"Yama-chan?"
Pipermon snapped her chin up when she heard Takeru's frightened call. She let out a yelp when a shudder ran up the tree and nearly shook her from her perch. Gripping the branch, she leaned down to see what was going on. A gasp escaped her throat at what she saw.
"Yamato-san?" she cried.
He was backed up against the tree. He had backed up so fast that a shockwave had shuddered up the tree trunk when he slammed into it. His eyes were wide and full of terror, his chest was heaving, and sweat covered his brow. Pipermon felt a jolt of fear shoot through her body. What had happened to him? Her thoughts immediately snapped back to the digivice--it had been flickering, just like Tai's, hadn't it? What...what did it mean? Then Kurarimon's ruby eyes flashed through her mind, and she felt her blood boil at the idea that Kurarimon had gotten to Yamato, too. She launched herself from the branch and dropped to the ground, staring hard at his face.
His kind blue eyes were now wide and wild, like those of a creature who knew the predator was nearby but knew not where it lurked. It was a look of desperate terror. His face was covered in a cold sweat, and his breath came in ragged gasps as though he were having trouble inhaling. Pipermon furrowed her brow and took a step closer to the frightened child.
"Yamato-san," she said, her eyes fixed on his, "Yamato-san, what's wrong?"
He didn't even seem to see her, he looked right through her.
"Yama-chan?" TK cried softly, his voice cracking. "Yama, what happened??" The younger boy stepped toward his brother.
Yamato seemed to snap out of his trance, and his eyes narrowed as TK got closer. He pressed back against the tree, baring his teeth.
"Stay away from me," he snarled. Pipermon gasped at the inhuman growl in his voice. Something was terribly wrong.
Takeru hesitated, then took another step.
"I said stay AWAY!!" Yamato screamed, fisting his hands. He lunged forward in preparation to strike the smaller boy.
Takeru shrieked in fear and flinched.
Pipermon darted in front of Takeru, her hands out in front of her. She caught Yamato's fist in her open palm, surprising even herself. She fixed her eyes on him, and squeezed her fingers around his fist. The others watched in fear and shock as Pipermon stood between Yamato and his brother, shielding the younger child.
"Yamato-san!" she yelled, trying to get through to him. She set her jaw. "Yamato-san, what's the matter? What's wrong with you?"
He let out a furious growl and fisted his other hand, drawing back to punch her. She caught that hand, too, and they stood at a stalemate. She struggled, trying to push him backward, to break free. He was a lot stronger than she had first thought...or was it fear that made him stronger? She wasn't sure. She tossed her head to flip her bangs out of her face, and looked into Yamato's eyes. She was frightened by what she saw...no longer did his kind azure eyes betray a cool and calm spirit behind them, rather they were the eyes of a crazed and terrified young man whose only interest was hurting who and whatever was in his way. She bit her lower lip and then shouted his name again.
"Yamato-san, what's happened to you?" she cried. "What's wrong? What do you see??"
He gasped like she had slapped him, and recoiled quickly. His face contorted in terror.
"Faces..." he rasped, "I see...faces...so many faces...trying to...they're all...and their voices...I can hear them screaming...and..." Suddenly his expression hardened. "No!" he screamed, backing up against the tree again. "You stay away from me!!" He lunged forward again, shoving past Pipermon and the rest of the group.
"Yamato-san!" she called after him, zooming over to block his path. "Yamato-san, stop!" She spread her arms to blockade him. "Stoppit, Yamato-san, you're--ullp!"
She cried out and clutched her stomach as Yamato landed a hard punch to her abdomen. She coughed and dropped to her knees as he sprinted past her.
"Pipermon!" Kari shouted, and took her arm to help her to her feet. "Pipermon, are you okay?"
Without replying, Pipermon turned to look to where Yamato had run. She held her stomach with one hand, still smarting from where his fist had hit her, and she swallowed hard.
"Yamato-san!" she shouted, and the single echo that returned to her made her blood run cold. She looked severely at the rest of the children. "I think Kurarimon got to him," she said, "he's hallucinating. More of her tricks...he's lost all grip on reality." She tensed, prepared to go after him. Kari grabbed Pipermon’s arm. Pipermon looked down. "Hikari-san?"
