Chapter 3: The Girl with the Lunamon

Disclaimer: Don't own.

Ezekiel had no idea what to do with the blue card that he formed to attempt a transformation to the Ultimate level. He pondered it for a few hours while looking at the city in front of him. He was on the opposite end of town from the Tamers and Somnus , so he had a view of the other side of the various casinos that dotted the landscape.

The idea hit him while he looked around. He was going to give it to the black guy in exchange for joining his team. Yes, the plan was flawless. The guy obviously wanted a partner and may be willing to do anything for one. If he decided not to join, then Ezekiel could just dispose of the Digimon.

"Dobermon!" Ezekiel shouted.

The massive Doberman pinscher appeared next to him. "Yes?"

"Let's go to the house we were at earlier today. I have a plan."

Dobermon couldn't understand what his Tamer wanted but he went along with it anyway.

Nathan shook as he walked through the hangar that the limo had parked in, afraid of what his father was going to think once he found out that his son had a partner Digimon. Oh, sure, the two of them had gone through far worse together, but this was entirely different from the memory that had flashed through Nathan's mind.

Way different.

"Okay, here we are!" Diego exclaimed as the three boys were about to enter the briefing room, only to be stopped by Marika, who was in their way.

"Wow, look what the cat dragged in," the girl said, smiling at Nathan. "He's almost cuter than Ezekiel."

"Um, Marika, why don't you wait until after I brief the director? We have a problem now and it involves Ezequiel."

Marika looked at him, concerned. "You found him dead, didn't you?"

Diego shook his head. "He seems to have gone rogue and he had gone after Nathan, the new Tamer. To make matters worse, he had formed a blue card. We all know what that was going to do."

Marika's eyes widened. "You're kidding!"

"I wish I was."

"Wait a second…" Marika's eyes narrowed as a realization hit her about the identity of the new tamer. "You played against me in the finals the other day, didn't you?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Are you single?"

"Marika!" Diego snapped. "This isn't time to be hitting on the new guy!"

"Oh, please, when is it ever time to hit on the new guy?" she joked. "At least he's better looking than you."

"That wasn't very nice," Nathan heard a small figure say. He looked down next to Marika to see a familiar-looking puppy-like Digimon.

"Salamon?" Nathan asked.

"My name is Plotmon. Remember, Marika, we're supposed to be a team. You can't go on talking about your teammates looks like that."

"Hey, I was only joking." Then she let the three boys through, but not before checking out Marcus as well. She loved black guys.

Diego walked into the briefing room to hear his boss call out to him. "Well, this had better be good!"

"Uh, well, good news and bad. The good news is that we might have a new member. The bad is that he's your son and that Ezequiel seems to have gone rogue."

Jonny Beckenstein's reaction was better than expected. "Somehow I'm not surprised. Okay, Nathan, here's the thing: I've been suspicious ever since you had shown me that broken monitor and just because you're my son doesn't mean that I'm going to go easy on you, got it?"

"Uh, yeah," Nathan was sweating profusely.

"And another thing, you had better come home; otherwise I wouldn't be able to live with myself. It's bad enough that you've become a tamer, but I don't want you dead. If your Digimon is deleted, get out of wherever you are as soon as possible. Understand?"

Nathan nodded. Of course, just because his dad was going to let him slide this time didn't mean that they weren't going to talk about it later.

"Alright, now for your next mission: remember the girl from a month ago that you said didn't want to join in on us? It turns out that she fought against an emerged Digimon last night."

"Wait, you mean Claire?" Diego asked.

"Claire?" Nathan had no idea who she could have been.

"Yeah, she's this chick that's in high school already, despite being the same age as us. She ended up causing a bio-emergence on accident by playing with a V-Pet on her computer."

"Man, what is with technology giving everyone Digimon?" Nathan asked.

"Anyway, I want you to take our new recruit with you since it's an easy mission to start off with. If what you said about your brother is true, then we need a good team put together and not just the three of you."

