Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Excuse me sir, we’re ready for you now” A voice called out to someone.

The words directed at a man in his early twenties, clutched within the light palms of a dark skinned man was a strange device, an amalgam of features and details comprised from different devices of various famous chronicles that were once only fiction in his home world, but now they felt as real as a broken bone after a bad fall. Embarrassingly, he had to admit that the thing was rather clunky looking and felt hard to hold, but those attributes didn’t matter in the slightest to him because it was this very device that brought him here, a place he never could’ve imagined.

A massive hub-like area bustling with humans and digital monsters sprawled out before his sight from the cushioned bench of where he sat. If he was asked to describe it, he’d say it reminded him of an early to mid y2k futuristic room space where the room lacked sharp corners and improvised with smooth safe curves, crevasses and surfaces. Solid white and translucent orange were the dominating colors here, while presenting white board like terminals with holographic blue interfaces always being displayed just inches off the smooth blank surfaces of things. Above everyone was a crystal clear dome ceiling where a pristine blue sky dotted by various clouds met the eyes.

The frutiger aero, dorfic-like aesthetics brought him back to a time in his younger years where he wished he had the mind to appreciate the bubbly, crystal clean and colorful look of things in the early 2000s, the world’s attempt at how they thought the future would look vs how it looked now.

He almost went on daydreaming about a time long gone had it not been for one thing.

“Hello?? We’re ready for you now, I’m calling you sir, the one in the pink beanie with black horns!” repeated the front desk digimon.

The man’s eyes dropped from the ceiling to one of the digital creatures shaped like an orange guinea pig with bat wings, when he saw this specific one almost leaning over the counter staring directly at him, he quickly got to his black sandaled feet with a short back then forth rocking motion on the bench that rolled him onto his feet.

“Yep? Yes? You need me?.” He innocently asked.

“Yes,” Replied the Digimon. “We can serve you now so will you get over-- I mean, Will you please step to the front desk?” The man sucked in his lips and held back a smile from the irritated front desk clerk, it was a little entertaining to see them get fed up but he didn’t want to see them get anymore angry either so he hurried to the desk and stood with his hand holding the wrist of the other behind his back.

At the circular front desk were about four digimon called Patamon, each in different patterned vests doing a different task. Behind all of them stood a pristine white obelisk which projected holographic monitors displaying a myriad of information all written in both English Digicode and in Japanese Digimoji. It was a small detail to notice but it enamored the man non the less, he was used to only seeing digimoji and rarely digi--

“Sir.” Spoke the Patamon in a sun motif service vest. The man’s eyes jumped from the monitors back down to the Patamon with shiba inu dot brows in front of him.

“Yes? Sorry, I’m paying attention.” He answered with a cheerful grin.

The patamon took in a deep breath and exhaled very slowly, “First, we would like to apologize for having you wait for such a long time. We needed to serve already existing tamers who needed our help with urgent situations and your matter was pushed to the back going by our service’s policy on situational importance.”

“Oh nah, that’s fine. I uh, I didn’t mind.” The man replied. He was too busy being enamored by the sight of real digimon and their tamers crowding around the front desk to be mad about his wait time. There were Agumon and Monodramon and even some digimon he had never seen before at the desk when he first arrived and he was content with just getting to see them and their stylishly dressed tamers.

“Ah- uh well,” The Patamon stammered a bit, relieved and a little surprised he wasn’t dealing with a hot head today. “Thank you for understanding, now that your arrival is our current top priority we can begin the welcoming process as per policy.”

“Cool.” The man replied

“Very.” The Patamon cleared it’s throat and began, “Welcome to Hopehub, a space where your greatest hopes can become reality. You’re here today because our systems heard your hopeful wish of becoming a real digimon tamer as you blew out your candles on your 23^rd birthday cake and so we sent that mysterious email to your phone to grant you that wish, now we planned on gifting you with you very own digivice however…”

When the digimon stopped mid sentence, the man knew what gave him pause and lifted up the hand holding the blue and black device which he looked at along with the Hopehub clerk.

“It seems that a different service answered your wish before we could… But that will not be an issue. Now at Hopehub we offer tamers a resting space filled with multiple locations to relax and unwind. We have a luxurious food court, a plentiful clothing store, an endless library archiving all known information on digital monsters and the like, a battle coliseum for training and sparring with other tamers, and last but not least our matrix space where anything you can create and experience anything you can hope for, any location you want and any scenario you want can come true just with a thought, or with a highly intricate control panel if you don’t want to think into existence something unpleasant.”

“Wait, when you said matrix system you mean—”

“Yes yes, the one from your world’s third installment of the digimon world games, a very similar one, yes.” Replied the mammal type.

“Woooow… That’s so cool, is it like a big red gem thing too?” he asked.

“That’s none of your business.” It smiled.

“Oh.” The man peeped.

The sound of an archive on digimon caught the man’s attention though, everything else except maybe the coliseum and matrix space had flew right past his brain. All the information on the most amazing franchise in the world at his fingertips… it was almost too good to be true.

“Is the coliseum like the really fucked up one from Digital Monster Version S?” he asked.

“Uhhhhhhh….” The patamon looked behind him at a patamon on break who was eating grapes out of a pouch, the digimon shrugged its ears and shoulders in response.

“It sure can be!” The sun vest Patamon replied with a big salesman like fake smile.” Any other question you’d like to ask?”

“Ummm,” The man thoughtfully scratched the chin curtain beard lining his face, he thought it was weird that the Patamon mentioned the ‘waking world’ so he chose to bring that up. “What did you mean by ‘tamers of the waking world’?”

“Ah, well Hopehub is the identical sister service to another dimensional space called Dreamhub which which is run by the Tapirmon who serve tamers who enter that space through their dreams, tamers who use one can still access the other even if they access this area through their devices while awake or in their dreams while asleep.”

“Oooh, okay I understand, that’s… all I have to ask I think.” responded the man

“You think?” Questioned the winged mammal.

The man awkwardly nodded, “I think.”

“Well here’s hoping you do that often.” The digimon said under his breath.

“Huh??”

“Oh nothing,” The clerk gleefully replied, his words dripping with simulated cheerfulness. “Now back to the matter at hand, The access pad to server 4694 is now open and ready for you to use.”

“That’s the digital world connected to my earth?” Asked the intrigued man.

“Indeed it is, your earth is connected to a Yggdrasil run digital world called the new digital world and is home to 6 continents in total and protected by Yggdrasil’s highest network security called the Royal Knights.”

“The Royals are there too?? Are they gonna know that I’m coming?” The beanie man asked.

“Well, in order for our systems to transport you to that world, we will need to contact and get network authorization from the admin Yggdrasil to allow for our access pads to send you there, so yes if Yggdrasil is notified then I’m sure the Royal knights will be as well.” Explained the Patamon. The young adult grimaced worryingly and vaguely gestured with his hands.

“Is there anyway I could just...sneak on by? Without them knowing about me?” He was sure his question would seem a little suspicious to the front desk clerk, but he had seen enough and played enough digimon media to know that while the royal knights were an interesting representation of a network’s security like Norton and IBM, They were also… in less polite terms, a gaggle of obnoxious assholes, sometimes at least and only a few of them but he’d still pick avoiding them over them knowing him.

“I don’t think… we can do that—”

“Actually,” Spoke up the grape eating patamon, this time the man took notice of how they had dark orange stripes going from the top of their head to down their back, much like how a real hamster would have them. “You could hide his login authorization underneath a more mundane one so that it gets passed.” The Inu brow Patamon and the man stared at the stripped patamon with an open mouthed expression, when the clerk speaking with the man turned back to him he switched to a big toothy grin and vigorously nodded to the idea.

The patamon turned back to his colleague, “Can we really do that?”

To which they nodded confidently, “Yeah, Remember that Nigerian tamer I had that asked to be let into his friend’s matrix space for his birthday but didn’t want his friend to know? I just masked his entrance authorization as a service worker coming in to do coding maintenance. Its as easy as an Air Shot.”

“A Boom Bubble.” Corrected the dot brow Patamon.

His striped friend narrowed his eyes, “We’re not having this argument again.” and swiveled back around in their tall little seat.

“I suppose I could hide you as a portal pad installation and send the real installation as a maintenance check, but you’ll need to wait about three days after today to make it look legitimate!” The Patamon informed him.

“Aww, but— Oh alright, that’s fine I guess…” He looked dejected as he slid his hands into the pockets of his shorts but the importance of making this look real didn’t elude him, if he didn’t want to deal with knights, he’d have to bide his time after today, but only one day to visit the digital world? What if he didn’t get a partner digimon on the first day? What if they get deleted while he was away? He almost got lost in the thought of coming to a digital world where his partner was already gone until he realized there was another problem.

“What about my future visits? You can’t disguise me as something forever can you?”

The Patamon let out a soft ‘Hmm.’ and sat back in their little chair, “I’ll look into something for that but for tight now let’s move onto your devices.”

“Devices? Plural?” The Man perked up, “What do you mean?”

Switching topics, the Patamon gleefully reached under the counter and presented a rectangular device with an antenna atop a grandiose red pillow.

“Hopehub presents to you your very own D-Terminal, this will—”

“This is the D-Terminal from Adventure 02, Holy Shit!!” Blurted the man.

The Patamon angrily stared at the man while still holding the pillow on the counter top, when he fell silent on account of the digimon’s angry stare he continued.

“This will allow you the same functions as the original D-terminal as well ass store Hopehub items, contact friends from anywhere, store partners, create portals back to Hope and Dreamhub and much more!”

“This is awesome! I always wanted a d-terminal, but the ones on ebay cost more than buying an actual car!” Commented the man.

“I have no idea what an ebay is but they sound concerning,” Beamed the patamon. “Now about your D-Byte.”

Confused, the beanie wearing man looked down at his device, “You mean this thing has a name already? I was gonna call it the D-Cluster if I’m being honest.”

“While it does seem to be a chaotic looking creation, it has the functions of 4 other known digivices fused together, code scanning, card slashing, air signaling, and power charging are its most noteworthy features. It’s overall structure is curiously unstable… but stable??? our systems are having a hard time deciding its overall condition but its still usable.” The Patamon went on.

“That’s really weird, but as long as it wont explode in my hands or anything I guess I’m fine with it…Wait do I get cards for the card slashing slot? Please please please tell me you have cards.” Pleaded the man. But the Patamon clerk shook their head.

“While we could grant you cards to use, the odd condition of your device is worrying so our system recommends not using cards, at least not ones generated from our data banks.”

This once in a life time opportunity was getting bogged down left and right, but that’s just how life seemed to go, the one glimmer of light for the man was the chance to dive into the digital world for the first time in his own human history, to the be the first and only tamer of his planet and to meet his first digimon partner, he took a deep breath and convinced himself that he had to take this chance no matter what, the small details could be worried about later, despite his own penchant for obsessing over them.

“That’s fine, its not like I’ll be card slashing anytime soon right?”

The Patamon solemnly nodded, “Right, let’s hope not.”

He was scared to ask about anything else, he shared a digital world with the royal knights, he could only visit for today and then had to wait for three days, his digivice was unstable— But he was going to the digital world. A place he dreamed about for as long as he was a digimon fan, those daydreams in his room, the one or two digimon dreams, and the virtual pets he had hanging in his room, this was worth it!

“Is there uh.. anything else?” he asked cautiously. The patamon clerk opened up two other hologram screens, read through them and nodded.

“Just one more thing, We have no idea who or what your partner digimon will be, but your digivice is emitting a type of ping signal that’s bouncing off another located in this digital world, luckily the transport point is right where that ping signal will be so it will only be a matter of finding them.”

The man nodded, looking down at his digivice he repeated. “Only a matter of finding them…”

“Are you ready to dive into the digital world sir?” Asked the clerk patamon.

“Absolutely.” He replied. The Digimon gestured with a wing towards one of seven computer chip shaped platforms with a blue glowing center that pulsed with blue and white. The man walked over and stepped onto the device. He could feel a low vibration through the sandals on his feet that felt kinda pleasant.

“Thanks for the help… um.” He paused, not sure how to directly address this one specific patamon.

“… oh! Kaleb, kaleb is just fine and you’re welcome, it was my pleasure,” Answered Kaleb.

The man adjusted his beanie hat, fixed the strap on his side bag and evened out the draw strings on his blue zip up hoodie, he was as set as he could be.

“Im all ready!” He announced.

“We hope you enjoy your trip to Digimon World!” Waved Kaleb, It’s little paw hit a confirmation button on the digital screen and the man’s entire body floated off the ground and enveloped then warped away in a blip of light leaving behind small ones and zeroes.

“You did ask him how he wanted to arrive there, right?” Asked the grape eating Patamon, Kaleb whipped his head around, then back to the portal pad. “Oh.. no?”

“Did you… did you at least secure him a safe landing??”

Kaleb slowly and nervously shook his head no.

While panic set in back in the lobby, a black spinning silhouette of the black man flew in as the man’s body materialized out of light, when the black shape of his form aligned with his real one, he felt a freeing force peel him off the air and send him flying through the tube of rushing information and data towards a rough looking tear in reality.

He could feel air from the tear rushing up against his bearded face and blow his curly bangs out of his face. Thanks to his glasses he didn’t have to squint as much from any air blowing into his face so he watched as he flew towards and straight through the portal tear and right into the open sea of the bright blue digital sky.

“Here I am…” He said, “IN THE DIGITAL WORLD!!!” As he emerged from the portal he looked back up at it, seeing how much of a rip In the sky it looked like, with the edged being frayed circuit lines and loose data cubes before it seemingly healed like a cut and left him alone in the high blue sky.

That’s when the feeling of the fall started, It felt like those falling dreams he had as a little kid, the ones he read were apparently born from stressful situations in his waking life, there was the fear in his body expecting and bracing for the impact to hit his legs and feet first, the hollow sensation of his skin predicting the pain to erupt where it meets the hard ground and the blended feeling of fear and panic performing an almost perfect tango in his heart and mind as the idea of crashing into the solid ground below.

The rushing winds of the high altitude he was falling through whipped and rushed against his exposed skin and body to the point where he could tell the cold was drying it up his skin immediately, he gripped his hat tightly in response to the wind’s threatened to rip away his prized pink beanie hat with its overwhelming gusts of speeding air.

At one point he thought he couldn’t breath, in that moment he was happy he wasn’t the type to scream in situations like this it just wasn’t a part of him to do so, otherwise he would’ve used up all the air he had and probably passed out, but it was like he had stuck his face extremely close to a high powered fan and his body refused to take another breath of this violent oxygen but he found himself taking taking in air only when he had to remind himself to.

He could barely keep a consistent balance as he raced towards the ground, he was flipping and rolling between his front and his back, but around the fifth flip over he held his arms out at his sides and his legs outstretched to catch more air with his body and hold a stable balance, he wished he could say that he remembered to do that from a real sky diving video but he actually had the opening to Digimon adventure in mind where the leader of that season held his arm out during the fall.

Mental embarrassments aside, now that he was free falling facing the ground with a hand on his hat, he started to wonder when he was supposed to black out and wake up safely on the ground? Shouldn’t that be happening by now? Maybe HopeHub wasn’t as good as it made itself out to be. Maybe that portal thing malfunctioned and this wasn’t how he was supposed to drop in. It looked a lot like his hopes for an adventure were gonna be bricked walled by the hard land below at over one hundred miles per hour with him as a mysterious chunky red splat on some grassy field, wait was he gonna land on some grass?

He didn’t want to look below him but he made the choice to just because he knew he had to, and in that moment all he could register was the sight of some gray square object rushing towards him with resounding speed, he instinctively threw his arms up in a guard and curled his legs up over his stomach before everything instantly stopped. It really did stop, as in he wasn’t even falling anymore but instead suspended In the air a mere couple feet above what looked like the wavy scrap metal roof of a shed.

There was a weird little jingle sound from his left short pocket, like a little phone tune. It was so out of nowhere that it broke the man out of his paralysis. He oh so casually reached into his pocket and pulled out he ringing D-Terminal from Hopehub and flipped the screen open, seeing a phone icon sending out a signal on home screen.

“Oh! I got mail.” He chirped. With a tap of his finger he opened the app and was met with a hologram of Kaleb.

“Hello again,” Greeted the tiny projected above the screen, “I want to sincerely apologize for not telling you about the options of entry, We have paused your original entry progress to ask you how you’d like to enter your digital world?”

The man stared at the hologram, looked down at the roof below him and asked, “um, honestly? I was expecting to enter it like in Digimon Adventure?”

The wing headed clerk placed a thoughtful paw to their chin and glanced at screens unseen from the man’s point of view.

The clerk then spoke, “Could you be more specific? From the footage I’ve pulled up it looks as though they only fall.”

“Well yeah but I was meant to pass out after my fall, then I’d wake up on the ground.” He explained, he felt like he was missing something but he was pretty certain that’s what he wanted.

“Ah! Well… you’ve already completed the falling aspect but we’ll attempt to help you replicate that last detail.” assured the Patamon, its hologram disappeared and the dark skinned man felt his body rise away from the top of the roof, he looked around and noticed a translucent bubble form around him and pull him upwards as if it were a tractor beam from a UFO. He slid his D-terminal into pocket and felt safe enough to smile while he slowly floated up.

Then he met the roof with an impact that nearly took his consciousness, it all happened so fast but he managed to feel his right side ribs collide with two hard object in two rapid successions before his whole front body crashed into whatever else it did and slammed onto something large rocky and rough.

“We hope we accomplished what you set out to experience, enjoy your time in the digital world!” concluded Kaleb. But the man didn’t really get to hear all that, he was in too much pain so his only response was a very weak—

“Ugghh…” He remembered what he forgot to say, Safe, he wanted to wake up safe and on the ground.

“Ow…” cried a muffled craggily voice. The man didn’t make that sound, his chest was in too much pain to do that twice. He very carefully and very slowly pushed himself up onto his hands.

