Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Digimon Dark Prophecies ❯ "The World As We Know It!" ( Chapter 4 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

[[[A/N]]]

This is a collaboration works between myself and Sin. We alternate chapters. This chapter is my turn, and hers will be next. Also, I would like to apologize for the wait between this chapter and the last one. I've had a lot of my free time taken up lately due to Drama at my high school. However, Drama is over with now, and my free time is flooding back to me.

[[[Disclaimer]]]

Digimon and 'The World As We Know It'. Don't own either. Want to own. Wouldn't be here writing fics and using song titles if I did.

'The World As We Know It' belongs to Scary Kids Scarring Kids, Digimon belongs to Bandai and Toei Animation.

Digimon Dark Prophecies

Chapter 2:

The World As We Know It

Elessa looked from her newly acquired necklace to the numerous faces around the table. Her eyes finally rested on Kai, who was currently balancing a spoon on the tip of his nose. Patamon sat in his seat beside Kai, and swayed to and fro with the line of the spoon. Ele was about to start yelling at Kai when she started to laugh at the dazed look on Patamon's face. She tried to keep it down, and ended up snorting at the clown act before her. Kai slammed the spoon on the table, and glared at Ele.

"GOD, Ele! I can't concentrate here with all your snorgling racketry!"

The smile on her face was instantly wiped away, and replaced by a snarl meaner than anything the children present had ever seen. Gemini merely raised an eyebrow at the sight.

"I told you, Kai, that you were to never to say that phrase again if you valued your life," she growled slow and deliberately, every syllable dripping with tenacity. "What happened last time we went through this?"

Kai cringed at her voice, while ten pairs of curious eyes shot back and forth between the two of them.

"Well, I STILL couldn't concentrate," he spat out in an attempt to gain his composure. "I mean, you'd think with all that racketry you were making, you'd be a bit more considerate."

"What's wrong with racketry, Ele?" Colline asked, trying to break the tension. "Is that even a word?"

"That's NOT the word he's not supposed to say," Ele snarled.

"Oh, you don't want him to say sno-" Ele's gaze cut Andrew off before he could finish the sentence. "Right. Got it. Won't say it."

"Say what? Snorgling?" Kai couldn't help himself as he blurted the question out rapid fire. He looked to Andrew as he asked it, then back to Ele, only to be promptly sent flying into the wall behind him.

"I won't hear it again, will I Kai?"

"No, ma'am," came the weak response from the wall, as Kai currently had his face embedded several inches into the wood.

"Good."

"Well, if you two are finished destroying my home," Gemini said, nonchalantly, "we can get to business. Outside, if you please?"

* * *

"So, all of you need to find Pixiemon. He will train you, and with that training, you can defeat the Viral Team."

Six humans and six digimon stood outside the cottage, under the shade of a large elm tree, a cool breeze ruffling their unkempt hair and blowing the tree branches about. Gemini looked at each of the other five humans, one at a time, accenting the severity of the coming mission.

"Where will we find Piximon?" Chris asked the guardian. "Where does she live?"

"HE lives where HE chooses to live," Gemini answered. Chris grimaced a bit at his gender confusion. "And therein lies your first task. You must find Piximon."

"But what if we can't find him before the Viral Team finds us?" Biyomon asked, her feathered face full of worry. "We aren't that strong yet."

"You should have no troubles. There is a tracker that Piximon made several years ago, just in case he should need to be called upon. Using this tracker, you can easily locate his home." Gemini sighed, not wanting to continue. "However..."

"However, what?" Elessa asked, not sure how things could get much worse.

"Boiling lava? Thundering blizzard? Godzilla with a head-cold? Ele once a mo-" Kai was introduced with a sharp elbow in the side before he could finish his slightly sexist statement amongst other nonsensical variables.

"I'm afraid it's worse than that," Gemini admitted, smiling at the two's bickering. Kai gasped sharply.

"You mean it's Godzilla with a head-cold, in a pit of boiling lava, during a thundering blizzard, arguing with Ele once a mo--OW!" The elbow came much harder this time.

