about having to share this prize with a bunch of chicks." He adopted a cocky, imperfectly-shaped grin and taunted, "You willing to grab some glory, or are you just gonna sit back and watch a real tamer in action?"
"Joshua, can we please wait for the others?" Penguinmon pleaded.
For a brief moment, it seemed as though his request might be heeded as Joshua nodded so fiercely that his thick-framed glasses slipped precariously down his nose. "You're right," he said, but then continued, "so we'll just have to hold this thing off until they get here. Okay?"
Joshua's question was entirely rhetorical, so Penguinmon refused to even acknowledge it. Instead, the Digimon resigned itself to charging up an attack in his orange beak. When the pale blue energy had formed into a rough three-dimensional cube of ice, Penguinmon launched it at Salamandemon with a cry of, "Ice Prism!"
Salamandemon had seen the attack coming and his four three-toed feet scrambled over the smooth surface of the bike path as he scurried out of the path of the frozen missile. It did not seem like Salamandemon had needed to bother, however. As Penguinmon's attack drew nearer to the fiery Digimon, it first melted and then evaporated before any part of it could strike Salamandemon's former position.
"Um, what now?" Joshua asked.
"Keep firing. You two can at least keep it busy," Paul growled and then he addressed Dracmon with the same harsh tone. "What'd'ya got?"
Dracmon looked down at the eyes embedded in his palms and then looked at the Salamandemon and the powerful aura of flames surrounding his body. With an unhappy grimace, Dracmon replied, "I'm not sure that I can lay a finger on him, Paul."
Paul reached into the back pocket of his black jeans and pulled out his switchblade and tossed it to Dracmon. The Digimon snatched it out of the air with practiced ease and then unsheathed the knife. The two of them held a wordless conversation, with Dracmon looking skeptical and while Paul's face was stern and unwavering. Dracmon broke eye contact first, nervously fiddling with the switchblade in his stubby, red-clawed fingers.
While this was going on, Penguinmon had kept diligently trying to land an attack on Salamandemon. It was easier said than done. Even given his bulk and awkwardly-shaped body, Salamandemon was more than fast enough to avoid giving Penguinmon an opening.
Joshua knew that he had to do something to help Penguinmon against Salamandemon. But instead of a knife, what Joshua pulled out of the back of his jeans were an assortment of Digimon trading cards. As the Paul looked on, seemingly unable to decide between mockery and sheer incredulity, Joshua opened up the scanning application on his white and blue Digivice and selected a single dog-eared card from the half-dozen or so that he had been carrying around since the morning after he had first met Penguinmon. Joshua straightened up to his full height and announced forcefully, "Digi-Modify! Gigadramon's Gigabyte Wing! Activate!" He ran his Digivice's camera over the card, only for nothing to happen save for Paul laughing so hard that he doubled over.
Joshua's pathetic display also appeared to have amused Salamandemon, but his grinning, alien mouth was quick to produce another line of flame, punctuated by a wheezing hiss of "Heat Breath!"
Salamandemon's attack ripped through the air over Joshua moments after he threw himself to the ground. Paul and Dracmon had also been stunned by the ferocious attack and, with Paul forgetting his amusement at Joshua's expense for the moment, the two of them had also ducked out of the way of Salamandemon's attack.
Penguinmon, on the other hand, had been so intent on getting a hit in on Salamandemon that he had seen only an opportunity instead of any danger when the larger Digimon had attacked Joshua. This time, although Penguinmon's attack still melted entirely into a spray of water, the resulting splash struck Salamandemon and sizzled and burst into a cloud of steam. Salamandemon gave a surprised roar and slowly retreated away from the group of humans and Digimon, showing far more of an effect from Penguinmon's attack than he or the others had anticipated.
While Salamandemon reared back to reevaluate its foes, Paul crawled across the asphalt of the bike path and roughly pulled Joshua after him and behind the perimeter formed by Penguinmon and Dracmon. Paul's voice was harsh and overshadowed Joshua's protests as he demanded, "Are you retarded or something? What the hell was that?"
"It worked in the cartoon," grumbled Joshua as he futilely tried to pull his arm out of Paul's arm.
"The cartoon?" Paul blustered. "What's the matter with you? This is real life, you idiot! If you hadn't ducked, you'd have been burnt to a crisp!"
