Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Digimon: Data Storm ❯ Troublesome sunburn ( Chapter 4 )

*Jean-Seb enters from left-hand stage with his hair mated back and glistening with gel*

Well, well, look what we have here.

*His hair catches on fire as Circéus enters from the other side, sighing*

Cut it off with the Snape impression! This is Digimon:Data Storm, not anything official, so the trademark belongs to somebody else, leave us alone!

*Johnny enters from left-hand stage, trying to sort through a pile of paper*

Oh, and we need to thank... Where did I put it?

*He extracts a single sheet, causing the rest to fall down.*

Oh, right, all the thanks in the world to Shirubie, radagast and JJriddler a.k.a. Oreo man.

TËAHMÄN IN TÖNALMIQUILIZTLI - Troublesome sunburn

"And then there is them."

He shook himself free of her uncertain grasp and walked to the banisters lining the front of the board.

"I am here, Tönalmicqui." An orderly row of seven child-level digimon, all wearing elaborate feather headdresses, were standing behind a tall, fiery and smirking lizard.

"Well, well. Look what we've got there. Seems like you finally accepted your fate. I'd have though the Unwritten Book would have helped you do that a long time ago." Ohocelotzintli gave him a defiant look before kicking the rope-ladder down.

"I did accept it. Just don't go thinking that will keep me from fighting it's application down to my very last shred of sanity," he retorted before going down.

When Andrea looked up, her eyes crossed Huehuenpol's before he disappeared from sight. He nodded at her. Eztepoztli noticed and panicked. Oh no... He hasn't...

"Chicömic! Mäcuillic! Seize him!"

A black-colored lizard, otherwise identical to Ähuïleh Agumon, and a pink bird rushed to await Gazimon at ground level. Andrea stood up.

"NO YOU DON'T!" Everyone froze for a second and Sepikmon panicked even more. Andrea walked to the banister and pointed an accusing finger at the leading digimon. "I am not letting you kill him when it's the only thing you've ever been able to do with your life! Lies are no reason to kill people!"

"How dare you!" Tönalmicqui suffocated.

"I dare because he needs help, and I'm not letting anybody kill him before I've been able to help him!"

The angry answer wiped her confidence.

"Get them!"

Andrea hurried to the rope-ladder. The pink bird looked up at her and...

"Magical fire!"

...launched a spiral of greenish energy from its beak. Andrea eeped and hurriedly ducked away as parts of the engine's shell were blown to charred bits.

"Pepper breath!"

"Goblin fire!"

"Flame hit!"

A long beam of fire and two smaller fireballs shot overhead and hit the wooden structure.

"They're trying to take the nehnemini down! Derek, Clockmon, put the fires out! I'm handling sunburns here." Sepikmon seemed to be in a familiar element. Andrea watched in amazement as he ran forward and front-flipped over the banister.

"Magical fire!"

Another attack blasted parts of the board. She looked down to see Huehuenpol fighting to climb back up while the two grounded digimon shook the ladder and aimed their attacks at him. She let her instincts take over and jumped down. Her fall was broken by a feathery body sprawling out in unconsciousness under her weight. When she opened her eyes, the black Agumon was gathering fire in his open muzzle.

"Pepper br..." The call was abruptly interrupted as Huehuenpol Gazimon thumped down on his head, taking (or rather crushing) his lights out. Andrea glowered at him.

"You knew all along, didn't you?"

"Well, I did mention 'minimal resistance'..."

"Oh, for the love of..."

Clockmon watched the burgeoning blaze, unsure of what he should do.

"Goblin fire!"

The digimon's hammer moved too quickly for the eye to follow and the incoming attack dissipated.

"I'm handling it, Clockmon!" Derek interrupted his train of though. He grabbed his D-Coder and pressed a few controls. "Data hack, activate!" he announced. The device produced a bright flash of light and a symbol floated in the air. "The Sinuous River!"

"Proceeding to encode," a mechanical voice continued. "Now implementing..." The symbol was kind of sucked down by Clockmon. "Water cannon." Parts of his front mechanic opened and a metallic tube slowly slid out. He turned back toward the fire and sent a blast of water, turning the fire into a less threatening steamy inferno.

"Goblin bomb!" The attack was intercepted by another blast of liquid. That flew on and flung the green-skinned digimon into a tree. With a painful moan, it slumped to the ground.

"Somebody else needs a shower?"

