Chapter 10: Training Day

Disclaimer: Don't own Digimon. Just own the OCs.

"You found another group of Tamers? That's excellent. Where are they, in the bay area?" Johnny Beckenstein asked into the phone. He was wandering around their house and feeding a small, black digimon with yellow eyes and small ears.

"No, they're somewhere else. I agreed not to say, though. By the way, they had some startling accusations against Somnus, not your branch but another one. Actually, I ran into Diego and he said that some of the ones from the bay area attempted to kidnap him."

"What? I simply told a group over there to find Diego and keep watch over him, to protect him, not to arrest him or anything."

"Yeah? Apparently they're in league with the Anti-Digimon groups over here. Diego also mentioned something about the head of Somnus also being involved somehow."

"The head of Somnus…?" Johnny walked into his office inside the house, the small black digimon following him. "Here we go, the head of Somnus is someone who was transferred from Hypnos to help out here… Hmm… strange… It seems that he quickly climbed the corporate ladder. Some of his former superiors wound up dead in bizarre circumstances."

"Sounds like we're going to be dealing with a real piece of work… What else has been going on lately?"

"Shibumi confirmed the origin of those eggs we've been finding in recent bioemergences. It turns out that they may have come from a different digital world than the previous ones. Oh, and one of them hatched into a Botamon."

"Crazy… I don't get it. Why's all this weird stuff happening right now?"

That was a good question, and one that Beckenstein didn't have an answer for.

Afghanistan, Monday

Nathan and Diego were trekking along, hoping that they could get through this whole test with their partners. Thankfully, it wouldn't be too bad other than the whole 100 degree weather at noon. Then again, Vegas got that hot and they still lived there.

"Great, two miles and no sign of any digimon. I can't believe this place is restricted," Diego complained. He was ahead of Nathan by about ten feet with his partner by his side. "Will you please hurry up? Man, and I thought I was the slow one around here."

"Hey, I'm coming, I'm coming. Don't worry."

"Yeah, can't you guys just get along," Dracomon retorted.

"In case you haven't noticed, the reason I left Vegas for a while was because of Nathan and Marcus joining Somnus and cramping my style."

"I think Dracomon's right," Gaomon said.

"Great, you're on their side too?"

Gaomon's eyes narrowed. Then the blue and white dog tensed and started growling. "What's going on?"

That was when their digivices started glowing red. A geyser of data rose up out of the ground and the area was surrounded in mist. Unfortunately for the two tamers, the digital field in question was at the bottom of a cliff. "Okay, Gaomon, time to become Gaogamon so…" Diego caught himself in mid-sentence.

"Um, Diego…"

"I know. Sheesh." Diego moved to the edge of the cliff. There was no way they could fly down there using the white wings card. Both tamers were just too heavy for that. Nathan just ran past him with Dracomon behind. Diego just rolled his eyes. "Let's hurry, Gaomon," he said, running as fast as he could until he ran out of energy about halfway down. "On second thought, let's see if blondie can take care of this."

Nathan reached the digital field and entered along with Dracomon. "Okay, boy, it's time to take on whatever's in here!" The blond clenched his teeth as he looked around. It had been awhile since he had gone to a bio-emergence on his own. Come to think of it, did he ever go to one on his own?

The digimon in front of him was a skinny red wolf with a long snout, and large amounts of leather strapped to its four legs. Nathan checked his digivice for info on it.

Fangmon, Champion Level, Data Attribute.

Data attribute… that meant that Dracomon had both a type and level disadvantage. Oh well. Nathan pulled out a card as soon as the red wolf lunged toward Dracomon. "Digi-Modify, Dark Training Manual! Digi-Modify, High-Speed plug-in A!" After that modification, Dracomon became a blur, but so did Fangmon. Nathan hoped that the situation would give his partner an advantage.

