Episode 1.13: Front Row, Part Two

It did not take very long for a crowd of cars and pedestrians to gather in order to gawk at the cloud of smoke and dust that was rising up from where the bridge had collapsed. Initial panic was joined by morbid curiosity, and the men and women of the local emergency services were hard pressed to man the lines of people gathering at the entrances and exits of the highway. Dealing with the restless throngs was all that they were allowed to do. Word had come down from the governor's office in St. Paul that the job of clearing rubble and searching for survivors was going to be delayed until federal agents had completed a preliminary investigation. As much as this frustrated the police officers and firefighters who were eager to do their part, they respected the chain of command and did their best to hold back the curious crowd. Since they were outnumbered twenty-to-one in some areas, and had focused the bulk of their efforts on the ramps, the first responders failed to notice the figures which emerged out of two cars and crept through the green bushes that lined the highway.

As the tamers and their Digimon drew closer to the highway, the latter grew increasingly tense with unconscious growls emanating from the throat of each monster except for Penguinmon. Instead, he only told Joshua and the others, "We're getting close."

Joshua didn't share Penguinmon's apprehension. He was the furthest ahead of the group and was clearing a path for the others through the high grass while wearing an excited smile that he was making only the barest effort to hide. Not far behind him, Emily, Todd, and their reptilian Digimon dueled for second place. Everyone else was further behind, with Penguinmon bringing up the rear of the group pressing into the disaster zone.

Despite its violence, the initial explosion and collapse caused by Patamon digivolving had not caused the majority of the damage. It was the Digimon that the frightened Patamon become which had torn up the road and smashed signs. Each of Rhinomon's stomping footsteps had driven its armored bulk deep into the ground and ripped it apart, and any pause in its path of destruction was only a chance for Rhinomon to prepare itself for another charge where it would slam itself against the nearest obstacle with a furious bellow. A thin layer of dust and rubble had settled upon Rhinomon's body, but the debris hardly dimmed the gleaming golden armor plating that layered its back and flanks. It was an intimidating sight to behold, enough that it made the leaders of the pack of tamers and Digimon stop in their tracks long enough for the others to catch up to them.

"What is that thing?" Lynn asked.

Joshua was reaching for his Digivice, but stopped short when Paul tonelessly recited, "Rhinomon, a Champion-level tied to the Digi-Egg of Miracles. A Vaccine-type too, I think."

"Great, so now we know what to call it while we're beating the snot out of it!" said Floramon gleefully and she started towards the road.

"Whoa! Not so fast there!" Emily said, grabbing her Digimon's shoulder and pulling Floramon back. "We need to come up with some kind of plan."

"Overwhelming firepower," suggested Todd. "That's what BlackAgumon does best." The black-scaled Digimon nodded at mention of his name.

Even in his sour mood, Paul found the energy to scoff at Todd's plan. "Look at the armor on that thing! You think your iguana can blast through that?"

"He wouldn't be alone," offered Joshua, wiping the sweat off of his forehead before adjusting his glasses. "Penguinmon and Kudamon could, uh, blast it too."

"Yeah, like that's going to make a difference," Paul shot back.

Lynn cleared her throat and then voiced her own idea, "Getting Floramon to change is probably our best bet."

"Let's do it, chief!"

"And how exactly are we supposed to do that, Floramon? Anyone?" drawled Emily.

When no one answered Emily's question, Dracmon spoke into the silence, "Look, how about we just make it up as we go?" After getting looks that ranged from skeptical to annoyed, Dracmon couldn't resist spreading his hands wide and saying with a grin, "Kidding, kidding."

"Well, if its armored everywhere, we can't do anything against it," Penguinmon said, a small tremor of hope present in his warbling voice. "So, we might as well go home."

"Is it armored everywhere?" Todd asked, suddenly interested.

"Everywhere we can see," answered Penguinmon quickly.

Joshua mused, "Maybe he's got a soft underbelly, like an armadillo or something?"

