Okay, Kari, here's that next part for you...except now it's part 8
instead of 13! It got even weirder when I started combining chapters,
ne?? Bwahaha! Are you confused yet?? Heh heh heh... Just so everyone
knows, Kari is awesome, she's been reading my fic and trying to get me
to post it here for a while now, I just never got around to it till
now... ::sigh:: She's been ever so patient with me...so go read one of
her fics and review it for her, that's an order! ~_^ Luv ya, Kar! Domo
arigatou gozaimasu!! Okay, now when you read this one, make sure you
read carefully, minna...there's a lot of real important stuff here.
Enjoy!
Games of the Mind *Chapter Eight*
Pipermon stretched her arms up over her head, then clasped them behind
her neck, staring up at the sky. She leaned back in the tree and watched
the swirling reds and golds of the sunset twist and writhe through the
clouds as the sun sank slowly toward the horizon. The air was chilly,
but not to the point where it was uncomfortable. It felt like a brisk
October evening, the kind where you sit out on the front porch swing and
sip hot cider, or run through piles of raked leaves and scatter them
into the wind.
She sighed.
But it wouldn't last for long. Not long after the fall of darkness, the
Arashii would again rip their way through the forest, reminding everyone
who dwelled there that, even in the digital world, no one could match
the power of Mother Nature.
She sighed again and reached up to let her hair down from its ponytails.
As she shook her head to loosen her long hair, she peered down through
the branches of the tree at the eight children and their digimon.
Someone had started a small campfire, and Jyou was now poking warily at
it with a long slender stick, Gomamon chattering at him from his perch
on the boy's shoulder. Pipermon heard Mimi grumble something to Palmon
about wishing she had brought some marshmallows, and frowned, wondering
what on earth a marshmallow was. Whatever it was, she didn't think it
sounded too friendly. Agumon and Biyomon stood faithfully beside the
fire near where their human companions were seated, keeping a constant
eye out for anything suspicious. Pipermon watched Sora and Tai sitting
near the fire, talking quietly, their faces glowing in the firelight.
The digimon frowned. These were more than just children, she realized,
their adventures in the digital world had caused their minds and hearts
to develop much beyond those of any child. They held the spirits of
mature adults in their juvenile bodies, having eyes far too wise for
their youthful faces. These children had seen and done things that
others only had nightmares about...they had defeated monsters and
enemies against incredible odds. They had saved their world right under
everyone's noses...and that was bound to change anyone.
Pipermon laughed when she saw Kari and TK play-jousting with a couple of
long sticks, and was reminded that, even though they might have been
different from other human children, they were still children at heart.
She giggled as Kari "stabbed" TK, and the blond boy fell over backward
in a dramatic death pose. Gatomon and Patamon laughed as they watched
from a nearby boulder, Patamon’s golden wings folded atop his head.
Gatomon looked at her claws, then at Patamon, then grinned wickedly.
With a playful snarl, she proceeded to pounce on the small, rodentlike
digimon. Patamon let out a squeal of protest and launched himself into
the air, giggling like a maniac.
Then Pipermon's eyes moved to Koushiro. He was seated on the other side
of the rock where Patamon and Gatomon were wrestling, his Pineapple
laptop resting on his knees. He was, as usual, typing feverishly at the
keyboard, as though he could find the meaning to life itself somewhere
within the machine's binary circuitry. He looked troubled, and Pipermon
hopped down from her tree, and hovered over to the boulder he sat
against, laying down across the flat lip of the rock and resting her
chin on her crossed wrists.
"Watcha doin', Izumi-san?" she asked.
Koushiro jumped, startled, and looked about frantically for a moment
before realizing the voice had come from above him.
"Oh, it's you, Pipermon," he said, tilting his head back to look up at
her. "You startled me. I'm trying to create a map of the forest, in case
you ever get separated from the group again, so at least we'll have some
sort of idea as to where we're going."
"You look like you're having some trouble there," she said with a frown.
Izzy scowled.
"I am," he admitted, "the program won't load correctly. I created a
program a while ago, the first time we returned home from the digital
world, a program that would create maps of where we had been so we could
easily navigate our way through those areas without trouble."
"But?" she coaxed.
