Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Digimon: Data Storm ❯ Tomorrow started tonight ( Chapter 6 )

*Circeus*

This took waaaay too long to write up, and you know it!

*Jean-Seb*

Shut up! We busied ourselves with over twelve thousands words worth of Songhai Diaries, in case you forgot! Besides, it's Johnny's job to make sure we have a plot!

*Johnny, to Circeus*

Conk him.

*Continues as Circeus mallets Jean-Seb in the background*

At any rate, we do not own the Digimon franchise, as much as we'd like to. Take things from our work and face our collective wrath. Big credits and kudos go to JJriddler, Shirubie and Radagast.

TZINTIZQUIA IN ILHUITL ÄXCAN TEÖTLAC - Tomorrow started tonight

The three digimon walked across the village, back to where the main street became the main road. The sky slowly turned ablaze as the ceremonious apparel got settled. Torches had been set in a rough circle, each of them held by a child digimon. Musyamon sat cross-legged at the other end of the arena thus defined, his sword laid down before him. He did not look up when they arrived.

The other swordsman did react when the sound of rumbling drums rose from the village. The bass drumsticks where held high between hits by a Gazimon and a Palmon. Musyamon stood, leaving his sword on the ground, as a figure set in a sedan chair slowly emerged from the darkness. Four Hawkmon carried it, bracketed by two taller adult digimon. One was another Sepikmon, the second was a Butterflymon. Both wore shades. A last digimon walked in front of this small procession: an Agumon carrying Andrea's D-Coder on a cushion. The various walkers took their respective places as in a miniature court between the two fighters. Owlmon stood up, causing the chair to wobble dangerously. Once the platform was steadied, he spread his arms pompously.

"We are here on this evening," he said ",because Eztepoztli Sepikmon and Tlaïxtotocani Musyamon have decided to settle the dispute on the ownership of this device by way of a battle of marksmanship. It has been decided that the sword shall be the only weapon used, in addition to any natural abilities of the fighter."

Musyamon and Sepikmon nodded at this recital and the setting of the rules.

"Fighters, get ready..." Owlmon announced.

The two swordsmen stepped into the ring. Sepikmon brought his sword in front of him and held it at an angle, ready for anything. Musyamon did not even bother with taking his own.

"I sure hope he knows what he's doing," Gazimon muttered from Clockmon's shoulder.

"Fight!"

Sepikmon's knees flexed and he hurled himself at his opponent. Musyamon reacted at the last moment, sidestepping the slash. His opponent reacted in a split second and redirected the blow for his enemy's back, but the armoured humanoid leaned forward to put his hand on the ground, the armour deviating the sword. Musyamon cartwheeled over his hand as Sepikmon continued on his momentum and spun away from him. When Musyamon landed back on his feet, he had his sword in hand, having picked it up with the hand that was not on the ground. He immediately attacked.

"White Bird Sword!"

A slash of the weapon created a violent blast of wind Sepikmon merely jumped over. The stray attack blew two torches off into the darkness of the setting night as their holders were knocked down. Musyamon gave a cocky grin.

"That wasn't too bad."

Musyamon swung his sword one-handed and tried to punch Sepikmon with the other while the other was distracted, but the masked adult deviated the blow by turning his head and jumped away from him. A light flashed at his opponent's wrist an a pair of blades made from bright light extended over his hand, illuminating the battle over the torches. Sepikmon did not look phased at this change in situation and charged.

"Foul! This has nothing to do with any natural abilities Musyamon ever displayed!" Gazimon loudly protested, pointing at the two fighters.

"I see no more foul in this than in your own specific powers," Owlmon retorted emotionlessly.

"My... own..." Gazimon whispered.

