Forbidden Fusion

by killalao

explicit multiversal adventure with lots of cute girls.

47. Chapter 47

-chapter 47-

I woke up the next morning on the grass lying next to my beloved. When she awoke we kissed back and forth for a while, and it might have gone further if we didn't become coherent enough to know that our friends weren't very far away, along with several dozen assorted rooky digimon we had rescued the night before. Minutes passed, eventually we were all gathered around the little burned patch on the ground where the now extinguished fire had been the night before.

"Allright, I think we should head back and try to take Etemon down, since he's probably an easy target, we haven't even seen Marionamon yet and we don't know where to look." I said. "If we put some pressure on him, he might spill the beans."

"If that old lady hasn't ended him yet." Henry said. "They never put her on the train. Etemon couldn't even get rid of her."

"I don't know why she didn't kill him yesterday, it seemed pretty obvious she's a lot stronger than she lets on." Zari added.

"There's some toy agumon back that way too." I added. "We can take them out, and get some more strength to fight Etemon with."

"But they'll be tanks Cj, or helicopters or who knows what else." Phoebe said.

"We'll just have to trick them into splitting up somehow." I said. "It worked yesterday."

"That doesn't mean it will work today." Phoebe replied.

"They can't be that stupid can they?" Zari asked.

"How'd you split them up?" Henry asked.

"We just headed into the forest and they did it on their own, probably so they could move around easier." I said. "We also used Cloudela as a distraction, to take down one of the scout cars, it's pretty good at that."

"We're going to have to be really careful if we want to take them down Cj." Phoebe said.

"We hurt them pretty bad yesterday, now we just have to play for keeps." I replied.

"Besides we have all our mechanorimon now." I said.

"NEGATIVE, OUR OVERALL CONDITION IS ONLY 45%." One of the mechanorimon suddenly commented. Which seemed erroneous, as while they were pretty scratched up and dented, they were still all able to walk.

"You guys don't look that bad." I replied.

"How long will it take you to get back to 100%?" Phoebe asked.

"INTERNAL SENSORS INDICATE A MINIMUM OF 27 HOURS TO COMPLETE AUTOMATED REPAIR PROCEDURES." The same mechanorimon replied.

"Well we can't just wait here for an entire day." I said.

"They could find us by then, especially if they turn into helicopters." Henry commented.

"But we'll be able to take them right?" Claire nervously asked.

"That's why we need to find them first, that way we have the element of surprise." I said.

"I agree with my Cj." Phoebe said.

"Your Cj?" I asked.

"Yes you're my Cj." She said as she cutely wrapped her arms around me as Kitty glared at her with contempt.

"We didn't need the mechanorimon yesterday." She added.

"True." I replied.

"Look, let's just start leading the survivors to the champion village and see what happens.

"The survivors?" Phoebe asked.

"The digimon we saved yesterday, we can't let them wander back by themselves they'll get creamed." I said. "Let's gather them all up and get moving, we're all feeling pretty awake now right?"

They all agreed, so before long we were moving out.

"Cj?" Phoebe asked as we walked through the forest with our friends alongside us and many assorted rooky digimon following behind us.

"Yeah baby girl?" I asked.

"What are we going to do when we get home?" She asked.

"We're going to go to the Sinnoh region to visit your parents, along with Charley and Nina." I replied.

"And then what?" She asked.

"We'll go home and just relax for a while I guess, spend some time with our kids, get used to being parents again."

"But what about our jobs?" Phoebe said.

"We'll figure something out I'm sure." I replied.

"And what about Nina's school?" Phoebe asked.

"There was nothing going wrong with that when we started this." I said.

"Won't she miss school if she comes with us to Sinnoh?" Phoebe asked.

"We'll just pull her out for a few days and they'll send her homework with her." I said.

"What you just want you and me to go?" I asked.

"No I just, I don't know. No because I want Charley and Nina to come too." Phoebe replied.

"Isn't Charley going to have to go to school someday?" She asked moments later.

"Yeah, someday." I replied. "But not for a while yet, he's only a little over 1 Pheebles, most kids don't go to school until they're like 5 or 6. So it's going to be awhile before we have to worry about getting that sorted out."

"Cj, are we going to kill Etemon?" Phoebe asked.

"He tried to kill us Pheebles." I said.

"We wouldn't really be killing him." Kitty said. "He would just be reborn in the primary village unless his data is separated in time."

"What about the dark kings?" I asked.

"They would be reborn too, but without the evil of deusmon, when we absorb them that part is destroyed. That's why we were chosen, Seraphimon gave us the unique ability to do so." Kitty said.

"So we're not really killing anybody?" Phoebe asked.

"Yep." Kitty replied.

"Laaaame." I said.

"Oh Cj, I think it's relieving." Phoebe cutely argued.

"Yeah, I guess, somewhat." I replied, wanting her to be happy.

"But if we're not really killing them, why does Seraphimon not want us too?" I asked.

"She just doesn't, I don't need a reason." Kitty replied.

"Well Kitty, let's look at the facts here, it's obvious her original plan isn't working out too well, you were all supposed to meet us at the hotel, but we only found you and Saphira, and the only other chosen one we've found so far is IceLeomon, and he has yet to become anybody's partner. So basically she planned for us to have a full team by now, but we barely even have half of one." I said in a bid to try to get her to see why we needed to bend the "rules".

"Cj's right on this, there's too many of them to keep fighting them like we are. " Phoebe said.

We walked for about 2 hours before we came across any trouble.

"Cj, my cute little feet are getting tired. Carry me!" She said as she playfully hopped on my back, using her powers to hold her up just enough so that I could keep walking.

"Pheebles what are you doing?" I said as I turned to face her, she smiled at me.

"I'm bored." She said.

"Yeah, so am I, but we have to keep moving." I replied.

"We are." She said as she squeezed my head with her legs.

"Is this even helping you?" I asked as I could tell she was using her powers to drastically reduce her weight.

"Yeah it is actually, you're carrying most of me." She said with a smile.

"CJ they're here!" Kitty yelled, she had gotten pretty far ahead of us by now because of Phoebe's random antics. By the look of things she had found a shadow toy agumon and promptly stabbed it and was now absorbing its data.

"I'm so sorry, but I have to, the world is at stake." Kitty sincerely apologized as it disintegrated.

Of course it wasn't the only one out here and her yelling only served to attract more, they quickly grouped together and combined into some bizarre robot looking thing with wire like appendages, like a metallic slender man.

"Oh come on, I was just starting to have fun." Phoebe said as she teleported off of me.

The toy agumon's new form was small enough it could easily maneuver through the forest, but strong enough to pose a threat. It was just as physically vulnerable as their other forms, but its appendages could move fast enough that it was very proficient at blocking.

It was hard to fight because it was hard to hit and hard to tell where it was going to hit. While trying to take it down, Kitty got smacked into a tree, it managed to deflect most of Phoebe's shurikens. Saphira managed to slow it down enough that I could get a few hits in with the sword. The mechanorimon kept their distance and fired lasers at it on occasion, most of which missed. The rookies we were escorting stayed back and avoided it like the plague, Henry, Claire, and Zari took it upon themselves to keep them organized, while the rest of us tried to fight this thing. At some point I got smacked into a tree as well and got the wind knocked out of me. Phoebe didn't waste any time taking my hand and teleporting me away.

"There you go getting hurt again." She scolded.

"Pheebles, it's impossible not to get hit by that thing, and besides, I'm fine." I said.

"Yeah, but . . . . . . . "She stammered. "Just be careful!"

Eager to get back into the fight before Saphira managed to get hurt, she suddenly kissed me, teleported away and left me on my own to recover.

I sat there for all of five seconds before I felt I was ready to get back into the fight, so I went. I passed by Kitty on the way, who got slammed into another tree, for what was probably the third or fourth time since the fight began. I helped her up. Then we took a moment to think about how we were going to approach this thing. While Phoebe, Saphira, and the mechanorimon were still fighting it. IceLeomon tried to fight it, but from what I had seen he never managed to cause any significant damage and ended up being slammed into a tree about as many times as Kitty. The lasers were powerful enough to knock a few Shadowtoyagumon away from it, but these would quickly be grabbed by its wire-like appendages and re-added to its mass.

"I can't get close to it, it's too fast. It keeps hitting me and it hurts." Kitty said.

"We're going to have to find a way to make it hurt." I said.

"It already hurts!" Kitty replied.

"I mean hurt it, not you." I explained.

"Wha?" She asked.

"Look, just stay close to me, we'll cover each other's backs until we can get close enough to do some real damage." I said.

"Ok." She agreed.

So we started to advance towards the monstrosity together as Phoebe devised a plan of her own.

"If I can get Kitty into the air she might be able to get a good hit in." Phoebe said to me telepathically.

"Hey Kitty how are you with heights?" I asked.

"What do you mean?" She asked.

"I mean Phoebe might give you a little boost in a moment." I said. "That way you can get your claws in him and maybe we could do some real damage." I said while watching out for its numerous flapping appendages.

"And she agreed to this?" Kitty asked, with a confused look on her face.

"Yes." I replied.

"But she never said anything to you." Kitty replied with a confused look, not understanding Phoebe's telepathy.

"Don't worry about that, just get ready." I replied.

A few moments later Phoebe came by, took her hand and teleported her to a point in the air behind the head of the monster. Kitty stuck her claws in it while falling down, creating a huge gash in its back as it was busy trying to keep the rest of us at bay and didn't expect to be attacked like that. Shadowtoyagumon came pouring out of it as it began to shrink in size. Kitty and Saphira tried to take them out before they could rejoin and succeeded in taking down most of them, however the strange machine managed to patch itself up fast, and though we managed to weaken it, it was still going strong. Worse still, there was no way that strategy was going to work a second time. The data Kitty absorbed allowed her to heal pretty quickly. The same went for Saphira, but she wasn't hurt quite as bad.

We fought this thing for what seemed like another hour at least until we finally had it whittled down. If nothing else it gave the mechanorimon time to rest. It's data got split between our three digimon and then we continued on our journey back to the champion village. Occasionally we came across more shadow toy agumon and even some porcupamon along the way, but there wasn't enough of them to be a serious threat. We never saw anymore Nohemon, either they were all on the train when it derailed or they just weren't willing to engage, sometime after fighting robo-slenderman we got paranoid and split up just to keep an eye out for them. We formed a very loose square with Phoebe, our digimon, and I at the top left, Claire at the top right, Henry at bottom left, and Zari at bottom right. With HCZ flying around in three of the mechanorimon, and the rookies we were escorting hanging out in the middle, being roughly directed by IceLeomon and two more mechanorimon. The final mechanorimon was accompanying Phoebe and I so we could communicate with IceLeomon, HCZ .

"Cj, I feel terrible for murdering all those poor guys." Kitty said.

"Awe, Kitty, it'll be ok. I thought you said they'll get reborn anyway?" Phoebe replied before I could think to say anything.

"Yeah, but, the look in their eyes when I started to take their data." Kitty said as we walked alongside each other, the mechanorimon clumsily trudging behind.

"Nobody said war was fun." I replied.

"Yeah, sometimes you just have to do what you have to do." Phoebe added.

"Cj, maybe you should take the mechanorimon up so you can get a better view." Phoebe said.

"You just want to walk down here with Kitty all by yourself?" I asked.

"Well, if it means we'll be safer. You can leave my side for a few minutes to take a look around, what are you so worried about?" She replied.