"But," Izzy went on, "I can't get the program to load. Something is
preventing the computer from opening the map program, and I can't seem
to find what's wrong."
Pipermon hesitated.
"Can I try?" she asked.
Izzy looked at her, then at his computer, then back at her. He twitched
his nose, then hesitantly moved aside so she could sit down on the
ground next to him. She jumped down from the rock and sat on her knees,
taking the laptop from Izzy's reluctantly outstretched hands.
"You think you can fix it?" he asked. She didn't reply. He sighed, then
started to tell her how to locate and open the program when he
discovered she had already found it, and was now typing at an incredible
speed, recalibrating and relocating lines of the program's binary
makeup, changing some of the lines of code and completely deleting
others.
"Hey!" Izzy cried, lunging forward. "Whaddya think you're doing?? You're
rewriting the entire pro"--he stopped in mid-word as the map program
loaded and the navigation bar popped up on the screen--"gram..." He
quickly took his beloved computer from Pipermon's grasp, and tapped at
the mousepad, opening each of the maps and making sure the program was
in full working order. Pipermon hopped back up onto the top of the rock
and watched Izzy over his shoulder, a grin spreading across her face at
his amazement. "How...how did you do that?"
Pipermon winked.
"It's simple, really," she said, "every day we move closer to the
enemy...as we do so...we get closer and closer to the enemy's powers...
The magic in this area was strong enough to block out some of your
computer's circuitry. Basically, it hid the program from the hard
drive...the processor couldn't find the program to open it. I just had
to rewrite the programming so it was no longer susceptible to the
enemy's dark energy."
"Prodigious! That was phenomenal, Pipermon," Izzy gushed, "I could
really use someone with your skills in my computer club at school back
home!"
She laughed.
"It doesn't have anything to do with skill, really, Izumi-san," she
said, "it's my nature."
"Your nature?" Tentomon echoed. "Whaddya mean?"
"As a digimon," she told them, "I am made up of the same binary language
as the circuitry as your computer, Izumi-san. Reconfiguring a computer
program is like changing my hairstyle, it's easy, because it's made up
of the same things I am made up of myself."
"Is that how you know so much about this forest?" Izzy asked.
She nodded.
"I'm a digimon, and all digimon are formed of the same thing that formed
this forest: Information," she said. "So, in the same way a human doctor
knows everything there is to know about a human's physiology, any
digimon with more than a half a byte of a brain can see what makes
anything in this world tick."
"Then how come the rest of us digimon got lost in the forest?" a new
voice asked. Pipermon turned to see that Patamon and Gatomon had stopped
their game, and were now listening intently to the conversation, and the
rest of the group was making their way over. "We're made of information,
too," Patamon continued, "why did WE get lost?"
Pipermon frowned.
"All I said was that we could all see what was causing the problem," she
admitted, "I never said everyone would be able to find the solution..."
"So what makes you so special?" Gatomon asked, leery.
"I've been living in this forest for a little over two years now," she
told them all, "since you all defeated Piedmon. I learned, after a
while, that one part of the forest remained constant while everything
else moved around it. This path we are following right now is that
constant."
"Nobody else thought to follow a path?" TK asked, lifting his eyebrows.
Pipermon smiled.
"It's not that simple," she said, "this path forks and breaks off in
many places...only one of a hundred possible paths is the right one."
"So how do we know you're leading us down the right one?" Gatomon
questioned.
"How do YOU even know you are?" Kari added, giving Gatomon a warning
glance.
"Once I figured out that this forest was constantly changing," Pipermon
explained, "I would levitate above the trees for hours at a time,
watching it, to see if there was any pattern in it...to see a method to
the madness or an order in the chaos. After a while I noticed that there
was only one whole section of the forest that never moved...the section
of the woods at the base of Kuroniji Mountain."
"Kuroniji Mountain?" the children echoed.
"That is where your enemy dwells," she continued, "in a huge castle atop
Kuroniji Mountain. The only way out of this forest is through the castle
on the mountain...and the only way through the castle is through her--"
She stopped short when she realized what she had said.
"Her?" Tai asked.
"The enemy is a female?" Izzy added.
Pipermon balked. She licked her lips, then looked at the group.
