Chapter 8
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.