"Well, last time I left you two alone." I began.

"Saphira's here too Cj, don't forget about her." Phoebe interrupted.

"I'm not entirely sure that helps your case." I said.

"I promise I won't start anything." Phoebe said. "Besides you can just take Kitty with you."

"Yeah, I could use a nap." Kitty said.

"Ok then let's go, open up mechanorimon." I replied.

"Wait!" Phoebe said.

"OPENING!" The mechanorimon announced.

"What?" I asked.

"Kiss me." Phoebe cutely demanded.

I gave her a quick kiss as Kitty entered my digivice, then I got in the mechanorimon and took to the skies, to see a whole bunch of trees. Trees everywhere, the rail line, the champion village clear in the distance, and not much else. I could see Phoebe and Saphira, and if I looked very carefully at the right time I could catch a glimpse of IceLeomon in the distance. It was only a few minutes before I decided to come back down again as I really couldn't see much else. The enemy would have to be a 50ft tall Godzilla monster for me to see them through all the trees.

"It all looks clear Pheebles, I can't really see that much though, the trees are so thick here." I said once I climbed out of the mechanorimon.

"Ok, I guess you'll need to check again in a few minutes." She said.

"I really don't think it will do much good." I replied.

"Ok if you say so." Phoebe said.

"I CAN KEEP A LOOK OUT BY MYSELF." The mechanorimon suddenly said.

"Are you sure? " Phoebe asked. "It's a big responsibility."

"I AM 100 PERCENT CERTAIN I CAN PERFORM THIS TASK WITHOUT THE ONE YOU CALL CJ." The mechanorimon replied.

"Ok then you can check on your own in a few minutes." Phoebe said in a somewhat motherly tone.

"Cj will be safe here with me." She said as she put her arm around me. "He probably won't be so scared either."

"I'm not scared." I said.

"Whatever you say." Phoebe replied, obviously just playing around.

"Are you going to let Kitty out?" Phoebe asked.

"Um, she's asleep." I said as I briefly glanced at my digivice.

"If we keep standing around like this we'll lose our formation." Saphira said.

"That's very true." Phoebe agreed. "So let's get going."

"HOW MANY MINUTES IS A FEW MINUTES?" Mechanorimon suddenly asked.

"um, I don't really know just go with like um." Phoebe tried to answer. "Cj how much is a few?"

"Just go with five." I said.

"AFFIRMATIVE." The mechanorimon replied.

From that point on, it flew up into the air to check our surroundings exactly every five minutes, then it came back down and reported that it had seen nothing. This went on until it became very annoying so we told it to only do it every 15 minutes. So it started to do so at precise 15 minute intervals, and continued to state that it had seen nothing.

This went on for about an hour until it was suddenly attacked by more toy agumon in attack helicopter form. As soon as we noticed this, several porcupamon approached us on the ground.

"Here we go again." Phoebe said.

"Mhm." I replied.

"Kitty, you're going to have to wake up now." I said as I ejected her from my digivice.

As usual she was curled up on the ground, fast asleep.

"Wake up, we don't have time for this." Phoebe said as she hit Kitty with a low powered shadowball, waking her up instantaneously. Making her frustration quite clear.

"WHAT WAS THAT?" She asked in confusion.

"Get up we have enemies to fight." I said.

"That really hurt." Kitty said.

"Oh stop whining, I barely made that one." Phoebe said as she and Saphira started to fight the porcupamon.

"Made what?" Kitty asked.

"Just get up." I said as I swung at a porcupamon with the sword.

Kitty finally got up and reluctantly joined the fight a few seconds later. As the battle progressed, distant laser fire made it clear that only some went for Phoebe and I, while another group went for the rookies we were supposed to protect, our formation got completely screwed up as we addressed this, as we all had to move inward to protect the rookies. There were too many for IceLeomon and the other "guards" to stop them all. The data our digimon gained from this battle made them a lot stronger, but considering they were already ultimate level, it would be awhile before they could digivolve. The porcupamon could take quite a bit of abuse, but their attacks were pretty weak. While the toy agumon were only dangerous in numbers. In helicopter form they fell apart pretty quickly due to being airborne, as well as helicopters in general being pretty sensitive to damage, if their rotors were damaged, they couldn't reconfigure themselves fast enough to avoid a crash, which would usually cause them all to separate.

The fighting went on and off for a few hours until we got close enough to the champion village that the enemy forces began to back off, as the residents there were more than capable of taking them on. Once we got there, we were welcomed by the locals and we decided to call it a night as everyone was tired, both from the fighting and the traveling.

I spent the night snuggled up next to my baby girl, tomorrow we were going to take back green village and return the rookies to their homes.

"Cj, how are we going to get our bus off of that train? You know we're going to be passing by it tomorrow." Phoebe asked as I was about to close my eyes.

"I have no idea, maybe the residents will help. I don't want to abandon it unless we have to, but you know we might have to this time." I said.

"I hope not." Phoebe replied.

"I wonder what Charley would be doing now." Phoebe asked.

"He'd probably be asleep. It's way past his bedtime." I said.

"Would he even have a bedtime without us?" Phoebe asked.

"Of course he would, they wouldn't just abandon him because we're gone." I said.

"Corina would probably take care of him, if not Melissa. If our parents didn't step in." I continued.

"And Nina wouldn't leave him either." I said.

"Yeah, that's true." Phoebe agreed.

"Cj, my cabbage juice tonight turned into wine." She said.

"So that's why you started drinking mine." I said. "I thought it was strange when you said it was a mistake."

"So you like wine?" I asked a moment later.

"Kind of." Phoebe replied. "But I haven't had any since japan."

"Well why don't we share a drink together?" I asked.

"You sure?" She asked in return.

"Yeah what have we got to lose?" I asked.

"Ok, I need a moment." She said as she located her digivice and began to mess around with it.

Out came a couple of glasses we had been using for drinks and a bottle of cabbage juice, which had a similar property to the cabbages, but worked for liquids instead. They had these machines in every village that would take in cabbages and produce little plastic bottles of this stuff. And would even dispose of the empty bottles. She poured some into each glass and put her lips up to it, which caused it to turn into wine, which tasted of alcohol, sugar, and rawstberries, which were similar to strawberries, but had a really sharp flavor, like frozen strawberry Gatorade. We sat there in the dark and enjoyed it together, we got just slightly intoxicated, but we slept well that night, and everyone else was none the wiser. It was the most romantic thing we had done in a while.

"So do you like it too?" Phoebe asked once I had taken my first sip.

"It's allright, a bit sweet, but not bad." I said.

"It should help us relax once we've had enough." Phoebe said. "Or atleast it will help me anyway, you seem pretty relaxed already."

"I like that about you, you're always so calm." She said.

"Aww baby girl." I replied.

"I like how you're so devoted to me even though I'll never know why." I replied.

"Really, even after that thing with kitty?" She asked.

"I think that was less about you cheating more about you trying to force me to join you." I said.

"Yeah it was, but that doesn't make it right, I'm sorry.' She said.

"I know you are." I replied.

"And then you let me have that night with Kitty, and, I don't even know how I'm ever going to make it up to you." I said.

"You already are you goofball." She said.

"What are you sleeping around without telling me?" I asked.

"No, but you still want me over her. That's all I need." Phoebe said.

"As much as she sleeps I think she'd drive me crazy after a few weeks." I said.

"If she doesn't accidently cut you to ribbons first." Phoebe replied.

"Yeah, that too." I agreed.

"And what about you and Saphira?" I asked.

"Are you kidding me? She is way too quiet and serious, quieter than you even, and I can't read her mind, so no, it would never work between us." Phoebe said.

"Good to know." I replied.

"She also can't make me laugh like you can." Phoebe added.

"She's just my digimon partner, that's all, I'll share her with you sometimes, but you and I are the real deal. Right Cj?" She said as she raised her glass.

"Right." I said as we had our own little toast.

"Good, I'm glad we got that figured out." She said.

"Now if we, if we could." She struggled to say.

"You have a little too much?" I asked.

"It's all kickinng innnn now." She said.

"Ok well no more for you then." I said.

"I knooow." She replied.

"I love yoou Cj." She said as she clumsily put her arms around me.

"Love you too Pheebles." I replied.

"You're my forever husband." She said.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"I don't know." She replied.

We continued to talk for a while, with her speech gradually becoming less coherent until she fell asleep in my arms, then I finished the rest of the wine to leave no trace which made me tired enough to fall asleep myself sometime later.

-Meanwhile at Mayor Etemon's office.-

"The train was destroyed? That's not my fault. You insisted it'd make it back on its own." Etemon said on the phone. "No! Don't send her out please, last thing I need is her coming around and smashing up my town."

"What, no boss please, I'll kill the humans I promise, I'm heading out to find them now." He lied. "It's not that bad is it? You got some of their data."

"No boss I'm not a stupid monkey, I know you wanted it all, please just." Etemon's heart sank as Marionamon had hung up on him.

"Problems?" Babamon said as she opened the door. "She's coming isn't she?"

"Old lady, for the last time, get out of my city!" Etemon angrily exclaimed.

"I don't think I will youngster, it will be too much fun to watch you pay for what you did to all those poor innocent digimon." Babamon replied.

"Be gone foul witch!" Etemon once again tried to hit her with a dark network attack to no avail.

"Why don't you come out and fight me, you think you're so strong?" Etemon asked as Babamon disappeared around the entrance.

"Not my vengeance to take." Babamon replied. "It'd be more satisfying to watch them crush you."

"Well you'll be crushed too when she gets here! I'll see to it." Etemon threatened as Babamon left the building.

Anyway, Henry came and woke us up the next morning as the wine caused us to sleep in later than the others apparently approved.

"You two lovebirds going to get up yet? Everyone is waiting." I cracked my eyes open to see Henry standing over us.

"What?, oh, yeah, um Pheebles, wake up." I said in a somewhat delirious state.

"hmmmm?" Phoebe cutely grumbled.

"Get your shoes on before Henry teases us again." I said.

"Oh let him tease us, I wuv you." She cutely said before kissing me on the cheek a few times.

"We'll all be by the fire when you're ready." Henry said before walking away.

"I guess we overslept." I said.

"Yeah I guess we did." Phoebe agreed. "It was worth it."

"Yeah it was." I said as we smiled at each other. "You were so cute last night when you started get tipsy."

She looked me in the eyes for a moment, before replying with "Yeah I had a bit too much, sorry."

"It's ok, it was cute." I replied.

"Quit calling me cute. " She said playfully as she slipped on her shoes.

"Oh, but you are." I said.

Once we were awake and ready to go we had a meeting with several of the residents, and with testimony from the rookies we were escorting, we were able to convince many of them to help with our assault on Green Village, where we would get our revenge on Mayor Etemon.

However, he was not the only one we would fight there, as a new opponent was on her way by train.

We were walking through the forest, quite far away from the tracks so we would be harder to spot, so we never saw it go by, though we heard it. It stopped at Green Village, quickly dropped her off, and headed back in the opposite direction.

We passed by our vehicles along with the poor kettle trailmon that was still stranded out here. Phoebe kindly greeted it and said we would find help for it when we could, but we couldn't stay long as we had to take back green village.

