Chapter 3: The Girl with the Lunamon


A/N: Don't own, don't sue.


Images went through his mind, unsettling ones. He remembered the academy with its bare grey walls, its blank students with the notorious focus-inducing headbands on their heads, the extremely dense assignments and he realized it would last for the next fifteen hours with the exception of a few food and bathroom breaks.

"Remember, you will be with us, forever," a white-haired man wearing a robe said at the front of the room. "You are our weapons."

He looked to the side and saw the female headmaster, her hair tied neatly in a bun. "You will never escape again. We'll be sure of it."

He looked to the other side and saw Kyle, Diego, Marika and his former, blond-haired roommate from the academy, blank expressions on their faces.

He woke up, hyperventilating and sweating. He looked across the dark room and could barely make out Keramon hanging from the ceiling like he likes to sleep.

"Great, another dream," Gunther whispered, rubbing the sweat off his forehead. He got up and walked over to the window, peaking over the shades to look out over the street. The streetlamps were still lit. Then again, Las Vegas was a twenty-four hour town.

After a slight lookout for academy freaks, he checked the alarm clock. It was 3:34 a.m. Gunther realized that with his heartbeat up so high he wouldn't be able to go back to bed for awhile, so he put on some pants and snuck out of the room, walking gently across the hallway and into Kyle's room. He grabbed the guy's laptop and brought it with him into his own room, hooking its charging cable into the wall before turning it on. He set his alarm clock so that it would go off at 7:00 a.m., giving him more than enough time to put it back in Kyle's room before the guy notices.

Once he turned the computer on, he checked his email. It turned out he got an email from his former roommate at the academy.

Hey, Gunther! It's me, Andrew. I got your message and it turns out that I'm actually in town for the next couple of days. You do remember that I'm from Vegas, right?

Oh, by the way, ever since escaping I've been working on a bit of a project. It turns out that a game maker/engine went open source and I've just been working with the code a bit. It was badly organized but I seem to have gotten it worked out, turning it into a bunch of little projects in Visual Studio that connect to one big project. I want you to check it out. The code's in Visual Basic and I know you prefer C++ but you might be able to do something with it, especially since we learned that language at the academy (along with a bunch of other languages and their libraries, right? I wish I had a focus band while I was in school). The source is here. I've mainly been working on the editor, but if you feel like improving and debugging the engine, go ahead. Just tell me what changes you made so that I can tell the people on the forum for that software. Or better yet, get an account on the forums and mention your update.

Speaking of school, since getting out of the academy, I got my GED (much to my parents' chagrin). Oh, and I going to try to set-up a computer business now, though I'm here visiting friends at the moment. Maybe we can meet up. I'm here till Friday.

BTW, I participated in a digimon tournament on Saturday and lost in the first round. Shoutmon's still livid about that one.

Upon seeing that, Gunther downloaded the source and sent Andrew a reply, saying that they should meet if not tomorrow, then the next day. For the next three hours, he messed with the RPG Developer source code, rooting out several bugs from the code that he found out about on the website for the source code, testing it out, and moving onto the next bugs. He also had to deal with some nasty spaghetti code as well as the fact that the original programmer thought it fitting to name important variables things like 'a' instead of 'tileLayer,' which would have been far more appropriate.

Then his alarm went off and he shut the computer down, sneaking it into Kyle's room. He felt hungry so he put a shirt on and went downstairs to grab some breakfast. He was surprised to find Kyle's dad eating pancakes at the dinner table as soon as he got downstairs. Kyle's mom was also in the kitchen, cleaning up.

"Oh, hello, Gunther. What are you doing up this time of morning?" he asked. Kyle's dad looked quite a bit different from him and spoke with a trace of an Eastern-European accent. He had short black hair and a black moustache that reminded Gunther of some sort of giant caterpillar. The middle-aged man was also wearing a pilot's uniform for one of the local airlines.

"Had a bad dream."

"About that academy place?"