“Son of a bitch…” he grumbled. If he broke a rib from what he fell on he was happy to not feel it yet but that sure was the opposite of a flat ground to land on. He was tempted to lay back down from the pain but suddenly the hard object he was laying on just started to… move?

“Get-” began a voice, “Off!” With a powerful heave, the man was thrown through the shed door and tumbled along the grass until he came to a stop with his chest hitting the doorknob.

“god whyyyy…” He whined, he wished he had fallen on his back rather than his front but that was all a little late to hope for.

A 4ft figure stepped out from the shed the young man had just crashed through. It’s rough hands adjusting and fixing its large gray head topped with solid ears, it held a mildly upset expression from having been landed on out of the clear blue sky and rubbed the top of its hard head in pain.

“First crops go missing now I’ve got things landing on me during work, today just ain’t been easy on me…” The being complained to itself with a country-like accent as it peered outside the shed with large golden eyes. The man sat up very carefully cautious not to hit anything else with his body next, he wrapped his arms around his torso like he had a full body stomache and glanced behind him, he knew something tossed his out of the shed but just what?

To his complete joy, there stood the first real life digital monster he would see since coming to this world, a Gotsumon. The rock monster donned a blue neckerchief with the knot and tail facing forward and tied around the base of it’s head with a star adorning digicode attached to the scarf’s knot, a black pair of suspender shorts covered its hips with greenish teal straps hanging down on the short’s sides with three stars on the left lower edge of his shorts.

To the Gotsumon’s absolute shock and slight horror sat a human on the grassy greens of his land. He didn’t have a clear idea of what humans looked like but he knew most were taller than digimon of his levels, other than that he didn’t expect them to look like anything in particular although he did find the hat with horns to be interesting.

The adult man turned completely around and sat on his knees staring at the Gotsumon in utter awe, it was really happening, he was really meeting a digimon in the digital world for the very first time, in person!

He muttered out, “A Gotsumon… You look so much more…rockier in person” The man wanted to reach his hands out to touch the creature’s face but he resisted the thought, that would be so weird to do when he really thought about it, Digimon weren’t wild animals with low sentience, I mean he could look at this one wearing clothing and tell he was more mentally capable of what a dog could think, so he resisted the urge to pet and tightly kept his hand to his lap.

“Was I not in person before?” Asked the Digimon. The human shook his head slowly and the Gotsumon felt himself be scanned by the man’s eyes from the top of his little stone animal ears to his stony little toes. Was it weird? Yes, absolutely but the golem wasn’t showing any of that. He stared right back and analyzed the human. He took note of the fact that he was still on his knees, were their legs injured or broken? He wouldn’t last long in the wilds of the digital world with legs that aint workin’ but the man looked a little smart with those tiny glass windows with little hangers stuck to his face so maybe he would survive, maybe he’d better ask but first a right ol’ introduction. The Gotsumon rested a hand on his hip and jutted the other hand out.

“Howdy! My name is Duster, its nice to meet you human!” he cheerfully greeted.

“Uhh,” The man looked at the Digimon’s outstretched hand and carefully took it into his hand, it felt like he was grasping a rough brick to throw and the digimon’s hand was a little hard to hold thanks to it being so large compared to his own, but he did his best and shook it.

“My name is Dray, it’s nice to meet you too Duster.” Just then, a light began to glow from within his shorts pocket. The light startled Duster and made him step back as his new human friend reached into his pocket and looked at a mysterious glowing device, it looked complicated in his opinion like one of those knick-knacks from the Metal Empire.

Dray held the digivice in his hands, marveled by the iridescent rainbow ring seen around the screen. When the light finally died down it seemed to be sucked back into the screen of the digivice, the screen light up like a handheld and the pixelized word “D-Byte System” appeared on the boot-up screen.

“Whats that?” Asked Duster.

“My Digivice.” Replied Dray.

Duster quirked his upper body tot he side, “Digi...vice? Like Cherubimon’s Vice? Is it evil?”

“No!” Dray hastily replied. “It means digital device and it’s the opposite of evil, I’m pretty sure anyways…”

‘So it is from the Metal Empire!” Duster exclaimed. That place was such an alien place to him, sitting on the far edge of the continent away from all the nature and natural life of the wild, he only ever saw the billowing smoke from its factories in the distance but he had feelings about that place.

“Its not from there either, at least I don’t think. Something as radiant as this couldn’t have come from a place like that.” Disputed the man. Just as he finished talking, the screen materialized a holographic compass arrow initially pointing up and surrounded by a ring labeled with the letters for the cardinal directions, then the arrow laid flat within the ring and pointed towards Duster.

The Digimon stepped to the right, and the arrow followed, then to the left but the arrow followed again. He looked behind himself, confused he looked behind him thinking maybe he was weirdly in sync with whatever it was actually pointing at. Dray looked down at the arrow and then at Duster, he was just as confused but also amused. His thumb hovered around one of the three button below the screen and in an impulsive decision he pressed the top one.

The compass completely vanished, and the screen was filled with new words:

[Establishing Partnership…]

From where the scanner sat at the top of the D-Byte, a bubble of light formed and that released a cone of light that enveloped Duster’s form and startling the both of them, Dray fell from his knees to his rear and Duster fell backwards onto his own.

“W-what’s it doing?!” The Digimon cried.

“How should I know, I didn’t build it!” The Man replied. The both of them watched nervously as the beam turned from a white cone of light to a vivid blue beam that zeroed in on Duster’s chest. A sphere was outlined within him with a blue energy and then the beam retracted back into the device, over the screen appeared a cube shaped icon with a tiny face colored blue.

“The Data Attribute…” Whispered Dray. The words on the screen slid off the left side of the screen and were replaced with ones that put a shine in the man’s eyes:

[Partnership Established!]

“Partnership! It says Partnership!!” He cheered, victoriously holding up his digivice.

“Partner ship??” Asked the Gotsumon. Dray hopped to his feet with surprising dexterity and bent down to offer a hand to Duster.

“Duster do you know what a partner is?” He asked.

The Digimon nodded as he took the hand, “Of course I do, they’re your work buddy, your business pal, your friend in arms even.” He was slow to get up, mostly because he was pretty heavy for Dray to pull up but he got to his feet nonetheless.

“Well... do you know what a Tamer and Partner are?” He asked instead.

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh—”

“Its what we are!” Dray replied.

“We are? Am I the tamer?” He questioned with a finger pointing at himself. Dray shook his head ‘No.’

“Are… you the tamer?” He cautiously asked. When he was met with a confirming nod he gave a little hop for joy.

“Neat I got it right! But wait… what does that make me?” He pointed at himself again.

“The partner!” The man answered.

“Oh! Oh okay!” Duster accepted, though he wasn’t fully sure of what that meant.

But this was an amazing experience for the new tamer, sure the getting here was rough but he achieved the greatest thing he could ever imagine, becoming a tamer to a real digital monster. It was such a spectacular feeling that he felt like his heart would burst into confetti and ribbons the way it was swelling up with joy. He interlocked his fingers together and clutched the digivice in between his palms, a brilliant smile expressed on his face.

“So Dray…” started Duster, “What do Tamers and Partners do?”

“Well,” Dray began, thoughtfully placing a thumb on his chin. “Digimon and Tamers do a lot of things, but most importantly they go out on adventures!”

“Oohh… hm….” Duster hummed.

“What’s the matter?” His tamer asked.

Duster’s stone ears slid down on either side of his head, “I don’t think I can be your partner then, I can’t go on adventures.” Dray let out an audibly horrified gasp.

“I can’t abandon the family meat farm with all this work that needs to be done! That would be terrible!” Duster added.

“Oh… The meat farm?” Dray looked around, something he didn’t think to do since he landed. Where he stood truly did look like a farm, They currently stood near what looked like a destroyed tool shed on a small lawn, then on either sides of a dirt path that they stood next to and even behind both of them were acres of crop fields guarded by tall wire fences with vegetable stalks and cartoony meat on bones half sticking out of the ground. Then to the left right of the tool shed and it’s little lawn was a massive sprawling tree that was also a house, it had a large door in the base of its super wide trunk and big circular windows on either side of the door. The Tree house’s tree top was like a massive cloud of green leaves but in the cluster of one of them Dray could make out very thick branch with stairs carve into it’s wood leading along the branches. And Finally there were two big barn sheds on the far east edge of the farm where one housed a sleeping Kommandomon donning a silver helmet.

‘Wow, what a cool meat farm…” Dray awed.

“I know right, Ain’t it just the best? This is Starry Farms, and we grow the best bone meat, big meat, sirloins and vegetables that serve all of Star City! I’m the main farm hand here and I handle all the chores around here while my Mama Babamon handles the money and profits, we also have an employee named Miku whose our restaurant cashier.” Duster explained.

“You really have a life built here, and a whole job too…” Noted the young man now clutching his bag strap.

“Exactly,” Duster said. “And right now I have to find out whose been eating from our crops all week… after I fix up the shed.” The Gotsumon looked over at the busted door, the dented roof now caved in on the ground, and the three farm tools with splintered and snapped at the handle.

“N-now that whole thing wasn’t exactly my fault,” Dray stammered to clear his name.

“Its fine, I’ll just fix up the shed. It’ll take me a long while though but done work is better than undone work.” Duster assured himself aloud.

“That… shouldn’t take that long?” From just a glance at everything, this was all about an hour at best, if the whole shed was destroyed plus the shelves that would be a different story but it was minimum to medium amount of damage done.

“Are you sure?” Asked Duster.

“I’m pretty sure, If I help you fix everything it’ll go by in a snap.” Dray spoke. Duster set his fist on his hip and nodded, the sound of that was very welcomed in his eyes. And the work went by as fast as the tamer proclaimed, fixing the plow, hoe, and rake were a matter of jamming the pieces back onto their splintered ends and filing away the exposed splinters till it was smooth enough to duct tape together again, then the roof was just a kick from Duster to bend back into place with Dray standing on his partner’s shoulders to place it back on top of the shed. The door was something Dray handled alone, his hands were smaller and better at fixing the hinges with tools he brought with him in his bag that he filled with whatever he thought people might bring for adventures. When they were just about done, Duster was sitting by the door while his tamer checked the screws of the shed’s shelves.

“Wow you sure do have a lot of stuff in that bag, Dray.” Commented Duster.

“It’s got all the things I thought I’d need and some stuff I just like to carry around, like some shiny marbles and things I like to just look at.” The guy replied.

“Hey, you know what I just realized, we both have names that start with D!” Duster pointed out with a rocky grin, or what you could only assume was a grin.

“Hey we do! Ain’t that neat.” Dray smiled back. The both of them sat in silence for a while until duster spoke up again, by then Dray was done straightening up the shed.

“Hey Dray, How did you get here?” He asked.

His tamer didn’t speak on it immediately, first he looked around and knelt down next to his partner, “I came here after this multidimensional digimon service sent me a message and took me to their hub world where these patamon in vests helped a bunch of tamers travel back and forth between earth and the digital world, I came here after something gave me this digivice.”

Duster stared at the strange device in his human’s hands, he tapped the top of it with his rock finger and felt a weird resonate feeling through his arms.

“Freaky, wait wait wait this thing had a compass tracker doohickey right?”

“Uhhhh Id assume so, why?” Dray questioned, but he his answer was being picked up like he was as heavy as a wet paper bag and carried by Duster over his head to an area of the farm where the meat and vegetables grew, in particular it was a part of the fence where there was a noticeable hole in the wires where something looked to be chewing though them and dragging out whatever it could grab.

Duster set his human down on the ground in front of the hole and pointed at it.

“You can use it to track down the food vermin whose been eating the crops in field C!

“I can?” Dray asked.

“You can! Right…?” Duster sounding less sure of himself about this.

Dray looking down at his mix of a digivice and started scrolling through screen on the thing using the bottom right button, he did mess with it and go through it’s settings much much earlier back in his house before being sent to Hopehub. There was a stylized arrow symbol he saw on the fourth screen that he remembered so he went straight to it and confirmed it’s activation.

Presented to both of them was another compass like tracker however this one possessed a more intricate interface with things like ‘HP:’ ‘Attk:’ and other stats around the compass arrow as it spun around as if it were searching for something.

“Neato!!” They said simultaneously. Just then the arrow snapped to the opposite direction they were facing, towards the forest line just inches behind them. The two slowly turned to look behind them then they both stood straight.

“Its just over here.” Dray whispered.

“Let’s gettem.” Duster insisted, slamming his fist into the palm of his other and making a loud stoney clack sound that his partner aggressively shushed him for.

“Sorry! Sorry…” he apologized and then tried again but much slower and quieter.

The pair tipped into the forest, and trekked through a small sea of trees and calf half bushes, at least calf sized for Dray, but for Duster they came up to his chest and would frequently catch the edge of his shorts or suspender bands on a thorn or bush stick. But they made their way to the other side and into a rough clearing where a small makeshift hut sat near a very tall rock jutting out of the ground.

Dray spoke up first,“Is this another part of the farm Or—”

“Definitely not, I know every part of that ol’ farm like the back of my hand and I’ve never seen or been told by mama about a hut out in the forest that we own.” Duster replied sternly.

Just then the arrow started blinking and a black and yellow sphere appeared next to it as a sort of loading symbol, an image of Tentomon appeared and Dray looked at it puzzled.

Was it picking up a Tentomon? Perhaps it lived here and stole from the farm on occasion. He pressed one of the other buttons and the arrow shrank with a number of kilometers displayed which he assumed was the distance between them and the digimon in question.

The kilometers seemed to be going down in number however, indicatign to him that they would be meeting this Tentomon very very soon.

“This Tentomon is heading this way...” Dray informed.

Duster ground his fist into his palm, “Alrighty.”

Bushes from the far side of the clearing rustled and shifted, tensing the two up for whatever was about to happen. A Tentomon flew out from the short shrubbery, it was covered in leave and the like, it’s form looked frazzled despite it lacking a face that could show clear emotions but it was very easy to tell through it’s uneven flying and panicked body language.

“What’s going on with him?” Duster wondered. Dray was about to ask the same thing when his eyes spotted something orb-like above the tree tops zoom through the air and violently collide with the insect midair. The duo watched as the Tentomon’s body was taken into sphere that swelled up upon the collision and swallow the digimon whole, for what felt like minutes they could only see a silhouette of the bug, it’s violently writhing body as something electric like flowed into it’s form inside this dark purple and blood red orb. Finally the orb shrunk away and with it came the Tentomon falling down from the sky, it’s compound eyes now darkened and dull in color.

“He’s gonna hit the ground head first!!” Warned Dray. Duster jumped into action right after his tamer said that, He ran forward arms out hoping to reach the digimon’s landing spot in time.

That’s when the D-Byte scanned and displayed the Tentomon’s full stats and technique list at the same time the Tentomon’s eyes turned a threatening red and he reopened his wings, catching himself and hovering just above the ground.

“O-oh! Good, you’re fine. Well that was pretty scary a second ago are you—”

“Dusteeeer, I don’t think he’s okay!” Dray called out to his partner. The gotsumon looked back at his tamer confused, then he turned back around and took a good look at the ladybug.

It carried a dark aura outlined by red energy, its features became more sharp and carapace became more ragged and rough looking and its clear winged turned a translucent black.

“Must... feed! Must... eat! Belly…. empty!!!” The Bug crazily screamed. It’s antenna raise up and aimed at the golem, and knowing exactly what that meant, Duster reared a rock fist back and a golden yellow energy enveloped his right knuckle.

“Hardest Punch!” With a hearty swing of the fist Duster right hooked the bug into the dirt and sent it skidding backwards leaving it twitching on the ground.

Dray winced when he heard his partner’s knuckle connect with the Tentomon’s head, he hoped that it couldn’t really feel the impact in this strange state, Dray was carefully making his way over to Duster when they both noticed the Tentomon jerk up onto its feet and rush at Dray in a mindless rage.

“AH!” Dray dove and it nearly nicked his leg with its large sharp claws. Duster ran over and stood defensively in front of his tamer with his knuckles glowing with earthly power.

In that moment, the tamer held up his digivice and gripped it readily, the ring that wrapped around the screen lit up and a single light spun around inside the ring. It was time for his first ever Digimon Battle.

“Duster get ready!” Dray ordered.

“Ready and on it!” Duster replied, slipping his suspender straps onto his shoulders for battle.

“Then let’s stone’em!” Dray shot a finger point towards the Tentomon.

“Hardest Punch!” Duster jumped at the flying insect and swung wide to try and cover the distance but he missed as the Tentomon flew back to avoid it.

“Hard Claw!” With a raised claw the Tentomon flew down towards the Gotsumon and attempted to strike him with a slash attack.

“Duster! Cover your forearms in that gold energy!” Dray called out. For a second Duster wasn’t sure what his partner was talking about, but then it clicked and he slammed his glowing knuckles together and the skin toughening earth energy spread to his large forearms just as Tentomon’s claws raked against them cause sparks to fly. Duster fell back to the ground with a thud but otherwise he was fine.

“Did it work?” Dray asked from beyond the cloud of dust that plumed up. With a strong outside swing from both his arms Duster cleared the smoke away.

“I’m dandy!” He said, throwing a thumbs up.

Duster readied his knuckles again as the bug landed and rushed Tentomon, hurling a slugger at its head, the bug rolled to the side and. crossed its claws.

“Stumbling Attack!” Tentomon began hopping sideways towards Duster, and once it got close it fell towards him claws first. Duster back flipped away and let its black claws sink into the ground he once stood on.

Through a moment of simultaneous realization at the open invitation to deliver a beat down on the opponent, something in both Dray and Duster connected causing the Digivice to glow and power to swell up inside Duster’s digicore.

“Rock Fist!” Duster clapped his stone hands together in a praying position, they were enveloped in a pure white light this time rather than gold, he pulled them apart and in tandem with the motion of his hands, he summoned a myriad of smaller stones from the earth around him forming a large stone in between his hands.