We reached the village another hour later welcomed by a small army of porcupamon. The first battle of the day and an easy one at that. A good warmup for the army of champion civilian digimon we had led all this way. The rookies pitched in when they could, but they mostly stayed back. They weren't too happy about Etemon's betrayal and most of the enemy's data was split up among themselves, but the real fight was only just about to begin. Once again nohemon hiding somewhere in the distance fired a barrage of arrows that came raining down. We hid behind various buildings for cover, so the damage was minimal. Unlike our last encounter there were plenty of places to hide. So they weren't nearly as effective. To counter this, some of them stopped acting like artillery and instead tried to hunt us down. This made them dangerous and extremely annoying as it was impossible to know when they would pop around a corner, quickly fire an arrow, and then retreat to safety. We had a few close calls, but the mechanorimon eventually took them down. Their ability to fly made it difficult to hide from them. If we didn't have so many digimon with us, one or more of us probably would've been hit for sure.

However this was only the beginning of the battle, because eventually Etemon emerged from his office, alongside a new foe. She was a Porcelamon, an eerie puppet digimon with the appearance of an adult-sized, possessed porcelain doll of a young girl with colonial era clothing. Despite the seemingly innocent appearance, she is anything but and is considered an ultimate level digimon, a powerful one at that. She was basically Marionamon's lieutenant. Like the majority of puppet digimon, she has a complete absence of facial expressions, but is inexplicably able to speak.

"I told you they were powerful, it looks like they already took down most of my guards." Mayor Etemon said with just a hint of nervousness.

"Yes, compared to you and the rest of the cannon fodder, I suppose they are." She said with the voice of a creepy little girl as her expressionless gaze met his own.

"What is that thing?" Phoebe asked as we peeked at them around a corner.

"I don't know." I replied. "Marionamon maybe, hopefully."

Of course it wasn't it was just another one of her underlings that happened to be a digimon I've never seen or heard of before.

"Pheebles, let's back away from her." I said.

"Why?" Phoebe asked.

"We don't know what she's capable of. Let's see how our new friends fare against her then we can maybe find a better way to approach her. I mean we can always revive the digimon, we can't revive ourselves." I explained.

"Yeah, I get what you're saying." Phoebe agreed. "Come on then."

She took my hand and teleported us away. We stayed back for a while and waited for this strange new digimon to attack our allies so we could figure out how to approach it.

Eventually a group consisting of 2 friendly greymon and a kabuterimon spotted it. The former offered fire support while the later went in for the kill. The magical floating china doll not only dodged the greymon's novablasts, it reflected them at the kabuterimon, setting it ablaze and quickly knocking it out. One of the greymon proceeded to charge at it, it easily dodged. The other launched another novablast, which was reflected back towards it, badly wounding it. This gave the other enough time to turn around and charge at it again. The doll once again managed to evade this, then it attacked by projecting a countless amount of sharp porcelain shards from its arms. Badly wounding the charging greymon. It then turned this attack on the other and quickly finished it off.

"Well that's going to be hard to dodge." I said as I watched it finish off the other greymon.

"Yeah, but we can't shoot at it either." Phoebe said. "Even if we had the means to do so."

"You have your shurikens don't you?" I asked.

"I don't really shoot them I just kind of control them." She said. "And I really don't want them coming back at me.

"Yeah, but, if you control them, can't you keep control of them? Also, the graymon's attack is energy based, we don't know if it can reflect physical projectiles." I said.

"Do you want me to find out the hard way for you?" Phoebe asked.

"No, not really." I said.

"Oh come on, just one little shuriken." Phoebe replied.

"You'll get its attention and then we'll both be screwed." I said.

"You want me to, you know you want me too." Phoebe said.

"Just do it already if you're going to, but teleport somewhere else first." I said.

"Of course, wish me luck." She said before kissing me on the cheek.

She teleported away before I could respond.

A few seconds later I saw one of her shurikens rapidly fly towards the strange digimon. A little silver line, just barely visible. I heard it clang against her, I saw it bounce back, but before I could see where it went Phoebe teleported back to me.

"Ok this is bad, I can't control it once it touches her." Phoebe said. "Arceus! It's still coming for me."

"I knew that was a bad idea." I said, but she had already teleported away as her shuriken whizzed passed me, controlled by some unseen force.

Phoebe managed to dodge it by simply heading inside of the building we were hiding out on, causing it to crash into the side and clatter to the ground, but she was very clearly spooked as when she finally came back to me she wrapped her arms around me fairly tight.

"I'm not doing that again." She said.

"Probably a good idea." I replied.

"What do we do now?" She asked.

"We need to get the word out that ranged attacks on that thing are not a good idea." I said.

"You going to let go of me?" I asked a few moments later as she was still tightly clinging to me.

"You're warm." She said.

"Yeah and your psyhorn is starting to cut into my chest." I replied.

"Sorry." She said as she loosened her grip just enough to not hurt me.

"What am I going to do with you Pheebles?" I said with a sigh.

"Hold me until I feel safe." She quickly replied.

"Pheebles, we're in the middle of a battle, I don't even feel completely safe." I said.

"Come on, you have to snap out of whatever you're in right now. I don't get what's gotten into you you're usually a bit braver than this." I said.

"I saw its eyes Cj." She said. "They were full of pure hatred."

"Mhm, sure they were." I replied.

"You don't get it Cj, it was horrible, worse than what that carnival monster tried to show me."

"I'm going to have nightmares, I just know it." She said.

"Just a second." I said.

"What?" She asked. "You have to believe me Cj."

"I do, I just want to see what the digivice has to say about that thing." I said.

I stepped away from her for a moment and messed with my digivice for a bit until I figured out how to get it to tell me about the digimon I was facing again. That was when I learned that we were dealing with a Porcelamon. Aside from basically restating what we had already observed, the digivice confirmed that her eyes have some kind of hypnotic effect. Apparently one that could affect Phoebe somehow, either by being insanely powerful, on par with a pokémon using an amplifier, or, like many things in the digital world, not quite following the laws of physics. The effect of course being the ability to induce fear in anyone that gazes into them. It didn't say anything about how long the effects would last or if there was an easy way to cure it.

"It got you Pheebles." I said.

"Wha what? How?" She asked.

"You looked into its eyes, it say right here they can induce fear in anyone that looks into them." I said. "It's like hypnosis."

"I can't be hypnotized, I'm psychic myself." She said with a noticeable tremble.

"Well it must be extremely powerful then. " I said.

"Get back over here and hold me." She demanded.

"We have to tell the others, we can't let them end up like you." I said as she wrapped her arms around me once again.

"Can you still teleport?" I asked.

"I can't focus anymore." She said.

"Well we at least need to get off of this roof." I said.

"Cj it's getting worse." She said.

"Just get us off this roof at least, we can't be stuck up here for the entire battle." I said as I pulled her close.

"her eyes." She said.

"Forget about her eyes, look into mine." I replied.

I kissed her the moment we made eye contact, and a few moments later we were on the ground.

"Ok, now we need to find the others." I said as I sent out Kitty.

"What is it now?" Kitty asked, I was mildly surprised she was wide awake this time.

"We did some scouting, we need to find the others and tell them that the china doll thing can reflect any form of projectile attack. And also not to make eye contact with it."

"What china doll thing?" She asked.

"It's a Porcelamon or something like that." I said.

"Oh, ok." She replied.

"We'll split up, and try to find our friends before it's too late. I'll go with Phoebe since she's kind of, spooked, I guess is a way to put it." I said. " You and, Pheebles send out Saphira already."

"What if she gets hurt? " Phoebe questioned. "She might see its eyes."

Saphira decided to come out on her own.

"I'll go with Kitty." She said.

"Right." I said.

"Hey, I am your tamer not my husband!" Phoebe said. " I don't want you to get hurt."

"Yeah, but you're clearly out of it right now thanks to Porcelamon. I'll be fine. I've seen this before, it will wear off after a few days." Saphira said. "Let's go Kitty."

"Right." Kitty replied.

"A few days?" I asked.

"Or whenever we defeat that Porcelamon." Saphira replied.

"Don't go!" Phoebe pleaded as she tried to reach out for her, while at the same time unwilling to let go of me.

"I hope she makes it back." Phoebe said once they were out of earshot.

"She will." I said. "Come on, all we have to do is look for Henry, Claire, and Zari."

"Cj, I don't want to lose you." Phoebe said as she suddenly started to cry.

"You're not going to lose me, nothing is even coming for us right now." I said.

She just held me and cried for a bit while I tried to figure out just what I was going to do. She had gotten upset in the past, but this was different, as whatever Porcelamon had done to her wasn't allowing her to think rationally. Normally I could say a few well thought out words and snap her out of it, I couldn't do that now, she was literally afraid of everything. She was trembling pretty bad as she held me and I could also feel her heart racing.

"Why don't we just sit down and relax for a bit?" I suggested.

"What about our friends?" She asked.

"I'm sure Kitty and Saphira will find them before we do anyway." I said.

"Cj we can't sit here we could get attacked." Phoebe suggested.

"Well where should we go then?" I asked.

"If we leave the alley they could spot us and we could get attacked too." Phoebe said.

"By what some porcupamon? They're not that scary baby girl, we've defeated a lot of them recently." I said.

"Actually what if find somewhere quiet and have some quick sex, would that help you?" I asked.

"How would that help?" She asked.

"If you're aroused it'd be a bit more difficult to be afraid." I said.

"I don't know, what if I get pregnant?" She asked.

"Pheebles we've had unprotected sex more times than I can even remember and I've only ever gotten you pregnant that one time when you tricked me into taking those drugs." I said.

"You're not mad at me for that are you?" She asked.

"No baby girl." I replied.

"What if this time is the one time you do get me pregnant and the baby is some weird mutant because we don't have the drugs ? " She said.

"Pheebles that's ridiculous." I said.

"Well ok then, we'll just stand here and do nothing." I said.

"Wait Cj." She said.

"What?" I asked.

"Just take me somewhere away from here." She said. " Hold my hand, don't let go and just keep walking. I can't even concentrate anymore, her eyes are all I can think about."

"We'll fix that soon I promise, now come on." I said.

Meanwhile, Henry, Claire, and Zari were fighting some porcupamon while inside the mechanorimon, talking to each other through the digimon's built-in radio.

"Where did Cj and Phoebe go?" Zari asked.

"I don't know, haven't seen them in twenty minutes." Henry replied.

"Maybe they're off screwing somewhere?" Claire asked.

"No, they wouldn't, not now." Zari said.

"Yeah, not when there's so much going on." Henry agreed.

"Kitty and um, Saphira or whatever are coming towards us, they probably know where they are." Claire said.

"We need to tell you something." Kitty said.

"Where's Cj and Phoebe?" Henry asked.

"They're fine, but um, Saphira what were we supposed to say again?"

"Good grief, there's an enemy Porcelamon lurking about, it can reflect any projectile attack and it can cause anyone that looks into its eyes to feel terrified of it."

Meanwhile, Phoebe got even worse.

"Arceus Cj, she's right behind us!" Phoebe said in utter terror.

"There's nothing behind us." I replied.

"She's right there." Phoebe said.

"I don't see anything, besides, there's no way she could know where you went." I said.

"She's in front of us now." Phoebe said. "And behind us, there's more than one of them Cj."

"I think you're hallucinating baby girl, I don't see anything."

"Don't look." Phoebe said as she covered my eyes.

"There's nothing to look at." I said as I moved her hands off of my face.

"What you're seeing isn't real." I said. "Just close your eyes, I'll lead you somewhere safe."

She closed her eyes and just a second later let out a scream.

"All I see when I close my eyes, are her eyes." She said.

