"Marcus' Inner Strength"
Here is the next chapter and thank you so much to The Keeper of Worlds and prettyflower34 for your kindness and support. Please enjoy and review!
After the meeting at DATs, Yoshi and Lalamon followed Daisuke and Dorumon back to the Damons home to eat supper, Agumon already eagerly eating while Marcus still slept the day away.
"This food is delicious, Mrs. Damon." Dorumon said.
"Oh, thank you, Dorumon. But please, call me Sarah." The woman smiled.
"Very well then." he said nodding to her.
"Agumon!" someone cried making Daisuke look up to see her cousin was up and staring at the dino in shock and confusion.
"More please." Agumon said after he scarfed down his food and held out his bowel to Sarah.
"Coming up." Sarah said as she served him and Marcus anime fell.
"Careful, Aunt Sarah. Digimon's stomachs are like bottomless pits." Daisuke teased as she thought back to all of the times she watched Demiveemon scarf down his food much like Agumon did.
"How can you just sit here eating with all that's going on?" Marcus asked angered as he stepped up behind his partner.
"Thanks. Because if I eat standing up, I don't feel good." Agumon said as he took his bowel, but dropped it onto the table as Marcus started rubbing his knuckles into the dino's head roughly.
"That isn't what I meant you digital dimwit." Marcus said.
"Hey, that hurts!" Agumon cried.
"Excuse me, you mind keeping it down? We're trying to enjoy a nice meal here. You know, this is the best corn dog I ever had." Yoshi said.
Marcus looked at her in shock, then at Dorumon as the dragon ate his food.
"What in the-?" the street fighter trailed off.
"Yeah, I have a long story to tell you, but the short version is I'm now a member of DATs and Dorumon here is my partner." Daisuke said as she continued on with her meal as if everything was fine.
"Hello. Thank you for keeping Agumon out of trouble. I know how difficult he is to deal with." Dorumon nodded in greeting at his Mistress' cousin.
Marcus had nothing to say to that, but turned his gaze on Yoshi, thinking it was her fault that his cousin was in this mess because of her.
He was protective of her like he was of Kristy, especially when Daisuke came to live with them with dead eyes and this wave of despair rolling off of her.
He grabbed the magenta haired girl by the arm and pulled her out of the room to have a chat with her.
"What are they doing?" Agumon asked.
"Who cares?" Daisuke shrugged.
All they heard from the other room was arguing and yelling, but they all waited it out until Daisuke heard the silence and went to go check on them.
"Marcus, we need to talk." She said spotting her cousin in a glaring contest with Yoshi.
"What is it, Dai?" he asked.
She walked over and took his arm, leading him up to her room and pushed him down onto her bed.
He yelped at the sudden force, but waited as she took one of her photo albums from out of her box and brought it over to him.
"This is the reason I've been so depressed lately." She said handing him the album.
Curiously, he took it and opened it up, his light green eyes widened in shock at the sight of Daisuke in a group picture with all of her friends from Odaiba and these creatures with them, all smiling.
"What…are these digimon?" he asked.
"Yep. When I was 10 years old, I was chosen by the Digital World to be a Digidestind and save it from being destroyed by evil. This guy here was my partner, Veemon." Daisuke said smiling lovingly at her blue dragon.
"Was your partner?" Marcus asked as he looked at Veemon and then at the scar that was on the girl's face.
"Last year there was a battle to save the two worlds, the human and digital, from an evil digimon. It was like the fifth time it happened. I was finally able to get Veemon to digivolve to his Mega form, his fully digivolved state, and we both charged in at the baddie and destroyed him. Sadly, Veemon was killed during the battle and I was in a coma for three months. Losing your digimon partner…it's like a part of your soul is missing. Your partner is a part of you. If I had died in that battle, then Veemon would slowly start to fade away and die soon after. I never knew why I survived, but now I do. It was to find Dorumon and be his partner." She said.
