Digimon VIRAL
Episode Six
The Sapphire Temple

   "Who are you two?" Kotamon stared at each in turn, the bat and the bee.

   "And where did you come from, at that?" Zuru joined her partner in questioning.

   "Well," the bee smiled, "I'm Muzenmon."

   "Zotzmon."

   "And we're not from anywhere in particular, really, though we often fly around these walls, hoping that at some point a door or other entryway will just show up..." She wove together lies which were only slightly pre-rehearsed, doing her best to sound convincing.

   "Why though? What's on the other side?" Gin inquired.

   "It's a long story, and it doesn't really concern you..." Zotzmon trailed off.

   "It does too concern us." Nathan frowned. "We're kind of in the same situation here, we've got nowhere else to go except over that wall."

   "Well, if you're that willing." Muzenmon stilled her wings and landed on the ground. "Like we said, there's only one way to fix a problem like this..."

   "The wall is too high, too long, and too deep into the ground..." Zotzmon continued.

   "Thus, of course, the only way for you to get through is just like that: through."

   "Break down the wall."

   "What!? We can't do that!" Neptumon leaned her head downwards to get a closer look at the newcomers. "None'a us know what this is, s'not our place ta smash through it."

   "None of you maybe, but we both know what this is..."

   Audrey looked at the wall, and then back at the pair, "Are you ever going to tell us?"

   "It's rather a long one." Zotzmon pointed out.

   "We've...got time to spare..." Canismon responded with a dry tone.

   "Well then, I'll start with what it is." Muzenmon pointed at the wall, "This is the barrier around the Sapphire Temple. It's just about impenetrable, and has always been."

   "Whoa, whoa, wait. You're expecting us to break into a temple!?" Nathan gaped.

   Zotzmon sent him an annoyed look. "Let her finish."

   "As I was saying, it surrounds a Temple. Now, it's been here for almost as long as the Digital World itself, but this wall wasn't. It was built only a few short decades ago.

   "The Sapphire Temple was accompanied by three other temples, but those three are far away from here. Before the wall was built, each temple was the source of positive data, and helped to keep evil away from the surrounding area.

   "However, a higher power, an evil one at that, manipulated the data around each temple to create walls like this one, which locked in the positive energy and gave them free reign over everything not within these walls. And that's actually a very large portion of the Digital World, as the walls cut the radius by almost ninety percent..." Muzenmon spun the story out as Nagamon himself had told her to do. There were bits and pieces of truth in her story, but of course the teens and their partners wouldn't be able to figure out what was true and what was a lie.

   Zotzmon picked up from there. "And that's why we're going to ask the help of the Chosen Children – yes we know that's you – to break through these walls and allow the positive data to leak out once again, depleting the territory of evil."

   "But...how do you know we're the Chosen Children?" Zuru tilted her head in confusion.

   "You know, the Digivices do kind of give it away..." Muzenmon pointed out.

   Canismon sat up. "How do you know all this?"

   "Mm, we kept records of the past, picking up from where Digimon before us left off." The bat Digimon was prepared with an answer.

   "But why should we trust you?" Kotamon narrowed her eyes at the pair.

   Muzenmon responded to that with a gentle tone in her voice. "Because you've got nowhere else to go and nothing else to do...you're stuck here otherwise."

   "...give us a few minutes." Nathan signaled for the others to move out of earshot and discuss the situation.

   "Of course."

   "Should we really believe what they're saying?" Gin leaned forwards; the group was in a tight circle with their heads together, while the rookie Digimon peeked in through the tangle of legs, Neptumon looming overhead.

   "I don't know, it all sounds plausible..." Audrey noted.

   Zuru frowned. "They were right about us not having much of a choice, too..."

   Kotamon looked up at her partner. "But can we really just go ahead and destroy something like that?"

   "Hey, we wouldn't be completely destroying it." Ospreymon piped in, "Just making a small entryway. Well, small compared to the rest of the thing.

   "He's got a point there." Nathan said. "What do you think, Canismon? You know a lot more about these kinds of things."