"OK well just calm down baby girl. This isn't the first time. Remember when we were fighting team rocket they hit you with this stuff that made you think I was some sort of monster?" I asked. "They were trying to split us up and you ended up running away from me."

"I remember that Cj, but this is worse." Phoebe said.

"How?" I asked.

"It's her eyes. They're everywhere." She said with a thousand yard stare.

"Well, I don't know what to say baby girl, you're just going to have to ride this out." I said.

"We need to destroy her Cj, I can't wait a few days for this to go away on it's own." Phoebe replied. "It's driving me crazy now!"

"Well, we'll see what we can do. I don't even know where she is right now." I said.

"Everywhere, just slash all around you, you'll hit her." Phoebe said.

"I don't see what you're talking about." I said.

"Can you till see me?" I asked.

"Mhm." She replied.

"Can you see into my eyes?" I asked.

"Her eyes are appearing all over your body." Phoebe replied.

"GO AWAY!" She yelled.

"Pheebles, just calm down. You need to try to stay calm." I said. "All these eyes you're seeing aren't real."

"What is real?" She asked.

"Just keep holding my hand." I said. "Don't go running off, we'll get through this together."

"I love you." She said.

"I love you too, just hang in there." I replied.

I led her away from the front lines, occasionally taking out a porcupamon or nohemon that noticed us. The nohemon burned really nicely, though they were hard to hit and getting arrows shot at you was no fun. Phoebe thankfully stayed conscious but would occasionally say nonsensical things or scream for no apparent reason, until she stopped talking altogether and seemed to just stare off into the distance or into a wall, or wherever she happened to be facing.

Eventually I made it over to Henry, Claire, and Zari, and we stayed behind them for a bit as the battle continued. Kitty and Saphira joined us a bit later.

"Is she ok?" Claire asked.

"She hasn't said anything for the past ten minutes." I replied. "I don't think she knows where she is right now."

"Pheebles? Baby girl? Hello?" I said as I waved my hand in front of her face in an unsuccessful attempt to get her to react. She just kept staring straight ahead.

"So yeah when we come across porcelamon, don't look it in the eyes." I said.

"What's it look like?" Henry asked.

"It looks like a giant china doll." I said. "Also don't shoot at it or it will reflect your attack back at you or at someone else."

"Kitty already said that earlier." Henry said.

"Yeah, but now you have proof." I replied.

"When we find it, I'd try to take it out with the mechanorimon. Kitty maybe you could help too." I said. "Saphira, I have no idea what your powers would do to it. "

"We should all gang up on it at once." Zari said.

"Seems like the best way to deal with it." I said. "I don't know how strong it is, but I think it's immune to any kind of projectile attack. It also hovers and doesn't seem to follow the laws of physics."

Phoebe, who had been standing there quietly, began to hover into the air.

"Pheebles what are you doing baby girl?" I asked.

"The eyes can't touch me when I hover." She said.

"So you can still speak." I replied.

"Her eyes Cj, they call out to me, she wants me to see her." Phoebe rambled.

"I don't think that's the best idea baby girl, we'll take it from here." I said.

"She wants me Cj, then maybe she'll stop." Phoebe continued.

"Saphira when stuff gets going I'm going to need you to keep an eye on her." I said.

"Of course." Saphira agreed.

"Cj you're not listening! She'll stop!" Phoebe said.

"Yeah no duh she'll stop, you'll be dead." I replied.

"She said she'll stop!" Phoebe yelled as she put her hands on my shoulders and tried to shake me like some sort of crazy ghost.

"I hope this is reversible." I said to Saphira.

"It is, I've seen it before, we either have to defeat the Porcelamon that caused it, or just wait it out." Saphira replied. "Either way I'll keep her safe for you, don't worry."

"Where's IceLeomon?" I asked.

"He went around to the other side of the town to fight on his own." Zari said as a half dozen porcupamon came around a corner. "I'll go check on him if you want, after this next wave of porcupamon."

"If he'll let you." I joked.

"We sent the other three mechanorimon with him, so he could have some help. Hope you don't mind." Henry said.

" Nah, it's fine." I replied.

"Her eyes are everywhere Cj." Phoebe mumbled. "And looking into them is like looking into the domain of giratina, except more fiery."

"You mean like hell?" I asked.

I'm not sure if Phoebe didn't want to respond or couldn't, but she never did, she just went silent again for a few minutes and nobody could snap her out of it. Not that we had much of a chance to try, enemy porcupamon were bearing down on us along with the occasional, annoying, nohemon. We had to fight them off and keep an eye on her at the same time.

Giratina's domain is the reverse world, a world of chaos where the laws of physics can change without warning, not exactly a true equivalent of hell as its only resident is giratina and giratina alone, but it's the closest thing the pokémon world has to a concept of it.

Meanwhile on the other side of town, the porcupamon gave IceLeomon no trouble, but it was hard for him to dodge the nohemon's arrows, and as more and more hit, he was starting to feel some pain. The nohemon were also good at keeping their distance, so he hadn't even managed to defeat one yet. He started using the helpless porcupamon as shields against their arrows, before getting angry and tossing them at the nohemon. Eventually he managed to knock one down long enough that he could close the distance, awarding him his first victory over one. By repeating this process over the course of about an hour, he had taken down quite a few of them, but his injuries were beginning to take their toll.

Once the enemy had relented for a little bit on our side of things, Zari went to check on him with one of the mechanorimon.

"Are you doing ok?" Zari asked as her mechanorimon touched the ground.

"I got this end, they aren't that tough." IceLeomon replied.

"You have five arrows in your shoulder." Zari said. "You sure you don't want any help?"

"They don't hurt that bad." IceLeomon replied. "I can still fight."

"Just cause you're strong doesn't give you an excuse to be stupid." Zari said as they fought their way through the alley.

"I can get through this on my own, you need to help the others." IceLeomon said.

"I was getting bored helping them. They have their side more than covered. " Zari said.

"Also everyone else knows already, except for you cause you went over here by yourself, but if you come across something that looks like a large china doll, don't look it in the eyes. Phoebe did and I think she's going crazy." Zari said.

"If I look it in the eyes, it will go crazy." IceLeomon said, much to Zari's annoyance.

"Don't look it in the eyes!" Zari yelled.

"Say what you wish red human girl, but I can take care of things by myself." IceLeomon said.

"Say what you wish big feline man, but you can't." Zari replied.

"Go back to the others they're probably worried about you." IceLeomon said, despite being in pain, he still felt he could take down Marionamon on his own.

"You know we weren't around when you got captured by gran-whatever his name was." Zari pointed out.

"Did you get caught on purpose or?" Zari began.

"I was going to escape, but you all showed up and it was more convenient." IceLeomon said.

"Sure you were, I bet you got captured on purpose too." Zari said.

"No cell can hold me." IceLeomon said while smashing a porcupamon into a wall. "You're making me angry."

"I'm just saying the truth, admit it, we saved your furry butt." Zari said.

"Go back to the others, that's an order!" IceLeomon said.

"Ehehe, you're not my commander." Zari replied.

"I'm an ultimate level digimon, and you're a, you're just a human." IceLeomon said.

"The correct term is humanoid." Zari said.

" What?" Iceleomon asked.

"Across all of existence, there are millions of planets many of which have different races of humans, some have red skin like mine, some are blue, some are white, black, almost any color you can think of depending on environmental adaptations, some have weird bumps on their heads, or pointy ears, but for the most part they all have the same amount of intelligence and abilities so their universally referred to as humanoids." Zari explained.

"There's other planets?" IceLeomon asked, completely lost.

"Yes, but many of the inhabited ones are similar. It's a lot of sciency stuff to get into. But my point is most of our group consists of humanoids, yet we've gotten this far? You think Grandracmon was the first dark king we destroyed? Think again." Zari said.

"It probably took you a lot longer too." IceLeomon dismissed.

"What happened to the 3 mechanorimon that were sent with you?" Zari asked.

"I don't know where they went, they couldn't keep up. The battle moved over here, they're back there somewhere." IceLeomon replied.

"So you ditched them?" Zari asked with a slight amount of anger.

"It's not my fault they couldn't keep up." IceLeomon replied.

"And if they get destroyed?" Asked an even angrier Zari.

"There's no more enemies back that way, they'll be fine." IceLeomon said.

-meanwhile as Zari attempted to argue with what may have been the most stubborn digimon ever-

"Cj I'm swimming in a sea of her eyes." Phoebe suddenly said as she appeared to be trying to swim through the air. "I can breathe under them, it's weird."

"They still scary?" I asked.

"It's hard to look at them when they're smothering you." Phoebe replied.

"And I can still breathe, I don't get it." Phoebe said. "I can feel them, they're cold and smooth like river stones, but yet when I breathe it's like they're not there."

"That's because they aren't there." I said. "You're hallucinating."

"Why don't you take the other two mechanorimon and get her out of here? We can handle this fight." Henry insisted.

"Look Phoebe may be incapacitated, but I'm still able to fight and so are our digimon." I said. "I'm not leaving you guys either, I never told you this before, but years ago, during the disaster that occurred on our world when Phoebe and I met, we spent some time rolling with a bunch of teenagers that had pokémon like us, then they went off on their own one day and that's the last we saw them alive. I still think about them sometimes, but really it was just an item on a long list of screwed up crap that happened back then. We were lucky we survived that whole ordeal. Phoebe will be fine if we keep her away from the front."

"Allright." Henry agreed.

"What happened to them?" Kitty asked.

"I think it was a wave of rogue pokémon. It was a complicated time. Not as bad as what happened on Henry's world, but, it was nothing to laugh about either." I said. "It one of the reasons why you and I can never have what Phoebe and I have, because for better or worse those days made us inseparable."

"The eyes are starting to feel slimy." Phoebe commented.

"Did you eat a person or something?" Claire seemed to ask out of nowhere.

"What? No! What? How'd you get that idea?" I asked.

"Well you know like in some movies things get really bad and they have to eat somebody before they starve and it becomes like a dark secret for everyone there. And in that way it makes them inseparable." Claire said.

"We didn't eat anybody." I said.

"Really?" She asked.

"Yes really, we never had it that bad, gas stations and rest stops almost always had some candy bars available. Just had to avoid meat and other perishables that usually expired because of widespread blackouts. It was chaos for a while, but after about a year and a half or so things started to stabilize and rebuild. If it went on longer things may have gotten more desperate, but it didn't. "

"I am swimming in the slime of her eyes." Phoebe said.

"You're not swimming in anything." I replied. "You're just waving your arms around, besides that you can't swim very well anyway."

"Yeah I can, I am right now." Phoebe argued as she attempted to swim through the air.

"Let's move up to the next alley." Henry said as he headed out into the street.

"Well what do we have here? A handful of horrible humans." Mayor Etemon said as he caught us trying to cross the street. "And their dimwitted digimon too."

"I didn't think you'd have the guts to fight us." I said. "I'm impressed."

"You ain't seen nothing yet." Mayor Etemon replied.

"Where did your friend go?" I asked.

"Porcelamon told me to deal with you, so it doesn't matter." Etemon replied

"So she gives you the orders? I thought you were in this by yourself." I said.

"I am, but she, she's just creepy and well, DARK NETWORK ATTACK." Etemon said as he released a large shadowball-like projectile without warning. Henry's mechanorimon quickly destroyed it with its laser. Etemon took advantage of this and jumped on its back.

"You're all going to die now!" He sang as he tried to break the cockpit glass of Henry's mechanorimon.

