Chapter 6: Stress

Disclaimer: I don't own Digimon…

Why?

He woke up to the call of his father calling him to dinner. He didn't want to get up, but he felt a pair of boxing gloves push and roll him off the bed anyway, causing him to fall down to the floor.

Why? We keep each other in check.

He got up and glared at the Digimon that was standing on his bed. It was still light outside, being June. The alarm clock on his desk read 5:23.

He's the social one. I'm the one that keeps him in line.

He turned on the lights in his room and glanced at the deck box that was lying on his desk. He walked over to it and pulled out the cards that were stored in it for safe-keeping. The one on top was the blue card.

He was going to use this against me… us.

After putting the cards back in the box, he opened up a drawer on his desk and pulled out a series of photographs, looking them over.

"Mast… I mean Diego! You parents want you to be present for dinner," Gaomon told him.

"I know." Diego hesitated for a second, shaking a bit from the stress, and then plopped the photographs onto the desk.

He hasn't told his parents about his meetings with Ezekiel yet, but he would have to eventually. Truth be told, they still don't know the true nature of his work with Digimon.

He was stressed out to the point of just wanting to leave town for awhile. The last time something major happened that stressed him out like this, back in seventh grade, his father took him for a drive and they talked about it. That alone got rid of most of the stress from that incident.

I'll get him back, eventually.

Nathan swallowed the latest bite of his pizza as he noticed his Digimon grabbing his fourth slice of it, causing him to roll his eyes.

"Hey, we've gotta eat too, Dracomon!" Nathan told him.

"But I'm hungry!" the digimon replied.

Nathan just looked back at his dad, who was cutting his own slice with a fork and eating it. The boy had a question that was on his mind, one that confused him massively. Now was the time to ask it.

"Hey, dad." Johnny nodded for him to go on. "Okay, so there's a tamer around that can go Mega. How come you never use him?"

"Well, you see, he doesn't really want to go on missions at the moment. That's just one reason though. He gave a pretty good point when we first found him though, which was that we need to have a strong team in order to take on anything that may come through the barriers. He said that just having him take on every Digimon around would lead to everyone being complacent."

"Who is he, exactly?"

"That's classified. Same with the identity of his partner Digimon."

Nathan rolled his eyes. "So, where's he from? How the heck can he go Mega when most tamers can't?"

"For the first, I don't know. He was just found at an emergence point one time. He claimed to be from a town on the east coast that we looked up and doesn't exist. How he can go Mega is a good question as well. He apparently spent a large amount of time in the digital world at one point and that probably contributed to it, even though he claimed that he got to that level in the real world by biomerging after his Digimon got beat by another mega-level Digimon."

"Weird."

"Yes. To make things even weirder, he has a different model of digivice from yours. I'm not sure what name they use for it is, though."

"Is it like one from the TV show?"

Johnny Beckenstein shook his head. "Nope. It's a completely different model, although it can use card slash like yours."

The entire thing confused Nathan. In fact, one of these days, he would have to track down that Tamer and find out everything.

Gaomon sat at the table with the rest of Diego's family. The news was going on in the background with "Digimon in Vegas?" as the headline. Apparently, people actually noticed MetalGarurumon and the various digital fields for once.

"So, Diego, how was your day?" his dad asked in between bites of pasta.

"Decent. Why do you ask?"

"You just went straight to bed when you got home. I hear you went out with some friends."

Diego nodded. "I guess."

"You guess?"

"I don't really know them well enough to call them friends."

That was when his mom spoke up. "Hey, they seemed friendly enough with you to be considered that. It's good to have some amigos, Diego."

"Yeah, it's just… I don't know."

"What's wrong?" the dad asked.

Diego shrugged. "It's just, I don't know. They both kind of screwed up today."
"What happened?" his mom asked.

"Uh, nothing much."

"If it's nothing much, then why you complaining?" his dad asked.

"Well, Nathan can be kind of lazy at times, like yesterday at the pool. And Marcus… well… I don't know. Some guys messed around with him and he fell for it and we had to bail him out."