With amazing speed, Sepikmon ran up to the other digimon and swiped at him. Musyamon parried with his new weapon and the ensuing exchange was so rapid that the only hint to the weapons meeting was the sharp metallic sound of their collision. The two blades at Musyamon's left hand created large arcs of shining light as the arm moved around. Then a flash exploded in red and Sepikmon yelled out in pain. The two swordsmen froze for an instant. The spectator were able to see the two shimmering white claws piercing through Sepikmon's side. His masked face twitched as he apparently looked down at the wound. Musyamon allowed him a glance before ripping his hand away. Blood splattered the ground when Sepikmon hurriedly jumped away from his opponent. Musyamon struck a pose with his arm raised high in the air.

"The slivers!" he called out in triumph. He twirled around to face Gazimon and Clockmon. "Behind special powers and behind legends, we always find a cause. Writers of legends, the Digital Glyphs. Ever heard about the blade tree?"

The child looked at the swordsman blankly. Behind Musyamon, Sepikmon was prostrated on the ground with an arm pressed against his wound, in shock.

"So this is why I couldn't know how this would end!" the child digimon exclaimed.

"Stories told of a tree in the forest, the Tënätic Cuahuitl, with leaves like blades and bark like sandpaper," Musyamon continued without paying him any attention, "but nobody ever wondered how this could be. It takes a lot of energy to unleash a glyph, and the Tlaïxahcicäittani does just that, now the Slivers' power is entirely mine!"

With another flash of light, the two long curved claws extending from his wrist merged in a longer one duplicating the sword he held in his other hand.

"Cheap trick..." a voice said weakly behind him.

Sepikmon had gotten up shakily, blood still dropping from his wound. With a yell of contained rage, Musyamon raised both arms over his head and crossed the blades in giant, lethal scissors. Turning around, he charged his opponent with the lowered twin weapon. Sepikmon stopped the assault with his own sword blocking the two opposing ones where they met. Still, the brute force from the attack shoved him back.

"Theatrics," he spurted, and proceeded to kick his opponent violently in the gut.

Musyamon was forced on his back with a painful groan. He rolled to the side just in time to avoid a vicious slash that separated his left spaulder and sent it flying. He shook his head as he jumped to his feet, throwing glistening drops of sweat in the air.

"He's overexerting himself, he can't control it..." Gazimon murmured.

"What do you mean?" Clockmon asked, looking away from the battle.

"If he keeps going on like this, he's going to burn up all his energy. Keeping a glyph active like that takes up a lot of it."

"So why don't you...?" the adult pointed out.

"You fool! I only use a fraction of its power and it's been enough to keep me from evolving all these years!" Gazimon said angrily.

As they looked back to the fight, Musyamon groaned loudly. The shimmering blade replacing his hand nearly doubled in length, spearing through Sepikmon's left shoulder. The masked adult grinned and violently hit the blade with his sword. The added leverage from the blade's length caused Musyamon to spin and fall down, gasping for air.

"You can feel it, can't you? Your energy, your power draining away," Sepikmon spoke to him. "A rogue fighter, a thorn in the side of the world, that's all you've ever been," he spat out.

Musyamon slowly got up and attempted a weak swipe at him.

"But you're too arrogant to give it up. It's like you can control the entire world, isn't it?"

Musyamon shook his head and smirked.

"Yes," he hissed in a low tone.

"I've got bad news for you," Sepikmon announced. "You are not up to it."

With a roar, Musyamon brandished his blade over his head and lurched forward. Sepikmon dropped his sword as his anger-blinded enemy charged, pulled his fist back and punched him in the face. The blow shoved and sent the armoured swordsman flying back. As he sailed through the air, his form flickered and flashed, and a symbol similar in design but different in shape from the one Derek had used on Clockmon separated from his body, leaving it much smaller. The glyph spun in mid air for a split second before balling up and flying straight to Andrea's D-Coder. The Agumon dropped the cushion in fear from the apparent attack, eliciting panicked cries from both Clockmon and Owlmon. Sepikmon approached the prostrate form that had been Musyamon. He now looked like a green imp wearing ragged and tattered leather clothes with a spike of orange hair atop his head. The Goburimon moaned when the winner poked him with his foot.

