Chapter Seventeen

Primary Village

You'd think that a place that could produce infinite copies of your exact outfit overnight and preserve fresh toast in plastic without melting the package and transport an entire car and seven people through a television set would have no problem paving roads with concrete, or at least provide better methods of travel other than walking. Sorry, did I say better methods of travel? What I meant to say was any method of transportation.

After what my legs guesstimated to be a mile, a tall lion-man appeared out of the surrounding forest. He was totally ripped, had a dangerous studded knuckle brace and wore nothing but black pants. He towered over everyone and wore the best 'don't fuck with me,' expression I'd ever seen. Myoticmon should take tips on this guy on how to look scary.

He held out a hand with deadly looking black claws and grumbled: "Greetings, I am Leomon."

"No shit?" Josh said.

No one reached for Leomon's, very dangerous, clawed paw.

"He's here to help protect all of you until you get your own Digimon," Caroline explained.

"Why won't he just be our Digimon?" Josh asked, taking in Leomon's height and wrestler build.

Leomon grunted and turned away to nobly stride ahead.

"Well?" Josh asked as everyone filed after Leomon.

"Leomon's a pretty uptight Digimon and hasn't found a human noble enough for him to bond with for life," Palmon replied.

"Like, how noble?" Josh asked.

"He's got his heart set on superman," Caroline said. "Or batman. Or any of those idealistic characters that don't actually exist in real life."

"Um, what?" Josh said.

"He wants to team up with the ultimate good guy. The only one he deems worthy of him," Justin explained.

"What an arrogant bastard," Brian said.

Leomon glanced over his shoulder. "I can hear everything you all are saying, you realize?"

"Oh, yes of course we realize. You're like, five feet ahead of us and you have like super good animal hearing, so yeah, we know." Justin grinned and winked at Jessie.

After a few minutes of awkward silence, Brian leaned into Josh and whispered: "I didn't know he could hear us."

Primary Village was run by a fat, red toad-like digimon named Elecmon. The place resembled a baby's nursery on steroids. Giant ABC sponge blocks towered over the trees. Buildings made entirely of twenty-feet-long plastic fruit toys. They had giant smiley faces painted on them, and were very, very, scary to stare at. Hundreds of eggs the size of ostridge's lay scattered about a perfectly cut lawn with grass fine enough to make up a golf course. And there were baby cradles with drooling plush size digimon. The ratio of babies to caretaker was –what?- a bagilion to one? It was a wonder that none of them died of neglect.

"Oh my gosh!" Jessie cried as a mob of mobile heads mauled her. She lost balance and fell to the ground as the crowd all chattered at her at once, each digimon trying to drown out the others with their own introduction.

"Hey back off!" A floppy eared digimon came racing from god only knows where. "Terrier Tornado!" He leaped into the air, and spun in a circle, his floppy ears spreading out and from his swirl a mini twister metalized out of magic, because I couldn't imagine logic having anything to do with this nonsense, and blew all the little heads away from Jessie. The floppy eared digimon then strode up to her and stuck a thumb at himself. "My name is Terriermon and I'm a fighter."

Jessie stared at him a brief moment, but before she could come up with a reply, a four limbed blue and white thing that head was in complete disproportion to its body size, charged Terriermon, head-butting the other monster in the stomach.

Terriermon stumbled back a few steps and then spun again, this time with far less velocity as before, and knocked the blue and white digimon over with one of his floppy ears. The thing tumbled and let out a grunt. He then looked up at Terriermon with tear's beading the ducks of his eyes.

"Suck it up! Tears are for the weak!" Terriermon said and puffed up his ears and smirked at Jessie.

The blue and white digimon sniffed and struggled to push itself to its tiny feet. It crawled up to Jessie and gazed at her with large watery eyes. A wet kitten mewing in the rain couldn't have pulled of a better performance. She scooped up the little creature and it immediately smiled. Jessie made an affectionate sound with her throat.

"What's your name?" Jessie asked.

"Demiveemon," it said.

"Umph, the weak shall attract the weak and both will parish in the flames of evil. Good riddance." Terriermon said and snarled at the other digimon he'd blown away as they tried to approach once more.

"You know why no one has bonded with you yet?" Demiveemon said from Jessie's lap. "It's because you're a bully. That's why you've stuck around here and pick on us. You can't face anything out there."

Terriermon spun and snarled. "That's not true- I don't- you're- I'm here to protect you… stupid…"

Caroline sighed. "Alright, alright. The rest of you dive in." She gestured to the terrified crowd of plush heads.

Josh was the first to step forward, and the heads responded immediately. They crowded him as they had Jessie, yet he managed to keep his balance.

"Kinda funny looking aren't they?" Joshed said.

"They get better. Just think of Agumon here, he was once one of those funny looking things," Justin said and leaned casually on Agumon's head, who didn't seem to mind. He closed his eyes and smiled good naturedly.

"Just hurry it up. Justin, I'm heading back to the human world," Caroline said. She waved as she walked away. "Just make sure they don't die."

"Can't make any promises," Justin said.

Caroline grunted and left us in Justin's questionably capable care.

