I woke up to banging on my wall. My ears twitched as my eyelids slowly fluttered awake. There was a blurry figure standing at my door, knocking on the wall. Guess that explained the noise.
"Gabi, is that you?" I let out a yawn, making sure to show off both my sharp teeth and long claws, "because if you woke me up and it's not the biggest emergency we've ever had, I'm scratching you."
Ten minutes later, I knew why Gabi had woken me up so early, and he remained unscratched.
"On one hand, I am nowhere near awake enough to deal with this," I groaned as I tried to rub the sleep out of my eyes as the TV showed the video again. A video which complicated my life to an unacceptable degree. "On the other hand, better to find out about this as early as possible. Gives us time to figure out what to do."
"What do you already have an idea?" Gabi laid down on the couch, his eyes glued to the screen.
"Normally, I'd say that coming up with the plan is your job but I can take the load this time around." I smirked as I sat back and thought this over. If William had just gone and revealed the first clue towards the existence of digimon, we would need to be more careful. All it took was for one person to wonder if the video was real and if the digital rebels could do the same for the idea to exist out there. And once it did, it would be impossible to put the genie back in the bottle. "Okay, so this is what I think we should do for now."
"Hit me with what you've got," Gabi jumped out of the couch and crouched down in front of the chair I was sitting in.
"Okay so the 'magic' hood you want to disguise yourself? That just went from a fun project to kill time with, to something you have to finish before we can start doing operations again."
"Okay makes sense. The harder it is for someone to figure out who I am, the better." He nodded his head despite my expectation. I figured he would have grumbled over having to wait until he was done with the hood. Maybe he figured he could finish it in a week, so it didn't matter anyway.
Or maybe I should just take him at his word.
"Other than that, the other big thing is that we're going to need to be a lot more careful with how we do things." He nodded again.
"Yeah, you're right. The next time we get caught in a trap like that, we might not get so lucky. William, for as crazy as he is, only wanted to teach us a lesson, not kill us." He brought up his hand and started staring at it. No… not his hand, he was looking right at his wrist. The one which didn't have the rebel drive on it.
"Do you think I could make myself a grappling hook?" I paused and stared at him. "I mean, think of how many times having a grappling hook to climb up the glass roads would have come in handy."
My first instinct was to call it a dumb idea, but I hesitated. I thought back to all of our times exploring PC's. How many times would something like a grappling hook have come in handy? The answer was way too many times to ignore.
"I guess you can work on one after you finish off with both hoods." I sighed as Gabi got a victory out of me. I barely opened my eye back up to see Gabi staring at me. "What?"
"What do you mean 'both hoods'? Why would I need two?" I smirked at his confused face.
"Come on, if you're making your own outfit, you can't just leave me out. I want one of those hoods too." I knew from my research that humans tended to be almost entirely reliant on sight for identifying individuals. If I had to guess, almost any human would find it impossible to distinguish me from any other Gazimon. Gabi might have been able to figure it out with enough time, but he was an outlier.
But for other digimon who could see data and understand in an instinctual way, identifying me would be a simple task. If we were going to be dealing with more eyes on us, I would need something to hide my identity too.
"Humm," Gabi leaned over me and narrowed his eyes. I leaned back as he reached down to touch my arm. He picked it up and brought it up to his face. I felt my face heat up as he became completely absorbed. He pressed his thumb through my fur, moving it up, and then moving it down. "Yeah I think your fur color would fit the outfit's colors."
I thought back a gulp as he let go of my arm and did that stupid smile. He walked away with a whole lot more confidence and peace than he'd shown when he first woke me up.
After sitting there for a minute or two, I turned the TV off and went off to find him working in his room. We had a whole day to ourselves, time to see how much progress we could make on our costumes. The faster we worked on them, the better. Never knew when they'd come in handy.
"Goblin Strike!" An explosion burst through the air as a short figure carrying an even smaller red and blue figure raced out of the dust cloud. A taller figure watched from a distance as the short green figure next to him aimed again.
The taller figure smirked as the short green monster threw another fireball. The little girl and her digimon partner screamed as the explosion hit right behind them and sent them flying forward.
They landed in a pile as the taller figure clutched the small white object in his hand. Ever since the object had appeared in front of him all those months ago, his life had changed completely. He'd gone from a low level thug in a small-time criminal organization which was never going anywhere, to a bigshot.