"Feather slash!"

Gazimon tackled Andrea before she could end her sentence. A whirling projectile buzzed over them in a curving tangent, narrowly missing her. When she jumped back to her feet, she noticed, or rather did not notice a familiar weight on her back. She found the solution at her feet. Her braid was lying on the ground like a vulgar piece of string. Something snapped in the woman. With a yell of pure rage she ran up to the white and brown bird that had just caught back the returning projectile. Her leg raised of its own accord and her ankle violently collided with the side of his head, sending him cartwheeling to the ground. She looked down at him.

"Never touch a woman's hairdo without her permission."

"Pepper breath!"

"Allergy shower!"

"Stamen rope!"

Watching Huehuenpol Gazimon rumble was very instructive. He never actually dodged attacks. Rather, he simply never stood where they hit, preferring to leave that position to an opponent. This "strategic retreat" left most of the brute work to be performed by the opponents. He walked back to Andrea, leaving the three badly shaped digimon lying on the ground.

"Thank you."

"You had planned for all of this, hadn't you?" she asked him.

"Plans? I don't do plans. If I did, that would mean I know what's going to happen, and I'd rather avoid it, or have it happen to someone else, now, wouldn't I?" Andrea rolled her eyes.

"Somehow that doesn't quite reassure me."

"Flare tower!"

The raging column of fire zoomed toward Sepikmon as soon as he landed, and he only avoided it by rolling aside in the same movement. His hand reached to his sword in the middle of the roll and the weapon moved seamlessly to his side, sending forward a wave of white energy.

"Spirit boomerang!"

He glanced around himself. There was no trace of the great priest. Not good. He stood back up quickly.

"Flame hit!"

The attack came as a rain of fire from above. Sepikmon managed to deflect some of the fireballs, but they were followed by a fiery silhouette that crashed onto him. He landed on his back, his opponent kneeling across his chest. Flarelizamon raised his hands above his head.

"Flare tower!"

But Eztepoztli reacted more rapidly, kicking the digimon in the back with both knees. The unaimed attack destroyed a patch of trees. His face protected by his mask (but his chest becoming dangerously hot), he head butted his opponent in the stomach, catching him with the pointy end. Using the leverage, he projected Flarelizamon forward. Tönalmicqui landed back on his feet with a slight wince of pain, then shot his joint hands toward the concentrating Sepikmon.

"Flare tower!"

"Charming dance!"

Sepikmon avoided the attack with an unnatural grace, spinning on himself with his arms widespread.

"Flame hit!"

The blast shot toward the spinning digimon, but Eztepoztli's sword hit the ground and he somehow turned horizontal for several seconds in a move Andrea would only have believed if it had come up in a really good martial arts movie. The fire stream went under him and flew between the legs of the walker. Then two bright flashes shot from Sepikmon's hands and hit the priest straight in the chest. Bracing against the attack, he went back several feet, his claws digging tracks into the road, but stood up.

Eztepoztli's sword shot out to reestablish him on his feet on the other side of his opponent in a long, gracious move. Somehow his weapon had reached a brandishing position in the meantime.

"Spirit boomerang!"

This time the sword was launched, spinning and encased in energy, at the unexpecting opponent and hit him across the back, bouncing as if it had only been a large book. The attack knocked Flarelizamon violently off his feet and sent him sprawling to the ground, unconscious.

"Oh... my... You didn't...?" Andrea started.

"Obviously not," Sepikmon answered. "But that is probably going to leave a mark," he added as he caught his sword. Andrea took in a long-winded breath. She had really needed to blow off some steam.

"That did some good."

"Speak for yourself," a voice commented. Its owner was obviously not in a very good shape. He actually sounded like he had received a piano on the head, even though it was truly Gazimon. A loud bop in Andrea's back was followed by the sound of a slumping body. When she turned around, Gazimon was twirling his stick innocently.

"That was uncalled for, you know," she scowled as she dragged the unconscious body to the side of the road. Gazimon stared at her.

"He tried to kill you," he pointed out.

"That's no reason to use more violence than necessary."

Gazimon rolled his eyes and took advantage that she was looking elsewhere to use the Piyomon as a footboard to climb on the rope ladder.

The rest of the journey went on much more smoothly. Andrea had a hard time absorbing the idea that she'd have to grow back her hair, though. She'd been keeping the same braid for over two years and all these efforts had been destroyed in the span of a few seconds. For the time being, she had decided to keep her hair as is.

