- Monster Picnic -

Tai looked his brother in the eye, and sighed at how easy that was when they were both identical. Agumon had apparently been recruited by their parents to help with this thing, and in turn now had Tai helping out with the last bits of setup. The two of them had arrived early to help get the various family members who had not been a monster before into that form for the event, and handing out various transformative items had been annoying with his now much shorter dinosaur legs.

The worst news about what exactly the families had become, and the thing that nobody had yet managed to explain the reasoning behind well, was that what was left of Yolei's family that had not become monsters before had decided to try pokemon instead of digimon. The best explanation he'd gotten was that her mother was worried there were too many digimon in the family, and had decided that the Hida family was having less trouble for a reason.

"Let's see," the Flybeemon said far more calmly than Tai had expected given that madness. She seemed mostly just disappointed, which was very fair in his opinion. "Dad's a Kecleon." That species was a chameleon pokemon, and the result was apparently acceptable to the new reptile. "Chizuru's a Rookidee." The relatively small and nearly spherical blue and black bird looked incredibly perplexed by her current form. "And you are a Corvisquire mom," Yolei finished with a slightly unhappy tone. "Which is the evolution of a Rookidee." The dark blue raven her mother had become looked away a bit smugly at that statement, and Tai joined Yolei in looking over at Joe's family in response.

That was a pile of orange and yellow otter pokemon, and all but Joe and Gomamon were the unevolved Buizel instead of more Floatzels. The way they were all nearly identical made it hard for Tai to get a count, let alone tell who was who, but it also showed that becoming an evolved pokemon of any kind had a clear meaning. "So, have you been in a lot of fights?" the metal insect digimon asked the crow pokemon, who did not look like she was going to answer her daughter.

"There are a lot more pokemon than I expected," Agumon noted, apparently having noticed how he was looking at Joe's family. "Although Mimi does seem to be happy that her parents were both Poison types too." His brother pointed over at where the Tachikawa family was inspecting some of the digimon world's plant life. Her father had become a short round plant pokemon called a 'Budew', which apparently evolved into the rose pokemon Mimi's friend had for a partner, while her mother had turned into a dark blue colored spherical pokemon with a collection of leaves growing out her head called an 'Oddish' that eventually evolved into the flower monster with a leaf skirt that Palmon currently had taken the form of. Mimi and her Grimer were both enjoying a chance to be out in something like public again without being a serious health risk as well.

"Did you hear if any of the DSS people were coming?" Tai asked his brother on that topic.

"The Investigator Ladder guy and his team of ghosts are definitely showing up. They said that Serperior's sister wanted to show something off," Agumon confirmed with a nod. "Janice said that she might show up as a pokemon to try and show she was sorry for all this trouble that they caused, but she needed to make sure that her company didn't need her human for a while first. Apparently when she turns into a pokemon again she's stuck like that for a week every time."

"That explains why she thought it was something fairly normal to happen then," the Digidestined of Courage sighed, and then poked at his teeth because of just how much air went through his muzzle than his mouth from that. "I still have no idea how everyone else has just handled dealing with this sort of thing all the time."

"Don't ask me, I've only ever digivolved. This turning into humans or pocket monsters thing is still too weird for me," his brother unhelpfully said. "I still don't know why Davey and Patamon seem so uneasy with being digimon."

"Patamon has problems with it too?" he sighed as he considered how to deal with the fact that monsters turning into people was another issue out of nowhere he now had to handle. "Is he getting a human name?"

"Huh? Oh no, he doesn't like being human either," Agumon confusingly explained. "He's just a little uneasy with how digimon partners think." His brother then blinked. "I wonder if he's even thought of trying being a pokemon yet?"

Davey figured he was getting too used to being a human. Having a tail again was still fairly normal, but unlike his brother he had not actually been staying a Flamedramon very much outside of fighting, and neither of them had been a Veemon in a long time now. His sister had even been a digimon more than him lately with how she was going over to be digimon with Yolei's middle sister. Which was actually one reason he found his family all in a digimon form a bit strange, he wasn't even close to the digimon of his family anymore.

His parents were currently a Dracomon and a Blucomon, two different dragon like digimon. His mom was the former bluish green bipedal western dragon with antler like horns and wings too small to actually lift her, while his dad was the latter blue reptile creature with an icy coating on his claws and head along with a ruff of white fur. Both of them seemed to be doing alright as monsters, at least so far, so he was glad for that. Jun had already flown off to meet with Momoe, which went a long way to showing how confident she was in that form.