"Ready to lose it all for such little things..." the adult said, shaking his head.

At this point, the blood loss he had experienced caught up with the adult. He collapsed with a sigh. Clockmon and Gazimon hurried to his side.

"Damn! We must get him to a doctor!"

A few throaty sounds escaped from Sepikmon. Gazimon's hear twitched, catching on the lying digimon's garble.

"What is he saying?" Clockmon asked.

"'Can you see now?'" the rabbit repeated softly.

Sepikmon's head rolled to the side and he finally fainted, having found the time to have a meeting with pain. Gazimon turned away, unable to look at the wounded swordsman. Despite his guilt, he felt himself tugged into darkness as he tried to open his mind to the future, discovering it to feel like a pile of boxes, as a new one opened. Random images of arguments to come made him wince, but there was no trace of Andrea or Derek. For some reason Owlmon's image seemed to tower over the next few days.

"I think we are going to run into another glyph," he said.

"What makes you think that?" Clockmon asked, busy with ripping a makeshift bandage from his robe.

"I still can't see beyond tomorrow," Clockmon gave him a short annoyed glance, "I think the glyphs affect each others when they are not controlled by the same individual. I think I cannot see what happen whenever a glyph is involved."

"Oh motherboards..." Clockmon cursed when blood sprayed forth from the wound. He looked up to yell at Owlmon for help, but the bird, along with most of his suite, had disappeared into the darkness. "Where'd he go?!"

"Back to the palace, I suppose. I think he wants to try and keep the D-Coder anyway," Gazimon posited.

Clockmon cursed loudly.

Andrea awoke angry and in pain, usually not a recommended combination. Not recommended for anyone around her, that is. Whoever was drilling holes into her head was so going to get their ass kicked. Mental note: Next time, bring aspirin.

"Who's using the sledgehammer?" she asked.

Her ears perceived cracking and rustling sounds, and the occasional crashing. She was probably in some sort of cart. Whatever it was, it did not have much in the way of suspension. Each time her head was dangled or shoved around it was as if a boulder crashed on it.

"Err... Nobody," the answer somehow carried through that acoustic carnage. She recognized Derek's voice.

"Damn, 't's my head." She got up from the man's lap and tried to calm the elephants running all over her skull, only to press a painful lump on her forehead. She pulled her hand away with a wince, her eyes still shut.

"I think you hit your head on the tree stump when you fell."

"Where are we?" for some reason, she couldn't think of anything else to ask.

Opening her eyes, she looked around slowly, trying not to elicit more pain.

"In a cart, in the middle of the forest." She rolled her eyes. People who answered questions identified by their quality of being questions tended to get hit harder by life. And by Andrea. But right now she desired nothing more than to hit the idiot pressing a cheese grinder against her brain cells.

The woman caught sight of a dozen or so digimon, not all of them conscious, sprawled across the metallic cage or propped against the metal bars. Several of them wore various restraining devices. A few looked identical to those she had seen before. She cursed and looked outside. Small blue dragons in cybernetic military gear escorted the cart and it was pulled by... unicorns? Her eyes closed of their own accord, a feeble attempt at shielding her sanity. Of course, life would not have it and her head it the floor before she could realize that the man had moved away, taking her cushioning with him. Pain flared again through her head and she moaned painfully.

"Can you just stay put?" she growled. Her hand reached out and latched at his tie. The man choked briefly as Andrea kept him from moving and, incidentally, breathing. Another throb flashed through her mind when someone shouted in front of the group.

"Will you speed up a little? We need to set up a data stream to Http before the night!" the speaker looked like a large white and red rooster. He worried rightly, considering that darkness was falling quite rapidly. Derek shuffled away from her again and Andrea noticed she had dropped his tie to grab at her own head.

"I'm trying to have us escape now," the man whispered to her, "Now that you're awake I can kick the plan into work."

