- Settling In -

Gazimon woke up in an unfamiliar room on a relatively comfortable bed of blankets. Confused he looked around the room, quickly spotting a bunk bed with a human on the upper level and the lower level dominated by the horrifying sight of a massive green snake that seemed easily large enough to swallow him whole. This made the lost digimon freeze in place long enough to remember how he had ended up in the situation. "What have I gotten myself into?" he asked quietly while trying to calm down.

The room wasn't big enough for three creatures in his opinion, and it was only how close the other two were willing to tolerate each other that gave the rabbit like monster any room at all the previous night. There was a board covered with writing that caught his eye as there was a new listing of 'make room for ' on there. "Why is there a period in there?" he whispered confused.

"You ssspook too loudly," the reptile hissed, deliberately lisping. "Did you sleep well?" Serperior asked as Gazimon gave a short terrified shout.

"Is he okay?" Shawn asked groggily from the upper bunk.

"I'm fine, the snake is just scary," the digimon said angrily. The confusion that was obvious on the trainer's face at that remark just made him give a huff. "It's kinda weird having a place like this to stay."

"You were wild before?" the two of them asked in an eerie synchronization, their tone more curious than an accusation.

"Uh, not really. I've lived with some mons, but Gazimon aren't exactly the friendly type. I mean we did side with the dark forces trying to take over everything," he replied somewhat nervously.

"So, just because you aren't a species that is nice to other pokemon you get pushed around?" Shawn asked looking over the digimon with consideration.

"We push back plenty thank you very much," Gazimon shot back somewhat angry.

"Your species are definitely Dark types, that sound pretty standard for them to me," Serperior noted helping his trainer down with his tail.

"Standard? You just have entire kinds of monsters that are evil like that?" the new Dark type asked still upset over the topic of his kind's typical activities.

"Well, there are Absol, who some people say cause disasters just by showing up in places. Given the kind of things that I've seen pokemon do that isn't too farfetched. Dark type pokemon in general are crueler than most pokemon, and villainous teams like having them around more because of it," Shawn replied with what the digimon felt was too much cheer over the topic. "Although I have heard Absol are actually sensing the disasters are coming and try and warn people."

"Villainous teams?" he asked focusing on the part that sounded closer to his own experiences.

"Team Rocket is the one we can most easily talk about. Criminals that tried to get rich by exploiting wild pokemon and stealing rare pokemon from people to sell to others. The reason we care about them in particular is they had this scheme where they were offering a rare pokemon as a top prize from gambling," Shawn looked seriously at the digimon. "The rare Porygon, which being an artificial pokemon is not found in the wild."

Gazimon thought of the two blocky mons he had met the day before, and how the group had been worried about him being remade into something like them. "Porygon are hard to make?" he asked.

"No, they are not," the trainer said somewhat sadly. "All you need is a materializer, some pokeballs, and energy. They made hundreds, each one claimed to be rarer than any other pokemon they were offering." The human turned away and Serperior curled behind him so he could lean back on the snake pokemon. "Thing is they are fairly fragile, especially when you care more about making one cheaply than anything else. Their abilities outside a computer aren't that impressive, and most people wouldn't have anything for them to do inside of one. So here were hundreds of supposedly rare pokemon, that needed more care than some random gambler would be able to give them, and who weren't really able to do much for their new owners."

"They are still trying to find people and places that can take care of the ones that were recovered during the fall of the organization," the plant pokemon added. "If we didn't need highly specialized versions of the pokemon for the Boxes we probably would have taken a lot of them." Serperior shook his head. "Even then I think there are a good half dozen working with the development team."

Gazimon could not readily think of an equivalent situation from his own world. Exploiting digimon that were already there was definitely the kind of thing he was talking about, but somehow making new digimon just to exploit them was something else. "You guys really aren't going to throw me out for being a Gazimon are you?"

