Episode 1.03: Satellite Mind

For a minute after he first awoke, Joshua thought that all of the events of the previous night might have been a dream. Then he felt his body's lingering aches and pains and saw the creature sleeping on the floor next to his bed. The blue-feathered Digimon (Penguinmon, Joshua remembered) was perched on a makeshift nest of blankets that his host had pulled out of the closet and piled on the carpeted floor for him. Penguinmon was sound asleep, and Joshua realized that this was the first time that he had seen the jittery creature in a state of relative calm. Of course, this tranquility was immediately shattered by the sound of pounding feet coming down the basement stairs. "Penguinmon!" Joshua hissed as he sprung from his bed. When the feathered Digimon did not respond, Joshua shook him and said, "My mom's coming! You have to hide!"

The small creature's eyes shot open and he let out a small squawk that Joshua quickly muffled by clamping his hand over Penguinmon's beak. Joshua then pushed Penguinmon into the closet and shut the door just as his mother entered his bedroom.

"Did you just get up?" the reedy woman asked, her blue eyes quickly passing over the mess of blankets on the ground to her son standing awkwardly with his back pressed against his closet.

"Yeah," said Joshua before he took a deliberate step away from his closet.

His mother looked confused and worried. "It's almost eleven, are you feeling sick?" Joshua's mother placed her hand against his forehead and her frown deepened.

"I'm fine," said Joshua, pulling away from her touch. "I just stayed up too late, okay?"

"You couldn't sleep? Are you feeling sad now that the school year is over?"

"Oh, come on, mom!" Joshua groaned. "I'm not suicidal! I just couldn't get out of bed!"

Joshua's mother didn't look too convinced, but she kept her concern nonverbal. "Okay, well, I'm about to visit your sister for lunch and then run a few other errands. Do you want to come with me?"

"No thanks, I'm good," Joshua said quickly.

"Okay." Joshua's mother frowned again, before she said, "There's plenty of food in the fridge so you can make yourself some breakfast or lunch, or both." Before she left the room, Joshua's mother gave her son another glance and said, "And try to get out of the house and do something. If I find out that you spent the first day of summer vacation holed up in your room, I really am going to get worried."

With that exhortation, she left and as soon as Joshua heard the telltale sound of his mother going back upstairs, he let out the breath that he had been holding. Joshua let Penguinmon out of the closet, but when the blue Digimon tried to speak, he was harshly shushed as Joshua's dark brown eyes flickered up to the ceiling until he heard the garage door open with a heavy whirring and, after a few seconds more, close with the same telltale sound. Only then did Joshua turn to Penguinmon and say, "All clear."

"What was that about?" Penguinmon asked while he attempted to disentangle himself from an oversized t-shirt which had fallen on him.

"I think my mom would totally freak out if she saw a Digimon in my room."

"Why? Does she not like Digimon?"

"Well, there aren't exactly a lot of you guys walking around," Joshua said, before muttering, "and she think that the card game is a waste of time and money." Penguinmon gave him an odd look, so Joshua added, "Before last night I didn't think Digimon were real."

"Before last night I did not think that humans were real," Penguinmon echoed with a cock of his head to one side.

After he had gotten dressed, Joshua led Penguinmon upstairs and to the kitchen. The unlikely pair looked through the fridge, but while Joshua found the materials for his own meal, Penguinmon didn't see the appeal of any of the food that Joshua offered him. Finally, a solution was found in the form of a dozen unopened cans of tuna in the cupboard next to the dishwasher. Joshua opened two of them up and then tried to avoid watching Penguinmon tear into the tins of fish. Joshua ate his own food slowly and talked in-between his measured bites. "Do you know why you're here?" he asked.

"No," Penguinmon answered, his yellow beak marred by pink flecks of tuna, "do you?"

"Well, if I have a Digivice, then that should make me a Digimon tamer, right?"

"A what?"

"It's kind of hard to explain," Joshua said. He took a drink from his glass of milk to give himself some time to think. "Basically, a kid gets a Digivice and a Digimon partner and they fight bad Digimon. That's how it's supposed to work."

"What makes a Digimon bad?" Penguinmon asked as he struggled to pull himself into the chair at the other end of the table from Joshua.

"If they're doing bad stuff like attacking people and being a jerk, that makes them bad, I guess. Like that little guy, DemiDevimon, from last night."

Penguinmon silently mulled over Joshua's words, while the teenager finished eating. After he put his dishes in the dishwasher, Joshua broke the silence by saying, "I'm going to take a shower. Do you want to watch some TV while I'm in there?"