"Wrong again. The tracker is split into 5 different pieces. And the Viral Team got a hold of them."

"What, so we're screwed?" Andrew asked, crossing his arms.

"Not exactly. The Viral Team was not able to use the 5 pieces. It seems they were encoded. And you have the decoders. Since they knew you were the only ones capable of using the tracker, they scattered the pieces. All you have to do is find them."

"Wait, why couldn't they use the tracker?" Agumon asked puzzled. "They're encoded?"

"Yes. You see, each piece is encoded in a certain complex language. When each of you 5 Digidestined came here, your body was converted to digital data. But before you were given life as a digital being, a small piece of code was added to your being; the Codex. This codex allows you to encode and decode in whatever coding it consists of. Since each of you has a different one, each of you is necessary to unlock the mystery of the tracker."

"I'm sorry, what?" Kai looked up to Gemini from where he lay on the ground, drawing figures in the dirt with Patamon. "I wasn't paying attention."

"Never mind him," Elessa told Gemini, not wanting to bother with his antics now. "So, how will we find the pieces of the tracker if they've been scattered?"

"Your digivices." Gemini pointed to the small, watch-like device on Elessa's waist. "One of the features is a radar-like device. It will show you where, in relation to you, the trackers are. But they'll only lock on to one at a time, and it may or may not be the one you can read."

"Well, let's get going," Chris said optimistically, looking to his comrades. "The sooner we ship out, the sooner we find that tracker.”

"Yeah, time to rock 'n' roll!" Kai leap to his feet. Patamon imitated him, but fell on his face as he attempted to balance on his hind feet. Kai let out a short laugh, and picked him up, setting Patamon on his shoulder. Patamon smiled his thanks and made his way to his usual nesting place atop Kai's head.

"Look, I'm locked onto one!" Colline said excitedly. She held out her pink digivice and sure enough, there was a blip on the screen. The other four pressed the same button she had, and had similar blips, off in different directions.

"Well, it's usually safer to stay together," Andrew noted. "But I think we can manage being apart long enough to get these pieces. We'll just meet back here, sound good?" The Digidestined nodded their agreement, before heading off their separate ways, partner digimon at their sides.

* * *

"How far is the piece now, Kai?"

Patamon laid himself across the top of Kai's head, leaving Kai to walk the dirt trails through a relatively thick forest. The paths beneath him were littered with root growths and small copses of foreign fungi. Occasionally, wild digimon could be spotted through the trees, but none came into view, so they seemed to be no immediate threat.

"What does it matter to you?" Kai shot up to his friend, a smile playing across his face. "You aren't even walking."

"Yeah, but I'm...I'm..." Patamon let out a loud yawn, and snuggled himself further into the tussle of Kai's hair. "I'm tired." Kai snickered at his friend.

"Go ahead and take a nap, Patamon," the teen offered. "I don't think I'll run into too much trouble in the next few minutes." Patamon took him up on the offer, and closed his heavy eyelids, the throes of sleep catching him almost instantly.

Kai smiled brightly at his friend, and made an attempt to pick a slightly smoother trail to walk, allowing Patamon his rest. Without someone to talk to, however, time seemed to drag on. The gamer quickly grew bored, and his mind wandered. Kai hadn't played a video game in...how long had it been? Two days? Three? He seemed to lose track in this Digital World. Sure, the sun and moon rose and set like it did in the Real World, but they seemed to follow a different number of hours. Time had no meaning anymore; the only thing that mattered was finding that piece of the tracker. Then, maybe they could get home, and Kai could get some gameage on. Oh, he was gonna play games for three days STRAIGHT to make up for the lost time!

Smiling to himself at the thought, Kai looked up from the forest floor where his eyes had been glued to for the past however long. Up ahead, the path he was walking ran into a gray wall, and stopped abruptly. In fact, this wall seemed to run the entire length of the forest. Kai scanned left and right, and saw no end to this wall. It seemed so out of place, not only in nature, but in color and texture. An alien to this world of the forest.