"Hey, it doesn't sound too major," Diego's dad said. "If something goes wrong, just tell them. Hey, we all have to put up with stuff from one other. How do you think your mom and I stay married?" Diego's mom rolled his eyes at her husband. "She has to put up with me a lot, too much at times."

"Oh, Geraldo," his wife said, laughing.

One thing was sure, human relationships would continue to confuse Gaomon. Then again, he did have to put up with a couple of Digimon that he worked with while fighting the D-Reaper just before getting sucked into this human world.

Later on, Geraldo was driving down the road with Diego in the passenger seat. It was still bright outside and the heat from the sun would cook them if they were out in it too long. It's a miracle that when riding Digimon, the wind would negate most of the heat. Now, though, it would be too hot even for that.

"So, what else is new?"

"Not much. I was thinking about trying to pick up Spanish on my own since most likely I'm going to take Website Science next year instead." Website science was a web design class.

"Yes? Website Science sounds like a good idea. Your uncle's a computer programmer, you know? Makes good money."

"Uh, yeah."

"Spanish is also a good idea. Remember to try studying the pronunciation. I made the mistake of not studying it in English and listen to my accent."

"Hey, I like your accent." Diego responded, smiling a bit.

"That's because you're my son. It's pretty grating on the ears of people when they first meet me, though. Of course, people who speak bad Spanish sound terrible too. So, how do you plan on doing it? Learning Spanish, I mean."

"I guess I'll just look at some books at the bookstore after we work out."

Gaomon was busy on Diego's laptop computer, typing up some 'fan fiction' that was basically a memoir of his time in the digital world and human world before meeting up with Diego. He still shuddered when he though of the events that lead to his being Diego's partner. He had been wandering around the north part of town when a group of high-schoolers cornered him, yelling obscenities at him and telling him to go back to his own world where he came from.

The thing was that he couldn't. That didn't dissuade them one bit though, and they proceeded to beat him up until someone from a nearby house intervened. Unfortunately, after the kids dispersed, the person realized he rescued a Digimon and left him there, all battered.

Luckily, Diego and Ezekiel were headed home from school when Diego encountered the poor Digimon. Knowing that the hospital wouldn't know what to do with him, the two just brought him home and set him down on Diego's bed. It took the Digimon days to recover while Diego slept on the floor, but eventually he did.

That was what led to Diego's digivice forming and to the guy becoming a Tamer, much to Ezekiel's dismay.

Gaomon was about to finish typing on the computer when the door to his partner's room opened. "Uh, what are you doing?" asked the kid that opened the door, causing Gaomon to minimize the window on the screen.

"Uh, nothing. Is Diego home yet?"

"No, he just left a half-an-hour ago," Diego's youngest brother replied.

Gaomon shut down the word program and then the rest of the computer, closed it up and put it away where Diego usually keeps it, partially to keep away from his younger brother who, knowing him, would probably download some virus or something like what happened to their parents computer.

"What do you want?" Gaomon asked, putting his boxing gloves back on.

"Oh, nothing. I just want to know what's up with Diego. He's hiding something, I know it." Gaomon glared at the boy. He didn't want to deal with him, especially since he wanted a partner himself, even going as far as trying to take Gaomon with him to school.

"Leave me alone," Gaomon said.

"He found Ezekiel, didn't he?" the youngest brother didn't bother with the Spanish pronunciation like the other two, which constantly got on the nerves of Ezekiel. Strangely enough, Ezekiel didn't care if his friends used that pronunciation or gave him some bizarre nickname.

As far as the question is concerned, Gaomon didn't really feel like answering it. He wanted to get away from the kid, though, so he answered him. "Yes."

"Okay, where the heck has he been, huh, bud?"

"We were able to track him down to somewhere south of the Strip. However, after awhile, the signal from his digivice disappeared."

"Figures. Ezekiel was always resourceful when he wanted to be. I'm surprised he didn't try running off to California or South America or something."

"Fernando, don't you have homework to do or anything?"

"No, I'm still in elementary school. Some friends are coming over, though, so we might go swimming. You want to come along?"

"No." Gaomon didn't like water one bit. In fact, he wondered how humans showered every day.