"Shogun sword!" I declared as I attempted to set him on fire. Unfortunately he jumped off of Henry's mechanorimon in time and it only managed to hit Henry and his Mechanorimon. Thankfully metal doesn't burn very well.

"Careful!" Henry yelled.

"Sorry." I replied as I tried to figure out where Etemon went.

"Get off!" Claire yelled as he tried to break into her mechanorimon, which was now flailing around wildly doing everything it could to throw him off. Seeing as how the shogun sword attack was a bit too slow, I decided to run up and attempt to slash at him instead. He quickly hopped off of Claire's mechanorimon and turned to face me. I didn't even get to close the distance before Henry's mechanorimon fired at him with its laser. A direct hit that only caused Etemon a mild amount of pain.

"Ow! That's hot, but not as hot as my burning desire to destroy you! " He said as he lunged at Henry's mechanorimon.

"You're all going to diiiie today. Cause you caaaame my way. Now you'll haaave to pay." He sang in an impossibly loud voice as he kicked Henry's mechanorimon hard enough to lay it out flat. Thankfully Henry was pretty well protected inside. I helped him escape at Etemon went for Claire's.

Before he could take Claire's out Kitty got involved which resulted in one of the most intense hand to hand fights I've ever seen. Until Etemon used his incredibly loud voice to gain the upper hand. Seriously it was like he had a built in microphone, and he wasn't really good at singing either.

"I've had about enough of you, just shut up already. We need to fight Porcelamon, not you." Kitty said.

"Hey, you know those are some nice claws but they're no match for my golden voice!" Etemon said.

"You know one day it will be your turrrrn, to feel that digiburrrrn." He sang in his unnaturally loud voice which threw everyone off guard.

"Sorry honey, but I'm a one man show. Get off the stage." He said as he punched her repeatedly before kicking her against the wall of a nearby building.

"Kitty?!" I said with some concern.

"I'm ok, just, hurting." She said with some strain.

"That was brutal, how he punched a lady like her like that without hesitation." Henry said.

"Well, it's not like she can't hurt him, you know that. She'd probably beat all of us close up." I said.

"And if he starts punching Phoebe?" Henry asked.

"Then he's a dead man." I said.

"Deadmon?" Henry asked.

"Yeah, something like that." I replied.

"Don't get up I'm not done with you." He said as he approached Kitty, who was in enough pain that she was having difficulties standing up.

"That's fine I'm done with you." She struggled to say.

"You're one of the chosen digimon, Marionamon wants you dead so bad I may get another village to control just for ending you." Said Etemon as he approached her, fully intending to finish her off.

"To bad you won't live to see it." I said as I approached him from behind.

"Did you forget about my friends?" Kitty asked.

"No, I just haven't gotten around to them yet." Etemon replied as he somehow dodged my attack and kicked me to the ground, it happened so fast I don't even know how he did it. Before I could even get up, both Claire and Henry were firing lasers at him. Might as well have been nerf guns.

"Now you've gone and made me angry!" He yelled. "Dark Network attack!"

Both of their mechanorimon were struck by the sphere, which then began to enshroud them in darkness.

"What is this?" Henry asked.

"PAIN SENSORS OVERLOADED! DESTRUCTION EMINENT!" His mechanorimon replied as the darkness began to consume it.

When he saw the oozing darkness begin to eat into the cockpit, he knew he had to try to escape. Fortunately, his mechanorimon knew it was dying, so it opened the cockpit glass for him. He pulled himself out slipped off the front of the dying digimon and somewhat clumsily landed on his knees. He got up a sprinted over to Claire's to help her escape as his mechanorimon started to melt into a puddle of darkness. Henry's mechanorimon took most of the hit so she had a bit more time.

The mechanorimon's data streams leaked out when they were almost completely dissolved. The entire process took about a minute, during this time, Kitty got up on her own and approached Etemon again.

"Are you ok?" Henry asked as he helped Claire up.

"I'm fine, my robot is gone though." Claire replied.

"Mine is too." Henry said. "That was close."

"Go find some cover you two!" I yelled at them as Etemon and Kitty went at it again. Once again, she seemed to be holding her own, but I knew that at any moment Etemon could start singing horribly again in order to get the upper hand. So I decided to attempt to strike him from behind. Unfortunately he decided to start singing before I decided to do so.

"Now you're starting to put me in a rage. I thought I told you to get off the stage!" He sang as he gave a badly stunned Kitty another brutal thrashing. He finally kicked her into the nearby building again and then turned towards me. I did my best to hold him off, and was able to for a while, but I wasn't as fast as Kitty and eventually his hits started to land, they hurt, bad, it was like I fighting somebody twice his size, he was way stronger than his appearance, I even lost the sword, he managed to knock it out of my hands and his constant assault prevented me from being able to retrieve it. I would've been beaten to a pulp if Henry didn't decide to intervene. The two of us were able to hold him off until Kitty could recover, but we didn't seem to be making much progress. Henry and I were banged up pretty bad, but Etemon didn't even seem to be getting tired, and I wasn't sure how many more times Kitty could take being slammed into that building. Saphira was occupied trying to protect Phoebe, who was still very delusional, from the occasional porcupamon or nohemon that would come across us, as for Claire, I didn't know where she went at the moment, she was likely hiding somewhere.

"You humans are so weak, I don't even need to sing." Etemon said.

"I wish I had some duct tape about now." I said.

"You think we could shut him up if we did?" Henry asked.

"Probably." I replied.

"We could've used the mechanorimon to drown him out, they're very loud too." I said.

"Yeah, but now they're just puddles of black crud." Henry said.

"I'm going to have to kick you off the stage a third time aren't I girlie?" Etemon asked.

"I think it's about time you got kicked off." Kitty replied as she began to dance.

"What are you doing? This isn't a dance competition?" Etemon replied in confusion.

"You have your ways of manipulation, I have mine." Kitty replied.

"You sure this will work on him?" I asked her.

"It already is, he can't look away." Kitty said softly so as to not break her trance.

"Uggggh." Etemon struggled to speak as he watched her every move with his jaw hanging open.

I looked around and spotted my sword lying on the ground, with Etemon distracted, I finally had a chance to retrieve it as Kitty slowly danced her way towards him. Henry seemed to be affected by her too, I hoped Claire wasn't watching.

-meanwhile about 50ft away-

"Cj, I can't break through the surface of all these eyes." Phoebe said.

"Cj isn't even here." Saphira replied. "He's busy fighting over there."

"You know I can't see what direction you're pointing all I can see is her eyes." Phoebe replied.

"We'll fix that as soon as we can." Saphira said.

"I wonder what kind of fish swim in this see of eyes?" Phoebe asked. "I hope there aren't any sharpedos."

"Any what?" Saphira asked.

"Oh Arceus I just felt something." Phoebe said.

"Oh great it's cycling back to fear again." Saphira said.

"Who are you strange voice?" Phoebe asked.

"I'm you're digimon, you named me Saphira remember?" Saphira asked.

"No Cj would never choose Kitty over me." Phoebe said.

"What?" Saphira asked.

"No he wouldn't" Phoebe said.

Saphira stopped talking to her, knowing she was too far into the illusion to be coherent anymore.

"Stop saying that, that's awful, that would never happen." Phoebe said a few moments later.

Anyway, both Kitty and I approached Etemon, ready to strike, as he stood there staring at her like I stare at Phoebe sometimes. Which was probably why it didn't affect me, if not it might have been just cause I was her tamer, I wasn't exactly sure, it could have been just cause I've already seen her naked for all I knew. There wasn't much in this world that made sense, but it finally looked like Etemon was going to lose. He somehow broke out of the trance he was in in time to block Kitty's attack, but not mine. The sword cut vertically into his side, very deep, blood leaked out as he braced himself in pain.

"Gahh!" He yelled. "That really hurts!"

Kitty took the opportunity to slice him up pretty bad. I won't go into too much detail, other than to say that after she was done you couldn't tell if he was human or digimon.

"My face! My beautiful face, you ruined it!" He yelped in pain. I had no idea how he was still conscious.

"How are you still alive?" Kitty asked.

"You stupid inferior digimon, you ruined my face!" He said as limped away as fast as he could, leaving a trail of blood down the street.

"Should I just let him go?" Kitty asked as Etemon "escaped".

"I don't think he'll get too far." I said. "He's losing a lot of blood. Why'd you go for his face? You should have just gone for his neck."

"Because I wanted to hurt him more than he hurt me." Kitty replied, as she scraped small bits of his face off of her claws. Not the most glamorous sight. "He made me mad, I want to play with him a bit before I destroy him."

"Don't let your rage cost us a victory." I replied.

"You're the one that let him get away." She replied.

"I know but, you just need to realize there's more important things than just petty revenge."

"It's not petty, he was close to killing you and Henry too." She defended.

"All I'm saying is you gotta watch that. Ok, cause you keep going down that road you're either going to end up going too far or dropping your guard, and neither of those will turn out well."

"Whatever master." She sarcastically said with a sigh.

"Oh relax, we're doing good, we had him." I said. "Though it's going to be a bit harder to keep going without the mechanorimon."

"How are your arms?" She asked.

"They can take a bit more." I replied. "If I'm careful."

"How close are you to digivolving?" I asked.

"I have no idea." She defensively replied. "I don't even know if I want to."

"Why not?" I asked.

"What if I turn into something ugly?" She asked.

"I don't know, you'll still be my digimon, don't worry about it." I replied.

"What if I turn into something you're not attracted to?" She asked.

"Um, well, you know, for the last time I'm already married. " I said.

"So?" She asked.

"If Pheebles wasn't such and nympho we would have never have slept together in the first place." I said.

"So you're not attracted to me now is that what you're saying?" She asked.

"No what I'm saying is . . . " I began to say, only for Henry to suddenly interrupt.

"Why'd you let him run away? That big orange wuss." Henry commented with a sigh, interrupting our conversation, thankyou god.

He then took a moment to look around before asking. "Where did Claire go?"

"She's probably hiding somewhere." I replied. "Maybe Saphira knows."

He went over to Saphira right after I finished saying that, before he was even able to ask her I saw Claire emerge from a nearby building. So I yelled for him to draw his attention to her.

They reunited while I went over to Saphira myself to check on my beloved.

"Is she getting any better?" I asked.

"She hasn't even said anything for a while." Saphira said. "I told you it takes a few days unless we can defeat the Porcelamon that did this to her."

"Pheebles you ok in there?" I asked as Phoebe just seemed to stare off into the distance. She just kept staring into the distance with her mouth open and didn't respond in anyway whatsoever.

"Pheebles?" I asked again.

"She's kind of lost right now." Saphira explained.

"Is she getting any better?" Henry asked as he and Claire arrived.

"Nope, she can't even talk right now." I replied.

"Hey our conversation isn't over!" Kitty said, seemingly annoyed.

"We don't have any more time to talk." I said as several porcupamon came around the corner.

"It's not over." She said while she prepared to fight.

"Just let me know when she starts talking again." I said to Saphira as Kitty ran towards the enemy horde.

"Right I will." She replied.

Anyway, a wounded Mayor Etemon went looking for Porcelamon, as we slowly chased him, it became a bit harder to fight without the mechanorimon, but we were still making some progress. There was no way we were going to catch him, the porcupamon and nohemon were making sure of that, but, we kept heading in the direction we saw him run towards.