"My head hurts too much for escaping," Andrea moaned in response.

It is a cruel world that does not react to a migrainous woman's pleas. Completely ignoring her protests, Derek whipped out his D-Coder and activated a few controls. The woman sighed with annoyance and scrambled around the cart to wake up the few digimons that were still not awake. As she moved to shake a small lizard by the shoulder, the large cuffs that completely covered his hands and a metallic helmet fell off his frame. He looked up at her in surprise. She blinked back. One of the cyber-soldier digimon yelled, and it resonated in her ears like the gong of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

"We have a wild one, we have a wild one!"

"Andrea, get in the corner!" Derek desperately called out to her. "Data hack activate! The Sudden Growth!"

The two successive cries splattered pain through the woman's skull like wet magenta paint. She was briefly blinded when a ray of light shot past her and into the creature. It glowed briefly and, in a spurt that violently shoved Andrea across the cage, its size tripled. More lights flashed before her eyes and she thought her skull would split open. Yells came from every side, overwhelming her senses, then the sound of tortured metal covered everything for a short moment. Andrea opened her eyes again and somehow correctly assessed that chaos had taken over the small caravan.

The blue lizard with two fleshy horn-like appendages on its head now reached well over 2 dozen feet. His growth spurt had broken through the foliage, causing leaves and branches to fall everywhere. Small soldiers and digimon ran all over the place, attacking each others. Andrea jumped from the cart to find cover from the stray attacks, but the large lizard brought his foot down on a soldier dragon, causing a small, localized shockwave that knocked the woman back to the ground. A flurry of butterflies escaped toward the forest and dissolved in mid-air. She heard someone yell her name. A rain of flaming feathers suddenly showered the newly grown lizard, then the rooster creature slammed into his chest sending him crashing into a large tree.

"Capture the humans, do no harm them!" the bird ordered.

The disorganized, but obviously well trained soldiers immediately stopped chasing the various digimon and spread out to circle around the most obvious target: Andrea. She didn't see Derek anywhere. She mentally summed the situation: her brains had escaped on unlimited vacation, she was angry and she was afflicted with the mother of all headaches. She was a bomb waiting to explode.

"Vee Punch!" The rooster flew back and crashed in the forest somewhere in the background.

"Now, miss, just calm down and nothing bad's gonna happen,'kay?" one of the midgets with assault guns said, approaching her with a set of shackles.

The women gave a grin that would have made any half-competent psychiatrist cower in fear. The soldier digimon simply continued to walk toward her, cockily unaware of the impending catastrophe. Andrea continued to smile.

"Hello! My name is Andrea. Never call me 'miss'," she said with an overly cheery tone.

The soldier froze, surprised at the unexpected utterance. That was her cue. Andrea grabbed the soldier by the shoulders and, flipping over him, used the accumulated momentum to throw him over her head as she landed behind the group.

"M16 assassin!" another voice immediately yelled behind her.

Andrea jumped to the side and crouched, her right leg extended to the side while she spun around. The energy projectile sped past her to destination unknown.

"Commandramon, do not hurt her!" the rooster warned.

Andrea smiled. It was always a good sign if the adversary could not use the full extent of its abilities. The group rushed at her all at once...

"Vee kick!"

Only for two of them to get caught when the blue lizard kicked at them. The two dragons flew well out of sight with surprised yelps. The others stopped for a moment, then they attacked.

"I wanna play too! Flash blinder!" the woman exclaimed.

The first soldier's eyes met with her viciously extended index and middle fingers. It yelled in pain and covered his eyes with his paws.

"Knee kick!"

Her knee raised and slammed into another attacker's large muzzle. Blood spewed from its nostrils and it rolled to the ground, unconscious. A metallic feet swiped her legs from under her and she fell on her back. The Commandramon grabbed her right arm to restrain the crazy woman, but Andrea shoved his helmet backward with her left, revealing a large forehead. Her hand backed.

