At the same time, on the other side of the same building, Tai, Yamato, Hikari, and Takeru were all having a bit of difficulty themselves.
"Binding Tendrils!" Ivymon shouted, and Kari grabbed her brother's wrist and yanked him hard to the right, barely dodging the vines, and sending the two siblings sprawling into a narrow alleyway in the side of the building.
"Tai!" Yamato shouted, wheeling back.
"Go on ahead!" Tai called back, waving him on. "We'll be harder to catch if we split up!"
"But--!"
"Just go!" he yelled. "We'll be fine!"
"Pepper Breath--poi!"
Agumon's attack hit Ivymon in the chest, tossing their nemesis backward and buying them a little time.
"Come on, Tai," Kari urged, helping him to his feet, "hurry!"
"Not...so...fast..." Hollymon sneered, jumping lightly down from where Izzy had evaded her on the roof. Kari squeezed Tai's hand, and ran her other hand over the headband beneath the goggles that still crowned her head. Gatomon, who had reverted to her Champion state after continually blocking the twins' attacks from hitting the children, tensed by Kari's side.
"You two go on," she said softly.
"We'll take care of these two jokers," Agumon added.
"But we can't just--"
"Go on," Gatomon hissed before Tai could continue. She flexed her claws. "We've got it covered."
Kari glanced at Agumon, and the little lizard nodded. She squeezed Tai's hand again. "Let's go."
"Binding Tendrils!"
"Prickly Heat!"
"Lightning Paw!"
"Pepper Breath--poi!!"
Kari ran as quickly as she could, headed for the small grove of skeletal trees, but not quite certain what she would do once she and her brother reached them. She was quickly running out of ideas...she really didn't know what to do anymore. Pipermon had said that the children had the power to defeat Kurarimon...but they had yet to discover what it was! She ignored the burning sensation in her chest as she ran harder, and tried desperately to block out the sounds of the battle behind them. She was afraid...afraid for the lives of their digimon...and the lives of her friends...
"Oh no you don't!" Tai heard Hollymon growl. "Prickly Heat!"
"Kari!" he yelped, and shoved her forward, wrapping his arms around her to block her from the attack. He let out a cry of surprise when two hands grabbed his shoulders and yanked him roughly to one side as Hollymon's attack whizzed past. He could feel the heat of the little fireballs as they shot past him, barely missing his face. Still clinging to his sister, he overbalanced and fell sideways, hitting his shoulder hard against the side of the building.
"Pipermon!" Kari exulted. Pipermon gave a playful salute. Tai quickly got back to his feet, and gave a wan smile.
"That's twice I owe you now for saving my ass," he said, and Pipermon winked at Kari.
"It was nothing," she assured them, and then peered around the corner of the building where Hollymon and Ivymon were searching for their lost victims. "Now," she went on, "if you'll excuse me..."--she cracked her knuckles, and snapped her head to either side, and Kari squinted as she heard the joints in Pipermon's neck pop--"I have to go takeout the garbage..."
"Be careful!" Kari called as Pipermon flew out to where the twins had gone back to wrestling with Agumon and Gatomon.
"Prickly Heat!"
"Pepper Breath--poi!!"
"Harlequin Bells!"
Pipermon's attack sliced through the air and hit Hollymon full force. With a scream, the smaller digimon tumbled head over feet backward into her brother.
"Playtime is over, you two," Pipermon growled, her flute materializing in her hands. "It's time you learned some manners, I’d say."
"You really wanna fight with us, Little Piper?" Hollymon sneered.
"Last time, your little feline friend had to come to your rescue..." Ivymon taunted. Gatomon's claws flexed.
"I was careless," Pipermon snarled testily. "I won't make that mistake again."
"Very well, then," Ivymon roared, lunging forward. "Binding Tendrils!"
The vines were quite easily deflected with a flick of Pipermon's wrist. Her flute spun, slicing through the vines as though they were made of butter.
"Is that all you've got?" she jeered.
"Prickly Heat!"
Pipermon shot upward higher, then dove back down, wielding the flute like a sword. With a battle cry, she snapped the flute out as she darted past Hollymon, and Hollymon reeled back, clutching her cheek as blood seeped through her fingers. Without pausing for a reaction, she somersaulted, then flipped around to head for Ivymon. Ivymon grunted, then snapped his vines tightly between his hands. With a loud shriek, he cracked the vines like a many-tailed whip, catching the end of Pipermon's flute and ripping it away from her grasp. She gasped, and spun in midair to try and grab it back, but Hollymon, still recovering from the shock of being cut, had her wits about her enough to hit Piper in the back with another Prickly Heat attack. Pipermon let out a cry of pain and whirled back, deciding she didn't really need the flute. She would get it later. She drew her right hand up near her face, and extended her middle and index finger. Lifting her elbow, she pointed the two fingers downward, then snapped her arm back up again, a single playing card now clamped between her two outstretched fingers.