"What is TV?" was Penguinmon's reply.

Joshua grinned and he walked into the living room, grabbed a slender gray remote as he passed the couch, and turned on that room's television. The screen came to life in a blaze of lights and sounds. Penguinmon's beak hung open as he marveled at the electronic images playing out above his head.

Joshua handed the awestruck Digimon the remote and showed him how to work it. "This button will make it louder when you press it, this one below it will make it quieter," he explained to Penguinmon, "and these two will let you change what you're watching. Have fun!"

With that, Joshua ducked his head under the low ceiling over the basement stairs, and took his shower. It was much needed. Although Joshua had managed to wash off most of the mud that he and Penguinmon had collected with the garden hose last night, this was much better. Joshua still had to figure out if and how he could salvage his mud-stained jeans, but for now the shower washed away his worries along with the lingering flecks of dried mud that dissolved in the water and ran down the drain. His tranquil shower was disrupted while Joshua was rinsing the shampoo out of his shaggy dishwater blonde hair when Penguinmon came into the bathroom.

"Joshua, are you in here?" asked Penguinmon.

The teenager jumped and pulled the curtain out of Penguinmon's claws as he said, "Jeez, Penguinmon! Haven't you ever heard of knocking?"

"No?" the fowl intoned before continuing. "Anyways, I had a question about the people in the box and when I was looking for you, this thing was making a lot of noises."

Joshua peeked out from behind the shower curtain and saw the Penguinmon had his phone, his Digivice now, clasped gingerly between his claw-tipped wings. The device was not beeping like it had earlier, but its screen was flashing with some kind of notification that Joshua could not make out through the steam, especially without his glasses. "Okay, I'll be out in a minute," he said.

Penguinmon looked at him expectantly.

"So, can you wait out there?"

The Digimon cocked his head to one side again before shrugging as best his body could allow and leaving the bathroom without shutting the door behind him.

Joshua sighed and reached across the room to close the door before he shut off the water and dried himself off. After he was dry and dressed, Joshua stepped out and took his phone from Penguinmon. The flashing screen read "Digimon Detected!" and when Joshua tapped on those words, his phone's screen reverted to the radar which had led him to the construction site the night before. This time, the squares of the grid were much smaller than they had been that time, with a green dot flashing on the edge of the screen. Joshua turned to Penguinmon and said, "Why didn't you tell me this thing picked up another Digimon?"

"It did?" Penguinmon asked.

"It said so on the screen. Can't you read?"

"No."

"I think we should go check it out."

"Can we just stay here and watch more of the people in the box?"

"Come on, we'll just go see what's going on," insisted Joshua. "We won't fight whatever Digimon it is unless you want to, okay?"

Penguinmon looked skeptical, but eventually he sighed, "Okay."

Satisfied, Joshua finished getting dressed and filled up a water bottle for their trek. The main problem to solve was how Penguinmon could travel with him. After some resistance from the Digimon in question, Joshua produced a large, emptied backpack in which Penguinmon could fit without being completely uncomfortable.

The two of them had just finished wheeling Joshua's bike out of the garage when he set the empty bag down. "I know this isn't perfect," Joshua admitted sheepishly, "but it's the best I can do right now."

Penguinmon gave him a pitiful look but crawled into the bag and let the human zip up the backpack around him until just his blue head was sticking out.

As he was lifting his passenger onto the back of the bike and securing the bag to the bike, Joshua groaned, "It'll be a bit of a trip, so just try to relax. Boy, you're heavy. If you have to say anything, try to talk when we're moving so no one gets suspicious."

Penguinmon nodded as best he could from his unhappy confinement, and Joshua walked the bike out to the street before hopping onto it and, after adjusting to his passenger's extra weight, heading north. Joshua counted himself lucky that he had taken his schoolbooks or, more often, his Digimon cards, on bike rides before, and so he was able to fall into a comfortable pace as he headed toward whatever new Digimon had popped up on the radar.

It was a quiet summer day that saw people of all ages out and about enjoying the sunny weather that had followed the previous night's storm. Every couple of minutes, Joshua would come to a halt and check his progress on his Digivice and adjust his course accordingly. Between those stops, he and Penguinmon talked about the sky, the sounds they heard, and other little things that were perfect topics for such a relaxed day. They attracted a few curious looks from pedestrians, but no one questioned Joshua about the strange stuffed animal that he appeared to be carrying on his back. After heading north toward the heart of the city for a while, Joshua pulled his bike off of the street and onto the sidewalk before coming to a complete stop in order to check the Digivice's radar once more.