Here's something you need to remember, Nathan heard from Ricardo before coming to this barren wasteland, you shouldn't force Digivolution. If you do that, something bad will happen. I actually heard of an instance of forced Digivolution involving Takato Matsuda that nearly destroyed the digital world. We can't have that.

I understand, Nathan thought, searching his deck for more cards that could give Dracomon an edge. Suddenly, the two feuding digimon stopped seemingly in mid-air.

"Baby Flame!" Dracomon yelled, unleashing his attack on Fangmon's brisket. The lupine digimon recoiled from the attack, but it didn't seem to do much damage, it just charred some fur.

"Blast Coffin!" Fangmon yelled, unleashing a blast of dark energy from his mouth and causing Dracomon to fall to the ground, smoke coming from his scaly skin.

"Dracomon!" Nathan realized he needed to strategize well. It was just that most games allowed him the time to do that. He remembered how one summer, his grandfather on his mom's side taught him a number of games such as chess and poker. Back then, he could take all the time in the world. As it was, he spent the entire summer there.

Using some of the strategic ability that he developed back then, Nathan pulled out a card and slashed it. "Digi-Modify, Power Charger! Digi-Modify, Stamina Seed!"

Dracomon just pushed on his hands and flipped over, ready to face Fangmon, which he did, heading straight for the red wolf and attacking by making his horns glow and unleashing an energy blast from his mouth. "G Shurunen!" The attack hit Fangmon head-on, causing the wolf to fall to the ground and dissolve into a million pieces of data.

"Good work," Nathan complimented his partner.

"Oh, that was nothing compared to what you did."

"Hey, I didn't do any of the fighting."
The Digital Field dissipated and Nathan walked out to find Diego sitting down, panting and reading something on his computer.

"How'd it go?" the black-haired boy asked.

"No Digivolution but I managed to beat a champion without one. This one was Fangmon."

Diego nodded. "That was the first digimon the Frontier team fought. An author's note said that an alternate version had them fighting an ultimate, Cerubumon."
Nathan was slightly confused. "What are you reading?"

"Something called Digital Frontier. It's supposedly the story of the original digidestined and it resembles the fourth season that Eric mentioned. I do think the concept of kids turning into digimon is kind of weird though. I mean, didn't the original digidestined have silhouettes of digimon with them in the second to last episode of Adventure?"

"It's been awhile."

"So, how are you feeling, Dracomon?" Diego asked.

"Great. I showed that wolf who was boss!" the diminutive lizard exclaimed.

"Good to hear. Now, to the next area…" Diego said, the others following. "Ready to take on whatever we encounter, Gaomon?"

"Yes, mas… I mean, Diego!"

"Good. We should be digivolved by nightfall."

"Sounds like a good idea to me. Hey, isn't there supposed to be like a massive time-zone difference between here and the west coast?" Nathan asked.

"Yeah. Hmm…" Diego examined the sky. He then realized that the sun was actually far closer to setting than he expected.

"So much for getting it done by nightfall." the blond chuckled.

California

Marcus was still bored in the facility he was being kept. It didn't help that he was rooming with someone that was willing to kill his partner digimon, namely Ezekiel. To make matters worse, the Hispanic snored, loudly. For the most part, rooming with him actually wasn't too bad. Ezekiel mainly kept to himself, reading or searching for that Jacob McClosky guy. Marcus was starting to get an inkling that he didn't exist, since nobody knew who he was.

Strangely, though, Marcus hadn't seen the guy all morning. He was simply digging into his fifth pancake while talking with the Canadian kid from the day before.

"So, know any tamers where you were at, Davy?" Marcus asked the brown haired boy sitting across from him.

"No, not really. There were other tamers there, but they didn't want me in their group."

"What about your partner?"

Davy looked around for a second and then whispered in Marcus' ear: "Dracmon."

"Dracomon?" Marcus asked loudly.

"We're not supposed to talk about that here."

"Man, it's not like anybody's listening."

