Gizamon was still looking over the edge of the cliff and moaning quietly. Hearing someone arrive, he turned, dejected, to see who it was. Blinking at Taira, he cocked his head when he saw the boy. Strange, he hadn't known there were other Digidestined. Of course, when one's a servant to one of the Dark Masters, one does not hear all the info there is to hear. He shuddered to clear that thought. He was a Digidestined Digimon - or had been. He whimpered again. "Sayu fell off..." he cried piteously, turning back towards the cliff and looking over the edge again.

Sayu was actually impressed with the cave. It was spacious, and well-furnished, and rather cozy. "How long've you lived here?" She asked Betamon. The small Digimon grinned and shrugged.

"A while. Since before the Dark Masters." Betamon turned and pointed to the back of the cave. "I can't for the life of me figure out what that is, though." Sayu turned to look, and her eyes went wide.

"By Ra!" She gasped, shocked. "It looks like..." She trailed off as she approached the eye-shaped marking. As she reached out to touch it, it started to glow. Suddenly, it flashed, shrunk, and slipped inside the tag that Betamon had given her. "What the...?" She held the tag before her, as she eyed the new addition. The same marking was inside the tag, and bronze-colored now. "Weird." She shrugged it off, and looked where the wall had been. Her jaw dropped. "....." She stared about the dark and dreary wasteland. She saw something dart past her, and heard Betamon whimper behind her, and whirled, just in time to see the little marine Digimon dissolve. Her eyes widened, as one of the shadowed things grabbed her.

"I think our Master would like to see you, though he'd probably prefer one of the other 'Destined... Oh, crap." The thing hissed, and then Sayu woke up, panting heavily. She looked around. She was in the cave again. She turned to where the dark-world had been, but there was just a regular wall there, now.

"...Betamon?" No answer. "Betamon?" She called again, louder. No reply. Sayu was alone in the cave.

Isthian waved to Taira over Fi's head. "Long time, no see, Goggly Girly!" He quirked an eyebrow at the unintroduced Damen. "But I guess I can see the reason for that." Thi addressed the boy more directly now, declaring, "You'd better not try your tricks on the other girls in this group. This one's mine!" He draped his arm back around Fiona possessively.

Wollymon was too busy chasing after butterflies to properly greet, or even notice, Taira's new friend.

Taira grew a tinge jealous of Fiona, but with this new guy gripping onto her waist she wasn't going to care. That may have been in her crazy stage, but it still was in her mind. "Oh yeah Isthian...." She held up her hand and did the spirit fingers thing. The fingers moving caused a beam of light to hit a small coil on her finger. Sticking out her tongue she looked back at Damen. "This is Damen... I found him while bathing..." Smirking, both her and Damen seemed to only get the joke.

Damen jumped down and still laughing some introduced himself. "Just call me Damen... I apologize. I seemed to have stumbled on a girl who has now become a savior. Or else I might still be left alone." Taira blushed and got off Foxmon. Foxmon in turn dedigivolved to Cubimon since she had evolved so many times that day she almost went to baby form.

"How can you all be happy and carefree like that?" Gizamon snapped angrily, turning to glare and scowl at the present Digidestined. "Sayu just fell over the cliff!" He moaned, turning back to look over the cliff. "And Sayu can't swim! She's probably drowned, and none of you seem to care at all!" He hissed at them, beginning to sob again. "Saaaayuuuuuu..."

Fiona blinked at Taira. "You're back? You're... not dead?" She jumped up away from Isthian and gave the girl a big hug. "I hope you can cook!" she said to her.

With his girlfriend gone, Isthian took the opportunity to kneel next to Gizamon with a sympathetic look on his face. "It's alright," he said gently, resting his hand on one of the Digimon's back-spikes. "We decided that since she was so violent and nasty, it's probably for the best that she's moved on to, uhh, yet another world. So you see, it's really not so bad." He gave the marine Digimon a comforting pat on the head before standing up again.

Gizamon decided that Isthian was trying to comfort him, not insult him, so he let the bad comments on Sayu go. They were true, anyway. He managed a weak smile at Isthi. "Thanks... I think..." The Digimon blinked, and turned to Damen. "Sorry, I haven't introduced myself. I'm Gizamon."