"Too bad we can't have more than one," Brian said, picking up one of the little heads. Wizardmon stood next to him crossing his arms. He looked dispassionately into the sky.

Sarah joined Josh in the sea of heads, leaving me to stand awkwardly alone… watching them… like a creeper. Maybe I should be more enthusiastic or at least show a little more interest in the monsters, but I honestly couldn't picture myself with one of those things following me around everywhere. In case it wasn't blatantly obvious, I don't deal well socially. My aloof demeanor completely failed at attracting the sort of attention everyone else was getting and I wasn't jealous.

I wandered off from the rest of them to explore the oddity that was Primary Village. The first spectacle I investigated was the plastic fruit building. I entered through the watermelon smiley mouth. For a building constructed completely out of plastic, it was surprisingly cool, as in temperature. The building was filled with children's toys, and had stairs without railings that wove crookedly around the many stories with no thought to proper architecture. The entire place was padded like every isolation chamber depicted on television.

After looking around for a good two minutes I sat down on a bouncy chair and there I stayed, enjoying a moment of almost silence. Unfortunately my new found privacy was short lived. Brian came hustling into the room.

"Woah," he said turning in a circled to admire the poorly designed architecture. "Man, this place is a toddler's wonderland."

Wizardmon, ever patient, and blessedly silent, dutifully followed after Brian and gazed about with far less admiration.

"Aren't you going to go pick a digimon?" Brian asked.

I shrugged.

"It's mega awesome."

After a few moments of silence, Brian grabbed me by the hand and dragged me out of the chair.

"What are you doing?" I said.

"This is the most awesome thing to happen to anyone in the history of ever and you're sitting around moping in a toddlers play chair. Come on and enjoy this!" he said and dragged me back outside to the chaotic frenzy of Digimon pining to be befriended. Brian scooped up an orange and white head with a very spiky horn growing out of its face. "Here." He shoved said spike-head in my arms.

"Hello, I'm Tsunomon and I'd-" he cut off abruptly, eyes growing wide and distant. He then leapt out of my arms and bounded towards the toad-like Elecmon. "I know who my digi-destine is! I just had the calling! I know just where they are!"

"Well, that was fast," Brian said.

Elecmon held up his hands. "Calm down, calm down, which one of these guys is it?"

"None of them! He's not here! He's in Mexico and needs my help! I have to go to him! Now!" Tsunomon said.

"What, oh, I'll go get my T.V." And he hustled off.

Tsunomon continued to bounce around in circles. "Hurry, hurry, hurry!"

And then Elecmon was back with a T.V. and Justin was there with his digivice.

"Mexico? You sure? You know where?"

"A city! A city!"

"I guess that narrows it down… sorta.. not really," Justin said as he fiddled with the dials. "Here's Mexico city, I'll leave the gate open a little bit for you to jump back through incase he is not anywhere close to there." He held his digivice to the screen, which now displayed an internet café and the little creature leapt into the air.

"Adios amigos!" was Tsunomon's cliché good-bye and he was off.

Justin kept the T.V. going for a full five minutes but Tsunomon never returned. "Guess he found his guy."

"Shouldn't we go help him? He did say he was in trouble." Brian said.

Justin blinked. "I shouldn't leave you all alone, but…" he glanced at the T.V.

"We could go with you," Josh said.

"I don't know, most of you don't have digimon and could prove to be more of a liability." Justin said.

"But-" Brian began.

But whatever argument he was about to make was drowned out by someone shouting:

"Diabolic Star!"

And out of the sky a ball and chain came hurling from the heaven's to smash into the T.V.

Justin scampered out of the way as plastic and glass flew everywhere. He threw up his arms to protect his face, and despite Agumon's rush to cover him, glass still lodged into his arms, and plastic slashed his clothes and legs. But Justin didn't earn the crest of courage for nothing. He immediately rose to his feet, digivice in hand. "Agumon!"

"On it!" Agumon said and leapt into the air and glowed and then exploded into a full sized T-Rex.

Right, I'm out of here. I fled back to the plastic fruit building like an intelligent pansy. Brian, taking after Justin, held up his own digivice. "Wizardmon!"

But Wizardmon was following me to safety.

It took Brian a couple of seconds to realize this. He glanced about and spotted us. "The hell! I thought you were supposed to protect me!"

Wizardmon gestured and Brian came flying after us, literally flying. And the three of us took cover in a fruit building.

"Where's everyone else?" Brian asked.

I shrugged.

There was much shouting and destructive noises coming from outside.

"Who's attacking us?" Brian asked.

"Myoticmon's henchmen," Wizardmon replied.

Brian frowned and looked back out the open smiley-face door. "And you're just going to stand there! I'm a chosen one! I'm supposed to protect everyone!" And with that deranged logic, he ran back outside.

Wizardmon sighed, glanced at me, and then chased after Brian.

I snuck for cover behind a giant block and would have been perfectly happy to remain in the toddler's playroom, had not a black bowling-ball-shaped-bird-thing came flapping inside. "I know you are in here. I saw you run inside." Demidevimon said.

I didn't say anything, but I wasn't in all that great of a hiding spot. Just around an oversized sponge block, and bam, he found me.

