Abel and Kain
37.
Aki had to stop at her farm to drop off her digimon. It turned out she had more than just three, and she hugged and talked to each of them in turn.
It also turned out she often brought friends to her farm, because the smaller digimon and Calumon gathered at her feet. 'Hi!' they chirped. 'What's your name?'
'Tomomi,' said Tomomi, bemused. Who knew they were so social? Of course, that was getting past the fact that less than 5% of digimon communicate intelligently with their Tamers (and no-one else). And then there were the five masters also capable of intelligent thought to some degree. Part of the security of the digital world, amongst other things - like running the Tamer programme.
'Mi means pretty!' Calumon declared. 'i've been learning some japanese,' he added proudly.
Maybe Grandpa Kogorou was right about them being more intelligent than little bits of data. And more real.
Wait… Did that mean they'd been killing innocent digimon? Like animals, as opposed to word documents they'd never use again. That they'd been essentially messing with nature?
But that wasn't possible. A human like Grandpa Kogorou couldn't have created true nature for them to mess around with?