"Sure we are, Marcus," the black guy turned his head around and looked straight at the familiar brown-haired British guy from earlier. "Now, I'll go easy on you, but you should probably keep your mouth shut around the other blokes watching you."

Marcus gulped. Then he noticed the far door open and Ezekiel walk in. "Marcus, I'll need you for something."

He could only imagine what.

"So, what do you want?" Marcus asked as he walked into the library with Ezekiel. There weren't many other kids in the room. He recognized the guy that punched Ezekiel in the face the day before, the rosy-cheeked fat guy that was sitting next to Marcus at that one ceremony reading a book, a pair of girls talking, one brunette and one with red hair, and finally a couple of Mexican kids on one of the computers, one bald and one not.

"I need you to learn something for me. It will take about eight hours for you to get through this course on a foreign language."

"Foreign language? Is it Japanese?"

"Nope, it's Czech."

"Czech? When am I going to talk to somebody who speaks Czech?"

"When are you going to speak to someone who speaks Japanese?"

"Okay, so you got a point there, but here's the thing: I have no interest in learning such a language. Japan is cool 'cause it's got anime and samurai and ninjas and stuff."

"You do know that samurai and ninjas haven't been around for hundreds of years, right?"

"Hey, they exist in anime. Since when has the Czech Republic released anything like Neon Genesis Evangelion?"

"That doesn't have samurai or ninjas in it. Just put this on." Ezekiel handed Marcus some weird strap with some sort of device in the middle.

"Uh, what the heck is this and what does it do?"

"It's called a focus band. You put it on your forehead and it allows you to pay close attention to something for hours on end. I cite that as the reason I mastered both Spanish and French in such a short time."

"Yeah, right. Now French, that would be fun. I'd impress all the ladies easily, then."

"Just put it on and shut up. Actually, don't shut up, go through the eight hour course on here."

"Why don't you do it?"

"Because I'd rather study Russian. It's much more interesting and I have a Russian-speaking rival that I'll have to deal with once we get out of here." Ezekiel put the focus band and put it on Marcus' forehead, turning it on. The African-American boy would be in the same spot for more than eight hours without even noticing anything around him other than the program which would be ingrained into his mind. Ezekiel simply went off to try to find out more information on Jacob McClosky.

Marcus awoke from his stupor hungry and sore. Eight hours had passed and he felt it. From the looks of it, it was at least six in the evening, though the afternoon sun was nowhere near setting.

The boy took off the focus band and put it in his pocket. He was going to have to get revenge on Ezekiel somehow. Marcus looked around the room and didn't see anyone from earlier in the library, with one exception. Rosy-cheeked fat boy was still there, though at a different table. For the heck of it, Marcus got up and headed over to the boy's table.

"You spend a lot of time here, don't you?" The boy nodded. "You got any friends here?"

"A couple. I've only met a few I liked."

"My name is Marcus, by the way."

"Good to meet you." The kid glanced at his watch. "It's not seven yet…"

"Yeah, what are you going to do then?"

"Eat dinner. I'd rather not eat with all the others. Oh, yeah, I do have something else to do. Sorry." The guy just got up and left. Marcus rolled his eyes at the sight.

Man, that guy's rude…He thought. He looked around and decided to check out some of the books around the library. He opened a few of them and glanced through the pages, but none of them interested him.

Having run out of things to do, Marcus left the library, happy to leave. He proceeded to go to the cafeteria and grab food: two hamburgers and a plateful of French fries along with a number of packets of ketchup.

"That all can't be good for you," a curly-haired red-head commented, pulling off his head-phones.

"Believe me, I'm hungry. Haven't even eaten lunch." Marcus decided to just sit at the red-head's table. It was nice to actually have someone talk to him.

The red-head chuckled. "Too busy for that?"

"Oh, my roommate made me go through an entire Czech course. It was retarded."

"Sounds like it. What would be the point of learning that? Then again, it would be more useful than something like Gaelic."