"So, then we need to tip him over somehow," said Lynn.

On her shoulders, Kudamon added, "Floramon's vines might be able to help us with that."

"Now we're talking!" Emily crowed. "We knock it over-"

"-and blow its guts out," finished Todd approvingly.

Almost all of the contents of the office space that the Department of Researching Unknowns had been using had been packed up and carted off, leaving only a few cardboard boxes sealed up with packing tape. All of the furniture had been removed, as had the plastic ferns that had once dotted the office space. It was in this Spartan setting that Ken and Eddy met to discuss what was to be done about the disaster unfolding on I-35. There was nowhere to sit, so they stood instead, with Eddy leaning against a wall for support while the director stood ramrod straight on the carpeted floor. There had been no pleasantries, instead the two men had gotten straight to business.

"I phoned the governor on my way over," Ken said. "He's holding the leash pretty tight until we can get some of our people in there to try and salvage this."

"Can we salvage this?" Eddy asked with a shake of his heavy head. Then he asked a more helpful question, "How about the media presence?"

Ken's lip curled into a slight sneer. "The cordon is holding, but people are curious. It's only a matter of time before some idiot gets a glimpse of this thing. Even if they can't get a picture or audio, an eyewitness would make everything a lot more complicated."

"Do we know exactly what 'this thing' is?"

"The only thing the van was supposed to be carrying was Test Subject One, but it was a small, little thing. Hardly capable of taking care of itself, let alone killing three agents." Ken took out a small BlackBerry device and began tapping on its touch screen. "Luckily we have a few drones already back online after the initial screen was fried by whatever happened. I set one to patrol the area of the explosion." Ken looked at the screen for a little under a minute before handing his phone over to Eddy. "Take a look."

Eddy grasped for it clumsily and held it up to his ruddy face. "What on Earth?" he murmured at the sight of the huge golden monster rampaging around the stretch of highway. Then he looked up at Ken. "Is this a new Unknown?"

"It's not one we've ever seen before, but we haven't picked up any new emergences. And listen."

Eddy frowned and held the BlackBerry up against his ear. "There's sound!"

"That's right. There's none of the usual audio interference."

"Another point in favor of this not being the usual threat," Eddy said, studying the video feed once again. "Wait, what's that?"

"What?"

"There," answered Eddy and he used two pudgy fingers to zoom in on a spot on the screen and then he offered the BlackBerry back to Ken. Visible behind a thin shield of leaves and grass were glimpses of skin, clothes, scales, and feathers. "I think it's those kids, Ken."

Ken ripped the BlackBerry out of his associate's hands. "What?" Sure enough, they were the same teenagers that the department had been tracking, and their Unknowns were with them, too. After giving the matter some thought, Ken ordered, "Send a few agents to monitor the situation."

"And try to eliminate that new Unknown?"

"That's not what I said." Ken ran a hand through his short brown hair absentmindedly. "Let's see how these kids handle it."

Eddy's mouth hung open. "You can't be serious."

"We're still only in the prototype stage with our own anti-Unknown capabilities, so short of calling in the military, this is our best chance to take down this new threat and see what these kids can do with their own Unknowns. We may have a real opportunity here, Eddy."

"Just so long as we're not ruling calling in the big guns," muttered Eddy.

"We never take any of our options off the table, my friend," Ken told Eddy with a small, genuine smile. "Never."

"So how are we actually going to do this?" asked Lynn, arcing a thin eyebrow at the collected Digimon standing at various levels of attention.

"Well, first we could fire off a shot across his nose to get his attention-" Todd began, but before he had finished speaking BlackAgumon had gathered a ball of orange flames in his mouth and launched it at Rhinomon's shielded face. The blast dissipated in a useless shower of sparks against the armored mask, but the attack still attracted the attention of the larger Digimon. With an outraged bellow, Rhinomon turned charged the group's hiding place.