Sayu was scared out of her wits. She huddled in the cave, hugging her knees to her chest. She couldn't remember what that weird dream had been about, only that it was bad and that her fr - those other kids were in trouble. She grabbed her digivice, and stared at it for a long moment. Then, face set determinedly, she spoke into it, holding down the button that brought up the map.

"Hello? Can you guys hear me?" She tried, hoping that they did. Blinking, she wondered why she cared. She wanted them to live to get her out of this cave. Yeah, that was it. It most definitely was not because they were her friends. Oh, no, not at all. Hisssss.

Taira smirked sheepishly at Gizamon. Not really knowing how to respond to him. Isthian had already done his best. She had to grin, it was kinda cute how he did it, even though he was being his normal self. Damen was standing back and apologizing to Gizamon. Almost to the point it was annoying. Taira shook her head and ignored it. Then Fiona, out of the blue, gave her a big hug. Hugging back slightly and blushing Taira was about to say something when she heard a noise, almost a voice, come from her digivice.

"C'mon, someone hasta hear me!" Sayu snapped into the digivice, voice rising in irritation. "HELLO?!" She yelled into the device. Very loudly.

Fiona blinked and pulled away. She then pointed at Taira's digivice. "Your pants are talking," she said.

Isthian boggled intelligently at Taira's pants. "Okay, I know you aren't all Japanese, but I didn't think you were THAT freaky-American!"

Chris smiled through his tears as Kamika woke up. "You're... okay!" He hugged her gently. "Thank you, sir, for helping us. I owe you a great debt."

Just then, a voice started coming out all three of their digivices at once. Strange... it was rather loud and sounded like... SAYU.

"DIDN'T SHE DIE?"

"I AM NOT DEAD, PODIMA!" Sayu screeched into her digivice. Loud enough so that anyone near anyone with a digivice could hear her. Which, of course, meant...

"SAYU?!" Gizamon shrieked, staring at Taira's pants. "She's alive?!" It was such a shocking notion that he really couldn't react in any other way.

Fiona blinked in amazement again at Taira's digivice. "OH MY GOD!" she yelled. "THAT FREAKY GIRL'S BEEN REINCARNATED AS YOUR PANTS!"

Sayu was twitching. How could these people be so DUMB?!

"I'M TALKING THROUGH MY DIGIVICE, IDIOT!" She screeched at whoever had spoken; she hadn't got who it was.

"Huh? Sayu's ALIVE?" Isthian stared at Taira's pants in shock (as compared to the normal reason -- perversion). "So does that mean Sora's really alive, too?"

Taira blinked oddly as everyone started talking to her pants. In a quick and violent motion she shooed every one away. "SHE IS NOT MY PANTS! It is that strange device that they gave us you idiots! Touch my pants one more time and I'll-"

Damen cut her off, grabbing once again her digivice and took out a map. "Unless it was an accident that she was brought here...... Sora is dead... Otherwise, no she isn't. But that shrieking girl is below us... you can see it on the map..." Pressing more buttons the map appeared again. "See..."

Taira once again was staring at people... Isthian mainly... "I'm not a freaky American you..." Insert colorful dialogue here.

Sayu was startled to hear a boy's voice she didn't recognize. Her eyes instantly narrowed in suspicion. "Who the hell is that?!" She snapped angrily into the digivice. "Look, I ain't playin' games here, you idiots! There's some'un or something out there looking for you all, and you go around trusting th'first person you meet? Pffft!" She hissed. Then again, Sayu was a normally distrustful person. After all, she didn't trust any of them anyway, and she wanted to kill Podima. Still... a person appearing out of the blue like that was rather suspicious. She was going to inquire after Gizamon... but her pride held her back. The crest glinted in its tag, not that Sayu noticed.

Kamika blinked as she heard the sudden voice of Sayu coming from out of nowhere. Looking around, she asked. "Sayu? Huh? Where?" Then she noticed it was coming from the digivices. "Okay. This is getting scary. These digivices have MORE options than anything I've ever seen! Next thing you know. . you can use them to teleport or something. . ." She muttered to herself. THEN she realized what Chris said. "Wait a minute. . SHE DIED?!"