"You speak Gaelic?"

"I'm from Ireland. Not that everyone that lives there speaks it, of course."

"Yeah? I'm from Vegas. You've lived here awhile, haven't you?"

The Irishman had an uneasy silence. "Get up. We'll talk about this elsewhere." The Irishman led Marcus to the boy's locker room. At the time, there was absolutely nobody changing. It still wasn't the hour when all the kids who took showers in the evening took them and there was currently nobody swimming outside save a couple of kids doing laps. "I actually live in Ireland and I haven't been to the states before a week ago. I'm just here because I'm good with accents. My name is Sean O'Farrell."

"Yeah? I never met anyone from Ireland before. That's pretty cool. What's your partner digimon?"

"Candlemon. He can digivolve into Meramon and then SkullMeramon."

"I've got Bearmon and he digivolves into Grizzlymon."

"Haven't reached the Ultimate Level, aye?" The Irish accent was starting to leak out.

"Nope. I have no idea what his Ultimate form would be."

"Well, I'll tell you this, mate, the Ultimate form is easy to reach. You just have to produce a blue card. I'm assuming you've already digivolved to champion without cards, right, lad?"

"Un, no. I haven't. Just got him to that level using cards."

Sean's eyes widened up. "Well, as soon as I find the location of all the partner digimon and call my superiors, you'll get your chance, I'm sure of it."

"I'll help you. I also made a couple more friends that should be able to help too."

"All right, lad, who are you thinking of?"

"Davy Symanski. I also ran into this fat guy… not really sure about him though."

"Davy, maybe… You're talking about the bloke with black hair, am I right?"

"Uh, yeah. Did the guy have any issues or anything?"

The green-eyed boy nodded. "Yes, the lad had a few problems, though he's not willing to open up about them. However, I do have another ally. Her name is Gwen LeFabre. I'll introduce you to her later."

Afghanistan

Nathan and Diego had walked for hours with only a few close calls. It seemed like there weren't really as many digimon as Ricardo said and it was in the middle of the night. Still, the duo was on the lookout.

"So, I realized I don't know you that well…" Nathan said while the group walked.

"Yeah…?" was Diego's simple response.

"Just thought I'd make some conversation. What's your favorite band?"

"Favorite band?" Diego asked, looking behind at Nathan. "U2."

"U2?"

"Don't like them?"

"No, it's not that. I've never actually listened to them. I'm not much of a fan of eighties music, though…"

"They don't sound like most eighties. To be honest, I don't know why I like them. My dad kind of got me into them."

"I'm surprised your dad didn't get you into mariachi or something."

"Mariachi? My dad's not Mexican."

"So, what are you guys, anyway?" Unfortunately, before Diego could answer, a massive shelled digimon came up out of the ground. It was a grey mollusk inside a green, spiked shell. Nathan recognized that it was a Shellmon subspecies. The mollusk shot a jet of water at the group, Nathan and Diego both got out of the way just in time, jumping in opposite directions. "Great timing."

Diego checked the holographic display on his digivice. "MoriShellmon, Champion Level, Mollusk Digimon, Data Attribute. His attacks are Pile Shell and Slamming Attack."

"Come on, Dracomon, we can take this guy!" Nathan shouted.

"Right!"

Nathan slid a card. "Digi-Modify, Strength Plug-in B!"

"Baby Flame!" Dracomon yelled out, unleashing a fireball on the mollusk in front of them. The attack simply bumped off.

"Nathan, you realize your digimon has an attribute disadvantage, right?"

"Uh, yeah, of course. That was how I defeated Fangmon. I'm getting to that." Nathan picked a card out of his deck. "Digi-Modify Dark Training Manual!"

"G Shurunen!" MoriShellmon withdrew his head into his shell again and the attack still had no effect. There was obviously only so much an attribute advantage could do. MoriShellmon retaliated by hitting Dracomon with a jet of water again, causing the miniature dragon to hit a large boulder behind him and get knocked out. "Dracomon!"