The humans quickly scattered and their Digimon readied themselves, though there was little that they could do. Rhinomon shrugged off Penguinmon and Kudamon's attempts to breach its armor. Only at the last second did the smaller Digimon dive out of the way as Rhinomon barreled through the underbrush in a blind rage.

"Go, get it back out in the open!" shouted Joshua and the tamer's Digimon worked quickly to comply. They circled around Rhinomon's flanks and pelted it with petty bursts of fire, ice, and harsh words.

As it made a slow, plodding turn, Rhinomon glowered at its attackers from behind its armored mask, rhythmically letting out harsh snorts of hot air before deciding to charge at Penguinmon next.

With a timid squawk, Penguinmon tried to abandon the fight and hurriedly began to waddle away as quickly as he could. BlackAgumon and Dracmon moved to close the gap Penguinmon opened in their line. The former readied a ball of orange fire inside of his toothy maw and the latter's hands began gathering black mist around the eyes embedded in his palms.

"Floramon, now!"

"Stamen Rope!" Floramon cried as she shot long vines out from her petal-lined wrists. The vines zipped low above the ground between Rhinomon's front and back legs before coiling tightly around a concrete cylinder on the edge of the highway. The makeshift rope pulled taut as Rhinomon's heavy limbs pulled against it and cut its charge short.

After Rhinomon had crashed to the ground, BlackAgumon let loose with a roar of "Pepper Breath!", but his attack splattered helplessly into a shower of sparks against the space where Rhinomon's mask and body armor overlapped. Dracmon attempted to draw closer for his own attack, but he had to abandon his plan when Rhinomon pulled free of Floramon's snare and started to get back to its feet.

"Any openings?" Paul shouted at the Digimon.

Dracmon shook his head ruefully as he scrambled a few yards away from Rhinomon. "Nothin', boss! It's like fighting a tank!"

"Can you get Floramon to digivolve?" Joshua asked Emily.

Emily looked down at her green and white Digivice and frowned, wiping a few strands of red hair away from her eyes. "I'm still not sure how to do it, to be honest. Floramon! You feel anything?"

"Not a thing, Emily" the Digimon said as she ejected her limp vines from her arms to make room for their replacements.

"Great, so now what?" Lynn sighed.

"I can't believe this," Molly said for what seemed like the hundredth time in the last five minutes. "I just can't believe this."

"Well believe it, blondie," the pilot said offhandedly, giving one last check of his instruments and flicking a few switches before settling his hands on the stick. Then he shouted, "Make sure you're buckled up back there!" over the sound of the rotors picking up speed. His three passengers quickly double-checked their seatbelts and the helicopter kicked up dust from the heavy downdraft of its spinning blades as it rose into the air.

Molly had never been inside of a helicopter before, but here she was inside of one of the local news affiliate's choppers to try and get a closer look at what had happened on the highway. It took a good deal of Molly's to keep from cheering the fact that she was not only going to be reporting on an actual story, but would be doing so from the WCCO's "Eye in the Sky". While the other newshounds in the cities only had official statements and the AP ticker, she, Molly Kleberg, would be getting everything she needed to get the scoop of her life. She might even get a byline out of this.

Snapping out of her daydreams, Molly took stock of her fellow travelers. WCCO's cameraman was a nondescript figure, as was fitting for a job that directed eyes at other people, while the reporter who was his partner was Reg Chapman, a jolly mountain of an African-American man who was a fixture in the local news scene. Reg opened up his mouth to strike up a conversation with Molly, but the drone of the blades drowned him out so he just smiled at her.

Molly did her best to look like a proper reporter, fishing out her pen and notepad and straightening her posture, even as her heart beat wildly in her chest. Through the window, she could see the city and its inhabitants grow smaller and smaller until the metropolis with all of its stories playing out was no more than a background to her current adventure. Although the taboo had faded somewhat over the past few decades, it was still frowned upon in theory for a reporter to think of the story in first-person terms. Even so, Molly let herself imagine what untold fame and fortune might await her because of this lucky break so that her smile was almost as wide as Reg's.