"From what I've heard," she began, and paused. "Well, what I've been
told is..." She hesitated again, then lowered her head. "As far as I
know...the enemy is a female." She paused. Now she'd done it...how was
she supposed to explain to them how she knew about Kurarimon?
She was surprised when she was met with enthusiasm rather than
suspicion.
"What else do you know about her?" Tai asked excitedly. "The more you
can tell us, the better off we'll be."
Pipermon swallowed hard.
"She...she's called Kurarimon," she said slowly, haltingly.
"That's...that’s all I can tell you right now..." She looked at her
hands.
Traitor, her mind screamed at her. Traitor! She squeezed her hands into
fists, her nails stabbing at her palms. Traitor...
"That's okay, Pipermon," Sora said quickly, seeing that the current
subject had made Pipermon anxious. "If that's all you know, that's all
you know..."
Jyou paused a moment in the awkward silence, then tapped Pipermon on the
shoulder. She looked up at him.
"I'm dying to know, Pipermon," he said, his dark eyes shining, "how did
you know what Tylenol was? And what a migraine was? There are HUMANS who
don't know what those are...how did you know?"
Pipermon smiled.
"The Internet," she said.
"The Internet??" he cried. "Digimon can access the Internet?"
"No way!" Tai and Izzy shouted together.
"Pipermon, how did you do it?" Tai asked, genuinely curious. "When
Agumon, Gabumon, Patamon, and Tentomon had to go onto the net to defeat
Diaborumon, they had to be downloaded directly into in, someone had to
do it for them... How were YOU able to access it?"
"Courtesy of Piedmon," she said, a little bitterly. "He made me that
way. When he created me, he wanted me to be able to do anything.
Anything he might have wished."
"Anything?" Gomamon said.
"Anything," Pipermon affirmed. "He made it so that I could find him any
information he might need. I don't have to be downloaded to the net, all
I have to do is find a data port, and I'm there." She snapped her
fingers. "Just like that."
"So you got on the net to access...Tylenol?" TK asked.
Pipermon smiled.
"No, no, no," she said. "After Piedmon was destroyed, it seemed I no
longer had a purpose...I was created to do his bidding, and when he was
destroyed, I had no one to give me orders. When his spell over me
abated, and I was free to command myself, I didn't know how...I had
never been my own boss before, I had always done what he had told
me...so after he was gone, I started to wonder...what had I been doing,
anyway? He was destroyed before he could really put his final plan into
action...I'm not even certain what it was...but I never got the chance
to see what a human really looked like, or what they really were. All
that time he had been telling me that my purpose was to help him destroy
the digidestined children who came from the real world...but I never
knew who you were... So, when he was destroyed, I took it upon myself to
find out just that. I read all about your race...I was fascinated by
how, among all the creatures in your world, you humans had risen to the
top. You had done amazing things in your world, like created medicines
and built huge structures, even in ancient times before you had any idea
what a computer or databyte was, you were pioneers, always thinking,
always creating. A prolific race, you humans are... But so destructive
at the same time. It seemed hypocritical that such a sentient species
would start wars and destroy countries, and I had supposed that was why
Piedmon had wished for your destruction. I was so naive though, thinking
he had our world's best interests in mind..."
"What do you mean?" Mimi asked. "Piedmon was evil, why would you think
he would ever wish for ANYthing to be in ANYone's best interests but his
own?"
Pipermon shook her head.
"You just don't understand," she told them, "Piedmon was more than just
an evil digimon...he was an artist."
Blank stares.
"Yes, yes, I know that isn't exactly the first word to come to your
minds..." Pipermon admitted.
"It's not even the LAST word..." Jyou muttered. Gomamon snickered.
Pipermon narrowed her eyes ruefully.
"Seriously, though," she went on, "if it's true that there is a little
evil in even the best of us...then it must too be true that there is a
little good in the worst of us, no?" She hesitated. "I guess that's what
I had always believed... I guess I saw him in a different light than
everyone else did...I couldn't help but admire him, he was my
master...my creator..." Her voice trailed off. "Everything Piedmon did
was completely thought out...every move he made, he took into
consideration the reaction it would get. He always took into account
what his audience would think...there wasn't a single thing he did that
wasn't premeditated."
