I marched out of Principal Verden's office, my eyes locked into a glare. By the time I got home, it'd died down, but my anger at everything kept burning cold.
"Keep an eye on the house," Uncle told me as he passed me by the door. "Your cousin will be back in a bit, so don't try anything. And something's weird with the TV. Try getting it working again."
"Sure thing," I told him as he grumbled at me before heading to his car. He was going out with my Aunt. I didn't know where they were going, I didn't really care either.
At the very least I had time to talk to Gazimon without anyone else around. I turned the TV on only to find it working fine. Whatever problem he had, it was gone now. I shrugged and headed up to my room.
"Welcome back," Gazimon greeted me as I lifted the laptop. "So how did your plan go?" they asked as I looked up at the ceiling. I didn't need to look at the screen to know what Gazimon's face looked like.
And I had been so sure of my plan when I had walked in.
"Thank you for making time to see me Principal Verden," I greeted the older man as politely as I could. I had also changed my clothes for the day. Instead of the 'band shirt and ripped jeans' Coach K had pointed out, I was in the nicest burgundy shirt I had as well as my only non-ripped pair of jeans.
"Don't worry about it Mr. Maurati. I always have time for my students, especially when they come talk to me directly. Now please, take a seat," the older man greeted me with a full smile that made his gray mustache look just a little bit bigger. "Now, what is this about?"
"It's about Coach K sir," I explained as a dark shadow fell over the Principal's face for a second. "He's been physically abusing the members of the American Football team."
Instead of looking stunned or angry or anything I would have expected, Principal Verden sighed and took off his glasses.
"I have to say, I am very disappointed in you MR. Mauranti," he rubbed the bridge of his nose and set his glasses down on his desk. "When Coach K came to me yesterday and told me that a student had attacked him and was planning on framing him, I couldn't believe it. And yet here you are, weaving your lies, unaware that I already knew all about them."
"But sir, it's the truth. I have proof," I reached into my pocket and tried to pull out the phone I'd borrowed just for this. I grimaced as I caught Principal Verden flinching while my hand was in my pocket. Coach K must have fed him the lie about the knife too. "It's right here on this phone."
"No," He said plainly as my hand dropped. "I will not sit here and have you slander the best Coach this school has seen in years and one of my most trusted subordinates. If Coach K hadn't asked to handle your discipline himself, I would have you in suspension or worse."
"I see. So you're not even going to look at my proof then," I growled as I put my phone right back into my pocket. "Then we're done here. Have a nice day sir."
I walked out before he could say a word.
"Wow, he totally took that Coach's side." Gazimon grumbled while eating a slice of ham with their claws.
After telling Gazimon my plan the night before, we had made some more discoveries about both the rebel drive as well as the PC that had come in the mail.
Mostly that the PC had come with a program to create 3d models that could be imported into the digihome for Gazimon to use. As well as a program to convert raw data into food for Gazimon. It was more than enough to convince us that the rebel drive and the PC had come from the same person.
"So now what do we do?" I asked as Gazimon sat back on the luxurious couch I had made for them.
"Well, I've been looking some stuff up on that internet of yours," they explained as they sliced off another piece of ham. It was another thing we had gotten into the night before. The PC came with its own browser that was accessible through the dark void with the glass roads that was the laptop itself. Gazimon had apparently spent most of the day on it while I had been in school. "And I think I, oh right, almost forgot."
They set the ham down and I leaned in.
"What's up?"
"I was looking up some stuff on the internet and noticed that you humans are really obsessed with putting individuals into all these categories, especially gender. So I spent some time looking into that stuff because it seemed interesting and I figured it would be easier for you that way," She swung her arms around like they were scales. "And after weighing my options, I figured that I consider myself more female than anything else."
"Is that right?" Gazimon gave me a quick nod.
"Yeah, you humans are way more into the whole 'individuality' thing then us digimon," she laughed, "I mean, every single one of you guys has your own name? How do you even keep track of that?"
"So you're saying that you're okay with just being called 'Gazimon'?" I asked her only for Gazimon to raise one of her claws and move it back and forth.
"Now I never said that," she corrected me, "I just need some time to come up with one. Maybe something based on my old number?"
"Number?" I asked.
