Forbidden Fusion

by killalao

explicit multiversal adventure with lots of cute girls.

41. The Machine City

-chapter 41, machine city-

I woke up in a slightly different mood than the night before.

"Ok Pheebles, I hope you had fun last night, cause that's the last time I'm giving in to your sexual demands, until we get Henry and Claire's pokemon back." I said as soon as we were both awake enough to have an intelligible conversation.

"But Cj you love me remember?" She protested.

"Yeah, well."

"And what demands? I asked you last night and you agreed." She interrupted.

"You annoyed me until I agreed, you wouldn't talk about anything else." I replied. "And I do love you baby girl, that's why I'm trying to hold you accountable, so maybe you can learn some self-control, so our "harem" stops expanding, because this is getting a bit ridiculous."

"How is it going to expand?" She asked.

"Well it seems that all it takes is to find an attractive female and leave you alone with them for an hour or so." I replied. "You didn't even ask last time, you did that for you."

"I told you I was sorry." She said.

"Yeah you did." I sighed. "You're driving me crazy, you know that."

"Just no more ok? You even mention it or anything to do with sex, and I will leave the room you understand?"

"What if we're on the bus and it's moving?" She asked.

"Then I will jump out of the bus and cartwheel down the road or something." I said with determination.

"Really?" She asked. "Don't do that you'll get hurt."

"And then I'll have to rub that healing cream on you. And I might decide that you're hurt in a very special place." She said, which caused me to get up, throw on some underwear, and walk out of the room.

"Really Cj?" She called after I closed the door behind me.

Well I was out in the hallway of a mostly empty hotel, in my underwear, and I didn't really plan on going down to the lobby, so yeah I just walked down to the end of the hall and left Phoebe wondering how long I was going to take to come back, an answer I didn't really know myself because, this was so spontaneous, but yeah, I eventually came back.

"You weren't gone very long." She said as I opened the door to the room.

"That was a demonstration." I said as I shut the door behind me.

"Of course I'm not going to be gone long, I'm not going to leave you forever, I'm just going to, uh, extricate myself from the situation." I replied.

"Well then I'll follow you." She said.

"Then I'll keep extricating myself." I replied.

"Then we'll end up somewhere nice and secluded." Phoebe replied.

"Pheebles. . . " I said sternly as I opened the door again.

"Ok Ok, don't go again, I get it." She replied.

"All right then." I replied as I closed it.

"But just one question." She said as she got out of bed and started to dress herself.

"What if we never get their pokémon back?" She asked.

"Then I'll be reasonable about it baby girl." I replied. "I'm not doing this to punish you I'm trying to help you, just trust me ok?"

We got dressed and headed downstairs, we found Henry, Claire, and Zari conveniently waiting for us in the lobby.

"Well hey it's the dynamic ditching duo, and it looks like they got a new member! Space cop!" I said as I saw them waiting around.

"It's officer of the space police." Zari corrected.

"Wouldn't that make them a trio?" Phoebe asked.

"Oh hey it's the lovebirds!" Henry shot back.

"Eh, fair enough." I replied. "What did you guys see?"

"You mean in the next town or . . . . . ? Henry began.

"Yes, he means the next town, don't say that, he'll leave." Phoebe interrupted.

"No Pheebles, that only applies to you." I said.

"It does? " She asked.

"Why is that so hard to understand?" I asked.

"Lovebirds not in love anymore? " Henry asked.

"No it's just . . . " I began without really knowing where I was going.

"It's complicated." I said as I threw my arm around my beloved, to which she happily did the same.

"Ok well, anyway, after we left town yesterday, we drove to the north for about 4 hours." Henry began. "All we saw were grassy hills and this massive steel wall."

"Nobody attacked us, but a place that well protected has to be hiding some nasty secrets." Zari added.

"Or they could be trying to protect themselves from something worse." Henry argued.

"Unlikely." Zari argued back. "Otherwise wouldn't this city and all the others around have similar protection?"

"That's a good point, but anyway it's another city so it's worth checking out regardless." I replied. "Good job on the recon."

"Kitty go get Ranamon we're about to leave." Phoebe said.

"Ok Cj's wife." Kitty replied before heading over to the pool room.

"What'd she call you this time? " I asked as I thought I didn't hear things correctly.

"Your wife." Phoebe replied.

"Egh, guess it's better than mistress." I replied.

"Well it's true." Phoebe replied.

"Yeah, it sure is." I agreed as I pulled her a little closer.

"Yep, there it is, they're still in love." Claire pointed out.

"I would be more worried if we came back and they weren't. " Zari replied.

We left the hotel and followed Henry and Claire over to the wall they found yesterday. It was bizarre, to say the least. It was a huge wall made of numerous metal plates welded together. It was anyone's guess as to why. It was large enough that we could see it on the horizon just an hour to the north of the city, and as we approached it got bigger and bigger until it completely enveloped and became the horizon, casting a huge shadow over the land. We followed alongside it for awhile, but eventually it became impossible to continue as we came across a river. There was a little tunnel in the wall to allow the river to flow through, but it was so dark it was impossible to see what was on the other side. So we doubled back and looked for another point of entry that wouldn't involve getting wet. Thankfully Zari was watching carefully or we would've missed it. In the side of the wall, in a seemingly random place about 3 miles from the river, there was a single door, of ordinary size. Of course it was constructed of the same material as the wall, in addition, there was no wear in the ground from use, so if you weren't looking it was really easy to miss. Unfortunately the inside didn't make any more sense. A narrow hallway, lined with more welded metal panels. There was more than likely a big empty space on the other side of each wall, but it was impossible to tell.

"Cj I don't like it in here, why don't we go up and try to teleport around it?" Phoebe said after we made it just ten feet down the hallway.

"Is it really that bad ? " I asked.

"It's like being surrounded by water, but still being able to breath. " She replied.

"You can't read digimon anyway baby girl, so I don't see how it's really effecting you that much." I replied.

"Oh, right." She said. "I guess it's not that important then."

"So Kitty, Ranamon, either of you know anything about this place?" I asked.

"No I came from the west and she came from the south." Kitty replied. "Somebody was supposed to come from the North, but they still haven't shown up."

"What if somebody sneaks up on us Cj? " Phoebe asked only to be ignored.

"They still have to be alive." Ranamon insisted. " or Ophanimon wouldn't let your friends stay here."

"I thought Ophanimon was too busy?" I asked.

"Well she would know if the other chosen were still alive or not." Kitty defended.

"Is that where the engine crew went? " Henry asked.

"Oh yeah, I forgot, they disappeared." I replied. "As well as Jack and the rest of the train."

"Maybe." Kitty replied. "Maybe they got lost."

"Yeah I don't think our train could get lost, there was just enough track outside the station to slow down when we arrived here." I replied.

"Yeah, Ophanimon probably sent them away so they wouldn't get hurt then." Kitty said.

"Ok, then, why are the bubblemen here?" I asked.

"The bubblemen?" Both digimon asked in confusion.

"She wasn't there when we fought them Cj." Phoebe pointed out. "They're a bunch of guys that wear these big bulky suits, they've been following us around for a while now. They were chasing us when the portal opened up that brought us here and they followed us in. "

"I don't know, I'm sure she knows about them, I don't know why she has let them stay here." Ranamon replied.

-meanwhile at tactimon's fortress.-

The bubblemen were freed from the goo, but they quickly found themselves in a power struggle as without Tactimon, there were a large amount of kogamon, ogremon, musyamon, vilemon, and some black knightchessmon without a leader. Karatenmon, a lieutenant under Tactimon, attempted to take charge, but there were others vying for power as well. They were fighting amongst themselves, until Volkheim stepped up.

"What exactly are we going to do once a leader is decided?" He asked.

"That will be up to whoever becomes the leader. " An ogremon replied, the same ogremon that had been accompanying them thus far.

"Are we going to find another king to follow?"

"Maybe, if we can find one." The hulking green digimon replied as he watched others fight for power in amusement.

"What if I were to make a suggestion?" Volkheim said. "We were so close to capturing the extradimensional being. If we were to receive assistance we could certainly capture her for good."

"Yes, but then what?" Ogremon replied. "We were supposed to destroy her along with the rest of the humans."

"That would be a foolish mistake." With her power, we could freely travel across the multiverse, without needing a portal." Volkheim said, somehow still vastly overestimating Phoebe's capabilities. "There are many worlds out there just waiting to be conquered."

"You mean conquer a human world? You wouldn't be the first to try such a thing." A nearby musyamon replied. "There are legends that go back over millenia, but still, I've always wanted to try myself."

"Allright then, now we just need to get the others attention somehow." Volkheim said.

The Ogremon stood up, waved his arms around and addressed as many of the crowd as he could while karatenmon and several others were fighting behind him.

"EVERYONE LISTEN UP! THIS GUY HAS AN IDEA!" He yelled.

"Quiet you big green oaf, you're disrupting our battle." Karatenmon commanded.

"I wanna hear what he has to say. " A random musyamon said.