"What I don't quite understand," Tai said after a moment, "is why, if he
created you to be his pawn, and you were so powerful...why didn't he
just create like a whole army of digimon like you and destroy us that
way?"
"He knew better than to try that," Pipermon explained. "By combining the
three types of digimon into one, Piedmon had created a digimon that,
even at a lower level than he, was more powerful than he. Even as I am
now, in my Ultimate form, I would still be more powerful than he ever
was at his Mega evolution." She frowned. "It took all he had...every
trick up those ridiculous puffy red sleeves of his...just to keep me
under his power. He knew that if I learned what he was really
planning...if I disagreed with his motives...he knew I could have
blasted him to digital smithereens if I wanted to." Pipermon paused, and
looked at her hands. "He knew he wouldn't have ever been able to control
a whole throng of digimon like myself...he never would have been able to
keep that many creatures at my level of power under his thumb. So,
rather than build an empire of lower creatures he could have easily
controlled, he created me, a single being with the power of dozens. One
digimon who, even in a lower form of evolution, could do more damage
than he and the other Dark Masters could have done, combined."
The children gasped.
"Are you really that powerful?" Kari asked meekly. Pipermon's shoulders
sagged a little.
"To be honest, Hikari-san," she said, "I don't know. I've never really
achieved my highest output level, I never had a need to... I dunno
exactly how much power I may have." She grinned. "But rest assured,
digidestined," she went on, "though I may not know my own strength, I DO
know that there is only one single being in this world who can match me,
and that is the enemy...Kurarimon."
"So, with you on our side, this should be a piece of cake!" Takeru cried
in elation.
Pipermon flinched.
"Uh...sure," she said softly, and shifted so she was sitting on her
knees. She looked down at her hands and fidgeted.
"So...being that you're this sort of...super-digimon," Izzy said after a
moment, "is it safe to say that you could crack just about any computer
code? Read any encrypted file?" He grinned as she nodded slowly. "That’s
amazing, Pipermon," he went on, overjoyed to meet someone whose
technical aptitude matched--or possibly even exceeded--his own, "is
there anything you CAN'T do with a computer?"
She coyly lifted one eyebrow.
"Izumi-san," she said, "I can read binary as simple as you can read your
ABC's. Encryption codes and mainframe data-processing jargon are my
native tongue. I could do things that the technical engineers in YOUR
world only DREAM about...things that would make your so-called geniuses
turn positively verdant with envy." She cracked her knuckles. "Izumi-
san, I could take your computer programs...and make them dance."
Then a new sound caught her ears, and she snapped her head to the side.
She looked to the other side of the rock, and saw Yamato seated with his
back up against the boulder, his hands clasped around something silvery,
held near his mouth. A low, throaty sound was emanating from between his
fingers. It was an almost ethereal sound, like several voices, all in
harmony with one another, all coming from the same object. Intrigued,
Pipermon swiveled her legs around, and then dropped to the ground beside
Yamato.
"Yamato-san," she said, "I didn't know you were a musician."
He jumped, startled by how quickly she had appeared, and lowered his
hands.
"I...I am," he replied slowly, staring down at the instrument.
"You're quite good," Pipermon told him, "but your song is so sad."
Yamato smiled.
"A harmonica usually sounds that way," he explained.
"Har...monica?" she echoed, scrunching up one side of her mouth. "That
is what your strange fat sideways fife is called?"
Yamato laughed.
"Well, it's not really a fife at all," he said with a grin, "a harmonica
is just a harmonica."
By now, all the other children had migrated to the other side of the
rock to watch the exchange between Pipermon and Yamato. She reached out
to touch the harmonica, and took it gently from Yamato's open palm,
holding it gingerly between her fingers as though afraid she might break
it. She ran her fingertips over the shiny silver, then looked at Yamato,
confusion in her eyes.
"A harmonica can only play a sad song?" she asked quietly.
He balked.
"Well, uh...no," he responded uneasily, "I would suppose that it depends
on who's playing it, and what they wanted to hear..."
She smiled a sideways smile.
"So, like any instrument," Pipermon said knowingly, "it reflects the
heart of whoever plays it."