Marcus kept silent during this and looked down at all of the pictures, seeing how much love that was radiating between Daisuke and Veemon in these pictures.
It was no wonder her parents got fed up with her state of depression and shipped her off to them and he was disgusted by the Motomiyas for being so cold hearted.
Jun was also the older sibling.
As so, it was her responsibility to take her younger sister's side over her parents and try to protect her, not exile her.
Daisuke gasped as her male cousin pulled her into his chest, rubbing her back and running his fingers through her hair.
"I'm sorry you had to go through all of that. But I'm gonna be here for you no matter what. No one will mess with ya when I'm around." Marcus swore.
Smiling at that and feeling touched at his words, Daisuke let herself cry after so long, but they were tears of happiness.
(The next day…)
"Where you going, Boss?" Agumon asked as he saw Marcus and Daisuke dressed up in different clothing.
"School." Marcus said.
"What is school, Lady Dai?" Dorumon asked.
"It's a nightmare for teenagers. But, that's just my opinion. I never liked school." Daisuke said as she patted her dragon on the head.
"It's a place where there are tons of people to fight for me." Marcus said as he stood up slinging his school bag on and handed Daisuke her bag.
"Oooh. Sounds like my kind of place. Let's go." Agumon said.
"No way. My old team and I brought our digimo to school with us and hid them in our school bags, but they were smaller. After all, they were in their In-Training forms so they could hide easily, but you guys are Rookies and too bid to hide in our desks and school bags." Daisuke said.
"Besides, if people find digimon walking around, it'll cause a huge panic." Yoshi said as she walked into the hall when she overheard them.
"Oh, yeah. That's right." Marcus said.
"Unless we were in Odaiba. Digimon have attacked that place so often, we had no choice but to let the public know about them, especially with more Digidestinds being called all over the city." Daisuke said making everyone look at her in surprise, Agumon and Dorumon looking pleased with this information.
"But I wanna go to school with Boss. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna!" the dino whined.
"Fine, just be quiet." Yoshi sighed as she pulled out an orange and white digivice that belonged to Marcus.
"Here, use this." She said.
"No way, I thought I lost this thing." Marcus said taking it.
"Lost your digivice?! Are you stupid?" Daisuke scolded him and he pouted at that.
She was four months younger and yet she treated him like he was a child half the time.
"You dropped it during your escape at DATs." Yoshi said happy to see that at least one of the new members were responsible.
Then again, Daisuke had been a Digidestind for 4 years and was in multiple battles over the years, so she had been groomed into a leader during it all.
"Oh, well thank you. So how do I use it anyway?" Marcus asked.
"You just point it towards Raptor 1-I mean Agumon," Yoshi corrected herself when she saw the look the mahogany haired girl shot her way.
"And press the button on the right." She said.
"Like this?" Marcus asked as he turned the digivice to the dino, the camera like lenses glowing orange and Agumon was turned into data, being downloaded inside.
"Ah! Boss, let me out of here!" Agumon cried when his image appeared on the screen.
"Oh, so that's what it does." Daisuke mussed.
"Digivices, or these versions, can change digimon into data and store them. And safety rule number one says 'keep your digimon stored'." Yoshi said.
Daisuke shrugged and pulled out her own new digivice and held it out towards Dorumon.
He turned into lavender data and was transported into her digivice.
"How is it?" she asked.
"It's actually very spacious." Dorumon said.
"Marcus, Daisuke! You're going to be late." Sarah called.
"Ah, man. See you guys." Marcus called as he grabbed his cousin and ran out of the house with her.
Yoshi went out after them and got inside her car, following after the two tanned teens as they ran to school.
"If you're going to follow us, then you could at least give us a lift in your car." Marcus said as the magenta haired girl drove beside them as they ran on the sidewalk.
"Nope. Daisuke's joined the Digimon Data Squad and you can always join too. That way, we won't keep coming after Rap-Agumon." Yoshi said.
