-chapter 50-
A few hours later I woke up next to her royal nakedness and after getting dressed switched places with Zari. The next two hours went by pretty quietly as she dozed off and Phoebe had yet to wake up. I basically just sat in silence, following Henry's Camaro through the desert.
2 days of this later we were extremely bored and finally back at Sandy River village. Even Mr. Cinders was getting bored. At that point the surviving shopkeepers had left so it was completely empty. We topped off our vehicle's tanks and then decided to follow the river, thinking it would lead to another village faster than just heading west.
The river ended up going back into the forest area, which may have ended up being the same one that ran by the machine city, we never found out because that was where we stopped following it. We never came across an inhabited village in all that time either.
Progress drastically slowed down after that, mostly because of boredom. We stopped driving in shifts because we really didn't need to, Phoebe and I started having sex every morning before the others woke up, so we could just be alone together without involving either Zari or the digibabes. Sometimes we didn't even do that because we were just so sweaty and unpleasant. We began to straddle the line between the desert and forest areas, so at least if the heat started getting to us, a cooler atmosphere was just a short walk away. It was a lot easier to drive through the desert though, as there weren't any trees to avoid.
At some point Henry and Claire decided to stop to have a pokémon battle in the middle of the desert, of all things. On another day when Phoebe was driving Zari decided to ride on one of the mechanorimon. Then Henry and Claire followed suit, just to stave off boredom. Shortly after that, Phoebe decided to battle against Claire's chikorita with Mr. Cinders. And everybody felt thirsty, all the time. We stopped to check out every little landmark and village we came across, all of which were unoccupied. It was three days until we came across a settlement that Indramon's scouting force hadn't gotten too, and dam was it a relief. As boring as those days were, it at least gave us some time to heal. We were all feeling pretty good at the end of it, aside from just a general thirst. I had no idea how Ophanimon ever expected a bunch of kids to travel these great distances, even as adults, with our vehicles, traveling through this place was brutal. This made me think that maybe we weren't where we were supposed to be, but there really wasn't any evidence to support this, so we just kept going.
This village also happened to be on the line between the forest and desert regions, and was unique in the way that it was lived in by a combination of forest and desert dwelling digimon. The buildings were all built out of wood gathered from the forest, and very well constructed. It was larger than the Sandy River village, but not quite as big as Green Village.
All this time Marionamon spent rebuilding her army with the aid of Darkdramon and Ice Daemon, the dark king of the frozen lands of the far north, they had all joined forces and were terrorizing the northern half of the digital world, however the Bubblemen, who had also assembled a huge army at this point, were surprisingly holding them back, though their interest was still in capturing Phoebe, so they really didn't care to try to defeat their new found opponents. They fought constantly, but neither made any real progress.
"Oh thank god we finally found a town." I said as the village came into view.
"Where?" Phoebe asked.
"Straight ahead baby girl. Take a look." I replied.
"Awwe there's no skyscrapers, it must be pretty small." Phoebe said.
"A town is a town." I replied. "It's better than nothing, here's hoping it's occupied. Besides, how are they supposed to pbuild skyscrapers just out of stuff they find laying around?"
"I don't know." Phoebe replied.
"Zari wake up there's a town." Phoebe said as she placed her hand on Zari's head to "Help" her wake up.
"Ow what the?" Zari suddenly stirred awake.
"Don't punch me, there's a city up ahead." Phoebe replied.
"Oh ok." Zari replied. "My head hurts."
"It's a minor side effect, sorry." Phoebe apologized. "It will go away in a moment."
"Is this a town digimon actually live in or is it just another empty one?" Zari asked as she massaged her head.
"I don't know yet." I replied. "If nothing else it's pretty sizable, so at least it will take a while to explore."
"Hopefully they have showers." Phoebe said.
"Yeah hopefully." I replied.