"Okay," he said to Penguinmon after he checked to make sure that they were alone, "it looks like this Digimon is near Minnehaha Falls."

"What is so funny?" the blue creature asked from inside the backpack.

"Nothing."

"Then why did you laugh?"

That confused Joshua for a moment. "Oh," he said, "that's just what they're called."

The falls were a series of small waterfalls that were accessible by a number of trails and paths, including a series of wooden platforms connected by stairs that allowed for the truly inspired to get as close as they dared to the waterfalls and peer into the network of caves that interspersed the columns of roaring water. The area was a popular spot for adolescents to make dates and many of the youth around Minneapolis enjoyed their first kiss within fifty yards of crashing water. As such, Joshua counted himself lucky when he walked his bike onto the start of the hardwood platform just off of the sidewalk and saw that there was no one else around.

That isn't to say that everything was normal at the falls that day. A thick fog cut across the wooden platform with a sharp border between itself and the clear air where Joshua was standing. The mist, which resembled that which Joshua had seen at the construction site the previous night, was concealing the caves and some of the waterfalls behind a heavy white veil. This incidence of fog, however, was made all the more unsettling by the lack of any storm or sleepiness to explain to Joshua what he was seeing. As he stepped past the incorporeal barrier, the fine hairs on Joshua's arms and the back of his neck stood on end.

"You were right," Penguinmon moaned from inside of Joshua's backpack, "there is a Digimon here."

"What makes you so sure?" Joshua asked as he took the bag off of his bike and freed Penguinmon from its confines, all without looking at the Digimon. He was too busy swiveling his head around to investigate the mist around them.

"All Digimon can detect others when they are nearby to some degree. It is like a feeling in the air, or a taste on your tongue," Penguinmon rambled. "I cannot explain it exactly."

Joshua pondered this new information. "Well, does this feeling' tell you where the other Digimon is right now?"

Penguinmon pointed with one of his wings to the mouth of the largest cave on the rock face. "It is in there, but it feels strange somehow. Like the other Digimon is sending vibrations in our direction. I think that it is trying to sense me, too."

"How about we send some vibrations back?" Joshua asked with a grin before cupping his hands around his mouth and hollering, "Hello? Is there anyone in there?"

His voice pierced the veil of falling water and echoed inside of the network of caves, softening and distorting with each repetition. Just when it seemed as though the noise had finished bouncing off of the walls, a new sound rang out from the inside of the cave. Each echo of this new speaker seemed to get louder for Joshua and Penguinmon as the reverberations traveled from the depths of the caves to the outside air. Only two words were uttered, each one was delivered jerkily and there was a hard stop between them. "There. Is."

"That voice sounded like mine," Joshua marveled aloud.

"Okay, great, we know there is a Digimon in there," Penguinmon said quickly. "Can we please leave now?"

"But we don't know what we're dealing with here!"

"Hold it, Joshua," retorted Penguinmon. "That was not what you said! You said that we would not have to fight any other Digimon if I did not want to!"

"We can investigate it without fighting," said Joshua testily.

"That Digimon is already trying to sense me! If we go into those caves, it will definitely try to fight me!" Penguinmon squawked, the last words echoing down the caves just as Joshua's earlier shouting had.

Again, a stilted response came ringing back, but the words were Penguinmon's this time, "Fight. Me." Then came a great rustling sound like a tablecloth fluttering in the wind.

Joshua and Penguinmon looked at one another, matching looks of unease painted on their faces. Before either of them could say anything, a monstrous creature emerged from the largest cave.

It was an ugly, spindly bat-like Digimon, hunchbacked and covered in blue fur, save for a white face, underbelly, and neck. Four thin limbs dangled from the malformed creature, but instead of being tipped with anything that existed in the animal kingdom, each one ended in a wickedly curved sickle, as did the strange Digimon's tail. Its face was a mess of needle-pointed teeth and bulging yellow eyes. As it emerged from the dank cave that had housed it, the Digimon unfolded its red, leathery wings and let out an ear-splitting screech that caused both Joshua and Penguinmon to double over and cover their ears to try and block out the painful wail.

"Why is it always bats?" Joshua yelled over the terrible din.

"What do we do?" asked Penguinmon, matching his companion's volume.

"Fight or flight, you pick!"