"You can't separate Agumon from Marcus. They are partners; therefore they belong with each other. You have no right to separate them. But she does have a point in you joining DATs. After all, if you were partnered to a digimon, then it's for a reason." Daisuke said as they all stopped when they came to the intersection of the road and it was a red light.
"Such wise words, Lady Dai. How lucky am I to have you as my partner? I feel envious of Veemon for having those first four years with you. Uh, sorry." Dorumon said when he realized what he said.
"It's fine. And thanks." She said to him.
"So what do you say?" Yoshi asked.
"No way. I want to get rid of you, not see more of you." Marcus said as the light turned green and they all started running off to school.
"What's that?" he asked when they passed the middle school.
There were cop cars there and some of the students that were out looked very upset while the police talked to the teachers.
"What's up? I thought you were in a hurry." Yoshi said as she parked the car.
"This is my sister's school." Marcus said as he went to go see what the problem was.
"Wait!" Yoshi called.
The cousins went to the school yard where the animal cage was and saw that there were kids standing around it, gossiping about what had happened, Kristy was also amongst the crowd.
"Kristy." Marcus called making the girl turn around and smile at the sight of the two teens.
"Marcus, Dai. Over here." She said waving from her place at the front of the crowd.
The two teenagers made their way through the crowd carefully and went over to Kristy, Daisuke getting a bad feeling when she saw the cage that housed the animals.
"Look at that." Kristy said pointing at the missing animals.
"What happened to the animals?" Marcus asked.
"See that boy over there?" Kristy asked pointing out a brunette that was crying, the principal patting his head as they spoke to one of the police men.
"When he came in to feed the chickens and rabbits this morning, they were all gone. Nobody knows where they went." Kristy said as Marcus stared at him, a look of suspicion in his green eyes.
"That sucks." Daisuke said as she looked at the cage.
"What's weird is that this isn't the first time it's happened. In an elementary school the next town over just went through exactly the same thing." The police man said.
"I have to talk to you both." Yoshi said as she came up to the cousins, taking Marcus' hand and pulled him off.
"Where are we going?" he asked as they went behind one of the huts.
"A digimon is behind all this." Yoshi said.
"What? You sure?" Marcus asked.
Yoshi responded by lifting her white and pink digivice, showing that a radar like appearance had taken over the screen, pin pointing their location.
"Yeah, my digivice is picking up a residual trace of it's energy signature." She said.
"Whoa, those things can do that too?" Marcus asked.
"School is more exciting than I'd thought it was." Agumon said.
"Yeah. Hey, how did you get out of the digivice?!" Marcus asked when he turned around seeing the dino was behind him.
"Please, Boss. All these cramped places are making me claustrophobic." Agumon said making Daisuke laugh.
"You're a real piece of work. You know, Agumon, there should be a rule about leaving your digivice without permission." Yoshi said annoyed, then gasped as she thought of something.
"Wait, it was you, wasn't it? You were the digimon that attacked those animal pens." She accused angering Dorumon and Daisuke.
"Huh?" Agumon asked.
"It wasn't him." Lalamon said from her digivice.
"What, Lalamon?" Yoshi asked.
"I watched Agumon the whole night while you were sleeping. Frankly, I don't know how you slept with all his snoring, but still, he didn't leave the room. Another digimon must have done it." Lalamon said.
"At least someone has a brain on your team." Dorumon scoffed.
"You thinking what I'm thinking?" Agumon asked excitedly.
"Yeah." Marcus smiled.
"The ultimate team. It's fighting time again!" they cheered pumping their fists in the air.
Daisuke laughed at that as she turned and started walking off to school.
Veemon and her used to be like that too when they were younger.
It was good to focus on the good things than the bad things that torture her.
(That night…)
"What is it with you and these cramped spaces, Boss?" Agumon asked as he was locked inside the animal pen by Marcus.
"The old saying is that 'the criminal returns to the scene of the crime'. When this guy finds out there's something new in these cages he won't be able to resist returning." Marcus explained.
"Wow, you're the smartest guy ever, Boss." Agumon said.