"He's stronger than he looks, Pipermon," Kari said, "he could really hurt you if he tried. If he's lost sense of what's real and what's not, he could really hurt you..."
Pipermon pulled free of the girl's grip and hovered a few inches above the ground.
"Well, we have to do SOMETHING!" she shouted. "If he keeps running that way, he'll fall into the Shin'en!"
"The Shin'en?" the children echoed.
Pipermon nodded gravely.
"The Shin'en is another creation courtesy of the Kurarimon's powers," she said, "it's a deep chasm, it marks the edge of the forest, it serves as a boundary. It's at least twenty feet across--farther than any human could jump without help...and nobody's certain how deep it is...no one has ever been down there and returned to tell about it." She scowled. "It was put there to prevent anyone who couldn't fly from leaving these woods."
Gabumon leapt forward.
"I'll catch him," he shouted. "Gabumon digivolve to--"
No change.
"That's not going to work," Pipermon interjected, "the light from Yamato's digivice is fading, just like Kamiya-san's. You won't be able to digivolve until that is rectified. We have to stop the hallucinations!"
"I think I saw something like this on an episode of The X-Files once," Jyou said.
Tai lifted one eyebrow, floored at the idea that squeamish Jyou, who got nauseous just at the THOUGHT of blood, and chickened out at the mere MENTION of danger, would watch a creepy series like The X-Files.
"YOU watch The X-Files??" he demanded.
Jyou shook his head.
"No, but Shin does," he replied. "He likes to turn it on whenever I'm in the room just to see if I'll turn green."
"Okay, so what happened in the episode?" Sora asked. "How did they fix the problem?"
Jyou looked sheepish.
"I...I dunno," he admitted, "it got gory and I left the room."
Nobody liked the sound of where this was headed. Tense silence filled the air. Pipermon looked at the children again, and set her jaw.
"I'm going after him," she told then simply, and darted away before any of them could reply. She heard them gasp as she disappeared into the thick trees after Yamato. "I'm sorry, kids," she said softly, "this is my fault. I won't let Kurarimon's games go any further, I promise you that!" She zipped through the woods, following the trail she had seen Yamato run down. Accelerating until she was going faster than even she believed she could fly, she quickly caught up with him.
Damn, he's fast for a human! she thought. He was almost to the hill that dropped off steeply into the gaping canyon of the Shin'en below.
"Yamato-san!" she shouted. "Yamato-san, stop! Please, stop! You have to stop! You're hallucinating!" She put on a burst of speed. "Whatever you're seeing, Yamato-san, whatever you're running from--it's not REAL!"
She caught up with him and reached out, grabbing his arm. He twisted away with a cry like a frightened animal. Pipermon sqinted.
"Yamato-san, I'm sorry!" she whispered, and tackled him from behind, throwing her arms around his shoulders and pitching them both to the ground. With a startled cry, she found herself falling, spinning, and realized they were tumbling down the hill at an alarming speed, somersaulting and tumbling through the dirt and grass. Yamato struggled against her grip, still swept up in the delusions Kurarimon had trapped him in. She squeezed her arms tight around his chest, refusing to let him go, and used her powers of levitation to slow their rapid descent toward the Shin'en. She let out a shriek as the crevice of the Shin'en came closer and closer, and then--
--they stopped, just inches from the edge. Breathing heavily, Pipermon sighed, relieved, and she felt her arms quivering as she loosened her grip on Yamato's torso. He still struggled against her touch, apparently still seeing something she couldn't. She cried out as he lurched to the side, coming dangerously close to the edge of the Shin'en.
"Yamato-san, stop! Stop struggling!" she scolded. "For God's sake, STOP! You'll fall if you don't stay still!" She kept a firm grip on his forearms and shook him, looking into his eyes. "Yamato-san, it's ME! It's Pipermon! Stop--PLEASE!"
