Happy Odaiba Day!

At least, it still is Odaiba Day at present as I hurry to post these chapters. I swear this day snuck up on me somehow even though I was aware that it was coming up soon since June, but here we are and I'm scrambling to post.

I hope you all are well and enjoy this latest chapter!

I DO NOT OWN DIGIMON ADVENTURE, 02 OR FRONTIER OR ANY OF ITS CHARACTERS!

Chapter 36: Let's Rock

Matt leaned against the wall as his group waited for the obstacle course doors to open. Gabumon was by his side like always but was participating in a conversation with Yolei and Hawkmon about what potential obstacles Izzi and Ken could pit them against. Yutaka, on the other hand, was leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the door from Matt with his eyes closed in concentration or meditation.

Matt wasn't sure what to make of the oldest member of the Warriors group. Yutaka was friendly enough, but there was a very large age gap between him and the rest of the DigiDestined. He was an adult old enough to have graduated from university and started a career. He had responsibilities even before becoming a DigiDestined, which was more than apparent during the days he was late or unable to join them due to his job. It was honestly amazing that he was able to join them as often as he was able to.

It made Matt wonder what he was going to do. Next year, Tai, Sora, and Matt himself would be graduating from high school and move on to the next stage in their lives. He knew that Tai was going to college on a sports scholarship and even had a chance of going pro if he trained hard enough on whatever college team he ended up on. Sora was similarly going to college on a sports scholarship for tennis, but planned on pursuing a career in fashion of all things. As for Matt himself, he wasn't sure. He had his band, but if he was honest… he didn't think they'd make it big enough for it to provide him with a solid career path.

While Matt was lost in thought about his future, the door finally opened and Gabumon kindly nudged him back out of his head.

Taking in the view through the door, though, Matt wanted to groan.

"Why do we get the tundra?!" Yolei wailed. "Wasn't Russia enough?!"

"Well, that's one way to make things harder for me," Yukata mused. "Kind of hard to manipulate the ground when it's covered in snow."

Matt just sighed. "Come on, everyone. Let's get this over with."

He was relieved that the moment he crossed the threshold into the course, his attire changed.

"Well that's something," Yutaka whistled. "Very convenient."

"Oh, right! This is your first time experiencing a wardrobe change in Digiworld, isn't it? Neat huh?" Yolei beamed.

"Very," Yutaka said with a nod. "Now, let's figure out our course, shall we?"

"Right," Matt agreed, looking out at the snow field ahead of them.

The only landmark in sight ahead of them was a mountain with an obvious cave entrance about a kilometer away from where they entered the obstacle course.

"So, shall we just cross? This is like what the first group encountered, right? Just with snow," Yutaka asked.

"Yes, but that doesn't mean that our obstacles are going to be the same," Yolei explained. "The grassland and snow fields that we came up with had different obstacles programmed to impede progress. Group one dealt with the booby trapped grass field where Stingmon was able use an aerial view to spot the traps hidden in the grass. With the snow field, the obstacles won't be obvious until we're right on top of them even with Hawkmon spotting for us."

"So what do we do?" Matt asked, frowning. "Just take the brunt of the traps head on?"

Yolei just shrugged helplessly, but Yutaka looked thoughtful before crouching down and moved the snow in front of him aside until he found the ground beneath.

"What are you doing?" Gabumon asked.

"If we won't be able to spot the obstacles from the air, maybe I can detect them in the ground. I've not done this before so it may take me a moment to figure out what I'm doing."

"Any way we can help?" Yolei asked.

Yutaka remained quiet for a moment before humming in consideration. "Could you guys walk around a bit? It'd give me an idea of what movement feels like. The snow will muffle it, but I should still feel it faintly with you guys so close by."

Matt nodded and began to pace back and forth by the entrance to avoid triggering anything on the course. Gabumon jogged right beside him. Yolei apparently decided to start jumping and skipping about to give Yutaka a different kind of movement source to detect.

After a couple minutes Yutaka called them back.

"I think I might be able to help us navigate through the field. About a couple meters ahead of us there is something buried in the ground that's vibrating. I can lead us around that, but I can only sense things in a roughly five meter radius around me at present. I'll have to stop frequently, so going will be slow, but I'm sure I can help us navigate."

"Perfecto!" Yolei cheered. "Sounds good to me."

"By all means, lead the way if you're comfortable with that," Matt said.

"Leave it to me," Yutaka said, flashing them a grin.