"Now for you!" MoriShellmon yelled out, aiming at Diego. "You don't seem to be doing anything! Ha!"

Diego tossed his backpack to the side to prevent his computer and his cards from being damaged. Then the stream of water hit him head on. Thankfully, there weren't any boulders for him to slam into. Still, he badly skinned his back sliding backwards. The portly boy got himself up.

"Now for the dog…" Gaomon was right in front of a rock formation, but the dog was ready strike with his boxing gloves. The mollusk aimed his shell again.

"Gaomon!" Diego yelled out, clutching his injuries. He could tell that the back of his shirt was now shredded, and feeling it, he could tell there was blood. Nathan was treating Dracomon, sliding a Stamina Seed and causing the digimon's wounds to heal up. Diego, on the other hand, noticed that he was separated from his backpack and deck box and so ran in front of his digimon. "Leave him alone!"

MoriShellmon ignored him, realizing he wasn't a threat. The mollusk aimed at him and Gaomon and fired.

That was when Diego's digivice shined.

DIGIVOLUTION_

"Gaomon digivolve to… Gaogamon." The blue wolf faced MoriShellmon with confidence, moving Diego out of the way and evading the stream of water easily.

"Oh, so you want to play tough, huh? Slamming Attack!" the mollusk yelled, withdrawing its head and arms into the shell and causing it to spin, aiming at Gaogamon, who jumped out of the way. "Spiral Blow!" Gaogamon yelled, attacking with a powerful vortex, buffering MoriShellmon.

"Gaogamon, attack the opening to the shell!" Diego yelled out.

"Got it. Dash Double Claw!" Gaogamon yelled out, moving at an extremely high speed, and then unleashing an x-shaped beam from his claws at the right angle. The attack struck MoriShellmon head on, causing it to come out of its shell.

"Now, attack it!"

"Gaoga Hound!" Gaogamon yelled, biting MoriShellmon in the neck. After a couple seconds, he bit through it. Then MoriShellmon disintegrated and its data flowed off.

Diego walked over to his partner, still aching. Man, I'm glad that's over.

Nathan on the other hand was fuming. I can't believe he digivolved before I did!

"Diego, we're going to have to find a way to treat your back," Gaogamon said. "If you all ride me, we can survey the area in case there's a town around here. Even if it's abandoned, I'm sure there will be something there that we can use."

Nathan nodded. "Sounds like a good idea to me." He sighed deeply. "Dracomon, how are you feeling?"

"Are you kidding me, I feel like I've been run over by a freight train."

"You're not the only one," Diego said, half-smiling.

The three boarded Gaogamon. From the distance, a member of the Tamer's Brigade watched on, barely visible in the shadows. "So, what now, Goblimon?" the teen asked his partner digimon in an American accent that with hints of Middle Eastern influence.

"I don't know. We still have a few hours until bedtime."

The tamer smiled, something that wasn't visible in the dark. "How about we go after the others? They might need my help in case they come across some of the natives. I think they're headed to the town that's still inhabited. Of course, I don't speak Pashto."

California

That night, Marcus couldn't sleep. Thankfully, he still had a fork from dinner and so, after getting redressed, he used it to open up the locked door. Looking around, there were no guards posted in the hall. He found that kind of strange, but he guessed that the owners of the facility didn't expect any of the kids to be able to sneak out.

Of course, the facility is surrounded by a barbed-wire fence so escape was nigh impossible.

Looking around, Marcus was amazed at how quiet everything was. For one thing, Ezekiel had an annoying habit of snoring, something that kept Marcus up the night before. Then again, he really didn't like the guy, for obvious reasons, and dreaded the thought of teaming up with him.