"Really Jack, 'Smog' is the best you can come up with?" a new face asked as the pokemon world group arrived. She was a black and purple lizard monster with bright pink stripes. One who on a closer look had her entire body made out of a larger number of polygons than they had seen before from DSS' digital pokemon.

"'Vibration', 'Smile', heck your other name is just 'Strangle'," the Investigator's Monochromon rumbled to point out the issue, and Davey wondered if he was just lucky when it came to names. "Besides, your mom is apparently named 'Mini'."

"It was ironic," the now named Smog replied with a huff of purple smoke that immediately had Davey backing away from the group a bit. There were enough toxic fumes around Mimi's family, let alone someone else whose mom had a similar name. "She was long for a Snivy, and grew big for a Serperior."

"Can I just call you Strangle if the other you isn't around?" a Serperior asked from next to her. There were two of those, one in the thorny form they took when they became an Ultimate and the normal looking one who spoke. That likely meant that Shawn had not been the one speaking, but Davey felt he should check before assuming that to be the case. He also gave a double take to the new lizard as she didn't really look like their sister.

"Mom says that we probably shouldn't, it apparently isn't working at the Gym," Smog replied with a sigh after a moment.

"You look about as happy about being a monster as I am," the Lucario that was with them suddenly said to him directly. Davey recognized that this was Janice right off, although the foil on her dangling things was odd since he had thought those were something like extra ears. Honestly, he was still surprised to see her there. "Don't worry, it's not too bad to have a moment to remember why you don't actually stay in a monster form."

"Really?" he asked, and the uncomfortable smile he got in response wasn't reassuring.

"Maybe, I have medical issues too that make this form bad for me basically every time," she said flicking the metal on her maybe-extra-ears. "But I haven't actually met enough people with issues one way or the other that have tried going back to be sure it isn't true for someone."

"I'm not sure Davis can even turn back to just human anymore," he commented, uneasy with the idea that she didn't actually know about that attempt at reassurance. "Even when he's solid with the wrist band he still seems a bit molten."

"That is a thing with Acid Armor, although I think he's the first human who has actually learned it," she replied with a sigh. "Want to go pretend we're fine with this?"

"Okay," he nervously answered. "That's an option."

"Davey, is this ice part of me, or just on me?" his father then shouted with some concern.

"It's probably like fingernail, or claw material. Hair if it is particularly easy to remove, but that's generally snow," Janice replied. "At least when we've had to deal with Ice types before where that's the case. It should be fairly safe to remove some of it if you really need to."

Yolei sighed as her parents went over to Mimi's family to discuss the pokemon world. "They haven't even let us turn the TV thing on yet," she grumbled to the digimon half of her family.

"I've been using it," her older brother smugly proclaimed from the front of the small swarm of flying robot arm digital creatures he had brought to help set things up.

"The rest of us aren't robots, Mantarou," her pelt wearing reptile sister noted. "We can't just hijack signals without help."

"Maybe you should come over to my place more," the blue bird digimon that had joined them suggested. "There's lots of neat stuff on their TV. Like the show about what your mom fully evolves into being a knight in a European drama thing. That one's odd because it's on the channel that shows stuff from other countries. There's this really neat cooking show where an icing monster helps out too."

"I've mostly been looking at the tech shows," Mantarou said with a click of minor annoyance. "Maybe I shouldn't be though, that's mostly just making me wish we could use things we apparently can't."

"We can't just randomly use them," Yolei told him. "I know it sucks to see this nice stuff and have to worry about that, but last I heard from Izzy we might already be dealing with some of the plants around the area being a risk of that just from what's happened so far."

"That's honestly the next big thing we are going to handle," Hawkmon added as he came back from another failed attempt to get an actual fire started with local logs. "We had this whole thing with getting a scanner ready for that, and we can't exactly take the energy back."

"The logs aren't cooperating?" Jun asked with an amused chirp.

"It appears that the local trees are actually metallic in nature," her sort-of-clone brother grumbled. "Even if we got them burning we couldn't cook any of the smaller things over it unless we could handle the fumes."

"So me and Mimi's family? My last medical checkup I had the Steel type," Yolei admitted. "We're immune to poisons, and I'm fairly sure metal fumes count."

"Your mom's pokemon form ends up Steel type actually," Davis' sister noted. "So you might just be matching what you'd be as a pokemon."