Dray threw forward a hand. “Fire!” Duster listened and thrusted both palm forward launching the stone like a spinning cannonball. The stone caught the Tentomon, snatching it up in its speeding trajectory and crushed it up against a tree where it’s spiked shell was stabbed into the bark.

“Great firing!” Dray cheered. Duster sheepishly rubbed the back of his head but the sound of breaking wood put him back into a fighting stance. Dray checked the status of Tentomon on his Digivice.

“41 HP, we put a good dent in him,” Smiled Dray, but then he noticed a star symbol near his the Tentomon’s name, upon tapping it it read ‘Stunned’.

“Awesome! It keeps track of statuses like an rpg! Duster quick, while it's stunned, hit’em with another good one!” Dray called out.

“Earth Shaker!” The Gotsumon’s body began to glow an orange aura, with a jump and a full weighted arm slam into the ground he caused everything around them to violently shake like an earthquake, a speeding trail of jagged rock pillars traveled along the ground from Duster to the Tentomon and a towering stone rock violently erupted underneath the Tentomon sending it through the tree and into the air.

‘This is it! We’ve got this battle in the bag!’ Dray thought, but he noticed strange electric sparks coming from Tentomon’s airborne body, it started intensifying until it was surrounded by wild bolts of electricity.

“Super Shocker!!!” Dray watched at red and light lighting surrounded the Tentomon like a barrier while lighting up the sky above them, time seemed to crawl to a still all of a sudden he watched in horrific slow motion as a powerful lighting bolt was headed straight down at his partner, he couldn't gauge if he could take the hit, and he didn't want to bet on Duster’s life that he could. He raised his Digivice and held it forward

“Block it!” He ordered.

“Earth Shaker!” Without fully understanding what he was doing, Duster already had his fist stretched out on either side of himself. with one white and one gold, he punched the palm of his golden hand with his white one and they fused into a pastel yellow light, he slammed his palms into the ground and a tall wall of earth shot up directly in front of him and took the blast of electricity head on, the wall of destroyed but to Dray’s absolute delight Duster was fine.

The Tentomon dropped down to the ground but caught itself by unleashing its wings from its shell and hovering just before hitting ground.

“How’s it holding up?” Duster asked Dray.

“12 Hit points left! You’ve almost got this!” Dray cheered. Duster slammed his knuckles together and wrapped them in that dangerous golden glow again, he vaulted over the destroyed wall of rock with one hand and dashed up to Tentomon before it could even stand. First a right hook, then a left, then finally a back knuckled smash attack to the face was all Duster needed to do to send it spinning away on the point of its back spike and colliding with that tall pillar of stone near the hut.

Dray watched as the red color in its compound eyes faded away and were replaced with its good classic green. He breathed a sigh of relief, that meant the battle had hopefully come to an end. Duster was still in a fighting stance though, so Dray walked over and placed a hand on his arm.

‘Duster, I think we won!” He smiled. Duster was hesitant to let his guard down, one thing Mama Baba taught him was to never let your guard down, even around digimon that might be done for, the digital world was full of surprising comebacks after all...

“Maybe… is he still showing up on your thingie?” Asked the Gotsumon. Dray held it up to check, and sure enough, he wasn’t a threat anymore. His information had no hp or stats anywhere, he was peaceful again. Just then, the both of them caught sight of the Tentomon’s body lighting up and out from within came a red ring of a barcode pattern. Duster knew nothing about this strange ring but Dray knew it from one of his shows, he stepped towards it then looked at his digivice. It had the fractal code scanner from the D-tector along with the button that activated it. He figured that it could've been for a spirit which he personally wasn’t hoping for but now he realized it could be for something like this.

He pressed the button on the left side and a blue flare shot up from the scanner’s surface. He cautiously placed the flaring scanner up to the ring and watched sparks fly as the scanner caught the edge of the ring and slowly sucked it into the digivice. Once the ring was fully absorbed the digivice screen lit up with blue words, ‘Insanity Code Catch!’

From the screen came a digimon card of Tentomon with a slash bar on it’s left side.

The eyes of the Tentomon light up with a bright green color, it tumbled onto its feet and sat docile in front of Dray then Duster who had rushed over.

“Excuse me but um, where might I happen to be?” Asked the Tentomon. Duster and Dray glanced at each other, then back to the Tentomon.

“You don’t remember actin’ all wild and hungry-like?” Duster asked.

The Tentomon placed a claw on its hatchet-like mouth and thought for a second.

“Well I do remember something chasing me… it had a really scary vibe to whatever it was so I flew away as far as I could but them it… it caught me...”

A curious tale, the barcode now caught within the digivice is what Dray figured he was talking about. The Tentomon didn’t seem to retain any of the battle damage Duster dealt which was good honestly.

“Well I have another question,” Duster began then gripped the lady bug up but both its arms and glaring into it’s face. “Have you been eatin’ off our farm without asking??”

“O-o-h! D-d-do you own that f-farm over there??” Asked the Insect. Duster gripped the digimon harder and watched him squeal in pain. “OKAY OKAY I TOOK SOME WHEN I WAS REALLY REALLY HUNGRY!!!”

“Hey Duster,” Dray stepped in. “Maybe he can work off what he ate by working on the farm?”

The suggestion intrigued the rock monster, he’d need to run it by mama Babamon but it sounds like an idea she’d make, the other being deletion on sight.

“Ill run it by mama and see what she thinks!” Duster replied while casually holding the Tentomon under his arm.

“Thank you…” The Tentomon whispered to the man.

Duster stuck his hand out to his tamer, “Great work today, tamer.”

Dray clasped his hand into Duster’s, “Yeah great work, partner.”

The tamer crossed his arms and reveled in what felt like the conclusion of a thrilling day, he did so much! He met his partner, got to know him and even had his first ever battle. If anything else was going to happen today he’d be more than happy to be there for it.

Right then he heard a concerning warning blare emitting from his digivice, it was already in his hand so a quick adjustment of his glasses and glance at the screen showed him what it was doing. It’s entire compass UI went from a calm blue to a flashing red and white, the loading icon didn’t stay long this time and presented the tamer with the reason for it’s panic with quickness.

The Digimon that appeared on his screen made his stomach drop to the grass under his feet, he could recognize that skull shaped purple helm and two helmet tails anywhere, it was the eighth Royal Knight; Craniumon.

A frightened tight jawed grimace replaced the tamer’s smile and the sin he committed today by even stepping foot on this world’s grass broadcast itself to the front of his brain.

You are not supposed to be here, you are an intruder, an anomaly, a virus to this world, they’ll deal with you as such.

“Hey Dray, what’s going on? You look like you’ve seen a Soulmon.” Duster asked. The man was mid way into biting through his nails when he realized he hadn’t told his partner… everything.

“D-duster, I’m gonna be honest with you, I’m not supposed to… be here…” He revealed.

Duster looked surprised, “You aren’t??”

“He isn’t??” Added the Tentomon.

“At least, to the Royal Knights I’m not. I came here under a guise so I’m not approved to come here so now I’m technically in hiding from every Royal Knight that exists.

“That’s bad.” Frowned the Gotsumon.

“Mega level bad.” Added the Tentomon.

Dray took out his D-Terminal and fumbled for the portal app, his D-Byte showed Craniumon’s current distance as slowly drawing near.

“It was really great to meet you Duster, it really was, I’ll come back to visit you again as soon as I can, but for right now I gotta jump back to the hub or else.” By the time he finished talking the portal was loaded open and ready, a swirling orange pool of data formed in front of the man.

“Well it was really great getting to meet a human! And don’t worry I wont tell anyone.” Promised the Rookie.

Dray turned just before he ran through the portal back, “Thanks partner!”

Chapter Text

“And so, as an apology and welcome back presents from HopeHub itself, we will be gifting you two special gifts as compensation for the less than satisfactory transportation experience during your first visit to the digital world.” The Patamon bearing brows like a shiba inu had their head bowed during their business professional apology with their wings seemingly shielding their lower half in an attempt to look more proper.

But Dray just stood there gripping his bag strap and looking away awkwardly, other tamers glanced his way and some started to whisper, this was his first time back after the three day wait and he hadn’t thought about his rough n’ tumble entry into the cyber world all that much, it was kinda funny when he thought about it but he didn’t care at all. Even during his three days away, he did nothing but relive that first fight, which led to him writing notebooks upon notebooks of attack ideas for his partner’s limited move pool.

“Wonderful, can I go now?” He replied dismissively.

Kaleb looked up from their bowing, “Our policy states that tamers must receive their gifts before they embark for the digital world, so that will be a no.” He watched as a sigh escaped the man while he turned around towards the white terminal and input commands to bring fourth the first gift.

“All I want is to hit the portal pad and go back to the digital world, I can get my gift later through y’know, the D-Terminal??” Dray pointed out.

“The gift inbox is for items ordered through the Item list while already venturing in the digital world, and this specific gift is better handed directly to the tamer rather than stuffed into a digital gift box. So please sit tightly while I prepare the gift.”

Dray could do nothing but stuff his hands into his pockets and lean up against the counter with his back, other tamers that were waiting behind him were given attention by other Patamon clerks while he waited off to one side of the large circular front desk near Kaleb who was still typing away.

“What kind of compensation prize is this anyways? Digiexcedrin?”Asked the man.

“We could provide that for you too if you’d like.” Kaleb’s hand was hovering over what looked like digital button, not knowing that he was taking a joke too seriously.

“…Maybe,” Dray considered. “not right now. But what is it that you’re typing up so fast, you’re typing faster than someone giving an unwanted opinion.”

“I’m currently retrieving the solution to your network detection predicament, I’m just going through a lot of protocols and waiting for a lot of permissions to get them, they’re a very very special creature after all.”

Creature? Dray raised a brow at the back of Kaleb’s head, what kind of living thing was going to sneak him into the digital world? None were coming to mind immediately, from what he knew about yggdrasil not many things got past it’s admin level awareness. They were basically considered of the digital world aside from the one under the protection of the Three great angels.

“Its almost ready to materialize from the private server, please give me your D-Byte.” Kaleb’s little paws were cute to see gesture for the device, but Dray obliged and gave the gizmo to the winged clerk. It was beginning to build some excitement in him, it made him think of MMOs from the 2000s where getting little floating pets by your character’s heads was the norm or a sign of how much money someone’s parents were throwing at them.

Kaleb took the device and plucked a hidden usb cord from the side of the white monolithic terminal that even Dray wouldn’t have known was there, and plugged it into the left side of the digivice just under the air signal. Little lights of electricity surged from the terminal along the cord and into the digivice which was laid down on the desk face up, Dray watched in awe as something began to materialize above the digivice’s screen, each piece of data surging into the device made another part of this, thing, grow and build more of a solid concise form.

“The process is under way, this is a gift only few tamers have been given y’know.” Commented the clerk.

“What other ways can you get this… prize…” Dray asked, now wondering immensely.

Kaleb replied, “Completing multiple missions on the mission board, around 100 will have the administrators of Hope and Dreamhub gift this being to you as a way of further… assistance.” That last part felt a smidge cryptic tot he tamer.

“What kind of… assistance.” He repeated. The Kaleb was a little surprise that the man mimicked his way of saying that last bit, it made him giggle but he knew he couldn’t answer that directly.

“That is a secret, our admins would like to keep that aspect under wraps but you’ll find out what that is someday.” Kaleb said. So it was something he’d have to learn on his own, that was cool, just being told what this creature did would’ve taken away the fun of discovering it’s ability anyways.

The creature in question was halfway done forming, well it’s egg anyways. It looked like a tall bowl at this point and it made Dray think about the cereal he had this morning, it was a short breakfast though because he ate it so fast in a rush to get back to Hopehub. In a moment of free thought he remembered that this wasn’t the only present present he was getting.

“Oh, about the other present—” He began.

But Kaleb’s lightened up face and raised wings cut him off as a gleeful expression overtook his normal static smile. “Oooh, I’m glad you asked~”

The Patamon did a cheerful little twirl on one paw and stopped to pose. “My name is Kaleb, I am Patamon Assistant number 9819 and I will be your—” Suddenly tears were in it’s eyes and it’s one foot pose crumpled into a tearful standing crouch. The sudden change in emotion had Dray leaning over a bit, hand up in concern.

“A-are, uh, are you good?” He asked. He didn’t dare look around to see who was watching, the embarrassment would make him leave.

“I-I’m just so overwhelmed by this!” He sniffled, his black paws wiping away little tears.

“And what’s that??” Dray asked.

“I’m going to be your permanent assistant starting today!” Kaleb exclaimed. Stunned, Dray stood there with his mouth agape, but then he started to think and incidentally gained a skewed realization between the sudden burst of tears and the assignment to be his new assistant.

Dray leaned back and crossed his arms angrily, “I’m not that fucking bad y’know, so I don’t know why you need to cry about it.”

“No no no! I’m not sniffle crying about you, I’m crying because the assistant benefits are so good!”

“Assistant… benefits…” Dray repeated.

“The extra terminal commands, the authorizations and higher stage management power, becoming a tamer assistant and having all these doors open up is like a Data type’s dream!! At least to me it is.” Kaleb sighed happily.

“Cool, its not me, cool…” The Tamer slowly changed his target of attention back to the egg which was not only seconds away from being fully formed. The egg shell was a blueish lavender color with this mirrored decorative purple swirl that met at an inwards spiral at the center front of the egg, which is what he assumed it to be since that of the area with three small purple dots below and in between the swirls leading up to a big purple heart with a red upside down triangle that sat just above the inwards spirals. It was cute, at least in Dray’s eyes, but it didn’t help him figure out what was about to hatch in the slightest. He may have been a big fan of the franchise, but there were things about digimon that he just didn’t know.

With a sudden glow of light the egg seemed to be fully formed and completed, Dray’s eyes did hurt from being practically flash banged even if the light was gloriously pretty.

“The transfer is completed! Now it’s time for the hatching.” Kaleb removed the plug and let it get retracted back into the white tower, he reached over and pressed the top button on the digivice and they both watched as a computer circuit like line mimicking a natural egg crack formed around the circumference of the shell. Dray stepped back a bit scared that the egg shells might go flying when whatever this was burst out, but only the top egg shell flew up and… floated there. The small figure of a black body layered with a blue computer wire frame ascended out of the egg, the sight was perplexing but amazing at the same time, When the small wire frame creature out stretched its long arms the egg shells dispersed into pixelized lights and data before assembling over its wire frame skeleton as lavender blue skin.

F inally its form was complete, and the tamer recognized this creature almost immediately.

“Its a Digignome!” He exclaimed.

“Not just any digignome, it’s your digignome look closely.” Urged the Patamon. Upon closer inspection, this digignome didn’t just have that nice skin color, it’s puppet like mouth had a single sharp tooth sticking up out at the side on the bottom jaw, its mysterious markings matched the pattern on the egg shell and it had some very noticeable mini dragon horns on it’s head in between feathered like ears. Other than all that it still had a long singular antenna, long arms, little feet with no legs and that upside down red triangle in the center of it’s head.

Dray pointed at the creature, “Is this…”

“Your apology gift, a personalized digignome! We call digivice linked gnomes AI-Gnomes and it’s abilities will help you hide from the detection of yggdrasil’s systems and the royal knight among other things, however if any of them physically see you you’ll be in big trouble…” Kaleb Explained. As the Digimon went on, the Digignome staring at Dray reached out and grabbed his pointing finger with both of its little hands, its six little paws grasped his finger with some a gentle hold that a squeezing grip took the man’s heart. It was like a baby’s hold! It was too cute for him to handle and he could feel tears well up in the corner of his eyes.

“Eep.” Was the first sound it made and it sounded like a little squeaky toy, or more like a weird quack? It was a mix of the two for sure but it was such a charming little sound to come out of its big eye’d face.

“Mr.Churchill?” Asked Kaleb, his voice finally reached the man’s brain after his adoring train of thought over this small whimsical creature had died down enough for the patamon’s voice to reach him.

His attention snapped to his assistant, “Huh?”

“They’ll need a name, can you think of one?” Asked Kaleb. Dray placed a thinking finger to his chin and mindlessly looked up at the clear glass ceiling of the Hopehub lobby.

“A name…” he muttered, his eyes went backdown at his digignome, who was standing on his D-Byte digivice and looking at him with their head tilted to the side. He focused on his digivice, thinking and thinking until it finally hit him like a gust of air.

“I got it! Their name will be—”

“Byte?” Duster asked. Dray was back on Starry Farms, his way here from the hub was now way safer with an established portal pad, though it was hidden right inside the farm tool shed but he figured he’d get used to appearing in a completely dark space room, it even made stepping into a bright, sunny digital world even cooler! Now he stood with his partner digimon Duster the gotsumon, standing next to him holding a hefty crate chock full of big meats with one rocky hand, which was pretty impressive to him, and his new Digignome friend sat in his hoodie’s hood looking over Dray’s shoulder at his digimon.

“Yeah! I figured, why not name him after the digivice that made him y’know?” He explained. Over head flew in the Tentomon that they had battled on their first day as partner and tamer. In its second pair of arms it carried a much lighter load of veggies like muscle yams and those carrots with buff little arms all peeking out from the edges of the crate. It was nice to see them again, and better that they seem to be working here now.

“But its really nice to see you again! I’m guessing that babamon was happy to have a new employee to the farm?” Dray asked.

Duster chuckled a bit with a hard to notice smile , “ It’s nice to see you again too! And she’s been more than happy to have a flying employee really. TenTen can take care of the watering and crop inspecting without accidentally stepping on the crops like I do .”

T he Tentomon in question hovered his over over after he loaded onto the back of a silver helmed Komondomon stationed near the gate. He now donned a green skull cap with a button pin on its brim that had a bone meat symbol with a heart on it.

“Hey Human! Thanks for beating out of that glitchy funk last time, after I recovered from a concussion I didn’t know I got, I asked Mamababamon if I could work off my debt.”
“You have a debt now?” Dray asked intrigued.

“Yep,” Duster replied. “He ate about 50 pounds worth of crops over the course of him hiding out in that hut so Mama said he works all that off or else!”