"Yeah…" The previous night, Gunther managed to open up to Kyle's parents about what he was doing there in the country. The parent were surprisingly accepting of his answers, partially basing their reasoning on their son's support and also on the fact that they both had monsters from another world, meaning that just about anything could be possible anymore. "Kyle was in the academy, too."

"Don't worry. I'm sure that if you have to deal with those guys again, you'll beat them."

Gunther smiled. "Thanks."

"If you need to talk, don't hesitate to talk to me or my wife."

"Okay, thanks."

After that, he ate breakfast while chatting with Kyle's dad and then went back to sleep. He didn't wake up until several hours later when Kyle came into the room. "You ready for the day?"

Gunther groggily got up. "Yeah, I'm ready."

"You look like you got hit by a truck," Kyle remarked while leaning against the wall.

"Yeah, had a nightmare and then couldn't get back to sleep. Oh, and I already ate breakfast."

"So, that's why you slept in your clothes." Kyle chuckled a little bit. "Just kidding with you. So, we're going to meet Marika at her house for this mission in an hour."

Gunther forced himself into a seating position. "And how do you think we'll be doing that?"

Kyle showed the German a card that had a picture of a digimon that looked like it was fading into non-existence. The card said 'Cloaking Field' on top. "This is one of the cards I got from a booster yesterday. I tested it out on ViElecmon this morning."

Then Gunther heard a voice out of nowhere. "Yeah, and you can bet I'm here, watching your every move!"

The large, brown-haired boy jumped back in fright. "Are you kidding me? What are the effects in the card game for that card?"

"Oh, your opponent can't attack you during his next turn. You know, next to useless unless you absolutely have to survive just one more turn. Though, for situations like these when we need to get across town without anyone seeing us, it'll work just fine."

Gunther got up. "Alright. So let's go, then."

Kyle smiled and ViElecmon rematerialized in front of him. "Well, I'm glad that's over. It was getting kind of ridiculous when you guys weren't noticing me."


After a few minutes, they walked out the back door of the house into Kyle's backyard. "Okay, so now what?" Gunther asked.

"We use Appamon."

"Appamon?"

"You know, one of my armor forms. Yeah…" ViElecmon replied.

"So, can I use armor forms, Gunther?" Keramon asked, perching on the German's shoulder.

"You already have Chysalimon. Why would you need to?"

"Come on, it'll be fun!"

Kyle pulled out his deck, and then grabbed the cards that he needed, the aforementioned Cloaking Field card and the Digimental of Light. He then put the deck back into the holder on his belt. ViElecmon, knowing the drill, walked to the center of the yard a distance away from the two tamers and other digimon. "Okay, Digi-Modify! Armor Digivolution!"

"ViElecmon armor digivolve to… Appamon!"

Appamon was a large, white bison with six legs and a long, wide tail. He also had a pair of horns and the crest of light on his forehead. In addition, there was a carriage on top of him that passengers could ride on.

"Wait, so ViElecmon can turn into this big hairy thing?" Gunther asked in amazement. "I mean, he was already a mammal, but…"

"Armor digivolving is weird!" Keramon exclaimed.

"Yup, and believe it or not, this guy's gonna be our transportation across town," Kyle said.

"Okay, how exactly does this guy fly?" Gunther asked.

Kyle just shrugged and got on the digimon. "Beats me."

Gunther was at first kind of nervous about getting on the digimon, at least until the digimon spoke. "Hey, are you gonna get on or what? I don't have all day and I don't particularly like this form."

With that, the muscular boy climbed onto the hairy beast and into the carriage along with Keramon. "We get to go for a ride!" the alien digimon exclaimed.

"That's for sure," Gunther replied as the flying bison shook its tail and flew off into the air just as Kyle slashed his cloaking field card to avoid being seen by the neighbors.


Marika didn't know what to expect when she heard a knock on the door. Nobody ever came to her apartment. Also, nobody knew where she lived. Besides, she was planning on leaving in a few minutes to meet the others at the Galleria Mall in Henderson for their mission.