"I can't fly!" Penguinmon cried. The Digimon took one look at the waking nightmare now circling in the sky above them and made his decision. "Run!"

Joshua and Penguinmon's escape was cut short when the flying Digimon overhead shrieked, "Crazy Sonic Blaster!" As soon as the words had left its mouth, its voice became vibrations, a powerful wave which tore a hole through the wood in front of Penguinmon. Not yet satisfied, the Digimon prepared another attack which destroyed Joshua's escape route as well. Both Joshua and Penguinmon held their breaths in anticipation of the next attack, but the grotesque Digimon only forced its toothy maw into a smile and, with a powerful flap of its sickle-tipped wings, drifted backwards into the deep fog so that it became obscured by the heavy white mist.

"Are you okay?" Joshua asked Penguinmon breathlessly.

"I am alive."

"I guess we have to fight our way out," Joshua said before he thought to add, "sorry."

Penguinmon tried to push down the bile rising in his throat. "Can you use your Digivice to pinpoint where it is now?"

Joshua took out his phone and opened up the scanning app he had used on DemiDevimon previously before swinging his phone around himself in a wide arc. Finally, his phone's screen displayed an image of the Digimon that just had attacked them. "Pipismon," Joshua read, "is a Champion-level Digimon." He was about to read more when he looked up to see the monster from his screen diving at him, its sickles raised and its jaws hanging open and dripping with drool.

"Sky Jacker!" Pipismon screamed just as Joshua dived for the wooden floor of the platform on which he was standing. The bat-like Digimon barely flew over its intended victim so that its sickles struck the wood just above where Joshua's head had landed. With a frustrated shriek, Pipismon flapped its ungainly wings and flew back into the mist to prepare for its next attack.

Watching Pipismon's clumsy flight gave Joshua an idea. "Penguinmon," he shouted, "try aiming for its wings like you did to DemiDevimon last night!"

"Um, I was not really aiming then to be honest," came Penguinmon's response. "It was only luck that my attack worked as well as it did."

"Well, see if you can get lucky again!" Joshua yelled impatiently. "If we can cripple it, or even slow it down, we should be able to get out of here safely!"

With a heavy sigh, Penguinmon rose up to his full height, unimpressive as it was, and scanned the air around him and Joshua for Pipismon. Penguinmon got his chance when the larger Digimon emerged from the cover of the fog in order to launch another attack. As Pipismon drew nearer to where he and Joshua were standing, Penguinmon clenched his eyes shut and took a deep breath. Then, with a cry of "Ice Prism!", Penguinmon he launched a small frozen pyramid out of his mouth with all of the strength that he could muster.

Joshua's plan quickly fell apart when Pipismon countered Penguinmon's attack by aiming a short high-pitched sonic burst at the incoming missile. The icy shape which Penguinmon had created was completely shattered, and Penguinmon had to scramble out of the way as Pipismon continued to advance on him. Luckily, Pipismon appeared to have decided to toy with its prey and scraped its sickles over the observation deck's wooden surface before returning to the sky.

Reluctantly, Penguinmon conjured another simple shape out of ice and fired it at Pipismon's retreating form. This time the attack landed, striking Pipismon directly on its hunched back. The flying Digimon gnashed its teeth in surprise and wheeled through the air to retaliate against Penguinmon.

"I thought I told you to aim for its wings!" shouted Joshua.

Penguinmon turned to him to protest, "I am doing my best here!"

Joshua opened his mouth to continue arguing with the stout Digimon, but his intentions changed as soon as he saw Pipismon sailing through the air towards Penguinmon. "Look out!"

Penguinmon turned around and leapt backwards just as Pipismon dive-bombed the platform again. This time instead of landing a glancing blow against the floor around Penguinmon and Joshua, Pipismon remained on the ground and scrambled towards Penguinmon with its deadly limbs. During its advance, Pipismon's eyes were staring at Penguinmon and it was constantly snapping its mouth full of needle-like teeth at the smaller Digimon.

Despite the fog, Joshua could see that both Penguinmon and his pursuer were rapidly running out of room on the wooden surface. For Pipismon, it would not be a problem, but Joshua wasn't confident that the Digimon named after a flightless bird could say the same. "You have to fight back, Penguinmon! Now!"

"I hope you are right." Penguinmon whimpered through his gritted beak as he began gathering the energy he needed for another attack.