Traversing across the snow field was slow, but Yutaka was able to lead them most of the way across without incident. Gabumon would use his blue blaster to melt a patch of snow every 5 meters to give Yutaka a spot of earth to sense the obstacles around them. It was when they were reaching the end of the snow field that one of them must have triggered a trap Yutaka had failed to sense, but the man's reflexes were on point. Snow flew everywhere as spears of ice flew out of the ground right for them when Yutaka stomped on the ground and a wall of earth shot up in front of them. The ice spears pierced the earthen barrier, but with only enough force and momentum to cause it to crack and slump over rather than carry on towards their group.

"Well that was close," Yutaka chuckled, a nervous edge to his voice.

"Holy cow! That was amazing!" Yolei gasped. "How did you do that?"

"Honestly? I'm not entirely sure," Yutaka sighed. "I just reacted."

"It's a good thing you did," Matt said, letting out a relieved breath. "We could have seriously been hurt."

"No kidding," Yolei scowled, prodding the points of the ice spears poking through Yutaka's half crumbled earth barrier. "These have blunt tips, but they'd still hurt really badly if one of us had been hit with them."

"Let's just keep going," Matt sighed. "We still have more obstacles to go through."

"Right," the other responded.

After Yutaka spent a few long minutes checking for any remaining traps on the ice field, they finally moved on to the cave.

"Great. Now we have to navigate in the dark," Yolei sighed. "Unless one of you has a means of lighting this place up?"

Gabumon shot off a Blue Blaster attack that briefly illuminated the cave, but there were no available materials to make a torch.

"Well, this cave is easier for me to navigate than the snow field," Yutaka mused. "Maybe we just travel ahead and have Gabumon light things up every once in a while to make sure we're on the right track?"

"I'm up for that," Gabumon said.

"Though not too frequently," Matt added. "We wouldn't want him to wear out on the second of five obstacles."

"Agreed," Hawkmon hooted. "The final obstacles thus far have been very physically demanding."

With a course of action agreed upon, Yutaka led the group again, his hand on the wall to sense the cave's layout, directing others on moving left or right to avoid sizable rocks in their way. Gabumon would light the cave with a Blue Blaster if Yutaka wasn't quite sure what sort of cave formation they were facing. After about ten minutes of this, however, Yutaka asked them to stop.

"What's wrong?" Yolei asked.

"I'm not completely sure," Yutaka mused, "But I think we've reached a fork of sorts. This cave is splitting in two, at least, that's what it feels like."

"Gabumon," Matt murmured.

"Blue Blaster!"

The cave lit up as Gabumon held his attack to give them more time to see what was ahead of them. The cave did indeed diverge into two paths.

"This feels like an Izzi obstacle," Yolei mused. "So there must be a trick to determine the right path."

"Since we're in the dark, maybe it's sound based?" Hawkmon suggested, awkwardly shuffling forward.

"Wouldn't hurt to try," Matt said.

"Yutaka, how close am I to one of the cave tunnels?" Hawkmon asked.

"Maybe five of your steps to the right to reach the wall, and then forward another…10? Maybe, to reach the entrance to the right tunnel."

All was quiet as Hawkmon shuffled about.

"So about here?" Hawkmon asked after a minute.

"Yeah, you're just inside the right tunnel."

Hawkmon drew in a deep breath before letting out a loud caw that reverberated through the tunnel, making Yutaka gasp.

"Apologies if I startled you, Yutaka," Hawkmon said once the echo of his caw faded.

"No worries, my reaction had nothing to do with the sound you made, but rather the effect it had on the tunnel," Yutaka mused. "It was like… I could see it clearer? I could actually see quite a ways forward."

"Wow, really? Like echo location?" Yolei asked.

"Not really," Yutaka said slowly, likely trying to get his thoughts in order. "More like the sound made the earth vibrate enough that it became more defined. I think? It was like having HD vision for a brief moment. It's not like the range of my senses got better or anything, but I was much more aware of what I could sense. "

"Interesting," Yolei hummed. "Hawkmon, let's try the other tunnel."

Yutaka helped direct Hawkmon into the mouth of the left tunnel and Hawkmon released another loud caw.

"Okay, that was weird," Yutaka said, sounding puzzled. "It did the same thing, but this tunnel didn't… become as defined as the last one? Like, I could still see it a bit clearer than normal, but not to the extent of the other tunnel."

"Well if the sound causes vibrations in the cave, and those vibrations are what briefly boosts visibility… maybe the reason the cave on the right is so clear is because it's a dead end, causing the sound to bounce back through the cave multiple times, increasing the intensity of the vibrations," Yolei hypothesized.