Those were just a few of the reasons she was surprised to see the two newest members of her team at the front door along with their digimon. "Hey, Marika, how's it going?" Kyle greeted as soon as the girl opened the door.

"Oh, hey, um, what are you guys doing here?" she asked.

"Well, we just thought it would be nice to pick you up for the mission."

"Pick me up? I didn't know you had a car."

"He ain't got one," ViElecmon quipped from Kyle's shoulder. "Unless you count me as a car."

Marika's face all the sudden had a confused expression. "Wait, I thought you couldn't digivolve?"

"Uh, I can armor digivolve, remember? Weren't you there when they went over all my forms last night?" the dark rabbit asked.

"Oh yeah. Unfortunately, I haven't seen any of your armor digivolutions before. Heck, I had no idea you could armor digivolve."

"Any digimon can armor digivolve. It's just that those season 2 digimon do it more than anyone else."

"Hm, figures. Then again, didn't Izzy use the digi-egg of courage once in season 3?"

Kyle thought about that for a second. "I remember that episode. It was episode 6, I believe. Didn't they go through a field set up by the bad guys that didn't allow digivolution? I do have to wonder what he was doing with Davis' digimental in the first place. Then again, at that point, most of the digi-destined had been captured."

Gunther looked at the duo. "You know, the only series I watched all the way through was Adventure. How much of Tamers did you actually watch?"

"All the way through. Well, every available episode, anyway. They cancelled the series just as it was getting good simply because a giant pig attacked Tokyo. Great, they were about to reveal the identities of the original digi-destined, too."

Gunther was in shock. "What! You mean that they show the five from the end of Adventure?"

"Well, you see the skeleton of one of them and then they finally show a live one. It turned out he was the only one still alive and he had the crest of friendship on his stasis pod. Though they didn't have time to explain why they were in stasis. I wouldn't be surprised if their intent was to lead into a fourth season that starred the original team of digidestined."

Then Marika spoke. "That would have been interesting. Too bad they would have probably revealed the entire plot of the season by means of this original digidestined of friendship. Anyway, I guess we better get going." The girl moved past Kyle and Gunther after locking her door.

"So, you're not going to invite us in or anything?" Gunther asked, following the dark girl and her partner.

"Marika never has anybody over," Plotmon told the German.

"Oh, is that the case?"

"By the way, we don't have to pay for bus tickets. We can just use Appamon," Kyle told the girl.

Marika turned around. "Oh, yeah, duh. Sorry, my mind's a bit of a blank right now," the girl responded.


They made it to Henderson in record time. The suburb was on the far southeast of town and was also the second largest city in the state. Of course, since they had already met at Marika's house, they didn't really need to go straight to the Galleria Mall, but they all agreed that it would be a good place to start the search for the other tamer.

Appamon landed and devolved in front of the south entrance to the mall, as soon as the team disembarked. Once all that was over, the trio decided to check their digivices' radar system, to disturbing results.

"Okay, there are far too many digivice signals on here," Marika commented as soon as she checked her holographic screen.

"That can only mean one thing: the Dark Academy is here," Gunther said with venom in his voice.

"Dark Academy? You mean they actually call themselves that?" Marika asked in surprise.

"No, that's just a cheesy nickname my roommate and I thought up for the place," the German replied, walking into the mall.

"Man, talk about complicating things," ViElecmon commented, following his partner.

"No kidding. Any suggestions, Marika?" Kyle asked the girl.

"Simple, we look for any digivice signals belonging to someone that's surrounded by non-tamers. That would be my best bet."

"But what if the tamer's a dude?" Kyle asked.

"What? Guys don't go shopping together?"

"Not usually."

"Guys, let's just keep moving forward," Gunther said as his voice lowered into a whisper. "I recognize a few from the academy. I'm afraid they might be watching us."

Marika shuddered. "Okay, if we get into a fight, let's try our best to take it outside. It seems like a pretty busy shopping day. In the meantime, can we stop by Hot Topic or something?"

"Hot Topic? Man, that store scared me as a kid," Kyle commented, causing Marika to roll her eyes.