Eventually, the forest became sparser and started to gave way to houses and gardens. Soon they were out in the middle of the large crop fields that surrounded Ahuamoloyan. At this point, the road was more solid and the walker moved much less dust than it had done for most of the way, so Andrea took off her protective mask. The goggles were useful, but looked ridiculous on her.

Small crowds of digimon even smaller than those she had seen so far gathered along the road, chirping indistinct conversations. She assumed these were children. She turned to Gazimon who immediately took on her question.

"These are baby II level digimon," he said, without helping. She frowned at him. "Hey, it's not my fault if that's the correct term! Digimon are born from their digieggs at baby I level. After a few months, they evolve into baby II, who usually evolve into child digimon by 3 years."

Andrea looked puzzled.

"Child level? I'd have though these to be more of the Child level." Huehuenpol seemed little appreciative of this comment.

"Child level like myself, or Tönalmicqui's dummies we met earlier. That's the way it's always worked. I'm afraid there's little sense to be made out of it, you know." He looked almost sheepish.

Andrea shook her head and settled her eyes on the settlement ahead. It wasn't nearly as big as Teocaltintlan, but it seemed to be a fairly large town. The street weren't buzzing with excitation like in Teocaltintlan, but she assumed it might have been because it wasn't a market day. Andrea waved hello to a few Digimon that had gone out on their doorstep to watch them. In the meantime, Derek had gone back to fiddling with his D-Coder to try and locate the thief and was now grumbling curses.

"I can't locate it! It's too close, my maps' resolutions aren't high enough!"

Fuming with exasperation, he switched to a different mode that left only a large yellowish arrow floating in the air.

"That's the best I can do."

All eyes immediately followed the direction it pointed, up to a structure very similar to a roman domus with several interior courtyards. The rooves were topped with large hippogriffs statues at the extremities. Gazimon's eyes widened.

"That's one page I hadn't managed to read," he commented.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Derek asked.

"That's the ithualli, the local court and the prefect's residence. Owlmon's fascination with technology is well-known, but I'm surprised our thief would be stupid enough to try and sell that thing to him."

As soon as he was done with these explanations, they disembarked and ran up to the construction. The antechamber was almost identical to that on the palace back in Teocaltintlan, except that the statue was that of a hippogriff in a battling stance. Sepikmon deposited his sword and another bit of malachite. Clockmon left his hammer as well as a small bit of hardware. When it was her turn, Andrea bowed, much like she had done back in the city of temples. Then she went to the wall and neatly rolled her cut braid in a niche. That'll have to do for now.

When they walked out of the room, they found themselves in a courtyard paved with red and black puzzle-shaped pieces of stone. On each side, a long basin bordered the larger central area, separating the pavement and the areas shadowed by the peristyle. At the other end, a large owl with cybernetic legs and infrared vision apparatus over his face rested atop a golden and ornate perch. He immediately looked beyond the man in moulding wooden armour before him to report all his fascinated attention on the group, especially Derek.

"Derek," Andrea muttered, "you forgot to take off the goggles."

Derek's hand reached to remove the eye-widening protection and reveal his flustered face to the prefect. Andrea smirked noticing the round marks around his eyes.

"Tlaïxtotocani Musyamon! I knew you were ready to go far, but I didn't expect you to stoop that low!" Sepikmon yelled at the figure, who turned to better look at them, revealing a man with bluish skin clad in moulding ancient Japanese armour, moth-eaten fur and dirty bandages. A large metallic sword hung at his side. He clutched Andrea's former graphic tablet in his left hand. The prefect's cybernetic eyes focused on the masked digimon.

"What does this mean, Cohuatzintli?"

Sepikmon bowed, then spoke.

"It means that this device Musyamon is displaying here is not his, nor was it even ever. It is one of the Tlaïxahcicäittanimeh, the fabled D-Coders. To be precise, it is Tamikane Andrea's," Sepikmon rapidly explained, pointing to Andrea.

"Lies! All lies! I bought this in a very legitimate bazaar of Teocaltintlan!" Musyamon protested.

"You've never been known yourself for having an unfaltering conviction in truth," Sepikmon sardonically retorted.

Andrea's eyes went from one to the other as they exchanged accusations and insults ranging from sabotage and foul thinking to treason and first-degree murder. Owlmon looked too with a raising air of annoyance. He eventually took off and landed straight between the two digimon, wings wide open to separate them.