"That makes sense," Matt said. "And if that's the case. The left tunnel is the one we want to take."

"Agreed," Yutaka said, before carefully directing everyone into the left cave tunnel so that they could continue on.

They ran into two more intersections of cave tunnels, each one adding another branching path than the last. Hawkmon and Yutaka would perform their sound test and lead their group through the one tunnel that wasn't as defined in Yutaka's vision.

"I think it's safe to say that my hypothesis was correct," Yolei said, sounding proud. "We haven't hit a dead end and I think that we're about to get out of this cave!"

Ahead of the group was a faint, but rapidly growing light as they progressed. They all sighed with relief once they exited the cave into a grass field where roughly a kilometer ahead, was the GOAL arch, signifying the end of their obstacle course.

"This feels anti-climactic," Gabumon sighed.

"I think the cave obstacle counted as two," Matt reasoned. "Having to navigate in the dark was one, and then figuring out which of the branching tunnels to take was another."

"So that leaves two more," Yutaka mused. "And yet the end goal is in sight."

"Which means that this field is more than it seems," Yolei added, sharp eyes sweeping the stretch of grassland in front of them. "Hawkmon?"

"On it," the bird Digimon said before taking to the sky, circling higher and higher to get an aerial view of what lay before them.

Not a moment later, a laser shot out from the ground up at Hawkmon, who barely dodged.

"Hawkmon! Digivolve!" Yolei screamed, her digivice lighting up.

"HAWKMON DIGIVOLVE TOOO… AQUILAMON!"

The larger bird Digimon was much faster in the air and began dodging as more lasers fired from somewhere in the grass field.

"Matt, I need to Digivolve too," Gabumon said. "I can help Aquilamon if I can take out whatever's shooting at him."

"Go for it," Matt said, pulling out his digivice.

"GABUMON DIGIVOLVE TOOO… GARURUMON!"

The large wolf digimon took off into the grass where he could smell the discharge from the laser fire.

"We need to move," Yutaka said.

While Yolei and Matt had been focused on their partner Digimon, Yutaka had been trying to get the lay of the grass field. He could now sense about 10 meters around him, compared to the 5 meter radius he'd been working with in the snow field, but with so much movement he could faintly detect outside of his "sight" range, he knew that they couldn't just stay in one place. Not if this was like the hill obstacle from the last group's course.

"Can you lead again?" Matt asked.

"I think so," Yutaka mused, "I just know that we can't just stand around."

The grass was waist high, making trudging through it with any sort of reasonable speed hard. When Yutaka felt the ground vibrate in front of him, he jumped to the side and back, yanking Yolei with him since she'd been right on his heels. Matt had automatically come to a stop just on the edge of where the ground fell out from where Yutaka and Yolei had been standing.

"That was close," Yutaka huffed, before moving on, trying to skirt the group around something that felt like it was slithering in the area on their right.

Yolei let out a sigh before marching after him.

Matt brought up the rear, but startled when he heard Garurumon howl in pain.

"Garurumon!"

His partner had to have been downed because he couldn't see Garurumon anywhere.

A loud caw sounded from the sky just before the three humans of the group saw Aquilamon dive, dodging more laser blasts before abruptly pulling up with something mechanical wriggling in his grasp. Garurumon was back on his feet a few seconds later before unleashing a Howling Blaster as something that blew up and stopped about half of the laser fire that was still being shot at Aquilamon.

"We can't be distracted!" Yutaka shouted, "if we get caught out here, your partners are going to get hurt fighting a battle on three fronts."

Matt grit his teeth, but agreed with the man's take on the situation. Garurumon and Aquilamon were handling the lasers and whatever else they were dealing with fine.

"Almost there," Yolei reassured, the Goal arch getting closer with every step.

Matt should have known that something was about to go wrong. It usually did.

Yutaka gasped sharply when they were about 10 meters from the goal, stomping down on the ground with his foot at the same time he reach out and yanked both Yolei and Matt close to him, hunkering down with them as earth shot up around them and formed a solid circle barrier around them. Matt and Yolei flinched as several somethings impacted with the earthen walls Yutaka had formed around them. With a grunt, Yutaka released his grip on Matt and laid his hand upon the dirt wall in front of him. Matt noted that the dirt seemed to firm up into something more solid like rock. Just in time too if the sound of another round of impacts was any indication.

"Yutaka?" Yolei gasped. "Are you alright? You're bleeding."

Alarmed, Matt quickly moved himself in front of Yutaka and saw that Yolei was right. Though he wasn't physically injured with a wound of some sort, blood was dripping from Yutaka's nose. He also looked incredibly dazed and was no longer responding to them then they tried to get his attention.