   Canismon sighed. While he was very knowledgeable about the past and various things along those lines, he honestly hadn't known about these temples until they were told of them. "Well... It's possible it's all true, but is so ancient that many Digimon had... forgotten about them entirely... We can trust them for now..."

   The rest of the team nodded, then split apart and walked back towards the bee and the bat.

   "We'll believe the story you told us." Nathan spoke out. "So just tell us how to get through."

   Muzenmon smiled, her wings flicking excitedly, "Like we said. Smash through."

   Still a bit skeptical, the Digimon hesitated before going at the wall.

   Kotamon's fists suddenly became surrounded with a silver-blue, translucent aura. "Arctic Strike!" She punched at the wall, but bounced away, leaving only a few thin sheets of ice on the surface.

   "Landmine!" Canismon covered the ground in front of the wall with glowing red circles, which exploded once he moved away. But once the salt in the air settled, it was evident that was no use.

   Ospreymon started spinning around, electricity building up around him. "Lightning Ty-"

   "No, no, no!" Muzenmon interrupted, causing the annoyed bird to halt his attack. "That's obviously not going to do a thing."

   "Well then what do you expect us to do, rub it and hope it vanishes?" Ospreymon snapped.

   "I guess you haven't made the connection yet..." Zotzmon closed his eyes, sighed, and reopened them with his head turned towards Gin. "Have you even looked at your Digivice since your partner evolved?"

   "Huh? No, I haven't..." Gin reached into her pocket, pulling out the device that was almost the same shade as the walls themselves. The square screen, though it showed no data, was glowing faintly. "Well what do you know, it's glowing!"

   "It just might be reacting to the wall." Audrey said, his eyes shifting from the Digicode inscriptions to the device in Gin's palm. "Seeing as none of ours did that once our partners evolved."

   Zotzmon nodded. "Exactly. So the other three Digimon's attacks were futile as this temple wasn't linked to their partner."

   Neptumon tentatively lifted her claws and rested the tips against the wall. "So ‘en that means that..." She shifted her arm muscles and dragged that one arm down the sapphire surface. Sure enough, three deep scratches were gouged into it. "...only I can ‘urt th'wall."

   The bee Digimon set her wings in motion again, levitating off of the salty ground. "There we go."

   Slowly, the sea monster turned her head to look at her partner, who gave an approving, yet hesitant nod. She took a few lumbering steps backwards, spreading her arms wide.

   "Tidal Whiplash!" Both arms came down, forming blades of water as they cut through the air. The moment they were created they streaked forwards. Neptumon's claws hit the salt and kicked up a cloud of it, at the same time her attack slammed into the wall, sending shards of sapphires straight at them. The team ducked but nothing hit them, as a thick shield of honey seemed to have sprung up just in time.

   "Got to be prepared for things like that." Muzenmon pointed out, as the honey shattered in place, the pieces – now impaled with blue debris – fell apart slowly, as they were still quite sticky.

   Canismon looked at the bee with an expression of mild surprise. "Well...thank you for that..."

   She smiled in return. "You're very welcome."

   "Guys, look. The salt's settling down!" Gin peeked out from behind her partner Digimon.

   Where there once was solid wall, there was now a fairly large vertical hole, chunks of the blue stone littered the salt around it, ruining the perfect whiteness. Slowly the team got to their feet and made their way towards the new opening, staring as if blinking would have them miss something important.

   Within the temple walls were what looked like fields of grass. Green grass, but with a slight tinge of blue nonetheless. Scattered in the fields were large moss-covered stones, very likely also of sapphire, but the moss hid that. The sky overhead was no different, except that looking up they noticed a system of what appeared to be-

   "Pipes? That doesn't make any sense...why would they be so high up?" Audrey moved his eyes along the winding bends.

   The further along they walked, the more they saw. But what excited them most were the trees. Twisted bark over thick trunks, and leaves that looked like those of weeping willows back in the real world. These trees also had what seemed to be fruit, and this immediately pulled the kids towards a patch of them.