Diego nodded. "Yeah, he was trying to recruit Nathan. Remember, there's also another guy who can reach mega if need be."

"I want to use him as a last resort. You are going to have to do without him if you ever want to get by without him since he's not even from this world."

Nathan was bored and had no idea what his dad was talking about. Marcus was enthused, though.

"So, can I come along?"

Beckenstein paused for a second before giving his one-word answer. "No. You don't even have a partner Digimon. What are you doing here in the first place? This place is off limit to non-tamers!"

Diego was visibly shaking. "He insisted to come along."

Beckenstein glared at the overweight boy. "And you didn't stop him?" Beckenstein put his palm on his forehead. "Kids… Okay, first order of business: return Marcus to his house, and then go look for Claire. Got it?"

The two boys nodded, walking out with their digimon behind them. Marcus however stayed behind. "Okay, so can't you like hook me up with a partner or something?"

"We're not the ones who choose the chosen, Marcus. If you want to be a Tamer, call up a digignome. I'm sure one of them will be of assistance."

Marcus had no idea what Beckenstein was talking about and he continued thinking about it on the way back to his place with Nathan and Diego. "You guys are so lucky," he said. "I'm just wondering: what's a Digignome and where can I find one?"

Nathan had no idea how to respond and Diego was surprised that Marcus had even heard of digignomes. "Well," Diego started to say, "Digignomes are these… um… fairy-like digital life forms that grant wishes. I've never actually seen one though and I have no idea where any are."

"So…" Nathan started to ask a question. "My dad mentioned that you had a brother. Is he…"

"Ezequiel? Yeah…"

"Why do you keep pronouncing his name like that?"

"That's how his name is pronounced in Spanish."

"Whoa, you speak Spanish?" Marcus asked.

"I wish. My parents came to this country twenty years ago but they didn't raise me bilingual, which sucks. I guess I'll have to learn it in school."

"Eh, when has anybody ever gotten fluent from high-school foreign language instruction?" Marcus asked.

"Says you. You can't even stick to learning Japanese!" Nathan shot back, smiling.

"Hah, hah. I just started a regimen that should help me out involving spaced repetition software, Kanji and Naruto." Diego didn't know what the first thing was and so he jotted it down for later on a notepad he had in his pocket.

"Didn't want to go through V-Tamer 01, eh?" Nathan asked.

Diego had no clue what they were talking about other than the series in question being anime. Well, he was almost right.

A few minutes later, Marcus was dropped off and the limo was on its way to the girl's house. "So, how did you get Gaomon?" Nathan asked.

Diego smiled for a second. "I kind of found him on accident. My brother and I were walking home from school one day when we came across him. Anyway, he had made it to the real world badly injured, having barely escaped an enemy Digimon, so we took him home and despite our parents protests at first, they came to accept him."

"That's good. What school do you go to?"

"We went to Lied. Now though, I'm going to Cheyenne. My brother and I are about ten months apart so we got to go to the same school. That and we spent our first few years in California so I have to be in his grade level despite being born in August. He's younger than me by the way, born May 23 while I was born August 2."

"Well, I hope we have some classes together."

The defection of Diego's brother bothered him deeply and he clenched his fists thinking about it. Soon after their conversation ended, the limo stopped in front of a house and the two Tamers and their Digimon walked out. It was odd having a fancy limousine in the middle of a middle-class housing development, but the awkwardness left with the black vehicle. "Okay, she knows me so I'll knock and talk. Is that okay?"

Nathan nodded. "What about the Digimon?" he asked.

"Uh, just go put them out of view for a few minutes."

Nathan rolled his eyes in disdain of the task set before him. "Okay, guys, you have to come with me."

"Oh, man, you've gotta be kidding me," Dracomon complained. Gaomon, on the other hand, was compliant with Nathan's demands.

Diego waited for a few seconds before someone answered the door. It was a voluptuous woman with blond hair that was obviously dyed and blue eyes. "Hello, how may I help you?"