"Okay, but if you don't want to go to Hot Topic, then you can't go to any stupid video game store or anything."

"Ooh, Transformers!" Marika heard Gunther exclaim as they passed a toy store, much to her embarrassment.


Claire was walking around with her friends at the mall, holding a couple of bags of clothes. However, the blonde girl had a strange feeling that someone was watching her. It was at times like this when she wished she had Lunamon with her since she had left her partner at home.

She had to laugh when she saw a black-haired girl and a boy with extremely short brown hair pulling this taller, muscular guy away from a toy store.

"What's up with you, Claire?" one of her friends, a brunette with her hair in a pony-tail asked.

"Oh, nothing. Do you get the feeling that we're being followed?" the blonde asked.

"Yeah, I saw this one guy just staring at us. I think we should get out of here and go home or something."

"I know. We could go to the movies or something. I hear there's this really good movie out right now," another one of her friends, a curly-haired African-American girl, suggested.

They walked past the odd trio at the toy store and towards the exit.


"Gunther, we're on a mission! Let's be serious!" Marika ordered him.

"Sheesh, you were the one that wanted to go to Hot Topic!" ViElecmon commented from Kyle's shoulder before whispering "Hypocrite."

"Okay, okay, I get it," Gunther said, checking his digivice. "There's someone in that group of girls that has a digivice." He pointed to a quartet consisting of a blonde, a brunette, a black girl and a red-head.

"Reminds me of some sort of blonde joke. Want to hear it?" ViElecmon asked.

"No!" all three tamers said at once.

"I do!" Keramon said from Gunther's backpack.

"Um, Keramon, you're not supposed to talk," the German told his partner.

"Oh, how come ViElecmon can talk, huh?"

"Let's just go after this chick, okay?" Marika said, rushing off with Plotmon, Kyle and Gunther going after her, both well aware of the eyes around the mall.


A figure started to walk towards the tamers. He had a green monkey sitting on his shoulder that was wearing a leopard-skin toga. The figure realized that this was going to be his one chance to get away from the academy and he had to make sure everything happened according to plan.

The other academy students started to converge on the door as soon as the local team of tamers left the building. None of them knew the plan that one of the tamers had in store for them.


"Great, it looks like she's leaving with her friends," Marika commented once they exited the building. "At this rate, we'll never get to ask her if she wants to join."

Kyle didn't seem so down. "Don't worry, I'm sure we can catch up with her using Appamon. Which one do you think it is?"

"Beats me."

"Guys, we have company!" Gunther yelled. In front of the building were five tamers: a blonde girl with a ponytail wearing a yellow top and a pink skirt, a black guy with short, curly hair and wearing an all black outfit, a dark-skinned guy with short hair and a large nose wearing a red shirt and blue slacks, a red-haired girl with an orange top and blue jeans and a black-haired guy wearing a tight black shirt and beige slacks.

Automatically recognizing everyone they were up against as academy tamers, Gunther held out his digivice and yelled out: "Digivolution Activate!" just as his partner jumped out of his backpack.

"Keramon digivolve to… Chrysalimon!"

"Okay, Chrysalimon, Academy Defeat Plan!"

"Got it!" Chysalimon charged forward to behind the team of enemy tamers and sliced at their back pockets where their relay devices would normally be.

"What was that?" Marika asked.

"Simple, I just removed their way of getting back to the academy in case of escape. Now we just need to defeat them. I did this the other day with the group of tamers that attacked the tournament, you know, though then I simply stole the devices and tossed them in a trashcan."

Kyle smiled, "Good work."

"It's a shame that the academy will still know where we are from our last location," the black-haired boy said emotionlessly with a slight trace of an accent. "Gabumon, digivolution activate!"

"Gabumon digivolve to… Garurumon!'

"Palmon, digivolution activate!" the blonde girl with the ponytail exclaimed.

"Palmon digivolve to… Togemon!"

"Koemon digivolution activate!" the black boy exclaimed.

"Koemon digivolve to… Hanumon!"