"Not unhiss that means you need to break things or steal stuff, and even then that's only because we don't have enough room to hide you or your stuff in here," Serperior replied nodding.

"Just let us know if you need to do something sinister, that way we can get our cover stories straight," Shawn then said partially refuting the snake's response.


Soon after the three of them arrived back at the Troubleshooter Lab. "Ah, you made it alright," A-0 said as it floated into the room with them, where they all saw an exhausted looking Janice and her still rather fresh looking Metang.

"We have good news and bad news," Janice said tiredly. "I'll start with the more positive aspects. Medical has gotten back to us regarding the scans we did yesterday. According to them your body is in great condition for a Dark type. Based on your conditioning alone you are somewhere between level 10 and 15, although we'd need to have more data from others of your species for a better idea about that." The digimon turned to look at A-0 slightly confused by the term, but not wanting to interrupt the rather distracted speech. "Their only concern is that those three moves you demonstrated are currently untyped. They recommend Dark for the basic claw attack you told them about, Electric for the paralysis breath one, and the pit attack is quite clearly a Ground type move."

"Okay. That's, something I guess," Gazimon said before quietly questioning Serperior. "Was that good news?" The snake pokemon snickered and pointed to Janice to keep him focused.

"The bad news is that there is basically no data from any of those scans that helps us with identifying your origin world for the purpose of getting you home," she continued not really noticing his response to her prior topic. "Charlie 13 and the development team were able to completely confirm that there is no hope at all of separating the various holes in reality he punched all the way out of the universe. So short of us finding the Legendary pokemon Giratina, one of the first four creatures to ever exist and the sibling of the embodiments of time and space themselves, we aren't likely to get you home." She turned to A-0. "Charlie 13 is on probation for this mess, and his box is under partial lockdown while the developers figure out a safer way to clean it up."

"Janice," Shawn said harshly, getting a slow but surprised turn of the Troubleshooter Lead's head "go get some sleep. I can handle today, and Gazimon should be able to wait for you to be rested to go over any of his problems that I can't handle."

The older woman looked at the trainer for a moment, before turning to A-0 again. "Right, A-0 you're in charge." The Porygon beeped and nodded. "Fuzzy new guy, don't break anything important, get your attacks fixed." Gazimon simply blinked at the human. "Snake twins, don't break anything, ease up on the puns." The trainer and starter whispered 'twins' in the same synchronization from earlier. "I'll be back tomorrow," she started to say before spotting a clock. "This afternoon, when I'm not hearing things." Janice then walked out of the door in a bit of a daze and down the hall.

"Twins?" the two asked again.

"I'd disagree a lot more if I could think of a time when the two of you didn't act like you were joined at the hip," A-0 said floating over to Metang and delivering a static burst of machine code that went too fast for Gazimon to understand. The mechanically minded pokemon replied in the same manner. "Outstanding issues are a minor corruption outbreak in Box 30, a soil sample problem of some kind in 205, and the previously mentioned possible need for our new friend to get his moves clarified."

"Corruption?" Gazimon asked worried by the ominous term.

"If it was too bad then we would already be slithering into the Box at a run," Serperior commented briefly before letting A-0 explain in detail.

"A method we developed of more safely containing viruses and other malicious code that attempts to breach a Box. Rather than trying to capture it directly, possibly allowing it to infest the Administrator, it is given a basic form inside the Box. This usually results in simple static pieces of corrupt material, but if the code is more advanced or not cleaned up for a while it can become a primitive digital life form." The digital pokemon gave a sigh. "It actually works really well, which does not really make up for the suffering that went into building the system."

"Generally once it has its own form the local Administrator can deal with it themselves, but some stuff is able to hide from them or otherwise make it so they can't deal with it so then we need to help," Shawn added. "If this instance is something we have been called on to handle, but don't need to hurry to complete, then it is probably a few basic life forms that developed from some hidden corruption. We'd just need to track it down and clear everything out." He moved to the transmission console. "We should be able to work out what's messed up with your moves while we are working on that, and Delta 6's dirt should be able to wait for us to finish with those two things. Unless that's somehow gotten corrupted too?" Metang shook its body to indicate that it wasn't.