Surprisingly, it seemed that out of shear amusement and lack of anything else to do, Volkheim was given their full attention. Even the fighting stopped for the moment. It was a strange event, here he was, surrounded by all these creatures that could have reduced him to a fine red paste, but if there was one thing Volkheim had it was charisma. There were a few that actively went against him, karatenmon in particular, but so many were intrigued by the opportunity to escape the digital world and conquer others that all of the dissenters were beaten senseless, by the end of the day, Volkheim had his own army, cobbled together from the remains of Duskmon and Tactimon's forces.

While the leader of the bubblemen was gaining power, we were still trying to find our way through this mysterious metal wall. It was a labyrinth inside with many corridors and rooms that seemed to have no particular purpose, and no signs to indicate what any of this was for. An unknown digimon appeared in front of us for only a brief moment before disappearing behind a corner, only Phoebe and I saw it, none of the others did, but it wasn't the only one in here either. It turned out they were smart little buggers. After two of them appeared at once at opposite ends of a corridor they managed to split our group up. Phoebe and I went one way with Ranamon, and Zari, while Kitty went the other way with Henry and Claire, and the thrill of the chase served to separate us even further.

"Cj, we're lost." Phoebe said once we reached another intersection of corridors where there were 3 possibly directions the digimon we were chasing could have gone, but we were too slow to see where it went.

"They're toying with us, they split us off from the others." I said.

"Yeah, I've noticed." Phoebe replied. "It's all right, they don't look that strong."

"Looks can be deceiving Pheebles." I replied.

-meanwhile-

"Sir, the humans we spotted yesterday have breached the perimeter wall." A servant kokuwamon said to its king, a HighAndromon of all things. It's appearance could best be described as being similar to Robocop, except his armor had andromon's skull motif in the helmet and shoulderpads, and his arms had cylinders around both ends which contained built-in laser miniguns.

"I was hoping we'd have more time." The king replied in a voice that was half-robotic and half-human. "They can't be ready yet, we've heard nothing of them, this isn't good, they're too weak to help."

"Ok, I have an idea." The king said. "Go ahead, show them the way out and invite them to the palace."

"Um sir?"

"Don't question it, just do it." The king insisted. "If my calculations are correct they don't know what we're up too yet."

"Yes sir." The servant replied before heading out to assemble some troops.

We spent another 2 hours wandering through that labyrinth, before we were suddenly approached by about half a dozen kokuwamon. At that point I was finally able to realize they were the digimon we had been chasing as well.

"I told you they would sneak up on us." Phoebe replied.

"Yeah, yeah, but hey, they're just a bunch of rookies." I said.

"Don't worry Phoebe, this shouldn't be too difficult." Ranamon added.

"Wait, don't fight. " The lead kokuwamon said.

"What?" I asked in confusion.

"They don't want to fight." Phoebe replied.

"Ok then what's with all the running away?" I asked. "Splitting up our group."

"We've been ordered to invite you to the palace and show you the way out of this labyrinth." The lead kokuwamon replied. "Please follow us, we'll lead you out of here along with your friends."

"Um, ooookaaay. " I replied.

"Don't let your guard down." Zari said.

"Don't worry about that." I replied.

"Why do you have this wall anyway?" Zari asked as we followed them around. "What are you trying to protect?"

"Are our homes not enough?" The leader replied. "With all the raids and the chaos of the dark kings, you can never be too careful. We've been safe inside these walls where others were murdered, starved, and enslaved."

"And you did nothing to help them?" Zari asked.

"It would only invite them to mess with us." The leader replied.

Eventually we were led to an exit to the inside of the walls, where our group was reunited a few minutes later, before we were all led to the palace.

"Cj, why didn't you follow me?" Kitty asked.

"Um, why didn't you follow me?" I replied.

"Because I saw one of these guys run around a corner." She replied.

"Yeah, well I did too, down the other way." I defended. "It's allright, we all made it out."

"I guess so." She agreed.

"So uh, what do you think about these guys? " I asked.

"I don't know, they're weird, but not in a necessarily bad way?" She replied.

"They don't seem that bad." Claire added.

"We'll find out soon enough." Henry replied.

About a dozen guardromon were stationed outside the palace, standing in two lines in what seemed to be some sort of official military formation. The leading kokuwamon said something to them and they let us through.

Inside were another dozen guardromon standing in the same formation, alongside a long carpet that led to the throne, in addition they were backed up by four mechanorimon, and not one, but two machinedramon calmly sitting beside their king and his throne, while also completely towering over it. Talk about a display of force. As we approached the throne, not one of them even moved an inch, aside from their eyes, which was kind of creepy. They were all machines so they didn't even need to breath . In contrast to the other ruling figures we've come across so far, their king seemed almost less threatening than his own machinedramon bodyguards. Though it's important to note that digimon can be a lot more powerful than their appearance would suggest, they didn't necessarily have to obey the laws of physics.

"Welcome to the machine city, I am the king, High Andromon." Their leader announced. "Why have you entered our walls?"

"We were just exploring." Phoebe said.

"The door was unlocked." I added.

"Yes well, now that you know what's in here, perhaps you would be willing to leave?" High Andromon asked.

"Why? We've done nothing wrong we just want to explore." Zari asked.

"Now she gets it." I whispered to my beloved.

"Well, we're very busy, we can't be bothered with humans wandering around and interfering with our work." High Andromon replied.

"What work? Why do you need these walls? What are you protecting?" Zari asked continuing to bombard the metallic king with questions.

"You dare question my authority?" The king snapped. "Get out, don't come back, or you will be met with force. Kokuwamon escort them out!"

"Yes sir." The kokuwamon that led us here replied as the others behind him prepared to manhandle us.

So yeah, just as quickly as we were escorted into the city, we were escorted out, for no particular reason other than they apparently didn't like visitors. Of course there was a hidden agenda, but we wouldn't figure that out until later.

-back on the bus, about an hour later-

"You saw how he snapped like that? He was definitely hiding something." Zari said.

"Yeah, but what?" I asked. "Anyway he has two freaking machinedramon, those are mega level, it's probably best not to try to get in a fight with them unless we have too. We should probably just try to find another city."

"I agree." Phoebe replied.

"I agree too, unless you think our pokemon could be in there." Henry said.

"No, that's not the same guy I saw in the alleyway, he's too tall." Zari replied. "Since we know for sure that we saw the same thief. I think whoever I saw him talking to has your pokemon."

"We don't even know if that guy was a dark king or not." I replied.

"Why else would he be interested in our pokemon?" Henry asked.

"I don't know. " I replied.

"Let's go further east, maybe then we can find one of the other chosen digimon and maybe the thief?" Kitty suggested.

"You mean passed the other village where the mine workers were abducted from?" I asked.

"Yep." She replied.

"All right, who else thinks it's a good idea to head east?" I asked.

"Do you think we can find our pokémon over there?" Claire asked.

"Maybe." I replied. "As good of a chance as any other direction."

"Let's go then, I keep feeling like those robotic creeps are watching us or something." Claire said.

"Well, they did know we entered their walls." I replied.

"Exactly, it's creepy." Claire agreed.

Everyone agreed, so to the east we went which led to us spending the majority of the afternoon looking for another settlement.

The next one, which was about 3 hours to the east was just another village, similar to the one we had rescued. Some of the digimon we had rescued yesterday were actually from here, so the residents were both happy and friendly as they had recently returned. From this point we couldn't take the vehicles any further east because of a forest that was too thick to drive through, we were also warned that it wasn't wise to explore the forest this close to sunset, but everybody was bored so we left the vehicles behind in the village and went out anyway. Thinking that whatever was out there couldn't be much stronger than whatever we had already been fighting. From the village we could see a lone tower in the distance protruding above the tree line. So we decided to head over and check it out.

We used Cloudela to fly above the trees and make sure we were heading the right way. The forest had some anomalies associated with digital and simulated worlds. The most obvious one being a complete lack of insects, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Another was a sudden increase in ambient temperature, so far in the digital world, it was always around 65 degrees and never seemed to fluctuate, but once we got far enough into the forest there seemed to be an invisible line somewhere where the temperature shot up to about 75 degrees. It was the strangest thing, like walking into a wall of heat.

"How much further is it Cloudela?" Phoebe asked. "It's going to get dark soon, we should stop and make a fire."

"I was just about to say the same." Henry agreed while Cloudela went up to check the tower's location once again.

"Yeah, I'm getting tired." I replied.

"Let's stop here then." Phoebe said.

"Actually how are we going to get firewood? Bulby is too hurt to move isn't he? " I asked.

"Oh yeah, I forgot." Phoebe replied.

"Can't even light the damned fire, HellBlade is down." I realized.

"Maybe Mr. Cinders can help?" Phoebe asked.

"Um, does he even know ember yet?" I asked.

"I don't know." Phoebe said." Probably not."

"Got any bullets?" Henry asked.

"Um, yeah." I said. "Why?"

"The gunpowder." Henry replied. "But first we need to get some tinder gathered up."

"All right then." I said.

It was a lot harder to get a decent fire going that night than usual, in fact, without Henry's input we probably never would have had one at all.