“This feels like something one of those middle of nowhere hillbillies would say to a stranger, next your gonna tell me she said that while pointing a shotgun at him haha—”

“Nope, it was her broom but she did fire off those straws to show me an example.” TenTen pointed a large claw over to a tree where Dray glanced and immediately recoiled at the sight. The surface of the tree was so packed full of quill like straw strands that it was promptly bulging outwards at the sides, the straws must be digging in in such a clustered mass that they’ve taken up space on its inside. The man clutched at his hoodie tightly, even Byte pulled up the hood in fear, sucks that this was it’s first time being in the digital world and this was the first terrifying thing it saw.

“S-she’s pretty strong I take it?” Dray nervously asked.

“Yepperoonie! She’s a tough mega level whose really experienced, that’s why I’m so tough myself because she trained me the moment I hatched from my digiegg!” Duster flexed a stone bicep, although there was no bulging of a muscle since it was all rock but Dray got the picture that his partner was pre-trained essentially.

‘Experienced enough to invent new moves like a straw shotgun, I don’t remember babamon having techniques like that at all…’ The Tamer thought as he stared at the stricken tree.

When his concerns and intrigue were done running its course, he realized being called human was very weird to him, he turned to the tentomon and held out a hand.

“My name is Dray by the way, your name’s tenten right?” The tentomon took the hand with their second pair, shaking it somewhat awkwardly.

“Yeah! MamaBabamon gave me that name, It’s kinda funny.” Dray gaze the tnetomon a quizzical look and switched his gaze to Duster.

“Did babamon name you to?” Dray asked.

Duster nodded, “Yep, all civil digimon have names. We took after human cultu re I think… I don’t know how long ago, but we do it so it would be easier to tell us apart.”

First wild then civil, its not like there haven’t been divides in digimon stories before but not like this…

“But yeah!” Tenten spoke up in a chirp, “It’s been great here, no more dodging triceramon horns and fighting gaomon for digimushrooms or ducking under claws cuz you asked someone for scraps. Just some hours of work and then hours of eating!” The ladybug’s joy was well conveyed in it’s antenna making a heart and it’s jolly hopping. It was cute, although it was scary thinking about living like that.

“So anyways what’re you two up to?” Asked Dray, hands resting on his hips. Byte now stood on his head with their own hands on their none existent hips, letting out a little “eep!”

“We’re loading up the crops for sell at the restaurant in the city and street shop! They all finished growing and ripening last night so it’s time to restock everything and start business!” Duster explained. There was some pride to his words that made his tamer smile.

“Wow we’ve got a businessmon over here, so when do you set off to the city?” Dray asked.

Duster gestured a rocky thumb at the barn houses, “When Mama is ready, she should be ready—”

Just then, the barn doors burst open and a large Komondomon with a reddish-brown helm came rushing out, it stopped on its front paws and swung its rear around sending dust up into the air in Duster, Dray, Byte, and Tentomon’s direction. When it came to a stop, A figure stepped up onto the edge of Komodomon’s back looking down on the four from above. Dray couldn't see their face as they were shadowed by the sunlight from above but he could tell what Digimon it was from the general silhouette and from that he figured just who it was.

“Are you, cough cough, M-miss Mama babamon?” he questioned through his coughs.

W ith a powerful leap, the figure left their position in a flash and landed with a startling thud on the ground right in front of Dray causing him to stumble and fall on his rear in fright.

The elderly woman looking monster spoke, “Are you my dear son’s human partner…?” This Babamon wore a rose pink robe with a floral design on her poncho and twin hairpins donning a star and moon respectively on the ends. They stepped forward, looking expectingly at the man with a single revealed eye under their graying bangs.

“Y-yes Ma’am my name is—”

“I know, Dray. A strange human name but it’s a name nonetheless.

“Well—” Dray was about to object, but the sight of that pin cushioned tree made him clamp his mouth back up.

“Yep, it sure is weird, absolutely.” he nervously nodded.

“You seem like a good man,” MamaBabamon started, “But no one likes a suck up sonny, it makes you look spineless.” Without warning, he felt himself rise into the air by something lifting him up by his hoodie, with a worried squeal from Byte in his hood he found himself being hung up by the top of the babamon’s magic broom stick and put into the palm of Mama Babamon’s hand solely on his back and held right over her head.

“Duster, grab those crates of meat and toss them inside Ares, we’ll be taking them with us to the restaurant. Tenten take those vegetables and put them in Artemis, you’ll meet Mimi at the street stand, you remember what digimon Mimi is correct?”

Tenten paused, then tapped a claw to their chin and answered, “They’re a… Meicoomon?”

“One with a red bandana and earring, after you drop those off take Artemis back to the restaurant, you’ll be doing in-city orders today.”

“Rodger dodger!”

The elderly digimon leapt back onto the back of the Komondomon and set a shaking young man down on one of the long sofa seats installed on the large dog’s back. He was still all balled up with his knees up to his chest and forearms folded over their biceps, thought the softness of the sofas were enough to ease him up.

“Wow… these are really soft seats…” he marveled, what Dray did Byte did too, and the creature floated down next to him and began pushing down on the cushions to examine their quality for itself.

“I never expected my darling little pebble to become a partnered digimon.” Mama Baba began to speak. Dray looked over at her sitting on the over side of the big platform upon the komondomon’s back.

“I never expected to become a tamer, I just made a goofy wish on a candle and… well, here I am.” He explained.

“The digital world continues to work in the most mysterious of ways, its seems living long doesn’t guarantee you a sight of all there is to be seen.” She said. Her words sounded so sagely, it made him wish he was at a level of experience and knowledge she was, but maybe being the thing that amazes someone was a comfort he could take.

“For Star City, Ares!” Called the aging Digimon, the Babamon slammed the butt of her broom into the hard wood and Dray heard a loud thundering “Raroof!!” before he felt the large digimon he was sitting on begin to move starting with a sudden shift, then full on movement towards a large gate with a sign right at the entrance of the farm.

“So what are your goals in this world, what are you going to do here and with my child.” Asked the digimon, her broom was set in her lap and he gently had her hands set over it.

“Im… not entirely sure but I think I’ll figure that out eventually. There aren’t any immediate big bads to fight as far as I know and things seemed okay… except for one thing but maybe that can wait for now…” His mind wondered to the fight with Tenten, the way he and Duster beat that code out of the guy and extracted it with his digivice, one instance of that wasn’t enough to start doing anything in his opinion. He honestly wanted to explore this world before tackling that but what if that was a selfish thought?

The door leading from inside the Komondomon named Ares opened up and Duster came onto the back.

“Everything from the bone meat to the meat capsule containers has been loaded and secured mama!” He cheerfully reported.

“Very good Duster, have a seat with your partner.” Mama Baba urged. The mini golem did as he was told and sat next to his human tamer, looking over at him and smiling with his eyes. Dray smiled back and so did Byte over his shoulder. The ride to the city was a bit of a long one, but one that the man could appreciate.

Outside the farm were wide open grasslands as far as the eye could see, emerald green grass moving in a hypnotic blur as the two Komondomon raced across the dirt path. There was a distinct flower meadow that grew along the path’s right side that consisted of golden yellow and blue flowers all dancing in a gentler breeze than the one brushing up against Dray’s beard and face. A trio of silhouettes appeared in the middle of the wood floor, when Dray and Duster looked up they saw the flying figures of three Morphomon soaring on the high winds above them. Duster waved to them and one of them even waved back, Byte mimicked the digimon and at least got the second butterfly rookie to wave back.’

“Are Digignomes common where you are? Its very rare to even see them, let alone with a human.

“O-oh well…” It didn’t feel like a smart idea to mention hopehub to digimon other than Duster, a place where anything you wanted could be made real sounded like a dog whistle for the worst kind of company to track him down. “Byte came with my digivice, I’m not sure how long he’s been living in there but he’s really nice to have around.

The Digignome looked confused at the man, unfortunately not catching on but Mama Baba didn’t notice it’s bewildered expression for whatever reason, she let out a soft “hm.” of acknowledgment and went back to looked forward down the road they were going. Dray rested his head on the edge of the komondomon’s back and let out a quiet sigh through his nose. His eyes open and watching the blue sky, seeing circuit board lining be revealed in brief white shimmers of light along it’s complex network. The man wondered if that was where the first layer of the digital world’s atmosphere lied, each layer outlined by computer circuit strings for a world that wasn’t even a real planet.

H e dashed away his thoughts for a moment and took a deep breath of the clean air, this must be what it’s like to live away from the city, in the country side just driving in a little pickup truck or something. He glanced to his partner and saw him with his upper body leaning over the edge with an arm over it, most likely staring at the destination come closer. He looked behind him initially to see the farm shrinking away but saw the face of the silver helmet komondomon named Artemis instead, on their head was Tenten sitting uneasily from the force of the wind, at least that’s what Dray figured. The ladybug happened to pull out a small chunk of meat on a bone and stick it into his mouth.

Just a regular food growing business, just like the ones he’d see back home on the street and in open areas. This was nice, relaxing and exciting. But his mind couldn’t help but think about the royal knights, their presence in this world hindered how much he could enjoy without being noticed and vaporized for being where he isn’t supposed to, maybe he should’ve let Kaleb tell them he was arriving instead of hiding away when they drew near.

“We’re at the gates young man,” called Mama Baba. “The Digimon here haven’t seen a human in person, only videos and photos caught on our technology and television sets. I’d stay low until the whispers die down and they get used to you being here.”

“Would me telling them I’m a tamer help at all?” Asked Dray.

“You think showing them your device will ease the chatter?? Don’t be goofy, that’ll only make it loud enough for the nearby towns to hear it.” badgered the old woman monster. With the idea shot down, the tamer pushed his digivice deeper into his pocket and sat uncomfortably before a loud creaking sound caught his attention and made he and his digignome companion turn to see a pair of giant star marked doors split open and welcome the Komondomons in.

“Good morning Miss babamon!” Called a voice from up above, when looking up, the human was met with the sight of a giant blue beetle, donning a single horn on a samurai like helmet of a head, they were stationed atop one of the twin watch towers and this one was staring down at them.

“Good morning Kabuta.” Mama Baba greeted the Kabuterimon.

“Excuse me for asking Miss, but—” another voice began, and on the opposite tower was a giant red pincer beetle which he recognized as a Kuwagamon.

“He’s with me, I’d like it if you kept this human’s existence within city walls as best as you can, and a special discount of seventy percent off our Grilled honey meat is all yours~” The sound of the sweet deal all but mesmerized the guards, they gave the elderly digimon a quiet salute and they went back to scanning the grasslands.

Dray was pretty amazed, they didn’t even utter another peep after she said all that, he surmised her bone meats and cooking must be ridiculously good like, although if anyone ever found out they took bribes like that they’d be in serious trouble but Dray himself was never gonna snitch on them or anything so it wasn’t his concern at all. T he two komondomon moved in, slowly making their way through a short tunnel of a gateway before properly entering Star City.

Within the grand brick walls was like a bustling homely city, the movement and energy of the digimon moving about their day reminded the man of the set of a medieval movie where the towns people move about dirt roads and paths, this was much the same with a large majority of the city walking on a stomped on dry dirt path of a sandy color, there were patches and places of greenery here and there but mostly in front of buildings and what Dray assumed to be business establishments.

The Komondomon waltzed in and parallel parked off to the side near the gate wall, Mama Baba got up of her seat and signaled for Tenten to fly over, she took out a little purse shaped like a digiegg and gave Tenten some change, apparently for his lunch.

As they did that, Dray turned to Duster, “ How long has this city been here?”

Duster tapped thoughtfully on his chin, “Id say about a hundred plus year or so? I’ve tasted the rubble off the city walls before when wild digimon attacked the wall to get in and the stones are super old.”

“Wait wait wait, how can you tell how old the wall is by tasting it?” Dray asked rather puzzled.

“I’m a gotsumon, we can tell the age of a lot of stone built things be eating them, the materials used to make the bricks of the wall are all settled and dry but old data sits inside the stone and gains a particular taste from having not moved in a long time.”

Dray curiously rubbed his chin, “ So it wo rk s like aged cheese them?”

“Kinda!” His partner replied. When Duster got up off his chair, Dray pulled out a tiny notebook and wrote that info down. When he was done he took another glance at the city, he spotted a Greymon wearing an apron carrying three Koromon on his tail, a patamon racing a Biyomon down the road in the slowest air race you’ve ever seen. He watched a Dracumon an Impmon and a Guilmon run away from a Veggiemon food seller with various foods in their arms, and he saw an Aeroveedramon walking hand in hand with a Garudamon with braided hair.

“Just like home… I could even live here… maybe…” he muttered.

After Mama Baba sent Tenten on his way, she walked over to Duster and Dray with his broom as her walking cane. “Alright, we’re gonna take Ares over to the shop today, we’ll do this for a while until everyone is used to seeing a human at the shop.”

“Okie dokie mama!” Duster saluted.

“Are you suuure that’ll be okay?” Dray asked cautiously.

“Of course!” The Babamon exclaimed. “And if it doesn’t work out then we’ll atleast get some major traffic in the shop from you being there.” Dray could’ve sworn he saw a twinkle in her eye beneath her gray hair but he willingly moved past that. He really couldn’t imagine way this was going to work when he thought about it, whether he got introduced to everyone in a big announcement or was discreetly put into the town he was going to get some amount of stares and attention like he was some spectacle.

T he Babamon slammed the wood floor back of Ares twice and the Komondomon got out of their parking space and began moving again. With his arm resting on the edge of the komondomon’s back and his head propped up in his hand Dray watched the buildings go by. They were all of varying sizes with very accommodating door sizes for all sorts of digimon, little ones, big ones, even ones of his size. He watched digimon sitting out on apartment balconies, ones on their flat or triangle roofs and some bird digimon on a bird house branch like perch near windows. It felt like he was in his brother’s car again, driving home from somewhere and watching split second glimpses of people’s business and lives before he never saw them again until another ride in the car.

Ares took a left down a road and came to a slow stop, it found itself in front of a medium sized shop adorned with a holographic sign showing the classi c pixel sprite of the meat icon from the original vpets. It made the man’s heart flutter with amusement, but it was a charming building with or without the sign with it’s brick red coloring and different graffiti painted pictures of food on the sides. Above the glass door was another digital sign in fine pixels and white text; “Mama Babamon’s Bone Meat and Meat related Foods” the sign had scrolling text below the main title in Digimoji and Digicode as well as various human languages.

“What a neato lil’ place.” Commented Dray. He got up but immediately stopped, not sure whether to just slide down the Komondomon’s long shaggy fur or go through the digimon’s door at the back of it’s head.

“Why thank you young man, It’s one of my most prized possessions. Took me around 30 years to get it looking the way it down now.” Said MamaBaba as she walked out the side door of Ares’. Duster chose to slide down however his leg got tangled on a thick lock of hair and he slid and hit the ground head first.

“I’m okay!” Duster called out. With his partner taking a braver route, Dray decided to follow suite, so he backed up, adjusted his beanie hat and carefully climbed over the side and slid down on his stomach down the fur and onto the dirt floor. After Byte decided to just roll down on his side and into his tamer’s hoodie, Dray followed Mama Baba and his partner to the door and watched her unlock the door with a little bone key with a rose keychain. Ares parked itself into one of the two little sheds attached to the side of the building as she opened the door and all three of them stepped inside.

The shop was dark, except for the bit of sunlight peeking in through the windows so it wasnt really that dark. The Babamon walked in and drew a circle of pink light made of 1s and 0s in the air with her finger and the store lights came to life . Dray felt like he was inside a neighborhood street corner restaurant, a slowly spinning ceiling fan, pictures of food on the walls, some photos of what he guessed were friends of Mama Baba on the walls and one or two fancy paintings of dot digimon dot sprites hung up near the counter for all to see.

“Woooow, what a place.” He awed.

“Sure is, but don’t you have places like this back in the human world deary?” Asked the Babamon as she walked back out from behind the counter.

“Oh yeah we do! But its really cool to see a Digimon’s way of doing things like this, its really similar too.” He responded. He leaned up against one of the five round tables organized across the store and scanned the place in admiration. Meanwhile Duster and his mother went to work, setting down the chairs on the dark beige stone floor and setting pairs of menus on the tabletops for customers.

“Duster, go through the side back door leading into the shed and start unloading the foods and containers into the kitchen, Tenten should be back in a little while to help you speed things up.” Ordered Mama baba.

“Yes Ma’am” Saluted the golem, and he went behind the store counter through the lifting panel. Mama Baba went behind the counter and first turned on three tall glass door food heaters with long bulbs and metal shelves made to probably keep food orders warm, and pressed a switch somewhere that lit up soft lights around the large menu sign right above the counter. The list of options were listed from cheapest to most expensive with their names in both digimoji and digicode below still images of the foods. There was meat, Big Meat and Sirloins which were really expensive, grilled varieties and honey glazed. They had steamed and cooked super carrots and a hawk radish salad with seasoned DigiMushrooms too! The options were pretty wide but did look a tad pricey in some places, the Chain melon and Deluxe Mushrooms were apparently nine hundred to nine hundred and fifty bits bits a full plate but a smaller text under them read that they had positive training and health benefits so it began to make sense to Dray why they were so expensive… they could use a couple discounts though…

“This is such a cozy place miss, its very warm and welcoming. It reminds me of the place near my apartment where me and my friends go to eat.” Said Dray.

“Is that so?” Asked Mama Baba.

“Yep! we’re friends with someone who works there too so we always go and hang out, at least up until more customers come in and their mom kicks up out to make room for them.”

“Haha! Smart woman, I’d do the same, but this place is as welcoming as it is because that’s the kind of thing that brings in profit. If I were to make it exclusive to certain types of digimon or didn’t have things set out to accommodate different digital monsters, then I’d be making less money.” She replied.

Dray slid in hands into his pockets, “Sound like something some people need to learn back home.”