Yamato felt his face redden. Somehow, even Pipermon seemed able to read
his soul. All the children knew that Yamato had always been sort of a
lone wolf. He kept to himself, and preferred it that way. When you keep
to yourself, he would always tell himself, you never have to worry about
letting anybody down. When you don't let anyone get too close to you,
you never have to worry about getting hurt. But when you fear the
repercussions of friendship so much that you push everyone away, do you
not damn yourself to a life of loneliness? Yamato had surprised even
himself when he realized, two years ago, when the digidestined were
first cast into the digiworld, just how much friendship could mean.
Never before had he become so close to anyone as he had his fellow
digidestined. He could honestly say he would do near about anything to
insure their safety.
And then there was TK. His little brother. That went without saying.
Time and time again, Yamato had endangered his own safety for Takeru.
Protecting TK was, at times, the only purpose Yamato could find for
himself. Sometimes he wondered what would happen on that inevitable day
when TK grew up and no longer needed Yamato's brotherly advice or
protection. But he didn't really want to think about that.
That was why he played the harmonica. Its haunting, almost ghostly
chords somehow helped ease the stormy seas of his heart and, even if no
one else knew it, it made him happy. Perhaps it was because the
harmonica was much like Yamato himself; rather awkward when placed in
the company of others and unusual to be seen in large groups. The
harmonica, too, was a loner, an often solitary instrument in a world run
by the orchestra. But, like Yamato, the harmonica, if understood, was
capable of making beautiful music all by itself.
Pipermon frowned at the look on Yamato's face. Realizing she had struck
a nerve, she started to say something to retract her previous statement
when a gust of wind rushed past them, blowing out the campfire like a
snuffed candle. Pipermon looked up at the blackening sky.
"Come on, guys," Tai said, getting to his feet. Kari took his wrist.
"Storms are coming," he went on, "let's get to shelter before we all get
drenched."
As they hurried toward their tents, Jyou turned back over his shoulder.
"Coming, Pipermon?" he asked as she headed toward the tree. She paused
and looked at him.
"No, thanks," she said with a small sigh. "Now that all your digimon are
here, the tents will be pretty crowded." She closed her eyes and smiled
sweetly. "Besides," she added, "someone needs to keep watch."
Koushiro paused by his tent.
"If you need someone to relieve you, Pipermon," he said, "just come and
wake one of us, okay?"
Pipermon winked at him and held up her fingers in a V.
"You got it, Izumi-san," she said, and watched the children retreat to
their tents. Then she launched herself into the air and daintily sat
down in the tree again. As the wind blew through her long hair, she
watched the clouds slink past the moon, signaling the impending storms.
She sighed and leaned back in the tree. It was strange...she suddenly
found herself so drawn to these children...these children she was
supposed to hate. She laughed softly to herself, shaking her head.
What's wrong with me? she wondered, resting her chin in her hands. I'm
giving evil digimon a bad name... She chuckled again.
Then she perked up her ears. She had heard something...a giggle? A
whisper? A voice, in the wind. Pipermon narrowed her blue eyes and
tensed in the tree. Someone was nearby. She jumped softly down from her
perch, dropping to the ground.
"Who's there?" she demanded, the wind whipping through her hair. "Show
yourself!"
Another soft, high-pitched giggle rushed past her on the night wind, and
she scowled. She knew that laugh. Her mouth twisted up in a sneer as
Hollymon and Ivymon appeared in the shadows, their long tails twitching
by their ankles.
"What do you two fools want?" she hissed.
Hollymon's red eyes narrowed to angry slits.
"Now is that any way to talk to your co-conspirators?" she asked
unctuously.
Pipermon loured.
"Conniving, untrustworthy little weasels is all I would call YOU two..."
she growled in response. "What do you want?"
"It's not what WE want, Piper," Ivymon said, and grinned when Pipermon
winced. He knew she hated it when he called her that. "We're here on
orders." He paused pointedly. "Orders from Kurarimon," he went on after
a brief silence, "or had you forgotten about her?"
Pipermon's breath caught in her throat.
"What...what orders might those be?" she asked, trying not to sound
nervous. It wasn't working.
"To find out what the hell you think you're doing," Ivymon said.
Pipermon tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear.
"Come again?" she asked neutrally, and Hollymon rolled her eyes.