Without a proper bed, it at first seemed like it was going to be a long night, but without any bugs the grass was more comfortable than it had any right to be. It had been quiet for hours with nothing but the occasional crackling of the fire. We had no privacy whatsoever so she didn't even try to talk me into having sex with her, but I put my arm around her and we gazed up at the starry sky for a while in silence. Before I fell asleep I wondered if the stars were real. Were they actually physical objects as in a normal world, or were they just lights in the sky? Were there other digital planets out there? It was a question that could not be answered.

"The stars are very pretty." Phoebe said, breaking hours of silence.

"Yeah, I wonder if they're real." I asked.

"I don't know, it kind of hurts to think about." Phoebe replied.

"Yep." I agreed.

"A digital universe." Zari replied. "You know there's a theory that all these worlds actually exist in the same universe, but they're different planets that are actually millions and millions of lightyears apart."

"Ok." I replied.

"So the portals don't actually travel through universes, they just travel across vast distances instantaneously." Zari continued.

"So what is this like the digital universe? And all other digital worlds in existence are just really far away?" I asked.

"Maybe." Zari replied." Nobody knows for sure. "

"Where did the portals even come from?" Henry asked.

"Well, the portal technology was discovered on an empty planet by the predecessors of the space police over a millenia ago. In the mother galaxy, a system where there were over 12 life supporting planets. That's where the grand headquarters is for the entire space police organization."

"So they got spaceships and crap?" I asked.

"Yeah, a thousand years ago." Zari replied. "And the portals are even older than that."

"Well damn, we're way behind the times." I said.

"Not really, most planets never develop interplanetary travel, they usually come across portal technology first. Either through the space police, or through other means, it's quite possible they could come up with it on their own, but in our case, some eggheads figured out how to replicate it all those centuries ago." Zari continued to explain.

-meanwhile-

Now taking orders from Volkheim, many kogamon were sneaking around the city and other nearby areas looking for us, a few were also heading to the nearby village, but they wouldn't make it there until tomorrow. We had plenty of time before they would be able to locate us.

Anyway, after talking about things that made us realize how utterly tiny, insignificant, and behind the times our home worlds were, we tried to get some sleep. However, not long after we were all asleep, we were surrounded by a large group of dokugumon, giant spider digimon that were insanely ugly in person, a smaller number of veggiemon, redveggiemon, and weedmon, large plant like digimon that have a very strong, awful plant smell, and a pair of cherrymon, which were basically sentient trees.

"There is no point in trying to escape, as you can see, you are surrounded." One of the cherrymon explained while everyone was trying to grasp the situation. "This forest belongs to Grankuwagamon and you are trespassing in his domain."

"You know you'd think you'd put up a sign or something if that was the case." I replied.

"The penalty for trespassing is death." The cherrymon continued. "To be administered in front of Grankuwagamon, who isn't here right now, so until he returns we must take you to the dungeon."

"Mhm I see." I said while Phoebe took my hand and teleported us out of sight, which bought our digimon enough time to come out of the digivices and also allowed us to draw our weapons. The dokugumon were easy, as despite their large size, they were quite soft and squishy. With Phoebe's shurikens, and Kitty's speed, they were cut down pretty fast, pretty much all the other champion digimon we fought had more defense. The cherrymon on the otherhand more than made up for the lack of a threat posed by the dokugumon. They were extremely slow, infact they were pretty much stationary, but they were built like tanks and their attacks were dangerous and hard to predict. One of them wrapped our friends up in its vines and started to slowly carry them away while the other stayed behind to keep us from retrieving them. I tried to get close enough to strike it with the sword, but the sheer amount of vines it could project from it's head, as well as the roots it could "spawn" from the ground meant I was wearing my arms out just trying to protect myself. Kitty wasn't able to do much better. Phoebe's shurikens could cut through it's vines, but there were so many it was getting to be pretty proficient at deflecting them. So both Phoebe and Ranamon resorted to using their ranged attacks, which it merely soaked up like a sponge. The one carrying our friends was moving so slow there was no shortage of time to save them or anything, the only thing that was going well at the moment.

"We should just light it on fire." I said.

"How?" Phoebe asked.

"I dunno." I replied.

"Why don't you go try to rescue our friends? I'll keep this guy distracted." I said.

"Ok." Phoebe replied. "But if you get hurt again . . . . "

"I'll be fine." I interrupted. "Now go save them before that tree gets too far away."

"Ok . " She replied. She had to be the one to save them because she was the only one that could teleport around the other.

"Cj how are we going to beat this guy?" Kitty asked.

"I don't know yet. Just keep it together." Was the only reply I could give.

"This is a musyamon's sword right?" I asked.

"Yeah." Kitty replied.

"And they can do that fire attack somehow." I said.

"Right." Kitty agreed.

"Give it up, you'll never figure it out." Cherrymon taunted as I examined my sword for buttons.

Sadly, there were none.

I started swinging it around in no particular pattern, thinking that maybe a certain technique would activate it's flame abilities. Maybe I had to have a certain stance, of course I looked like a fool doing so, to everyone's amusement.

"Try saying the name of the attack." Kitty suggested.

Truth be told all digimon declare their attacks, I just haven't been mentioning it, as it would get highly repetitive, also I never thought it actually meant anything aside from theatrics.

"Really?" I replied. "Um, shogun sword?"

Nothing happened.

"Say it like you mean it." Kitty added.

"Enough." Cherrymon said as he sent more vines flying my way, along with some highly explosive cherries, it was apparently tired of watching me bumble around with a sword.

"Shogun sword!" I said as the sword moved to deflect the attack, unbelievably it worked and the sword burst into bright blue flames, that strangely didn't burn my hands, but they did burn through cherrymon's vines, and it launched a dragon like projectile, off into the forest where it could do absolutely nothing useful, and actually set fire to an unfortunate tree.

"I can't believe that worked." I said. "Neat, hehehe."

The Cherrymon had a look of panic on its face as it realized it was screwed.

"Um try aiming next time?" Kitty suggested.

"Right." I replied.

"Shogun sword!" I declared once again, this time swinging the sword vertically towards cherrymon. The sword did its thing once again and sent a flaming dragon directly at him, which collided with him and set him on fire. It wasn't the fastest projectile, definitely not meant for long range attacks, and it was extremely fiddly, emerging from the tip of the sword and flying in a perfectly straight line, but cherrymon was so slow it didn't really matter.

"Ah! You stupid human. You're gonna pay for this!" Cherrymon yelled in pain as it tried to put the fire out.

"Yeah yeah yeah, I'm not the one on fire right now."

"Ranamon why don't you make sure we don't set the rest of the forrest on fire?" I asked.

"Um, ok, sure." She replied, using her powers to quickly extinguish the tree I accidently set ablaze earlier.

About an eighth of a mile away Phoebe was trying to free our friends from the second cherrymon.

She used her shurikens to cut them free from its vines, then she quickly teleported them to safety one by one. After that she came back to see how the rest of us were doing, which was shortly after I had managed to set the first cherrymon on fire. She was able to watch him burn helplessly for about ten seconds until he finally expired and dissolved into data, conveniently extinguishing the fire in the process.

"How did you even do that?" She asked.

"It's a secret." I replied. "Did you save our friends?"

"Yes, but the other tree guy is coming back." She replied.

"Ok, well, watch this." I said as I waited to get a visual on the other cherrymon.

"What?" Phoebe asked.

"Just wait I gotta be able to see him first."

-1 minute later-

"Um Cj?" Kitty asked, wondering if I was going to do anything, while Ranamon was busy on fire watch.

"Why don't you just go to him?" Phoebe asked.

"Yeah, that might be more convenient." I replied.

So we calmly walked over to the cherrymon who was approaching very slowly.

"Shogun sword!" I yelled, causing the sword to burst into flame once again.

A flaming dragon erupted from the tip of the blade and made its way towards cherrymon, who simply blocked it with one of its many vines.

"You'll have to do more than that! " It boastfully proclaimed.

"Damn, he blocked it." I said.

"It was still pretty cool." Phoebe commented.

"It's cooler when they hit and then that guy lights up like a Christmas tree." I said.

"Well maybe if I help we could make that happen?" Phoebe replied as she drew a bunch of shurikens from her digivice.

"Maybe, get his uh, vines tied up a little bit." I added.

"Yeah." Phoebe agreed as she surrounded herself with shurikens.
"How many of those things do you have?" I asked.

"I don't know, I lost a few of them." She replied. " I'll have to go find them in the morning."

"Yeah, well, let's roast us a tree guy first." I said.

"Hehehe, ok." She giggled.

"Anything I can do?" Kitty asked.

"Just stay back, don't want to set you on fire." I replied.

"Where's Ranamon?" Phoebe asked as her shurikens flew in all directions towards cherrymon.

"Making sure we don't set the rest of the forrest on fire." I replied.

"I'm over here." Ranamon added.

"Oh ok." Phoebe replied. "Just making sure you didn't get hurt."

"Where are our friends?" I asked.

"I moved them out of the way so the tree guy wouldn't take them again." Phoebe answered.

"Ok." I replied.

"Now get ready to attack and quiet because I need to focus." Phoebe ordered.

So I prepared to attack once again, my arms were starting to hurt, but I could get a few more strikes in. Phoebe's shurikens were keeping its many vines and roots occupied so I could go in for the kill.

