Chapter 17 – Doubts

Port control was no longer as welcoming or homey as it once had been – and that hadn't been very much so to begin with. As I might have told you once or twice before, even the likes of Persiamon and Babamon were put under surveillance. Initially, the surveillance groups consisted of a human soldier and a basic pokemon, such as a gastly, growlithe, or houndour. However, within a week of the terrorist attacks, numerous containers loaded with larval digimon resembling black caterpillars were shipped into all the major cities, with orders from up above.

Apparently, they were called dokunemon, and they were to replace pokemon on all the indoor surveillance details. The admiralty and digimon higher-ups also made it a point to stress that dokunemon were all capable of scaling walls and ceilings, as well as rendering themselves completely invisible for extended periods of time.

Alas, they were very weak physically, but the human soldiers that accompanied them were a sufficient compensating factor, it seemed.

General Harding had watched impassively as the dokunemon assigned to patrol the third floor crawled up onto the ceiling and vanished from our sight. With a sigh, he had shrugged and turned away from its apparent location, heading back to his office.

When I followed him into his office and shut the door behind me, he had turned to me with a frown.

"This isn't good at all."

"And why would that be so, sir?"

He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. "No one seems to realize it yet, but humans and pokemon are losing it. Given enough time, you'll see what I mean."

I was bewildered. "What are you talking about, sir?"

"I'm talking about power, kid. The digimon are taking more and more of it away from us over time," he said quietly, staring out the window at the sea. "Mark my words, there will probably come a day when no humans will hold any ranks in the government – especially if the terrorists keep their act going."

If we had once thought that things were bad immediately after the attack, we certainly thought that they were horrible by the time the dokunemon were deployed in every government facility. After all, being watched by something that you could see was one thing, and being spied on by invisible eyes was a whole new can of worms.

Pun entirely intended in that last statement of mine, for the record.

xxx

I frowned at the page that I was reading.

The reason for me doing so was simple – Tammy Silvas' file simply seemed to lack everything that should have been in it. Her entire service record at Canalave was brief to the point of being utterly useless for any history-taking on her, and the tentacool incident itself was only mentioned in passing.

Specifically, the deaths of she and her starter were written-off as being due to 'mishandling of venomous pokemon' and 'natural death due to bacterial agents'. It was kind of a letdown when you considered how tedious it had been for me to gain unsupervised access to the archives, really.

Well, admittedly the dokunemon and guard that had been assigned to watch Persiamon weren't too keen on lingering about her hairspray-scented domain for prolonged periods of time. That did make evading their scrutiny a little easier, but not much on the whole.

With a sigh, I shelved her file, mere seconds before Ford the ariados scuttled over the top of the shelf to check on me. He clicked his mandibles several times while narrowing his eyes at me, finally disappearing with a rattling sound. Quietly, I made my way out of the archives department. It seemed that even Persiamon's pokemon had their eyes on me, if Ford's behaviour was any indication.

Or maybe I was just getting paranoid.

xxx

As it turned out, my translator chips were activated once they had processed a certain amount of pokemon speech. That did explain why I hadn't been able to understand the blissey in the hospital cafeteria, and also the other pokemon at port control once I got back. When I later asked Babamon about it, she told me that the chips were designed as such to allow them to synchronize with the user's brainwaves or something like that – apparently, not all pokemon speech could be translated directly due to the differing speed of communication and frequencies at which they talked.

Still, it didn't stop me from nearly going crazy when they first activated themselves. A word of advice if you're thinking of getting translating devices – you might want to avoid really crowded places until you get a little used to them. The chips made it sound like a voice was speaking in my head, and there was obviously no volume control on them. See why I'm warning you about them?

Actually, the first few words of translated pokemon speech that made it to me were from a pair of lopunny that I passed in the mess hall. I had been heading to a table with my tray of lunch when I crossed their paths, and I nearly thought that I was dreaming or having some kind of hallucination.

"Ooh, so he's the one with the chips!" one of them had giggled, nudging her companion when she saw me heading in their direction. "It's that haircut again."