Isthian backed away from Taira with his hands raised defensively, sweatdropping. "Hey, girlie, I'm sorry! I just thought you said you were half-American! Sorry, I didn't mean to insult ya!" He suddenly noticed he was next to Fiona, so he draped an arm around her shoulders again, smiling broadly. "Besides, it's not SO bad! I mean, my doll-baby here is American, and look how pretty she is!" Thian kissed her cheek fondly.

Chris was staring at his digivice. "We thought she did... she fell off a cliff. Apparently, she survived, though... No idea how." He spoke loudly into his digivice. "Sayu, where exactly are you and how did you get there?"

Fiona blushed bright red and struggled to not slap Isthian on the cheek. He was allowed to now, wasn't he? "What's so wrong with being American?" she said instead.

Hisss. Podima. Will kill him later, yesh... Shaking her head to clear those thoughts, Sayu answered him in a tone that stated clearly: I hate you and you will die.

"I'm in 'nunderwater cave, sorta... It's underwater, but it's all dry in here. A Betamon saved me an' brought me here..." She paused, still confused about that. Sure, she had dreamed him dying... but that was just the dream, right? "He disappeared off somewhere, though..."

Thian shrugged. "Well, I mean, just everything, you know? They're stupid and insensitive and uncultured, and, um... they're so blunt, they have no tact at all! And they're greedy, and, uhh..." Thi was clearly trying to show off how flexible he was by shoving his foot so completely into his mouth.

Wollymon had finally lost track of the butterfly, and come back to the group until he found another amusement. So he was listening in to the digivice conversation when Sayu gave her location. "Ooh, I know!" he squealed. "I'll just go down and get her!" The little yellow smiley face bounced merrily over to the cliff, and then merrily off it, as well. He flew spinning through the air, and struck the water with a great SPLASH.

"HEY!!" Isthian cut short his rantings about the shortcomings of Americans, and ran over to the edge of the cliff. He lay down on his stomach and peered cautiously down into the water. "What the heck did you do that for?!"

Wollymon bobbed on the surface of the water, looking like a yellow and dizzily rolling beach ball. "It seemed like a good idea for the time," he squeaked back, his voice barely carrying up to the top.

One of those little veiny-thingies appeared on Fiona's head, and she twitched. She was just about to whack Isthian on the head, but Wollymon had gone and jumped off the cliff and Thian had run over there to see what was happening. She contented herself with threatening him instead.

"Oh, you are sooo dead, Isthian..."

Chris was snickering quietly at the byplay between Isthian and Fiona when he heard Sayu's reply. "An UNDERWATER CAVE? Doesn't that just SUUUUCK... with you hating water and all?" He then heard a loud *SPLASH* and a shout. "Hey, what just happened? HELLO?"

Thi glanced sideways at Fiona. "Hey, sometime when I'm not hangin' over a cliff, okay?" He looked back down at his bobbing Digimon, then stood up, put his hands on his hips, and turned back to the group. "Er..." he said with some embarrassment, "does anybody have an idea as to how I'm supposed to get my blobby-thing back?" He sweatdropped a few times.

Fiona crossed her arms and grumbled. Penguinmon quickly grabbed one of her legs incase she decided that now was a good time to kill Isthian.

Kyrainia, who had been in a bit of a hypnotic daze staring at the water and all, woke up when that little blobby digimon thing jumped in. She looked over at the group and realized that they had been talking to Sayu and she was in fact alive. Of course, with no idea of how to get her out.

"This is really a bloody hopeless situation..." she muttered, looking back down at the water.

Meanwhile, Mushroomon was just bouncing up and down looking around.

Isthian was starting to get annoyed at everyone's seeming lack of concern about the fact that his Digimon had just willfully leapt off a cliff. Not that that was necessarily such a bad thing, but it was the principle of the matter. He addressed the blonde boy, who seemed to be way too interested in his digivice when worse problems were going on.

"Hey! You know everything," he accused. "My blobby-thingy just jumped into the ocean. How am I supposed to get him back up here? I don't think he can fly."

Wollymon, meanwhile, was enjoying a leisurely roll around the surface of the water below. Ahh, the blissful existence of yellow smiley faces.

Chris blinked. "Why did he jump in the water, then?" He shook his head, and clipped the digivice back on his pocket. "You two, we had better get back to the others... I'd hate to think of what's happening without us."