Kitty was riding with us now because she was driving Saphira, and in turn, Henry and Claire crazy. They basically kicked her out. Unfortunately Phoebe still didn't get along with her very well either. Or, more appropriately, Phoebe would get bored, play pranks on her with her powers, usually involving one of her many rings, then she would get mad and either try to put the moves on me for revenge, or less often, try to prank Phoebe back, which almost always failed. Sometimes she would try to start a fight with Phoebe, then Phoebe would attempt to use that as an excuse to attempt to turn me against her, unsuccessfully. Other times Phoebe wouldn't even bother with pranks and just become extra possessive of me whenever Kitty was awake (Which admittedly wasn't very often). In short, Phoebe was obviously jealous of her, for no good reason, she was the one that roped her into all this after all.
IceLeomon was still riding around on the roof. He was pretty quiet, then again it was hard to speak to him while he was up there.
"Pheebles go wake Kitty up." I said.
"Do I have to?" She replied.
"No, Zari can." I replied.
"No I got it." Phoebe insisted.
"WAKE UP YOU SMELLY FURBALL!" She yelled directly in Kitty's face.
"Pheebles!" I scolded.
"What? She's waking up see." Phoebe replied. "I'm just having fun."
"You know what you did you jealous little." I said.
"Little what?" She asked.
"Loud human." Kitty tiredly muttered.
"I'm not human." Phoebe replied.
"Well then you're a loud floaty monster thing." Kitty said.
"Floaty monster thing?" Phoebe asked.
"Oh crap I know that look." I said.
"Not again." Zari quietly mumbled, this wasn't the only time in the last few days they managed to piss each other off.
"Now listen here you little welp! I am a gardevoir, I come from a long line of proud, intelligent, forest dwelling pokémon. You come from, um, probably just a bunch of random numbers on a computer somewhere, I am not just a floaty monster thing." Phoebe angrily, but still cutely replied.
"You're right, you're a loud, angry, floaty monster thing." Kitty replied.
"rrrrrrrrrr" Phoebe groaned.
"Ok Kitty now you're trying to piss her off." I said, interrupting the feud before it got violent. "Pheebles stop bullying my digimon."
"But Cj she said." Phoebe began to explain.
"I know what she said, I know what you said too, this bus really isn't that big." I replied as I came to a stop behind Henry's car as we had now arrived at the town. The whole bus shook a few seconds later as IceLeomon got off of the roof.
"These last few days have been really rough, everybody is a bit cranky, and tired, and smelly." Zari explained.
"Yeah, but still, she always goes after Kitty." I replied.
"Yeah well, it's complicated." Phoebe didn't even bother to explain why she chose Kitty as her target.
"No, not really, you see Kitty as your greatest failure, therefore you're afraid of her and what she could do. You're afraid you went too far, and you're most afraid that she could steal Cj away from you." Zari pointed out.
"They teach you psychology in space police school too?" I asked.
"It's an elective." Zari replied. "Anyway Phoebe in short, you are jealous of her, but also fearful."
"Yeah, well Pheebles, you know I'd never leave you. I don't know how to show you, but you know." I said.
"When I can read you I know, and when I can't I soon forget every time I see her, and I can't read her like a normal person or pokémon so, that makes it even worse. I'm sorry CJ." Phoebe replied. "Can I get a hug?"
"Yeah fine." I replied as I got up to hug her, knowing full well this wouldn't be the last time she would pull such things. She wasn't perfect, after all.
"I'd never steal him from you, we might have fun sometimes, but I'm never going to take him from you." Kitty said.
"Yeah, no, you're not having fun with him without my permission." Phoebe said.
"That's what I meant." Kitty replied.
"Yeah well, permission denied until further notice." Phoebe replied as she playfully stuck her tongue out.
"You going to apologize to her?" I asked.
"I'm sorry Kitty, but permission still denied." Phoebe replied after a sigh.
"We'll see." Kitty replied.
"You're never spending a night alone with anyone but me ever again." Phoebe said as she looked me in the eyes.
"Why would I want to?" I replied.
"Awwwe Cj." Phoebe said before she kissed me.
"Guys there's some digimon outside." Zari said as Phoebe and I were still locked in an embrace.