She let out a shriek of fear as he wrenched free of her grasp and stumbled backward, shoving away from her, blinded by his sheer terror. The ground at the edge of the Shin'en began to crumble beneath his feet.
"Yamato-san, get away from the edge!" she cried, grabbing for his shirt as he floundered backward, off-balance, and tottered on the edge. He let out a terrified yelp as the unsteady ground gave way under his weight and he plunged down ward into the abyss below.
"YAMATO-SAN!!"
Pipermon hurled herself toward the edge and snapped her arm out. Her fingers grasped the fabric of Yamato's shirt, and she held fast. Breathing a sigh of relief, she quickly tried to pull him back up onto solid ground. He still resisted, frightened, against her clutch, even though she was the only thing preventing him from plummeting to his death. Pipermon silently damned Kurarimon for doing this to him. She had poisoned his mind, and nearly killed him! Kurarimon knew now, that Pipermon was walking the line between the two sides...though she didn't want to betray Kurarimon, Pipermon just couldn't bring herself to hurt these children, nor could she bear to see any harm come to them! Was Kurarimon doing this merely to torture her now?
"Yamato-san, PLEASE!" she begged, struggling to pull him up over the edge. "Please, stop squirming!" She felt her heart jerk in her chest as he twisted and writhed in her grasp, seemingly unaware that, if Pipermon's grip failed, he was done for, he would plummet to an unseen death a distance no one had ever traveled. Oh, no, no way, Pipermon thought, angrily, determined, setting her jaw. Like hell he will. With a cry of exasperation, she gave his shirt a sharp yank, pulling him up over the lip of the Shin'en. Before he had the chance to put up a fight, Pipermon ran one hand down his face.
"Mists of Morpheus!" she whispered, and a sparkling lavender fog billowed all around them.
"Pipermon!!"
With a strangled cry, Koushiro rushed down the hill, the rest of the children hot on his heels, their digimon not far behind. They all stopped short at the sight of the purplish haze.
"Pipermon?" Koushiro called her name again, and took a step forward, waving his hands in the air in front of him in an attempt to dispel the thick fog.
When the violet vapor lifted, the children saw Pipermon near the edge of the deep black chasm she had warned them about, cradling Yamato's head in her lap. She looked up at them, tears clouding her bright blue eyes.
"I'm sorry," she said as they stepped closer to her. Her voice trembled. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry...I had to...I just had to...he wouldn’t...he wouldn't stop struggling, so I..."
Jyou dropped to one knee and took Yamato’s wrist. He glanced at his watch, concentrating.
"He's okay, Pipermon," Jyou told her, letting go of the boy's wrist. "His pulse is a little fast, but he's all right. Why are you apologizing?"
"You probably just saved his life," Izzy said.
Pipermon squeezed her eyes shut.
"But I had to use one of my attacks on him," she said softly. "I used a sleeping spell...I had to...I had to attack him..."
"He would have fallen otherwise," Gabumon said as the rest of the digimon gathered around their human companions.
"No need to apologize," Patamon said with a smile, "you didn't hurt him."
She looked up at the children, and smiled faintly.
"Ohmigosh, Pipermon!" Mimi gasped. Pipermon snapped her head up as Mimi pointed. "You're bleeding!" "I'm..."
Pipermon looked down at her arm. Indeed, she had a scratch on her left forearm. The fabric of her sleeve was torn, and blood was slowly oozing from the wound. She touched the blood gingerly, as though she didn't believe it was real, then winced and hissed in pain. It stung!
"I didn't think that digimon bled," Jyou said, lifting one eyebrow.
Pipermon frowned.
"Most don't," she admitted, "but I do. So do Hollymon and Ivymon...so does Kurarimon... It comes from being what we are...we're more than just digimon...we're...we're almost real. The combination of virus, data, and vaccine create a creature that totters on the fine line between reality and virtual reality. We're digital, and yet we're real enough to bleed." She twitched her nose. "Pretty freaky, ne?" she added with a small smile.