Joshua continued to pull against Paul's grip as he asked, "Is that how you got all those scars? From fighting Digimon?"
Instead of answering, Paul let go of Joshua's arm and turned away, concealing some his menagerie of healed scars and burns, but revealing others on his sides and back to Joshua. "Look, just leave the fighting to the Digimon, okay?"
While the Digimon squared off, Paul started up the hill and Joshua felt that he had to follow him. The two of them climbed up to the crest of the hill and walked onto the bridge, over the side of which they could study the Digimon below from what seemed to be a safe distance. Having learned something from his earlier success, Penguinmon was no longer haphazardly attacking Salamandemon, but was rather carefully watching the crimson Digimon in hopes of catching him making a mistake. For his part, the long, fiery Digimon had also adopted a new strategy and was now carefully keeping his distance from Penguinmon and Dracmon as he prepared his next attack. On the periphery of the other two Digimon's fields of vision, Dracmon flitted around aimlessly, Pauls' switchblade useless in his blue-skinned hands.
After a minute of watching the Digimon, Joshua thought that he noticed something. "Do Salamandemon's flames look different to you?"
"Maybe," replied Paul, his green eyes scanning the Digimon in question. "Why? What do you think's changed?"
"They look smaller somehow, like, weaker." Joshua tapped the side of his glasses in thought. Then, he leaned over the side of the bridge and hollered, "You can do it, Penguinmon!"
All three of the Digimon looked up in confusion and Joshua saw what he had been looking for. Salamandemon was the last one to react to the tamer's outburst, and when he did raise his wide, flat head up to look at the source of the disturbance, his movements were slower and unsteady.
Realizing opportunity Joshua's outburst had afforded him, Penguinmon launched another frozen missile from his beak at Salamandemon. With only seconds to spare, Penguinmon's target bent his legs and leapt over the attack, but only hardly cleared it.
"Paul!" Joshua exclaimed. "When Penguinmon hit that thing with some water, he put out some of its fire and slowed it down! If Penguinmon can do that a few more times, then we might actually be able to beat this thing!"
"Was there ever any doubt?" Paul asked, but his expression seemed considerably more cheerful than his words might have suggested.
Their initial wave of optimism ebbed to a trickle of apprehension as Joshua and Paul watched the next series of attacks launched by Penguinmon fall short and seem to be missing by larger and larger margins each time. Salamandemon seemed to be getting faster, aided, Joshua guessed, by the steady resurgence of his fiery aura. To his credit, Dracmon had tried to make himself useful by throwing pieces of torn up pavement and asphalt at Salamandemon, but his efforts were simply withstood as Salamandemon concentrated largely on avoiding Penguinmon's more dangerous attacks. What Penguinmon and Dracmon needed was another distraction, but neither Joshua nor Paul was able to capture Salamandemon's attention again, no matter how loudly Joshua shouted or what creative curses Paul flung at him.
At this rate, it was only a matter of time before Salamandemon would fully recover from Penguinmon's earlier attack, and then it happened. A sudden flash of power mushroomed to the north, undetectable by any human being, but delivering a powerful, unmistakable message to every Digimon who could feel it. Something big had happened. A powerful new Digimon had arrived. Penguinmon, Dracmon, and Salamandemon all stopped what they were doing and turned to the incredible power which they had sensed.
Unfortunately for him, Salamandemon remained fixated on the new Digimon he sensed longer than Penguinmon and Dracmon, and this proved to be just the opening that they needed to take him down.
Penguinmon was the first to attack and quickly fired a trio of icy pyramids Salamandemon. The first two melted into icy sprays of water and reduced Salamandemon's protective aura enough that the third frozen projectile could sink deep into the red Digimon's slimy skin. Though sharply diminished, the heat which Salamandemon was giving off still melted this icy shape as well, but not before it had cut a wound in Salamandemon's side which began to leak a trickle of white particles of data into the humid summer air.
His movements were now plodding, and Salamandemon turned on Penguinmon only with great difficulty to deliver a pained hiss. Exhausted from his rapid succession of attacks, Penguinmon had sunk to the ground and was in no position to avoid the ball of fire build up in Salamandemon's toothless, opening maw. Fortunately, he did not have to.