A door stood in the wall, directly in the middle of the path Kai walked upon. The deep brown wood of the door was adorned with strange symbols he couldn't quite understand. The symbols were carved into the wood with a relatively dull instrument by the looks of it; the rough hew of the wood looked splintery and dangerous. As Kai strode up to the door, he ran the fingertips of one hand down the face of it, from the very top just above his head, to chest height.

'Strange,' he thought to himself. 'The wood looks rough, yet it feels smooth. As if these symbols aren't really there.'

Kai pulled the digivice from where he stored it in his pocket, and pressed the button to place it into what he began to call the 'DNA' mode - Digivice Networking Access. He chuckled at his own joke again, poor though it was, and looked at the blip on his screen. It was closer now; he was definitely headed in the right direction. However, the blip happened to be on the other side of this wall.

"Just my luck," Kai said aloud to no one in particular. A twig snapped in the woods at the sound of his voice. He ignored it, and reached his hand for the door knob, its well oiled gears turning easily as he gently pushed the door open.

On the other side of the wall was...nothing. A darkness so present, so there, it almost seemed palpable as Kai reached a hand in and waved it around. Satisfied that there was indeed empty space present beyond the wall, dark thought it may be, Kai leaned his head down and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, a habit he picked up from years of logic use in video games. However, he forgot about Patamon, and the change in the level of Kai's head made Patamon tumble from his sleeping place.

"GAH!" A thud and a quiet curse ensued as Patamon hit the ground, jolting awake. "A simple 'wake up, Patamon' would suffice, you know," Patamon complained as he rubbed a rather large goose egg now present above his left eye.

"Sorry, what's that?" Kai looked down, honestly not knowing what he had said. His concentration is hard broken when he's thinking problems through.

"Ah, never mind," Patamon grumbled. He pulled himself to his feet and looked around. "So, are we close to the piece of the tracker, yet?"

"Well, we're closer than we were," Kai answered, almost as though he were avoiding the question. "However, the Digivice says it's on the other side of ol' smoky, here." Kai gave the smoky gray wall a resounding rap with his knuckles. "And the electric bill hasn't been payed in some time by the looks of things."

"So what are we waiting for?" Patamon looked through the door. "We just need to find a way to see in there, right? Maybe the Digivice can help?"

Kai pulled the Digivice out of his pocket again, and held it up to his face, taking a close look at few buttons present. Unfortunately, none of them were labeled, and he doubted he would get much light out of such a small electronic, even if there there was a button for light. The Digivice returned to its sanctum, Kai looked through the door.

"Well, maybe we can go by feel," he offered. "If we go really really slowly, we'll know if anything dangerous is there, so we don't go falling down a cliff or running into walls or something." Kai and Patamon looked at one another, then back through the door. Then back to each other, then back through the door.

With tentative steps, the duo inched their way into the darkness beyond the doorway, hoping to avoid any hazards that may be present. Patamon was somewhere suckered into taking point position, though he didn't care. 'I'm too short to be hit by most hazards that Kai might hit, and if I fall, I can fly myself to safety,' he snickered to himself, careful not to say anything aloud. Shortly thereafter they found themselves several feet into a place where they were deprived of sense; there was no light, no smell, no sound.

Kai chanced a look behind him to the door, and saw the forest they had just come from, the shadows of leaves playing across the dirt paths he had walked down just minutes before. The scenery looked so alien to him now as he plunged himself further and further into darkness. As Kai was about to turn around to continue the trek, a harsh cackle sounded from beside the doorway, and it slammed closed, a resounding click telling him the door had locked itself.

Half from surprise at the laugh, half from shock of being cut off from light, and half from his own clumsiness [and he blamed another half on his need to make a paradox out of a simple situation], Kai tripped over Patamon, the two of them falling to the floor in a pile. They were met with cold flagstone, perfectly fitted together and smooth as glass. As they began to pick themselves up, lights seemed to appear from nowhere and the room [or whatever they were in, Kai thought to himself] was illuminated as clearly as daylight. The cackle made itself known again, and Kai and Patamon whipped behind them to see who was there.