The other lopunny had given me a glance, and then let out a giggle. "He'd be cute if he wasn't a human, really."

Any thoughts or doubts I might have had as to the reality of the whole scene were thrown right out of the window when she pinched my butt as I passed her.

xxx

I was in the water pokemon vault – distracting Babamon while Silas casually went about asking questions about Zachary Harding and Tammy's tentacool – when the chips kicked in, and the resulting surge of translated pokemon speech made it feel like a bomb had exploded inside my head. See, the chips didn't produce sounds on their own – they merely processed any sound that passed through them, and transmitted the modified signals to my auditory nerve. So it was like hearing voices in my head, really.

Now, imagine hearing a whole group of gossiping finneon and goldeen fry all at once. Yes, you heard me right... I had no less than thirteen pokemon all talking at once, and the chips happily decided to start functioning in earnest.

"Did you see that seaking?"

"When is feeding time, again?"

"He looks so dreamy..."

"Join my anti-Babamon campaign!"

"Who did that?"

"I think my scales are getting dry..."

"Argh!" I clapped my hands over my ears, trying to shut-off the terrific din that was being generated by the swarm of tiny fish pokemon. "Stop it!"

"Stop what?" Babamon asked obliviously and sounding a little muffled through her scarf, as she turned away from those annoying fishes and turned to regard me with a curious expression. Upon seeing my hands over my ears, though, she began laughing. "Oh, I take it that the chips have kicked in?"

"Yes..." I hissed, glaring at the noisy fry in the pool. "Could you get them to shut up, please? It's like a pair of loudred are having a shouting match in here..."

Babamon shrugged, even as she began speaking louder to get past the hands over my ears – and making my headache a little worse in the process of making herself heard. "Well, it's their day to get exercise, so you'd have to wait a while... maybe we'll step out of the vault for a bit."

"Alright," I nodded, still covering my ears as we left the vault. "That sucked balls, really..."

"Watch your language, young man!" Babamon said waspishly as she brandished her cane. "Don't make me tan your hide, eh!"

Fortunately for me, her assigned guard and dokunemon made it back from their break just about then, allowing me to take my leave of her without getting a hiding.

xxx

Once the throbbing in my head had died down a little bit, I went back into the vault with Babamon to pick Silas up. He had already been in there for about three hours, and we had agreed that spending too much time in the vault would probably cause the other personnel at port control to get suspicious.

I let out a relieved sigh upon seeing the group of finneon and goldeen watching me silently with their big eyes. "Phew, they've shut up now..."

"Not for long, alas," the elderly digimon shook her head. "They're still very hyperactive at this stage, I'm afraid. Maybe in a few weeks, we'll see them becoming a little more settled down."

"Oh, alright – Silas, where are you? It's time for us to leave Babamon in peace!"

"Alright already – I'm coming!"

Even though I had already talked to him once back at Snowpoint, I froze on the spot. It really was one thing to use a headset to talk with him, and another to actually be able to hear what he was saying. All I could do was to blink like a noctowl, even as Silas scooted out from behind a tank where he had been talking to some other water pokemon.

"I'm here," he said, as he waved his tongue in the air to draw my attention. "Why are you looking stoned?"

"I can understand you," I said, still somewhat in awe over the chips' translating ability. "And without a headset, too!"

"Indeed – you got some screws tightened up there, instead."

"Hey, I heard that – I don't have any loose screws up there!" I swatted him on the back of his shell, noting that Babamon had left the vault for a smoke as I did so. "Anyway, did you get anything on him?"

Silas stuck his tongue out and made a short whistling sound. "I couldn't get anything new from the vault. In fact, that wooper I talked to just now said that he was actually trying to get some information out of the tentacool before it died."

I frowned – this new bit of information would certainly change things if it turned out to be true. "So he might not be the tentacool's killer?"

"Yes... Everything I've got on him so far suggests that aside from being a hyperactive and corrupt bastard, there's nothing we can really hold against him. Anything useful on your end?" Silas asked, looking up at me.