The children looked a little startled by this late-breaking news. It had never even occurred to them before that digimon were completely digital, and they themselves were real...the digimon had come into the real world with them so many times that they had never given it a second thought. They were as real as any human, as far as the digidestined were concerned. But it was true, none of the digimon had really bled...Mimi had bandaged Ogremon once after a bad fall, and he'd had a gash across his face...but there really hadn’t been any blood. Kari had patched up a wound on Agumon after a fight, but it hadn't really bled, just sort of emitted a black steam. Was that digital blood? Usually, when the digimon were injured, they just devolved back to their Rookie or In-Training state...but none of them could think of a time when a digimon had really bled.
Pipermon looked down at Yamato, and her smile faded.
"Come on, kids," she said, moving to stand up, "we have to get off the Shin'en and back to the trail. The sleep spell I used doesn't last very long, and if Yamato-san wakes up and starts freaking out again, I might not be able to stop him."
She scooped him up, one arm behind his neck and the other beneath his knees, and started up the hill, following Jyou and Gomamon's lead. She looked up toward the top of the hill and noticed that Tai and Kari had just caught up with all of them. Kari looked down and saw the rest of the group trudging their way back up the hill, and she squeezed her brother’s hand.
"He's all right, Tai," Kari told him, "Pipermon caught him. He's okay." She smiled as she heard Tai breathe a sigh of relief. Tai admitted, to anyone who asked, that he and Yamato often locked horns when it came to making decisions, but he was still Tai's best friend, even if they found it hard to agree on anything. Tai wasn't sure what he would do if something were to happen to Yamato--or any of the digidestined, for that matter. They were more than just a group of friends, they were almost like a single unit...they could almost read one another’s thoughts. A single unit...yes, that's what it was...a unit that would fall apart at the seams if any one of its components were lost.
Pipermon followed the rest of the children up to the top of the hill where they reunited with Tai and Kari. There was excited chatter as the children told Taichi what had happened to Pipermon, and how she had explained that she and the enemy were almost as real as anyone from their own world. Stepping into the clearing atop the hill, Pipermon shifted Yamato's weight in her arms, and she paused, her eyes narrowed. She silently dropped to one knee and placed the palm of her hand on his cheek.
He's very warm, she thought, frowning.
"Watcha doin', Pipermon?"
She looked up into TK's curiously anxious eyes, and impulsively reached out and brushed his golden hair off his forehead, her palm on his brow. She placed her other hand across Yamato's forehead again.
"Pipermon," TK said, "what are you--?"
"Jyou-san," Pipermon called, and the chatter in the clearing stopped as he looked at her. She pulled her hand away from Takeru's face. "Jyou-san, what's a human's normal temperature?"
He blinked.
"Ninety-eight point six degrees Fahrenheit," he recited, "why do you ask?"
"Does Yamato have a fever?" Sora queried, worried.
Pipermon didn't reply. She looked at TK, then at Yamato, then back to Jyou.
"Ninety-eight point six?" she said. "You're certain?"
He nodded, and the children and digimon fanned out around her and Yamato as she pressed her palm a little harder against his forehead, and felt TK's brow one more time. She shook her head and looked at Jyou. "Ninety-eight point six," she whispered, and worry flooded her eyes. "If you're right, Jyou-san, then Yamato's temperature is dangerously high. It must be at least a hundred and six."
There was a collective gasp.
"A hundred and SIX?" Jyou cried.
"Inconceivable!" Izzy shouted.
Gabumon hurried over to his human's side.
"How can it be so high?" he asked, afraid. He had almost lost Yamato once because he had gone out in a snowstorm to look for TK and nearly frozen to death. And there was the time Yamato had almost lost HIMSELF in a cave of darkness created by the fears in his own heart. Both times, however, Gabumon had been able to save him...to bring him back...but this time... What would happen this time?
"A hundred and six?" Jyou asked again. "That's...that's just...not possible! A temperature of a hundred and four is enough to send a human to the hospital! A hundred and six...that could...could..." He refused to say the words... That could kill him, he thought.
"I KNEW he was lying!" Takeru wailed suddenly, dropping hard to his knees beside his brother. Patamon fluttered up to the young boy's shoulder. "I knew he was lying, I knew he wasn't okay!"