"Why hello, my guetht!" A large green blobish creature with a tongue nearly the length of his body hanging out of his mouth and two large snail-like eye stalks stood beside the door. The...thing...spoke with a heavy lisp. 'As would be expected with a get-up like that,' Kai thought to himself.

"I thee you have brought yourthelveth into my lair! Now you are caught within my cluthith, and there ith no ethcape in your theuture!"

"Whatever this thing is, it sure is cocky," Kai whispered to Patamon behind his hand.

"Hey, no talking unleth I thay you can!" the blob furiously spat at Kai. Quite literally, in fact, as Kai rather disgustedly discovered, wiping large amounts of saliva from his face.

"Sexy," Kai stated in a non-chalant tone. "Well, listen, we'd love to stay and chill, buddy, but me and my friend here got some searching to get done, so we'll chat another time Mr...?"

"It'th Numemon!" the blob declared, proud of his name. "And you're not going anywhere. Direct orderth from the both himthelf!"

"Yeah, see, about that," Kai started to explain. He and Patamon began a slow backwards step.

"We're kinda late for an appointment," Patamon continued.

"Yeah, I'm supposed to get my eyebrows waxed."

"And I've got this killer kink in my neck I need to get massaged out."

"And don't forget, I need to stop by the tailors to get that zoot suit fitted for the dance next week."

"I need to clean my nails."

"And then there's that gallon of milk my mom asked me to grab from the store before I get home."

"We just don't have the time." The pair of them ended their ranting together, having made about ten feets' distance away from Numemon. They quickly turned around and ran away, not caring where they ended up. They only wished to get away from Numemon.

* * *

"Jeez, Andrew, when are we gonna get to the fragment?"

Andrew looked down to his yellow dinosaur friend and smiled. They'd been walking for a good twenty minutes, and the scenery didn't change much. Just more and more hilly trails with a forest to one side and a beach to the other. Clouds in the sky played shadows on the ground, and the occasional marine digimon broke the surface of the water, sending up a mountain of spray. All in all, it was a peaceful setting.

"Quit your complaining," Andrew answered Agumon. "We're getting closer, aren't we?"

"Yeah, but I don't see why it's taking so long for us to get there." Agumon folded his arms over his chest and huffed, sending up a small tendril of fire. "It feels like we've been walking forever!"

"Yeah, yeah. Complaining only takes more of your energy, you know. Save it for the walk."

A rustle at the edge of the woods caught their attention. A shrub seemed to be moving, and not with the wind either. Agumon looked up to Andrew and started to make random hand movements.

"You have no idea what that means, do you Agumon?" Andrew asked, confused at what he was doing.

"Not at all. But I thought you might."

"Nope. Wastin' your time."

"Right then. Shall I just blast him and get it over with?"

"Sounds good to me."

"PEPPER BREATH!"

Agumon let out a fireball at the shrub and it burst into flames. A large gray rabbit-looking creature hopped out from behind it. He savagely beat at his ear, which was currently on fire.

"Geez, I'd better get payed GOOD for this one!" the Digimon grumbled, not aware that he had revealed himself.

"Can we...help you?" Andrew offered. As if slapped in the face, the gray rabbit turned to them and stared.

"Yeah, you can start by not setting fire to me again!" he snarled. "And second, you can turn yourselves over to me, since you won't be getting much further anyways."

"Who are you, anyways?" Agumon asked.

"I'm Gazimon," the rabbit snarled. "And no more questions!"

"Well, what if we have more things we want to know?" Andrew asked, a smirk playing at his lips.

"Well, you'll just have to go without answ-" Gazimon stopped as he realized he answered another question. "SILENCE!"

"Think you've got another one, Agumon?" Andrew asked his companion, looking down with his eyebrows raised.

"Yeah, I think I can manage another shot." Agumon took in a deep breath.

"WAIT! STOP! I'LL GET MY FRIENDS HERE!" Gazimon started to yell at them, his paws outstretched.