I ran towards it holding the sword, the sword moved to bat a few vines and roots out of the way, harshly pulling on my arms as it did so. I declared the attack once again when I felt I was close enough, the sword released another dragon that the cherrymon did not have time to block, and just like with the first, it collided against him and set him ablaze. A few seconds passed as it frantically threw explosive cherries everywhere, and even tried to grab Phoebe, but it eventually dissolved into data, fighting till the end, unlike it's accomplice.

"There, one barbecued tree guy." I said.

"Too bad we can't eat it." Phoebe replied. "I'm hungry."

"Um, burnt wood doesn't sound very appetizing anyway." I joked as the last of the cherrymon's body dissolved.

"I guess you're right." Phoebe agreed.

"Is it over?" Zari asked, emerging from the forest.

"Yes, but you three were supposed to stay put." Phoebe said as Henry and Claire appeared behind Zari.

"That's hard to do when the only thing we can see is a giant burning tree." Henry commented.

"Let's get out of here and try to get some sleep." I said.

"Kitty is there anything we can do to keep these guys out for a while?" I asked.

"We can take just some of their data." Kitty replied. "It will take them longer to heal that way."

"Allright then, do that." I said.

"Ok." Kitty said as she set about collecting data from all the digimon we had defeated.

"Can I have some?" Ranamon asked.

"Yeah of course." Kitty replied. "There's plenty to go around."

"Can I Phoebe?" She asked.

"Why are you asking me? Just go on and go." Phoebe replied.

"Ok." Ranamon happily replied.

"You think we can try to get some sleep without getting attacked again?" I asked.

"I don't know, I don't want to try to sleep here though." Phoebe replied. "Those spider guys smell awful."

"Allright then let's find another spot." I said.

So with Phoebe leading the way, we left our original campsite and resettled in an area about 30 minutes of walking away in order to throw off any other enemies that might be trying to find us, at this point we were all tired so it didn't so everyone was asleep within the hour.

The next morning arrived, my arms were incredibly sore, our friends were a bit banged up as well after being dragged by the cherrymon, but we were all able to continue. It was a slow morning. Phoebe and I went out for a bit to look for any shurikens she may have abandoned after last night while I was trying my best to keep my arms stretching or moving to fight the soreness. Everyone else was trying to figure out where all their numerous bruises were. Ranamon was helping Phoebe, while Kitty was on her own, keeping an eye out for any enemy digimon approaching the camp. By camp I meant the open area we fell asleep at, it wasn't much of a camp really.

"Well here's the fire pit, so they should probably be somewhere around here." I said to my beloved.

"But I was actually fighting the tree guy over this way." Phoebe pointed out.

"Yeah, that's true." I replied, hoping we could get moving before any of these digimon woke up and we'd have to fight them again.

I followed her and ranamon back into the forest a little ways, and then we all spread out a bit to get better coverage so we could search more effectively. A few trees were damaged in the fight last night, with many having deep cuts in them where Phoebe accidently clipped them, there were a few fallen branches on the ground as well. Eventually I spotted one of her shurikens embedded in a tree as the sunlight reflected off of it.

"Hey Pheebles, I found one." I yelled.

"You did?" She asked as she teleported over to me.

"Yeah right here baby girl." I said as I tried to liberate it from the tree, or maybe the other way around. It took some wiggling but eventually it slid out.

"Here you go." I said as I handed it to her.

"Well that's one of them." She replied as she took hold of it.

"How many are you missing?" I asked as she pressed a button on her digivice that quickly sucked it inside.

"Three or four." She answered.

"There's another one in the ground over here Phoebe, I'll send it to your digivice." Ranamon yelled in the distance.

"Ok, that's fine." Phoebe yelled back. A visible data stream entered her digivice a few seconds later.

"So what is there? 2 more?" I asked.

"Yeah, something like that." Phoebe replied.

We got lost in each other's eyes for a moment.

"Whatcha looking at baby girl?" I asked to break the silence.

"You and your big dumb face." She playfully replied.

"Oh really?" I asked.

"Mhmm." She replied.

"Will you leave if I kiss you?" She asked. "Or am I allowed?"

I just pulled her close and kissed her.

"Of course we can still kiss baby girl." I whispered.

"Ok, that's good." She replied. "I was afraid to ask."

"Awwwe, baby girl I love you, I just want you to try to exhibit some self control." I explained. "I just want you to abstain from sex until we get Henry and Claire's pokemon back, it's not that hard."

"But what if it takes too long?" She asked.

"I told you before, I'll be reasonable." I replied.

"What's reasonable?" She asked.

"I don't know." I replied. "When I feel like you've waited long enough."

"How long is that?" She asked.

"I don't know." I replied. "Now let's talk about something else."

"What?" She asked.

"I don't know." I asked. "Why are your eyes so red?"

"They're always red." She replied. "And I really don't know why, why are yours blue?"

"Because, that's the color that reflects out of them?" I replied.

"Well then I guess mine are red for the same reason?" She replied.

"Eh, fair enough." I agreed.

"Why don't we talk about getting something to eat? I'm hungry." She said.

"Well where are we going to go? We just have to hope that tower has some more cabbages or something." I replied.

"There's cabbages in your digivice." Ranamon said as she overheard our conversation.

"There is?" I asked.

"Just scroll through the menu Phoebe, you'll see them, I put in a bunch of them before we left the hotel. I was going to tell you, but I kept forgetting, and Kitty was asleep so she probably doesn't even know." Ranamon continued. "I'll keep looking for your blades if you two want to eat."

"Oh, ok cool." Phoebe replied. "Cj, you want to have cabbages with me?"

"Sure, I could use some food too." I replied.

"Ok, come along then, we can go sit by this tree and have a picnic." She said.

"Hehe, if you say so." I replied thinking it odd to have a picnic without a pick-a-nic basket, or really anything but a few cabbages, but oh well, she was my baby girl and I was glad to spend time with her none the less.

So we sat under a nearby tree and she materialized a pair of cabbages from her digivice.

"We should bring some to the others later." I said. "They're probably getting hungry too."

"Yeah, that's a good idea." Phoebe replied. "Ranamon put a bunch of them in here."

"Does it say how many?" I asked.

"40." She replied as she showed me the screen, which had a cartoonish picture of many multicolored cabbages with "x40" in the lower right-hand corner, like an inventory system in a video game.

"I wonder how many things can fit in here." she said as she ejected a couple of cabbages from the device.

"I don't know."

"Anything you want as long as it's data-based." Ranamon said, seemingly coming up on us out of nowhere. "It won't hold anything that isn't."

"So only stuff from this world then?" I asked.

"Yep, pretty much." She replied.

"Did you find any more of my spinny blade thingies?" Phoebe asked.

"No, but I'll start looking again." She replied.

"It's all right sit down, we can hang out." Phoebe continued.

"Um ok." She replied.

"You can join our picnic." Phoebe continued as Ranamon sat next to her. "You want some pieces of cabbage?" Phoebe asked.

"No, it's allright." She replied. "And it's not cabbager it's digi fruit."

"Oh come on, you need to eat too don't you?" Phoebe asked.

"I don't need a whole one." She replied.

"That's ok, I don't either, we can share." Phoebe replied. "Cj can you use your sword to cut this cabbage in half?"

"Um yeah, I guess." I replied.

I summoned my sword from the digivice and easily sliced the cabbage in half, something I probably could've done without the sword threatening to rip my arms off, but it still tried to do so. As unnecessary as it was, it made a very clean cut.

"There, now we can share." Phoebe said as she picked up one of the halves
Ranamon took the other half, and soon our picnic was well underway.

"So what does your cabbage taste like today Cj?" Phoebe asked.

"It's like a cold pizza that has been sitting out for a few hours. " I replied, thinking I probably should have found a way to heat it up first.

"Yeah, that is a problem with these things." Ranamon added. "You have to want something cold if you don't want to heat them up."

"Isn't most food like that?" I asked.

"Hehe, it is." Phoebe giggled.

"There's not much other food here aside from these. " Ranamon replied. "It's been that way for a long time. There used to be other kinds of food, like what you humans have, but I don't think they survived the last reformation."

"Ok first off sweety, I'm not human, secondly, what's the reformation?" Phoebe asked.

"Sometimes the digital world drastically reconfigures itself, sometimes because of a shift in the balance of power, and other times just because of instability, when this happens, the entire geography shifts, landmarks are moved, destroyed, or even completely wiped from existence. It's been going on for eons." Ranamon said.

"So all the villages we visited can just disappear at any time?" I asked.

"No, usually there's fair warning, earthquakes, mass disappearances, obvious changes in the balance of power, things like that." Ranamon continued. "It almost never happens when humans are present, but they have a tendency to happen after they leave. It's been 2000 years since the last one. "

"What will happen to you and Kitty?" Phoebe asked.

"I don't know, we were both hoping we could go with you." Ranamon said.

"Um, well . . . " I struggled to reply.

"Cj, if their lives would be at risk we should let them come with us." Phoebe interrupted.

"Yeah, I guess so, but to be fair, I don't even know where we're going to end up after this, we don't know where our train went. Or if we'll even get back to that, we just want to get home to our kids, but we're not even sure if we can get back to our train. " I tried to explain.