Yolei and the entire digimon side of her family looked over at the two other blue bird monsters now present at that. Their mother seemed strangely comfortable with the form, while their older sister had a nervous expression and clear dislike of the change in scale. "Does anyone else hate how often coincidences happen to us now?" Momoe asked with a grumble

"There was an entire special on researching the way those happen to people," Mantarou replied. "Apparently in the pokemon world it can actually happen enough for you to get scientifically significant results on strange things happening specifically to you."

"Our new nurse switches minds with her pokemon," Yolei complained. "Considering what we're at I'm fairly sure we know that it is a thing."

Four Tentomon looked at each other, and simply laughed at the result. "Well, I guess that shows that we fit together doesn't it?" Masami Izumi said as they all moved from the box of extra transformation equipment that was brought just in case anyone decided to swap between digimon and pokemon.

"It does," his wife agreed. "This is quite strange though," she noted and very clearly tested her ability to control each of her four arms.

"I'm somewhat interested in what using our wings is like," Izzy commented. "With all that's been happening I haven't really had time to consider trying this myself."

"Honestly, I probably have had the time to try the other side of things," the family member that was not currently transformed admitted. "Maybe then I'd have some idea what to call myself right now, because 'Tentomon' is a bit confusing at the moment."

The four of them looked over to Davey, the only digimon to go with that so far, and considered the topic. "Do you have any idea what you want for a name? We barely use Koshiro's," Kae Izumi noted as she poked her other son with one of her larger main limbs.

"Now I'm half tempted to suggest letting him use Koshiro," Masami suggested jokingly. "That way someone is using it."

"I don't think I want to be that much of a clone," Tentomon joined in on the joke. "Although it is a topic to consider if we do make this a common thing like some of the families." That shifted their gaze to where the larger blue corvid was facing off against a pangolin monster to the shock of the Inoue family. "I think Yolei's family might have an issue with resorting to violence to deal with uncomfortable situations."

Hiroaki Ishida shifted some of his feathers deliberately. "I'm fairly sure that's my fault," Skarmory said from right next to him. He was currently a lot more robotic than his pokemon, but given he was a bird digimon that still wasn't too visually different.

"I think you might look more like a normal bird than he does," Matt grumbled, the new Gabumon alternated between basically hiding in his pelt and trying to look like he didn't care he was wearing it. Hiroaki was currently a Jazamon, with silver colored metal for most of his body, a purple and quite sharp beak, actual wings instead of the claw-wings two of the other digimon birds present had, little blue lights all over him, and a beam weapon in his mouth.

"I'm not sure how to take that," he grumbled, and the way that required a set of speakers instead of lungs was very strange. "I'm not even seeing things like a biological creature." They paused a moment at that statement. "Okay, talking like a robot is apparently a side effect of this."

"I think from what Patamon's said before that minds working differently is common with this," Gabumon, the not transformed one, noted. "I'm actually a little worried what it is like. Agumon suggested we should try an all human day too."

"I am not trying that one," Skarmory huffed good naturedly. "Actually, I probably can't try that given my medical issues."

"Are you doing better?" Matt asked with some concern. "I mean, we've actually been lucky enough that you haven't had to really do anything."

"I've been told to try and reduce my stress level a bit, but overall there is clear improvement," the metal bird pokemon informed them. "My overall combat conditioning is worse, but that is to be expected. I likely will not be a regular battle pokemon again, but I might be able to handle low stakes fights later."

"Hiroaki," a flower-lizard digimon said as she approached with a pair of Patamon and one of the few natural pokemon present. "This is strange isn't it?"

"Being a monster probably is a bit less unusual in your case," he noted to his ex-wife. "I've got something that sounds off in my internal components and I've been half tempted to get someone to open me up to see if they can spot anything."

"My feet are roots and these leaves work. I'm pretty sure I could write an entire story on what being a plant feels like from just this," Nancy Takaishi replied.

"Mom's a Floramon," T.K. supplied from right next to his twin. "And being the same as Patamon just means now I'm worried that he's going to get into a fight with me."

"I'm starting to think that being my trainer's partner wouldn't have been as great," Sneasel grumbled. "You're a lot more overprotective right now, and honestly I'm starting to worry that I've always just supposed to have been straight up teaching you stuff."

"I'm sort of wishing that I'd decided to join in and try out being a pokemon," Patamon grumbled. "Maybe then he wouldn't be sticking so close."

Yuuko Kamiya was currently a long thin mammal digimon that was white with purple markings called a Kudamon. She also was completely wrapped around her massive empty cartridge made of shining gold that was the most important thing she currently owned. That was a very peculiar feeling to suddenly have, and something completely unfamiliar from before she had become a monster just a short time ago.