That wasn't possible seeing as the smartest guy was 17 years old with red hair and dark eyes.
"You do realize that he's using you as bait, don't you?" Yoshi asked as she leaned against the pen.
"WHAT?! I take it all back." The dino said.
"Don't worry. I'll stop the bad guy before he even gets close to ya. Just trust me." Marcus said.
"Yeah? Well, I'll believe it when I see it happen." Yoshi said.
The three teenagers then hid behind the supply hut, Dorumon with them to scoop out the area as they waited for the digi-thief to arrive.
The clouds then covered the full moon as someone then appeared at the gate of the school, walking into the yard.
"Here it comes." Marcus said as they watched the figure stand in front of the cage.
The wind blew the clouds away from the cage, the light revealing the boy that Kristy had pointed out before that morning.
"Isn't that the kid who was supposed to feed the animals?" Yoshi asked.
"My sister's friend." Marcus said.
"Well, this'll end well." Daisuke said.
"He's seen Agumon!" Lalamon cried from inside the digivice.
"So much for keeping him secret." Yoshi said as Marcus stepped out from the hiding place.
"Hey, kid. You come to check on the cages or something? Well, thanks, but you shouldn't be here. Go home." He said as the kid sent a glare at him.
"Hey, did ya hear me? Get out of here." Marcus asked while Daisuke tensed up as she got a bad feeling.
It was the feeling of the tension in the air before the battle began that she had gotten used to.
"BE QUIET!" the boy yelled.
"You brat!" Marcus said.
"Wait. Something weird's going on." Yoshi said as she, Dorumon and Daisuke stepped out to see the boy shaking in anger.
"Why me? I didn't want to take care of those stupid animals. I wish they'd all just disappear and then they did…thanks to him." The boy said.
A violet mist in the shape of an insect started forming on his back.
It formed into a Kunemon!
Agumon yelled loudly as the others gasped at the sight of the digimon.
Kunemon gave a raspy snarl as it jumped off of the boy's back, making him fall to the ground unconscious.
"Kid? So you're the one behind all this. You're gonna have to pay." Marcus said.
"Stay back." Yoshi said holding her arm out in front of him.
"Say what?" he asked.
"Leave this to the Digimon Data Squad. Lalamon: realize!" she said holding out her digivice and it shot out pink light as her partner appeared.
She then used her Seed Blast at Kunemon, but he wasn't hit at all and then spat out this webbing that caught her and threw her to the ground.
"I'm not impressed in the least." Daisuke said.
"Lalamon." Yoshi gasped as she ran over to her partner, picking her up.
"That's it." Marcus said after he pulled the kid away to safety and went to fight.
"Wait, Boss. Get me out of here first." Agumon called stopping him.
"Oh, right." The teen said as he went to try and get the combination right to open the cage, but couldn't remember it.
"Dorumon, go for it." Daisuke said.
The dragon nodded as he ran at Kunemon, firing out his Dash Metal, this metal sphere out of his mouth.
Kunemon hissed as he was hit, then was hit again by Metal Cannon, shooting out a metal sphere again only he was standing still and it had more force.
"That's my boy!" Daisuke cheered, then froze as she thought back to the times she said that about Veemon.
"Lalamon, time to digivolve." Yoshi said.
She stood up holding her digivice in her right hand while her left hand was covered with pink data particles.
"DNA: CHARGE!" she called as she touched the top of her digivice, downloading the data.
"Lalamon digivolve to…SUNFLOWMON!"
"Still not impressed." Daisuke said as Dorumon back flipped over to his Mistress.
Sunflowmon used her Sunshine Beam and hit Kunemon dead on.
"All right!" Yoshi cheered.
"Aw, they had all the fun because you're slow." Agumon said.
"Give me a break." Marcus said.
"That was way too easy." Daisuke frowned making Dorumon look at her.
The dust moved to reveal a chrysalis that was the size of a bus and it was starting to crack.