Claire was visibly shaken by the battle earlier that day. The entire situation was one that she didn't expect upon becoming a Tamer. What made her feel worse was that the boy she fought was brainwashed and she purposely hit him on the side of the head.

She sat on her bed, reading a book but merely glossing over the words. She didn't normally have this much stress in her life and wondered if it was actually worth it joining Marika and the other Tamers. Heck, she and Marika didn't even have much in common.

Lunamon was on the other side of the room, dusting. Claire didn't want her Digimon doing her work, but she insisted for some reason. Her room wasn't too much to deal with: her bed was on the right side of the doorway and her closet on the opposite wall. There was a window on the far end of the room as well and the walls were painted bright pink and covered in posters of boys and boy bands.

"So, Lunamon, do you think it was a good idea for me to join the Tamers?" she asked.

Lunamon looked at her Tamer, surprised by the question. "Of course. Sometimes I feel like I don't have anything to do around here and I'm really bored." While Claire was in school, Lunamon usually did nothing but organize the house and watch soap operas. "Are you having second thoughts for some reason?"

"A little. That fight against that boy earlier took a lot out of me."

Lunamon understood. As a Digimon she was somewhat expected to fight; it was in her blood. Yet, as a human, Claire wasn't the type. Heck, for most humans it takes something like desperation or patriotism to fight. Digimon don't have the latter concept, though desperation was a common trait.

"Don't worry. I'm sure most of the time you won't have to get involved."

Claire hoped not.

Diego went through his exercises half-heartedly, despite the amount of weight lifted being increased this week. Constantly thinking about his brother was only offset slightly a little later on when he spotted Eric on the treadmill.

He and his dad were finishing the last bit of their workout when the blond-haired giant came over and talked to them. "Hey, what's up, Diego?" Eric asked. Another blond guy was close behind him, this one a lot quieter.

"Not much. Just finishing our workout, that's all. You?"

"Pretty much the same. I just came here after work with a friend of mine. So, this is your dad, huh?" Eric shook hands with Geraldo.

"Yes, you're the game shop guy, right?" Geraldo asked.

"So that's what Diego refers to me as, huh? Yeah, I at least work there. It's a job, I guess. This is Jake, by the way," he said, pointing to the other blond guy who was in his workout clothes. He quickly shook the hands of both Diego and Geraldo.

"Good to meet you guys."

"Likewise," was Geraldo's response.

"So, I'm going to go to the steam room. You headed there?" Eric asked.

Diego nodded and so did Geraldo. "Might as well. I always soak in the Jacuzzi afterwards too," Geraldo said.

"So, did you hear any of the rumors?" Eric asked Diego. The two of them were in the sauna and Eric was just wearing blue gym shorts while Diego wore blue shorts and a black shirt. On the other side of the room, Jake and Geraldo were talking.

"What rumors?" Diego asked.

"Well, I hear that those anti-Digimon groups somehow managed to get Bandai to stop producing the cards despite how they've been selling like hotcakes.

Diego was surprised at that. "And just as they've become more useful than just playing cards."

"To you and the other tamers, maybe, but for non-tamers they're just cards, unless someone gets lucky enough to get a blue card and become a tamer. Tamers are rare, though, and other than you guys, they're just rumored in this country."

Diego paused for a second. "What about your group?"

Eric chuckled a bit. "That… was way different. You know the answer to that question."

"What, other than the non-existent hometown of yours? Are you from another dimension or something?"

"That's what I think. You see, I lived through this time period we're in right now and we didn't have a D-Reaper to deal with. Our group got together in 2006 and fought an enemy in a digital world that's different from what it was described as being like in your world. A month ago, I woke up in the year 2003 in a world where I didn't exist and as far as I know, none of my friends do either."

Diego thought about that and still didn't believe it. "That's impossible. How can we be sure that these other dimensions, these parallel universes actually exist?"

"Well, the only other tamer I know of that is in the same situation as I am is Ryo Akiyama." Diego was shocked at the mention of the name.

"Yeah…? How would you know that?"

"There are more seasons of Digimon in my world than in yours. Let that sink in for a bit."

