Chapter 2: First Time for everything
I didn't sleep so well, as expected. I woke up at around 2 in the morning. I was overwhelmed with thoughts and worries about my future with Herpetomon. Such thoughts as "I wonder what his other forms are like.", "What is the real purpose of him being here?", and "How am I going to hide him when he digivolves?" floated through my head. Even though these thoughts clouded my mind I didn't come up with a reasonable conclusion to any of them. When I eventually settled down, I laid staring at the ceiling. While I was staring blankly I realized to my horror that my room was silent. I became flustered, What if Herpetomon left or disappeared or something? I couldn't see anything in the pitch black shade of the room, so I called out to him.
"Herpetomon, Herpetomon!" I practically yelled. I hadn't been with him for long, but just the thought of losing him made me weak. I needed to hear him, to make sure he wasn't part of some elaborate dream. I scrambled out of bed and turned the lights on. Thankfully Herpetomon was lying sprawled on my floor. He woke up after all of the commotion. Without even realizing it I just dropped on my knees and hugged him.
"Wha, Brendan, What's going on, what happened?" He asked.
"I thought…I thought I lost you, I thought you might have left me alone." I was practically sobbing on him. I pulled myself together and sat across from him. He looked at me with a very understanding and caring expression on his face.
"Oh, that's it, well trust me you don't have to worry about that. This is a partnership we have here. You make me stronger and I'm here to help fulfill your destiny" he explained in his suave and deep voice. "We need to trust each other if this is going to work. Just being around you makes me feel complete, like I have a real purpose so don't worry about me leaving you. You're stuck with me." He said with a smirk. I was amazed at his wisdom, but what he said brought me to my senses.
"Right, I'm sorry, I just needed to realize that. From now on we're partners and friends till the end." I proclaimed. I realize how corny that sounded, but I meant it. Then, after all of the din I heard a knock at my door. I quickly gestured for Herpetomon to hide in the closet. I opened the door a crack to find Mom and Dave peering in.
"Brendan what happened? We heard yelling." Mom asked nervously.
"Huh, oh yeah, I, uh fell out of bed and hit my head on the floor." Was the only excuse I could come up with.
"But why were you yelling?" Dave asked incriminatingly
"Because hitting one's head on the floor tends to hurt" I said jokingly. "Don't worry about it."
"OK, fine, we're going back to bed." She said as they dragged themselves away. I shut and locked the door and Herpetomon came out.
"Whew, close call." I sighed. It was mutually understood that we were going back to bed too, so I got in bed and Herpetomon lay down on his impromptu bed.
"Herpetomon?" I said
"Yeah," he responded
"'Till the end" I said
"'Till the end" He replied
This time I slept until 6:30, which is about my usual time. Mom and Dave were still asleep and so was Herpetomon. I let him sleep and began making us waffles in the kitchen. Not frozen waffles, but real hot Belgian waffles. As I added the ingredients I noticed it was an abnormally dark and shady November morning. When I had added the ingredients and began mixing I could hear Herpetomon waking up in my room.
"Huh, Brendan where'd you go, Hello?" I could hear him scrambling around my room.
"Herpetomon I'm out here" I called to him. "It's OK, my parents are asleep you can come out for a while."
"Oh, duh." he chuckled as he came out of my room through the den and into the kitchen. "Pretty nice house." he commented "What'cha makin'?"
"I'm "makin'" some waffles" I told him. "Hungry?" I joked
"What did I tell you yesterday? Oh, I get it, ha ha ha." He accentuated his laughing sarcastically. Beep Beep Beep, the waffles were done. I gave the waffles to Herpetomon.
"Here take these to my room, Mom and Dave should be down soon. I'll be in in a sec." I told him. He hurried back to my room and I cleaned up the mess from the waffles. As I thought Mom and Dave came down a few minutes after.
"What are you up to?" Mom asked.
"Nothing" I said "Just making waffles". She looked at me insinuatingly, but I just slinked back into my room. Herpetomon was half way through the first waffle already. I sat and ate with him. They were perfect, as usual. When I finished and cleaned up I asked "What should we do today? What do Digimon like to do, besides eating?"
"I don't know about other Digimon, but I like reading and exercising." Said Herpetomon.
I myself was an avid reader, so I asked "What do you like to read?" We continued to have a discussion on various books and authors. Then I showed him my collection of books he was impressed. We just spent the morning reading and talking.
At around 5:00 at night we were just hanging around my room. Herpetomon was intently thumbing through the dictionary and I was drawing some random sketches. Suddenly Herpetomon jumped to his feet and stared at the wall.
"Herpetomon what's going on?" I asked. He didn't respond. He just stared blankly at the wall. Then the strangest thing happened Herpetomon's eyes actually began to change color. Slowly his eyes changed from a deep dark brown to a bright almost luminescent green. Then a second surprise, my D-Gadget was rumbling on my desk, it turned to the analyzer channel.