“I’m assuming stores in your world don’t have things made for different humans?” She questioned.

Dray nodded, “A lot of it is made for one body type or something similar.”

“And do they only allow certain type in certain stores too?” She asked further.

Dray paused for a moment, then replied to that, “A rare few, not where I live but I’ve heard of them in some far off places, most because of wealth, others for some other things…” He hoped she wouldn’t want the specific details, he’d rather leave that aspect of his life behind. Luckily she seemed to stop asking.

M ama Baba stood back up and pushed up a little chair for her to sit on, having stood around for a while Dray spoke up, “Uh, would you like for me to help with anything miss?”

Mama Baba thought for a moment, “You could go in the back and help Duster with the containers and veggies while I call up Miko to come into work and work the front desk.”

“Alright, I can do that.” Dray nodded, he made his way to the back past the front counter and through a pair of purple curtains which blocked the view of the back to digimon over the counter, he walked into a rather cutely sized kitchen for digimon of around Duster’s size and larger. Stoves, Grills, and all kinds of things were back here but Dray decided not to get distracted again by digimon life like he did a few minutes ago. As he walked a bit further he saw his stone partner walking through a door into the shed hefting two crates of meat and setting them with ease.

“Howdy Dray!” He greeted.

“Hey Duster.” Dray said back.

Duster dusted his rocks hands off, “What’re you doin’ back here?”

“Asked Mama Baba if I could help out sooo here I am!” Dray replied with a shrugged.

“Well, that’s great! You can handle the containers, I’ll give you the Meat and you just place it in there.” Duster slid in a wide crate full of capsule like brick red bottom and clear topped containers that vaguely looked like gacha capsules from those machines in japan. Dray slid the crate to his feet and he knelt down, now setting out three containers to preemptively put meat into. He grabbed a bone of meat and placed it into the container, the moment he did that the container top closed with a snap and the meat inside dispersed into data leaving a holographic image of itself with the number “1” hovering above it.

“Whoa!” The man exclaimed.

“Cool huh? This is a quantity capsule, fancy tech Mama invested in not too long ago from the Metal Empire.” The Gotsumon tapped the top of the container gently as he spoke of it.

“Awesome, have those guys done anything else?” Dray asked with a piqued interest.

Duster replied as he went about bringing in more meat crates, “Oh they did a bunch of techy gizmo stuff, I cant remember them all though I just know they base some of it off things from your world. I never mess if any of it though…”

“Aww how come, have you thought about seeing if they have anything to help you with farm work?” Dray suggested, he was getting the hang of setting the meats into the quantity capsule until they maxed out at 5 and he moved onto the next capsule.

“I don’t need some bolts and nuts to do my job, I do it just fine with my own hands.” Even though Duster said this with no sort of haughty, prideful tone of voice, it still seemed to Dray that his partner took pride as a farm hand to his Mama. And he had reason to honestly, he’s pretty strong just from the way he handles carrying these large crates of food on top of fighting.

“Alright, just a suggestion.” Dray eased back. When the fifth capsule was filled, the two heard the jingle of a door bells and some chatter up at the front desk.

The Babamon poked her head in through the curtains, “Dray, TenTen is back, he’ll handle the rest of the stocking, I need you to come to the front and help me with something.” When he head retracted, the pair looked at each other before the man stood up and walked out the back, he by passed a sort of tired looking Tentomon and walked around tot he front of the counter where Mama Baba sat.

“What was—” Before he finished his hands were filled with rolled up posters.

“Put those up for me please, we’re about to open up in half an hour.” She requested. Dray looked down at the posters and then at the walls around the store.

“Just anywhere between and under the photos, I’ve got one I need to place outside but those I need placed up higher than what I can reach, and you look to be quite tall for your... age is it?” She paused in her short pondering.

“I’m twenty-three Ma’am.” Dray told her.

“Right, that’s an adult age I think. I’m still not used to the age system the majority of the public asked to be put in place, We were better off using our current evolutionary stages rather then trying to be more like humans…” Mama Baba walked on past Dray with a poster held in her hands.

Curious Dray asked, “I didn’t know you guys were trying out ages, how old is Duster?”

“Ummm, I think they said my boy was nineteen… yes, he’s about nineteen.” She pushed about the door she stopped at and Dray unfurled the first poster thinking about how much human culture was seeping in here. Digimon had to have their own culture, so why did they think modern human ways were good enough to take inspiration from?

He straightened and smoothed out the adhesive backed poster and read the first one up on the wall. ‘Big and Small Meat combo only 100 Bits!!’ That sounded like a nice little deal. He waked to the opposite wall and put up the next one; ‘No Loitering!!! Pay to Stay!!!’ in big instructive letters.

“Well I’ve seen these more times than I can count…” He noted somewhat disdainfully, business was business he supposed. The last poster was put up on the wall next to the first one and was pleasantly surprised, ‘No Bits? One free meal a day!’ And it was accompanied by a little image of a dot Lalamon eating a pixel meat with the currency symbol for Bits under an X.

Just then Mama Baba walked back in and was shuffling back towards the front counter with their hands hidden within their sleeves.

“You feed the moneyless here?” Dray asked.

“Do you find that problematic?” She inquired. Dray held up and waved his hands dismissively.

“No no, not at all, I think its great. Its just… if you have a poster like this then that means there’s digimon here who are homeless right? Or just can’t feed themselves all day.”

Mama Baba sighed and continued back to sit at the counter, “They’re normally the wild ones that recently moved in, just like Tenten they’ve lived out in the wilds of the digital world and they moved to the city for one reason or another. They normally come from the shelter center that houses them or straight off the streets for that still can’t handle being in buildings.”

What an weird digital world this was turning out to be for the tamer, he asked, “How did you guys get so divided? I mean wild digimon and civil digimon?”

Just as the Babamon was about to answer, the door to the restaurant opened and in stepped a Mikemon donning earrings on both ears and a small bag.

“Meowrning Mama Baba, I hope I wasn’t holding up the opening!” The cat greeted her.

Mama Baba shook her head, “No my dear you’re right on time, you’ve got a couple minutes before opening. Is your brother coming in later?”

“Yeah he’ll be in later, his hoodie and cap got wet and he’s waiting for them to dr—” The brown gloved cat’s eyes glanced Dray’s way, most likely having caught him in her peripheral. Byte at the same time popped his head up from behind Dray’s beanie and the three stared at each other in an awkward silence, it felt like he had been caught doing a dance by himself by someone just coming through the door, which happened once or twice back at his old home.

The Cat was speechless, “Uhhhhh—”

“Ummmmm—” The man wasn’t sure how to act or what to even say, he slowly raised his hands to do… something but Byte perked up and gave the digimon a big o’l cheerful wave and a happy ‘Eepeep!’. Did that help at all?

“Is that a fucking digignome too?!” The Mikemon blurted out. Well that was still up for discussion in Dray’s mind.

“Hey! watch your damn mouth in my restaurant Miko!” Mama Baba yelled with a wagging a mad finger.

“But you just swore too!?” Argued Miko.

The elderly monster leaned forward on the counter on her forearm, glaring at the cat with a single revealed eye, “Because this is my restaurant, you just work here, and seeing the young sling around swears makes my data pressure rise so watch your language!”

“Howdy Miko, welcome in!!” Shouted Duster from the back. Tenten appeared from the back seemingly to see who this Miko was and when they spotted each other Tenten zipped right back into the kitchen as fast as possible.

“….This is beginning to be too much for me right now…” Said the Mikemon, she turned back towards Dray who still felt like he shouldn’t be seen right now. Mustering up whatever bits of courage he had he finally spoke up.

“H-honestly, when I first got here I-I was as speechless as you were hehe—”

“No you weren’t, you talked to me right away!” Called out Duster. Dray whipped his head over where he heard his partner’s voice

“Stop having good hearing and handle your business back there!” He yelled back.

“Oh my god it can talk!” cried Miko. A vein rose on Dray’s forehead in reaction.

“’It’? Do I look like an it to you??” He snapped back while pointing down at her. The Mikemon got visibly scared for a moment but then shook their head to compose themselves.

“S-sorry I just never met a human before, there’s never been a human here at all as far as I know.”

Dray crossed his arms still looking down at the Mikemon who only really came up to his knee, he contemplated if his anger was fair, I mean it was a little bit but wouldn’t people back home call Digimon things like an ‘it’ too? And how was he still surprising they had to be looking or seeing humans on TV or something for them to be adopting human culture and concepts like age. Byte landed on a table next to him and began examining a salt shaker, he breathed out a little sigh through his nose and shrugged.

“Well, If a Digimon showed in my room a couple days before I wound up where I did, I’d probably slip up and call them an it… maybe…”

“Uh-huh…” Replied the Cat, Dray wasn’t sure if that was a skeptical ‘huh’ or not but regardless—

“My name is Dray and that’s Byte,” The man pointed to the Digignome now sucking salt crystals out of the salt shaker and immediately regretting it. “I’m Duster’s ta— human partner.”

“Duster’s what?!” She shrieked again. From the back came Duster but with Tenten hiding behind him.

“Who said my what? Oh howdy Dray!” Greeted the stone golem.

Dray gave his partner a head tilted look, “Hey?? I just talked to you a minute ago?” the Gotsumon apologetically flagged a hand at him.

“Oh sorry, I got so caught up in work I forgot you were here, hahaha.” Dray... didn’t know how to reply.

“Oh! Uh my name is Miko, I work the cash register here.” Spoke the Mikemon.

“Nice to meet you Miko, how’s it been working here?” Dray asked, just a bit of casual curiosity.

“Good enough not to quit, and pays well enough not to job search mid-shift” The cat replied, the both of them started laughing, a mutual feeling kindling between the two on the subject.

“You humans have jobs too I think, what do you do back on… earth right?” Questioned Miko.

The question caught him a little off guard, they did say they knew things humans did which lead to them even thinking of establishments in the first place. Though he glanced to Duster before he answered, heres hoping he didn’t have any high expectations for what he did back home.

“I do editorial work for a book publishing company, we get a lot of different genre books like adventure and mysteries but lately we’ve got a lot of uhh…” He paused at an awkward time, it’d be weird to outright say monster romance in front of what technically counted as monsters so… “Interesting romance, It’s been like that for a hot minute but it’s not like I get tired of it. I do like seeing all the nuanced takes and angles new authors try with the genre.”

Miko placed a gentle paw on her cheek, looking dreamily to nowhere in particular.

“Ahh...Romance~ I do love to crack books like those open from time to time… ‘The Pepper to my Breath’ by Allan Agumon, ‘My Celestial Poison’ co authored by Celeste Angewomon and Ladia LadyDevimon, even funny ones like ‘Pummeled by the Beast King’ by Oliver Ogremon and Leonard Leomon are great to listen to on my Digiphone on a day off.”

“You kids and your light romances, whatever happened to the spicier digimon books, like ‘The Touch of his Holy Rod’ and ‘His Evil inside my Heaven’ by Patrick Pidmon.”

“HIS WHO INSIDE MY WHAT??!” Dray yelped wide eyed and terrified.

“BABA!!!” Cried Miko. While Mama baba was laughing it up, Dray felt his hand being grabbed by something hard and pulled, It was Duster now in front of him and looking starry eyed, his bearded face reflected inside his partner’s golden yellow eyes.

“You... write... stories?!”

“Well I edit them—” Dray corrected. But that didn’t seem to matter to the golem as his mouth grew into a craggely grin.

“You’re like the people who make comic books!!” Digging in his back pocket, Duster unveiled a comic issue to his tamer, ‘The Jolting Justice #9’ On the cover was a Superstarmon in an action pose over a city background. Did he have the heart to tell his partner that he only worked in comic edits once and that he couldn’t stand his world’s comic books? No, no he couldn’t say that to those glowing amber eyes of his.

“Well I just… fix the words, but comics are cool though!” Dray feinted enthusiasm. Duster nodded excitedly, his excitement to Dray was sort of jarring in comparison to his steadfast stoic, farmer vibes from earlier.

“I’ve got all the issues of Metal Hearted Mamemon and the Tales of Tailmon and—”

“Okay okay OKAY,” Miko cut off, Her gloved paws began pushing Duster, who was still talking, back behind the counter. “Let’s get you back to stock before you lore dump AGAIN...”

“Miko! Don’t push him across the floor, I just had these floors redone and he’ll scruff them up with his rocky feet!!” Mama Baba angrily badgered the cat.

The man simply took a seat at one of the tables and blended into the background along with his digignome as the day started to pass him by, the low heat cabinets were stocked with ready to go bone meat inside those quantity capsules amongst other foods and Miko took her position at the cash register awaiting customers to come in.

An Array of Digimon came in not too long after everyone settled in, levels ranging from rookies with a huddle of Baby digimon, champion levels in after work groups and the rare ultimate level coming in by themselves or with some champions and rookies tagging along in a little family. They all however did take the time to gawk and glance at the dark skinned human in glasses sitting with a rare and elusive Digignome at a lone table. Some only stole a look, others made an attempt to give the man a short wave most too shy to wave when they sit down to order and eat and primarily waiting until they were about to leave and few were brave enough to actually step over and speak to him.

“Do humans really have squishy things inside called organs?” “Humans don’t turn into eggs right?” “Do you guys really not have any special techniques to defend yourselves?!” “You guys ride insise giant birds and turtles called airplanes and cars? Whats that like?” Were some example questions that amused the man enough to think back on. He really just sat around all day, well that’s not entirely true since Mama Babamon did have him sweep the store floor after every couple of customers to keep the place clean.

Eventually Dray and Byte met Miko’s younger brother, an Uver. BlackGatomon named Noir in a stripped brick red and white hoodie with a skullcap that had a bone meat insignia on the front. They were rather quiet but polite at least, they didn’t even look Dray’s way but they did acknowledge Byte, or rather had to from the way it followed him around the store. The digimon picked up their assigned orders and left as fast as they came in, Dray had to grab Byte back from following him right out the door.

The day was slowly nearing its end, the light of the setting sun seeping in through the restaurant glass door and two windows, and the sky was becoming a fiery orange with once white clouds now soaked in deep orange sunlight like a flying cotton swabs. Dray found himself fiddling with his D-Terminal from Hopehub, changing the background of the home screen to akin to the windows rolling green hills background and its app icons to something a little more whimsy. Byte sat on the table, using the salt and pepper shakers as dolls in some made up little play it was acting out in its mind. Duster was the one doing the sweeping now, careful to not leave rocky scratches on the tiled flooring of the shop, all in all the shop had made quite a lump sum of money from their semi-reopening from having to close to restock on meat and edible dishes. Dray knew it was partially because of him that they made a nice extra, and also because of Byte, from what Babamon told him, Digignomes are an extremely rare sight and can only be seen in places like deep untouched forests that even digimon don’t inhabit which is super rare to come by.

Miko sat at the cash register, looking bored as they scrolled through their digiphone on Pixelgram, they wanted to take a picture of him for her account, just to net some extra followers, but he begged her not to so after that she was back to resting her head in her brown gloved paws. Mama Baba was in the back on the phone with a business partner and Tenten was at the table with Dray and Byte just sleeping off his labor exhaustion.

It felt like the day would wrap up as peacefully as it started for the man until the shop phone began to ring.

“Oh, first phone call today, that’s a something.” Miko perked up and commented. Dray had asked earlier pertaining to the phone and while Digiphones were quite the hit, many digimon with claws weren’t so quick to use them unless they had bought a heavy duty screen protector, a claw-cap or both to keep their phones uncscratched.

Miko picked up the phone and answered, “Hello? Yes we do deliveries ma’am… where are you placing this order from?” Miko held the phone in the crook of her shoulder and picked up the pencil and note pad. Duster and Dray shared a glance towards one another from across the room.

“The total will come to one thousand Bits, nine-hundred for the food and one-hundred for the distance and risk, are you okay with that ma-am? You say that’s fine you’ll cover it? Wonderful, thank you for ordering from Mama Babamon’s and have a great day!” The phone returned to the receiver and Miko clapped her paws together delighfully.

“Great news everybody, we’ve got our first out-of-town delivery!”

“Ooo cool, wheres it coming from?” Dray asked excitedly, his interest in this world had only grown since sitting in the store all day for his own safety and security.

“We haven’t had one of those in a… ‘hot min..minute?’ did I say it right?” Duster asked looking to his partner. Dray nodded approvingly, teaching his partner a little AAVE was looking up to be a fun experience.

“The order is from Net Surf Village.” Miko announced. For Dray that sounded like a nice place, but something in those words made his Gotsumon partner visibly droop in mood.

“Oh...Net Surf…” His expression, while still hard to read down to the detail due to his rocky visage seemed to slowly morph into some sense of fearful disdain.

“Is uh…,” Dray began to ask. “Net Surf Village far or something?”

“Its the resort home of a wealthy Geckomon family located at a cape shore, They called me a week back wondering when our bone meats would be available, seems they’ve remembered to check in.” In came Mama Babamon explaining a little bit more on the details of the order.

“Oh so that’s what it’s like here…” Dray had actually heard about the village from a manga book back in his world so he wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with the location. But it was intriguing to know wealthy families existed in within the digital world.

“Indeed, and since I couldn’t find an out of town delivery digimon before the reopening date,” Mama Babamon raised her hand and threw a finger at both Dray and Dray, “You two will be delivering this order!!”

“Wait WHAT?!”

Grinning at the surprise of both of them, Mama Baba wagged a finger at them, “Miko if you’d care to explain.”

“My little brother is too young and inexperienced in fighting to go out here on his own to deliver the food, and the same goes for Tenten and I.”

“Mama babamon, need I remind you that I’m literally not supposed to be seen here?? Like if a royal knight even spots me they’ll eviscerate me like a loose leaf paper in a solar flare!!”

“I thought that little fellow over there was masking your presence from their sight.” Dray glanced at Byte who was sleeping in a juice cup and then back at Mama babamon.

“Well-- I mean yeah but like, I’m pretty sure they’re masking me from their security system, I don’t think that just makes me invisible to their big anime naked eye!”