That was about the time that Jake walked over to where Diego and Eric were talking. Diego looked at the man, blond hair and goatee, blue eyes, and a face that seemed somewhat familiar. He was also wearing purple swim-trunks. "So, I hear you're going to try to learn Spanish."
"Yeah, you talked to my dad about that, huh?"
Jake nodded. "Oh, yeah. I'm actually fluent. Speak with no accent either."

"Alright, say something."

"Hablo con soltura y sin acento. Quiero ir a un país de habla española pero tengo muchas cosas aquí que necesito hacer. Quiero que tu padre me dé datos sobre el país de su origen."

"What did you say?"

"What I just said in English and that I wanted to go to a Spanish speaking country. I also said that I wanted your dad to give me information about his home country."

"You sound like a Mexican," Geraldo said from across the room. Strangely enough, it wasn't intended as a compliment since Geraldo didn't particularly like the sound of the Mexican accent, which was one of the reasons why he didn't watch TV in Spanish.

"Thank you," Jake shot back.

"You should totally listen to this guy, man," Eric said.

"What would you recommend?" Diego asked.

"Well, learn the pronunciation. I'd recommend the Mexican or Columbian accents since they're both fairly neutral. Also, most non-native Spanish speakers tend to slack on that way too much. Then there's the grammar: don't neglect noun gender or verb conjugation including things such as the past tenses and the subjunctive. I'd also recommend reading as soon as possible. Heck, do stuff like read two pages out a novel every time you're on the john or something. You'd be amazed how far that can get you, even though you won't understand much in the beginning."

"Alright, where should I start?" Diego felt a compulsion to grab a note-pad and jot down everything that this guy said.

"Well, I saw this book at the bookstore called 'Spanish for Absolute Beginners'. Start there, it's simple, it'll get most of the basics such as noun gender down. After that, I'd recommend going through a Spanish verb workbook while increasing your vocabulary and starting your reading."

Diego nodded. He was definitely going to need that notepad right about now.

It was about that time somewhere else that Marcus was feeding Bearmon some leftovers. He knew that his parents wouldn't like him having a Digimon in the house, so he told the Digimon to pretend to be a stuffed toy as long as anyone else was around other than him. Of course, being Bearmon, this was going to be kind of difficult.

"Alright, man, here's your food," Marcus said, bringing a Tupperware container in that was filled with Spaghetti and meatballs. He and his siblings tended to eat a lot so his mother or father, depending on what day it is, made large amounts of food. Because of this, there were always leftovers and so it wasn't like Bearmon was going to be starved. Though, his family didn't exactly have a lot of money, so he was worried that would be one of the reasons they'd reject Bearmon.

Bearmon dug into the food and ate it all quickly, not even leaving a single drop of tomato sauce in the container.

"Was it good or what?" Marcus asked.

"Yeah!"

"Alright, man, that's good. My mom's a great cook, so you shouldn't have anything to worry about, man. So, what should we do, huh?"

"Dracomon told me about something called video games." Unfortunately, the game consoles were in the room that the bedrooms were all connected to.

"Maybe we can do that a little later on. For now, we can watch a movie or something. How about that?"

"Yeah!"

Things weren't going particularly well with Gaomon ever since his tamer's little brother decided to attempt to make him join in on swimming. Number one: Gaomon didn't like water. Fernando didn't respect his wishes when Gaomon was knocked into the pool. Number two: Gaomon didn't like cold water. He had no idea why humans kept their pools at a freezing cold 80 degrees. Then there were the kids. Gaomon didn't particularly like them that much, especially since they all reminded a little too much of his close encounters with death at the hands of roving bands of kids during his time before meeting Diego.

Of course, he had no choice in the matter. It was a matter of either being inside and doing nothing while breaking the kid's feelings or the alternative: being forced into playing childish games by the kid and his friends.

There were five of them and one of him, do the math.

Diego was zipping up his backpack after changing when Jake commandeered him in the locker room. "Hey, just one last thing."

"Okay," Diego said, in a hurry.

Jake opened up his locker, pulled something out of his gym bag, and handed it to Diego. "You might want to check this out. It's a DVD I burned with the first course I used on it along with a couple of Spanish reader's I got for free off the internet."