"Uhh... good question." Thi jogged back over to the edge of the cliff, and shouted down at his Digi. "Hey, you! What'd you go down there for?!"

Wollymon tried to pause his rolling, without very much success (due to a lack of arms and legs, or indeed any appendages). "I wanted to help rescue Sayu!" he called back up to his partner.

Isthian sweatdropped, and relayed this information to Chris. "He's playing at being a hero. Isn't that cute?"

"Well, you certainly can't go back now," the Gazimon said, "That sandstorm is still raging on as strong as ever, it's getting dark, and your digimon will have been running around in a sandstorm for hours to get here. Get some sleep and leave in the morning." And he walked over to a corner of the room, busying himself with something.

"Are you sure about staying here?" Labramon whispered to the others, "It could be a trap! He could be working for this Metalseadramon person I've heard so much about!"

"Well, I for one am willing to trust him," Christo said, "Why would he help Kamika if he was an enemy?

"To gain our trust." Answered Labramon. However, she did admit that her partner had a point.

"I trust him," said Christo, adamantly, "And I, for one, am going to get some sleep."

She curled up on the floor and dropped straight off to sleep. Labramon couldn't help smiling as she noticed that her partner was sucking her thumb.

Kamika gave a nod and then a tired yawn. "I guess it'd be better for all of us just to rest. . ." She said before lying back down and dozing off.

Puttimon smiled at her partner. It was great to see that she hadn't died off or anything. She laid down and fell asleep as Kamika had done.

Chris sighed. "A big smiley face playing as a hero? We've certainly come a long way, haven't we?" He yawned, and looked over at the sleeping girls. "I better get some sleep, too..." He stretched out on the floor near Kamika and was asleep in a few minutes. Tekumon looked at the Gazimon for a few seconds more, and then went into recharge. All was now quiet in the little hut... except for the Gazimon.

Isthian sweatdropped. "Well, that was helpful," he muttered as he clipped his digivice back onto his jeans. "Okay, since that obviously didn't work, does anybody here have some rope or anything? Though it would serve him right to leave him down there for the night, it'd be a bother if he got carried away by the tide or something."

Sayu was thoroughly annoyed. Here she was, stuck in an underwater cave, and those sorry excuses for "teammates" could do nothing about it. The worst thing about this scenario? When they did find a way to get her out of here, it would undoubtedly involve her getting wet. Ewww. Sayu shuddered at that prospect. She was still drenched from before, too. And her new clothes were soaked! She pulled out the bit of string she'd used to tie back her hair, and pulled it into a ponytail again, to get the sopping strands of hair out of her face. She then took to pacing the cave irritably, and punching the walls whenever she felt particularly sullen.

The next morning, Christo woke. The sandstorm was gone. She was VERY uncomfortable. That came, she realized, from having slept on her backpack. She opened the backpack (which had the handy feature of being bottomless; you could put the kitchen sink and more in there...) and chucked a load of stuff out. "I should have got some water earlier..." she muttered, looking at her thermos flask.

The next thing she came to was her diary, pens, book and notebook. "I don't need any of this." she said to the last 3 items, but she stopped at her diary. So many pages, she thought, reading it, all filled with hate.

"Christo, what are you doing?" Labramon asked, walking up.

"Just looking at my diary," Christo sighed, "I was angry at everything. Me and my parents, we keep everything bottled up. They go around being cheerful, pretending everything's OK when it isn't. But keeping things repressed just made me angry all the time. I always thought it was unfair that no-one wanted to be my friend, but I didn't even let them. I'd sit in a corner and glare at everyone so that they left me alone. No wonder I was unhappy."

"You were... unhappy, back on earth?" Labramon asked. She hadn't known her partner had had troubles, back where she came from. But she had never asked, either. And it was obvious Christo didn't tell people much.

"Yes. Mom and dad took me to a psychiatrist once, when I was little. He said that there must be something I wasn't telling anyone, that somehow, I wasn't happy... but then, he also gave a load of reasons why that made no sense and weren't the right reasons anyhow. When I got a bit older, I started keeping diaries. I pored all my hate in, every time I wrote. It helped, but not enough," she looked up from her diary, looked Labramon in the eyes, "I don't want to carry this around with me now. I should have left it behind."

"The diary? Why'd you have it?"

