A/N: Reposted from the collection: Fickle Petals (this was originally drabble 3). Written for The 100 Digi-fics challenge, #094 - needle
There's No Tetanus in the Digital World
There weren't infections in the Digital World. Not what humans defined as infections. There was no such thing as a Digimon bacteria, or a fungi. Parasites existed, like Parasimon, but she was a Digimon and she clung to their surface of Digimon and controlled their bodies. She didn't change their data.
The Digital World did have viruses though, viruses that messed with the integrity of Digital life forms and their worlds as well. That erased data instead of allowing the usual recycling. That warped data so that it became unrecognisable and created new subtypes of Digimon – like BlackTyrannamon arising from the normal Tyrannamom. And then there were D-reaper like things as well, things that lodged itself into the mainstream and were that much more detriment.
But they didn't get things like tetanus from stepping on rusted nails, or chicken pox, or even the common flu. Things like that didn't exist in the Digital World, and Ryo had almost forgotten they did exist in the real world. That he needed to do things like brush his teeth so they didn't rot, to cook fish as opposed to eating it raw – and he'd learnt his lesson quickly after he wound up with a two metre long worm in his stomach after eating raw fish in the real world.
It was Cyberdramon who had forced him into that habit, the dragon simply not patient enough to wait until it cooked. But the parasite was not a pleasant house guest, and Ryo found himself rediscovering a side of the real world that didn't translate over to the Digital one – since even food, that neither human nor Digimon required in the Digital World, could be found there, but medicines could not.
Neither could vaccines, or even needles, and Ryo rediscovered those as well as the parasite-related illness also led to him catching up on his vaccine course.