"I'm impressed they gave you a good beating." Babbamon said as she landed In front of him after leaping from a nearby rooftop. "It's a shame you had to run away before they could finish you."

"Shut up granny I got no time for you now, I have to find Porcelamon!" Etemon said.

"So she can help you drive them out of town?" Babbamon said. "You know she won't be pleased with your failure."

"I didn't fail, I just, need more reinforcements." Etemon said as he braced his side in pain. "The porcupamon sent to back me up were no good at all."

"You know that won't work." Babbamon replied.

"What do you know granny, I'm just trying to get my town back." Etemon said.

"That you stole from your own citizenry." Babbamon replied.

"RRRRRRR I told you I have no time for this! DARK NETWORK ATTACK. " Etemon said in a rage as he lashed out at her. His attack missed but she let him go. As Etemon headed out of sight in search of Porcelamon, Wizardmon revealed himself.

"I don't see why you didn't just finish him." Wizardmon said as Etemon disappeared from view.

"It's not my job, it's the chosen one's." Babbamon said. "Besides, they need his data far more than I. His time will come soon enough."

IceLeomon and Zari were still busy fighting on the other side of the city, they were making progress as well, but more slowly. But just like we had that encounter with Etemon, they were about to encounter another stronger enemy as well. It was Strawmon, leader of Marionamon's nohemon core and the digivolved form of nohemon. Like nohemon it had the appearance of a scarecrow, but its head was that of the crow's and black, useless wings were stitched to its back. The crow having merged with the scarecrow body entirely. Its bow was replaced with two small crossbows that "magically" reloaded, making it much more dangerous.. Its clothing was a lot more tattered, and puffs of straw poked out from every seam. It's arms and legs were also loosely wrapped in barbed wire for melee attacks.

When they first encountered it, it ran across the alley, fired its crossbows and quickly took cover around the corner on the other side. Similar to what its nohemon lackeys had been doing. Both bolts struck IceLeomon in the arm. He winced in pain as he pulled them out.

"Next one is going through your head. You'll pay for what you've done to my brethren." Strawmon said in a very raspy voice as his bows magically reloaded. It took a few seconds, like a real crossbow, but it made dual wielding them a lot less awkward, it also meant that he had infinite ammo.

"Those things actually hurt. We might be in trouble here." IceLeomon

"Right, I'll take the lead from here." Zari said as she marched forward with her mechanorimon.

"Where did the other mechanorimon go?" Zari asked.

"I HAVE THREE OF THEM LOCATED." Her mechanorimon replied.

"Only three?" Zari asked.

"SENSORS INDICATE UNITS 3 AND 4 HAVE FALLEN." It replied.

"Which ones are those?" Zari asked.

"THE ONES THAT WERE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CITY." Her mechanorimon replied.

"Die! You infernal machine!" Strawmon yelled as he popped out of his corner and fired another pair of bolts at Zari and her Mechanorimon. Unfortunately he managed to hit her mechanorimon in the eye. Which is pretty much their weak point. It quickly collapsed without saying a word and dissolved into data, leaving Zari on the ground unprotected as Strawmon prepared to attack once again.

IceLeomon decided to charge at him, but by the time he closed the gap, Strawmon already managed to reload. IceLeomon managed to shove one of his arms out of the way, ripping it off in the process, causing one of the bolts to harmlessly graze the side of a nearby building. Another punch sent the fairly lightweight digimon flying, but not before he fired his other crossbow straight into Ice Leomon's chest.

"That looks bad." Zari said.

"It is." IceLeomon nodded in agreement before falling to his knees.

"You saved me, I was dead for sure." Zari said.

"We would both be dead if one of us didn't attack him." IceLeomon replied.

"Leave before he comes back, don't let my death be in vain." IceLeomon said.

"No, you can't die. I won't let you, not again." Zari said. "Lie down. I'll get the arrow out, then we can try to control the bleeding."

"I think it got stopped by your ribs." Zari said as she took a moment to examine his wound.

"This will probably hurt quite a bit." She said as she began to lift the bolt out.

IceLeomon roared in absolute pain, so loud that the rest of us could hear it clear across town. So we started heading towards them out of curiosity and also because it was getting really hard to fight without the mechanorimon and we needed to keep moving. Saphira was now babysitting Phoebe, and Claire as well as keeping track of the mechanorimon's data streams. Henry surprisingly had enough training in close combat to fair well against the porcupamon, but the nohemon were still a menace that we had to look out for. Without the mechanorimon to hide behind, their arrows were devastating.

We eventually came across strawmon, who only had one arm at this point and one crossbow. A crossbow I was determined to claim for myself the second I saw it.

"What is that thing?" Henry asked as we came across him, he was slumped against the building, looking a lot like a normal, inanimate scarecrow.

"It's not a nohemon." I said.

"It's not moving." Claire pointed out." Maybe it's not a digimon at all."

"Let me check." I said as I fumbled with my digivice.

"Strawmon huh? What happened to your other arm?" I asked as I check his came up on the screen.

The strange digimon didn't respond.

"Is it friendly?" Henry asked.

"It says it's the digivolved form of nohemon, so I would assume no." I said.

Just then the scarecrow digimon decided to stand up.

"Let this bolt represent the will of queen Marionamon." It said in a raspy voice.

It weakly raised its crossbow towards me, but Kitty was unusually alert and quickly cut off its other arm before it could pull the trigger.

"Marionamon won't be defeated so easily." It said in a raspy voice as Kitty stabbed it again in the chest, finishing it.

"Maybe, but you will. Cj I got his weapon." Kitty said as she handed me his crossbow.

"Thanks." I replied as Kitty absorbed the rest of strawmon's data.

"That was an ultimate?" Henry asked. "Usually they're tougher than that."

"Well he was already missing his arm, maybe he already fought IceLeomon or something. We definitely weren't his first targets." I said.

"Maybe it was the old lady?" Henry suggested.

"I have no idea." I replied.

"But if it already fought IceLeomon and survived, then that means . . . . IceLeomon and Zari could be in trouble!" Claire realized.

"That's true." I agreed. "Let's get going then, we're halfway across, they shouldn't be too much further."

"CJ!" Phoebe suddenly exclaimed.

"What?" I asked.

"Kitty is working for the eyes, stay away from her, she'll hurt you." She warned.

"I am not! That is not true." Kitty protested.

"You sure you're not?" I jokingly asked.

"I can read her mind now, it's all I see." Phoebe said.

"Pheebles, you're still out of it." I replied.

"Where are you Cj? I can't see you. I can't read you, I can only hear you." Phoebe asked, sounding somewhat desperate as she stepped away from Saphira and staggered towards me.

I took her hand before she tripped or something, and we kept walking together for a little while, with some difficulty, it was very obvious she couldn't see straight.

"You are Cj right?" Phoebe asked moments later.

"Yeaaah. " I replied. "Who else would I be ?"

"The crazy eye lady?" Phoebe suggested.

"I don't know where she is." I replied.

"Everywhere." Phoebe answered.

"She looked more like a living doll to me than a lady." I said. "Way too creepy to be a lady."

"What does reality look like?" Phoebe asked.

"Like it always has baby girl. You forgot already?" I asked.

"I miss it, being able to see things other than eyes." She replied.

"Don't worry, we'll fix you soon enough." I said.

"You can't." Phoebe replied.

"Bull, all we have to do is kill Porcelamon." I said.

"No I mean you can't fix me soon enough." She said.

" Oh, well we'll try." I replied.

"You won't." Phoebe argued.

"Is that Zari up there?" Henry asked.

"Might be." I said as both Kitty and Saphira began to run towards her.

"Is that . . . " I began to say as I tried to process the form next to her .

"IceLeomon is hurt!" Kitty interrupted.

Henry and Claire ran ahead to investigate, while I ambled towards them with Phoebe in tow, as her hallucinations were still making it difficult for her to walk, I couldn't even consider running.

He was lying on the ground in pain, while Zari was trying to slow the bleeding.

"What happened?" Kitty asked.

"He's hurt, isn't it obvious?" Zari asked.

"What hurt him?" Saphira replied.

"Some bird headed guy with crossbows." Zari replied.

"Was he missing an arm?" I asked as I finally arrived on the scene.

"Um, he wasn't until IceLeomon cut it off." Zari replied.

"Alright then we killed him already." I said.

"It was easy." Kitty added.

"Because I already hurt him." IceLeomon stubbornly replied.

"Shhh, relax, the bleeding is slowing down." Zari said.

"So have you seen Porcelamon anywhere?" I asked.

"Who?" Zari asked.

"The crazy eye lady." I replied.

"She's everywhere Cj." Phoebe said. "Everywhere, but we can't fight her because her eyes are invincible!"

"No we can't fight her because she's not here baby girl." I replied. "We need to find her."

"Cj we can't leave IceLeomon like this he's really vulnerable right now." Saphira said.

"Did you lose your mechanorimon too?" I asked Zari.

"Yes, and IceLeomon ditched the ones that were supposed to be helping him so I have no idea where they are." Zari said.

"Ok then you three are going to have to keep switching the sword around again. I have a crossbow now, so. We're apparently going to have to wait here until IceLeomon can move, and then."

"Why don't you and Kitty go hunt Porcelamon down? We'll stay here and protect IceLeomon, Phoebe, and the mechanorimon's data streams." Saphira interrupted.

"Do you think we can take her on our own?" I asked.

"She's resistant to projectile attacks, Kitty doesn't use projectile attacks." Saphira explained matter of factly.

"That's not true I could throw things if I wanted." Kitty argued.

"Cj, I know you can do this. Make these eyes go away so I can see you again." Phoebe said in a now rare moment of clarity.

"Allright then, let's go Kitty." I said as I carefully placed Phoebe's hand in Saphira's.

"Do you think we can beat her?" Kitty asked.

"We have to try, I can't stand to see my baby girl like this anymore." I said. "So what do you say?"

"Well, if you think we can win." Kitty replied.

"Then let's get going, come on." I said as I began to leave the group.

"Actually wait a second." I said as I fumbled around with my digivice.

"Here take the crossbow, it's probably not going to help me much with Porcelamon." I said as I handed it to Henry who just happened to reach out first. "Don't lose it."

"I also got some bows off of the nohemon as well." Kitty said.

"Yeah I just noticed." I replied. "Did we really need 8 of them?" I asked. "And what about the arrows?"

"The arrow bag things." Kitty replied, not knowing what they were called.

"And you only have got me 3 of them." I said.

"They don't survive as often." Kitty defended.

"Allright then you take these bows too. If you can figure out how to use them." I said as I spawned in a small pile of them from the digivice along with the quivers.

So Kitty and I went off on our own to search for Porcelamon, without so much of a hint as to where she was exactly. Though we both knew it was very unlikely she had left the village by now.

There were still a few porcupamon and nohemon around, but there wasn't quite as many as there was a while ago.

"Allright Kitty, remember when we find her, don't look her in the eyes or you're just going to end up like Pheebles." I said as we searched.

"I know." She replied moments later.

"What if we don't find her until tomorrow?" She asked about a minute later.

"Well if Phoebe snaps out of it before we find her, well, we'll still have to fight her. We need to find out where Marionamon is." I said.

"But what if we have to spend the night away from the rest of the group? Just you and I, together." Kitty said.

"Geez, could you be anymore direct?" I asked.

"Well if that happens can we have sex again?" Kitty asked.

"No, never ask that again." I said.

"But Phoebe said." Kitty stammered.