The initial excitement of combat had dulled somewhat as the situation devolved into an uneasy stalemate. None of the allied Digimon could penetrate Rhinomon's thick armored hide with their attacks, but they also possessed enough speed and the bare minimum of teamwork necessary to avoid Rhinomon's easily telegraphed charges. The golden Digimon's enraged state left it easily distracted by random potshots, which helped to protect Floramon whenever Rhinomon's fevered brain managed to single her out. Yet despite her central role in the group's strategy, Floramon was still unable to live up to the lofty expectations. Rhinomon had proven too tough to harm even after being tripped by Floramon's vines and she still showed no signs of digivolving.

"This thing just won't give up," Todd grumbled after another round of blasts failed to so much as scorch Rhinomon's armor.

Dracmon took a diving leap at the larger Digimon, only to slide uselessly off of the slick armor.

"Anyone have any better ideas?" Paul asked ruefully. "Since 'Operation: Cow Tipping' isn't working."

"It's a good plan, we just need some more muscle," Emily replied defensively. Then she sighed and ran her hand over her dust-caked forehead. "Should we try to retreat? Fall back until we can come up with a better idea?"

From her position crouching next to her friend, Lynn asked, "Would this Digimon stay here though, or go out and hurt people?"

All of the other Digimon scattered in the wake of another of Rhinomon's charges and reformed their loose semi-circle behind the larger creature as it turned around.

"No one can stop this thing but us, so we have to stay," said Joshua, before quietly adding, "right?"

Another round of attacks from the smaller Digimon struck Rhinomon's armor uselessly.

"Are we so sure that we can stop Rhinomon?" Paul asked in turn.

The teenagers watched as Floramon shot out another pair of vines that darted between Rhinomon's legs and the lumbering behemoth toppled forward over the tripwire again. Floramon's allies gathered on one side of Rhinomon and began pushing and shoving in a vain attempt to knock the far larger creature over onto its side, but Rhinomon didn't budge. Its eyes were locked on Floramon as it struggled mightily against her restraints.

As Rhinomon freed its first foot from the cloying grasp of the make-shift ropes, Floramon doubled her efforts to keep its other limb immobilized. "Keep pushing, I can hold him!" Floramon groaned through gritted fangs, but her hold on Rhinomon was growing more and more tenuous by the second.

"Oh, screw this," Emily muttered and then sprung from her hiding place to run towards her Digimon. As she ran, the pounding blood in her head drowned out every other noise from the swearing of the other tamers to the slap of her sneakers on the highway.

Rhinomon's second foot came free.

Someone was following her, but Emily couldn't tell who and she didn't care. Even the noise of the helicopter flying over the battle was drowned out by her heartbeat. Her right foot hit a patch of loose gravel and she stopped, turned in place, and reached out her hand to Floramon. "Come on," Emily heard herself say.

The Digimon looked up at her with tired blue eyes and opened her mouth as if she was about to protest, but instead Floramon let Emily pick her up and the duo began to run back to the others. Emily's eyes met Paul's and the two of them exchanged curt nods as they passed one another, but then she was stopped. In the rush to get away from Rhinomon, Floramon had forgotten to unhook her vines from her arms, and so when she and Emily ran away the cords pulled tight and snapped Emily backwards so that the stunned girl landed on her back.

With the wind knocked out of her by the impact and the weight of Floramon on her chest, Emily laid flat on the ground and stared up at the sky. In her peripheral vision, she saw Rhinomon and Paul, but her eyes were focused instead on the helicopter hovering in the cloudless sky above.

Finally free from its restraints and heedless of the pitiful efforts of the Digimon pressing against its flank, Rhinomon took a heavy step forward and opened its mouth. "Atomic," it began to say, and a large scattering of blindingly white particles began to coalesce around its mouth into a sphere of energy.