   "Oh no way, now this is just crazy!" Zuru laughed.

   "What? Trees with fruit are crazy?" Kotamon blinked, tilting her head at her partner.

   "No, not at all. But see..." the chestnut-haired girl reached up to tap on one of the large, green, striped melons. "Watermelons don't grow on trees."

   "Well this place just gets weirder and weirder, doesn't it?" Nathan laughed, eagerly reaching up to pick one of the melons.

   "Wait!" Gin hissed. "Are you sure it's okay for us to be even touching those?"

   Ospreymon gave the girl a sympathetic expression – or at least what he assumed was one. "We've just smashed a hole larger than Neptumon into the side of a temple's palisade and you're worried about eating their watermelons?"

   "Well, they're on trees, so I was a little suspicious..." The Asian girl muttered.

   Muzenmon, flying by, gave the girl a light pat on the shoulder, which made her instinctively recoil a little. "Don't worry; this temple is linked to your Digivice. You have every right to be eating the fruit as you have to be setting foot in it."

   Unfortunately for the team, whichever of them heard that remark completely missed the sarcasm in it.

   "Great! I'm starved..." Neptumon reached out with one of her massive claws, to take one of the melons from the tree. Unfortunately for her, the moment the watermelon's stem was dislodged from the tree branch, her energy left her and she immediately shrunk down to her Rookie stage, winning the race to the ground. This promptly resulted in a hollow smash to the head once the melon fell and broke open, spilling its red innards all over the otter.

   "That was extremely smooth, Lutramon." Kotamon laughed from her seat on a tree branch, where it was much easier to get to the fruit.

   She shook herself off, looking around for a piece of melon solid enough to eat. "Laugh while yeh can, I'll get yeh for that..." she muttered sneakily.

   As the team was just about dying from hunger for quite a long time, no one had any complaints when Nathan suggested they sit down and take a break to eat as many watermelons as their stomachs could handle.

   However little nutritional value those watermelons may have had, it filled up the teams stomachs and refilled their spirits, and after a few minutes rest they were ready to up and explore the rest of the temple grounds. Maybe even run into the temple itself, as thus far there was no sign of it.

   "You know, I think this place beats the salty desert in weirdness." Zuru said.

   "It's just really bothering me that I can't figure out what all these pipes are for." Audrey was walking with his head tilted towards the sky, constantly trying to follow the paths of the pipes. "If anything, they just go higher."

   "Does that answer anything?" Nathan caught the other boy's attention by pointing to a spot a little in the distance, where a few rows of piping angled down and seemed to spill water downwards into what was likely a pond.

   "Probably." The white haired boy picked up his pace a bit, but what they saw upon closer inspection only confused them further. "...I'm just going to stop trying now."

   The water from the pond was actually going up into the pipes, defying all natural laws of gravity.

   "This place is insane." Zuru commented.

   "But at least we know that the water is going somewhere." Gin pointed out. "So why don't we just follow the pipes?"

   "Good idea..." Canismon stared at the pipes for a while. Then, assuming that as they went higher, they got closer to whatever they were feeding, he began heading towards the center of the grounds.

   Muzenmon and Zotzmon followed the group, but at this point lingered a little until they were all far enough ahead to be out of earshot.

   "Zotzmon, are you sure it's alright for them to head to the temple? I mean, you know what Nagamon said was in there, if they were to get their hands on those that would probably mean so much trouble for us. I mean, there's always a chance they won't even run into it but if they do they'll ask and-"

   "Oh shut up." The bat Digimon gave his partner a tired expression. "They likely will find it and we'll let them take it and use it as bait to drag them to the other three temples."

   "But that's just asking for doom! Have you even been listening to me?" A stupid question really, Muzenmon's partner always tried his best to ignore her voice.

   Zotzmon sighed. "If there was a risk, there'd be a much different plan. Nagamon knows that they're also broken, and serve no real purpose but to look pretty." He smiled a little. "But that's not what we're going to tell them."

   Muzenmon's antennae twitched. "Ohhh, I see. But the Digimon that run the temple...?"