"We didn't even know if it was taking us closer to home anyway." Phoebe added.

"We're basically lost in existence." I summed it up.

"Ok first of all, we're not doomed, a reformation isn't survivable, and, you have kids?" Ranamon asked with some surprise.

"Let's just finish our cabbage then we can talk about this later." Phoebe said, not wanting to talk about it.

"Why? What's wrong with now?" Ranamon asked.

"Just drop it before, it's sensitive ok?" I struggled to explain while Phoebe huddled against me.

"Ok." She replied.

"Cj can talk to you about it later, I can't." Phoebe declared.

"Thanks for throwing me under the bus." I replied.

"What? You can handle it, I know you can." Phoebe said before kissing me on the cheek and continuing to lean against me.

"Yeeeeeah, allright." I replied with a sigh. "Later when we get to the tower."

"You're making me think that your kids are mutant freaks or something." Ranamon said.

"Hehehe." I couldn't help but laugh, the look on my baby girl's face was priceless.

"No it's not like that at all." Phoebe defended. "It's just, Cj, explain." She said before suddenly teleporting away.

"Really Pheebles?" I asked in vain.

"Are you going to explain?" Ranamon asked.

"We have kids, we both miss them, but Phoebe is really sensitive about it, so it's best just to keep her mind off of it, because when we left, the facility that we work at, it um, before we lost radio contact it sounded like it got attacked, so she's super worried we won't get back in time to save him."

"Him?" She asked.

"Our son, Charley, he's just a bit over a year old. And then there's Nina, our adopted daughter, she's 14." I replied. "We rescued her a few years back from, well you don't even want to know. We were told by this strange guy that we would get back about the same time we left. But we don't even know how long we'll be gone, or how much farther we have to go."

"That's about all I can say." I replied. "Aside from Phoebe trying to drown out her misery with sex."

"I am not!" Phoebe denied as she teleported back to us from somewhere unseen.

"You holding up?" I asked. "How much of that did you hear?"

"I'll be fine, just, no more questions Ranamon." She said as she sat next to me as close as she could. She also leaned against me as soon as she could. I put my arm around her, thinking it would make her more comfortable.

"Ok, sorry Phoebe I didn't know." Ranamon replied.

"It's ok, I just . . ." Phoebe began.

"She just needs to keep her mind off of it." I interrupted.

"Mhmm." Phoebe added. "Let's talk about cars."

"What do you wanna know?" I asked.

"I don't know." She replied.

"Henry seems to have the only car on this entire world." I said.

"And we have the only bus." Phoebe replied.

"That's those things we've been riding around on right?." Ranamon asked, barely even grasping the concept of a car.

"Yes sweety. " Phoebe replied.

"3rd best thing in the world." I said.

"After what?" Phoebe asked.

"You, and guns." I said. "Or maybe they're better than guns, I haven't really decided."

"I'm the best though right?" Phoebe asked.

"Well yeah, duh." I replied as I pulled her a bit closer. "You're my baby girl."

"Awwwe Cj." She lovingly replied as she snuggled against me.

"So um, the tower, what are we going to do when we get there?" Ranamon asked.

"Depends on what is inside." I replied.

"What if it's another dark king?" Ranamon asked.

"Then we'll deal with them when we find them." I replied.

"What if it's that old guy digimon?" Phoebe asked.

"What?" I asked.

"The old guy that told us where the hotel was in the city." She explained.

"Yeah I highly doubt he'll be there." I replied as I wondered why she suggested such a thing.

"Yeah, you're right, it's probably the king of all the tree and spider guys." Phoebe replied.

"I hope it's not a bigger spider guy, I hate those spider guys." Phoebe added. "They were so gross."

"You dealt with them pretty well last night." I said.

"That was mostly Kitty." Phoebe argued.

"No, she got some of them, but you got quite a few yourself." I replied.

"Maybe like three out of twenty or so." Phoebe continued her denial.

"Just take the compliment baby girl, I remember it used to be the first sight of anything like that and you'd cling to me for hours." I said. "And you just with dealt with them last night like it was no problem."

"Spinny things help." She said. "As well as not being able to read their thoughts, but still they were disgusting, especially when their guts starting oozing out onto the grass, and the smell…"

"Phoebe, I beg your pardon, but I am trying to eat." Ranamon interrupted.

"Yeah baby girl watcha trying to do?" I asked.

"Sorry." Phoebe cutely replied.

"Anyway, I think they said something about a Grankuwagamon. " I said. "He's probably the next dark king, but the real question is whether he's at that tower or not."

"Probably not because the tree guy said he was going to put us in jail until he showed up." Phoebe replied.

Eventually we finished eating and we headed back to join the others. We shared a few cabbages with them and then once everyone was ready to go, we started to move towards the tower once again.

"This sucks! We lost our pokemon and we still haven't found our digimon yet." Claire complained, she had been complaining a lot recently. Everyone else was in a decent mood.

"There better be something interesting there, after this all this walking." Henry commented.

"Yeah, well, we really don't have much else to do here." I replied.

"I just hope our pokemon are inside." Claire added.

"There's always a chance." Phoebe replied.

We reached the tower after another hour of walking, we sent Kitty to knock on the door, in case of a surprise attack. After about 20 seconds the door was answered by a mushroomon.

"Wadaya want? We're busy." It grumpily claimed.

"Busy with what?" I asked.

"Nonya business." The grumpy digimon replied as it promptly slammed the door.

"Well now we know, the tower is inhabited by an asshole." I said.

"No Cj, there's gotta be more than that." Phoebe said.

"Yeah, that guy wasn't nearly as big as the guys we faced last night." Zari pointed out. "This tower can't belong to him."

"Maybe there's a bunch of them in there and they're hiding from all the big evil trees and spiders?" Phoebe suggested.

"Should I break down the door?" Kitty asked.

"Can you?" I asked.

"I can try." She eagerly replied.

"Ok go for it." I said, thinking it would be amusing to watch even if she failed.

"Wait no, we can't just go breaking in." Phoebe objected, causing Kitty to withhold her attack.

"Really Pheebles? " I asked.

"Yes." She replied.

"She's right, we don't have probable cause." Zari agreed.

"Does the digital world even have a legal system?" I asked.

"What's that mean?" Kitty asked.

"See? My point exactly." I said.

"That doesn't make it right Cj." Phoebe insisted.

"So we came all this way, went through all that hell last night for nothing?" Henry joined in.

"And about that, how do we know what happened last night isn't connected to this place?" I added.

"How do we know they don't have our pokemon?" Claire asked.

Phoebe sighed, then she approached the door and spoke up "Let me try something."

She knocked on the door, and continued to do so periodically for about three minutes before the same mushroomon from before answered.

"I told you we're busy, go away!" The grumpy mushroom monster tried to slam the door again, but Phoebe used her powers to keep it open. Being just a rooky level digimon, Phoebe was easily able to keep him from closing the door.

"What do you know about the tree guys that attacked us last night?" She asked.

"The what?" The mushroomon replied in confusion.

"They're cherrymon Pheebles." I said.

"The cherrytreemon." Phoebe tried to correct herself. "What do you know about them?"

"Um, nothing why?" He suddenly became nervous.

"What about the giant spider guys then?" Phoebe asked.

"Dokugumon, Pheebles." I said.

"The dokubamon." She once again failed to get it right.

"They're big stinking bugs that nobody wants to be around." The mushroomon said. "Now get lost."

He unsuccessfully tried to slam the door again.

"Why won't this stupid thing close?" It asked in vain, not understanding Phoebe's powers.

"I haven't asked all my questions yet." Phoebe said.

"Yeah, well I'm done giving answers to you and your band of dopey humans." The belligerent digimon replied.

"You sure?" Phoebe said as she started to use her powers to lift the rather small digimon into the air.

"Um, what are you doing lady you ain't no digimon I eva seen." The creature replied in confusion.

"Mhm, that's cause I'm not one." She replied. "Now are you going to tell us what's inside or am I going to have to force you out of the way?"

"Listen lady we don't want no trouble." The creature panicked as it turned to look somewhere behind him. "We're just trying to find a statue for Grankuwagamon."

"What kind of statue?" Phoebe asked.

"That's enough!" An angry arukenimon shouted. A look of relief flashed across the mushroomon's face, backup had arrived. "Grankuwagamon has had it with you and has ordered your immediate execution."

Phoebe kept her gaze fixed on the mushroomon while the rest of us looked around to find that we were once again we were surrounded by several dokugumon and their arukenimon commander. Yes arukenimon can disguise itself as a beautiful woman, but this one was in full blown ugly spider lady mode, with a disturbingly sexy voice.

"You could've come out of hiding at anytime!" The mushroomon squawked.

"We'll deal with you later then." Phoebe said as she threw the mushroomon against the wall and slammed the door before pulling her shurikens out of her digivice.

"Oh arceus, not more spider guys. I can smell them from here." She said as she turned around and saw what we were up against.

"Ugh, they're even uglier in the daytime." She complained. "And there's a bigger one too."

"Keep it together baby girl." I said, thinking she was about to bug out.