"Hi, I'm looking for Claire."

"Oh, Claire! Well, she's currently spending the afternoon with her friends at the pool."

"Alright, thank you. Have a good day."

"Okay, you too." Diego started to walk away as the door was shut.

"She's swimming," Diego said.

"Uh, you got any swim trunks?" Nathan asked.

"I'm going to need to call my mom and have her drop some off. My house is only about two miles away so it shouldn't be a problem. You?"

"I live right by here. I'm not sure if any of mine'll fit you, though."

"Ha ha."

A half hour later, the two were at the concession stand for the pool, trunks in grocery bags in hand. They got to the cashier and claimed that their Digimon were stuffed animals, which worked since there was no way most kids except for the smallest could fit in costumes the size of the Digimon. They got in, changed in the bathroom stalls that were located in the locker room, stored some of their stuff in a locker, showered and walked out if the room.

"Glad that's over with. I thought I was going to see some naked guy or something for a second there," Nathan commented. He was wearing green floral swim trunks.

"Good thing we didn't," Diego replied. He was wearing blue trunks and a black t-shirt.

"So, where's this chick at?" Nathan asked. They looked around to see numerous girls in bikinis, causing both of them to get red. "I think I'm in heaven."

"Yeah…" Diego replied lightly.

"So, what does she look like?"

Diego looked around, trying not to get distracted by the numerous female bodies that were walking around. Then his eyes settled upon a blonde girl that was walking up the spiral staircase leading up to the slide. "She's up there and she's a blonde girl," he pointed. Now, the public swimming pool consisted of two large diamond-shaped sections connected to each other: one side for the little kids and the other for older kids and adults.

"Oh, cool, the slide. I guess we have no choice but to go up it."

Diego objected. "Wouldn't it be better to just wait for her down here?"

"And miss going down the slide? I don't think so."

"Alright, you guys be good and guard our lawn chairs, okay?" Diego told the two Digimon.

"You bet!" Dracomon exclaimed.

"Sir, yes, sir!" The response from Gaomon got on Diego's nerves.

"You know, Nathan, I'm still not sure about this," he said.

"Hey, relax a little. Who said that missions have to be completely serious. Live a little. Have some fun!"

"At least you don't have a brother that's gone rogue."

"True, but we have to have fun every once and a while. Think, this'll help calm your nerves a little bit."
"Very funny, Nathan." The two of them got into line and after what seemed like forever, finally got to go down the slide.

"So, that's the trick for going down this thing really fast," Nathan finished saying when it was his turn to go.

"Like I'm going to try it…" As Nathan went down the slide, Diego looked over the edge for the girl. He couldn't find her. Then he looked at his Digimon. Some girl took over his lawn chair that was covered by his orange towel. He grimaced at the sight and barely registered the tap on his shoulder.

"Um, it's your turn," the male lifeguard told him.

"Oh, sorry." Diego went down the slide, eventually crashing into the waters below after sliding for what seemed like forever. Then he got out of the pool and walked to his lawn chair to kick off the girl and reprimand his Digimon for not fulfilling his orders.

Unfortunately, the girl proved to be all too familiar. "Hey, Diego, what's up?" It was Marika, wearing a bikini that had a red top and a black bottom.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Hey, a girl can have some fun too, can't she?"

"So, where's Nathan?"

Dracomon pointed at the slide. "He decided to go for another round in that tall thing."

"Gah!" Diego was astonished by the inability of the team at getting anything done.

"Why don't you just go get the girl yourself?" Marika asked. "Of course, she stole my bounty last night, but still, you might as well get her."

"Why were you even called to that emergence anyway?" Diego asked. "I live closer to it than you do."

"Oh, it was my turn."

"And a powerful enemy Digimon could have ended up trashing the place." That was when Nathan got back.

"So, where's the girl?"

Diego looked around. She was back in line for the slide. For a brief second Diego had an idea go through his mind of having Nathan digivolve Dracomon and making the dragon destroy the slide.