Still on the ground, Emily tensed her body in anticipation.

Then the golden beast finished calling his attack, "Burst!" and everything exploded into action.

Rhinomon jerked its head upwards and fired a stream of brilliant destructive force into the sky just as Paul lunged for its neck and attempted to pull it away from Emily. The girl in question rolled over to try and shield Floramon's body with her own. As she did so, Emily's Digivice, haphazardly stuffed partway into the back pocket of her jeans, began to hum with energy and its screen displayed a single word: "Digivolution".

Emily was thrown unceremoniously off of Floramon as the Digimon became encased in an emerald sphere of light which was marked only by a darker green grid pattern. Outside of that shell, time slowed down as Floramon's voice rang out, "Floramon digivolve to-"

Inside of it, however, just as before, it was not actually her voice that spoke. Inside of it, again, just as before, Floramon was in the dark, cut off from any contact with her allies. Her only company inside of the sphere was a hurricane of energy that surged all around her, filling her with energy, wiping away all of the exhaustion of the battle. It felt good, and in her dizzy haze, the renewed Digimon struggled to remember what had been so bad about digivolving, why she had been apprehensive about trying it again. Then she was flayed alive.

Her skin came off quickly, torn away from her, and revealing the data that lay underneath, that made up the entirety of her physical form in this world. Just as she had before, Floramon screamed in pain, but no sound escaped her lips as they were torn off by some unknown force. The wire frame of Floramon's body shifted and changed, lengthening, thickening, and becoming covered in a new layer of skin that raced to cover her altered form. Then, the pain was overwhelmed by a new feeling of immense power, invincibility. The green sphere exploded into shards and revealed the result of Floramon's transformation. "Sunflowmon!"

The surge of energy released by Sunflowmon's emergence dazzled the other Digimon, but that was not all it did. The helicopter flying overhead, which had just began righting itself after dramatically swerving out of the way of Rhinomon's attack, experienced a catastrophic failure of all of its onboard electronic systems. Sparks danced inside of the cockpit as panels and instruments exploded. The helicopter lilted dangerously and its rotors slowed so that it began to drop.

Time seemed to slow as mounting horror dawned on the humans and the Digimon watching the plummeting helicopter. Only one of them could act, and so she did.

Sunflowmon's powerful legs bent and then she sprung from the ground and took to the sky, her ascent powered by the furious beating of her leaf-like wings. Single-minded determination was written on Sunflowmon's round yellow face as she drew nearer to the falling helicopter.

Rhinomon attempted to get her attention with a swipe of its deadly horn, but Sunflowmon easily avoided the attack. Paul was not so lucky and he was thrown off of Rhinomon's neck, with a metallic clang ringing out as one of his legs struck out and unintentionally met Rhinomon's chin with his steel-toed boots. That blow caused Rhinomon to turn to look down at where Paul and Emily were laying before it and the heavy Digimon drew closer, snorting menacingly. "Ah, crap," Paul groaned with the air he still had left in his lungs.

Up until that point, Dracmon had served a mostly superfluous role as a part of the team of Digimon trying to bring Rhinomon down. Now, he felt his tired and bruised body begin to thrum with energy like he had never felt before. "Boss?" he asked nervously, and then he was consumed by a sphere of bright light as Paul's solid white Digivice, forgotten and laying in the bushes by the other teenagers who hadn't joined him and Emily, glowed and read simply, "Digivolution".

Just like Floramon, Dracmon was taken somewhere else to a dark, barren area that lacked anything beyond himself and the coils of white energy that swirled around him. Far away, he heard a muffled voice cry, "Dracmon digivolve to-", and he could swear that that was his voice. But that thought was chased from his mind when he started being ripped apart, his body shifting and changing from an immense infusion of power.

Dracmon was completely unprepared for the pain which wracked his body as his skin was torn off and replaced and his body changed to one completely unrecognizable as his own. But the pain was only the price of the power, and this was more power than Dracmon had ever known.