"Do you recall if Alpha 30 has any Ground type pokemon? I want to see how Gazimon's current paralysis move works before possibly introducing a limitation to it," A-0 noted maneuvering closer to the pad. "Serperior, would you mind traveling in your ball this time? The four of us are rather large and I'd rather not be in a pile with corruption around."

"Ball?" Gazimon asked. The snake pokemon rather than verbally answering him nodded at A-0 and tapped the button on the small red and white sphere held on Shawn's belt. The digimon looked on in shock as the serpent changed into red energy and was taken inside of the device. "What was that?" he asked pointing at the result with a scared expression.

"Pokeballs are a means of transforming a pokemon into energy so they can be safely and easily transported. It allows for the pokemon to expend no energy traveling themselves while also staying safe from environmental threats. That is the main use we have for trainers," A-0 replied calmly, earning a chuckle from Shawn. "The energy collecting pocket that it uses to hold us is why we are called 'pocket monsters'."

"So, that can happen to me now that I have that Dark type energy?" the digimon asked still sounding worried.

"Yeah, really it works in about the same way as this transport pad does. The biggest difference is that the pad has more power to grab the energy with, so it can get past the human resistance to being caught," the trainer added motioning for him to follow onto the pad in question. "If I didn't have that resistance I could get caught too."

"Given the things you've let us do to you that resistance isn't likely to last," A-0 said before looking over to the digimon still standing some distance from the pad.

"This is normal here isn't it?" he asked getting another laugh out of the human present.

"Some of it, but the other stuff is what makes the world interesting."


The first thing Shawn noted on looking at the box was the presence of Magmar, who seemed to be annoyed with the small yellow bird-like set of polygons trying to eat his physical looking meal. The tiny shape was simply two dimensional colored planes with no fully enclosed areas. The rest of the Box was unusual for an Alpha's domain, with the structure appearing much like a blocky version of the interior of the DSS building.

"Greetings," a voice said over what probably was intended to mimic the intercom system, only with the result being too clear compared to the real thing. "I was hoping you could maybe not delete these ones? I'm trying to figure out if there is a way to stabilize their coding so they don't go ravenous like the others." The Fire type made his thoughts on the matter clear by looking at the visible speaker near the top of the wall and pointing between the creature and his food.

"Have you contacted the medical and development teams regarding storing these corrupted data creatures?" A-0 asked as Serperior was retrieved to once more lean on his trainer. "Or indeed done anything other than not bring them to our attention until they got out?"

"Well, it isn't like they are just some random attempt at a breach that I left laying around. I wrote this virus myself with the system generating them from it in mind," Alpha 30 replied somewhat strongly.

"They don't feel much like what I'd call a Viral," Gazimon contributed having picked up the yellow creature, which was still focused on getting the food being held by Magmar. "Honestly this thing almost seems to be a Vaccine digimon. Is it supposed to get rid of bad ones or something?"

"Um, yes actually. I was hoping to train them to hunt down any anomalous materials and entities, then report them to me and if needed clean them up. I thought it would be a good project to help the others with detecting and responding to such issues," the Porygon said through the system. "These are the latest test and they kind of escaped their containment area."

"Porygon Alpha 30 Box 30, have you contacted anyone at all about your plan to create corruption deliberately before going through with it?" A-0 asked harshly.

"Some of the dev team know about them," Alpha 30 confessed. "We started with twelve in this test and we're down to six. They are scattered around the Box, mostly going after food sources for some reason. Most of their forms have been degrading over time unlike the typical results of something of their complexity being converted."

"Serperior, get to work grabbing them," Shawn instructed his starter. "Try and calm down anyone who they've had a chance to mess with." He turned to the speaker ignoring the angry wordless beeping of A-0. "Do you have any Ground types that are willing to help with something?"