"Why should we stop?" Andrew asked. He was suddenly grabbed from behind by a pair of Gazimon. while a third held his arms to prevent him from attacking. Agumon was held in a similar predicament.

"That's why," the leader Gazimon answered. "You have no choice. You'll be taken off to The Cells now."

The Gazimon strode up to the two of them, and with one swift club of his paw to their heads, knocked the two of them out cold.

* * *

Kai and Patamon quickly got themselves lost in the house, for that was what it seemed to be. Rooms flowed together and seemed to go in an infinite of circles. The off-white of the walls started to blend in with the beige of the flagstone floor, and the ceiling remained shrouded in darkness as the light only made itself so high up. Furniture quickly began to look familiar with one another, as the decor seemed designed to cause confusion and chaos.

Out of breath and thoroughly tired, Kai and Patamon plopped onto a sofa they cam across. They believed to have gotten away from Numemon. As they tried to get their breath back, Kai began to rub the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger again. They hadn't two minutes notice, however, before a familiar laugh sounded from behind the sofa they sat on.

"You can't get away throm me!" Numemon taunted. "Thith ith my houth. There'th no beating me in my houth."

"The hell do you want from us!" Kai yelled, jumping to his feet. His hands instantly shot into his usual imitation of fighting stances from video games. While he looked rather foolish and stupid, he could usually hold is own fighting in this manner.

"I want you to turn yourthelvth over to the both, and hand over the necklath!" Numemon demanded.

"What are you talking about?" Patamon asked. "We don't have any necklace!"

"Yeth you do!" Numemon spat back. "You retheived it from Gemini."

"Received it from...You don't mean that funny lookin' thing she gave to Elle do, ya?"

"Elle? Who'th Elle?"

Kai realised his mistake immediately. 'Numemon didn't know who got the necklace, only that Gemini had given it to one of us,; he reasoned. 'If his 'boss' wanted the necklace, then the boss would have told Numemon that I had it. However, Numemon was told I did when I don't. So, that means that there are likely other creatures like Numemon, going after the others. And if Numemon can get a hold of his boss, he'll be able to tell them to look for Elle. Shit!'

"I'll athk you again, Kai. Who ith Elle?" Numemon advanced on Kai and Patamon, his presence becoming increasingly menacing. Kai and Patamon huddled together on the sofa and inched away.

Something caught Kai's attention from the corner of his eye, and as he looked over, he saw several more Numemon coming through doorways into the room. They all had the same menacing look, the same heartless eyes, the same reckless abandon. And they were all watching the team on the sofa.

* * *

Chris and Lopmon sat hunched over in the corner of a dingy cell. Dirt covered flagstone made up three walls, the floor and the ceiling. A typical set of bars made up the last wall, creating the picture perfect dungeon set-up. The sound of water dripping in the distance completed the setting with audio. One window high on the back wall told Chris it was still light out, though for how long he didn't know. He couldn't even say for sure how long he'd been there.

The Digidestined and his digipartner looked up as the door to the cell opened and two figures were gruffly tossed in. The doors were quickly slammed shut again, though Chris knew it made no difference anyways. There was nothing he could have done, and Lopmon had already tried to fight him before, to no avail.

Making his way to the two figures that were thrown into the cell, Chris recognized the duo at once. Andrew and Agumon! They'd been caught as well, it seemed.

"Andrew! Agumon! Wake up!" Chris started to shake the two of them roughly, and Lopmon started to help. Slowly but surely, they came to.

"What happened?" Andrew asked. He sat up, holding his head. "Feels like I got clubbed by a bat."

"Try a rabbit," Agumon offered, sitting up himself and holding his own head. "Gazimon is a real pain in the neck."

"Nah, I think the pain's a bit further north."

"Thank goodness you're ok!" Lopmon sighed in relief. "I was worried about you guys."

"Hush up in there!" a voice yelled from down the hallway. A cup was thrown, and it shattered several feet from the steel bars making their barricade.