Oh, it was so tempting.

"I guess we'll wait," Diego said.

"Sure you don't want to go up again?" Marika asked as a joke.

"Does it look like I do?" Diego snapped.

"Sheesh, chill out!"

"Man, sometimes I feel like I'm the only one taking this whole thing seriously."

"Hey, man, don't worry. We'll get this mission finished and your brother back," Nathan reassured him.

"In the mean time, while the girl's coming down, you can just relax, take off that shirt, get a tan and show off that manly chest of yours," Marika said.

Diego glared at her, his left eye twitching. Everybody seemed to be out to test his patience today. Oh well, he knew the best way to get revenge, and it involved showing them his sixth grade yearbook. He smiled at the thought; it was going to be glorious.

He was almost too wrapped up in his thoughts to notice the girl getting out of the water that the slide led into. She had a lavender bikini and had blond hair. She recognized him immediately and walked toward him.

"Hey, how's it going?" she asked. Nathan looked at her in awe. No girl would come up to him and talk to him like that.

"Great. By the way, these are a couple of my friends," he gestured toward Nathan, "Nathan," then toward Marika, "and Marika."

"Oh, good to meet you guys! I'm Claire."

Nathan was speechless. Marika wasn't affected. "Good to meet you. Now, we've got something to ask."

"Um, yeah," Diego said, trying to hold back a blush but failing. "You fought an enemy Digimon last night."

"Yeah, well, my digivice kept going off in the middle of the night, so I decided to check it out. That was when this ugly… thing attacked me and my partner. I figured I had to do something, though I only had a few cards to use that my brother had."

Diego was having a hard time saying the next part so Marika decided to speak. "Well, it turns out that since you did that, you have to join us in Somnus ."

Claire looked at Diego in surprise. "Wait, you can't be serious."

"Don't worry, it'll be fun," Marika said. "Believe me: I need another girl on the team. If you want, we can go to Hot Topic later."

"Uh, I don't go to that store."

"Oh, no problem. We can still go shopping."

Claire chuckled a bit. "I won't have to live at Somnus headquarters or anything, will I?" she asked, somewhat wary.

"No, of course not," Diego responded. "I still live at home and so does Nathan. Marika just lives at Somnus because of special circumstances."

"Yeah, getting kicked out of the house for being a Tamer. Believe me; you don't want to live on the streets."

"Alright, I'll do it. I just heard some things that I guess weren't true," Claire said.

"Yeah, there are a bunch of bogus organizations out there that kidnap tamers and their Digimon, claiming to want to cure them," Diego said.

A shiver ran up Nathan's spine. "You're kidding me!"

"Nope, unfortunately I'm not. It's especially prevalent in developing nations. Sometimes these kids are conscripted as soldiers. It's really depressing, actually."

"So, what's your partner?" Nathan asked the girl.

"Just a second, I'll go get her."

A minute later, the girl was back with a small, lavender fairy Digimon with large, poofy ears and a crescent moon on its forehead. "This is Lunamon."

Nathan shook Lunamon's small hand. "Good to meet you."

"Likewise."

"So, Diego, how come you're like the only guy in the pool area with a shirt on? There are tons of guys here that look worse off than you."

"Eh… I don't want to talk about it."

"Yeah, he had his appendix removed and there's a massive scar on his chest," Nathan said, prompting a response from Diego.

"No I didn't!"

Claire smiled. "And another question, when's my first mission?"

"As soon as a Digimon shows up."

"Oh, and where's the cute guy that was with you last time we met?"

Diego knew that the question was going to come up sooner or later. "Uh, he went rogue. I'm not sure what his plans are, to be honest."

"That's too bad. Were you two good friends?"

"He was my brother."

"Oh, I'm so sorry." Claire then hugged him. He smiled really uneasily, blushing while doing so. "I hope we can get him back to being good."

Marika just rolled her eyes.