"Huh, so this is what being a cat is like," her husband noted with an interested look towards her to see if she had settled enough to actually discuss the change yet. He was a golden lion cub wearing a golden collar with a big green gemstone that Agumon had called 'Liollmon'. "How is being a... ferret? Um, whatever you are."

"Something like that," she admitted and shifted to look over at her daughters. The two cat monsters were both still nervous about this whole event, and clearly uncertain about their parents' reaction to being digimon. "Now that the fighting is over, do you think we could find Gatomon's tail ring?"

"We should be able to," Kari confirmed with a huff. "I just wish we could have done something about that before.

"Well now I know a lot better just how bad of an idea your plan had been," Yuuko rather harshly informed her younger daughter, and to show her point she flipped her cartridge to be more visible. "This is mine," she firmly informed all of them, instinctively saying the final word strongly. "I can barely even think about losing it, let alone the crazy thought of giving it up."

"I'm not sure my tail ring was that important," Gatomon noted uneasily.

"Does anyone want to participate in a combat tournament?" Agumon suddenly asked as her sons arrived. "Because somehow Yolei's mom and Joe's dad have both decided to have one on their own."

"There are enough pokemon around at this point that we have too much interest to just say 'no'," Tai complained. "Honestly, I'm probably going to join just to see what fighting is like before I'm just doing office work."

Yuuko looked over at her husband, who nervously looked back, and then sighed. "With that reasoning maybe we all should at least try it," she admitted, to her sons' dismay.

Sora watched with considerable disbelief as Tai's mother smacked Joe with part of a giant golden bullet. "I feel like this is something that's our fault somehow," 'Smog' said to her. The lizard monster had attempted to explain who she was, and while Sora could mostly understand it did leave her with some questions.

"I'm fairly sure that this is just going to be normal now," she said to the Salazzle. "Are you really here and in your world at the same time?"

"Yes, and that honestly sounds terrifying to me," 'Smog' replied with a shudder. "My mom wasn't sure if it would work, but Giratina said it should. Which did not make me feel better about trying it, but given my brothers' profession I needed to check at least."

"So, you're a clone of this other Serperior that shares her mind?" her mom asked, also a Biyomon so there were quite a few pink birds present.

"Not a clone, uh, actually practically the exact opposite of a clone. Instead of being a different person made with the same body I'm a different body made for the same person," the black and purple pokemon said clearly just as confused by her explanation as the rest of them. "It is apparently a hereditary condition."

"Wait, snake eyes and his pokemon are the same person?" HackBiyomon asked with a totally confused chirp.

"No, my brothers are two people that fuse into one Legendary pokemon," Smog sighed, clearly familiar with the question. "We haven't gone back further yet, but this whole thing probably means our family tree is a bit stranger than is typical even for civilized pokemon."

"Okay, that's got to be really strange. I've seen some of the documents we have on how odd pokemon family trees can get," her sister that worked for Upload noted with a good amount of horror.

"Are you thinking that your brothers are the way they are because they were destined to be a 'Legendary pokemon'?" Sora's father asked the Investigator's pokemon curiously. His transformation was the strangest out of everyone so far, because he had actually turned into a Palmon like what Mimi's partner/clone normally was. His appearance was different from that other digimon's, so there was no real chance of mistaking one from the other given his red leafed flower and darker green body, but the similarity was strange to see.

"I just mentioned the brother of our god of time, causality can work in funny ways in my world without being that close to the source," Smog grumbled. "I'm thinking it, but I'm far too afraid of the answer to ask anyone who would know."

"Okay, yeah, I can see why being able to actually get an answer for that can be worse," Sora said at that idea, with a look at her own wings to contemplate why exactly her clone sisters existed. "I'm not sure I really liked learning how they picked us to be Digi-'destined'. Even if I didn't really understand it back when we first got the explanation. Back then it was kind of a bigger concern that Kari had been taken over by some strange digital god."

"Kari what?" HackBiyomon asked, and Sora cringed as she quickly explained those events. "Ah, that kind of makes sense." Her sister now clearly wanted to change topics and Sora hoped that the younger digimon could find one. "Smog, I have a bit of an awkward question Upload wants to ask your trainer."

"Alright, what do you want to know?" the Poison/Fire type asked critically.

"What has happened to the Upload Porygon? Are they okay, and..." Sora's little sister trailed off, but she was fairly sure everyone had a good idea what she wasn't outright asking.