Just as I opened my mouth to answer him, Babamon stepped back into the vault, tucking her lighter and pack of Marlboros back into her robes as she did so. Quickly picking Silas up and shutting my mouth to avoid looking like a goldeen, I waved cheerfully at her with my free hand.

"I'll be heading out now, Babamon. Thanks for watching him," I called out to her as I headed for the door.

"Oh, Silas is a darling," she said, patting his shell with a smile. "Much better behaviour compared to some of those hooligans that Zachary has on his team, he is. Take care, young man!"

I shook my head as I exited the vault. "General Harding's team and hooligans being mentioned in the same sentence... Why am I not surprised?"

"Well, he wouldn't be Zachary Harding, otherwise," she laughed. "Oh, and another thing before you go?"

"Eh?"

"I'd get a haircut, if I were you. A mullet really doesn't go with that abnormally long face of yours."

"... duly noted."

xxx

I looked at my reflection in the barbershop's mirror with an expression that probably stood somewhere between awe and horror. The military barber, while used to giving buzz-cuts, was actually quite a flamboyant person by nature. And that probably explains just why I was all shocked and goggle-eyed in his shop's swivel chair to begin with.

"So, how's it look?" he asked, as he whipped the sheet he had wrapped around me off. "Long faces are generally tedious to work with, but I think we have a winner, here!"

"It's..." I gawked at my reflection. "It's nice."

"You look like a cancer patient who's on the losing end of the battle against chemotherapy. Or maybe a patient suffering from some terminal disease," Silas chirped happily. "You wouldn't happen to actually have any of those, do you?"

The barber straightened up indignantly. "Excuse me? Are you mocking my artistry?"

"Or you'd do what, Captain Queer?" laughed my shellder, as he narrowed his eyes at the barber. "Just don't flash me – I think I'd go blind."

"Blasphemous shellder!" squawked the barber, as he leapt at Silas with a hairbrush in his hand. "Be gone!"

"Hey, that's my shellder!" I jumped out of the barber's chair and grabbed his ponytail, just as Silas used his tongue to vault off the table which he had been sitting on. The barber slipped and fell backwards, cursing loudly as he crashed into me. We both ended up crashing to the ground in a graceless heap, with him on top of me.

"Take this, you faggot!" cried Silas, as he fired a jet of water at us. He hit his mark, soaking us through, and the fucking water was cold.

The barber flipped himself over, and clouted me upside the head with his hairbrush. "Pulling my hair, eh? Take that!"

"He's a shellder, for fuck's sake – leave him alone!" I snapped, as I slammed my forehead into his chin, sending him reeling backwards. If there's one thing that can be said about my body, it's definitely the hard head. "As for you, Silas – return!"

With a flash of red light, Silas vanished into his pokeball, leaving me alone with the angry barber. He got up and dusted himself off, glaring at me the whole while.

I got to my feet and smiled brightly at him. "How much would that be, again?"

xxx

"Wow," General Harding gawked at me as I entered his office. "Nice haircut, kid."

"Thanks," I murmured, as I deposited the armload of files I had picked up at the fourth floor on his desk, and released Silas. "Silas just had to insult the barber, though."

"The faggot had it coming," sniffed Silas disdainfully. "He should wear a big sign saying 'I'm a fruitcake', he really should!"

General Harding laughed, "Nice one, Silas! What about your trainer, though?"

Silas stuck his tongue out and flicked it in my direction. "Eh, at least he appears straight. Though now he looks like a straight person that's dying and has been given chemotherapy."

"My goodness..."

"Or maybe he looks like the bastard child of a tangela and a human. I'm not picky with what I use to insult him, really."

"Eh?" General Harding gave my haircut a good look. "Tangela? Where did that come from? Looks more like a bisharp or something... maybe it'll be nicer once it grows out."

I rolled my eyes. "Alright, now can we get to work? It's bad enough that I've been getting stares all the way from the fourth floor back too this room. Now it's you two getting on my case?"

"Ah, well – you can't expect me to give you a chance now, can you?" General Harding wagged a finger at me with a smirk. "It'll look good once it grows a little shaggier, though. So just be patient, and we'll find something else to bother you with."