"There is a Sandshrew currently in the Box. He is working for the maintenance staff on electrical problems," the Administrator quickly replied with some relief. "There is one of the shards near his location somewhere, I will give an indicator of direction."

"What exactly is your current contract?" A-0 asked as the serpent moved off along a different path to hopefully collect the other rogue digital life forms.

"Currently I do not have an outside contract. This has actually been the case for quite some time, but that is mostly because I have been assigned storage responsibility for company pokemon," its sibling replied as they set off. Magmar seemed quite glad to have the yellow construct moving away from him, and Gazimon spent most of the trip working to keep the creature still.


"Visitors?" a light brown armored pokemon asked as they turned a corner soon afterwards. In his hands was another of the digital creatures, this one a darker brown color, that was eating a piece of digital food. "Are you looking for this little guy? He was quite hungry." The Ground type picked up another piece of food from a small box on a counter and carefully gave it to the construct.

"Alpha 30, you have been feeding them, right?" Shawn asked the Administrator nervously, prompting both Sandshrew and Gazimon to move to give the yellow one some food as well.

"They are digital life forms, I thought that meant they didn't need any?" The reply came back more of a question than an answer.

"They do not have connections to the main grid!" A-0 shouted at its sibling. "I need to eat to stay alive! If you are going to make these things the least you can do is not starve them to death. Shawn, can you contact Serperior and let him know of this complication?"

"You should be able to reach him, he took the Pokedex." This reply was met with a level stare as A-0 open communication with the device and relayed the message.

Gazimon watched as the very simple data creatures consumed the small blocks of food. The material was simply vanishing in tiny chunks as they tapped the triangle at the end of their face against it. "These are really strange. The closest I've seen to them are those things made from corrupt data that sometimes cause problems, but those always try and attack you to make more of themselves," Sandshrew noted looking up at the digimon. "These seem rather nice compared to them, if a bit hungry."

"Are you the Ground type we were trying to find?" Gazimon asked while the two constructs huddled closer together as they ate.

"You were looking for me? Yes, I am a Ground type," the pokemon noted with a bit of a laugh. "It's really odd seeing pokemon from far away, isn't it? You never can be sure what exactly you are looking at." The rabbit monster nervously scratched his head in response. "What was it you needed?"

"Gazimon here has a couple of attacks that need to have their type fixed. There was an accident and he's stuck with us for now, so we're making sure he gets any help he needs," Shawn replied quickly hiding the details of the issue.

"Apparently my poisonous Paralyze Breath attack might be electrical?" the digimon asked with notable confusion.

"Paralysis usually is," the armored pokemon agreed "but if it is a poison then maybe not. I can see why you need my help." The cheerful agreement made Gazimon look over to Shawn and A-0, who was quietly interrogating the trainer about just how he could understand the pokemon. "Let's get these little guys out of the way and we can see what you can still do."

Shawn took the two tiny digital life forms while A-0 went over the basics of what they planned to do for testing with the two combatants. Gazimon found himself rather perplexed by the easy agreement to fight, particularly how no one present seem to think that attacking each other was something strange to do in such an otherwise friendly context.

"Right, let's see this poison breath attack," Sandshrew said far too happily.

"Ok here goes," Gazimon replied dubiously. He proceeded to breathe out a mist of sparking gas onto the sand colored pokemon, who started coughing slightly.

"Who told you that was Electric?" the pokemon asked shaking himself out and easily taking a large pinkish fruit Shawn pulled from his bag.

"Someone who was sleep deprived and reading just the basics of the report," A-0 answered. "It does have somewhat reduced power compared to a simply Poison type move, around a fourth of the potential damage from my readings rather than the normal half effectiveness. I suspect it is currently acting as a dual typed attack with the added Poison typing removing total immunity."