"So what do we do now?" Chris asked, quieting his voice.

"We need to find a way out of here," Andrew replied. "If only Kai were here, he could find a way out of this. He can get out of anything."

"Like that time he set off a stink bomb in the girls bathroom?" Chris asked, smiling. "I don't think we're talking about the same sort of trouble that we need to get out of here."

As if on cue, there was another bang as the door to the cell burst open and two more figures were tossed inside. The door was quickly slammed shut again.

"Boy, of all the lousy, no good tricks they could have thrown at us, it HAD to be the 'strength in numbers' card, didn't it? Oh, if I could give him a piece of my mind!" Kai started to rant in a phony accent as he picked himself off the floor, rubbing his hind end.

"Well, they were stronger than me," Patamon admitted. "Even one of them would have been enough to beat me."

"Nice to see you, too," Andrew shot at the angered teen.

"Hey, it's Miss Muffet and Little Bo Peep! Nice ta see ya guys again!" Kai's friends shrugged off the insults; they'd grown used to them long beforehand.

"We need to find a way out of here, Kai. Any chance you can think of anything?" Chris looked around the cell. "There's not much to work with, but if anyone can find a way, it's you."

Kai took a long look around the cell, taking it all in; the walls, the ceiling, the window. Finally, his eyes rested on the bars holding them in. He walked over, and took a good look at them, rapping one with his knuckle a few times to check the integrity.

"Yeah, I think I can get us out of here." Kai smiled as he worked out his plan. "If we can use Agumon's Pepper Breath to super-heat a few of these bars, then have Lopmon use his Blazing Ice, I think the shock of the cold should make these weak enough to break, if not cause them to shatter themselves."

"One problem, genius," Andrew pointed out. "How are we supposed to get away with doing all this? Won't the guards know what we're up to?"

"Oh, yeah. Damn." Kai sat down on the floor, not sure what else to do. "I'm out of plans."

Andrew and Kai began to argue over Kai's inability to think of a way out, and Andrew should have thought of something before he even got there, and Kai really should be able to think of more than one plan, and Andrew just doesn't want to admit that he's inferior to Kai. Chris sat himself down on the floor against the wall, and Lopmon sat beside him.

"Maybe the Digivice has something that can help us?" Lopmon offered.

"Hey, yeah...If it can track the pieces of the tracker, maybe it can get a hold of Elle and Colline!"

Chris pulled his blue Digivice out quickly, and pressed buttons at random. Suddenly, the fight between Andrew and Kai broke up as their Digivices began to give off a white light. They pulled them out, and pressed a single button. On screen now was the piece of the tracker they'd each been locked onto before, and a second dot, this one placed only a few feet away. They looked over at Chris who merely smiled and shrugged.

"Don't ask me what I did. It just worked." Kai looked back between his Digivice and Chris.

"If our Digivices give your position in relation to us..." Kai began.

"Then Elle's and Colline's will have his position as well!" Andrew finished for him.

The three of them smiled jubilantly, and laughed as it seemed they had beat the system. There was a way to get a hold of the girls, and THEY could provide a distraction while they put Kai's plan into action, and bust out of the prison cell. Kai looked back down to his Digivice, then looked over at Andrew's.

"Hey, check this out," Kai said. "The piece of the tracker I was locked onto isn't very far. And it seems to be in the same place your piece is, too." Andrew took a look and nodded as he noticed it as well.

"Well, what about my piece?" Chris asked, holding his Digivice to the others as he stood up. Sure enough, the piece of the tracker he was locked onto seemed to be in the same place as Kai and Andrews' pieces.

"This is great, now the girls can help us bust out of here, and before we leave we can knife three fragments of the tracker! It's great!" Andrew laughed as he sat back against the wall of the cell.

"Now all we have to do is play the waiting game," agreed Kai, resting himself against another wall and the floor. Patamon curled up beside him, and drifted off to sleep again.

[[[End Note: FINALLY! It is done! Now, on to Sin. See ya next time kiddies!]]]

TBC

[Tekai, Out]