As the injured Salamandemon prepared to attack Penguinmon, Dracmon took a running leap onto the larger Digimon's back. It was still painfully hot for Dracmon to touch, but Penguinmon had whittled Salamandemon's emanations of fire down to embers. In a flash of violent inspiration, Dracmon raised Paul's knife high above his black head and plunged it into the heavy ridge over Salamandemon's left eye hard enough to puncture it. Even as his body released a more violent stream of white data into the air, Dracmon's assault caused the blinded Salamandemon to rear back in a desperate attempt at throwing off his attacker. The same frantic motion caused the line of fire that erupted from his wide, grimacing mouth to sail high over Penguinmon's head.
Dracmon held on as tightly as he could to Salamandemon's slick skin. Even in his death throes, the larger Digimon's body was still hot enough that Dracmon had to grit his teeth against his skin screaming in protest from Salamandemon's heat. Still, Dracmon held on, pulling and tugging on the knife lodged in Salamandemon's head to try and direct the thrashing Digimon away from Penguinmon. Dracmon succeeded, only for him to realize that Salamandemon was now barreling towards the bridge where Joshua and Paul were watching the fight. Dracmon did his best to alter Salamandemon's path again even as his bucking mount did his best to throw him off.
The heat from Salamandemon's body had melted the blade of Paul's knife, with the metal trailing down the left side of his face and his ruined eye. Thus blinded, Salamandemon directed more and more of his desperate attacks towards his left even as Dracmon urged his body to the right, and under the bridge on which Joshua and Paul were standing.
In the tight space, Salamandemon's death throes became even wilder. He thrashed his tail against first one wall and then the other and tried to burn up the aging brick walls with his weakening attacks. Dracmon maintained his hold with a grim determination until he felt Salamandemon's body start to grow cold under his blistered hands and chest.
Only then did Dracmon deliver the final blow. He slapped his raw palms over Salamandemon's face and, as black mist poured out to shroud what was left of the larger Digimon's vision, Dracmon hissed, "Sleep," at Salamandemon.
Exhausted, Salamandemon slumped to the ground and finished dying as Dracmon sprang from his back and started blowing on his injured hands before beckoning Penguinmon over to join him.
The two Digimon stood in the shadow of the bridge, out of sight of Joshua and Paul, and stood in silence as they absorbed the stream of data flowing from Salamandemon's dying body. It was only after the boys had hurried to join them that Penguinmon and Dracmon seemed to snap out of their trances. Penguinmon looked down at his feet instead of at Joshua while Dracmon rushed to show his wounds to Paul. "Hey, check it out! Pretty gross, huh?"
Paul laughed at Dracmon and then turned to Joshua with a cocky grin. "Well, looks like we didn't need your girlfriends after all, did we?"
"Yeah, I guess not," Joshua said without looking away from Penguinmon. Then he remembered something and turned to Paul to ask the other boy earnestly, "How would you like to join us? The girls, Emily and Lynn, and me?"
Paul's face darkened as his good humor fled. "Why would I want to do that?"
"Uh, well," Joshua stammered out his unprepared reply, "our Digimon worked really well together just now, and imagine what we could do if we were all working together as a team! Fighting evil, protecting people-"
"Don't make me laugh! That's why you're doing this? That's stupid kid stuff." Paul walked over to where he had thrown his burnt and trampled shirt earlier and prodded it with one of his boots before deciding that it was completely ruined. "This isn't about evil Digimon, or good Digimon. Hell, from what I've seen so far most of them aren't anything more than dumb animals."
Joshua could not resist blurting out, "Then why do you do it?"
"It's fun and different, so why not?" With that, Paul sighed and ran a hand through his slick black hair. "You seem like an okay guy, Joshua," he said looking back at the other teenager, "so let me give you some advice. Stop being so pretentious. We get to make monsters fight. Do you really need some big dumb reason for it?" Without waiting for Joshua to answer him, Paul snapped his fingers and Dracmon hurried to his side as the pair strode away from Joshua and Penguinmon.
"Thanks for the help!" Dracmon shouted over his shoulder before following Paul out of the cloud of mist.
Penguinmon lifted his head in time to watch the other pair of Digimon and tamer disappear, and then he looked at Joshua with an unspoken question in his red eyes.
Joshua didn't seem to see it. "Well, that went better than expected," he said. "Don't you think?"