When the sphere of blinding white light broke, it was accompanied by a deep baritone voice proclaiming, "Bakemon!" Dracmon's new form was that of a spectral Digimon which hovered a few feet off of the ground and looked like a young child's idea of a ghost since it appeared to be wearing a white sheet with holes cut in them. But upon closer examination, Bakemon's black eyeholes contained dim silver points of light and below that was a mouth of sharp teeth and a long tongue.

Rhinomon sought out Bakemon, but it was scarcely able to finish turning its head before Bakemon swooped past it and pulled Paul and Emily after it in order to carry them to the other tamers, all of whom were speechless.

While below Bakemon began flying around Rhinomon to prepare for its attack, Sunflowmon had reached the helicopter. Bending her petal-ringed head, Sunflowmon shouldered the craft and lowered it at a more controlled pace. With Bakemon distracting Rhinomon, Sunflowmon was able to deposit the helicopter on the other half of the highway's concrete divide, albeit on its side. Then she returned to join Bakemon and Rhinomon.

Bakemon hadn't been able to make any headway on his own, even after producing a set of menacing blue claws from out of his off-white covering, but dragging his talons along Rhinomon's side was enough to keep the armored Digimon's attention while Sunflowmon plowed into it like a linebacker. The initial impact managed to get Rhinomon tottering on its feet and Sunflowmon continued pushing. With an anguished roar of frustration, Rhinomon attempted to turn to face Sunflowmon, but it was unable to do so before it fell over on its side and revealed the slate gray skin of its unarmored belly.

Rhinomon struggled mightily to right itself, but Bakemon swept around its prone form and uttered a cry of "Zombie Claw!" before shooting its claws out to pierce Rhinomon's stomach. The wound released a tremendous cloud of white data that exploded out of the golden beast as it died and disintegrated.

All of the other Digimon took some of the data, but the biggest portion went to Sunflowmon and Bakemon. Once the cloud of white particles had been completely absorbed, they each reverted back to Floramon and Dracmon and sat down on the highway, suddenly exhausted. The tamers surged forward in a disorganized mob, each checking with their Digimon and then with each other.

None of them had the opportunity to digest what had happened before the wail of sirens snapped them out of their trance. "We ought to go," said Emily and her suggestion was met with a chorus of approving nods. The teenagers made their way off of the road, into the bushes, and back to their cars. They were careful all the while to try to avoid detection by any of the approaching emergency personnel, but none of them noticed the half-conscious would-be reporter who spied them through the window of the overturned helicopter.

Only Paul and Dracmon lingered behind, stuck in the tall grass on the side of I-35, searching. "I can't believe I dropped my phone," the greasy-haired boy muttered more to himself than to Dracmon.

Dracmon replied anyways, "We'll find it, boss, don't sweat it."

The pair were so focused on their search that they failed to notice the trio of grizzled-looking men approaching them until it was too late. "Looking for something, punk?" one of them sneered from behind his sunglasses. In one of his gloved hands, he held the missing white Digivice. In his other, he held a gun.

Paul slowly stood up and raised his hands above his head. "How about you put that piece away, officer?" he suggested cordially, but there was already sweat running down his forehead.

The other men had wordlessly fanned out and cut off potential escape routes. "We've got a few questions for you, kid," one of the other men said tonelessly and professionally behind Paul's back.

"No thanks, my, uh, brother and I need to go home."

"It wasn't a request," said the first man. "You and that Unknown are coming with us."

With that, Todd dropped his arms and shouted, "Dracmon, run!" only to be hit by a Taser from one of the men standing behind him. Todd dropped to the ground, writhing in agony and watched as Dracmon hesitated long enough so that he was tased as well.

"Round 'em up," the first man told the others and the three of them dragged the spasming teenager and Digimon off into a waiting van, leaving no trace that any of them had ever been there.

End of Season One: "Fantasies"