"Really where?" Kitty asked.
"I love you Cj." Phoebe said in a somewhat apologetic tone.
"I love you too baby girl." I replied. "We done for now?"
Saphira knocked on the door just then, so we let her in.
"What's going on in here?" Saphira asked. "It smells awful."
"Yeah well, not too many showers around out here." I explained.
"Oh look Kitty is awake." Saphira pointed out.
"Yeah well Phoebe just woke her up so." I explained.
"Oh, yeah that makes sense." Saphira replied.
"Did you come here to say something or?" Phoebe asked.
"Henry just sent me to check on you, he wondered what was taking you so long." Saphira replied.
"Yeah, well, we're ready to go now. Everybody off, come on." I said as I gently pulled Phoebe off the bus with me. Henry and Claire were already outside talking to the locals. While IceLeomon immediately headed to the cooler side of the village, the part that was in the forest, without telling anybody. Eventually Phoebe and I split off from the rest of the group and went over there ourselves.
"I wonder where their furniture machines are and if they can make showers." Phoebe said.
"I don't know how that would work." I replied. "Where you going to get the water?"
"I was hoping it would come out of nowhere like how those machines work anyway." Phoebe said.
"I guess that makes as much sense as those machines." I replied. "But without a house to put it in how are we supposed to have any privacy?"
"I don't know, hey maybe it would be easier if we just asked somebody to use their shower." Phoebe said.
"Pheebles, if two people showed up at our door and asked to bang in our shower would you let them?" I asked.
"Um, no, but most digimon don't even understand what sex is." Phoebe pointed out.
"That doesn't make it any less weird." I said.
Most villages had their furniture machines in one building, along with some storage bins filled with the various resources they required. Said buildings were generally open to the public. It wasn't too long before we located the one belonging to this village.
"Ok let's see if these things can make showers." Phoebe said as she scrolled through the menu.
-10 minutes later-
"I don't see one." Phoebe said. "This a travesty. Do digimon not have bathrooms? How are we going to have fun and get clean at the same time?"
"Did you try the other machines? You ever hear of a shower made out of wood?" I asked.
"I don't see why they can't be." Phoebe said.
"Because wood is very porous and would get very dirty after awhile. Plus it would warp or even start to rot." I said. "That's why showers are usually made of harder, smoother things, like ceramic."
"Well is there a ceramic machine here?" Phoebe asked.
"I don't know." I replied.
"Well help me look." Phoebe said in a somewhat pushy manner.
"Pheebles even if we do make a shower what the heck are we going to do with it?" I asked. " I mean where are we going to put it? There's no room on the bus."
"Maybe we could attach it to the back of the bus." Phoebe suggested as we headed towards another machine.
"That would look really weird." I said.
"But then we could have a mobile shower." Phoebe said.
"So?" I asked.
"We could stay clean." Phoebe cheerfully replied.
"I understand the need for cleanliness, but . . . . " I began to say only for Phoebe to interrupt.
"this one makes showers!" She squeaked with excitement.
"but we need sand." She continued in a less excited tone.
"Well we're close to a desert." I said. "But first tell me where we're going to put this thing once we make it."
"I don't know, we'll figure that out later." Phoebe replied as she headed for the door.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"To get sand." She replied. "Come on, help me."
"We're going to need some buckets." I said.
"Yeah we will." Phoebe replied.
"Where are we going to get those?" I asked.
We proceeded to look around to see if any of the machines could make something we could use.
"This machine can make cups." She said after looking through the menu options on a third machine that could make things out of metal. Unfortunately it couldn't make more complicated things like microwaves, vehicles, or cell phone chargers. I mean, if you wanted to take the time to design something out of smaller components, it probably could make those components, but doing that would take several hours we didn't want to waste.
"How much sand do we need?" I asked.
"5." She replied.
"Just five cups?" I asked in disbelief.
"No five cubic meters." Phoebe replied.
"Pheebles that's a lot of sand." I said. "If we can only carry four cups a trip."