"I was going to be going on a camping trip in a few days. I like to be prepared. When I got chucked into the digiworld, my backpack was there with me."

Christo went back to sorting out junk, from useful stuff.

Kamika awoke the next morning feeling tired still. She rubbed her eyes and looked around. "Er. . . Where are we again?"

Puttimon was still asleep though and didn't answer.

Chris woke up with something glaring in his eyes. A ray of sun that had filtered in from a crack in the roof was shining straight on his face. He blinked irritably, and sat up. The first thing his hazy vision saw was Christo going through her backpack, and stuff strewn around on the floor. "Hey, what's going on?"

Deciding that nobody was going to help him after all, Thian walked over and deftly stole the shirt from around Fiona's waist. "I'll give this back in a few minutes!" he assured her, before darting off to steal clothing from other inattentive members of his small gang. Before long, he had securely knotted their arms together to form a kind of rope, and was dangling it over the edge of the cliff.

After a few long moments of convincing (which grew increasingly more agitated, as Isthian's arm started to fall asleep from the awkward position), Wollymon finally grabbed hold of the end of the rope with his teeth, and Thi was able to pull him up onto the cliff.

"Owwies... My side is all scraped up..." whined the little yellow smiley face as he rolled around on the grass on top of the cliff.

Isthian sweatdropped. "You're welcome."

"Hm?" Christo said as Chris spoke, "Oh! I'm sorting out what I don't need from the actual decent stuff," she grinned, "It barely all stays in there, and that's saying something when you have a backpack with the same mechanics as a bottomless pit."

"Oh bloody hell. This is rather pathetic, you know. We've got one girl trapped under some water, a group that's stuck... somewhere, and then us just sitting here while genius boy over here tries to save his digi-thing. We're really doing something productive here..." Kyrainia rolled her eyes.

Mushroomon, meanwhile, was squatting down on the ground shouting "I'm a mushroom!" before popping up and doing it again and again and again.

Thian grinned at Kyrainia. "Thanks for noticing me!" He balled up Fiona's sweatshirt (to make it easier to throw) and tossed it back to its... slightly more rightful owner. He laughed a little. "I don't think anybody else has been!"

Wollymon gave a startled squawk as he rolled right into the crazy, bouncing Mushroomon.

A ghost of a smile crossed Kyrainia's face, and she was about to retort before getting distracted by what Mushroomon was saying.

"Hi there! Feeling better now? I bet it was fun down in that water! Yep! I bet it was really really fun!" Mushroom ran over to the edge of the cliff, peering down. "It looks like a lot of fun to me! Maybe I should jump down there! It just looks like too much fun! I think I'm gunna take a nice long fun swim! CANNONBALL!!" Mushroomon ran back a bit and looked like he was about to take off for the cliff before--

"...you jump off that cliff and you're not getting back up."

"But, but!! I wanna swim!!"

"...too damn bad. If you jump off that cliff then you're stuck. Adios, have a great life."

Mushroomon pouted and then broke down into tears. "I WANNA SWIM!!!"

Chris shook his head. "Perhaps a better time for that would be when we've gotten back to the others? They're probably worried about us, and as Kamika's feeling better, maybe it's time to go." He turned to the elderly Gazimon. "Thank you very much for your hospitality and for helping our friend. We owe you a great deal. If there's anything we can do for you, please let us know."

Taira freaked and slid towards the edge of the cliff and looked down at a very frustrated Isthian. Wollymon below was splashing about and waiting for Isthian apparently to hurry up. Damen was Playing around even more with Taira's digivice with his back turned. "You okay Thian...!" Taira yelled down at him with a concerned look crossing her face.

A low voice rumbled behind them, "Might I offer a alternate suggestion?" It was Damen smiling from ear to ear, knowing something devious behind those eyes. "Might make things a lot simpler... My Gomamon can swim under and get her. They can breath very well underwater... And since there is TWO of them... It won't be that difficult."

This caused Charles and Derik to suddenly come to attention and move away from Teeg's growling digimon. "We can do that! Can't we?" Derik said to the other Gomamon.

"Course we can! I think..."

The Gazimon shook his head, "You don't need to repay me. I wish you luck and health on your journey. You may be the digiworld's only hope."