"I am very well aware of the old rivalry between you two already, thank you. The two great swordsmen of Axolotl, Eztepoztli and Tlaïxtotocani," He turned specifically at Sepikmon. "One of the Tlaïxahcicäittanimeh? It is a very grave accusation. And a hard to believe one too. Do you have any proofs?"

Just as Sepikmon was about to send his defiant answer, Derek tapped on his shoulder and they started whispering. Fortunately, the laws of narration being what they are, everybody heard the whispered dialogue very distinctly.

"What, we have proofs, right?"

"Actually, we don't. I have absolutely no idea how to prove it's hers," Derek answered. To Andrea's surprise, a large bead of sweat formed on the edge of Sepikmon's mask.

"What? Why didn't you tell me that first?" Andrea noticed a twitch in Eztepoztli's hair.

"As if you've left me the time."

"This is utterly preposterous!" Musyamon's hollow voice interrupted them. "I'm not going to accept being insulted like this again. I propose we settle this by a battle of marksmanship," before Sepikmon could answer, he added, "whoever wins gets to keep the Tlaïxahcicäittani, or whatever it is."

Before Sepikmon could answer, Gazimon tugged on his briefs to get his attention. For a very short and horrible moment, Andrea wondered what it was made of again. Fortunately, the human mind has a very ancient tactic to overcome these kinds of problems. It ignored the issue.

"Eztepoztli, I abjure you not accept," Gazimon said. Andrea noticed the worry and uneasiness in his stance. Sepikmon, however, unceremoniously slapped his hand away. The grey digimon's ears and head drooped.

"What's with the sudden familiarity? We didn't save your all-seeing ass just so you could get in the way of our mission, you know! Besides, you said yourself he would give it up," he responded with anger.

Gazimon opened his mouth to explain his sudden outburst, but decided against, realizing he had no chances to convince Sepikmon anymore. Andrea wanted nothing more than to question Huehuenpol immediately, but that would have been horribly insulting to Eztepoztli, and disrespectful to everybody else. Eventually, her worries let her attention turn back to the discussion. Musyamon was talking, setting the conditions to the duel in short, chopped sentences.

"Very well then. This evening at sunset. At the entrance of the village. Owlmon will be the judge. He'll keep the wager in the meantime." He walked to the large bird and dropped the D-Coder in his extended wing, right under the obviously glowering eyes of Sepikmon.

"You're going to regret this," he warned the other swordsman.

"Don't count your eggs before they're hatched," Musyamon answered with a smirk that only increased Andrea's urge to question Gazimon.

When they came out of the antechamber, she grabbed his tail to slow him down, letting Derek and the adult digimons take the lead. For a few minutes they walked side by side like this, lagging behind without a word. Gazimon's stick dragged slightly on the ground. The scratching nagged at her brains. Finally, he spoke up.

"Come to the point. You want to know what that was about, right?" he said. She realized he wasn't actually using his precognitive abilities.

"Yes. I know you saw something that wasn't good."

"Actually, it's rather the opposite. I didn't saw anything. It looks like something is actively clouding my perception of everything related to Musyamon. I could see that Sepikmon would accept his challenge, but I could not predict the conditions Musyamon imposed, nor the outcome. I am very worried about him."

Andrea looked ahead. Her companion's worry was contagious.

Is Gazimon right about being worried about the duel? What's up between Musyamon and Sepikmon, and why isn't Sepikmon worried about facing his greatest rival? What is chevon? Who's that guy with the shady moustaches? Answers and bad jokes in the next chapters: Oc tlamichïhualonih in äyiliztli

Wonderboy's guide to digital etiquette
Hey there! I'm filling in for Johnny, since he had to take a break (sounds of muffled cries of help). What does Eztepoztli means by "familiarities"? Well, he and Gazimon just met, so he's feeling really insulted that the child would call him by his nickname in front of both an adversary and a high-ranking official.

Then why did he call Gazimon by his nickname earlier? Well, Sepikmon is far from an idiot, he quickly realized that "Ontlachiyani" was a nickname someone else gave Gazimon, and so had no reasons not to use it.

And what about Santiramon? Well, Santiramon is the ruling lord of Axolotl node, obviously he can call and refer to people by their nicknames. You might notice both he and Owlmon used the term "Cohuatzintli". It is simply a term of address meaning "noble guest".