"Found you!"

No shit.

I got up and ran.

"Hey! Where are you going? Hey, answer me!"

The fuck is with this thing? Does he actually expect me to reply?

Seeing as running around in circles in a the fruit playhouse would accomplish nothing other than making me exhausted, and I did not trust my aim, nor the destructive power of preschool plush toys, the best option was to, unfortunately, flee into the chaos of whatever battle was raging outside.

Man was that a run on thought or what?

Outside, the battle between Justin's T-rex and the zipping ghost, Phantomon, was well, very hard to miss. Primary Village was in ruins, and there were crushed digiegg shells everywhere. It was past the point of everyone running around for cover, trying not to be smashed by the feet of a T-rex, or hit by Phantomon's swinging scythe

I darted for the woods, the only place not currently under threat of being trampled. Unfortunately, halfway to cover and Demidevimon caught me up, literally. He grabbed me by, of all my flailing appendages, my hair. How he managed to hold my slick black hair in his bird claws? Fuck if I knew. And it hurt. God damn, he was not gentle. He dragged me by my hair towards the direction I was already running. What is wrong with him?

I grabbed my roots in an attempt to keep my scalp from being ripping off.

Lucky for my tender locks, Elecmon came to the rescue. He jumped a good five feet into the air and smacked Demidevimon with his tail, which was now crinkling with electricity. The little demon went flying and my hair that was in his grip was singed, but blessedly not on fire.

Elecmon landed on the ground: "Run!" and was after Demidevimon as the little beast fluttered back into the air.

I spun back for the cover of the fruit building and was almost there when:

"Nova Blast!"

A raging ball of fire half the size of a car came hurling from the T rex's mouth and crashing into the fruit building. The walls melted and the suffocating smell of burning plastic filled the air. Shit. Not only was this guy huge, mobile, and intelligent, but it could shoot fireballs out of its mouth too? And we're losing?

I stood for a moment with my hand covering my mouth, trying not cough as the fumes of smoke and melted plastic assaulted my senses. My eyes watered and I fled the burning wreckage, trying to avoid more burning wreckage as the T-rex let loose another hell of raining fire. God damn it was getting hot.

I managed to get away to a clearing with breathable air and minimal chaos.

Terriermon stood in a protective stance in front of Josh. He was panting hard and ten Ghosts were closing in on him. He smiled, looking from one ghost to the other.

"Terrier Tornado!" he shouted and spun in his magic circle, zipping back and forth, knocking and blowing away each of the ghosts as they rushed towards Josh.

In an unpleasant reminder that Josh was not the only one they were after, another ghost grabbed me by my arm.

"You're coming with me!" the ghost said and started to drag me towards the woods.

"Where?" I asked.

He blinked and glanced at me. "To Myoticmon's castle."

"How far is it?" I asked.

"About a week away or a couple of hours, or a day." He continued to haul me off as he spoke.

Did he say that that just so it would rhyme?

"I'll save you, Tonia!" Brian cried and came running to me with a stick. He beat the ghost over and over unit it leg go and tried to run away from Brian's furious attack. And then Wizardmon came and with a single sweep of his sun-charm staff, the ghost disappeared into pixilated dust.

I need to work on not being so much of a damsel.

"Where did you get that stick?" I asked.

"The woods."

Duh.

"Come on. Sarah and Jessie are just over here." Brian started back for the woods.

"What about your other friend?" Wizardmon pointed to Josh, who was still being heroically defended by Terriermon.

"Oh, right. We'll get him. They're hiding out in the woods, Tonia, we'll meet you there!" And then the pair of them rushed to Josh's rescue.

Brian was actually pretty good at this.

I headed off in the direction Brian had been taking me before he got sidetracked to go be a hero somewhere else.

A few minutes of aimless wood wondering and:

"Tonia!"

Jessie carrying her living plush doll and Sarah rushed out of their hiding place in the brush to meet me. Leomon, the massive over six feet tall, Leomon, landed on the ground before us. Apparently he'd been hiding out in the branches of the trees… somehow.

"I will escort you all to safety."

"What about Josh and Brian?" Jessie asked.

Leomon crossed his arms and frowned towards the billowing smoke of Primary Village. "We will wait a little longer, but if they do not return we will go."

"You can't be serious! We can't just leave them!" Jessie said.

"Metalgraymon will protect them," Leomon said.

"What are you talking about?" Jessie said and Leomon pointed.

In the sky, high above the village something huge was blowing the smoke away with every beat of its wings. The enormous T-rex was now even bigger and had wings and a metal skull and chest plate and was now shooting missiles out of its chest.

"Are you joking?" Jessie asked.

Fortunately, Jessie's understandable miss trust of very scary flying dinosaur did not have to be put to the test. Josh and Brian came running out of the brush to meet us, Terriermon and Wizarmon coming up the rear.

"Let's go," Leomon said, and using the sheer power of his muscular body, forged a path for us.

"Do you think Justin will be okay?" Jessie asked.

"He is with Metalgraymon."

"And?"

"He is digidestined. He will protect us all."

I glanced back at the reptilian beast that was now bombing the ground with missiles flying from its chest like the fires of heaven.