   "Gone. The timing of this couldn't be any more perfect. They're on a pilgrimage that takes a month at least. It's about halfway through that, too. Of course, the other temples are in the same situation."

   "Funny that they have so much trust in the strength of those walls..." The bee chuckled.

   "It's justified. This hasn't exactly been done before."

   "That's true. But they can't really expect there to be no threat at all, can they?" Muzenmon waited a minute or so for her partner to respond, then became impatient and sarcastic. "Oh, you've gone silent on me again. I guess you've used up all your talking for the next hour."

   "Shut up."

   For a while the team thought that these pipes would go on forever, that they would just keep following them until their legs fell off. But after only about a half an hour of walking it became clear that the reason they weren't seeing anything in the distance was that there was a thick mist in the atmosphere. The ten of them stuck close to each other as they moved further into the mist. The pipes weren't even visible at this point, but the sound of rushing water got louder and louder as they walked.

   "Anyone else really have to go to the bathroom, with all the sounds of running water...?" Nathan piped up with a vaguely immature comment.

   "Thanks for sharing, Nath. Really." Zuru dryly retorted.

   Ospreymon, who had flown a little ahead to scout, returned, stopping the conversation where it was. "That's nice and all, but there's something up ahead."

   "Finally!" Gin gave a relieved sigh.

   A few minutes later the rest of them could see it too. A couple of spindly towers, and an angled, twisting roof. The closer they got the more detail they could see. The walls themselves seemed to bulge out near the bottom, and follow a sharp curve inwards the higher they got. The main doors – or at least what they assumed were the main doors – were surrounded by a tall, fat arch, which they thought was glistening crystal until closer inspection proved it was tiled with mirrors.

   The sapphire blocks that created it were seamless, and a little rough. In fact, the temple resembled something like a mutilated version of the modern architecture back on earth, but of sapphire instead of poured concrete.

   "It's gorgeous..." Kotamon gazed up at the doors in awe.

   "Well it certain'y is somethin'..." Lutramon's eyes lingered at the mirror shards, watching fragments of her own reflection warp and move as she walked by.

   Gin hesitated before following her partner. "Do we just go in unannounced?"

   Audrey stopped right behind the girl. "The door's ajar..."

   Muzenmon flew a little bit forwards. "Besides, it is yours. Not going in is like not coming home."

   "Well, that does make sense." She took her hand out of her pocket, where she had been firmly grasping her Digivice the whole way there, feeling it get warmer and warmer as they'd move closer. Now she pretty much had to let go, as it was becoming too hot to touch with her bare skin.

   "Will you do the honors?" Nathan laughed lightly, gesturing at the door. He was a little paranoid, too, that there might be some crazy security system that would go off if anyone but Gin or Lutramon opened the doors.

   Gin nodded. "Of course." She lifted a slightly shaky hand to graze the surface of the door. Once she was sure that it wasn't going to attack her, she pressed her grateful palm against the cold surface, a nice contrast from her Digivice.

   The doors swung open with surprising ease, giving way to a suddenly very loud sound of waterfalls, and a view of the pipe's final destination in the center of the giant room. They wove over the sides of the spherical ceiling and spiraled together in the center, where the water once again obeyed gravity and poured downwards onto an ornate fountain, the entire surface of which appeared to be engraved just like the wall they had previously destroyed part of.

   Lutramon whistled. "Well, that's some ‘ome..."

   Nathan recovered from dropping his jaw and looked at the bat and the bee. "Are all the temples this fantastic?"

   It took a moment for either of them to formulate an answer, as they were both in awe but wouldn't admit it. Neither of them had ever been inside one of these temples, everything from the breakdown of the wall and onwards was something new. They were just really good at acting like they knew everything.

   Zotzmon was the first to look at the boy. "Well, I would assume so. They do share a common task, after all."

   Rushing water continued to drown out the voices of the team, as each in turn murmured to others, commenting on the temple in awe and confusion. Gin was running her hand against the side of one of the fountain basins. The water that splashed around inside it was just the right temperature, warm but not too warm, like the seawater around Earth's more tropical parts.