Once again, Penguinmon launched a small frozen shape from his beak, and once again Pipismon countered with a sonic blast. The ice shattered again, but the two Digimon's close proximity caused the fragments to strike each of them. Penguinmon managed to shield himself by crossing his wings in front of his face, but Pipismon was less fortunate. Due to an unfortunate combination of surprise and clumsiness, the larger Digimon did not react in time to avoid receiving a wave of icy shards in its wide-open mouth. With a horrible scream of agony, Pipismon abandoned its intended prey and instead lurched back into the foggy sky.

"Wow," Joshua said breathlessly. "What just happened?"

"Is that not what you thought would happen?" wondered Penguinmon.

Their surprise was interrupted as Pipismon spread its red wings and gave another ear-splitting shriek before turning the harsh sound into words. "Crazy Soni-" it started to announce, only to be cut off by a new voice.

"Pepper Breath!" the new arrival roared, and the two words were punctuated by a ball of fire tearing through the mist and striking the side of Pipismon's face. The flying Digimon crashed into the deck across from the waterfalls with a heavy thud followed by a pitiable groan.

As Pipismon struck the section of platform in front of him, Penguinmon let out a startled squawk, but Joshua's attention was glued to the area of the fog where the flaming projectile had appeared. His curiosity was quickly rewarded as two figures stepped out of the cloying mist.

The shorter of the two was a muscular reptile covered in black scales whose powerful limbs ended in sharp-looking claws. Above a mouth overflowing with teeth like a crocodile's, two green eyes and nostrils tipping a short snout were all focused on Pipismon. Despite the fact that a creature that looked like it might have appeared in Jurassic Park had emerged from the white fog around the falls, Joshua was more startled by the teenager standing next to it.

"Todd?"

The broad-shouldered boy turned to Joshua and raised one eyebrow behind his pair of mirrored sunglasses. Todd's whole essence, from the dusting of stubble on his face to his stiff gait and humorless expression, worked to project an aura of confidence and maturity that Joshua could not imagine matching at the age of sixteen. "You know me," Todd said. It was very nearly a question, but not quite.

"Yeah, we were-" Joshua started to say before he made himself stop. "I watched you win the state championship yesterday."

"Oh," said Todd simply. His head dipped so that he could note the phone in Joshua's hand. "You have a Digivice," he remarked, with only the barest of hint of surprise entering his voice, "so you're not just any kid."

Joshua bristled at Todd's insult, but still he asked, "Do you have one too?"

Todd gave Joshua rolled his dark eyes behind his sunglasses before he pulled out a phone just like Joshua's, although instead of being white with blue accents, Todd's Digivice was black and gray. "I thought I was the only tamer," he muttered to himself.

"Um, I apologize for interrupting," Penguinmon interrupted, "but what do we do about this Digimon here?"

Todd glanced back at the Digimon standing to his side and a few paces behind him and curtly said, "Put that thing out of its misery, BlackAgumon."

Pipismon raised its half-charred head and fixed its now one-eyed gaze on the boys and the other Digimon inhabiting the fog. "Misery," it repeated in Todd's voice, albeit tinged with what sounded like traces of static.

BlackAgumon stepped forward and, with another roar of "Pepper Breath", launched a second flaming sphere at the prone Pipismon. The second attack finished the first's attempt at destroying the bat-like Digimon's head. The rest of Pipismon's corpse began to disintegrate, but, in the midst of his shock and horror, Joshua noticed that the floating fragments did not hang in the air this time but rather drew rapidly towards BlackAgumon and were absorbed through his scaly hide. When there was no trace of the vanquished Digimon left, BlackAgumon stepped back to his previous post behind Todd like a soldier falling in line.

Both Joshua and Penguinmon were stunned by what they had just witnessed, but snapped out of their respective dazes when Todd and BlackAgumon began to walk back into the rapidly dissipating fog. "Wait," Joshua said. "Can I get your number or something? I have so many questions! Plus, we could team up!"

At that last suggestion, Todd spun around on his heel. "Listen, kid," he said in a steely voice that brought back plenty of memories for Joshua, "just because I saved you doesn't make us a team. BlackAgumon's all the help I need. A wannabe tamer and his pet Muppet would just hold us back." With that, the Todd turned back around and left with his silent Digimon trailing behind him.

Joshua could only clench his fists in frustration as his trembling mouth formed the shape of half thought-out curses. His rage subsided when he felt Penguinmon gently tugging on his leg. "Can we please leave?"

After letting out a shaky breath, Joshua replied, "Yeah. Let's go home."

As they walked back to Joshua's parked bike, Penguinmon asked, "Joshua, what is a Muppet?"