“Crusadermon doesn’t have big naked anime eyes.” Duster pointed out.

Dray frustratingly fired back, “Well most of them do!”

Mama Babamon flagged her hand at the young man’s concerns, “You don’t have to worry about the royal knights coming this way young man, most of the time they’re investigating schemes by the seven demon lords in the dark area’s forest layer and when they aren’t doing that they’re with yggdrasil’s castle.”

Dray’s eyes widened, “Is… is that safe to even know? Why do you know that much??”

“Well everyone knows, they’re really open about it,” Duster interjected. “Duftmon and Alphamon were the one who made all the other royal knights act more open with the public so that in case of emergencies and stuff they can work with locally strong digimon to complete their missions. They only started doing this about a month or two before you showed up.

“Which is why you’ll be fine leaving the city on Ares and delivering their order.”

“But mama, what about… the waters…”

The Babamon let out a sigh, clearly having history with what seemed like a fear of Duster’s. “You wont go anywhere near the ocean, their houses are far up on shore, their front door doesn’t even have sand in front of it.”

“Okay… I guess so…” It looked to calm the rookie’s nerves, at least to a passable degree. Dray on the other hand rested a thumb on his chin, curious about the situation still.

“So you actually expect the possibility of us running into a fight to happen?”

“Yggdrasil forbid, but wild one attacks aren’t unheard of in their world. Many traveling civil digimon have had encounters with them either trying to steal their food, their equipment or the worst, deletion and absorption of their data to reach higher digivolution stages. However you two have your partnership and that digivice to protect you, you shouldn’t have any trouble dealing with a wild one’s assault on your delivery.”

“Oh right, speaking of that,” Miko spoke up, “They asked for six Big Meats, three grilled and three covered in savory spirit sauce. And a platter of muscle yams with a side of chain melon slices and a four drinks to go.”

“Oh hoho! Quite the order, they must be having a party over there… must be that old croak’s birthday or something.”

They all watched the little old lady disappear into the back of the shop to seemingly prepare the order with her own hands for this old friend of hers. Meanwhile, Dray glanced over at his partner, while his expression was hard to read, whether that be because of the way Gotsumon faces just are or if his partner was averse to showing his feelings, he couldn’t help but feel as though he was holding things in. Should he bring it up now? He didn’t want to bring it back up if this wasn’t a time he was fine with, so perhaps during their trip there was a good time.

Duster himself was standing idly, stone faced on purpose for the sake of his partner, or at least that’s what he wished. His little stone gut swished and swashed like the waves he was fearing the sight of, but he’d be okay just like Mama said, the waters would never rise up on shore to sink him into their depths or turn into a giant wave that would sweep him into the deep deep deathly blues… but these reassurances weren’t working...why?

“Relax Duster,” Miko began, Drawing both Dray and Duster’s attention. “You’ll be in and out faster than a Burpmon can belch.”

“R-right, we’ll be in and out and back in the dry dry grasslands….” As the Gotsumon started rubbing his arm, out came Mama Babamon with the big order being magically carried by her Babamon brooms.

Curious but also thinking for the sake of his stone partner, Dray spoke up, “So how did that family get so rich?”

“The Ribbits, the Gekomon familly, are a wealthy group of sea jewelry makers who have a tight partner ship with a clan of Syakomon, I’ve heard the clan is led by an ancient Syakomon of the ultimate level as opposed to its Rookie level followers.”

“...Just like in Digital Monster Ver. S Digimon Tamers…” Muttered the beanie wearing man. Miko and Tenten gave him quizzical looks but ultimately ignored it. Two of the brooms brought two parts of the orders up to Dray and the other half of the order over to Duster, they both took the orders and held them carefully.

“Load them into the storage compartment of Artemis, hers are more secure than Ares’ at the moment and ask her the travel at a slightly slower pace so that any bumps or jerks don’t mess up the composition of the sauces on the meals or spill the drinks.”

“Y-yes Ma’am!” Duster nodded. The both of them were walked outside the restaurant to the shed on the side where Mama Babamon tap the wood part of her broom on the open doors and both Komondomon woke up.

“Get ready Artemis, you’ll be taking an order out of the city, Net Surf Village.” Typical of a what you’d expect from a dog-like monster, the silver helmeted Komondomon yawned, stretched and stood on all of its feet, leaving the shed and the bronze helmeted Ares behind to sleep, shaking her long shaggy curtain fur until the side door was exposed to Dray and Duster.

“Its just a simple order, deliver the food, receive the payment and avoid any fights if you can and if you do get into a battle make sure to protect the food and make it back before it gets dark, it shouldn’t take you that long but just know that the city gates lock shut once the sun goes down if you’re running late.

“Do… do the wild digimon really get that bad at night?” Asked Dray.

“No one wants to find out…,” Was what the Babamon said. “So don’t!” It was only his second day here and he was already on what he’d call a ‘main quest’ just to deliver some food. Byte hung an arm off the side of Dray’s hood with his other clutching a sugar cube from the restaurant, with his little gusto the Digignome triumphantly pointed onward with his free arm accompanied by a little “Eeep!!” Dray and Duster both let out a bit of a sigh, glanced at each other and boarded their panting transportation vehicle.

Once the delivery was stowed away properly, the trio made their way up to the back deck of Artemis and stood at the edge looking down at Mama babamon.

“Remember Duster dear, what time do we close up?”

“We close at eight Mama, we’ll be back before then.” Duster replied with a wave.

“Great!” With that, Mama Baba yanked on a cluster of hair on the side of the Komondomon forcing them to face the direction of the nearest gate leading outside the walls.

“OPEN THE GATES!!!” Boomed the Babamon before summoning a broom that smacked the rear-end of Artemis, causing them to barrel down the road towards the southern gate. From the force of the komondomon’s starting gallop, Dray and Duster toppled over each other and slid across the back deck and hitting their heads on the back of its head as the giant digimon zoomed down the dirt road, various Digimon getting out of the giant dog’s way as Artemis made it out the gate just as the Snimon and Flymon guards finished opening it up. Out of the three people onboard, Byte was the only one to wave the two winged guard goodbye.

After stopping at a “T” shaped split in the road that lead them to taking the one heading towards the sea, the three were traveling across the a long stomped dirt path through the vast grasslands of the Folder Continent.

The sun was just getting in position to start setting, not yet touching the horizon but simply looking to do so. The sky was also in the midst of shifting, hints of a beautiful orange tickling the bottom of the midday blue as the winds of velocity brushed across Dray, Duster and Byte’s gazing faces.

Dray found this to be just nice, his arm resting on the deck’s edge railing as he sat across from his partner digimon, a hand gently held onto his pink, black horned beanie in case a wind wanted to snatch it away, although he really just wanted to hold it like that like some characters in shows do, he thought it looked cool to do so.

Byte was standing on the edge next to his tamer, a smile big on its silly looking visage and arms out wide as it let the winds slip its breezy arms underneath them and hold them up like in a certain titanic movie.

Duster on the other hand seemed distant and not just in the space between them, distant in the mind was a more accurate way to put it. It was quite concerning, Dray had seen his partner all day during the restaurant’s open hours and he was cheerful, and steadfast in the work he was told to do around the shop always responding with a ‘Yes Mama!’ and a ‘Alrighty!’ his partner walked with a modest pride in his actions, the kind of pride he used to carry as a little kid around the classroom when he had cleanup duty.

He didn’t mean to stare so long at him, but it was too late to act like he wasn’t when Duster’s big golden eyes landed on his brown ones, the Gotsumon sat up a bit and seemed to put on an upbeat grin.

“Im fine! No need to worry.” He assured. Was this the right time to push for a talk about it? Dray wasn’t super sure, He could try but what if he was the type to get angry? Duster seemed too chill for that but as his tamer of only two days, could he really say he knew enough about this digimon that Duster wasn’t the type to get mad like that? Dray ultimately decided to not speak on it, maybe it was better to just slide with it and hope for the best.

The time it took to reach Net Surf Village after that moment wasn’t very long, traveling down the southern road some more was slowly bringing the view of seashell shaped buildings and housings into sight, all settled upon a pastel yellow beach with softly visible circuit lines and beach stones bolted to the sandy ground the way computer chips were sauntered to a motherboard. The sight was lovely, but it was the computer aesthetics that made the man beam with joy. The digital world’s perfectly mixed makeup of natural nature and digital technology was so unique and awesome, it made his two day wait well worth it.

When he looked over at Duster after realizing he could see the ocean now, he was surprised to find him gone from his spot, but a pat to his cheek from Byte made him look the Digignome’s way and Byte pointed his little paw finger down at the hoodie now tied around the man’s waist. There his partner was, hiding curled up in a sitting position with his head under his hoodie’s back like a child hiding under a dinner cloth expect very very badly. Hiding was clearly not the point however, well it was in a way since he was hiding his eyes from the sight of the great grand blue of absolute deep wetness.

“Duster—”

“Im fine, Im just… uh… um……”

Dray grabbed the edge of his hoodie about to move it, “Well you’re—”

“Testing out the warmth under your hoodie! And its pretty warm under here, Byte you should come try it!” Duster blurted out. The invite worked remarkably well on the soft blue Digignome, Dray watched it drop down from his shoulder and onto the seat where it vanished under the shadow of his lifted hoodie like he was walking into a cave.

Dray just didn’t have it in him to say anything at this point, it in fact did not turn out for the best and he wasn’t coming up with anything to say that could really help. But they still had a delivery to make and he’d hate to see Mama Babamon mad, or what it was like being outside the city walls at night if they took too long.

“Im gonna go down and make the delivery, I don’t mind it if you wanna wait here until I get back.” He said to his partner, and after a comforting pat to the top of the rock’s head Dray was through the door at the back of Ares’ head and downstairs gathering the order up.

“A-are y-you sure you can handle all that by yourself?” Duster called out from under the hoodie. “Its gonna be really heavy if you’re carrying all that by yourself!” But there was not answer, as fast as Dray left for the food, he was already down the path that led into the beach village. As he carried the four Copy Capsules stacked all stacked together, Byte who was resting on the brim of his beanie between its black plastic horns, spotted the sight of innocent-looking bubbles gradually floating away into the air like hot air balloons. However non-hazardous the orbs of water may have looked, they were sending Byte into an alerted frenzy, it was hopping up and down, squeaking and slapping its flat little paw onto the man’s dark skinned forehead.

“Will you stop slapping me?! I need you to warn me when a Royal Knight shows up not when you see fresh or In-training level bubbles.” The look of the bubbles were rather pretty when the sunlight hit them actually which was why he didn’t understand Byte’s sudden erratic behavior.

“Look, I’ll set the food down over here by these rocks and I’ll go check out whatever this is, that way it won’t ruin the food. Okay? Okay.” Doing as he said, he set the capsules down by a half circle of rocks as a place to really hide them and he carefully tipped over.

Meanwhile, Duster was still curled up sitting on the back deck of Ares, all on the deck was quiet and a gentle breeze blew by as if the entice the Gotsumon into coming out from under the tamer’s hoodie, however this gentle breeze carried along a sickening scent, one that made even the tiniest pebbles that made up the golem’s body shake with terror… the smell of the open ocean.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no…” The rookie’s fears began bubbling to the surface out of his own control, He clutched and held Dray’s hoodie over his nose and it smelled sorta fruity like a fruit but not a fruit.

“Awoof?” Asked Ares.

“Im fine I think, Ares. Its just the… smell of the water… you know how I am about it…” Replied Duster.

“Raroof…” It sounded like a much sadder woof, a woof of condolences. But Duster wasn’t sad about his fears, he was sad about being a let down. When Dray had left that first day and Duster went back to the farm with Tenten under his arm and told his mama all about the human calling himself his partner and tamer, the Babamon was over the moon with pride.

She told him, “Duster, my sweet young monster, you are now a very special digimon who’ll go far and experience so much. As this man’s partner you are to stick together through the toughest storms side by side, weathering the worst of this life will throw at you together and if he is a good human at heart, he’ll stay by you and protect you all the same. Do your best to be there with him no matter what, understand?” Her words echoed in his rocky wire frame with haunting accuracy, haunting because he wasn’t doing any of what his precious mama asked of him. He let his human partner go down into a digimon inhabited area alone with no one other than that Digignome to guard him.

His thoughts wandered into a dark place and he thought to himself; ‘Am I a bad partner…?’

Just then, in flew Byte squeaking and crying and making all sorts of sounds in a terrible panic. Duster peeked out from under Dray’s hoodie at the Digignome landing before him and making all sorts of worrying noises that the rock monster just wasn’t understanding.

“I don’t know what eeep and meep mean, I don’t speak digignome sorry… I guess I’m even worse at this partner thing than I thought…” Muttered Duster disappointingly. But a grab to his face from Byte snapped him out of his funk momentarily

“Meep eep!”

“Ummm are you hungry?”

“Eep Eeep!!” Byte whipped around and pointed a little finger at the path leading into Net Surf Village, Duster took a glance glance before ducking back down to avoid eye contact with the sea.

“Uh oh, did something go wrong? Did they get freaked out when they saw Dray?” Asked Duster. The Digignome threw both its paws in the Gotsumon’s direction, he assumed that meant a yes of some kind? He wasnt sure but the sound of the waves had brought any ounce of will to go check to a crumbling halt.

“I want to go check, I should… but I just cant face the waters…. I...I wish I had even the most smidge of courage to go…” Duster held Dray’s hoodie down over his head and tried to think away the thoughts of the ocean. But after only a second somehting in Duster was changing, it was faint but he felt this… burning in his digicore this sensation followed by a crazy thought, ‘Go and see.’

What was this feeling? It was like the warmth of a candlemon’s light in the middle of a big dark cave. Did he want to go check? Really go and check? The thought was beginning to feel like a flower blooming, a weak and frail flower but a flower trying it’s best.

“M...Maybe I’ll go take a peek…” Duster slowly lifted the hoodie from over his head and stood up from the wood floor, when he looked down he saw Byte suddenly looking tired and ready to sleep, it looked pretty cute when it wasn’t making weird squeaking and chirping sounds!

“I’ll go see of Dray is okay…” He whispered tot he small creature, Duster took off his tamer’s hoodie and laid it over Byte like a big ol’ blanket, even pulling the hoodie back so that Byte’s upper body was showing. The Gotsumon’s stone hands grabbed the edge of the back deck and leapt overboard and onto the ground, despite the dramatic action jump, he was slowly and carefully making his way over to the beach and making sure to use the tails of his neckerchief to block the sight of the ocean from his eyes.

Meanwhile behind some beach rocks Dray hid, his breathing toned down to a quiet steady rhythm. His first time in Net Surf Village wasn’t a pleasant one so far but maybe it could turn out better. When he couldn’t hear any immediate sounds on the sand he inched his way over to the edge of the rocks and peered from behind them.

“No sign if it… Nope…” He whispered to only himself” His shirt and shorts were covered in sand and a little soaked from some quite threatening bubbles he barely got away from. Just when he thought hat the coast was clear, a silhouette emerged from over top of the rock’s shadows out of the corner of his eye. When his eyes traced up tot he top of the rocks he hid behind his eyes met with his goofy looking pursuer.

“Lullaby Bubbles!!” Without much thinking his hand latched onto a nearby small rock and heaved his body forward with a pull that managed to yank him out of the way of a violent torrent of bubbles that flooded the spot he once occupied. He rolled on his back but slammed upside down onto a rock just in front of his path, now in his sights was the Topsy-turvy sight of an Otamamon, once black eyes now blood red and gleaming with veins straining around its absent minded eyeballs.

“Child Claw!!”

“Yipe—” With the tossing of hid leg weight Dray dodged another close call as he slide and rolled along the sand while the sharp claws of the rookie level tadpole pierced and shattered the form of the rock he was leaned against, its midair rubble dispersing into tiny data and vanishing into thin air. As bad as this situation was, it was kinda fun! If he ignored the heart pounding threat of being put to sleep and slashed to death it was like playing those game of pretend anime battle he’d have with his friends back in elementary school during recess. When he uncurled from his ball and laid flat on his back he quickly flopped onto his stomach to get up but the shadow of the tadpole over lapped with his as the Otamamon leapt into the air, claw raised.

“Child—”

“Earth Shaker!!” The sand Dray laid upon rumbled and out from the ground following a burst of sand shot up a pillar of stone that connected roughly with the underbelly of the Otamamon, sending it higher than it jumped and backwards.

“Duster!!” Dray cried for joy.

“Howdy Dray!!” Duster rolled in, like as a liter boulder then uncurled and releasing the extra rocks he used to complete his rough spherical form.

“When could you do that?” His Tamer asked looking perplexed.

Duster scratched his rocky head, “Since two months ago.” When the two heard sounding thud against the sand, they both switched their attention to the subject at hand, the very berserk subject.

The digimon stomped up behind the stone pillar and destroyed it with its powerful claws, past the stone’s dust and rubble stood the Otamammon looking as unsettling and crazy in the eyes as before.

Dray got to one knee and held up his D-Byte digivice, “You ready to stone him?”

“Yeah I’m—” One glance at the sea behind the Otamamon shut Duster all the way down, the Gotsumon stopped in his words their knees visibly buckled at a small tide coming in and he was suddenly regretting coming down here.

“Hey what’s—” following his partner’s gaze, it was evident where he was looking.

“Water Jet!!” From the tadpole digimon came a powerful shot of water that blasted Duster backwards and across the sand, the claws of his fear too tightly grasping his mental state to even think of blocking it.

“Ugh.” He groaned, it wasn’t long before he got to his feet simply feeling winded.

“You cant fight if you just get stunned by the sight of the ocean waters!” Dray called to him concerned.

“Sleep, sleeeeep.” The Otamamon whispered ominously, its two large forearms dragging it closer towards the Tamer now the one back in it’s cross hairs.

“Hiyah!” Duster leapt forward with a punch reared back but inconvenient timing of a crashing wave on the rocks made his entire form turn to ruin.