"Dracomon, digivolution activate!" the dark-skinned boy yelled.

"Dracomon digivolve to… Coredramon!" The digimon became the green form of the dragon digimon.

"Otamamon, digivolution activate!" the red-headed girl yelled.

"Otamamon digivolve to… Geckomon!"

"Wow, five on three. What odds. This is going to be fun," Marika commented. "Digivolution activate!"

"Plotmon digivolve to… Darcmon!"

Kyle smiled as well. Then he pulled out his deck, easily found the two cards he wanted, and put the deck back. "Digi-modify!" He slid the first card: The Digimental of Courage and then using a fancy little finger trick, slashed the second card: The Digimental of Friendship. "Double Armor Digivolution!"

"Elecmon Double Armor Digivolve to… GuerrillaLeomon!" GuerrillaLeomon was a large digimon that resembled GrapLeomon in form but was wearing an entirely camouflaged outfit from head to toe and had a massive gun with a long magazine of bullets attached to it as well as another gun on his back.

The black guy took out his digivice and checked it.

GuerrillaLeomon

Armor Level (Double)

Beast Man Digimon

Virus Attribute

Attacks: Ametralladora, Plasma Cannon

Good thing I decided to be on their side. I just need to get the rest away from here so that we don't get captured by the academy again. "Hanumon, let's go after the girl tamer that we are looking for." The tamer and his digimon ran off, avoiding the two local tamers' partners.

"Darcmon, let's go after him. Kyle and Gunther can take on the rest," Marika ordered and her digimon nodded as they ran after the surprisingly swift enemy tamer and his partner. The other enemy tamers were not amused.

"Quick, go after them. It's obvious that he's not going by my orders," the dark-skinned enemy tamer, obviously the leader, told the group and so they moved forward with GuerrillaLeomon and Chrysalimon following them. After running about fifty feet, Kyle and Gunther spotted a vortex of data forming right where the tamers were before running.

"You know, I think that the African guy knew what he was doing," Gunther suggested.

"Looks like it," Kyle replied. "I'm just glad that we didn't get stuck in that thing."


The Academy Headmistress wasn't pleased. It seemed that the gray-haired woman potentially lost yet another team of tamers. This was just as bad as those disasters when they sent a group of tamers after that kid with the Lucemon and later on against the Academy escapee with the Shoutmon who could already reach Ultimate.

She was thinking that they would have to plan out their missions better next time. It was obvious that the runaway the team was going up against already had the whole situation planned out. Then again, there were only three local tamers not including the girl they were after so they shouldn't be a problem. That is, they shouldn't be a problem unless one of them goes to Ultimate.

She didn't take into account the betrayal from one of her own, even though that possibility crossed her mind.


Claire was busy chatting with her friends on the way home from the mall when they all stopped. In front of them was a man wearing a mask and a hood. "Okay, what's the big idea?" the girl's black friend asked.

"Well, hello Cynthia, my name is Blaine. I'm actually not here to harm any of you if that's what you think"

"Okay, what are you here for?" Claire asked.

"In case you haven't noticed, there's a digimon battle happening right now at the mall that you have just left. I actually have a friend of yours with me."

With that, a familiar white rabbit with two sets of long ears decorated in blue, one set sticking right up while the larger, thicker set hung on the sides of the digimon's ears. The digimon also had a pink ribbon on her chest with the moon in the center.

"Lunamon?" Claire asked in surprise.

"Wait, you're a Digimon Tamer?" Claire's brunette friend asked.

"Uh, yes, I guess I am. I only met Lunamon yesterday."

"That is so weird," Cynthia commented. "But if you want to go fight some giant enemy digimon, then go ahead."

"Wait, so you aren't mad?"

"Why would we be?" Cynthia replied. "Now, just go save the day like you're supposed to."

"What do I have to do?" Claire asked the mysterious man in front of her.

