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Thank you and please enjoy
The Hybrid Tamer
-Chapter 2-
-Unknown Space-
Renamon withheld a groan as she slowly sat up, lifting a paw up to her head as a sharp pain shot through it. Normally she'd be able to shrug off pain rather easily and keep going, especially in the digital world since most wouldn't hesitate to use those fleeting few seconds one needed to recover to finish you off. But this pain was not one she was able to ignore so easily, it seemed to be coming straight from the inside of her skull, pounding at her brain like a sledgehammer, searing her very thoughts as they started to form.
…In layman's terms, she just woke up with the mother of all headaches.
Mercifully though, the pain dulled down after about a minute or so from absolutely excruciating to just rather painful, allowing Renamon to properly take in her surroundings. And boy was she not happy.
"I must be back in the digital world. Just wonderful, all that effort to break into the real world and finding the perfect Tamer… wasted." She said in a monotone voice, with just the slightest hints of detectable aggravation seeped in as she frowned. All around her, the area was seemingly changing between a wide open mountainous forest and a dank, dark, and crumbling sewer at random intervals. "Even better, I'm in a Glitched Zone."
Glitched Zones were just as they sounded, sections of the digital world that were extremely glitchy or bugged out, making it near impossible to properly navigate through them.
Renamon absolutely hated these places.
The last one she'd been stuck in had been stock full of collision errors, making her spend over two weeks falling through seemingly solid ground, running into invisible walls, and clipping through objects and enemies. The only upside had been that her own 'hit box' as it were had been practically nonexistent while there, thus most attacks from the few digimon in that place had phased right through her harmlessly.
Focusing back to the present, Renamon's frown deepened as she prodded the ground around her cautiously with a single foot. Finding it solid, for now, she just as carefully walked along, keeping a sharp eye out for any discrepancies or enemies.
After a while of directionless wandering, she noticed how her surroundings were starting to stick with the sewer, the shifts to the mountains being shorter and more infrequent with each step she took. Not long after that, the change was only a barely noticeable flickering of her surroundings as she waded through the ankle-deep water.
Just when she was certain she was most of the way out of the Glitched Zone however, the entire area shined blindingly white, forcing her to shield her eyes as her headache flared up with a vengeance. When it cleared, she was only mildly shocked to find herself in a different place all together.
She now stood on a cliffside, inside a large valley with two large and mostly destroyed statues on either side of a waterfall. Renamon tensed as she saw the same kid who had crashed into her, having briefly seen his face before blacking out, standing before her scuffed up and slightly hunched over as he glared at her.
On reflex, she charged him with her paws suddenly lighting up with a blue flame, ready to tear him to shreds, only to end up stumbling and barely catching herself when she merely phased through him. Whirling around and ready to try again, the bipedal fox digimon stopped when she noticed that not only had he not reacted in any way towards her assault, but was still glaring in the direction she had been standing.
Following his gaze, she was visibly startled when she saw an equally battered raven-haired boy glaring right back with odd red eyes that had three comma-like marks spiraling around the pupil. "Hn, you are becoming more of a pain to deal with than I thought Naruto. Just give up already, nothing will stop me from getting more power to kill him." He said, getting the blonde to huff.
"No way in hell, Sasuke-Teme! I promised Sakura-chan I would bring you back to the village! And I intend to keep that promise even if I have to break every bone in your body to do so first! Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" Renamon was actually visibly startled as several copies of the now named Naruto popped into existence with a puff smoke and leapt at Sasuke with battle cries.
Just as they were about to reach him though, everything suddenly faded to black and Renamon collapsed to her knees as her headache flared back up to number eleven for several seconds. Once it toned back down to manageable, the blonde fox slowly stood back up with a grimace as she took in her new surroundings… again.
"Great, I'm starting to sense a trend here," She grumbled, now finding herself in the middle of a village. The design of the place seemed an odd mixture of feudal japan and modern civilization, having authentic looking old-style buildings with power lines and such running from them. Dozens of humans were casually phasing through her as they hurried along with their business, and judging by the position of the sun it was just an hour or so before nightfall so most were probably headed home.
"And if I am correct then, yep there he is," Renamon said to herself as she spotted the familiar mop of blonde hair passing by her. "Hmmm, what do you know, he's even shorter now," She said with a small smirk as she watched the much younger Naruto, maybe seven or eight, walking down the street by himself.
That smirk quickly switched to puzzled curiosity though as the second he came into sight, everything around Renamon seemed to come grinding to a stop. Almost everyone in view had stopped to glare at the boy while swiftly getting out of his path.
"It's that thing, how dare it show its face here,"
"Look at it, walking around like it owns the place, like its untouchable,"
"That stupid fox bra-"
"Shh! Remember the law!"
These were just a few of the veritable flood of insults Renamon's sensitive ears picked up as she watched young Naruto look around with a saddened expression before trudging on by himself. At first she thought some of them were meant for her as she heard multiple mentions of foxes in them, but dismissed it since none of them seemed to even react to her presence at all.