"I can carry more than two." Phoebe said.
"Yeah, well, it's still going to take a while. We need buckets Pheebles! Buckets!" I said.
"Ok, ok keep your pants on mister let's see." Phoebe replied. "Ok this machine can make buckets too see."
"Ok what do we need for that?" I asked.
"Iron ore." Phoebe replied.
"How much?" I asked.
"12 kilos for four buckets." Phoebe replied.
"Is there any in here?" I asked as I looked in the nearby storage bin.
" Of course not why would there be?" I said a few minutes later after not being able to find any.
"Ok so we need ore, to get the buckets, to get the sand, to get the shower, which we don't even know what we're going to do with once we have?" I asked.
"Yep." Phoebe cutely replied.
-meanwhile as we embarked on our mini-quest for a shower, IceLeomon was standing in an alleyway a few buildings down the street-
"Too bad, you lose 40 megabytes of data." A vademon said.
"This can't be possible." IceLeomon said as he watched an unfortunate greymon lose a game of tricky cups against said vademon.
The vademon used a strange laser pistol, not his usual abduction ray, to take the data from the greymon, which then reverted to an agumon.
"Awe man I can't keep my champion form anymore." The agumon complained.
"Too bad, you lost." The vademon said.
"Let me try one more time, please!" The agumon begged.
"I'm sorry sir, but you don't have enough data to play anymore." The vademon replied. "You'll have to leave."
"This game is rigged." The agumon said as it stormed off.
"Come back when you get more data!" The vademon said as the agumon departed.
"Would you like to play sir? Opening bid is 5 megabytes." The vademon said as it turned towards IceLeomon.
"No, you are a cheater, this game is obviously rigged." IceLeomon asked.
The vademon's eyes lit up.
" Oh no no , it's perfectly winnable." The vademon insisted. "You want to try? Special offer, one megabyte to enter."
"Just one wouldn't hurt I guess." IceLeomon said.
"Very well." The vademon replied. "Now watch carefully." He said as he placed a coin under one of 3 cups layed out on a table in front of him.
-about 30 minutes later-
Phoebe and I managed to find a shop that sold different kinds of ore.
"Iron ore is 5 megabytes per kilo." Said the prairiemon clerk.
"Great so we need 60?" I asked.
"Yep." The clerk replied.
"Where do we get those?" I asked.
"Well, it's data, so you'd have to trade either your own data or data from objects in your possession." The prairiemon explained. "So which one of you will be paying?"
"I guess I will?" I asked.
He suddenly shot me with this weird ray gun, Phoebe almost tackled him before she noticed I was unharmed.
"Relax it's just a data transference ray." The prairiemon explained. "It's harmless. However it seems you don't have any data, which is weird because you're standing right in front of me."
"We're non-digital beings." Phoebe pointed out.
"Weird." The prairiemon replied. "Ok so, what have you got to trade then?"
"I guess we need to go get our digimon." I said.
"I guess so." Phoebe replied. "We'll be back in a bit, don't sell the ore."
"If you want it that bad you might want to hurry." The prairiemon attempted to pressure us.
-meanwhile-
IceLeomon headed back to find the rest of the group.
"Guys um, this is this is bad, I think I made a mistake." Iceleomon said.
"Who are you?" Zari asked, unable to recognize him in his new, child-sized form.
"I, I was IceLeomon, but now I'm an elecmon." The small red digimon replied.
"You're IceLeomon?" Zari asked. "Where did you go and why are you so small now?"
"He's kind of cute now." Claire said. "Like a little alien puppy dog."
"Yeah he is." Henry replied with a laugh. "Can you pick him up?"
"DON'T TOUCH ME!" IceLeomon said with an angry growl.
"Awe he's still grouchy." Claire said.
"Yep that's definitely him." Henry replied.
"How did you end up like this?" Zari asked.
"I lost a game." IceLeomon explained.
"What game?" "Zari asked.