"Just stand next to me and I'll take us back to the mall," Blaine said. Claire complied and stood next to him after picking up her digimon. The man pulled out a small handheld device and typed in a few things on it. Claire found it odd that the device, which appeared to be a small computer, didn't have buttons on it. In fact, it was a touch-screen. "Don't gawk at this. Touch screen devices will be far more common in a couple of years. Oh, and you others might want to get back."

Suddenly, mist spilled out of nowhere and then collapsed into nothing. Not even the girl, the digimon, or the mysterious man remained.

"Should we have let her go with that guy? He was kind of creepy," the brunette said.


The girl found herself falling through a blue tunnel. "Don't worry, after the first couple of times, you get used to this," Blaine told the girl as he fell with her. "It'll be over right about… now!"

The tamers just about had a nervous breakdown when their digivices started to beep and a dome of mist came into being right where they were. Said dome of mist contracted into nothing, leaving just the girl with the Lunamon.

"Okay, how'd you do that?" Gunther asked.

"Oh, some weird guy named Blaine took me here," Claire said. She was behind the main battle with some big, muscular guy and a Chrysalimon. "Hey, you were in the mall, weren't you?"

"Uh, yeah, let's just get this battle over with and then we can talk. The name's Gunther by the way."

"Gunther? You mean like the guy with the mullet and the ugly mustache from Europe?"

Gunther just rolled his eyes at the thought of some Swedish guy's stage name. Why did some weirdo have to have his name and sing about bikinis and ding dongs? He thought the pastries tasted good but why sing about them? "Let's not talk about him. Chrysalimon!"

"Yep?"

"Go after Togemon!"

The black tamer realized that a second digital field had appeared. Using this, he turned around. "Okay, Hanumon, bypass the local tamers and attack Garurumon!"

His partner moved ahead, dodging attacks from both Darcmon and GuerrillaLeomon. He did so without question and yet he knew that something was up. It was obvious that his tamer wasn't as brainwashed as he seemed and that he was merely biding time to escape from the academy's clutches.

Kyle and Marika caught up to the black guy. "As you can tell, you locals, I'm on your side," the guy said with a grin.

"Oh, okay… um…" Kyle was only half surprised.

"Uh, anyway, let's just finish this fight!" Marika exclaimed, resisting the urge to check out the black guy.

"Yeah, before they send any reinforcements. The name's Vincent, by the way!"

"Good to meet you," the girl said.

The team looked to see Chrysalimon and Togemon head to head, the viral digimon winning. GuerrillaLeomon was shooting his gun off at Coredramon, the digimon barely dodging the attacks. Garurumon was having to take on Hanumon and Darcmon was fighting Geckomon and his annoying sound attacks.

Chysalimon had to figure out how to defeat Togemon without getting a ton of splinters inside of him. He also had to dodge a couple of Needle Sprays from the giant, walking cactus. Unfortunately, he couldn't dodge one of them and had a bunch of needles stuck in his face.

"Is there any way I can help?" Claire asked.

"Uh," Gunther thought about it for a second and looked through his card deck. "Use this card, specifically the Metal Fireball attack."

"Gotcha! Card Slash! SkullMeramon's Metal Fireball!"

Immediately, Lunamon was covered in blue flame and launched a flaming sphere at Togemon who received the attack head-on and caught on fire. This allowed Chrysalimon the opportunity to strike.

"Data Crusher!" the cocoon yelled, launching his knives at the flaming cactus and defeating it, causing it to fall to the ground and devolve back into Palmon.

At the same time, Darcmon was trying to prevent herself from succumbing to Geckmon's Symphony Crusher attack. She eventually makes it right in front of him and slices the frog across the chest with La Pucelle, causing the digimon to collapse and devolve back into Otamamon.

"Ugh, I'm glad that's over," she said, turning around to spot GuerrillaLeomon dodging an attack by Coredramon and unleashing a Plasma Cannon against him, causing him to revert in the process.

"I see you're done, too," the large humanoid lion said.

"Sure am. Let's go see if the others need any help."

Garurumon was doing a farely good job against Vincent's partner. He unleashed his Howling Blaster attack against the agile ape and Hanumon dodged, getting out of the way just in time and then strike. "Mega Bone Stick!" the yellow ape yelled, striking Garurumon on the head and then on the body, causing the digimon to collapse as well and join the others.

