The tamer was sitting on his couch, browsing his phone. Ren had smartly left him to cool off after his outburst, not bothering the tamer with the usual line of questions.
He still couldn't quite believe Ren had put a hole in the wall. He scoffed to himself.
"Bloody idiot. What was he thinking?"
"Who are you talking to, Tamer?"
The tamer jumped, startled by the digimon's sudden appearance. Despite being certain he was alone in the room, Ren was suddenly standing next to him once again.
At least this time he managed to control himself enough to avoid making any strange noises. He gave the digimon a cranky look before turning back to his phone.
"Not to you, homewrecker. And I thought I told you not to sneak up on me like that."
Ren's ears pinned back again as he realised his tamer was still upset with him. His next words were much quieter.
"I did try to be louder this time."
The tamer picked up on the digimon's tone. He looked over and saw Ren standing there, timidly staring at the floor.
He immediately felt guilty for the way he was treating his digimon.
Staring at the ceiling, he let out a long sigh before looking back to Ren.
"I'm sorry for yelling at you, Ren."
"It is alright, Tamer. I deserved it."
"No, it's not alright... and you definitely didn't deserve it."
"But I upset you."
"Yes, you did. But that's my problem to deal with. I shouldn't have lost my cool."
"But it was my fault in the first place."
"Damnit Ren..."
The tamer could feel his frustration rising again. He took a deep breath.
"...can you please stop trying to blame yourself? I mean, the fact you won't stand up for yourself only makes me feel worse for yelling at you."
"What do you mean, Tamer?"
"Well, it's easy to pick on someone who won't fight back. I swear, I could push you around and you'd just stand there and take it."
"I..."
Ren didn't have an answer for that.
"Oh my god, you actually would. Seriously Ren, you're so much stronger than me, but you'd let me walk all over you."
"You are my tamer. I could not go against you."
"Why not? Is this because of that nonsense they were teaching you back at that village?"
"Well..."
"Come on, I told you not to worry about that. Look, if I behave like that or do some other stupid thing, don't just let me get away with it. If I'm being an idiot, you tell me, ok?"
Ren looked appalled at the thought of doing so.
"I... I could not do that, Tamer.
"Sure you could, it's easy. You have my permission. Come on, call me an idiot."
"But I..."
Ren had a look of discomfort about him, struggling with the simple insult.
"...I cannot believe you are trying to encourage me to be disrespectful to you, Tamer."
"Well, I guess I'm a bit of an idiot then, aren't I?"
"No, you are just... weird."
"Oh, so you can call me weird, but not an idiot. Come on, Ren. Look, you don't even have to mean it. Just think of it like... a bit of banter."
He gave the digimon his own version of puppy dog eyes.
"...please?"
Ren didn't look happy about it, but eventually relented to the tamer's request.
"Fine..."
The digimon looked away, not comfortable saying it to his tamer's face. He mumbled as quietly as possible
"You are an... idiot."
"What was that? I couldn't hear you."
Ren clenched his fists, before speaking much louder this time.
"You are an idiot!"
"Hey! There you go."
"It still feels wrong, Tamer."
"No it doesn't. It's just a bit of fun. Hey..."
He held his hand out to the digimon with a friendly smile.
"...are we good?"
Ren hesitated, but reached out and grasped his tamer's hand.
The tamer's expression fell as he did.
"...what the..."
He looked down to stare at the handshake, realising something felt off. He turned his wrist. What he saw made him yank his hand away in shock.
He hadn't noticed it before, but Ren's fingers had somehow slimmed down and he now had two additional digits.
"... what the hell Ren?! What happened to your hand?!"
Ren quickly hid his hand behind his back.
"Tamer, I can explain!"
"Oh, please do. Because I'm about to freak out if you don't."
"Please... just stay calm."
Ren slowly held both hands up, trying to placate his tamer. The other one had also gone through the same changes. Both hands now had 5 human-like fingers. Each finger still ended in a claw, albeit much smaller than previously.
"...so... I told you digimon can manipulate data."
"Yeah."
"And you know we are made of data."
The tamer took a minute to catch on to what Ren was implying, eyes slowing widening in realisation.
"NO WAY! So you... you can just change how you look? Just like that?"
He gave a snap of his fingers to emphasise the point.
"It is difficult and takes a lot of effort, but yes. Not our base appearance, but minor changes such as this."
Ren wiggled his new fingers as he spoke.
The tamer stared with an incredulous expression, dumbfounded at the digimon's ability to seemingly modify his appearance at will.
Ren noticed the look on his tamer's face.
"...are you ok, Tamer? You look... shaken."
"I... um... yeah. Just..."
"I did not mean to upset you like this."
"No-no, I'm not upset. Just... I mean, I know digimon have some crazy abilities, but this... I've never heard of a digimon doing something like this."
"As far as I am aware, it is not a common occurrence. In the digital world, we would not have any reason to change."
"Why did you choose to do this?"
"I thought this form would make it easier to use your computer."
The tamer's expression dropped from shocked to judgemental.
"You did this... just so you could play on my computer?"
"Well, I also thought it might have other benefits. Your world is designed for people with hands. It just... makes sense to do this."
"I... guess so. It doesn't, like... uh... hurt you or anything, right? The change, I mean."
"It is not painful, just... an unusual sensation. I am not sure how to describe it in a way you would understand. It involves reformatting my base code."
The tamer stared dumbly for a moment, before responding.
"Um... yeah, no idea what that would feel like. So... you wanna get back on the computer. You could... I dunno... try some games or something? Test your hand-eye coordination?"
"Certainly. Do you have a particular game in mind that I could try?"
"Hmm... maybe Counterstrike?"