"I don't know, a game where this digimon was in this alleyway and was hiding a coin under some cups." IceLeomon explained.
"Ohhh that game." Zari replied. "You idiot you can't win those games, it's a scam. You better hope that whoever was running the game is still there. I don't know where Phoebe and Cj went, but they're your only shot at getting back to the way you were before you became, whatever this is."
"Well Kitty and Saphira are here." Henry said.
"Yes, but Kitty is asleep and Saphira won't do anything unless Phoebe tells her to." Zari said.
"That's not true." Saphira said after overhearing her.
" Ok then go figure out how to get IceLeomon back to normal." Zari said.
"Um, you know it would probably be smart to wait until they come back." Saphira replied.
"Of course it would be." Zari replied, feeling as if she had won.
-meanwhile-
"You two care to play a little game? Opening bid is 5 megabytes. All you have to do is find the coin in the cups" We were asked by a random vademon in an alleyway.
"We're non-digital beings." Phoebe said.
"Shh Pheebles." I said.
"What even if we could play it's a scam." Phoebe said telepathically.
"Can't you use your powers on the coin?" I asked in thought.
"Actually I have a better idea." Phoebe said.
"Cj why don't you play a few games I'm going to go see if there's a jewelry store around here or something." Phoebe said before kissing me on the cheek and teleporting me away.
"So what have you got?" The vademon said as he shot me with his data transfer beam or whatever it was.
"Nothing, you have nothing. Weird." Vademon said after staring at the screen on the device for a moment.
"I got some weapons that might be worth something." I replied as I started pulling weapons out of my digivice.
"How much are all of these worth?" I asked.
"Um, I'd say about, 2 terrabytes." The vademon replied.
"Allright let's play for it then." I said.
"Ok, watch carefully. The vademon said as he placed a coin under one of the six cups on the table in front of him. He began to shuffle them around admittedly quite quickly and skillfully, using several of his tentacles. Once he was finished. Phoebe released a low power psychic wave that blew all the cups down. Revealing the game for the scam that it was as the coin was not underneath any of them. The idea was if it wasn't actually a scam we could just write it off as a fluke. Even though wind wasn't a very frequent thing in the digital world.
"Must have been some large flying digimon going by." I said.
"Eh it happens sometimes." Vademon agreed.
"Now wait a minute here. Where's the coin?" I asked.
"Um, it, uh, it must have fallen off the table, yeah, it's probably on the ground somewhere. We'll just play again, how's that sound?" Vademon nervously explained.
"He's good." Phoebe said telepathically.
"I don't see a coin anywhere. Do you?" I asked.
"Now now this isn't what it looks like." The vademon panicked.
Suddenly he was launched out of his chair, through the window of a building across the street, screaming all the way.
"Phoebe what the hell?" I asked out loud.
"He was reaching for a gun." Phoebe replied as she hovered in the air behind him. "Also he's very light and squishy."
"Oh." I replied as the vademon crawled out of the broken window.
"Look out!" Phoebe said as he opened fire on us.
I took cover behind the table which was conveniently knocked down by Phoebe when she launched him. I already had my entire collection of guns out so I just picked one and started to return fire. Bystanders fled.
"Cj get those guns picked up and let's get out of here." Phoebe said. "Before we get run out of town."
"We can take this guy, he's not even a dark king." I said.
"Cj NOW!" Phoebe demanded.
"Ok ok ok." I replied.
I gathered up all the guns, took her hand and she teleported us out of there. It was a full twenty minutes before vademon found out we weren't behind the table anymore. Eventually he had to stop firing as some of the citizens, there were a few champions in this village after all, were a bit more angry than afraid of him. In the confusion, I mistook his data transfer gun for one of my own and shoved it into the digivice with the others.
"I don't see why we had to retreat." I said.
"Because we're still trying to keep a somewhat low profile." Phoebe explained. "Besides look Cj, some of the people are standing up to him, they could have been angry at us too if we stayed around."
By people of course she meant various giant sentient dinosaur and bug monsters.