“Wrapping Bubble!” Just as Duster’s body came withing range, the Otamamon encased itself in a water bubble with a spin, Duster’s stone body collided with it just as it finished forming and bounced him into the air.

“Watch out for the second half of that attack!!” Cried Dray, but it was no use, but the time he was finished the Otamamon already had a claw raised and threw it down, summoning a giant tear drop that brought the Gotsumon down to the ground HARD!

While the Duster where Duster was clearing, Dray had his digivice up and scanning their opponent as he ran to his partner’s side.

“Virus type, no wonder it’s doing more damage, with you as a Data type this is a bad match-up…”

“I wanna be matched up with a big ol’ Savannah with no bodies of water in sight…” Duster groggily spoke.

“In sight…” Dray said a loud in thought. Just before he could continue that thought, something told him to duck so he did, falling down flat and holding his head down with his hands, he felt a rush of wind as the Otamamon’s Body blow attack just barely missed him but hit a nearby building wall instead.

Glancing behind him for just a moment, Dray heaved up his heavy partner into his arms and started to clear away from where the Otamamon landed.\

Duster was heavy but luckily the man was frequent in his workout so his partner wasn’t all that bad, they just had to get away until Duster wasn’t dazed any—

“Water Shot!!” he felt an impact to his left as he ran, droplets splashing on his ankle, then to his right then finally one landing so close behind him that it startled his concentration on running that and caused him to trip, dropping his partner digimon and him to skid tot he sand where he got a mouthful of that sandy grain.

“Tuah Pe-tuah! I don’t need to be swallowing sand anytime soon y’know!” He protested as he spat out sandy grains. He glanced behind him and the Otamamon was practically galloping on its developed forearms like a deformed horse, when it came within range of him to even slice apart the mans’ bare skinned ankle it jumped and reared back for a wide swipe.

“Rock Fist!!” A Boulder the exact size of the large tadpole came barreling through he air and smashed straight into the rookie’ level’s face denting it in on impact and sending it crashing into a nearby rock.

“That was pretty close…” The Gotsumon groaned.

“And its gonna get even closer if we don’t find away for you to fight without staring at the Ocean.” Dray said to him, helping him to his rocky feet, the both of the them turned to look at the maddedned Otamamon, this time feeling more angry and deranged than ever.

“This looks just like how Tenten acted with we first met him.” Duster pointed out.

“Yeah, and I bet there was a red orb here earlier…” Dray noted. “start getting physical with it while I start thinking of a plan.”

“Ill do my best!” Duster moved past his tamer and darted at the Tadpole, he balled up fists slammed together at the top.

“Hardest Punch!!” With now glowing earth energy clad knuckles, the rookie rushed the Otamamon just coming out of the sandy dust cloud, landing blow after blow, a right hook, then a left hook and a one two jab to its face before slamming down its face into into the sand with a downward knuckle slam.

Back where Dray was he was running what Duster groaned about through his head and came up with a solution.

“Hey Duster!!” Dray called, his digimon mid turning to him locked sight with the ocean and froze up again.

“Body Blow!” A full on head tackle by Otamamon woke him up and sent him rolling backwards until he landed right in front of his human partner.

“I’ve got an idea!”

“Well let’s give it a chance!” Duster said, he jumped to his feet and got between the Otamamon and his tamer yet again.

“Earth shaker on the whole beach edge, it’ll block the view of the ocean and you can fight hydrophobia free!” The Tamer explained. Duster looked back at him worried.

“Rodger doger, but it’ll drain me real bad.” Duster added, but his tamer held up his digivice and waggled it at him.

“That’s where I come in, now rock this joint!!” Dray ordered. Duster nodded and slammed his palms together as if he were in prayer, his hands glowed a dark orange and with a mighty slam of his fists paired with the energy Dray pooled into the digicore of his partner with his D-Byte, Duster sent a racing line of tall dark brown stone columns that came together to form a wall blocking off the sight of the ocean.

“Hey hey what do ya’ know!” Duster chuckled with glee, he was free of his crippling fear.

“Now that that’s settled, start rocking his shit!!” Cheered Dray. With a certain nod from Duster the digimon ran in again, holding his hands aloft and summoning random stones to form his Rock Fist attack. When Duster jumped up and launched the attack down at the rookie, it was met with a Water Shot and they were both canceled out in a plume of smoke but straight out of the smoke fell Duster with a Hardest Punch already primed for striking.

“Hardest Punch!!” With a hefty slam onto the Otamamon’s face Duster landed another devastating blow to the rookie’s noggin’. The dust rose and settled the Otamamon was just barely hanging on by a the last few digits of its HP.

‘We’re almost done with him Duster just hang in there!” Dray assured his partner.

“Will do!!” Duster understood, he threw his arms out at his side and began rapidly spinning them until they became a scary blue of speed,

“Wild Strike!!” Duster rushed the tadpole Digimon with whirling arms. The Otamamon stood its ground and brandished its claws, the hard rock of Duster’s skin connecting with the Otamamon’s sharp claws caused sparks to fly upon contact, with another wide swing of his forearm Duster connected arm to claws again with the Otamamon and then again with his other arm causing even more sparks to fly.

“Pay him back for earlier Duster!” Called Dray from the back. A gleam appeared in the Gotsumon’s eyes as he remembered the tear drop slam he suffered at the beginning of the battle.
“You. Got it.” He said sternly, Duster clapped both hands together causing their dark orange glow and with both hands the Gotsumon slammed them into he ground as hard as possible.

“Earth Shaker!!” The ground beneath Otamamon dipped down and then in a massive burst of sand it was struck by a rush of rough rock pillars that rocketed it into the air.

“Aaand Rock Fist!!” Duster’s hands switched to a white glow and three large stone floated up out of the sandy beach, the first stone Duster launched flew up and struck the Otamamon in its right arm making it spin wildly then the next struck it in its left and the final one struck it square in its chin at an angle that made it start to spin backwards and down towards the ground.

Duster had a plan of his own in that moment, and as fast as his stone legs could carry him he ran behind where he predicted where the Otamamon would land. His foot glowing a dark orange, slammed into the sandy and summoned up a long spike of earth that he grabbed and broke off from its base, now wielding a baseball bat of pure earth.

“Hey Dray!!” He called to his tamer, a look from the Gotsumon made the made grin cheekily, he knew just what his partner was planning to do and got right into position.

As soon as Otamamon’s body came down and into Duster’s range, the stone rookie reared back and swung, smashing the stone bat right into the Otamamon’s back and launching it in Dray’s direction. Dray held out his Digivice like a baseball bat set up to hit the ball. He pressed the trigger causing the scanner to flare up with sparks just as a small light lit up within the Otamamon’s body and a bare code exactly like Tenten revealed itself. With a leg lift followed up by a big swing of his D-Byte, Dray collided his bar code scanner with the spinning ring of code around Otamamon’s unconscious body and absorbed it all up before the rookie’s body flew past him and become entrapped in a bubble of blue light that set him down gently on the sandy ground.

Dray looked at his D-Byte, sure enough its red screen now cleared and showing blue victorious words, ‘Insanity Code Catch!!’. Out from the screen came an Otamamon card with a clash bar, and with the Tentomon card that now made two.

“We Won!!” Dray cheered, holding the card and digivice up in joy. Duster ran up to his Tamer and the two high-fived triumphantly. After a second though Duster stepped back looks embarrassed.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come to your help sooner, I’ve got such a dumb fear of water…”

“And I’m sorry I didn’t speak up and really ask you what was wrong, I assumed you’d be over it by the time we got here but I knew a phobia of something can’t be easy in the slightest, take me for example I cant stand insects and they make be freeze up like a freeze-pop in a deep freezer.” Dray replied to his partner.

“Im happy you told me, Ill make sure no bugs come your way.” Duster promised.

Dray nodded, “And I’ll do everything I can to help you near big bodies of water, now come on, we’ve got rocks to clear and food to deliver.”

About a half an hour of returning rocks down beneath the sand, and some light clean up from combat, they had found and woken up the sleeping villager that the Otamamon had managed to inflect with an eternal sleep. When they questioned the Otamamon who was back to his senses, he mentioned the same exact red orb coming at him as they saw came at Tenten. He described it as a red light in the water where he spent his days practicing his vocals, it was alluring and strange up until it swam close and leapt at him causing it’s jump scare to be the last thing the rookie saw before he went insane and put the town to sleep.

They eventually made the delivery they came here to do as well, awarded for their bravery in the fight by the Ribbits with over two-thousand Bits separate from the food delivery pay which they already send to the restaurant

“Another Insanity code and another rampaging digimon, looks like these are things we’ll have to be on the look out for…” Spoke Dray as they walked back to Ares.

“Do you think someone evil is behind this?” Duster asked.

“Without a doubt, but as long as we handle them like he handled Otamamon today then we’ll have no problems whatsoever.”

“Haha yeah, we did pretty great today huh?” Duster chuckled.

“You know it, partner.” Dray held out his hand for a fist bump.

“Yeah, partner!” And Duster returned the gesture happily.

Chapter Text

The constant tapping of pressed laptop keys, mixed in with the sound of the Meat Shop ceiling fan spinning up above everyone’s heads made up the ambiance of the store’s inside.

Dray sat at a table with his laptop stationed in front of him, he had been typing on it almost all day from what Duster could recall, he had come in this morning grumbling and mumbling as if he had something to get done that he didn’t want to do. When asked he mentioned something about his human job and extra work, but he didn't dwell on it for too long, opting to get straight to work so that he didn't have to deal with it anymore.

The rock monster sat next to his tamer, handing on the table while admiring the human writings on his screen after his tamer explained to him that some of these chapters were for an action adventure novel which he added ‘For once.” onto.

“Is this one about superheroes?” Duster asked with golden doe-eyes.

“No no, This one is about a big ol’ swordsman guy on an adventure to go save his daughter from a dark tower and his possessed evil ex-husband. Its pretty good but the guy just has so many typos, its like they typed this all in one rush and never looked back at their spelling.”

“Sounds amazing!” Commented his partner.

Miko, their Mikemon cashier, leaned on the counter with her head in one paw and a magazine of ‘Beautiful Beasts Today!’ in the other. She was reluctant to really stay professional looking when so little customers had come in today. Business wasn’t all that good on a hot day like this, having hot food on a hot day would only make a digimon hotter, and that was only good for digimon like DemiMermon and other fire digimon. Those types did come in but they only made up a percentage of the city’s population, so when they all showed up that was all of them.

For everyone inside it was nice and cool thanks to the fan, but outside felt like an arid desert, the sun beaming down it’s once pleasant, now burning now rays onto sweating digimon trying to get where they needed to go.

Dray stopped typing and looked at the glass door as the only window in the store.

“I wonder how high the temperature is outside…” He wondered aloud, grasping one hand in the other.

“About eighty-nine degrees and rising.” Miko answered with a glance at her phone.

When Dray went back to his work, Duster went over and sat back at one of the tables in the shop on the other side of the room, he had a stack of ‘Justimon VS The D-Brigade’ arc comic books on the table in front of him. Duster himself was fine with the heat, being made of rock but also having worked in this type of heat before, it was like any other day to him. But being inside a cool room did feel rather nice.

TenTen came into the store with his ‘Dungeons and Dramon’s’ box set just as the phone rang on the wall. Miko picked it up and answered.

“Hello? …Yes she’s here,” Miko held the phone away and called into the back, “Mama Babamon, you have an order for IceMushrooms here?”

Everyone’s heads turned to watch as a Babamon entered from the back in a hurry and grabbed the phone from Miko.

“Yes, Mama Babamon speaking? You must be the TobuTobu Delivery service with my Ice Mushrooms, Yes I’ll send someone ri– Oh? Oh It’s a big delivery? Oh alright I’ll send some digimon over to retrieve them. Yes, thank you very much and have a wonderful evening!” Mama Babamon hung up the phone and clapped her hands together.

“Alright, Duster, Miko, and TenTen, I’m going to need you two to grab some Ice Mushrooms on the other side of town near the delivery gate.” She instructed.

“The one with the Flymon guards right?” Tent Teno asked, setting his box set on a table.

“Correct. Take Ares with you, they’ll melt if you try carrying them on foot.” She replied.

Duster folded the corner of the page he was reading in his comic and set it on the table, he glanced over at Dray, almost expecting him to get up and come with them, he always seems interested to learn more about their city. But Dray continued to furiously type and read, like he was in a working trance. Miko patted Duster on the shoulder.

“Come on, let him work. I’m sure he’ll ask you aaall about it after he’s done.”

When Miko and TenTen went past him he took one last look back at his tamer and went along with the others outside, they woke the bronze helmet wearing Komondomon from his slumber and were on their way to the other side of town.

Duster, Miko and TenTeno rested up on the upper deck of Mercrius as he ran through town, the rushing winds greeting their faces was nice albeit a bit warmer than the coolness of the shop thanks to the sun.

“Mikooooo!!!” A voice called from up ahead. Duster and TenTen rushed to Miko’s side and peeked over the ledge guard. Far up the road waved a Gatomon and a Black Gatomon carrying shopping bags while walking.

“We’re having smoked Meat for dinner tonight!” The Gatomon with a pink scarf called.

“Try not to stay out too late with that girlfriend of yours tonight!” The blue beanie wearing Black Gatomon teased as they passed them by.

“Neki Don’t say that out loud!!! I’m gonna get you later!!!” Miko angrily yelled, she sat back down and huffed, then noticed TenTen and Duster still sitting next to her.

“Are those your friends?” Duster Asked.

“Oh no those are my sisters our eggs clustered together when we were born, the Gatomon is Neko, and you heard the Black Gatomon’s name. I’ve got three siblings in all and I'm the third oldest of four.” Miko explained

“Oh so those we–”

“Wait, you've got a girlfriend?” TenTen spoke over Duster before he could finish. There was a sudden and awkward moment of silence as TenTen stared at Miko, Miko staring back confused and Duster looking between the both of them.

“Y-yes? A Meicoomon, but I like to keep my lives, y'know separate.” Miko said, making a separating gesture with her paws.

“Oh, Oh! I was just uh, asking, nevermind.” TenTen sat down on one of the cushioned seats and Duster noticed his antennae lowered a tiny bit.

“What were you going to say Duster?” Miko asked.

“Oh, I was just gonna say those were siblings, nothing else really.” He answered, he sat down on the same couch as Miko and sat silently for a second before Miko spoke up.

“Say… I heard Mama Babamon mention that you have brothers?” Miko watched a stone faced Duster turn to her and nod.

She twiddled her index claws and asked, “Mind telling me about them?”

“Sure!” Duster said with a sudden cheerful chirp. Miko scooted over a little closer to Duster to listen.

“So I’m the youngest of three, the second oldest is Issac, he’s an Icemon now and he’s pretty relaxed for the most part, really nerdy like TenTen too. He’d spend all day making tiny ice figurines and cool ice chandeliers. One time he made me a figure of my favorite supermon, Justimon Red. I still have it in those little ice boxes in my room back at home!” Said Duster.

“Aww that’s so cute!” Miko awed.

“He loves to make things like that,” Duster added. “Then there's Mason, he’s the oldest. He’s a Meteormon now so all three of us look the same, except for size and rock color of course.”

“Oooo so you all look like Gotsumon, and you're each on a different level too! Man that’s, that’s wild, like that lines up so well,” Miko pointed out. “But tell me more about Mason.”

Duster nodded, “Well Mason was pretty tough and rowdy a lot of the time, compared to Issac they were almost opposites. They’d fight sometimes but I managed to break up most of the fights. Mason liked to take me on wild adventures when I was just a Mochimon, he wasn’t as careful or calm as Issac was so he’d explode into a rage when something aggravated him, sometimes it led to him getting into fights during our adventures. It felt dangerous to go with him but I’d end up having so much fun!”

Miko rested a paw on her chest and let out an “Awww”

“You three sounded like quite the trio, so where are th–”

“Raroof!” Barked Ares as he came to a stop, The three of them looked over the edge and saw that they were at the delivery gate. Two Flymon guards were stationed on either side of a gate as a group of about 10 Tobucatmon were unloaded boxes of Digi Ice Mushrooms from a very large crate that they seem to have carried here themselves with rope and a large basket

“We’re here, come on you two time to get this stuff into Ares.” Miko jumped down first, followed by TenTen who slowly flew after her. Duster stayed up on the deck for a minute or two, his memories of his brother cycling through his mind before he snapped out of it and followed after the others to get the food loaded up.

Box after box they loaded it into the inside area of the Komondomon, on a hot day like this it would’ve had the three sweating, but the sheer coldness of the mushrooms kept the area nice and cold.

Duster even noticed some bystanders enjoying the cold, mostly fresh to rookie digimon feeling the coolness from just standing in the vicinity of the icy fungi, and as he glanced at the digimon standing around a figure in the distant moving crowds caught his eye. A snow white figure that looked so familiar he let the box of mushrooms slip from his hands and fall onto the ground.

The Digimon was moving away, walking in the opposite direction and Duster was slowly losing sight of him in the masses of Digimon.

“TenTen catch!” Duster picked up his box and tossed it to The Tentomon who violently fumbled to catch it with his second pair of arms alongside holding up his own box with his claws.

“Duster!” Miko called, but her repeated calls faded into the distance as Duster pushed past the line of Digimon close by and ran after that familiar looking digimon.

‘It had to be him…’ Duster thought to himself. ‘He had to have come to town to visit!’

Duster chased after him, closing the distance gradually, then the figure turned around, glancing at him with the same golden eyes Duster had. Suddenly he broke into a sprint and dashed down Megabyte avenue, Duster was never the fastest, being made of rocks didn't exactly give you the speed one needed in times like this but the burst of energy pulsing through his digicore was enough to make him keep pace, this feeling that felt cold but filled with joy was filling up his entire chest. He was here, in the city, here to visit, he had to be!