Diego looked at the disk that was inside a case. "Is this legal?"

Jake nodded. "Oh yeah. They're all public domain. Just go through the first couple of lessons in that course a couple of time and you'll have a pretty decent accent. The rest of it's a bit advanced for a beginner, though, so just save that for later."

"Okay, thanks."

"No problem," now Diego just had to wait for his dad for a few minutes. Since Diego didn't bother with the Jacuzzi, he just got dressed to leave and his dad came in a few minutes later and went to the showers. "So, what do you do for work?"

"Eh, I just work with stocks. I also do a little bit of programming on the side," the man started to change, so the two guys faced away from each other. "Not much to it, I guess."

"Yeah. How'd you meet Eric?"

"Well, I just happen to frequent the game shop he works at. That and we constantly run into each other here so we started hanging out." With that, Jake was done with changing. "Don't have too much to do. I'm kind of bored, actually and wouldn't mind getting an actual job or going on a trip somewhere."

Diego nodded. For some reason, he felt more sullen than usual. Maybe it was Jake's example of independence that was doing that.

"You alright?" Jake asked.

Diego shrugged. "I guess."

"You guess. Okay, man, I hate to pry, but what's bothering you?"

Diego had to find a way to organize his words so that the man couldn't figure out that he was a tamer. It was bad enough that MetalGarurumon appeared on TV earlier that day and that Diego and Eric talked a little bit about it while they were in the sauna. "Well, my younger brother just ran away from home and I ran into him earlier today."

Jake had this look of sheer realization on his face. "Whoa, that's pretty tough. I had a rebellious older sister that ran away from home a few times and eventually moved out. Okay, how old are you? Seventeen?"

"Fourteen going on fifteen."

"Oh, sorry, I guess I aimed a bit high. Well, I guess going out of town using your car to escape and vent off stress wouldn't be an option."

"No, not really." Diego remembered one time where his dad did just that and took Diego along to get over what was going on at school at the time. They made it all the way to the town of Tonopah to the north-west of Vegas and then headed back, talking along the way. Maybe it was a shot. He had been getting this urge to go back to his hometown of Oxnard, California for a few days to visit some friends.

Still, he didn't really want to get his dad upset because of Ezekiel, though he'd have to break it eventually, probably even that night.

"Thanks for the idea, though," Diego finished.

"Hey, I'm always there to help. That's what being a friend's about isn't it?" That struck Diego. How much had he really been helping out his friends? Heck, after Ezekiel disappeared off the face of the earth, he had actually been isolating himself from all his friends, even genuine ones such as Nathan, who despite not thinking about what he was doing still wanted to hang out since he saw Diego as somewhat respectable. He felt a pang of guilt run through his upper body from that.

"Whoa, sorry if I accidentally hit a nerve."

"No problem," Diego faced him; putting on the best fake smile he could possible make. "Thanks for everything."

Jake nodded. "You're welcome." Jake was about to walk toward the exit of the locker room when Diego stopped him.

"Hey, do you mind if I have your cell phone number?" he asked.

Jake was a bit weirded out by this, but he complied. "Okay, it's 702-555-1947. Just call it and I'll put you in."

"Another thing, what's your last name?"

"¿Mi apellido? Battaglia."

"Alright, Jake Battaglia. Got it."

"Great, just text me sometime, I guess."

Diego nodded, before turning around to see his dad in a purple towel, putting his trunks through the swimsuit water extractor. That meant that they had a few minutes before they left.

After leaving the gym, the two went to the bookstore. "Alright, I got it," Diego said, picking up a large book off the shelf. "Looks like a pretty decent method. I guess I'll take this book here. He recommended a verb workbook."

"Well, it's good you're taking it seriously, son. So, are you up to me nagging you every day to make sure you've been doing your Spanish?" the middle-aged man asked.

"Go ahead. I might need the encouragement." Diego then walked toward the check out, but not before accidentally running into a girl who was obviously distracted by the manga she was reading. The two practically tripped over each other and fell down to the ground. "Whoa, I'm so sorry!" Diego said, getting up and holding his hand to help the girl up. She held onto it and was lifted up and she looked Diego straight in the eye.