"Come off it, Pipermon," the smaller digimon said, "don't play dumb.
What's going on with you? Befriending these sniveling, incompetent
little digidestined brats...you've gone soft on us!"
"Shut up," Pipermon growled in an admonishing tone.
"Is it true, then?" Ivymon prodded. "Have you betrayed Kurarimon?"
"Whose side are you really on, Pipermon?" Hollymon added.
"I don't have to tell you half-witted half-pints ANYTHING!" Pipermon
shouted, slicing her hand through the air. "You two are MY subordinates,
and don't you forget it! Know your place!"
"We KNOW our place, Piper..." Ivymon said slowly.
"But do you know yours?" Hollymon concluded.
Pipermon covered her ears with her hands like a child trying to ignore
insults from the play yard bully.
"Shut up, BOTH of you!" she cried. "I don't have to take this crap from
you!"
"Is it crap, Pipermon," Ivymon seethed, "or is it the TRUTH?"
"It's true, we've seen that it is," Hollymon sneered, "you've RESCUED
them, for crying out loud. Why didn't you just let that boy fall into
the vortex? It would have made things easier!"
Pipermon glared daggers at them.
"Weren't you dimwitted dolts listening?" she fumed. "Kurarimon wants the
children brought to her...ALIVE. She wants to destroy them with her own
hands, she doesn't want them damaged by chance or happenstance. She
doesn't want their demise to be by accident, she would much rather
defeat them in person."
"So why did you heal the child's headache?" Hollymon asked. "Kurarimon
was rather having a lot of fun with that one."
Pipermon scowled.
"What's the point of torturing them now?" she shot back. "We're still
more than a day's walk from Kuroniji, why weaken them so early?" She
paused. "Besides," she added, folding her arms over her chest and
turning her back on the twins, "the more I do for them the more willing
they will be to trust me."
Ivymon threw his hands in the air.
"They ALREADY trust you!" he cried, and Pipermon whirled to face him,
jabbing one finger at him.
"But their digimon DON'T!" she snapped, curling up her lip in a snarl.
"And the more I do to convince them I'm their ally, the more likely they
will be to follow me up the mountain to Kurarimon's castle!"
Hollymon scoffed laughingly.
"Liar," she hissed. "My god, you're such a lousy liar, Pipermon, you
always WERE...how you convinced those kids of anything is totally beyond
my comprehension."
"But now," Ivymon added quickly, "you don't even WANT to hurt them
anymore...do you, Piper?"
"Shut up!" she shouted.
"DO YOU??" Hollymon yelled.
Pipermon whipped out her flute in a sparkling cloud of dust, then spun
it like a staff.
"I'll rip out your forked little tongues!" she roared in fury.
Ivymon lifted one thin green eyebrow.
"Is that a challenge, Piper?" he asked smoothly.
She gripped the flute between her thin fingers, her knuckles whitening.
"If that's what you lowlife cretins want..."
The two smaller digimon grinned at one another, then nodded in tandem
and sprang into action.
"Binding Tendrils!" Ivymon shouted.
"Prickly Heat!" Hollymon echoed.
Pipermon laughed off their attacks as though they had been nothing,
spinning the ammunition away with a flick of her flute.
"You'll have to do better than that," she taunted, and raised the
instrument to her lips. "Midnight Lightning!"
The purple bands of glowing lightning shot from the flute toward
Hollymon and Ivymon, but the twins weren't going to fall for that again.
They dodged the attack, then Ivymon darted into the shadows of the
darkened trees, disappearing from sight. Pipermon spun, her sharp eyes
scanning the trees for her invisible menace.
"Binding Tendrils!"
She let out a yelp when vines wrapped themselves tightly around her
upper torso, binding her arms to her sides, and then slithered around
her neck, daring to cut off her air. Ivymon chuckled and stepped back
into the light.
"Not so tough when we're not protecting our precious digidestined, now
are we, Piper?" he taunted in a syrupy voice.
"Oh, go find some mistletoe and kiss my--"
"Ah, ah, ah, Pipermon," Hollymon chided, waving one finger in the air,
"there's no need for vulgar language." She grinned at her brother as he
approached her slowly, cracking his knuckles.
"I suppose it's like they always say," Ivymon oozed, "two heads really
ARE better than one, ne?"