"I'm fine, it's just, Cj, I've never seen so many ugly faces in one place." She replied with a smile.

I chuckled at this as both of our digimon prepared to fight.

Arukenimon commanded her lackeys to attack. Things got violent, at first it seemed that these dokugumon would fall as easily as the ones we fought last night, but as the battle continued, it turned out these were faster and more experienced, they were better able to dodge our attacks. Once again Phoebe, our digimon, and I were the only ones that could really fight them, we really needed to find the other partner digimon soon. One of the first things we did was work on creating an opening so they could escape into the forrest. A few dokugamon turned to stop them, but that only served to open them up to our own attacks. The easiest kills we would see in the entire fight.

Oddly enough this wasn't the only battle going on at the moment. The bubblemen's numerous kogamon spies had figured out that we went towards the machine kingdom and now an entire army of them, along with musyamon ogremon, vilemon, and black knight chessmon were heading for it's labyrinth-like walls. While yet another army were launching an attack from the north. An army comprised of troopmon, commandramon, tankmon, and a handful of tankdramon, under the control of Darkdramon, who was watching from afar via another magical crystal ball.

Surprisingly High Andromon wasn't a dark king, but he had so much pride in his walls and calculations he thought he could hold out on his own while others sought to conquer his precious kingdom. The reason it was sought out over the surrounding villages and the huge, exposed city, was simple. Legend had it somewhere in the guts of the sprawling mechanical complex, another statue was buried. High Andromon knew this and was deadset on defending it. For he was a lot older than he appeared to be. He started building the entire city right after the last reformation, being one of the lucky few that survived. The entire city, the labyrinth-like walls, the complex factories capable of synthesizing many different machine digimon, at the cost of significant amounts of resources, was built entirely for the purpose of defending the statue. He could have asked us for help, but the city was so isolated that he had no idea we were that powerful, so, thinking we had about as much experience as the last group of humans that came through before the reformation thousands of years ago, which as usual were only children, he turned us away. His mistake was thinking that we had only been here a few weeks and weren't nearly strong enough to be of any help yet. He hadn't heard of Duskmon or Tactimon's defeat as neither he nor his numerous subjects ventured beyond the city walls. This wasn't the first time they were attacked however, as Tactimon had tried invading before several weeks prior, but then he found out about another, unprotected statue that was rumored to be buried in the cave, and decided to focus on looking for it instead. High Andromon thought as such as he held his ground, but now what remained of both Duskmon's and Tactimon's army was coming, under the new leadership of the bubble men, as well as a new challenger from the north.

"Tactimon is back, and there's a new army attacking from the north." His kokuwamon advisor said.

"Ambush them in the labyrinth, have guardromon and mechanorimon posted at all the exits, send the rest to the rooftops and tell them to open fire. Keep as many away from the walls as you can." High Andromon confidently replied.

Within minutes the battle began as several guardromon and mechanorimon took position on top of the wall and began to fire countless missiles and lasers and the approaching armies.

The blacknight chessmon returned fire with their darts. The commandramon returned fire with their rifles, which oddly weren't much more powerful than a standard m-16, despite being digital. The tankmon and tankdramon were firing their cannons, as well as their various other guns, making so much noise that the bubble men and their army could hear them from the other side of the city. The tankdramon were holding back a bit, refusing to fire their nuclear shells as that would flatten the entire city and possibly destroy the very thing they were looking for. They were making so much noise that the battle could even be heard from as far away as the big city.

Every army took casualties, the kokuwamon carted off defeated guardromon and mechanorimon to a place behind the walls where they could recover if the city wasn't destroyed by then. Another would then take their place. The kogamon, being the fastest and most agile, made it to the wall first. Their small size also meant they suffered the least amount of casualties.

On the other side, the army was still advancing, all the tankmon and tankdramon moved up front to protect the commandramon and troopmon following behind. When they got close enough to the walls they sprinted ahead while the tanks stayed back to give fire support, circling to further divide the defences. The kogamon had made it inside the walls now while the rest of the bubble men's army was still approaching. The kogamon easilly overpowered the kokuwamon inside, but the labyrinth, which even had multiple floors, confused them. The commandramon and troopmon where not doing much better, and soon both forces were spread out all over the place, desperately trying to find an exit while fighting off numerous kokuwamon. As time passed they were joined by a handful of vilemon, while all the other digimon found themselves too large to fit through the door. This led to them looking for an alternate entrance. The tankmon tried to blast their way through the wall, but all that did was leave scorch marks along the side. There was no cheating through this maze.

The two armys met for the first time alongside the river. At his time it was just the ogremon, the, musyamon, the knightchessmon and the tankmon. The more powerful tankdramon were still giving fire support.

Without another option, the ogremon and musyamon decided to swim their way in through the river, something the tankmon could not do, as like rock pokémon, their weight would drag them to the bottom. Tankmon being Tankmon, they decided to shoot first and ask questions later. Which ticked off the other group, so now the bubblemen were fighting a fairly large force of tankmon, while guardromon and mechanorimon were still firing on them from the walls above. A few ogremon and musyamon tried to swim under the walls, while others tried to fight the tankmon. The blackknightchessmon, who also couldn't swim particularly well, attacked both the tankmon and the defending forces up on the walls.

It was a long swim under the wall, but the ogremon and musyamon that made it inside found nothing but hostile guardromon waiting for them. That said, it was easier for them to fight up close. Guardromon were very durable digimon, but they weren't very good at close range attacks. They could soak up the ogremon's blows, but they couldn't return them. Mechanorimon were only slightly better in that regard, sacrificing defense for a bit more speed and attack power. In addition, their lasers could be used at close range without fear of splash damage, but they were still significantly slower than ogremon.

All this was going on while we were fighting a bunch of overgrown spiders. It took a lot longer to defeat them than the group we faced last night, but eventually the forest floor was littered with dead spider guts, and only Arukenimon remained. She barely even contributed to the fight up until now aside from occasionally spitting out blobs of acid. I got my leg glued to a tree, and my arms were extremely sore but otherwise I was fine. A bite from a single dokugumon would've been lethal, not because of the venom, so much as the size. Thankfully they were soft targets, and most of them were trying to tie us up before killing us. The few that tried to charge at me and bite me met very gruesome ends thanks to the sword. Ranamon was firmly attached to a tree atleast 3 times, but all Phoebe had to do was call her back into the digivice to get her unstuck. Phoebe and Kitty were tired, but other than that they were fine. I don't know how Phoebe managed to avoid being hit. I guess she was just lucky. Then again the battle wasn't over yet. Arukenimon was still alive. Kitty was trying to free me from the tree when the giant she began to attack, in quite an unusual manner.

"Ew, quit making spider babies. This isn't a nursery." Phoebe said in disgust as Arukenimon produced several hundred dokugumon. At this point, I was just trying to make sure Kitty didn't accidently amputate my leg in trying to free me. So I basically heard her say that out of the blue without any context whatsoever.

"What, you don't like them?" Arukenimon asked. "I think they're just adorable."

"No, they're gross, just like their mother." Phoebe replied.

"How rude." Arukenimon replied as thousands of the ugly things emerged from her abdomen. "Eat, my children. Strip the flesh from their bones!" Arukenimon said.

"Look out everybody! She sending her babies to attack because she can't fight herself!" Phoebe warned as several of the spider babies headed for us, while others gathered around the area Phoebe was hovering over. They were tarantula-sized, and basically just looked like a mini dokugamon. They were small, but their bite was more than likely toxic, and it was definitely not something we wanted to test.

"You thought that was gross, how about this?" Arukenimon said before spitting out a blob of acid that flew towards my baby girl.

"What is wrong with you lady?" Phoebe said as she easily dodged her attack. "If I can even call you a lady, you're more like a spider hag."

"You better watch your tongue, my babies are hungry." Arukenimon replied as Phoebe prepared to attack with her shurikens.

As soon as she did so, several of the baby spiders leaped into the air to block her attack, sacrificing themselves in the process. Several also leaped up at Phoebe herself, but as usual she was able to dodge, or deflect them with a pulse of psychic energy.

"They're so willing to die for mommy." Arukenimon said.

"I just killed your ugly babies and that's all you're going to say?" Phoebe said.

"Yeah you killed three of them, there's a lot more than that." Arukenimon replied. "They're more than happy to die for me."

Before long the rest of us were being swarmed by more of these things, I could kill them just by stepping on them, but there were so damned many. Kitty and I were pretty much screwed until Ranamon decided to use her draining rain attack. The little spiders were so weak they could barely move under it, which led to a lot of easy kills. My arms were hurting pretty bad at this point, but these things were moving so slow I could just squash them like an ordinary insect without having to use the sword. There were guts all over my shoes, but we got the job done. By the time Ranamon discontinued the attack Kitty and I had cleared a fairly large area, though there was still a swarm following Phoebe around as she hovered through the air, occasionally teleporting to dodge Arukenimon's acid attacks. And there was yet another swarm of tarantula-sized dokugumon to fight through before we could even think about attacking her. At some point Phoebe let Cloudela out, and as usual it was flying around firing light beams, which for once were quite effective at eliminating the mini - dokugas, if a bit slow, but it couldn't do much of anything against Arukenimon.