"Honestly? Roberts has been trying to stop other people from stealing them, and getting them back from successful thefts, ever since you guys left our world," Smog rather harshly replied. "If it was up to Jack and the rest of us that actually fought you? We'd already be sending the ones we've still got here to ensure that a proper exile of those involved occurred." The high poly reptile sighed. "So hold onto some hope, if it gets much worse then we will probably need your help getting them here even against orders."

He'd made a good effort to avoid it, but after looking just like the rest of his family for an entire day Gomamon was quite sure he was doomed to be yet another Kido medical professional. He was the only one out of said family to sit out the sudden conflict for the strongest monster that he did not entirely understand, but he had still been just another otter pokemon among the group.

"Well, I hope you're up for field work," TyranoGazimon grumbled from where she had been watching the events with Crusher, who according to the patchwork digimon was her sister. "Your brothers look beat, but given they lost that's to be expected."

Joe just glared at her, the other Floatzel had made it to the semifinals before being knocked out by Yolei's mother, who topped off that victory by evolving into a massive bird covered in metal armor. Then the now Flying/Steel typed pokemon discovered that Cody's sandstorms didn't care about that supposed protection, something that had most of them uneasy as they didn't think anyone had actually told the temporary bird pokemon about that little fact. "I just need a minute," his twin brother grumbled.

The digimon turned pokemon shook his head and sighed. "Joe, all of you probably could deal with this just by getting around to that food we put off for this mess," Gomamon roughly told his family. "Thing is, most of our participants haven't even been given a proper checkup in their current form. I for one don't want to find out that Yolei's mom has some new problem because she evolved like this."

"She should be fine, assuming that this isn't a case of a human with pokemon background again," Tyra dryly responded to that complaint.

"From what I overheard she was a bit rougher in her youth," their father said at that. The Buizel looked rather scuffed, but had managed well enough for his first time fighting. "Overall though I can see the appeal to that kind of combat, and how it would result in your world having a well developed medical profession."

Tyra huffed at that statement. "Come on sis, we have to admit we're kinda more pokemon world inhabitants than digimon anymore," Crusher rumbled jokingly. "This is the first time I've even been to the digimon world since our revival."

"Oh. I must admit I'm still a bit confused on what the exact difference is there," the older yet less evolved pokemon admitted. "That was the other option right?"

"Please don't ask to switch now," Joe grumbled. "We can try that later if you really want to feel the difference. I want to eat, not have to explain yet another monster body to someone."

Mimi sat between her parents and her team while quite happy with how the picnic had gone. They had a nice day of visiting one of the so far untouched parts of the digimon world, been able to talk with everyone without any big problems hanging over them, had a good safe set of fights that honestly made it a bit easier to handle all the pokemon around, and now was able to have a good meal with everyone.

"Granma, look, acid fruit!" Grimer burbled at her mother, to Mimi's slight embarrassment.

"Yes, it smells good doesn't it?" the Oddish replied easily with a nod towards the foreign fruit. Her mother and father had taken that little issue far too well in Mimi's opinion, and had spent most of the day so far spoiling her little blob. "Is this something we can eat without being like this?"

"Well, they said I shouldn't try it," Palmon, still a Bellossom, noted. "So I think it might be poisonous to most people. Although Yolei's mom has a plate of them."

"Steel types are able to handle poisonous stuff too," Mimi reminded her sister, and carefully grabbed one of them to hand to her Grimer. "Careful, we don't want to make a mess."

"Make mess, clean mess," the smaller toxic blob sighed before taking the fruit. "Thank you!"

With a shift of her sludge that matched with a shake of a solid creature's head she grabbed another of the fruit for herself. It tasted really toxic, which was good for her current body but clearly not safe for most creatures. Everyone else was having a wide variety of digimon and pokemon dishes, mostly the former provided by a number of food places that had survived the war. It was a nice reminder that the digimon world still had its own people and places that were unique experiences.

"Are we going to have to be like this to visit Grimer safely?" her father suddenly asked, and Mimi started to worry they had misunderstood how Grimer met her.

"No, you both still have the energy to keep yourself safe from our toxic fumes even when we're not that careful," she replied while trying to keep from sounding nervous. "It is just people who don't have that he isn't ready to be around just yet. We're still working on that."

"When are you going back to the pokemon world?" her mother asked. "I want to see if we can find some time to watch one of your contests."

"Oh, I've asked Amy and Ann about that. They said that I should wait another week or two first," Mimi happily answered, glad for the minor change in topic. "There is apparently a bit of a gap between contests in the region right now, so they're taking a break themselves. I guess the season technically moves to the nearby region for a bigger show, but they don't want to travel that far yet."