"If that is what is happening he will want to pick one of them. Those two have a lot of things that resist them separately so it would have a lot of things resisting the damage," Shawn noted giving the digimon an explanation of the problems with the situation.

"It probably is trying to hit with both status effects, so leaving it alone might work too," Sandshrew commented.

Gazimon simply looked back and forth between them slightly confused by their discussion. "What exactly will you be changing about it?" he nervously asked A-0, who seemed to be lost in thought while looking at the beeping constructs that had calmed considerably after being fed.

"Looking over your data and the medical report I can do one of three things, or do nothing at all. Option 1 is to change the type into one or the other, which will cause some alterations to how it works. Option 2 is to copy the move, and then give you two separate moves, one of each type. The third option, and the one that is the most risky is to try and alter the move just enough to properly register as having types while still being both types," the Porygon explained. "The risky part of the last one is that moves are almost never multiple types, and I personally do not know of one that acts like two at the same time. So to get most of that last option in a safer way I'd say you should just leave the move as it is."

Gazimon looked between the armored pokemon and the group he had arrived in this Box with. "Okay, I'm just going to ask. What exactly do you mean when you say 'move'?" he grumbled. "Where I'm from everybody has their attacks all the time, and when you evolve you get new ones. That doesn't really sound like what you're talking about. This sounds like a lot of work to get these working how you expect them to act, and if I evolve it won't matter anymore."

"He isn't really a pokemon, is he?" Sandshrew asked jokingly. "Moves are ways of using your energy to accomplish a task. Generally pokemon keep a maximum of four moves trained to the point where they can use them in combat, with a bit of work needed to get ones that are out of practice back in shape for that. I currently am using Rollout, Poison Sting, Magnitude, and Fury Swipes." He gave a laugh at the face Gazimon made when he provided the list without any context. "For pokemon we can use moves we've learned all through our lives, no matter how we evolve. Although evolving can give you new moves based on any changes to your shape giving you new skills."

"You guys evolve too?" the digimon asked, then shook his head. "Nevermind, let's focus on the explanation. So these moves are generic things, not unique to each kind of creature?"

"Yes, and that will be another concern to you if you choose any of these three options," A-0 answered. "By giving you a type when we got you out of Box 113 we have given you the ability to manipulate your energy like a pokemon. You should now be able to learn appropriate moves, and in turn these moves should be available to you for the rest of your life."

"Along with giving you an idea of how to learn other moves by using the energy slightly differently. What type is he?" the Ground type asked now invested in getting Gazimon up to speed.

"Dark," the digimon answered for himself. "Is that new energy that I didn't have before, or did you just mess with what I already had?"

"You would be better able to tell than I could," A-0 replied somewhat regretfully. "When we were in that Box there was a minimal impact on your data, but the energy would have been added during the transfer. Everything in the physical world has some typed energy, with living things having more than nonliving materials. The Boxes try and reproduce what energy you would have in the outside world, but it could be inaccurate to a degree."

"Moves that match the user's type are stronger, mostly because they don't need to generate a different kind of energy while accomplishing the task. The attack might be closer to Dark typed right now because it simply works with your energy, it might be weaker because we gave your energy a basic form, or it might even be the case that you will be able to use it as a Dark type move with more power than was possible before," Shawn said shuffling the two digital life forms. The yellow one was focused on Gazimon while the brown watched Sandshrew.

"The claw attack looks to be the closest to the Dark type, the code in general is similar to a very specialized form of Night Slash. Which makes a lot more sense if your specific form is the only one that uses it," A-0 said nodding. "We should try that one next, maybe before deciding on what to do with the first."

Sandshrew gave a short laugh at the idea and waved at Gazimon to have him try it. He was still nervous as he slashed towards the armored pokemon, and he stumbled slightly as the strike seemed to be unusual to him in some way. The Ground type easily took the hit and quickly moved to steady his attacker.

"Whoa," the digimon said steadying himself. "Okay, I think I get what you mean. Ugh, I'm gonna tire myself out in no time if it is that easy to put my energy into that."