"Oh no. It's beginning to digivolve." Yoshi gasped.
Out of it came a huge wasp digimon making Daisuke's eyes widen as she recognized it from one of her battles.
"It's Flymon." She said.
Flymon then roared as he flew over the two girls and digimon, dust flying on them and the feeling in their bodies left them as they fell to the ground.
"What's wrong with my body? It's going…numb." Yoshi gasped.
"It's fighting time!" Marcus growled out.
"Boss, I gotta digivolve first." Agumon said.
"Right. Let's do this." Marcus said as he raised his hand over his digivice, but nothing was happening.
"That digivice is so useless." Daisuke groaned as she forced herself to turn on her back.
"What's the deal?" Marcus asked.
"What's wrong?" Agumon asked when nothing happened.
"I don't know. Nothing's happening. I'm not getting that tingly feeling in my fist." Marcus said as he looked at his partner.
Flymon swooped down and knocked Sunflowmon and Dorumon around, laughing as he did so.
"That's it!" Marcus growled.
"Boss, wait!" Agumon called as the teen ran off after Flymon.
"Marcus, get out of here. It's too dangerous. You can't handle this. Leave it to trained professionals like me." Yoshi said.
"You're pathetic. Digidestinds are never trained." Daisuke groaned as she forced herself up.
"We act on instinct and on our heart. You can't train to become a Digidestind. It's the power that comes inside of you. The sooner you learn that, the better chance we have of surviving." She said.
"Daisuke's right. I'll never run away. An ultimate fighter never shows cowardice. No matter how difficult the fight might be, I'll always stand my ground. That's what a winner does. Fighting time again!" Marcus yelled as he ran at Flymon.
Daisuke smiled knowing that her cousin had the makings of a true leader just like her and Tai, only he was a little more wild than they ever were.
Marcus jumped up and punched Flymon in the face, the orange data particles appearing around his fist.
Flymon backed off while Marcus fell to the ground, landing on his feet.
"All right." He smirked while Agumon laughed.
"Ready to fight, Agumon?" he asked his partner.
"Yeah!" The dino cheered.
"All right then." Marcus grinned as he pulled out his digivice.
"DNA: CHARGE!"
"Agumon digivolve to…GEOGREYMON!"
The dino broke through the pen and Daisuke took in his appearance, seeing he looked different than a normal Greymon with the red stripes on his horns and red grips that Agumon wore.
His face was also a bit different too.
Flymon came down at GeoGremon, the Champion catching him as the toxic dust fell on him, but he shook it off and tossed the wasp off of him and onto the ground so hard it shook.
As Flymon tried to take to the air, GeoGreymon hit him with his Mega Flame.
Flymon fell to the ground as he burst into data that turned into a digi egg.
"All right, ya got him." Marcus said as Agumon returned to normal and Daisuke stood up as the numbing effect faded away, then she picked up Dorumon.
"Yeah." Agumon said.
The two laughed.
"So your fists of fury release your DNA huh?" an old man asked as he stood at the fence behind them.
"You're getting more interesting by the minute, Marcus." He said.
"Hey, you're the old guy who gave me my digivice." Marcus said as he walked over to him.
"If you want to become the ultimate fighter who fights the ultimate battles, then you're not going to find it in this world. But in the Digital World there are unlimited numbers of opponents that will test your fighting skills and make you the best fighter on two worlds." The man said.
The mahogany haired girl gave him a look, wondering if he was one of those Guardians like Gennai.
That had to be why he gave Marcus a digivice and was telling him all about this stuff.
"Then I'll be…the ultimate." Marcus said in awe.
The old man nodded with a smile as he hummed and the teen grinned.
"Things are going to become troublesome." Dorumon said.
(The next day at DATs…)
After DATs fixed the damage and erased the memories of the boy who was being used by Kunemon, Marcus and Agumon marched off to the office to tell Commander Sampson that he has decided to join the team while Daisuke stayed home to call Izzy and tell him all about what was going on in her new home.
To be continued…