"What the hell is this place?" MJF's voice is the first thing Louise hears as she approaches where the Forbidden Door Digidestined are loitering around, giving her pause for a moment before she continues to walk towards them.
"We've told you," Mox says tiredly. "It's the Digiworld."
"Yeah, but... what is it?"
"The Digital World," Louise speaks up once she's close enough, the group of six men hovering around turning towards her, a startled look on some of their faces. "Is a world created by data from your world's internet." She smiles at them. "We have creatures of all types here, built from that data. Some prefer to live peacefully, but others become warped with time or influence and that's when we need you all to come defend villages or help correct issues around the world."
"Great, dragged in to clean up yet another place's messes," Max mumbles to himself, barely paying attention to the strange creature clinging to his arm. "What are you?" he finally wonders, glancing down at the pale green creature with wide black eyes and a small horn on its head.
"Gummymon," she chirps happily, and he grimaces, adjusting her to rest atop his shoulder so she's in less danger of falling.
"If you check on your digivices," Louise says, nodding over at Mox as he pulls his out and stares at it. "There is a map that will direct you to digimon who require help."
"What, do these villages have an alarm system that communicates with us?" Max asks, not thrilled with the idea of being on call for some digital help system, especially after how ruffled he'd felt after that trip through the Digiport just to get here.
"Something like that," Louise tells him. "But if you're not in the digiworld, you won't get the alerts unless I interact directly with you through the digiport, which we usually try not to do. Considering there are four groups of digidestined, we usually have someone on hand in this world to help out so contacting you in such a way is only for truly extreme situations."
"Good to know," Max mumbles, not liking the thought of his valuable time with Piper getting disrupted anymore than it does already.
"So, we going to get this show on the road now that everything's been explained?" Mox asks, bored.
"Yes," Louise says, smiling genially at him. "Pick a mission off of your digivice, and you may go to it whenever you're ready."
Mox hums. Pokes around the map on his device before selecting one. "Ok, let's do this, then." They all set their devices to what Mox had selected, then crowd around the digiport. "Digiport open!" Mox calls, his device accompanied by the others opening the portal and sending them through to the village.
Max grunts at yet another trip through the digiport, huffing under his breath as he dusts himself off and checks on Gummymon, who beams back at him. "What a fucked up world," he grouses, trudging along after the other digidestined. Until they reach the village and he stops short, staring at the destruction awaiting them, a fair portion of the place razed to the ground. "Holy shit."
Mox casts a quick glance over at him before facing forward again. "See anything?" he asks Otamamon, who shakes his head slowly. "Well, damn. I guess let's begin searching."
They do, digging through the wreckage, carefully walking through what few buildings remain standing. Max feels like something's watching him, adding to his general paranoia as they creep along, and then something snags his leg. "Whoa," he exclaims, blinding kicking out at the thing... before stopping and squinting down. To his confusion, he realizes the strange block thing that had grabbed him has arms, and eyes, and... what the fuck? "What the hell are you?"
"Blikmon," the creature says. "This was my village. I think most everyone else was deleted in the attack. Please..."
Max kneels down and realizes that the creature is pinned down by a collapsed wall, frowning to himself as he digs around, trying to find a way to free him without making things worse. "Well, shit, you're wedged in there good, huh?" he mumbles, putting Gummymon up on top of his head so she won't slip off as easily while he digs.
He's still working stubbornly on clearing out enough of the rubble to free Blikmon when the creature freezes under his hand and Max looks up, fearing that he'd moved something wrong and hurt him worse, but- no... there's a strange shadow hovering over him, and-
Gummymon squeaks and tugs desperately at Max's hair, adding to his concern. He slowly turns his head and stares, eyes widening at the large Digimon hovering behind him, a weapon unlike anything he's ever seen before aimed right at his head.
"Aw shit," Max mumbles, pushing back to put as much distance as he can between them, but unable to go too far as he presses up against the slab of wall holding Blikmon down.