"Thanks, I guess," I muttered, as I took a seat and opened the first file. Perking up when I saw what was inside it, I shoved it towards General Harding. "Oh, and you'll need to read this entire requisition order carefully before signing on it."

"Mother-"

xxx

That night, when I finally got back to my dorm room and out of my uniform, I sat down on my bed and stared out of the window. For once, it wasn't a cloudy night – Canalave tended to be cloudy or foggy, depending on the time of year – and so the sky itself was visible. Stars were scattered all over the black sky, and there was a full moon.

Briefly, my mind flitted back to the lessons I had taken in high school, and to an old proverb about beauty. The proverb had made the analogy of beauty using a full moon 'swaddled' in stars, and for the first time in a long while, I was able to appreciate its meaning.

Silas scooted over from where I had released him onto my bed, and flopped himself onto my lap. Usually, he went to sleep before I did, but he seemed to be a chatty mood right about then. So I indulged him.

"So, what else have you found out about our dear general?" Silas asked me. "Babamon interrupted us just now, she did."

"Well..." I frowned. "There's very little I could find on Tammy Silvas, really. Her file in the archives department felt as if it had something missing, but I honestly can't say for sure. The tentacool case itself wasn't well documented..."

"Another dead end, then," Silas huffed.

I sighed. "Looks like it."

For a short while, the room was silent save for the ticking of the tiny alarm clock that sat on my desk. In the darkness, it felt as though we had slipped away from the world of the living, and into a place where only the passage of time seemed to make a sound.

"Tell me about yourself, trainer," he said, as he looked up at me. "Since we're stuck together, might as well get to know each other better before we kill each other."

I smirked as I rapped my knuckles on his shell, eliciting a purr from him – it was something General Harding had recommended, since it apparently was like a back massage for shellder. "I'll give you the first shot, Silas."

"Hmm, I'm trying to decide if that means I have permission to kill you when the day of our inevitable confrontation comes. I was born somewhere off the coast of Sunyshore, and got caught shortly after that. Your turn, trainer."

"Who said we were playing twenty questions?"

He opened his shell a little, and glared at me. "Unless you want a very wet dream tonight, you'd best play the game, my dear trainer."

I sighed, "I'm starting to wonder just which demented soul taught you how to use human slang, Silas. Anyways, I was born in Jubilife. Your turn."

"What kind of lousy answer is that? A drunk spinda could probably do better than that," he huffed. "Alright... I was in the vault of some pokemon professor for a few months before the revolution started. Then I eventually got sent here, and assigned to you, of all people."

"Wow, so you're more than three years old, and you know how to use similes?" I blinked. "You shellder live for ages, anyway... Hmm, I actually have a high school education."

"Ah, so you're not as dumb as you appear to be – you actually know what a simile is!" Silas chirped. "My turn, then... You do realize that I hate you, right? I wonder just why you put up with my antics."

"And yet you haven't poisoned me," I reminded him, as I lifted him off my lap and lay down on the bed. "We can still work together even if we hate each other, anyway. As for the reason why I tolerate you... well, you're basically the only person or pokemon that I've got."

"That's pathetic – you're trying to tell me that you don't know anyone else at port control?" he let out a whistle as I dropped him onto my chest. "Oh, wait... yeah, I know the answer to that one. You are a sad case, trainer. You really are."

"Nothing much that can be done about it, now, is there? And I never was a party animal, anyway," I shrugged, looking up into the darkness that was the ceiling. "They did say that the path to success was a lonely one..."

Silas seemed to consider that statement for quite some time before he spoke up again. "They also said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but that's not relevant to us right now. So tell me... just why are you trying so hard?"

"Eh?" I was beginning to get drowsy – just one of those things that happened to me when I was still for too long in a quiet place, really. "What did you say?"

"You said it yourself; the path to success is a lonely one. So why are you trying to do all this... nonsense like getting Harding charged with murder? Do you actually want to be alone or something?"

"It's not like that," I murmured, closing my eyes. "You probably won't understand my motives, anyway. Just go to sleep, Silas."

