Gazimon stood in the dead center of the small arena, her eyes closed and taking slow careful breaths. She took one last deep breath, opened her eyes, and almost unhinged her jaws.
"Paralyzing Bre…" an explosion of yellowish gas erupted from Gazimon's mouth as she collapsed to the ground. I rushed over, got to the edge of the cloud, waited for the sparkling particulars to dissipate, and then made it to Gazimon.
"You alright?" I crouched down, watching her eye as it twitched a few times before meeting mine. She vaguely garbled a few words which vaguely sounded like 'I'm fine' before trying to push herself up. I almost reached down to help before remembering Gazimon's request not to do so.
She got to her feet, cleared her throat a bit, and then took a couple of deep breaths. After that were a couple of arm swings to make sure the paralytic particles hadn't overwhelmed her natural immunity to them.
"Okay, let's try that one more time," She announced before closing her eyes again.
Right, time to step in.
"Actually, I think I need to head out at this point." I pointed out, Gazimon slowly opening a single eye and staring right at me. She'd agreed to only practice her attack while I was around to help if something went wrong. "If I wait any more, we risk my aunt and uncle finding out about the laptop."
"Fine," she grumbled as we started heading to the exit, "but you owe me for this."
"What does your little cat rabbit heart desire?" Gazimon rolled her eyes at me as we walked out onto the laptop's desktop.
"You still have a few more of those little flan things right?" Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. We walked down the glass roads until we reached a program at the very bottom.
"I have one mini flan left and I was looking forward to eating it tomorrow," I pointed my nose up at her and huffed, exaggerating my movements for effect. Gazimon just ignored me and activated the Data to protein converter.
"I bet Roxie would let me have her last flan," Pagumon argued as the two of us appeared in my room. I was still getting used to the idea of changing what I called her depending on the form, but I think I had it down now.
"That's because Roxie has thoroughly placed you in her 'cute thing I need to spoil' category, while I know of your true, devious ways," I reached down to scoop Pagumon up in my arms only for her to use her strange ear arms to hit the ground and bounce away.
"It's fine I can walk on my own…" we both stared at each other for a while, Pagumon breaking off first before I took a single long step. She glared at me before bouncing forward three times to catch up to me. Each bounce was painfully slow, and I could hear the grunt of effort each time she did it. I then took another step, which was followed by three more bounces. We repeated the cycle one more time, finally reaching the halfway point from my desk to my door.
"So you're sure you can walk on your own or…"
"Just carry me."
Several hours and one eaten flan later, I set Pagumon down on my bed before laying down next to her. I let out a sigh as I traced images in the ceiling above. After a few silent moments, I heard something shuffling next to me. I glanced over and spotted Pagumon making her way toward me. Our eyes met and she raised her ear/arms.
I braced myself for impact as Pagumon bounced herself onto my chest. As it turned out, I didn't need to bother.
"Wow, you weigh nothing as Pagumon," I let all my muscles relax as Pagumon shuffled around until she was also watching the ceiling.
"So… do you think Laura's going to be a problem from now on?" I grimaced as Pagumon got to the heart of the matter. We'd had a run-in with my annoyance of a cousin while Pagumon and I had split the mini flan. If it wasn't for her quick thinking, Pagumon probably would have been discovered.
"I don't think so. All she knows is that I have a laptop she's agreed to keep quiet about, and a weird plush toy," something warm and fleshy smacked me in the face. It didn't hurt, but it was unexpected. I glanced down and saw that it'd been one of Pagumon's ear/arms.
"I am not weird," She huffed as gently pinched her ears with my fingers. I put just enough force to move them around a little without causing any pain.
"No, but it is weird for someone my age to have one. Especially a cute, fuzzy, little… would you say you're a purple or gray colored blob?"
"Purplish-gray," she answered before rolling so far up our eyes met. "So… any thoughts on our next target?"
I shook my head and sighed again. Despite my big declaration from a week ago, I still had no idea who to go after. Coach K had been right that the world was filled with people worse than him, but they tended to keep to the shadows. The only reason I even knew about Coach K's abuse was my friendship with Francis.
Trying to find another evildoer to expose to justice without a personal connection was going to be tricky. And it had to be without a personal connection. The less connection they had with me, the harder it would be for the authorities to pin things on me.
Because for as much as I was doing things for the sake of justice, there was no denying it. There was no chance my actions weren't stupidly illegal.
"No, not really. Why are you asking? I thought we agreed to wait until you had Paralyzing Breath figured out?" I pointed out as Pagumon pulled her ears back before turning around and crossing them across herself.
"I think I'm getting close to figuring it out. Besides, everyone back home figured it out pretty quick, why shouldn't I?" She huffed and turned back around. I let my head hit the pillow as her words played over in my head.
"What was it like?"