And it was all thanks to the little green goblin who always seemed up for whatever scheme or crime which came to the taller figure's head. Even one like this.
The taller figure walked up to the little girl who was clutching her partner digimon in her arms. There were tears in her eyes, but he didn't care, there was too much at risk. He needed to take care of her and her red-and-blue electric rat.
Finding out that other people out there had the little white devices had been a shock, but he could see the trouble it would bring. If more people had them and the monster partner which came with them, it was only a matter of time until the cops learned about them.
All it took was one cop willing to investigate, and he could kiss this easy life goodbye. He spent a few minutes fiddling with the device out of stress when he'd found a new function. The ability to search out and find other devices like it.
His path from there was clear. Especially when both of the other device holsters he'd found had turned out to be snot nosed kids. If the rate was one adult like him for every three kids, then this thing was going to get out there by the end of the week.
"Alright kid, hand the rat and the little toy over," he growled as the girl sniffed.
"No way, Elecmon's my friend and we're never splitting up and…" the taller figure rolled his eyes and reached down and yanked the unconscious rat and threw them to the floor. The little girl's device went flying in the violent motion and clattered to the floor. The taller figure stomped on it, shattering it into pieces.
"Goblimon, take care of it," he threw the rat to the ground as Goblimon walked up to it.
"You got it boss," the taller figure took a deep breath and blocked out the screams. It wasn't his first time doing something like this, but screaming children wasn't something you got used to.
A few minutes later, he and Goblimon emerged from the internet, having left the girl inside by herself. He should have taken care of her too, but there were some lines even he wouldn't cross. He shrugged, without the device to help her, she was stuck in there without any chance of getting out and squealing.
"That was so easy boss," Goblimon cheered as he grabbed a turkey plate he'd left on the plate earlier. He took a big bite before speaking through the food. "Didn't even need to digivolve that time."
Goblimon had a point. The first fight had needed them to transform into a larger, more powerful version of himself, but the second one had been an easy ride. Hopefully all of them would be like this. Speaking of…
"Let's see if we can find the next target… is this what I think it is?" The tall figure smirked as two points appeared on the small screen. A two-in-one deal? That sounded perfect. Especially since one of them was glowing purple. Must have been an important one.
Night fell on Dryden after a full day of work. We'd made some large strides over the course of the day. We'd managed to figure out a color combination which fit both my fur and Gabi's 'aesthetic' a while ago so now we were actually trying to make the clothes.
It was coming along pretty well. Once Gabi got a hang of figuring out what commands resulted in which changes, he was able to make most of the outfit. The pants, shirt, and gloves were all done. All that was left were the shoes, the hood, and the enhancements to make them act like armor.
"I hate shoes so much," Gabi groaned as the next episode of Robin started up. The last episode had hinted we were getting Guy of Gisborne, and as an evil wizard to boot. "Why do shoes have to be so different?"
"Because they're made of a completely different kind of material?" I smirked as the opening to the show began to play. "Don't worry, just a few more tries and you'll have shoe leather that doesn't make you want to cut your feet off."
He groaned again as I thought back to Gabi's first attempt at shoes. His goal was to wear them around the house for a while to see how they felt. He wore the things for a couple of minutes before taking them off as fast as possible. He'd never even made it to the first floor.
We watched three episodes of Robin and soon Gabi was fast asleep and I was pretending to be the same. Once I was sure the coast was clear, I headed out to the graveyard. As much as I wanted to feel bad about it, my lessons for Ghostmon had just become a whole lot more important.
I reached the graveyard without too much trouble and began the nightly ritual of searching for the young Digimon. As soon as I made it over the fence, I perked my ears up and listened out for the grave keeper. I could faintly hear the familiar crunching of his heavy boots coming from the far right, so that meant Ghostmon was probably to the left somewhere in the hills.
I crouched down on all fours and started making my way through the graves and hills until I could finally hear another far off sound that wasn't the gravekeeper stomping around. It was Ghostmon's familiar laughter… plus someone else's.
I broke out into a run, following the founds of laughter and hushed whispers which would have been lost on anyone with worse hearing. I ran up one last hill and froze at the top. Down below at the bottom of the hill was Ghostmon, floating over a young human laying down on the ground. In the kid's hand was a small white digivice.
This day just kept going, didn't it?