Duster gave chase and when the figure took a left Duster took a left, when the figure took a right, Duster did the same. He chased the digimon, wondering why he was running, was he scared? Ashamed, did he feel unprepared to see him right now? Duster didn’t care, he was just happy to see him after so many years of being away from one of his own.

The figure made a sharp turn down Motherboard main street and was headed right towards the city wall facing Spirit Meadows. Duster wondered if he had finally cornered him, but he knew better than to think that about his brother Issac, he might’ve been a little clumsy compared to Mason and Duster but he was clever with his ice powers.

Instead of using them however, once the figure got within range of the wall he crouched down quickly and leapt over the high wall as if it was nothing, disappearing behind the chrome barriers.

“He’s gotten really good!” Huffed Duster, with a clap his own hands glowed a golden yellow and with a spur of the moment hand first dive turned handstand, he used his Earth Shaker technique to call up a flat top rock that shot out of the ground and launched him high up and enough to fall over the gate.

He landed on the ground making a deep foot shaped imprint on the ground with his heavy weight, He looked up and saw the digimon he was chasing after, he stood back up and raced across the meadow of flowers, it felt like it was a scene straight out of a movie, running through a field of flowers towards a loved one. The Digimon’s running speed changed over time as they ran, first a fast sprint, then a mild run, then a quick jog until finally they were both walking, walking through flowers in silence until the Digimon Duster was chasing came to a stop.

Duster let out a tired sigh, and glanced back to look at the large distance that they were from Star City. He was a little shocked at how far he had come, but he didn’t mind, it was all for him, it was all for his brother.

Standing just a head taller than Duster himself was a digimon that looked identical to a gostumon but with a rocky body made out of white icy stones. Around his neck sat a green winter scarf, and black suspender shorts adorned with two stars with blue edges and the straps hanging down at the sides.

“Howdy Issac, it’s been a really really long time since I’ve seen you!” Duster greeted.

Issac stood there silent, back still facing his younger brother, Duster had so much to say to him but it was all jumbled and mixed with different feelings.

“I bet you think I’m mad at you but I’m not I promise,” Duster reassured his silent sibling, “Well that's a bit of a lie I suppose, I am but I’ll never show it.”

Issac didn’t move, the wind moving his scarf with its force.

“Y’ know I’m sure Mama would be happy to see you too! And Miko and TenTen would like to meet you as well. Oh! Did I tell you I have a human partner now? He’s really neat, kinda nerdy like you and--!”

The sound of a fist clenching tightly cut Duster off, he stood in silence staring at the back of his brother, then Issac spoke, but not with the craggily nassley voice he’d come to be so fond of but with the only voice that’s been talking this whole time.

“I bet you’d love for it to be like this, to meet him like this, to see him again like this.” Said Issac with Duster’s voice.

“I-Issac…?” Duster muttered. A plume of dead autumn leaves began to flutter off the surface of Issac beginning at his feet and peeling away into the wind like a page was being turned, when the leaves fully disappeared, there stood another gray rocky monster wearing a blue scarf and suspender shorts. Duster stood there facing another Duster in the meadow of flowers.

“W-who--”

“I know how much you loved your brothers, I figured using one of them would be a good way to lure you out here, away from the city, away from your family and little human friend so you couldn’t be fueled by the light of that digivice. I wanted to see how good of a fighter you've gotten to be, one on one.” The False Duster acted without warning and struck the Duster in the chin with a flip kick.

Duster’s vision was suddenly a vertical spinning blur, then with a softened thumb he hit the ground, atleast, his head did. He found himself staring at the back of his body from a worm’s eye view, as his hands grasped at the air where his head used to be.

With a swift kick the false Duster sent his body stumbling back and tripping over Duster’s grounded head. Duster could feel the fading pain from the kick to his chest, but he had to get his head on straight and start fighting back. Picking his own head up and snapping it back into his shoulders, He stood readily for the battle with himself.

“Hardest Punch!!” Duster clashed his fists together and dashed at his doppleganger with glowing yellow knuckles. As calm as his opponent was before, his sudden speed did catch it off guard enough for him to land several hard swings targeting its face and ending with a thrown back hand strike.

His copy caught the attack and another flurry of leaves erupted from his enemy’s hands and into the Gotsumon’s face, Duster closed their eyes from the rush of autumn leaves and when he opened them he found that he had swapped places with his copy and was now facing the city.

The False Duster pulled Duster’s fist forward, and delivered a kick to his stomach again that sent him skidding back on his feet and further away from the city. Duster rubbed the spot where he was kicked for a moment before narrowing his rocky eyes on his copy and rushing at them with ill-prepared punches and kicks that his copy dodged with a simple leaning and ducking.

“This is what you turned into?” Said himself. “You became some empty headed goof? Not surprised you always were one.”

Duster hopped and curled into a spherical boulder, before speeding in the direction of his double, missing initially, then U-turning again before uncurling and throwing a straight punch aimed at his copy’s face, his copy caught it and went to strike with a kick to the side but Duster blocked it with a yellow glowing forearm.

“A Goof with some skill, but a goof regardless.” Added his fake.

Duster broke away and proceeded to jump back, but then he heard his copy call out an attack.

“Rock Fist!” Forming in between its palms was a rock glowing with earth energy, with a thrust of its hands he fired the stone at a mid jumping Duster, with little time to move he put up a golden glowing guard and took the hit that sent him sliding across the flowers on his back.

“Didn’t expect me to know how to do that did you?” Asked his copy.

“Uh,” Duster stumbled a bit but got to his feet relatively fine. “I mean, I guessed that you could since you look just like me.”

His imitation paused, then angrily scowled at him and angrily balled its fists up.

“Since you can shoot rocks like me, why don’t I show you how to punche like me!” Duster slammed a fiery orange fist into the ground and a rock from behind launched him forward like a piston.

“Hardest Punch!!!” With glowing yellow knuckles, Duster flew towards his copy and landed a hearty blow right into their chest, knocking the wind clean out of them.

In that moment of impact, their body was engulfed in dead autumn leaves that escaped the surface of his imitator’s body. When the force from Duster’s punch sent his opponent flying backwards across the field of flowers, Duster skidded to a stop and stared at his enemy, awaiting its true form.

When the leaves cleared away, a tall slender digital monster laid motionless for a moment in the field, they pushed themselves to sit up and revealed their identity to be that of a Renamon with a star-like thigh pattern and a magenta scarf tied around their arm.

Duster’s eyes grew wide and he slapped his hands over his snout, then slowly removed them to speak.

“Rina…. IS THAT YOU?!” He shouted, his tiny tail wagging his excitement.

The Renamon met Duster’s excited eyes with a cold gaze, picking herself up slowly and standing firm in front of him before she dusted dirt off her arm.

“You don’t need to pretend to be excited, you get such a stupid look on your face when you do…” She scowled.

“Pretend?! I haven’t seen you since I digivolved into a Rookie, I figured you had gone with your family to become the next heir and live all rich and stuff like you wanted!” Duster said to her.

Rina’s eyes glowed an ominous blue and a strong wind kicked up around her body.

“So that’s what you’ve made yourself believe? That I wanted to go with them?”

Duster shrugged, oblivious to Rina slowly starting to float off the ground.

“Well yeah, otherwise you would have met me back in the forest and stayed in Star City, right?”

“If that’s what you believe then I’ll believe in something too, I’ll believe that we were never friends to begin with!!”

Rina summoned a massive magic circle of green light in front of her, with lines outstretched from the center and piercing the lines of the circle. Leaves carried by a strange wind were caught in the wheel of light, and empowered with a magical energy.

Rina narrowed her eyes on Duster, “Diamond Squall!!!”

Thousands of diamond storm leaves escaped the circle and rushed towards Duster’s direction while leaving a fading trail.

“Earth Shaker!!” In a moment of quick thinking, Duster threw his hands forward and summoned a giant wall of earth that ate up a majority of the leaves rushing his way, his wall began to break however and a flex of power from Rina forced some leave through the wall and sent a handful of shining white leaves into Duster causing him to fall backwards and hit the ground, glowing leaves sprinkled lightly over his body.

The Renamon fell to the ground exhausted, she had trained for a long time to master using that level of power without needing to digivolve and she managed to use it all on her once good friend, now enemy. In that moment, she allowed herself to smile.

“Man that was super cool Rina!” Her smile immediately vanished when she looked up, and saw Duster roll backwards onto his hands and push himself into the air and back onto his feet, the leaves had lost their glow, and Duster swatted them off his rocky body like they were confetti.

“H-how did…” Rina stammered.

“I remember those times we used to play fight in the forest when we were still in-trainings, those were good times. You couldn’t blow bubbles but you could always turn into stone, and pop the bubbles I blew at you. Now I’m made of stone and can take the leaves you throw at me. We sure did switch places huh?” Duster laughed.

Rina ground her teeth and cramped her hands in a furious mix of confusion and frustration, “That….that doesn't even make sense!!!”

“Let’s fight some more so I can see how good you really got, don’t turn into me though, that’s cheating!” Duster stood with his legs apart and his fists up ready to fight again.

Rina got into a martial arts stance and glared at Duster, “Fine.”

“Hardest Punch!!”

“Power Paw!!”

The two rushed at each other and unleashed a myriad of glowing fiery punches in the other’s direction. Duster’s were slightly slow but were backed by power, Rin’s were fast and precise but lacked consistent force. When Rina or Duster’s fists came to collide, one of them would switch to an open palm to catch the other’s punch, Duster would feel Rina’s power paw’s fire scorch his stone hands and Rina’s wireframe wrists would pang with pain from the forceful earth energy surrounding Duster’s stone fists. With neither landing a seriously damaging blow to the other’s body, the two jumped away from each other and started running parallel to the other.

“Diamond Storm!!!” Rina had a burst of speed forward to get ahead of Duster, and unleashed a blizzard of leaves upon her new nemesis. Duster skidded to a stop and quickly formed a large yellow glowing rock in between his glowing white hands.

“Rock Fist!!!” Duster reared his hands back and fired the Rock off with a thrust, some of the leaves were deflected by the rock, which found itself striking Rina in the stomach and sending her flying backwards across the flowers. The leaves that weren't knocked away embedded themselves on Duster’s forearms as he tried to guard against them.

While initially holding her stomach from the pain, she brushed it off as Duster plucked leaves out of hid forearm. The fox held up a glowing hand with a single finger raised as power was summoned into her body.

“Kohenkyo!” In another flurry of leaves the fox vanished into the scattering plant life, leaving a confused Duster noticing her disappearance and looking around for the golden fox.

“Whoa! Where’d you vanish too now?” He asked in awe. His question however was answered when her shadow was caste down upon him from above and her form somersaulted down through the air before landing a head cracking heel kick to the small golem’s head and jumping off it. Duster was definitely dazed by the strike and stumbled momentarily, falling to a knee and rubbing where he was struck.

Regardless of the pain he complimented his opponent, “N-nice kick!”

“Do not patronize me!” she snapped.

“Oh, sorry. Well let me show you some things I can do too.” With that said the Gotsumon clapped his hands together causing them to glow orange.

“Earth Shaker!!” With a double hand slam to the ground near his feet, earthly energy was sent into the ground and two rectangular orange outlines of light appeared directly under Rina’s feet and the outline slabs of earth suddenly slammed together upon the fox’s body. Mere seconds before the shaped stone slabs crushed the slender rookie into a pancake, their form burst into a storm of leaves that reformed above the two slabs with Rina hand standing and breathing a little heavily from the close call.

“Earth Shaker Launch!!” Rina’s eyes looked up in shock and was caught off guard from the incoming sight of a propelled Gotsumon that flew at her with a balled up fist, Duster reared back and struck Rina clean off the slabs causing them to roll backwards through the air and bounce off the ground at least once, they did however swung their limbs out and managed to regain control and acrobatically spin and roll onto their feet before they hit the grassy ground again.

Duster stood atop the two closed slabs, staring at their old friend a couple feet away from them. This battle had become rather fun, he wouldn’t admit that as a Data type in public but he did enjoy a scuffle here and there, which he wondered if he picked up from his oldest brother.

“You stand high on top of those stones, do you look down on me in that exact way?” Rina asked as she stood up.

The question made the Gotsumon pause and hold their chin, “Well I am looking down to look at you—”

A flying leaf arrowhead cut across his stone cheek and he saw Rina staring daggers at him and looking rather angry.

“Make your next move.” the Renamon coldly commanded.

Obliging his old friend didn’t seem that hard to him, Duster raised his fist and slammed it down into the slabs he stood upon, falling down through the debris he met eyes with Rina and watched them lift their hand paw up and gesture for them to bring it on.

“Okay, Angry Rock Wave!!” Every stone, fragment and chunk of those double stone slabs found itself outlined in earthly energy. With a loud clap of his rocky hands Duster sent a storm of stones Rina’s way and it looked as if it was sure to hit them but in a moment of shock to Duster alone Rina reacted,

“Ko. Hen. Kyo!” With an upward wave of their whole arm, every stone in the attack was transformed into a fluttering dead leaf that was blown away on the wind just a foot or two away from Rina’s body.

“Incredible…” Duster gasped. The genuine awe did make Rina feel proud of that close call skill but she refused to let his words uplift her spirits anymore than that.

“Stay amazed if you’d like,” Rina began, “It’ll be your downfall in this battle.” The Renamon held up a glowing hand in front of their face, Rina leapt forward at Duster standing amongst the small pile of rubble and summoned two clones of themselves that soared along the ground with them at the rival data type.

“Kohenkyo!!” Rina along with her two clones flanking her sides launched a physical assault on Duster. The first clone went for a palm strike that Duster blocked with the back of their hand on the right, the second clone tried a claw attack that Duster deflected with an upward swat that was a close call, then the real Rina rushed the Gotsumon with a series of round house kicks that Duster held up crossed forearms against that managed to guard through the strikes that pushed him backwards with each hit.

Grass and flowers in the meadow were kicked up and ruined at the heels of Duster in the course of the hand to hand onslaught. Rina and her clones side by side jumped high in the air and performed a diving kick aimed at Duster’s head.

Acting fast Duster attacked,“Double Rock Fist!!” Forming two large stones together in the space between his palms and letting them rotate around each other in rapidly gaining speed before firing them off, in their spiraling air pattern Rina slipped right between the long raged attack while her clones were torn through and evaporated into blue flames.

Rina was now the only thing heading Duster’s way which he found more manageable, he held up his hands just in time to catch her by the ankle and swinging her over his head and slamming them both to the ground with himself landing hard on his back while she hit the ground face first. As Rina attempted to get up while feeling winded from the slam, Duster acted fast and held up a glowing orange fist.

“Earth Shaker!” With a hard slam to the ground beside him he sent a column of stone into Rina’s gut from underneath, giving him time to roll to his feet and look up to see where she was, Rina in the air struggled to recover due to the pain from a hard blow to the stomach, she was dazed and could feel food she ate wanting to come up while spit fell from her maw.

Duster ran up his own stone column and just as his foot touched the flat top he clashed his knuckles together and engulfed them in golden earthly energy before the jump towards the Renamon. Rina forced herself to recover in spit of the searing pain to her stomach and prepared for another hand to hand clash with the golem with the energy she had left.

“Power Paw!!” With paws engulfed in burning blue flames she fell down at Duster prepared.

“Hardest Punch!!” They clashed in a battle of fist to fist once again, Rina with a spin landing a burning chop to the side of Duster’s face but Duster striking Rina with a good straight punch to the chest that knocked her upwards a bit.

Rina closed the distance between them again with her paws still on fire, this time igniting her feet as she used her momentum from a double footed dive kick to fall down and strike Duster’s head, but Duster caught it with his glowing hands and with a tight grip around her ankles, he twisted his body and aimed to slam her to the ground with a midair throw.

“Kohenkyo!!” Duster lost his grip on her as she dispersed into a storm of leaves and reshaped on the safety of the flower filled ground, breathing heavily from her close encounter with pain.

“Hey Rina!” Duster called after landing on top of that risen stone and jumping off to land afar. “Lemme show you my own super move, me and Dray were working on it the other day when he took a break from work!” Duster called.

Rina didn’t understand half of what he said, but she began to understand what super move meant when she witnessed what happened to Duster’s eyes.

Duster’s socket’s were engulfed with a golden yellow light and his hands shined ominously with a similar foreboding glow. He raised his right hand up above his head with an open palm, and high above him were rocks flying in from all different directions. They bunched together, slowly forming something but also growing massive in size. The cluster of stones finally took shape and a massive five fingered knuckle made of stones floated above Duster’s head.

Duster leapt up and the wrist of the fist followed the Digimon as he stopped directly behind it, aiming the front of it right at Rina.

“She only muttered one word under her breath, “Crap…”

“Ragnarok Knuckle!!!”

The flat wrist of the giant fist flared with golden earthly energy like it was a rocket and B-lined it straight for Rina while she ran for her life, she kept her form leaning forward and her arms behind her but no matter the effort she put into her run the fist closed in on her, in the last few seconds of desperation, she looked back, past the flying stone missile and witnessed Duster happily wave at her with his arm still outstretched and glowing, steering the knuckle without a care in the world.

“You littl–”

BOOM!!! A large explosion of golden energy went off when the attack made contact with Rina, Duster’s arm lost its golden light and fell limb at his side. From this distance he judged that he won the battle, the question was, did he win too well?

Concerned for the condition of his golden furred friend, he jogged over calling her name and swinging at the black smoke emitted from his big attack with his still good arm.

“Rina!! Rina are you ok?!” He called. He found his way at the center of the smoke and with an arm energized in earthly yellow light, he swung and dispersed the smoke that was there.

He caught the site of dead autumn leave fly away from the spot he was looking at and looked up to see a cloud of them fly away in the sky.

He breathed a sigh of relief, his friend was ok, he wasn’t sure by how well they were okay but he was glad to see that they survived.

“Goodbye My friend! Till we can fight again. Stay safe!” he called, waving at the flying cluster of leaves. For a split second, he felt like he was being glared at, but maybe he was just imagining it all.