"I know what she said, that doesn't mean I'm going to." I interrupted. "If we haven't found Porcelamon by sunset, we'll go back to the rest of the group. Allright? I already owe her so much, I can't go taking more. Please Kitty you have to understand this has nothing to do with you."

"I understand, it's just not fair." Kitty replied.

"Don't go saying that to her, or me for that matter, you have no idea what we've been through together." I said. "Now come on, if we kill Porcelamon and snap Phoebe out of, wherever she is, maybe she'll reward you. You just have to let it go Kitty, there's still a place in my heart for you, but it's not the same as the one she has."

"What kind of reward?" She asked.

"Well, it's Pheebles, what do you think?" I asked.

"I don't know, you know her more than me." Kitty said.

"Aye yi yi " I exclaimed.

She was my digimon partner, it was important for us to have a functional relationship. But trying to keep it functional without breaking her heart or betraying my beloved was no easy task. Thanks in part to said beloved.

Meanwhile, in another part of the village.

"Porcelamon, everything is going downhill faster than a rocket sled on rails!" Mayor Etemon said.

"What's the matter Etemon, can't defend the city lady Marionamon so graciously provided you with?" Porcelamon asked without even looking at him. "She should have just burned this place down with you in it."

"How is it my fault it's these weak porcupamon. Haven't you noticed they're dropping like flies?" Etemon said.

"Tis the purpose of cannon fodder, a purpose you seem reluctant to serve." Porcelamon replied, again without looking at him.

"What did you just say?" Asked an annoyed mayor Etemon as he raised his fist in anger.

"Do you really want to fight me now Etemon? You know I could kill you so easily." Porcelamon said as she turned about halfway towards him.

"No, I, I didn't mean." Etemon replied.

"Then go back and fight the chosen ones like a good little cannon fodder monkey you are." Porcelamon commanded. "I have to go contact Marionamon to inform her of all the losses you're responsible for."

"Stupid doll face always giving commands. Never should have been sent here, this is my city, mine! And it's not like it's my fault those porcupamon are so weak. Marionamon is the one that recruited them." Etemon mumbled as he stormed away.

Anyway as we searched for Porcelamon, we took down a few more porcupamon, and Kitty continued to bother me with deeply personal questions about my relationship with Phoebe among other things, like a crazed fan bothers a celebrity.

"How do you not remember every time you've had sex with her?" Kitty asked.

"Well, when we've been together for so many years and have done it so many times, how could I really? " I asked. "You were a virgin not too long ago, you don't really have enough experience to understand."

"So you just start to forget after awhile?" Kitty asked. "So you don't remember your first time?"

"No you remember the more significant times and then all the more mundane times just kind of blend together. " I replied. "I'm pretty sure nearly everyone remembers their first time."

"Now can we please talk about something else?" I asked.

"Do Phoebe's boobs grow whenever she's excited or just when you're having sex?" She asked.

"Do you have any questions that aren't related to sex?" I asked.

"Well, um, not at the moment." Kitty awkwardly replied.

"Ok then, no more questions, just stay focused on the mission." I said.

"Awwwwwe." She groaned.

"I'll just have to ask her then." Kitty said.

"Don't, I don't need you two to start fighting again." I replied.

"But I want to know!" She said.

"Why do you want to know?" I asked.

"Because, I just do, that's why." She replied.

"You know if you ask her that she'll probably just send you flying into a tree." I said. "Or worse. Just don't do it, trust me it's not worth it." I replied.

"Ok, ok." Kitty replied.

We eventually found Porcelamon just minding her own business, there were no guards around, and she wasn't fighting any of our allies or anyone at all. Something immediately seemed off, but at that point we were just glad we found her.

"Remember, don't look her in the eyes just focus on the ground around her or something." I whispered as we spied on her from around a corner.

"I know I know." Kitty replied.

A nohemon emerged from a nearby building and approached Porcelamon to have a chat.

"Did you finish planting the explosives?" Porcelamon asked.

"All buildings on this block set for demolition." The nohemon replied in a nasally voice.

"Good, go join your brothers and the bombamon on the next block." Porcelamon replied. "I want this entire place rigged to blow by sundown. It will be a beautiful firework show for Lady Marionamon to see. A literally burning symbol of her power and glory throughout the land."

"Did you hear that? She's going to blow up the city." I whispered.

Kitty seemed to space out for a moment.

"No! We can't let that happen." She solemnly replied, loud enough that Porcelamon heard us and instantly started to hover towards us.

"Don't look into her eyes!" I said.

"I must say I'm not too terribly impressed with you humans so far. I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to confront me again." Porcelamon said. "Well no matter, this should be quick."

"Kitty focus on her dress and just start chipping away." I said." And whatever you do don't look up."

"Right." Kitty agreed.

"You're too late to save this place by the way. I've already got half the place wired with explosives, all Bombamon has to do is detonate and you can kiss this village goodbye!" Porcelamon said as she rained porcelain shards down upon us. I managed to take cover behind the building, but not before getting cut in several places. Kitty took a lot of hits too, but it was somehow less lethal to her.

I was already bleeding pretty bad. The pain hadn't set in yet, but I had to try to control the bleeding, I couldn't afford to pass out now. Kitty was fighting pretty hard, but even against melee attacks, Porcelamon was pretty damage resistant.

"I can't cut through!" She yelled.

"Too bad, you're too late to save this city, and too late to save yourself." Porcelamon replied as another mass of porcelain shards generated around her.

Kitty was screwed, I had to attack now, despite the bleeding. I drew the sword and charged at Porcelamon. It didn't do much but send a wave of pain through my already sore and tired arms, but it was enough to buy Kitty some time to evade Porcelamon's next attack. Most of the shards disintegrated against the side of the building, making a pretty impressive cloud of dust. Some of them ricocheted, I got hit by more of them than I could count, but they didn't go as deep as they did the first time. I was probably bleeding from more than a hundred places at that point. It was not a pleasant feeling. As I struggled to pull several small individual slivers of porcelain out of my skin. Kitty got angry and started slashing at Porcelamon like crazy. Getting up was painful. I was too hurt to focus on the battle anymore. Somehow I managed to prop myself up with the sword.

"Cj hang in there." Kitty cheered.

"Humans are so weak." Porcelamon said. "Why do you even need them?"

"Ophanimon said they would be helpful." Kitty replied.

"Hehehe, Ophanimon?" Porcelamon giggled. "Ophanimon is dead."

"No she's not, that's not true." Kitty replied.

"Don't let her get to you, don't look into her eyes ! " I struggled to yell.

"Shut up and die already you pathetic human." Porcelamon retorted.

"Nah, I don't feel like it." I said as I managed to raise the sword to my shoulder.

You hurt my baby girl, you're gonna pay." I said as blood streamed down my cheeks, determined to not pass out. We had to win this, no matter the cost. We couldn't escape now, it was too late for that, we either had to win or die.

The digivice started to emit a high pitched whirring noise, the screen flashed pure white light, and then Kitty started to glow. She digivolved into lilithmon right then and there, a somewhat different looking lilithmon, but at the moment I couldn't put my finger on what said difference was. Turned out she was some kind of vaccine subspecies of lilithmon with subtle differences including the lack of the mark of evil on her head, and black feathered wings instead of the usual tattered bat-like wings, she could control said wings, but was strangely unable to fly.

"What the? I digivolved?" She asked as she took a moment to check out her new body. Her voice got slightly deeper, but inside she was still Kitty, her personality didn't fit her new appearance much at all.

"I don't know, I'm as confused as you are." I said as I did the same. "You got cuter, Phoebe's not going to like this."

"Well it's not like it's my fault." Kitty replied.

"Big deal you digivolved, you're not even used to your new form, how could you possibly expect to win?" Porcelamon asked.

"I still have claws!" Kitty proudly replied as she realized she now had a large golden claw on her right hand, the nazar nail all Lilithmon have. A demonically powerful weapon in the form of a glove\gauntlet, that can corrode any solid object it touches aside from the user.

And so she went on the attack again, but she wasn't used to her new body yet so Porcelamon was able to evade and ready another attack. Several thousand porcelain shards were launched towards Kitty, many of which struck her in the back. Porcelamon then turned her attention towards me, which turned out to be a fatal mistake, as Kitty wasn't down yet and was given a huge opportunity to strike. She clumsily plunged the nazar nail straight through Porcelamon's body making it brittle and causing it to crack.

"This can't be happening, Deusmon must rise again!" Porcelamon said as her body writhed in pain and continued to crack before shattering completely, leaving only her head, which disintegrated into a cloud of data shortly afterwards.

"We won." Kitty said.

"Yeah, we did." I replied.

"Damn if I wasn't already married." I said as I looked her over once more.

"Well we already did even though you are so what's one more going to hurt?" She asked.

"No, not without Phoebe's permission." I replied weakly. "Besides, I'm not really up to it right now if you haven't noticed."

I nearly fell to the ground but she held me up. The loss of blood was finally starting to catch up.

"You want to just rest for a while?" She asked.

"Yeah, for a while." I said as we slowly sat down on the ground next to each other.

Then we layed down, and I was very, very close to just passing out, but I never quite did so.

We were there for maybe twenty minutes, until Phoebe found us. Apparently she went looking for me as soon as her sanity came back. She took a moment to analyze the situation before speaking.

"Really? I go insane and you go off and boink Kitty again." She said as she saw us laying there.

"What? No we never did anything." I said. "Seriously we never."

"Yeah we never did anything like that we were just resting." Kitty defended.

"Relax, I know." Phoebe replied. "Nice new look by the way."

"Get down here you." I said.

"Why don't you come up here?" She asked.

"Because I have about 1000 cuts in my back and it hurts just to move." I replied.

"So what you're saying is you got hurt, without me, again." Phoebe said.

"Yeah basically." I replied.

"Oh you. I guess that's fair." She said as she layed down beside me.

It hurt like hell but I managed to put my arm around her.

"You ruined your shirt again." Phoebe pointed out.

"Yep." I replied.

"You know that's your only shirt, all your others are back on the bus." Phoebe pointed out.

"Well dam." I replied.

"Kitty we're going to have to find a time to check your new body out." Phoebe said.

"Pheebles you can't be serious." I replied.

"Oh non-sense, you can't tell me that if we don't share her together you're not going to have her without me." She said.

"Are you suggesting I would cheat on you?" I asked.

"You're already thinking about it." She replied.

"That doesn't mean I would." I replied.

"Pheebles I love you and I missed you, but at the same time it's like you just went straight back to driving me crazy again." I said.

"I'm your wife, it's my job." Phoebe proudly replied. "And I missed you, you can't even imagine what the last few hours were like for me. I'm just trying to be nice."

"But first before we can have any fun we need to patch you up." Phoebe said.

My digivice began to beep.

"What the?" I exclaimed.

Kitty started to glow again, and reverted to her prior form.

"Awe come on we never even got to see you naked." Phoebe said, disappointed.

"Sorry I can't hold that form forever." Kitty explained. "I'm not even used to it yet."

"Oh well, maybe someday you can hold it long enough for us to have some real fun with you." Phoebe replied.

"What are you talking about she's still pretty sexy in this form. " I said.

"So you admit it." Phoebe replied.

"Well you're both pretty sexy. Ok now I'm half dead here, and all you've done since you got here is mess with my head." I awkwardly replied.

"Yeah you're right, I should take you back to the others and try to get you patched up." Phoebe replied.

"Yeah, you should." I said as I pulled her close and kissed her.