"Rodent bite!"

She extended two finger like curved claws and slammed the extended knuckles into her opponent's forehead. As he rolled to the ground, she noticed grenade-like bombs attached to the his belt and grabbed one, hoping to make good use of it. Unfortunately, it immediately began to sizzle and crackle.

"Uh oh..." Andrea sweatdropped.

She looked frantically around for a target to throw the deadly device at. The lizard and rooster where now grasping at each other. The bird's eyes flashed with red light. Her instincts took over. She threw the bomb at him.

"Petrif-"

The call was interrupted by a small deflagration as the bomb exploded between the fighter's heads. Both clutched at their faces with screeches of pain, the lizard stumbled blindly around and all the digimon present ran to avoid being crushed. A large caterpillar similar to the one Derek had tripped on back in Teocaltintlan, however, was unable to move away quick enough. The blinded lizard tripped over the cart and she saw it fall over as if in slow-motion. She sighed and gritted her teeth, knowing that would propel her headache to never-before-seen levels.

Running to the insect, she bent down mid-course, intending to roll and scoop the insect as she went by, but unfortunately tripped on an ill-placed root and fell right on top of it. They both yelled, Andrea's cry drowning the smaller creature's by far. The woman grabbed the insect and made to roll away. As she turned on her back, she saw the massive falling figure shrinking down in a blinking flash and returning to its original size. The blue meteor blasted all air from her lungs. The lizard looked like the happiest creature on that side of the globe, a goofy grin plastered on his scorched face as he looked up at her from his landing location.

"What a rush..." he mumbled.

"I'd guess so," she commented.

Andrea got up, both creatures roughly cradled into her arms. Her eyes quickly scanned the area, looking for any leftover soldiers, but the area was mostly calm now. She could still hear some of them running in the surrounding forest, but the sounds faded rapidly.

"What a... leverage..." the blue one continued.

"Uh...?" the woman muttered in confusion.

The creature's grin widened. Andrea realized she had been pressing both creatures against her chest all along. She flushed deep and her eyes narrowed with anger. She was about to throw the pervert away as far as possible when a small and underused part of her brain charged with gratitude management reminded the rest that he had kinda saved her life. The woman sighed annoyedly and threw him harshly over her shoulder like a potato bag. She heard Derek's voice calling for her again.

"You better be very confused," she grumbled.

She glared at the other deeply flushing digimon before she ran in the general area where she had heard Derek.

"You. No comments."

Oh my, isn't she a grumpy one today? I can't think of much more snappy questions at this point, but trust me, the characters have some, and not all of them gets answered in chapter 7: Tlahtlaniliztli oncah zän ayac quinänquilih

Johnny's linguistic trivia You might remember me using the expression "ïnäl tomöztlayö", "beyond our tomorrows" back in chapter 3. Why then, isn't there anything even vaguely reminiscent of it in the title of this chapter, even though it also uses the word "tomorrow"? Well, "ilhuitl" does not mean actually "tomorrow", but rather "day", and by extension "birthday, holy day". It happens so that in Nahuatl, temporal expressions behave like locative expressions. You can not use "möztla" as a subject any more than you could use "in my yard" as a subject in English. Obviously, "tomöztlayö" stretched it a bit already, but I needed to find something that would fit the form field!

I'll try to provide translation for most of the untranslated terms in the next installment.

Author's note To be frank, I'm not proud of this chapter. Obviously, I did not realize how much kidnapping Andrea and Derek would mess with the short term storyline. At least, you can be annoyed at me for writing a not so good chapter rather than just stopping writing the fic altogether. Besides, this lay-down gave me some time to work on Songhai Diaries, which I hope to start posting by the end of November.

Also it's been a long, long while since I saw any 02 episodes, much les the one with Musyamon, and I never saw more than a couple of Tamers, so if I missed completely on the attacks, I'd appreciate very much a heads up!