"Yeah, well. Now what are we going to do?" I asked.
"We have to find a way to . . . . " Phoebe began to say.
"Hold on, I got his data transfer gun thingy." I interupted her for once.
"You what?" Phoebe asked.
"We might not be broke after all." I said.
"Fuck this guy has 28 terrabytes of data on here." I said. "We could buy all the showers in town if we wanted to."
"But doesn't that data, belong to other people he scammed?" Phoebe asked.
"Pheebles we're loaded don't question this." I said.
"It's not right Cj." Phoebe replied.
"Well what are we supposed to do? Track down everyone he scammed and just hope he kept all his money or data or whatever on here without spending any of it?" I asked.
"No, but maybe we should be more charitable with it." Phoebe suggested. "Let's see what the others think first."
"Really? Do we have to?" I asked.
"It's only fair." Phoebe replied.
We returned to the rest of the group a few minutes later, we were both looking for our digimon, but we found Zari first, and what seemed to be a strange new companion.
"What's with the little red guy?" Phoebe asked before I could.
"Oh we were just about to tell you, that's IceLeomon." Zari said.
"What?" I asked.
"It's IceLeomon, he got turned into that weird alien puppy dog thing." Zari said.
"He's kind of cute." Phoebe said.
The elecmon just growled angrily at her.
"Awe he's grumpy." Phoebe said.
"Did he say how?" I asked.
"He said he played one of those stupid cup games you know?" Zari said.
"Yeah we know." I said.
"Don't tell me you played too. Please tell me you didn't lose the bus." Zari said.
"Oh we played." Phoebe said, smugly.
"We busted his ass is what we did." I said.
"You what?" Zari asked. "That's what those gunshots were weren't they?"
"Yep." I replied.
"Did you kill him?" Zari asked.
"Nope." I replied. "Phoebe decided we needed to leave before we caused too much trouble."
"But, we got this!" I said as I held up his data transfer gun.
"What does that do?" Zari asked. "It's just another gun, how is that going to help him?"
"If I'm stuck like this because of you two." IceLeomon threatened.
"You'll what? Piss on our legs?" I asked.
"No it's not just another gun." Phoebe said. "It's a data gun, the shops here use them to make transactions with data, they use it like money."
"So if I were to point this at him, press the credit button on the screen, and pull the trigger, see that just gave him 1 megabyte of data." I said.
"How much did you lose?" Phoebe asked.
"20 terrabytes." IceLeomon said.
"How long did you play his opening thing was 5 megas?" I asked.
"I kept trying to win back what I lost and then I ended up like this and he said he wouldn't let me play anymore." IceLeomon said.
"Allright hold still." I said as I squeezed the trigger and held it until I only had 8 terrabytes left.
"There. How's that feel?" I asked.
"I feel powerful." IceLeomon said before he began to glow. Now we all were expecting him to digivolve right back into IceLeomon, so you could imagine our surprise when the glow faded and we were all looking at a rather cross looking pandamon.
"Uh, what gives?" I asked.
"Awwwe, he got even cuter!" Phoebe said.
"I guess it didn't work." Zari replied.
"I guess not." I said.
"What even is that some type of teddy bear?" Henry asked.
"I think it's a panda." Claire said. "A small one."
"Well at least he can fit in the bus now." Zari said.
"What's wrong?" IceLeomon asked.
"Do we have a mirror anywhere?" I asked.
"I have one on the bus let me get it." Phoebe replied as she headed for said bus.
"I guess we could try it again and see what happens." I replied.
Phoebe came back with a mirror.
"Here you go, see you're adorable now." Phoebe said.
"I, I, uh, try it again." IceLeomon said in a panic.
I used the data transfer gun to take his data until he reverted back into elecmon and then gave it back, which cause him to digivolve yet again, into pandamon, again.
"This is, this can't be right." He mumbled.
"Well I guess he is still an ultimate, according to this thing." I said as I looked at my digivice.
"I don't like this, I don't like it at all, I want my old body back, now." IceLeomon panicked.