"Not when they only have half a brain between the two of them!" Pipermon
spat, and felt the vines tighten around her neck. She gasped, then
coughed, and struggled against Ivymon's viselike grip.
"You're trying my patience, Piper," he warned. She ignored him.
Hollymon grinned like a hyena.
"So easy..." she said softly, cracking her own knuckles in a maliciously
contemptuous manner. "Like taking candy from a baby." She splayed her
fingers, then grinned at Pipermon, a wild look in her red eyes. "Prickly
Heat!"
"Lightning Paw!"
Pipermon let out a squeak of surprise when a flash of white tore through
the vines constraining her. She tumbled backward, landing hard on the
forest floor, and then looked up, her jaw dropping in shock at the sight
of her rescuer.
"Two against one isn't fair," Gatomon growled, flattening her large ears
against her head and narrowing her blue eyes. "Didn't your mother ever
tell you that?"
Hollymon leapt backward into the air, and looked at her brother.
"Time to go," she whispered, and he nodded.
"Until we meet again, Little Piper!" Ivymon called, and the two impish
digimon vanished into the wind in a puff of smoke. Gatomon flexed her
claws, then glanced back over her shoulder at Pipermon as the fallen
digimon got to her feet.
"Gatomon?" Pipermon gasped in surprise. She couldn’t believe her eyes.
The catlike digimon turned primly on her heels and headed back toward
camp. Impulsively, Pipermon reached out and grabbed the end of Gatomon's
long striped tail. The feline spun back and glared.
"Gatomon...why?" Pipermon asked, genuinely curious. "Why...why did you
save me?"
Gatomon frowned.
"I heard a noise," she said softly, "so I peeked out of my tent to see
what was going on. When I saw that you weren't in your tree, I figured I
had better come and see what was going on." Her blue eyes flashed. "You
were protecting them, the children," she went on, her words slow and
articulate, "I wanted to make sure nothing prevented you from doing
that." She turned again, and started to walk away, pausing only long
enough to add, "Please let go of my tail."
Pipermon did so, then extended one arm, in a beckoning manner.
"Gatomon!" she called, and Gatomon paused again, but didn’t look back
this time. Pipermon hesitated. "Thank you, Gatomon."
"Don't mention it," Gatomon replied. She looked pointedly over her
shoulder. "Ever," she added icily, and headed back to Kari's tent.
Pipermon watched her go, and a frown slid over her features.
Damn you, Kurarimon, she though bitterly. But she should have seen this
coming. Kurarimon was too smart, she'd seen right through Pipermon like
a sheet of glass. She knew now, if she hadn't figured it out already,
that Pipermon no longer had any desire to harm the digidestined. But
why? she demanded of herself. WHY don't I desire to destroy them
anymore? The digidestined destroyed Piedmon...my master...my creator...I
should HATE them for that...but I...I just can't! I should want nothing
more than to destroy them to exact revenge for Piedmon's defeat...that
was why I agreed to join Kurarimon's fight against them in the first
place...so why am I having second thoughts now?
She shook her head to clear it, and returned to her perch in the tree,
torn between her head and her heart. One told her to destroy the
children...and the other told her to protect them. She didn't know which
one to listen to anymore...she just didn't know. Sitting in the tree,
Pipermon watched the first downpours of the Arashii fall upon the
digital earth until she was sure it could have been wrung like a wet
rag. She let her head fall back against the sturdy timber of the old
tree and listened to the rain.
What's wrong with me? she asked herself again. Only she wasn’t laughing
this time. What am I doing...?
O_o Okay, I think it's time for bed... ::points at self:: Okay, hikari,
no more posting fics at 2am, especially not when you have to work in the
morning. ::sigh:: But, alas, my public awaits! Well, okay, but that's
the last one I'm posting tonight....but more will come soon, yakusoku
shimasen. Aww...poor Pipermon...she's so torn... ::bounce:: It makes my
fingers all tingly when I type it, it's so exciting! Waiiii, okay, so
what do we think, ne? Review! Please! :D Kari...come on, now, hun, I
know you must have *something* to say in regards to this, you've only
been waiting for it for like...EVER! Smooches!
~~hikari
(
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