"Well, I'm glad that's over," Kyle said, wiping the sweat off his forehead. Apparently it was another hot day.

"You will not get away with defying the academy," the dark-skinned boy among the enemy tamers said before charging Kyle. Luckily, Gunther intercepted him before he could do any damage and hit him in several places, knocking him out.

Kyle simply stood there with a really surprised look on his face. "Okay, I had no idea that I was that much of a target. Thanks for the save, man!"

"No, problem."


A few minutes later, a group of Echelon agents showed up to pick up the academy tamers except for Vincent, who simply went with the other tamers in another vehicle. The tamers talked on the way to Echelon's base about the various things in life and the two new ones introduced themselves.

"The name's Vincent and I'm from Detroit!"

"Good to finally get an introduction," Gunther said before scratching his head. "So, um, where's Detroit at, anyway?"

"You don't know where Detroit, Michigan is?" Claire asked in shock.

"No, I'm not even American."

"It's the state that looks like a giant mitten," Kyle said. "You know, around the great lakes area. Maybe I should show you an atlas when we get home. Then again, I don't know where half the places are in Europe." He chuckled slightly.

"So yeah, I'm Claire and this is Lunamon. We've been partners for like a day now."

"Good to meet you. It'll be nice having another girl on the team, if you decide to join at least," Marika stated matter-of-factly.

"Hey, what's wrong with having a bunch of guys around?" Kyle asked.

"Do you ever want to get your nails done?" After Kyle shook his head, she continued. "I didn't think so."

"So, is there anyone here that's actually from Vegas?" Vincent finally asked.

"I am," Claire said, raising her hand.

"I'm from California," Marika stated.

"Colorado," Kyle said.

"Deutschland," Gunther said.

"Man, why are all the tamers imported or something?" Vincent asked, eliciting shrugs from the group.

"My friend Andrew's from here," Gunther said. "He moved away, though he's in town right now."

"Wait, there's another tamer in town right now and you didn't tell us?" Kyle asked. "I could have stayed home."

"Nah, we know about him. He only works for Echelon if an Ultimate or higher level digimon appears which never happens," Marika said.

"Hey, I was just kidding, anyway. I actually kind of like this job better than I thought I would."

Gunther chuckled and then asked Vincent something. "So, what are your plans now? Going back home?"

"Nope, I'm not sure what I'm gonna do. I lived in a pretty bad section of town and I don't really want to go back unless I have to. Too many unpleasant memories. Then again, if I have to go back, I'll probably just get my GED and then have the government send me to a fancy college with them paying for most of my education. Either that or I'd pay for it by fighting evil digimon in whatever town I go to."

"What do you want to go to school for?"

"I don't know. I kind of want to be a teacher or something. Or maybe I'll start a giant business and try to make a difference. I was thinking of trying to start a school for troubled kids in Detroit. Oh, and I'd use this." Vincent held up the headband-like device that Gunther remembered from the academy and, more recently, his dream the night before.

"One of those things… Why did you bring it along?"

"Seriously, these things are genius. If I had this in elementary school, I'd have had straight A's. Now seriously, the idea of focusing only on a couple of things at a time and then having instant recall of those things for later is an awesome concept. I think a big reason a lot of kids don't do well in school today is because they can't focus. Now, if I brought this to some rich corporation and had them figure out how to make more of these things, I'd make a fortune. Either that or they'd just steal my idea. So, how come you're not going back to Germany?"

"Well, my parents kind of disappeared off the face of the earth for starters and even though I could go and live with my grandparents, there are some people around there I don't really want to see again. One of them basically left me to the mercy of a bunch of academy tamers and escaped."

"That's rough, man," Vincent replied. "I was just cornered in a back alley by them."

"What I've noticed is that they somehow got a hold of my modified Shaggai program and that they use it to go around the world instantaneously. I mean, how?"