"Hey just calm down there's got to be some explanation for this." I said.
He attempted to roar, but as he was a pandamon now it didn't sound nearly as threatening, deafening or scary.
"You done?" I asked.
"Cj ease up, he's going through a lot." Phoebe said.
"I . . . I need . . . some time alone." IceLeomon said.
"Ok, well, Phoebe and I are going to go back to whatever we were doing and we'll probably leave here sometime tomorrow." I replied.
"Zari why don't you help him and make sure he doesn't have a complete breakdown?" Phoebe asked.
"What were you doing?" Zari asked.
"It's a surprise." Phoebe said.
"It is?" I asked.
"To them yes." Phoebe replied as she attempted to pull me away from the others as IceLeomon tried to climb onto the roof of the bus, only to fail miserably and fall right on his backside.
"Ok then I guess we'll have to be the ones to figure out how to get him back to normal." Henry said.
"It's not that important you know, he's still an ultimate." I said.
"Yeah and then he won't be able to fit inside the bus." Claire said.
"I HATE THIS BODY!" IceLeomon yelled as he smashed his fist against the side of the bus.
"Yeah, but he probably wouldn't be as sad and grumpy." Henry said.
"Hey easy on the bodywork." I yelled, wanting him to stop before he managed to put another dent in the bus.
"See? He's definitely not as strong as he was." Henry said. "Your bus would have been toast if he punched it before."
"He might not be as physically strong, but he's still an ultimate so that strength must have gone somewhere." Saphira explained.
"You're a digimon too, you know how to get him back to normal?" I asked.
"Not a clue." Saphira replied.
Kitty tiredly emerged from the bus, saw Iceleomon standing there and immediately freaked out.
"Who are you and why did you wake me up?" She grumpily asked.
"I uh, I'm IceLeomon." IceLeomon said.
"No you aren't he's way taller than you. Get out of here or I'll slice you to pieces. You're lucky my tamer isn't here." Kitty said as she showed off her claws.
"Hi Kitty!" I cheerfully waved.
"Um, oh hi." She said when she realized I was here.
"He woke me up!" She pointed to IceLeomon and said a few seconds later. "Who is he?"
"That's IceLeomon, or uh, pandamon now." I said.
"Call me that again and I will punch you!" Pandamon threatened.
"It is?" Kitty asked.
"Yeah." I replied.
"Ok you guys try to figure that out, Phoebe and I are kind of doing our own thing at the moment." I said to the rest of the group.
"What are you banging her in an alleyway somewhere?" Henry asked.
"Shut up." I replied as Phoebe gave him a dirty look.
"Yep it has something to do with that." Henry said as Claire giggled.
"Let's just go Pheebles, we'll meet back here in a bit. Kitty help Zari keep IceLeomon from wrecking the bus or all manner of annoying destructive things."
"Um ok." Kitty replied.
"Saphira why don't you help Henry and Claire find some information, or try to protect them if they come across more evil scammers." Phoebe said.
"Ok Phoebe." Saphira replied.
"Cj, come on let's go." Phoebe said as she tugged on my arm.
"Ok settle down." I replied.