The spider digimon were overwhelming us, it was easy at first, but after killing what seemed to be hundreds of them, my arms were shot, Kitty was tired, and Ranamon wasn't doing any better. To make matters even worse, Phoebe was getting tired as well, she started to seem out of it and was noticeably struggling to continue hovering. Then a laser beam came out of nowhere, followed by missiles, all of which were directed at Arukenimon.

"What the hell?" The spider hag yelped in pain, as everyone else silently thought the same thing, even the mini-dokugas paused for a moment, then about half of them turned around and began to head towards the source of the lasers, which was obscured by trees.

"This area is off limits you mechanical swine." Arukenimon said before spitting acid towards our mysterious saviors, who were quick to return fire with missiles. "The punishment for your trespassing is execution in view of Grankuwagamon.

Meanwhile, Kitty saw a moment of weakness and went in for the kill, while Phoebe and Ranamon were just as confused as me. Cloudela was still being a happy little murder-cloud killing the mini-dokugas. While Phoebe stopped hovering and teleported over to my side.

"It's good they showed up, I don't think I could fight that gross lady another ten minutes." She said as she leaned against me.

"Did you put your shurikens back?" I asked.

"Yes, of course." She replied as Arukenimon was starting to get overwhelmed herself. The mini-dokugamon couldn't even scratch the metal digimon that were backing us up. Her acid could damage them, but she only managed to wound a poor guardromon before succumbing to the massive amount of lasers and missiles. While they had her distracted Kitty managed to close in and deliver the killing blow, cutting her deep across her abdomen. When she bled out, collapsed, and exposed her data stream, all the remaining mini-dokugas disintegrated into data. When all was clear, we were able to meet our saviors, a group of 6 mechanorimon and 4 guardromon.

"Check out the new ride." Said Henry as the canopy on one of mechanorimon opened up, exposing him as its pilot, the rest of us were in total shock.

"How the? What?" Was all I could say.

"They followed us from that city with the walls." Henry explained. "They said they've been trying to find us since we left yesterday."

"Why? " I asked. "They kicked us out."

"They said they would explain after the giant spider lady was dealt with." Zari said as the canopy of the second mechanorimon opened up to reveal her as the pilot.

"That is correct." The mechanorimon she was piloting agreed with a voice similar to Microsoft Sam.

"Where's Claire?" I asked.

"She was too scared to come along, she's behind us." Henry answered.

"I see." I replied.

"She's missing out, these things are awesome." Zari said.

"If you don't mind we need you to come back with us to the machine city, our king made a mistake, we need to take you over there now before it's too late. " A lone kokuwamon emerged from behind the group and quickly explained with Claire following behind, looking absolutely horrified.

"Seriously, the only reason we survived that fight was because you showed up." I explained. "We were close to losing."

"Yes, well, you need to get out of this forest, Grankuwagamon has his lieutenants patrolling all over the place. It's only a matter of time before another one finds you. We really need to get back to the city now, so if you don't mind please board a mechanorimon and let's get out of here."

The mushroomon nervously watched us in complete shock through a window in the tower. Too scared to even think about trying to attack us.

"We just spent the last day coming out here you know?" I replied. "We came to find out what's in that tower over there."

"Right." Henry agreed as the mushroomon nearly died of fright.

"We can bring you back here later, right now we have other things we need to deal with, so please come along, I can't stress this enough." The kokuwamon begged.

"Cj, we really should see what they need help with." Phoebe chimed in.

"We can't handle another huge fight today, you know that." I said.

"I know, but, maybe we don't need to fight just yet." Phoebe said. "Come on we should go with them."

"What if it's an ambush?" Kitty asked.

"They wouldn't send out a force this big to set up an ambush." I replied. "They'd send one, maybe 2 guys."

"The tower will probably be here tomorrow." Zari chimed in.

"Ok fine, we'll go, but we're already tired so I can't guarantee anything." I said.

We returned our digimon to their digivices and Cloudela to its pokeball, then we climbed into the mechanorimon, who then took off into the air with extreme speed. It was not a very comfortable ride, but it was way faster than our bus, we made it back to the machine city within the hour to a sight of absolute chaos. All of which we could get a good view of from inside the mechanorimon. By now a large group of musyamon and ogremon had made it through the wall and were causing all sorts of destruction. A handful of kogamon and commandramon managed to make it through the labyrinth and were also running around. On the outside of the wall, Tankmon, and Tankdramon were still trying to blast their way in and numerous mechanorimon and guardromon were up on top of the wall trying to defend while blackknightchessmon were constantly pelting them with darts.

"I told you guys we weren't ready for another fight just yet." I said, though only the mechanorimon I was riding could hear me.

"We're too late, the attack has already begun." It replied.

"And who are these guys even?" I said. I didn't realize that one of the invading armies were literally the same digimon we fought before.

"One is darkdramon's army, the other, is unknown." The mechanorimon replied. "Perhaps Tactimon and Duskmon have formed an alliance?"

"Nah, they're dead." I replied.

"Impossible." It argued.

"No they're dead, we killed them." I repeated.

"So the rumors are true." It ominously replied. "Then perhaps it is another dark king that we weren't expecting."

"Kitty you ready for this?" I said into the digivice. A bunch of Zs appeared on the screen, meaning that Kitty was asleep again, somehow.

We landed as far from the chaos as we could to buy us some time, somehow we didn't get shot down. Phoebe and I left the mechanorimon, while Henry, Zari, and Claire stayed inside. While more than capable of fighting on their own, mechanorimon are able to move slightly faster with a pilot, being slightly more aware and being able to react to things a lot faster than they could without, as they don't have to devote as much processing power towards their movement or coordination. This meant that for the first time in a while our friends were able to meaningfully participate.

"Cj you're too hurt to keep fighting much longer, get back in." Phoebe said as she wrapped her arms around me.

"No, I, uh, I got this babe." I refused as waves of pain shot through my arm as I tried to embrace her.

"No, I don't want your arms to fall off, you need them." She insisted as she weakly pushed me back towards the mechanorimon. "Please, it would make me feel better."

"Ok fine." I replied after a sigh.

"Thankyou." She said before kissing me.

"Send Kitty out before you climb back in." She said.

"I think she's asleep." I said.

"Again? Really?" Ranamon interjected as she voluntarily left Phoebe's digivice.

"Oh hi sweety, I was about to send you out anyway." Phoebe said.

"Anyway Cj we'll just have to wake her up, can't be too hard." Phoebe replied as Henry and Zari were familiarizing themselves with mechanorimon's controls and scouting out the area with Claire kind of tagging along with them, not really knowing what she was doing. After a few minutes of this the mechanorimon she was supposed to be piloting was smart enough to ignore her commands and just started following Henry and Zari on its own.

Anyway, I sent Kitty out, who was then curled up on the ground fast asleep.

"Wake up silly, we're here." Phoebe said as she gently kicked her awake.

"Huh? Where is here?" Kitty said as she awoke.

"The one place, with the walls? Don't you remember?" Phoebe asked.

"Oh, right." Kitty replied.

"Get up lazy this place is under attack and we have to help them." Ranamon said. "How could you even think about trying to sleep right now?"

"Have to sleep when I can don't I? The spiders were making me tired." Kitty replied as I made my way back to my own mechanorimon.

"Where's master Cj?" She asked.

"Staying in the mechanorimon, I can't let him ruin his arms again." Phoebe replied.

"But we need to fight together." Kitty replied.

"You still can." Phoebe argued. "Just remember missy, he may be your tamer but he's my husband at the end of the day."

"Mhm." Kitty unenthusiastically agreed.

"Are we going to start fighting or what?" Ranamon asked.

"Yes, in a moment." Phoebe replied. "What's the rush?"

The girls had a few minutes to rest so they would be good to fight a bit more. That said, there was way more than just a bit of fighting that needed to be done. The question was where to start?

"You should make your way toward the palace, and try to protect it. What they want is in there. We can't let them take it." Lieutenant Kokuwamon explained from inside his own mechanorimon. Using what was basically a built in radio communication system.

"Allright then, show us the way." I replied.

We all headed for the palace.

"Ok mechanorimon, my arms are shot, so, you might need to take control." I said.

"Understood." My mechanorimon replied. "Adjusting control sensitivity."

"What?" I asked.

"This way you won't need to move too much, it should minimize your pain." The machine explained.

"Um, ok." I replied.

It was a long walk to the palace, but we made it there unopposed as the invading forces had only just made it to the edges of the complex. The complex was basically a giant factory that formed a second, inner ring around the city. Of course like many things in the digital world, the factory defied logic, compose of several large monoliths covered in countless gears of unknowable purpose with a wide conveyor belt running between them. Unlike a real world factory that makes things out of raw materials, this one made things out of data, pulled from the very fabric of the digital world itself through a method that only High Andromon understood. It required ore to operate, but like other resources in the digital world, ore tended to regenerate quickly, but not enough for the machine to run constantly. It used the water from the river as a powersource, though why it even needed one was beyond comprehension.