"Are you kidding, that was definitely my fault," the girl said. Diego squatted down and picked up the manga along with the books that he had dropped and handed the comic to the girl. She was of Latin-American descent like he was, though she was most likely Mexican, unlike him. Her hair was wavy and she had on glasses as well. She looked on the ground and picked something up. "I think you dropped this," she told him, handing him his digivice.

She wasn't supposed to see that. "Oh, thanks. Like I say, I'm sorry about what happened."

"It was my fault. You weren't the one reading and walking at the same time. Not to mention, that was kind of a blind corner." Diego's dad was looking at the two of them, trying not to laugh.

"Oh, well, I guess we should have both looked where we were going. See you around." She looked on as the boy and his father headed over to the check-out line, and realized upon his putting his digivice in his pocket that he was probably a Digimon Tamer.

The thought excited her so much that she couldn't contain herself and walked off with the manga to find a place to sit down. She didn't really read it though, since she couldn't stop thinking about him. A tamer? That's so cool. She had seen the news reports on TV so she knew that there was at least one tamer in town. Secretly, Digimon was what got her into anime in the first place.

She found herself shaking at the thought. It was as though she had a crush on the boy because of that, even though he wasn't nearly as good-looking as any of the guys in the manga she reads.

Now if only she had a cell-phone so she could text her friends about it.

Diego couldn't sleep that night. Gaomon was sleeping soundly at the foot of his bed despite being tortured repeatedly in the pool by Francisco and his friends. Diego got up and decided something. He had a friend in Oxnard that he could visit, but he had second thoughts on leaving the house behind. He knew that he would have to leave a note and call them every day he was there. He would also have to explain Ezekiel. It wasn't smart, but he couldn't stand being around there with all that stress. He had to vent it somehow, and despite going over a few lessons in that book he got, studying Spanish wasn't the way to do it.

Not that the book was bad. The lessons were really good and Diego found himself enjoying it despite their simplicity. They consisted of teaching only one thing each lesson, whether it was a new word or form, and Diego felt that he could complete most of the book in a matter of days, despite having nearly 200 lessons. He did most of the exercises in the empty part of a math notebook he had from school and he would probably do that with the follow-up as well. He had also put the courses from the DVD on his computer and attempted to do the first lesson.

Diego reached inside his deck. There was the Blue Card, still there from that afternoon when he had stolen it from Ezekiel.

Now he had an idea. Coming up with this, he packed his backpack with a couple days worth of clothing, the books for Spanish, and his laptop that he had spent a summer saving up for along with its necessary peripherals. After that, he wrote a lengthy note and left it on the kitchen table, detailing where he was going and when he would get back. He also said everything he could about Ezekiel.

Now for the hard part. "Gaomon, wake up," he said, rousing the anthropomorphized dog, who woke up groggily.

"Master, it's past one in the morning."

"That shouldn't matter. I want to go to Oxnard tonight."

The dog yawned. "Do I look like I have the energy for this?" Diego showed him the blue card. "Surely you must be joking."

"I'm not, now let's leave. Just so you know this doesn't count as your first time going to Ultimate. I have to actually create the blue card myself for it to." Gaomon nodded and then, complying with his partner's wishes despite not liking them, he followed the teenage boy out of the house.

Then Diego slashed the card and a massive amount of energy flowed through his Digimon. A few minutes later, the two of them were off, flying through the air and having a full view of the bright, endless city before them.

A/N: Well, there you have it. I think that's my best chapter so far. Tell me what you think. Please. Reviews are nice. Don't be shy.

The whole learning Spanish aspect was something that I thought would be fun for Diego's character and his development. He's kind of a perfectionist and like the chapter said, he tends to isolate himself, being afraid of working with people. Heck, Ezekiel was the people person and the one who was actually social, so you see how they would have complemented each other.

Of the chapters of this fic, I actually like this one the most since it for the most part develops one character, while working with the others every so often. The last five chapters were kind of a mixed bag (I'm kind of tempted to rewrite them), but this one was pretty decent.