"Oh, yeah it would be pretty confusing if everyone in the village was just called Gazimon, so we all used numbers to keep track of who was who. I was number 21."
"We'll, I'm sure you'll think of something."
"Don't worry I will, but enough of that. Back to what I was talking about. I have an idea about how we can deal with Coach K."
"I'm all ears," I told her as she started to explain.
"Well, if telling the people in charge of Coach K didn't work, what if we told more people?"
"Explain," I leaned in close to my screen.
"We find a time or place where a bunch of people will be watching a screen, and play the video in front of them," she explained. "I know how to do it, I tried it this morning."
"What did you do?"
"I used the network connection to access that TV thing downstairs, and I found a place where I could have put in data to make it play something."
"Impressive, but also don't do that again. Last thing I need is Uncle getting angry that his stuff is breaking down."
"Don't worry, I made sure not to do any permanent damage," she reassured me, "but you see the plan right?"
"Yeah I see your plan. I like it too," I told her as I imagined the looks on everyone's faces while watching Coach K overseeing the beatings.
"Told you, now all we need is a big enough venue for it to…"
Gazimon was interrupted by the sound of something knocking on my door.
"Hey there Gabi, can I come in?"
I slammed the laptop closed as I turned to the door. I was so sure that I was alone in the house right now.
"Come in," I said, like I had a choice in the matter. The doorknob turned as my cousin barged into my room. She looked me over and looked disappointed, like she had been expecting me to be doing something she could use to get me into trouble.
Until she noticed the laptop that is.
"Oh snap, Gabi, did you steal this?" She gave me a look of faux outrage before walking over to it and looking at it. "Do mom and dad know you have this?"
I sighed as my cousin Luna ran her finger over the top of the laptop. She was either my Aunt and Uncle's favorite child or only child, depending if you counted me or not.
She'd always been a pain, even before my parent's passing. But ever since I started living with them, she'd become nearly unbearable. Always on the lookout for ways to get me in trouble for something. It didn't help that her parents always took her side by default.
She was the main reason I stayed mostly either in my room or out of the house.
"It came in the mail for me, they know I got a package from some friends of my parents. They just didn't bother asking what was in it." I explained, hoping she would just leave it at that. Of course she didn't.
"I wonder if mom and dad would be okay if they knew you had this?"
"What do you want for your silence?" I cut to the chase, wanting to get this over with.
"Don't go to the game," I blinked at her strange request, "I don't care if you stay home, or go out to the beach or whatever. Just don't let me catch you at the game."
"Okay," I looked at her, waiting to see if this was a joke or trick.
"I'm serious. I'm taking a date there and the last thing I need is for him to learn I'm related to such a scrubby little dweeb like you."
"I guess that's fine," I told her before she smirked.
"And it's not like you're going to lose out on too much. Most people go to the games with their friends, and you don't have any of those."
"I didn't really want to go anyway," I tried to argue only for her to let out a laugh.
"That's rich, everyone wants to go to those games. Besides the beach, they're the closest thing we have to entertainment in this dinky little town," She huffed before walking to the door. She stopped once she was under the doorway. She looked back at me with an annoyed glare. "Also dad told me to remind you that you need to fix whatever's up with the TV."
"Already fixed it," I told her as I tried to not think about the source of the problem who was currently hidden away under a laptop screen.
I waited a few seconds to make sure she was gone. Before opening up the laptop again.
"Wow, talk about a piece of work," Gazimon smirked as our eyes met. "But a surprisingly useful piece of work."
"Useful, how was any of that useful?" I asked her as Gazimon started chuckling.
"She might be annoying, but she did bring me some useful information," She gave me an innocent look. "Gabi, what does your school's football field look like?"
I blinked and tried to follow her logic. What did the field look like…?
Oh.
"Well there's two big stands with a great view of a huge video screen if that's what you want to know," I told Gazimon as she grew a matching smirk, our minds now on the same page.
We both leaned in as I opened a word processor and started writing out the plan.
The next day I looked out the window of the classroom over to the football field. I quickly looked at the clock overhead and started counting down in my head. As soon as I reached zero, the big screen flared to life for a split second. Had anyone else been watching at the time, they might have just been able to make out a gray rabbit before the screen died again.
I smiled to myself as I got back to work. It was all going according to plan.