Past the complex there were streets of steel, just like steel plate, lined with numerous five story buildings that basically looked like giant metal boxes with windows. Machines didn't care much for comfort. They were sturdy buildings, if not much to look at. The entire city looked extremely mathematical. Every building was practically identical and everything was precisely layed out with exact measurements. The palace, of sorts, was a tall cylindrical building located in the middle, with the river running a circular moat around it and draw bridges on four sides.

From what we saw before we landed, we were able to put together that the palace was being approached by one army from the north and one from the west. As well as some coming in along the river to the northwest. A group of tankmon and tankdramon were also trying to break through the wall just north of the river. We had no way of knowing how much time we had before and if they managed to do so, but our main problem at the moment was some rapidly approaching kogamon, who were basically making a beeline for the palace. They were moving so fast they went right passed the guards.

They all went straight for Phoebe, Kitty cut a few of them down while Pheebles defended herself from the storm of shurikens flying towards her.

"We need her alive." One of them said to the others, they were moving very quickly so it was hard to get a good shot at them. Things calmed down once Phoebe got her own shurikens out and was able to take down several of them. While this was going on Henry and Zari headed northwest to annoy the ogremon and musyamon coming in through the river. Mechanorimon had a pretty impressive attack range and was able to land a few hits with its lasers. Claire's Mechanorimon dragged her along behind them and started firing as well. The mechanorimon Phoebe was riding in went off with Kokuwamon and the guardromon to focus on the masses of troopmon and commandramon coming in from the north. The commandramon were especially annoying as their assault rifles had a fair amount of range as well, combined with a high fire rate. They weren't much more powerful than a standard rifle however, so it didn't do much against the well armored machine digimon. Up close they were able to use c4 like explosives, which is how they managed to make it this far. Despite all the flashy weapons, as a rookie level, they're only about as physically strong as an average human. Phoebe and our digimon had to keep to the west to avoid getting in their sights. I wouldn't be surprised if our digimon could take a few bullets, but I knew for certain Phoebe couldn't.

Since we had the main streets covered, the enemy forces started to stick to the side streets, marching between buildings, still trying to make it to the palace. I helped my beloved fight off the kogamon without much of a problem as we had fought them before. I barely had to move my arms as mechanorimon made its own controls extremely sensitive. The only problem I had was several kogamon trying to smash open the cockpit glass to get to me, but that just made them an easy target for Pheebles. Once we ran out of kogamon, we tried to catch up with our friends who were going after the ones that came in through the river. We were trying to stay away from the commandramon as much as possible. I wondered where the king and his machinedramon went, why wasn't he doing anything about this?

The musyamon and ogremon put up a lot more of a fight. Once again they seemed to only be interested in Phoebe. To make things worse, they had gained a lot of experience from slaughtering the defending forces. My mechanorimon was taking a lot of damage, it protected me from the ogremon's attacks, but it was a big target and every time it got hit I got shaken around inside the rather small cockpit, which required me to move my arms to prevent myself from banging my head on the glass or the controls. I could've used the laser at point blank, but there was too much of a chance I could accidently hit the girls, who were fighting their own targets. For several minutes it was just pure war. Things were moving so fast, I couldn't possibly keep track of everything. I punched an ogremon squarely in the chest then took a club to the head, which cracked the cockpit glass. I elbowed that bastard, grabbed his club and smashed him with it, and another one as well, then a musyamon came in and sliced the club in half. I dropped what was left of the club and tried to punch the musyamon.

This went on for a while, I would punch one out and there would be another one alongside me trying to punch me. Mechanorimon would get punched in the stomach, I'd get shaken around in the cockpit like a pinball. Occasionally I had to move to avoid a musyamon's sword. I managed to grab it on one occasion and snap it in half. Which was easy for the mechanorimon to do. I don't even know how many I defeated, but at somepoint I suddenly got tackled by an ogremon, the cockpit glass shattered, glass was in my face and everywhere. I hit my head on the back wall of the cockpit. The laser was pointing straight up so I fired, the ogremon standing over me was completely annihilated. I was bleeding from multiple cuts, but nothing serious.

"Cj be careful, don't get smashed." Phoebe said.

Mechanorimon just managed to get back up when a club flew right past my head. At this point I was barely able to even do anything. We ran towards the thrower, took him down easily enough, then a musyamon jumped off a building, I tried to punch him, but another one came and sliced off mechanorimon's right arm mid punch. Which allowed the other to knock us on our back once again. This time I was ejected straight onto the metallic street. They would've killed me right there if Phoebe didn't save me. Mechanorimon wasn't so lucky, he got torn to pieces.

"What did I tell you?" Phoebe chastised me after bringing me to the roof of a nearby building, but I was too out of it. I couldn't react, I didn't know if it was the blood loss, as my back was now cut up from being ejected, or the fact that I smacked my head really hard or the fact that I slid about 50 ft on a dry sheet of metal being used as a street, but I could not process all of the pain, I couldn't move, and I couldn't say anything, all I could do was listen. "You always get hurt, every time."

"Cj?" She asked in concern. "You ok honey? Don't faint please."

"Master please don't die!" Kitty burst into tears, which was weird.

"He won't die, I won't let him." Phoebe insisted. "Cj I know you're awake in there, say something please."

"We should move, they're going to see us up here." Ranamon said. "There's some musyamon traveling across the rooftops."

"We need to stop the bleeding, he's cut really bad." Phoebe said. "We need bandages or something."

"Roll over Cj." She tried to push me onto my stomach, I still couldn't move. She used her powers to flip me over.

"We could use what's left of his shirt."

They ripped my shirt off, at that point the back of it was already torn to shreds.

Next thing I felt was something I could best describe as feeling like my head had touched a live wire.

"Don't you dare die on me Cj." Phoebe demanded as I gasped for breath, her hand pressed tightly against my chest.

"The hell just happened?" I asked.

"You died." She replied.

"Really?" I asked.

"Your heart stopped." She replied.

"Where are we now, heaven? " I asked.

"No, you're not dead, I restarted your brain. And your heart." She replied.

"You can do that?" I asked. "Like a revive?"

"Not like a revive." She replied as she pushed harder on my chest. "More like life support, you're still critically low on blood, if I wasn't keeping your heart running and your you'd faint again."

"Why does this always happen to me?" I asked.

"I don't know? Because I keep letting you fight? " She replied. "I should be protecting you."

"Well what am I supposed to do, just sit back and watch you risk your life?" I argued. "I was doing fine, anybody could get hurt doing that. Even you, you've been hurt before, don't pretend that I've never been the one trying to make sure you didn't die. We protect each other Pheebles."

"Yeah, you're right." She said with a sigh. "You actually did pretty good, until you died."

"Yeah well there was a lot of them, and I was trying to keep some of them from going after you." I said. "They all seemed to want to fight you for some reason."

"I don't know why that is Cj, but if you can remember that it looks like you didn't hit your head too hard then." She added. "But your back is terrible, it's seriously nothing but cuts. If Zari doesn't have anymore of that cream it's just going to be one big scab. Seriously Cj, I don't how you did it, but it's worse than last time."

"You should get out of here." Highandromon said as he entered the room. "The tankmon are about to breach the wall. Once that happens they will storm the palace. "You weren't even supposed to be here. I knew you weren't ready, but sometimes people just don't listen."

"Where the hell were you this entire time?" I asked.

"It would have gone better if you didn't just pull us out of one battle and throw us into another." Phoebe defended.

"I didn't do that though, my disobedient subordinates did. I wasn't out there fighting because I needed to make sure the artifact wasn't stolen." He said. "But since you're here and this city is doomed, you should take it with you." He said as he set the statue on a nearby table.

"That's what they're after?" Phoebe asked with a hint of disappointment.

"In the wrong hands, the power trapped within this statue could easily bring the digital world to its knees. I built this place to protect it, but alas, I have failed. Soon it will be up to you to keep it safe."

"Look roboboy, I can't move him yet, he'll die." Phoebe said. "He needs blood, type O."

"I uh, I'll see what I can do." Highandromon replied as he quickly left the room.

"Roboboy?" I asked, I would have laughed if it didn't hurt too much to do so.

"Well he is a robot." Phoebe replied.

"Our friends ok?" I asked.

"I don't know, they're still making their way back." She replied.

"Pheebles, I."

"No more talking, just relax. I love you too." She insisted as I took a moment to look around the room.

It was a bedroom, with what was possibly the strangest bed in the world. The sheets were made out of something that could best be described as metal cloth, it was like super thick aluminum foil, it was malleable, but rigid, not the least bit comfortable, but I was in too much pain to care about that at the moment. I don't know how the hell Highandromon got a hold of a pack of blood, but he did, and after injecting the entire pack into my arm through an IV which he also had for some reason I started to regain some strength, to the point where my body was able to support itself once again, which meant that we could move. Henry, Zari, and Claire arrived shortly afterwards. HighAndromon assembled some of the last surviving mechanorimon, and they flew us out of the city just as the tankmon burst through the wall. I was still delirious the rest of the day and Phoebe had to help me move, I loved that girl. Once we got back to our bus I spent the rest of the evening in bed, with Phoebe by my side. Despite everything that was the best night's sleep I had in a long time, probably because I had barely enough blood in my system to live.