Marcus ducked behind a corner once he reached one hallway. He noticed a pair of guards hanging out there, most likely from Somnus due to their black suits. The two looked completely bored out of their skulls, guarding whatever they were guarding. Marcus didn't see any doors down that hallway.

Then it opened. There was a hidden passageway against the wall, one that Marcus wouldn't have guessed was there. Out came a group of anti-digimon people, including Holmes and a couple others that Marcus couldn't place. That has to be where they keep the digimon…

"So, you have no idea how the partnership is formed?" One of the anti-digimon people, apparently the head honcho, said. In the dark, Marcus couldn't make the man out, though from his snotty demeanor, he automatically didn't like him.

"None," Holmes said, "The digivices don't seem to have anything to do with it and we can't find anything on the digimon."

"And you tried killing the digimon?"

"We killed one of them. It caused psychosis in the human partner."

"Hmm… Perhaps the answer lies in the brain. Yes, that's it. I would suggest attempting a lobotomy on one of them." Marcus listened on in confusion, wondering what a lobotomy was and realizing it probably wasn't good.

"Are you insane? These are children we're talking about!"

"Sometimes sacrifices have to be made. I'll move along now."

Marcus watched the group go away, leaving only the two guards and the hidden doorway. Marcus remembered seeing two guards here during the daytime, but didn't think anything of it. Now, though, it makes sense.

He just needed a dictionary to figure out what the heck a lobotomy was. Because of this, he snuck on over to the library. Interestingly enough, there was a light on in the reading room. This piqued his curiosity and so he wandered into the room, almost startling the heavy kid with the rosy cheeks half to death. It seemed like he wasn't the only one that couldn't sleep.

"Oh, hi, you spend a lot of time in here, don't you?"

"I guess. There's not much to do here. I almost thought you were one of the guards."

"Nope, I'm not." Marcus plopped a giant dictionary he found in the library on the table. It was out in the open for easy browsing anyway so Marcus could pick it up without having to actually see it. He opened it up to the L section and opened his mouth in horror when he read the definition of lobotomy. "Oh, man, we've gotta get out of here."

"What's going on?"

"They plan on taking parts of our brains out to see if our link with our digimon gets severed."

The kid looked on disbelieving. "Please tell me that's a joke."

"No man, they were talking about giving us lobotomies and that's what one is." The kid was visibly shaking. "So, what's your name, anyway?"

"Uh, Kenneth."

"I'm Marcus. What about your partner?"

Kenneth thought for a second. "Patamon."

Marcus had a weird inkling about something so he asked the kid: "Can I see your wallet for just a second?"

Kenneth was slightly shocked by the request, but he pulled out the old brown leather wallet he had anyway and passed it to him. Marcus eyed the school ID card. "So, what do you go by? You killed Kenny, Barbie and Ken, what?"

"Kenny, I guess. Wait, you're not mad?"

"Why would I be mad? We've got the same enemy and I wouldn't want him knowing who I was either."

Nevada

In downtown Las Vegas, Marika and Claire finally reach the point of the latest bioemergence only to find it empty, no fog, no digital field. Marika looked around the area, pondering for a little bit.

Then she told Claire and the partner digimon her deduction. "There's another Tamer."

A/N: Sorry it took so long getting this chapter out. I've been having some problems lately and I might be moving, so that's been getting in the way of this.

The whole 'True versions of seasons 4, 5 and 6' are inspired by the numerous remakes of said seasons. Basically it follows a what-if scenario, as in what if the seasons we're getting aren't how they actually happened. Well, the main parts of the seasons really happened, but there was a lot taken out (more character development for Masaru and Yoshino, more plot progression in Xros Wars, the other kids actually getting their fusion evolutions in Frontier, various fan theories actually turning out to be true, that sort of thing).

By the way, in order to clear up any confusion: Marcus is in no way fluent in Czech. He hasn't even used it yet (and there is a use). It's actually the same with Ezekiel and French and Spanish. He's basically just a bunch of hot air.