Now that she took a closer look at him, she could see that his clothing was rather ratty and dirty, not to mention a size or so to large. His thin arms were laden with several brown paper bags filled to the brim with plastic cups labelled 'Instant Ramen'.
Given that he seemed to be the main focus on all these weird dreams, as she was now certain she was dreaming instead of being stuck in the digital world again, Renamon quickly stepped behind him and followed.
Unfortunately, they had barely gone a block before her splitting migraine jolted through her head and everything faded out again.
This time it barely toned back down though, forcing Renamon to squint her eyes just so she could see what was going on around her. She found herself back in the sewer, only now she stood a few feet in front of an absolutely massive gate with a small piece of paper in the middle with the kanji for 'seal' on it.
If she had been able to think clearly, Renamon would have noted how Naruto was nowhere to be found here. Instead though, she focused what little of her normally high attentiveness she could manage on the barrier before her, her battle honed instincts all but screaming at her that something was on the other side and whatever it was, it was way beyond her league.
Suddenly, a gigantic pair of blood red eyes snapped open behind the bars and glared down at her. "How dare you take on a form similar to my own! I shall tear you apart for such an insult Ningen!" Before Renamon could even begin to question what those glowing eyes meant, massive white claws shot through the gaps and rushed right towards her.
-Nonaka Residence, Rika's bedroom-
Renamon shot up with a gasp as she clutched her aching head, unable to stop a hiss from escaping her lips as the sunlight streaming into her eyes magnified the feeling tenfold. Stumbling over to the only window of the room, she blindly grabbed at the curtains with one hand and yanked them shut.
With the light levels much lower, Renamon let out a barely audible sigh of relief before she looked back to see the one-armed blonde peacefully sleeping on the bed she was just on with the occasional twitch. 'What was that? A hallucination? A nightmare? It felt so real,' She thought as a paw idly went up to her chest, where the large claw had just started to pierce her chest before she awoke.
Deciding to ponder about this at a later time when she could think more clearly, Renamon pushed the thoughts to the side. As she headed for the door, she did her best to avoid stepping in the large puddles of blood and vomit covering the floor as she did. Pushing the sliding door open, Renamon squinted her eyes as she entered the slightly brighter hallway and started looking for her Tamer.
Hopefully she would have something for this Sovereign forsaken headache of hers.
It took only a few minutes of randomly wandering about again before she finally located the girl inside what she assumed was what humans call a 'living room'. Asleep with her head resting on her grandmother's lap, her mother sprawled out on another couch still passed out. Odd name for sure, but it didn't really matter that much to her.
As soon as she entered the room, Seiko's eyes darted up and met her own. "Ah, you're awake, Renamon was it?" Before she fell asleep, Seiko had managed to get at least most of what happened out of her granddaughter.
"That is… ugh, correct," Renamon said with a slow nod, gripping her head tighter as another jolt of pain shot through her skull.
"There's some aspirin in the bathroom medicine cabinet, down the hall, second door to the left, white bottle with blue label… you may want to wash up while you're in there as well." Seiko stated as she glanced at the fox digimon's chest and stomach. Following her gaze, Renamon found almost all of the fur on her torso was matted up with dried blood.
"Thank you," Was all she said in return as she turned around and left.
"…What a riveting conversationalist that one is," Seito said to herself with an eyeroll as she carefully scooted out from under Rika and headed into the kitchen to make breakfast.
After finding the bathroom and rummaging around the medicine cabinet, Renamon found the bottle Rika's grandmother had described. After checking the instructions on the label, she popped the lid and swallowed two tablets before chasing them down with some water from the faucet.
She sighed in relief as her digital biology quickly processed the medicine and put its effects to work dulling her throbbing head to a minor ache. "Now that that is taken care of, how in the world do I use this thing again?" She asked herself while looking back at the walk-in shower. Sure, she knew 'what' a shower was, but Renamon had never actually used one herself personally. 'I'm sure I can figure this out, it can't possibly be that complicated.'
-One Minute Later, with Seito-
"GAH! COLD!" Seiko couldn't help the giggle that escaped her lips as she heard the muffled cry coming from the bathroom. Focusing back on her cooking, she finished setting up the rice cooker and was just beating some eggs when she heard a shuffling noise behind her.
Glancing over her shoulder, her eyes widened in shock as they settled onto the injured blonde boy as he stumbled out of the hallway with a confused, tired, and worried look. He was leaning lightly against the wall, breathing slightly heavily as he looked around before catching view of her. "Um, excuse me Obaa-chan, but can you tell me where I am and how to get back to Konoha?"
-End Chapter-
AN: As I'm sure you all have figured out by now, the poll results are in and this is now an official full time story. Thank you to all those who voted and I do hope that you liked this new chapter. Thank you for reading and please review.