Pipermon looked at him.
"Takeru-san," she said, "whaddya mean?"
TK flinched and squeezed his eyes shut.
"Last night he woke up in the middle of the night cuz he'd had a bad dream," he said, near tears, and Pipermon's fists clenched as she realized she had been right...Kurarimon had gotten to Yamato, and badly, at that. "He was all scared, but he insisted that he was okay. He said he was fine--but I knew he was lying!"
Tai snapped to attention.
"TK!" he shouted, and TK looked at him. "TK, did you say Yama had a dream last night?"
TK sniffed, and then nodded.
"Uh huh," he affirmed, "a really scary one, too. He was really freaked out!"
Tai's mind was starting to put the pieces together.
"Sora," he said, and didn't even wait for her to acknowledge, "the night before you got that headache...you had a dream, too...didn't you?"
She blinked.
"Well, actually...yeah, I did," she admitted, sounding a little sheepish, "but I blamed it on being worried about you, Tai..."
Tai felt his face flush crimson, but continued quickly, "Sora, quick, tell me what you saw in the dream."
"Well," she said, "it was almost as if the dream started in the middle...like it was already going on when I became a part of it. We were running...all of us, running...running from something--I dunno what it was... It was some sort of a strange black cloud... But, we were too slow...and it..." Her voice trailed off.
"It swallowed you up, didn't it?" he asked seriously, and she snapped her head up, her eyes bulging.
"Yes!" she cried. "Yes, it did! But--how did you--?"
"Because I had the same dream," he said, and tapped one finger beside his left eye, "the night before I lost my sight."
"That was the weird part, though, Tai," Sora went on, "you weren't in the dream at all."
"Of course not," he said, slapping his fist into his palm, "because the dream had already gotten me." He paused. "You were right in front of me, Sora," he added, then hesitated. "Yamato was...he was in front of you...wasn't he?"
Sora gasped.
"He was...ohmigosh--!"
"Then I'll bet you my allowance for the next three weeks that neither you nor me was in the dream Yamato saw," Tai said.
"So whoever was in front of him will most likely be the next one on Kurarimon's list!" Sora said.
Izzy was fascinated.
"So," he said, "it stands to reason that Yamato would be able to correctly identify the person who will most likely be hit next." He paused. "We'll just have to ask him who was in front of him when he wakes up."
"IF he wakes up..."
All eyes turned to Pipermon.
"What??" they all cried.
Pipermon was holding Yamato's head in her lap again, and she brushed a golden strand of hair out of his face.
"My spell should have worn off by now," she explained with a frown. "The magic is only supposed to last maybe five or six minutes..." She gnawed on her lip. "I think that, whatever Kurarimon has done to him, it's made him too weak to awaken from the spell." She draped the back of her hand across his forehead again. "His temperature is so high..." she said, sounding fearful. She looked up at the rest of the group. "We have to find a way to bring the fever down."
Jyou dug through his pockets.
"I think I have some Aspirin," he mumbled.
"I think this is a little beyond the bounds of conventional medicines, Jyou," Gomamon said, waving a flipper.
"Gomamon's right," Pipermon said, and lay Yamato's head back down on the forest floor. Gabumon stood beside his fallen partner and looked at Pipermon with anxiety in his large round eyes.
"What do we do?" he asked. The look in Pipermon's eyes was a grave one.
"There's only one thing we CAN do," she said, and she placed two fingers on Yamato's forehead. Kari quickly slapped Pipermon's hand away.
"Hikari-san--?"
"Pipermon, you CAN'T," Kari protested, "it's too dangerous!"
"A headache is one thing," Sora added, her hands clasped together uncomfortably, "but Yamato's situation is really bad."
Pipermon was taken aback.
"But we have to do SOMETHING," she cried, "we can't just leave him like this! If something isn't done to break the fever...he could...he could..." She clenched her fists. "He could DIE!" She glared at the children. "Who are you more worried about, anyway" she demanded, "me, or your friend??"
Hikari lowered her eyes.
"But...you're our friend, too, Pipermon," she said softly.