Christo walked outside, pausing to fill her thermos flask with water from a nearby tap (like the sort you sometimes get on campsites) that was there because I said so. "Come on, Labramon!" she called, putting the flask back in her bag. Labramon hurried out and digivolved to Shiisamon. Christo mounted her digimon quickly and waited for the others.

Wollymon finally regained his land "legs," and bounced over to the squalling Mushroomon. "There, there!" he comforted. "Swimming's really fun, but coming up again hurts a LOT! So at least you don't have to go through that, right? So it's really not all bad." He smiled winningly at the attack-mushroom Digi.

"Well...I suppose you're right!" Mushroomon stopped whining and crying and doing whatever else it was that he was doing and started jumping around again singing some song about a tiny spider and a water spout.

Chris nodded. "Time we were going." He filled up his canteen, and called for Tekumon. Tekumon promptly digivolved into Saibdramon, and Chris got on. "Guys, we should all ride on Saibdramon. It'll be faster without the sandstorm, and there's no sense in tiring out two digimon. Get on!"

"Good point." said Labramon, dedigivolving. Unfortunately she forgot to let Christo dismount first, and was promptly sat on. Christo got up again, ignoring Labramon's glares.

"You had only yourself to blame." she muttered, mounting Saibdramon.

Kamika blinked as she saw the Gazimon and suddenly all the events of yesterday flooded back into her mind. "Oh." She muttered. Taking a look at her partner, she nudged Puttimon awake. "Puttimon. . It's time to go now. . ." Puttimon opened her eyes quite slowly and blinked. "Huh?"

Kamika smiled brightly. "Let's go! Chris and Christo are ready to leave. . ." She said, taking her still sleepy digimon in her arms.

With that, Puttimon just fell back to sleep and Kamika just carried her towards the other two. "Sorry I'm behind!" She exclaimed as she got on Saibdramon. "So let's get going, ne?"

Chris nodded, and pulled out his digivice. He showed Saibdramon the direction to go, and they took off.

After a while of flying, they finally hit the coast, and then just followed it to where the others were. As Saibdramon landed in a burst of sand and wind, Chris called out hellos to everyone.

"Oh joy. They're back. And I was enjoying this nice peaceful moment..." Kyrainia stated, quite sarcastically.

Mushroomon continued to sing about the spider and the spout.

Sayu continued to pace the cave, glowering at the slimy rock walls that were now beginning to have cracks in them, and water was forming tiny puddles on the floor. Of course, this had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Sayu had been attacking the walls since Betamon had vanished. No, nothing at all. Riiight. She was too breathless from pacing and punching to yell at the idiots outside, and she was too sullen to admit that she needed their help just then, anyway.

Gizamon had been leaning farther and farther over the edge of the cliff, whimpering with worry for his Partner. He hoped she was alri - SPLASH! Gizamon had leaned to far over, and had fallen into the water himself. Luckily, he was a marine Digimon, and could swim. He blinked, then realized he knew where the underwater cave was. He had a Betamon friend who lived there. Oh. Hehe. Whooops... Then, looking back up at the cliff, he called to the two Gomamon, "Hey, you said you'd help, right? I can't carry Sayu by myself. She's too big." He looked pleadingly up at them. "I don't want her to stay trapped under there..."

Isthian groaned. "I am NOT rescuing anyone else today!" He sighed, and looked over at Chris with a fed-up expression. "Guess you get to lend me your clothing for a rope this time, too."

Wollymon just boggled at Mushroomon, wondering with distress how all the other Digis knew all these cool human games when he didn't.

Christo clutched at her bandana protectively.

Isthian sweatdropped at Christobel. "It's not THAT mandatory." He suddenly chuckled. "If it was, then I'd be insisting on a much more interesting piece of clothing from Fiona..."

Fiona whapped Isthian upside the head. "Quiet, you!"

Chris simply twitched. "You're HOW OLD, Isthian? Pervert."

"I'm twelve." Isthian frowned. "What's that got to do with anything?" He rubbed his head, possibly because of confusion, or more likely just because it hurt after Fiona's thwap.

Kyrainia glanced over at Chris. "And being a 14-year-old pervert's just oh so much better..." she rolled her eyes.

Chris blinked, then frowned. "Since when am I a pervert?"

Isthian grinned at Chris. much amused. "Since she said so!"

Page 35