"Love you Pheebles." I said.

"Awwwwwe, ok, let's go, come on, Kitty help me help him up." Phoebe said.

Somehow they managed to stand me up so Phoebe could teleport us back to the others. Once there, a crude bed was made for me using materials scavenged from the nearby buildings. Once that was done I was able to lay down. Phoebe ripped what was left of my shirt off so they could better address my wounds.

Zari didn't have enough healing cream left to heal all of them, but there was enough to close up the more severe ones. That said I was only feeling marginally better. And things were peaceful for all of ten minutes until . . . .

"Shit fuck the bombs I forgot about the fucking bombs!" I suddenly yelled.

"What bombs?" Phoebe asked.

Porcelamon was going to blow up the city, she had a squad of digimon planting bombs in all the buildings." I said. "Fuck I forgot I'm such a fucking idiot."

"Calm down Cj." Phoebe replied.

"Look the squad was a block north of where you found us, if you hurry maybe you could stop them." I said.

"Ok ok, I'll take Saphira with me, we'll take them out, it will be easy." Phoebe said. "You got me out of wherever I was so I'll do this for you, so don't worry, you know I'm good."

"Yeah, I know you are baby girl." I replied.

"Allright Saphira, Kitty, why don't you both come with me so we can deal with the bombs." Phoebe said to our digimon. "Zari, my husband better be alive when I get back."

"He's stable don't worry." Zari replied.

" You know you're lucky we don't have to pull out any shrapnel or anything." Zari said. "With as many wounds as you have that could take hours, and we don't have any anesthetics."

"Yeah well, how's IceLeomon doing?" I asked.

"He's better than you at the moment. He just needs to rest a bit and he'll be fine." Zari replied.

"And when did you learn how to play doctor?" I asked.

"It's all part of basic space police training." Zari replied. "It's funny, I hated that class, and I never thought I would actually need it with the self-healing armor we had, because most of the time you either don't get hurt, or you get hurt really, really bad, but, well here we are."

"Now if we could just find a use for calculus." I said.

"What's that?" Zari asked.

"Never mind." I replied.

"Is he going to be ok?" Henry asked.

"He'll be fine, they're all shallow cuts, but there's a lot of them." Zari replied.

"You call this shallow, I had like a credit card slot in my kidney area." I argued.

"It wasn't deep enough to hit any vitals. And we already got that patched up." Zari said. " I took care of everything that would normally need stitches, but you're going to have to let the rest heal the old fashioned way. I don't have too much of that healing cream left and we should probably try to conserve as much as possible."

"Yeah, that seems fair enough." I said. "Doesn't make it hurt any less, I feel like I'm laying on a hot piece of aluminum." I said as I tried to describe the odd burning sensation of having a few hundred cuts at once, they all just kind of merge together into one large wound.

"You sure you can't just give me a bit more?" I asked.

"You'll be fine, you just need to rest." Zari insisted.

Anyway, Phoebe went off on her own along with our digimon to deal with the bomb squad, which consisted of Bombamon, a champion level digimon who specialized in setting explosives, throwing grenades, and suicide attacks, as well as about half a dozen nohemon.

Bombamon wasn't a particularly powerful digimon, but they can be very destructive if left to their own devices as they can basically generate a nearly infinite amount of remote explosives that can detonate at will. However this takes time to set up, so if dealt with early on it really isn't much of a threat. Its appearance could basically be described as a 4ft tall walking stick of dynamite with wiry grey, fuse-like hair that vaguely resembled dreadlocks. On its head it wore what appeared to be a ww2 era U.S military helmet. On its shoulders it wore a pair of bandoliers studded with fragmentation grenades which it used as its main weapon. Its eyes were yellow with black pupils. Its legs were well protected by oversized combat boots. On its right hip was a single brick of c4 attached to a remote explosive device. Because its primary weapon is its grenades and it's not very physically strong, it has no combat ability at close range, but it's grenades can be a serious annoyance when trying to approach it from a distance, it is also skilled at using its remote explosives to setup traps, but this only comes into play if it had time to make preparations prior to battle. Despite not really fitting in with the rest of Marionamon's army, its suitability for this particular operation made it a prime choice, so Porcelamon sought some out, quickly converted them to deusmonism, and employed them, giving it a small group of nohemon to use as its assistants, planting its remote explosives throughout the city while it went about figuring out the best place for them.

"How many more blocks do we have to go?" One of the nohemon asked.

"DOES IT LOOK LIKE I HAVE A MAP?" Bombamon angrily replied. "WE'LL JUST KEEP GOING NORTH UNTIL THERE'S NO MORE BUILDINGS!"

Just then a shuriken came out of nowhere and sliced the nohemon's arm off. Since this particular arm was the one attached to the crow, this was a lethal hit, akin to beheading.

Bombamon looked around and saw the rest of his squad taken down in a similar manner.

"WHAT THE DIGIBYTES IS GOING ON HERE?" He exclaimed.

"We can't let you blow up the city." Phoebe said.

"Then I'll just have to blow you up." Bombamon said as he lobbed a grenade at her.

Phoebe was easily able to just teleport away from it. Though it did damage the roof of the building she was on. This went on until Bombamon got so frustrated the fuses on his head lit themselves, culminating in a massive suicidal explosion.

"Arceus that was loud, Ok Saphira, all their data belongs to you." Phoebe said as the dust settled.

"What about me?" Kitty asked.

"You got Porcelamon and her goons, Saphira needs data too you know?" Phoebe replied.

The explosion was loud enough the rest of us heard it halfway across the city, however it didn't damage any buildings as Bombamon wasn't really close to any when he offed himself.

Upon Saphira absorbing its data, all the remote explosives it had planted were basically deleted. The worst part of the whole battle was that Bombamon destroyed its equipment when it suicided so we unfortunately didn't get access to infinite grenades and explosive charges, which would have been incredibly useful against the remaining dark kings and queens, but separating a digimon that could explode at any moment from its equipment wasn't exactly easy. Anyway, feeling the city was safe, Phoebe returned to the rest of us.

"Ok we're back where's my husband?" Phoebe asked the moment she returned.

"Same place he was when you left." Zari replied.

"Cj, I took care of the bombers, the city should be safe now." Phoebe said as she approached me.

"That was quick." I replied.

"Yeah well, the one guy kind of blew himself up." Phoebe replied.

"Oh, well, why can't anybody I fight do that?" I replied.

"I don't know. Anyway are you feeling any better?" She asked as she layed down beside me.

"Barely." I replied.

"Why don't I help you sleep?" Phoebe suggested. "That way when you wake up the worst will be over and you'll have some of your strength back."

"Cause we're still in an active warzone?" I replied.

"Well this battle is about over." Phoebe replied.

"Where the hell is Etemon?" I asked.

"I don't know. " Phoebe replied. "But you need to rest, don't worry about the rest of this battle, Porcelamon is gone, the worst is over. You'll wake up to me kissing you and you'll feel so much better."

"I'm just glad you're back to normal baby girl." I said.

"I am too, you don't even know how horrible that was." She replied. "You saved me."

"Well we would've been screwed if Kitty didn't digivolve. " I said.

"Yeah, but, from what I understand she can't digivolve without you. So really it's all thanks to you." Phoebe replied.

"If you say so." I replied.

"But really try not to get hurt next time. This is getting ridiculous." Phoebe said.

"Well I can't teleport like you can baby girl." I replied.

"I know, but still, who knows how long it will be before we can get back to the bus and get you another shirt." Phoebe said.

"Better my shirt than your dress." I said.

"Yeah right, I could've taken her down without getting hit." Phoebe confidently replied.

"Don't jinx it." I replied. "And no you could not, you were off swimming in eyeballs or something."

"It was worse than that." Phoebe replied.

"That doesn't really help your case." I said.

"I know." Phoebe replied.

"But if that didn't happen I could of." She insisted.

"Ehhhh." I emitted as I thought it over. "Not against Porcelamon. Neither you or Saphira are particular good with melee attacks."

"Oh, right I forgot." She replied before wrapping her arms around me as tight as she could. "Thank you for saving me." She cutely said.

"Uh huh" I said, knowing full well she was trying to be awkward because how dare I correct her, she was hurting me just a little bit, but I loved her so I pulled her close and kissed her on the cheek with whatever strength I could muster even though she was already close to stabbing me in the chest. It made it hurt more, but it was worth it.

"Ok now you need to relax mister." She said as she let go of me.

I layed back down with a great amount of pain and effort, followed by some relief when I did so as it meant I didn't have to move any more.

"I'm going to help you sleep ok? You'll feel better when you wake up I promise." She said as she moved her hand towards my head.

She put me out before I could say anything in return.

Meanwhile, a wounded mayor Etemon was searching for us with a high amount of total incompetence. While "searching" for us he happened to come across yet another Bombamon squad, one that we were unfortunately not aware of.

"What's going on here?" Etemon asked.

"I'm a Bombamon you big orange fleabag, I'm here on orders of Porcelamon." The grumpy explosive digimon replied.

"Why aren't you looking for the humans?" Etemon replied.

"We are." The Bombamon lied. "We're looking for them inside these buildings here and then we're marking them with these bricks so we don't check the same building twice. We haven't found any yet sadly."

"That's a funny looking brick." Etemon said. "What's this strange flashing light for?"

"It's um, it's a human detector." Bombamon lied. "If a human enters the building it will send me a signal, and then we'll know where they are."

"Hmm, I dare say that's not a terrible idea." Etemon replied with a smile. "Allright then, carry on, I'm going to go look for them over here."

So he went on "searching" for us, when about 5 minutes later Babbamon tracked him down, wizardmon was with her, but remained hidden from etemon's sight.

"ETEMON!" Babbamon yelled. "I knew you were a greedy, incompetent buffoon of a mayor, but are you really going to go so far as to blow up your own city?"

"What are you talking about granny?" Etemon asked, knowing nothing of Porcelamon's plan to destroy green village.

"The Bombamon, they're laying bombs everywhere." Babbamon said. "They're going to destroy this entire place."

"Those aren't bombs they're human detectors." Etemon replied. "They go off when a human enters the building. That way we can find them faster. It's probably the most useful thing Porcelamon's goons have ever done."

"Are you really that stupid?" Babbamon asked. "I thought you may be interested in saving this place, but you don't even know of the danger it's in."

"I know enough to know that this place is mine and I told you to leave a long time ago, and yet you're still here. Be gone granny, I don't have any time for your nonsense, I need to find those humans and finish them so I can enjoy my city in peace."

"You're going to enjoy it in pieces if you don't do something about those explosives. I'm going to go find the humans first and get them to help, since you're useless." Babbamon said.

"Yeah, well if I find them first they'll be dead before you find them." Etemon idiotically claimed.

"I highly doubt you'll find them anyway. Let's go wizardmon." Babbamon said as she disappeared from his sight.

"Stupid granny, at least I got rid of her for now, now I just have to find those pesky humans." Etemon said to himself.

"Babbamon, I still don't understand why you won't just take him down." Wizardmon said.

" Because he wasn't always like this wizardmon, I knew him back when he was a rookie, before he was mayor, before the last reformation. And in all my years, I never would've thought somebody could turn so evil so quickly. I don't know if he's just afraid of Marionamon or not, but, something in me refuses to believe that the old Etemon is gone. But the humans are here now, they and their digimon partners should be more than capable of dealing with him. If he must be destroyed, at least if I leave it up to them I won't have to watch. "