   Without even noticing where she was going, the ledge was leading Gin around the giant fountain, away from the view of everyone else. Except Lutramon, who had promptly decided it was a great idea to jump into the fountain, and was swimming in it, following the sight of Gin's fingers.

   Then the fountain ledge suddenly stopped, snapping the girl back into reality. She looked away from her knuckles and straight ahead, where a flat staircase had suddenly jumped out at her, or so she liked to believe.

   "Hey guys!" She called over the sound of the water. "There's something back here!" Gin quickly eyed the fountain basins on either side of the stairs, to check for booby traps, before setting foot on the first step.

   Canismon was the first one to appear, having easily heard her with his attentive ears. "Don't go too far ahead on your own... This is still unfamiliar territory..."

   Gin turned around to give the dog a reassuring smile, which winced a little when her partner leapt out of the water and shook off. "Lutramon, watch it! And don't worry; I was walking slowly to give you guys time to catch up."

   The otter Digimon puffed up indignantly, "You rather I drip all'ver th'stairs?" She then laughed. "Really, you should have gone for a dip."

   "Was there at least anything inside the fountains?" Audrey asked, stepping up with the rest of the group in tow.

   "Nah... Jus' more ‘ngravings."

   "That's mildly disappointing, actually." Kotamon commented. "Would have been cool if there was treasure or something, hidden under the water..." She lagged behind a bit, eyeing the surface of the fountain water with sparkling eyes.

   "Actually, there is something along the lines of treasure, Kots." Zuru, once getting her partners attention, directed her hand to the top of the stairs, where the rest of them now stood.

   "It's not very extravagant. Kind of dingy, really." Ospreymon sat himself on one of the topmost steps, suddenly uninterested.

   "Pick it up, Gin." Nathan suggested.

   The girl's lavender eyes stared at what was set upon the altar – a white altar at that, in contrast to just about everything else sapphire. It was a string of beads, medium ones separated by a few smaller ones, with one large one in what was the assumed middle. The beads were, of course, blue, but they seemed grungy, like they had had their share of bad run-ins with all the things that tarnish jewelry.

   Her arm hesitated a bit, as it always did, before reaching for the beads and picking them up. She felt almost disappointed that they hadn't reacted, or twitched, or even suddenly become clean. There was nothing coming from them, they felt...dead.

   "Well, all things considered, that was pretty anti-climactic." She noted.

   Canismon turned to look at the pair that led them there. "Was something supposed to happen?"

   Zotzmon and Muzenmon exchanged the tiniest of glances, rethinking what Nagamon had told them about the beads, but also remembering his conclusion that they were, indeed, useless.

   "Mmm, no." Muzenmon finally said. "There was little mention of them in what we've read; they don't do much except look pretty."

   "Well they're failing at that, too." The large blue feline pointed out, staring at a nonexistent reflection on one of the beads.

   "You can likely take them, too." Zotzmon shrugged. "As a...souvenir or something."

   "Huh, good idea!" Gin lifted the beads up to look into the largest one, barely making out a clouded shape in the centre – wonderful, it was even dirty inside. She slipped the beads over her head and tucked them under her shirts.

   Muzenmon turned to Zotzmon once the team had once again become distracted by the altar. "Are you sure that was the best idea?" She hissed. "Just letting them take it?"

   "Relax." Came the calm response. "It's dead. You can't revive something that's died, and isn't a Digimon." One of his wing claws was absentmindedly scratching at a spot on his chin. "Besides, we ought to get going."

   "Going where?" Audrey asked, causing the bat Digimon to flinch. Thankfully it seemed that the boy had only heard the last line, and nothing before.

   "To the next temple, of course!" Muzenmon picked up her partner's slack. "We've got kind of a long way to go, so we might as well be on our way now!"

   The others slowly started to make their ways back down the staircase, reproachful at the thought of more traveling, but thankful for at least one thing, which Nathan voiced with a dryly cheerful tone. "At least this is better than walking in a desert of salt."



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