"You mean kind of like how that Blaine guy transported me a couple of blocks back to the mall?" Claire inquired.

"You mean Blaine helped you?" Marika asked, incredulously. "That guy hired German boy's team against us a few days ago."

"Blaine? As in Blaine who gave the Academy those headband thingies?" Gunther asked. "That guy gives the academy technology as payment for jobs. I hear he sent a group of tamers after some random guy in Los Angeles for some reason and gave them a whole bunch of gym equipment."

"But, man, that guy helped you by sending Claire back to the Galleria. Who's side is he on?" Vincent asked no one in particular.


A couple of hours later, Ezekiel read over the report of that day's activities, in shock at what it said about Blaine. He wanted to find him but so far, he hasn't had any clue as to who he was or his whereabouts.

Now, though, he had an idea, so he wandered to the mainframe room in the local Echelon base and made a request for the two women currently monitoring digital activities. "Hello, ladies, I have something to ask of you. I need you to search the logs for any recent use of a program similar Shaggai or a program that seems to use the digital plane for long distance travel."

"Alright, I am doing a database scan right now," one of the women, a red-haired girl, said. "Okay, got it!"

Ezekiel gasped when he saw the lines. There were a number of them going across the Las Vegas valley and stopping in places such as the location of the tournament from that weekend. The trenchcoat-wearing tamer scratched his chin. "Any idea where any of these things go?"

"Most of them seem to use some sort of masking technology to cause the signal to be lost a hundred miles out of town," the second girl, a Filipino, said. "However, the one used today, apparently by Blaine, ends just outside of Japan."

"He's Japanese but he's not telling us who he is… Blaine, just who are you? If that is your real name…"


That question was still on his mind later on when he was walking home. At least until he spotted a small red reptile with ears in a v-shape wandering his neighborhood. Since he had Dobermon with him, he felt obligated to take care of the small digimon that seemed to have escaped detection. He checked his digivice for info on the digimon.

Shoutmon

Rookie Level

Vaccine Attribute

Attacks: Rock Damashi, Soul Crusher, Rowdy Rocker

Unfortunately, he didn't know that the digimon belonged to a tamer. He just figured that it was a rogue digimon that needed to be taken care of. "Dobermon, get him."

The dog nodded and then proceeded to chase the small dragon digimon, who realized he was being followed by a potentially hostile party. The pointy-eared digimon turned around and faced the dog, which was ready to attack.

"Schwartzes Strahl!" Dobermon yelled, unleashing a blast of dark energy at the dragon, who simply pulled a stage mic out of nowhere, jumped up, and formed a ball of orange energy at the end.

"Soul Crusher!" he yelled, unleashing the attack on Dobermon, causing the digimon to be blasted back into a cinderblock wall and collapse, unconscious.

Ezekiel ran up to his partner to check if he was alright and then turned to Shoutmon. "I will not let a rogue digimon like you go loose forever."

"Rogue digimon? You're the one who attacked me!" the digimon said. "And what do you mean by rogue? I have a tamer!"

Ezekiel looked on in slight shock as the digimon left. He was a rookie. This was supposed to be an easy battle but he defeated his partner far too quickly.


Just who is Blaine?

Will Vincent stay in Vegas or will he move on?

How far will Ezekiel go to find out the identity of his nemesis?

Find out in the next chapter of Echelon: The Search


A/N: As you can tell, I turned Appa into a digimon.

I have to say, that was one difficult battle to write. I'm not fond of writing long battles and that one… well, let's just say it wasn't my best. Oh, and at first I intended to have Psychemon instead of Gabumon.

The RPG Developer program the group is working on is inspired by RPG Toolkit. It even has a lot of the same problems as the real-life game maker and has the same features. It even knocks off RPG Code (With DevCode)! Man, I need to get into programming more and maybe even make a crappy fangame based on this fic.

Funny, I seem to be updating this every two weeks. I'd prefer once a week, but at least it's getting up there, considering I don't have a computer of my own at the moment and I'm using my dad's. Maybe in a few weeks once I get enough money…