Pipermon sucked in a sharp breath, feeling rather like she had been slapped across the face. She cringed and looked away.
Oh, how I wish you hadn't said that, Hikari-san, she thought. It's just going to make everything harder...
She looked up at the children again.
"Listen to me," she said, "this isn't as dangerous as you may think. I can regulate my internal body temperature, I can raise or lower it up to seven degrees from my normal temperature, which makes a hundred and six degree fever a lot less dangerous for me than for Yamato-san." She locked eyes with Kari. "Please," she implored, "please, let me try...let me help him..." This is partially my fault anyway... she added silently. Tai frowned.
"You really think it's safe?" he asked. He wanted to help Yama, but he didn't want anything to happen to Pipermon. Yama was his best friend, but Pipermon was their guide...without her, they would be lost, but without him, they would be incomplete...oh, what to do? It was times like this that Tai despised being the leader...because when you're the leader, the final say on big decisions rests on your shoulders...and so, too, does the responsibility should something go wrong. Tai grit his teeth. "You're confident you'll be all right?" he went on.
She nodded.
"Piece of cake," she said. "We'll both be fit as a fiddle when I'm through." She winked, and hoped she knew what she was talking about.
Tai sighed gustily, then slowly nodded his head.
"Then do it, Pipermon," he said. "Help Yama...but be careful."
She nodded once, crisply, then again placed two fingers on Yamato's forehead. She placed two from her other hand on her own brow, and closed her eyes.
"Rains from Heaven, Winds from the West,
Come forth, O power with which I was blest.
Bring back this child from the thresh hold of death,
Let him be saved by these words Magic saith:
Breath of Restoration!"
Again, the wind that seemed to originate nowhere swirled around the children, sparkling as though the air were full of diamond dust. Pipermon opened her palms and pressed her hand against Yamato’s' forehead. There was a flash of light--
--and then something went wrong. Pipermon felt suddenly dizzy as the sickness Yamato had been stricken with was yanked from his body and slammed into hers. Something was very wrong--it wasn't supposed to--something wasn't right at all! It wasn't supposed to happen like this--!
"Pipermon..."
She leapt back away from Yamato, nearly colliding with Jyou. Her eyes scanned the trees.
"Pipermon...what do you think you're doing?"
Kurarimon's voice filled her head, hissing like a serpent. Pipermon let out a shriek and stumbled backward, trying to escape the voice in her mind.
"What are you doing, Pipermon...?" the disembodied voice demanded. Pipermon cried out and dropped to her knees, pressing her hands over her ears as though she could block out the voice invading her thoughts. Her eyes were wild with terror. Was this what Kurarimon had done to Yamato? No wonder he had run! "So, you're helping them now?" Kurarimon whispered, her voice dripping with fury and resent. "How noble...taking the punishment meant to be theirs... This has gone far beyond the bounds of simply earning their trust, Little Piper..."
Pipermon screamed in terror and lunged backward as Kurarimon's ruby red eyes flashed before hers, narrowed to angry slits and burning with the fires of rage.
"So...you wish to be their ally now?" the eyes bellowed accusingly. "Not a very wise choice, child...I strongly suggest you rethink your plans. Perhaps I can help you make the right decision, Pipermon...perhaps I shall give you a sample of what I do to my enemies... I will give you another chance, Pipermon--but one, and only one--to choose...but maybe I'll let you experience what it is like to be my enemy before you make a final determination of whose side you're really on..."
With that, a searing white-hot pain shot through Pipermon's head, and she felt woozy and faint. She swayed unsteadily, and vaguely heard the frightened shouts of the digidestined children as her knees gave out from under her. She felt herself falling, and tried to cry out, but before she could do anything else, the world went black and silent around her.
Waiiii, this is *not* good! What'll happen to Pipermon? And what about Yamato? ::bounce:: Eeee...I'm all excited--and I
already know the ending. O_o; Okay, hikari, no more Coca Cola for breakfast. "..." Well, anyway, there ya go... please
review! Arigato! Ja ne, minna-san!
~~hikari
Back to the First Part of Chapter 9