"Hell no," he retorted, slapping his tongue on my chest. "If you're going to make me do some of your grunt work to get Harding booted out, I'm going to want to know why you're so set on it."

"Is it too much to want to make something of myself? Can't I want to stand out from everyone else?" I shifted a little towards the wall. "If there's one thing I never want to be, it's mediocre."

Silas let out a squeak. "Then why must you do it by going after Harding? He's a tough nut to crack, and I'm sure that there are easier ways for you to do so."

I sighed, and shifted him off my chest and onto my stomach – was easier to talk that way. "He's corrupt. Isn't that reason enough?"

"And you're the paragon of moral virtue, and I'm one of Santa's little helper jynx. What's your real angle on this?"

"Alright, I'll admit that I have no qualms about pushing others down to get what I want. And that I want to make something of myself in the military, as I've already said. I'm sure that you can do the maths."

"I can't literally handle arithmetic, but I can add where it matters. Something is still missing from this whole situation," Silas said softly.

"What now?" I squinted in the darkness to see him staring at me with wide eyes. "Just what more could you be curious about?"

"Are you very sure that you want to get that high in the rankings?" he asked warily. "You know what it's going to be like, right?"

"Please. Just how bad can it get?"

He stuck his tongue out, and I felt it flopping against my chest. "Look at Harding. He has no life, save for his continuous rule-breaking. Do you really want to be stuck in the military for good?"

I shrugged at the ceiling. "I can't go home without getting high enough to be successful in my parents' eyes. Right now, I'm guessing that a general's rank would suffice for that."

"Oh, I'm sure that they'll accept that. But do you have what it takes to take on Zachary Harding?" Silas asked. "You've done well at evading this question for a while now, so it's time for us to hear an answer."

"Why are you so curious, anyway?" I said before I could stop myself. "It's not like any of this will affect you, anyway!"

"Yes it will!" he snapped. "As much as I don't like you, I'll still be going along with you in the event that you get yourself boosted up there!"

"Please," I snorted. "You seriously expect me to believe that you'd put all your hatred for me aside just like that? I might be a lot of things, Silas, but damned stupid hopefully isn't one of them."

He hesitated for a brief moment before replying, "... I really don't know what to make of you, trainer."

"Why?"

"You want to achieve some obscenely high rank, and that's fine. Yet you turn down a promotion and take something that you could have gotten with a few years of experience instead," Silas deadpanned. "What gives? And don't tell me that it's all part of your grand scheme to oust Zachary Harding, since I wouldn't buy that for one second."

"And why not, do tell?" I asked, wide awake once again. If Silas wanted an argument, he had one coming. "Since when do you even know what's going on in my head, anyways?"

"Please, bitch, don't take me for a fool." he scoffed. "You totally want his cock, that's why. And that's just for starters."

I sat bolt upright, causing him to fly off my stomach with a startled squeak. "WHAT?"

"You know what I mean," he huffed, from where he had landed near the foot of my bed. "Getting boned? Doing the horizontal tango? Rutting like a pair of-"

"Alright, I get the point," I said angrily, as I grabbed Silas and hauled him over to look him in the eyes. "So what if I do find him attractive? That's not going to stop me from stepping over him if I need to."

"The question is, could you live with yourself if you did that?" Silas asked. "Especially since we now know that he in all likeliness didn't kill Tammy's tentacool?"

I gaped at him for a moment, before dropping him on the mattress and shaking my head. "Well, then I'd nail him on the corruption charge. There's plenty of proof out there on that for me to get my hands on."

"You have missed my point once again, like the dense wobbuffet that you are," Silas sighed. "Even to a simple shellder like me, it's clear that you don't want to do anything like that to him. So will you do it, when the time comes? Could you really bring him down even if you had the proof to do so? That's the real question I've been wondering about all this while, frankly."

I looked at him for what felt like hours. The moonlight streaming in through the dorm room's tiny window lit the mattress up somewhat, allowing me to see his wide eyes clearly. In those large, wet pupils I saw twin reflections of my own face staring back at me. Diminished, yes, but the look of frustration on them was clearly visible.

"I don't know, Silas. I really don't."