"Brendan," Herpetomon said sternly "A Digimon is breaking through to this world."
"What! Right now?" I asked "Oh, I get it, you can sense when a Digimon Bioemerges. OK lead me there, if it's evil we have to stop it." I grabbed the D-Gadget and locked the door. "I just hope no one comes to my door." Herpetomon had opened the window and was ready to jump. I went to the window, Herpetomon held me around the waist, we jumped, and landed roughly on the ground.
"OK now bring me there" I said. "Jump us over there" Herpetomon was still staring in the direction of the Digimon. Without turning he said gruffly "I can't carry you there, you'll have to keep up."
"Oh, no problem" I said as I began stretching. I'm no athlete, but I'm built for speed. "Now Let's go!" I yelled. We broke into a sprint. Herpetomon and I both ran with long leaping strides. We ran down Merchant Street heading towards an old abandoned factory in town. I wasn't too worried about Herpetomon being seen because he was running so fast and darkness set in early because of the coming winter.
"It's going to appear around here somewhere." Herpetomon said. We were in the large yard in front of the factory. Sure enough, after he said that the familiar fog shot up from the ground and I took a few steps closer to Herpetomon. Then from deep in the fog I heard a sneering chuckle. Soon after a form was rapidly approaching from inside the fog. I checked the D-Gadget just as the Digimon became visible. He was a small pinkish colored Digimon with long ears that were almost wing-like. The most disturbing feature of this Digimon was his eyes he had squinty cruel looking eyes.
"Hey Herpetomon, that's Gazimon. Watch out this guy's trouble. He's a virus rookie with a punky attitude. Careful of his Electric Stun attack."
"Out of my way!" The Gazimon yelled as he approached Herpetomon.
"Sorry, Punk" Herpetomon said smoothly as he dodged a swing bye Gazimon. He was on the defensive as the Gazimon ferociously swung and slashed at Herpetomon. Then Herpetomon turned the table, he grabbed the Gazimon's arm and swung him right into the factory wall.
"Alright nice move" I called to him. He didn't reply, he was "In-the-zone"
Herpetomon was approaching the cloud of dust where he tossed Gazimon. Then I heard Gazimon call his attack from inside the cloud "Electric Stun Blast." Suddenly a large sizzling ball of electric energy was crackling towards Herpetomon. "Herpetomon look out!" I yelled, but he had probably planned out his next move already. Sure enough when the sphere was just a few feet in front of him he performed another one of those great jumps over towards Gazimon. "Lizard Claw" Herpetomon called out as he plummeted towards Gazimon. I would finally get to see his attack. As Herpetomon fell his hands were engulfed in a strange green energy. "Oh No" the Gazimon cried as Herpetomon's claws combined with the green energy slashed him through. The Digimon didn't necessarily bleed, but he disappeared into a cloud of red particles. Then as the red particles were floating around the air Herpetomon began to absorb this cloud of what I understood to be loose data. Since Digimon are all made up of Data then when one Digimon defeats another he can choose to absorb his opponents data, and if he chooses not to I guess it goes back to the Digital World. When Herpetomon was through absorbing the data he looked at me and his eyes were literally glowing green. Slowly though his eyes began to go back to brown.
"Herpetomon we'd better get out of here before this Digital field disappears." I told him.
"Right, let's go" he said. We began running back home.
"Herpetomon, when we get to the house you can jump into my room again and I'll sneak into the house." I instructed. We reached the house fairly quickly and he did as I was told and bound into my window. I had a harder job though I decided to sneak in the side door. I found, to my joy, that the kitchen was empty so I slipped into the kitchen, past the den and into my room.
"Nice work out there." I said, "Our first fight."
"No problem, it was too easy." He seemed totally different from that "Alert-mode" he was in before. I'm guessing that's just a Digimon's natural ability to detect when other Digimon are around, I decided not to pester him about it. It was probably common for him.
"That Digimon was looking for a Tamer wasn't he?" I asked
"It would appear that way" He said "Not all Digimon will be bad like that one though"
"Hmm. Maybe we could check out the Digimon before we just run in like that, see if he's evil or what." I was worried that we might unrightfully injure some well meaning Digimon. I looked over to Herpetomon who was lying on the floor and he was already asleep.
"Good idea" I said to myself. As I was getting ready for bed I realized that I hadn't seen Herpetomon on the Digimon analyzer yet. After all I didn't know everything about him. I took out the D-Gadget and turned to the Analyzer Channel and there was Herpetomon. "Let's see Rookie, Reptile type, I know all this, what about his attribute" I looked up and down the display and to my confusion found that Herpetomon was a Virus type. This was confusing because Virus types are mainly the evil Digimon, but I couldn't find much evil in Herpetomon's character. I figured "Just because he's a virus doesn't mean anything." So I shrugged it off and went to bed.