Late that afternoon, Marcus was reading when he received a knock at the window. He didn't know what to expect and saw nothing when he opened it. When he was about to close it, he heard a voice: "Going somewhere?"

He knew who it was from earlier in the day. "Ezekiel."

"Yes, now I have a proposition for you."

"You tried attacking my friend."

Ezekiel shrugged as Marcus looked straight at him. "How are you sure that it wasn't Gaogamon who attacked first? You don't know my brother well enough to trust him."

Marcus didn't know enough to respond to that. "That's what I thought: no answer. Now, I only have a short amount of time before the master returns, but I wanted to give you this." Ezekiel gave Marcus the blue card he formed earlier. "Now, I don't know whether this will do what blue cards normally do when they're slid through a scanner since I created it to attempt Matrix Digivolution…"

"Matrix Digivolution?"

"Yes, Digivolution to the Ultimate Level."

"You can do that?"

"Yes. Dobermon's quite the ferocious beast once he reaches that level. Anyway, in exchange for you getting a partner Digimon, I want you to join my team."

"Um, I'm not sure."

"Think it over. In the mean time, you can keep the card."

Marcus looked at the blue card in his hand and grabbed a card reader like the one a certain Takato Matsuki used to create a digivice. "So, just scan it through something like this and I'll get a partner Digimon?"

"Close, you have to have it create a partner, too. Scan that card and then either scan some drawings of an imaginary Digimon or a Rookie Level Digimon card and you'll create an egg. Then tomorrow, the egg will hatch." Of course he left out that if he decided not to join then he wouldn't be able to keep the Digimon, but still, it would be worth it. After all, either Dobermon or the partner of the recruit from New Mexico could use some data.

Marcus looked over at some of the remaining cards from his collection and picked one up. He decided that that specific Digimon would be his partner. He had imagined having it as a partner ever since getting the card in one of the latest boosters and wondered what its higher forms were other than the Champion form.

He slid the blue card through the reader, causing it to shine brightly, and then put the reader on his desk, watching as it turned into a gray D-Arc with a red ring around the center. Then he slid the card through the digivice and watched as it scanned the data from the rookie. Soon after, he slid through some screens and saw a striped blue and grey egg form and pulsate.

"So, how long do I have to wait?" he asked, but Ezekiel was gone. He looked out the window and the mysterious Tamer was missing.

"So, how did the mission go, today?" Johnny Beckenstein asked his son at the dinner table. They were eating some soup that Johnny made from a can and that was still steaming. Dracomon was trying to eat some of the soup too, but ended up giving up and drinking it even though it was extremely hot. He didn't seem to notice, though, since he sometimes has fire coming out of his mouth anyway.

"Good."

"By the way, you didn't exactly receive a positive report. Apparently, you were distracted and encouraged goofing off instead of actually doing your job. Keep in mind Nathan: you need to take this task seriously or you won't last long as a Tamer."

Nathan was surprised by that statement. Who would say that he was goofing off? Then it struck him: Diego.

"Alright, thanks for telling me that."

"You're welcome. It's just… well… you're constantly going to be going into dangerous situations. Sometimes the decisions you make could mean life or death. Believe me: I know from experience." What Beckenstein was referring to was how he had gone to Vietnam during the war there. He was drafted in 1968 much to his dismay and had been put in the Army to fight there. He was able to get a job as an engineer and not have to fight that much until later. Needless to say, some of the missions were far more dangerous than expected.

Another thing he did was go to Russia as a spy during the cold war, specifically during the 70s. To do so, he had to pass as a Russian and learn the Russian language to native fluency in six months. He did so thanks to heavy training from the Defense Language Institute. He was also taught things such as computer programming, hacking, and how things were put together. Nathan didn't know the half of it.

Still, Nathan was going to try to take that to heart. Unfortunately, he didn't know the things that were in store for him.

A/N: Yeah, not much of an action chapter, though it moved the plot along slightly.