"Deuces Wild!" she cried, bombarding Hollymon with a flurry of flying cards, red and black twos flying from her fingertips. The cards were difficult to dodge, but Hollymon managed to evade a few of them. Unfortunately for her, the majority of the electrically-charged cards hit her, and hit her hard, sparking and crackling as though she had gotten too close to a severed electrical wire.
"No! Hollymon!" Ivymon bared his teeth and lunged at Pipermon in a furious rage. "How dare you hurt my sister??" he screamed.
Pipermon yelped as her own flute came down, slicing across the back of her shoulder. She spun angrily, catching Ivymon in the stomach with her right fist. He grunted in pain and gasped for breath, doubled over, clutching his abdomen and coughing hoarsely. Pipermon's flute slid from his grasp and she darted down to snatch it up--
--and was promptly back-attacked as Hollymon pummeled her with another Prickly Heat.
"Coward!" Pipermon cried. "You would strike from behind not once--but TWICE??"
"I'll do whatever it takes to get you out of the way!!" Hollymon snarled, still furious that Pipermon’d had the audacity to cut her face.
"The feeling," Pipermon responded, spinning her flute, "is MUTUAL!"
She lunged forward again, ready to attack Hollymon head-on, but Ivymon had managed to recover enough to zip up and block Pipermon's path, his vine whip taut between his palms as he prepared to defend his alter-ego and mirror-image sibling. It seemed that it was quite true...the twins were not much of an adversary on their own, but together, they were quite a formidable foe. Pipermon hated to admit it, but she was starting to lose her stamina...she couldn't take much more of this... She looked at the twins, at Ivymon, who appeared ready to die defending them both, and Pipermon felt a sudden pang of remorse. She swallowed hard, lowering her flute.
"What are you doing?" Ivymon demanded harshly, still wheezing from his blow to the gut.
Pipermon frowned. "It doesn't have to be like this," she said softly, her eyes narrowed a little, almost as if she were pleading with them. "It doesn't have to end this way..."
"Yes it does," Hollymon snarled. "You made certain of that."
"Don’t try your pity act on us, Piper," Ivymon warned darkly, "you're the one who decided this fate for all of us. You are the traitor."
"Please, Hollymon, Ivymon, reconsider," she implored, a desperate yearning in her voice. "Kurarimon is wrong. She's got it all wrong! Please don’t make it so I have to destroy you..."
The twins glared at her.
"We will never betray Kurarimon," Hollymon hissed. "We won't sell out to the enemy."
"We won’t be made into turncoats, Pipermon," Ivymon growled.
"A regular Judas Iscariat you turned out to be," Hollymon added with a rueful click of her tongue. "I wonder...what were you offered to betray YOUR friend and master, ne?" She scoffed. "I pray no less than thirty pieces of silver..."
Pipermon sadly shook her head. "Poor misguided souls," she said, "the both of you..." She raised her flute level with her eyes and held it horizontal, gripping the center of it. "Aureus Judicium."
As the Latin words for Golden Judgement fell from her lips, Pipermon and the whole of her flute were engulfed in a blinding saffron light, and the twins quickly shielded their eyes. "I’m sorry," she whispered, then swung her right arm out, the flute still gripped tightly in her left hand. The golden light intensified, then flowed from the flute into her arm, shooting from her fingertips like a spear of pure energy.
The twins cried out as they were swallowed by the deep yellow brilliance, and Pipermon turned her face away, closing her eyes and ears to the sounds of the final cries of those she had once called comrades.
When there was silence again, Pipermon turned back to frown at the empty air, cursing herself for having just committed the heinous act she had.
She was a murderer.
She sank slowly back to the ground, her mind a mix of a myriad of horrible emotions...anger, fear, hatred... She had killed two of her fellow digimon... She never imagined that taking a life would feel this way...she felt as though her heart had been torn from her chest by way of her own hands. She clenched her fists in rage and guilt, condemning her very name for the perpetual bloodstains she would now bear on her soul. She slumped to the ground, and her legs gave out from under her. Falling forward on her hands and knees, she squeezed her eyes shut, feeling weak and sick.
"What...what have I done...?" she whispered, staring at her fingers as they dug into the dirt beneath her. "What have I DONE??"
Bwahahaha!! We were not expecting that, now were we? }:D Hikari is never afraid to kill off a character, remember this!
Muhuhahahahaahah!!! Wow, okay, a good friend just pointed out to me that this story seems to have a lot of similarities
with the whole Blackwargreymon saga...has anybody else noticed this? I hadn't before, but now that I go back and read
it, it really does! Creepy, ne? I'm psychotic! Er--I mean psychic. ^_^; And there, tiger, I said "ass", are you happy now?
ASS! Yeesh. Kay, ciao for now, amigos! ::toddles off to type the next chapter before she gets beaned with random flying
objects form her readers::
~~hikari
Back to the First Part of Chapter 15