"You are not in the greatest of shape in general. I'd say you were some pampered house pet if you didn't act like you've been half starved yourself," Sandshrew noted. "Was that basically a Night Slash?"

"Close enough that I'm leaning to fixing the small discrepancies that make it not a Dark type move," A-0 replied. "The last one is in a similar state, being effectively Dig. The only one that is questionable is the breath attack, and at this point I think you'd be best just splitting it in two."

"Is everyone in this world battle mad?" Gazimon asked holding a claw over his face. "I'll try this one, hitting things with my claws seems like something I'll still be doing even if I become a Champion, but I want to see what happens to it before messing with my other attacks." A-0 beeped in acknowledgement and opened a pink pane to get to work.

"Battle mad? We're just testing moves, that's barely practicing," Shawn said somewhat jokingly. "Maybe we should have a real battle after we're done here to show you just how battle mad we are."

Gazimon flinched slightly at another black flash occurring over his form, then looked at his claws to see if there were any changes. Seeing none Sandshrew motioned for him to try the move again. This time he easily completed the move, with a hint of black energy coating his claws as they struck. The digimon blinked at the result, frowning at his claws. "It went back to normal? Maybe, maybe a bit easier to put my energy into, but that felt a lot better," he said looking at his opponent with some confusion.

"You hit a bit harder actually. Not by much, but I think you might have been having problems before if that is what it does normally," Sandshrew noted. "Come on, let's see this third move. If getting a type threw this one off maybe it did it to that one too, and having a busted move doesn't sound like a fun time."

"Alright, I'm not sure how it will work on this floor but I can at least try," Gazimon conceded. He quickly dug into the ground with some surprise at the ease with which he made it through the material. Rapidly he completed the attack by punching out of the ground underneath the target pokemon just barely hitting. "Okay, that was kinda weird, but I'm guessing that is another freaky part of your world."

"Using Dig was weird? I mean, it was a really fast Dig, but you managed to avoid whatever issue you were worried about the floor causing," the Ground type replied laughing a bit. "I'm probably going to evolve before I can pull something like that off."

"It would be more difficult in the actual building than in this digital representation. At minimum he would need to use more power to keep whatever he was tunneling through intact enough to travel through, and that assumes there was the space in it for the tunnel," Shawn told the combatants. "Is it feeling off at all? Too much or too little power?"

"It felt alright, no more off than the Paralyze Breath. Go ahead and change it though, it works great for getting out of messes and if I can keep these if I evolve then that would be a neat trick to pull." Gazimon looked away from the others at the wall. "Hold off on the breath though, I want to think about that one."

"I have much better data on the discrepancies now. It is a bit late for it, but I believe I might even have enough data to safely transfer one of your kind of digital life form into the physical world without the need to add a type," A-0 said opening a pair of blue panes. "Perhaps it might be better to call it the pokemon world given the context. I will be sending medical my findings so they can hopefully track any other side effects." Another flash occurred around Gazimon, this time brown in color.

"Hey, A-0. I've found three of the little Pips and got them some food. How are you guys doing with your search?" Serperior's voice suddenly said out of a nearby speaker. "Oh, wow that's the main intercom. Sorry everyone."

A-0 gave an exasperated beep and opened communication with the Pokedex. "We have two of them and just finished working on Gazi's moves," it told the serpent, earning a bit of grumbling from the digimon.

"Pips huh? Where'd that come from?" Shawn asked shuffling the two digital life forms around.

"Well they are small and they make this beeping sound when they find something they don't like, and I figured we needed something to call them," the Grass type replied, followed by a bit of a pause. "A-0, why can my trainer understand me?"

"He got one of my siblings to give him the ability again. Alpha 30 apparently has a working prototype of a general purpose translation for humans," the pink and blue pokemon replied. "We're moving out now, hopefully the last one is easy to find."