"What was what like?"
"You're home."
"You mean the digital world? I already told you about that."
Ah yes, a whole world of data somehow connected to the internet. I hadn't believed Pagumon when she'd first told me about it. But after hearing her out, I was forced to admit the digimon had to be coming from somewhere and if one of them was claiming another reality, then who was I to judge?
But that wasn't what I was asking about.
"I meant… you called them your tribe right? You don't really talk about them all that often." The two of us fell silent for a while and for a second I was worried I had overstepped. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't…"
"My tribe had a village in the middle of a desert," she quickly cut me off, "we picked a high spot on top of this big rock overlooking an oasis. It was our main home base, where we slept we stayed when we weren't out on patrol or on hunts. The sun was always out, so we built plenty of tents to hide under for when noon hit. If you got stuck outside of the village, you had to just hope you were lucky and close to a rock formation or something."
I could almost picture it, the little collection of tents on top of a stone hill. It looked pretty homely. Thinking back, it was a little weird that Pagumon hadn't reacted that strongly to the ocean when she'd first seen it.
"My best friend was number 16," oh it looked like she was still going, "the two of us did everything together. We hatched around the same time, got into trouble together, we even evolved from Pagumon into Gazimon at the same time. We weren't completely the same… 16 figured out Paralyzing Breath on their first try, but I was better at hunting with my claws."
Part of me wanted to ask about the whole 'hatch' thing, but Pagumon's sudden stillness warded me off.
"16's gone now. We were on a hunt together when we got attacked by a Tuskmon. It chased us into some rocks and… he wasn't fast enough. I kind of just wandered the desert for a while and then the next thing I knew… I was catching you from falling to your death."
"It was that recent?"
"Yeah… I guess that's why I kind of jumped into helping you with your plan. As long as I had something to do, I could concentrate on that instead of 16. But now… with us taking this long break… I don't have as much to worry about anymore, so I can't stop thinking about them."
All it took was two sniffles for me to sit up and reach my arms around Pagumon. They hiccuped for a second, before looking up at me. I didn't look back, instead focusing on the wall right in front of me. And I just kept focusing on that wall as Pagumon kept crying. After a while, she fell asleep.
She was supposed to go back to the digihome where she had her own room with her own bed but… It would be fine for one night. I leaned back and let myself fall asleep.
"Goodnight Pagumon."
On the other side of town from two slumbering rebels, a young man clacked away on his computer. He should have been asleep as well, resting in order to be ready for the trials of the next day. But he could not wait. The moon had risen, and with it his power.
The night sang to him, fueling his mind as his hands danced across the keys and his mouth clicked and dragged.
"This will be my best game yet," he whispered to himself as he took a second to adjust his glasses and inspect the 3d model he'd commissioned. After a quick look over, he nodded and placed it into the giant folder of game assets he'd collected over the years. Now all he had to do was stick in his engine and start making animations for it.
He cricked his neck, the blue light from his screen illuminating the anime posters and figures behind him.
He clicked on the program to receive a small pop-up. Looked like there was a new version of the software. He shrugged his shoulders and clicked on the 'okay' button without a second thought.
Now, had this happened in the middle of the day, the man probably would have remembered that this software did not do updates this way, you had to go to the website to get the latest version. He might have also noticed the borders and text in the pop-up window not being the same as the ones used by the program. He would have almost certainly noticed the handful of spelling and grammar errors in the long message.
But alas, it was the middle of the night, and the lack of sleep was beginning to affect him. He only noticed something was wrong as the pop-up window turned red and began to expand to fill the entire screen.
"What is this?" He jumped out of his chair and gripped the edge of his monitor. His eyes darted around, looking for an 'x' to click to banish the window. The only thing he saw were the jet-black words that appeared on the screen.
"Wait is this… oh no it is! I've been ransomwared!" He shouted into the night, awakening the rest of his family.
I woke up feeling warm, with something wrapping around me. I opened my eye a crack and saw long tanned arms. I must have fallen asleep last night.
Last night…
I felt my face heat up as I remembered the night before. Had I really cried in front of Gabi like that? What was I thinking? I felt like I just wanted to crawl into some little hole and never come out. He'd never take me seriously ever again.
… Oh who was I kidding? Gabi wasn't that kind of person. He wouldn't hold something like that against me. He actually reminded me a little of 16…
I closed my eyes and tried to banish the images that flashed in my head. An outstretched paw, a giant row of teeth right in my face, a single chance to save my friend wasted.
No, I couldn't focus on that. I needed to pull myself together and master Paralyzing Breath, the faster I did that, the better.
"Gabi you up yet? There's something I need to talk to you about."
But first, I had to wiggle my way out of sight. I'd only 'met' Laura a few times and I had no desire to have an actual conversation with her.