"I think he's hit his limit," Matt told Yolei grimly. "It can't have been easy to make these earth walls and he's been using his abilities to help us navigate through obstacles the entire time we've been out here. We need to get him over the goal line now."

"But how?" Yolei asked, knocking on the very solid ring of earth around them.

Matt looked up and realized that Yutaka hadn't given their instant-made barrier a roof.

"If I give you a boost, do you think you'd be able to call Aquilamon over?" Matt asked. "He may be the only way we get Yutaka out of here."

Yolei gave him a determined nod.

Matt cupped his hands and helped boost Yolei up. She scrambled with the top edge of the earth wall for a moment before finally finding enough purchase to pull herself up the rest of the way. She was just in time to see Garurumon destroy the final laser cannon she could just make out from her new vantage point.

"Aquilamon!" Yolei called out, digivice in hand. "We need help!"

"I'm on my way," was the response she got.

The beast bird Digimon dived out of the sky again, a Grand Horn attack already charged. He flew past Garurumon, taking out a few more of those mechanical things attacking on the ground, before alighting and taking off again towards Yolei. Garurumon must have realized that something was up because he took off after Aquilamon.

So focused on the partner Digimon, Yolei almost didn't notice the three mechanical beasts that were prowling around the earth barrier. Thankfully she spotted them just in time to avoid getting hit by an attack that looked like a shot of ball bearings. She did, however, take a tumble back behind the barrier. Thankfully Matt was there to catch her.

"Thanks," she gasped as she regained her footing.

"No problem," Matt grunted, helping her right herself.

It didn't take long for Aquilamon and Garurumon to get rid of the three mechanical beasts. Aquilamon then turned his focus on getting the three humans out of their protective barrier while Garurumon covered him in case any more of those mechanical menaces showed up. Yutaka was unconscious by the time they finally passed through the Goal arch and found themselves back at the observation room. Joe was there to meet them, helping to situate Yutaka on the cot Kari had previously occupied. Aquilamon and Garurumon immediately dedigivolved before following everyone inside.

"Is he okay?" Yolei asked after a few minutes of watching Joe check the older man over.

"I think he's just exhausted," Joe said, smiling at the sighs of relief that echoed around the room. "His vitals are all strong and he is only showing minor signs of exhaustion. He should regain consciousness within an hour."

Koishimon wordlessly came over and sat beside his human partner.

"And the nose bleed?" Matt asked.

"Might just be a sign of overexerting his abilities," Joe said with a shrug. "It's already stopped, so I'm not overly concerned. I'll know more when he wakes up. I'll be better able to ascertain how oriented he is and see how well he is able to answer questions on how he's feeling."

"He should be fine," Koishimon said softly. "He just over did it with that last barrier. I'm actually surprised he was able to solidify it like he did. He's got great instincts. He just needs to learn how to do that stuff on purpose now without overdoing it."

"And how are you feeling, Kari?" Yolei asked, noticing her friend was awake again and seated nearby with Tai's arm around her shoulders.

"Oh, I'm fine," Kari said, blushing. "I woke up not too long after you guys started. Sorry for the scare."

It was quiet for a short time as everyone resettled.

"Well," Tai sighed, standing up to face the room. "Are we good to continue? I'm ready to go if the rest of my group is."

Agumon got up from where he'd been chatting with Gabumon and nodded at his partner.

"I'm good to go," Mimi said. "Palmon?"

"Ready!"

"So are we," Veemon and Silver Veemon said in unison, looking excited.

"We'll have the next course set up momentarily, Tai," Izzi said from the control panel. "So feel free to head down."

Tai nodded. He squeezed Kari's shoulder reassuringly before heading out with the rest of his group.

This obstacle course seemed less intense than the last two, but someone still passed out before the end. Are they training too hard? Hopefully Tai and his group will have better luck, but I suppose we'll just have to find out how things go next time on Digimon: Digital Monsters!

So that went relatively well for group 3, but someone still was incapacitated before finishing. How do you think they did? I know the obstacles were not as intense, but was it still a good challenge?

This was an interesting group to write. Yolei and Matt are on such opposite ends of the energy spectrum, but both have rather chill partners. I'm still working out this adult Yutaka's character, who's very different from the teenager/young adult Yuataka I've established in Parent Worries. He really doesn't have much of a personality beyond "responsible adult" so please let me know what you think of him so far.

I hope you all have a fantastic Odaiba Day!