Starting with someone sleeping on a dark night with shadows crawling around isn't a bad way to start.
And we see a fiery figure drop a bit of fiery goop on them. And some pulsing as they transform into a salamander-like creature. And the Diginon leaves.
Hiro and Gammamon are cleaning, and Gammamon sees a gecko and Hiro explains it to him. The house is Hiro and his dads, which they're cleaning up, seemingly since no one is there normally now.
Hiro hears a noise and checks, the girl from before, with a diamond ring in the mouth. Hiro does not attack with his canoe oar he had grabbed. A window is partially melted, and the thing was clearly going after jewellery. Hiro recognizes the creature as seemingly Nanami, a girl he knew from schoo years before.
It appears Hiro was talking to his mom on the phone letting her know about the ring?
Hiro goes to her house to check on her, her mother doesn't understand why he would be there. Her parents look scratched up, but they let Hiro and Gammamon in. And yeah, gecko girl.
And the gang is together. Gammamon explains the hissing noise, Kiyoshiro tries to leave, but Jellymon finds it too cool to let him. Nanami escapes the house and jumps away. Ruli seems surprised that Hiro wasn't making it up.
Angora-copter away! And now we see there are many of the gecko-children. All being signaled on their cell phones, which all have corrupted screens, but some sort of voice coming out of them.
Melting the window a bit to reach in and unlock it is neat enough. And an alarm goes off. Gecko kid whacks Gammamon, but falls with him. And they find another ring. So someone clearly wants diamond rings and is having the kids do it for them. And we see them all collecting them, by spitting them up. into a pile.
Salamandamon and the ghost fire effect looks pretty good. It appears he is eating the ring, for power of some sort.
Kiyoshiro doesn't like any of this. Gecko kids are enough trouble, but jewel thieves also.
They're all staying the night at Hiro's house since it's the weekend. And geckos watch. And Salamandamon tries to the drop goop on Ruli.
Gecko-Ruli. Gammamon screams quite expertly. Kiyoshiro is freaked out as you'd expect, Angoramon is angry he left her alone.
Kiyoshiro points out there is a diamond shipment to a university for an experiment, nice to see him being helpful.
They follow Ruli as she 'not quite sneaks' off to meet up with the other gecko kids.
Kiyoshiro warned the diamond shipment ahead of time, they're all fake. And so the geckos attack for diamonds. Gecko kids don't seem to be aware. Everyone praises Kiyoshiro.
The geckos turn in their ill gotten gains to Salamandamon who praises them. It eats them, to gain carbon to burn hotter. It appears the diamonds weren't swapped out as Kiyoshiro warned them. Jellymon laughs, since they believed he was pulling a prank.
Tesla and Betel time. After a short fight Salamandamon laughs about an idea. It crawls up on a wall and sends the kids after them.
Digital space from Kiyoshiro. He's quite proud he's gotten rid of the gecko kids. But of course, it didn't work, they're in the space after. Salamandamon is aware they tried 'something' that failed and taunts them a bit, although not sure what.
Tesla points out hitting the water tanks should help. She has them all jump, then zaps the water all over the place to knock out the geckos. She is proud of her plan.
Betel grabs Salamandamon from behind and Salamandamon tries to fry him. We get some frame broiling effects. Betel says his fire won't lose to someone like Salamandamon. It starts to suck in the air to make a big boom.
Betel hits it with fire first before Salamandamon was ready. It seems confused. Betel used an explosion to blast out the flame. Salamandamon tries to apologize and asks them not to hurt it, it'll turn everyone back.
Nanami wakes up in bed and her parents are relieved. Ruli wakes up normal and Angoramon is relieved. Salamandamon apologies and says it won't do that or steal again, can it please eat the burning rock somehow though? Hiro will bring it some pencils, graphite, which should work to feed it. Angoramon talks puffishly. Ruli asks how they know Salamandamon (having no memory of what's happened.)
Hiro's Study Files goes over over Salamandamon as you'd expect. Ruli talks about the idea that you look uip at the ceiling and see a face, and nothing is really there.
It was... a perfectly serviceable episode. Kind of interesting, kind of boring. Not overly bad, just... kind of there. Reminds you that Ruli needs more to do.
Misa Watanabe was Salamandamon, returning to Digimon after previously being Plesiomon in Hunters. Fans would know her as Vivi in One Piece, Queen Beryl in Sailor Moon Crystal, Nozomi in World Trigger (plus many others). In other works she's the Japanese voice of EVA in the Metal Gear Games, Flint in Monsters Inc, Kristine Kochanski in Red Dwarf, among others.
Momo Ishibashi was Nanami. She was previously Floramon in Adventure:, plus various bit roles in Appmon.