-meanwhile-
After an unpleasant confrontation with several beefy local digimon, including a skullgreymon of all things, Vademon realized his data transference gun thing was missing, and was not too happy about it, in fact, he was out for blood. Unfortunately that wasn't his only DTG, he had a second one in his house, which wasn't far from the alleyway he had his little game set up in, loaded with over 80 terabytes of data, which he now intended to consume himself. This massive amount of data allowed him to digivolve into an even more powerful enemy. So now an ebemon was quietly looking for us. Of course Phoebe and I decided to use our new found wealth to buy some iron ore, to make buckets, to get sand, to make a shower, which we still weren't sure what we were going to do with. So once we had our buckets, Phoebe went to get some sand while I looked through all the screens and tried to figure out exactly what we were going to do with this shower once we had it made. We were going to need a lot of wood and hardware to make it work. Thankfully we still had the power tools we bought to modify the bus to begin with, although I wasn't sure if they still had living batteries or not, if I was careful I could get Cap'n'Magnum to help charge them, extremely careful, too many volts through the charger and they would explode, presumably at least, it wasn't something I had done before. Also needed to explore the possibility of constructing a water tank without a welder. We could just use the gas tank on the bus, but we would need some sort of pump, and these machines didn't seem capable of making one. So unless this shower defied the laws of physics and produced water on its own, which, given where we were, wasn't entirely impossible, we needed some sort of system to hold water. We could make steel plates, since we had a lot of iron ore left over, Phoebe misread the screen, it was actually 1.2 kilos of ore for one bucket, so we had about 7.2 left to use, some of which was still in the machine because the ore came in the form of a sack with a bunch of randomly sized rocks inside so it was impossible to put the exact needed amount in. We could make bolts, we had a drill that could put holes in the steel plates and allow us to bolt them together, but that wasn't going to be water tight by any means. I eventually realized the buckets we made earlier were water tight as they were just one big piece of metal, which led me to look for what would basically be a much larger bucket. I couldn't find something like that in the selection of things the machine could make, but while scrolling through the menu I did find a 100 gallon steel barrel, that could be used to store a variety of liquids, including oil, it was even available in six designer colors! It took 5 kilos of ore to make, but man was it beautiful. It looked like an ordinary metal barrel, except if you looked closely enough it was somewhat impossibly made out of one continuous piece of metal. There was a hole in the top to pour stuff in or to attach a spigot or something, which had to be made separately by the same machine. And that was about it, a bright blue barrel that could be used as a water tank. I quickly found a suitable attachment to make for it, and I just screwed it on when Phoebe returned with 2 buckets full of sand.
"What is this?" She asked.
"It's a barrel." I replied.
"Why do we need this?" She asked in a somewhat suspicious manner.
"To use as a water tank if the shower needs it." I replied.
"Oh." She said. "I guess that makes sense."
"I've been thinking about how to attach it to the back of the bus." I said. "We're going to have to take a lot of stuff back with us, but I think we can do this."
"We can?" She asked.
"Yeah." I replied.
"Then that means we could always have a shower" She said as she dumped the sand into the machine.
"Yeah." I replied.
She hugged me as the machine set to work making a shower, which came out as a stack of slabs of porcelain with some sort of marble-like design on them.
"Huh, I guess more assembly is required." I said.
"How are we going to assemble it, it's glass." Phoebe said.
"Porcelain." I said. "Probably need some type of glue."
"Great, more things we need." Phoebe said with a notable lack of enthusiasm.
"Well if you want a shower . . . " I began to say.
"It'll be worth it." She said. "Ok then which one of these machines can make glue?"
"No idea." I replied as she started examine the menu of the porcelain machine "This one makes metal things, that one makes porcelain things."
"This one makes glue too." She said.
"It does?" I asked.
"Item 483, Tub of Glue for assembling porcelain objects." She said.
"What do we need for it?" I asked.
"Some more sand, water, and blue digiroot." She said.
"I guess we have to go back to the store then." I replied.
"I'll go get it." She said.
"Allright, I guess I'll set about getting this stuff to the bus." I replied.
"Ok." She said as she left the building.
I used the rest of the iron ore to make several sheets of metal, and then, with the assistance of Bubba, my trusty blastoise, we started moving everything over to the bus. By the time we got back after getting everything moved, Phoebe was back and was already making the glue, then we needed to buy yet more iron ore and orange digiroot to make various hoses and fixtures we would need.
Then we were attack by an ebemon as we were heading back to make what would hopefully be the final things we would need.
We were having this conversation, Phoebe was questioning my every decision as she wasn't sure I knew what I was doing, which was fair enough, but then she suddenly stopped. Which, after being with her for so long I knew meant something bad was about to happen. I grabbed her arm before she could even reach for mine and she teleported us out of there leaving our supplies on the ground. I heard a really loud warbling noise as the building we were standing in front of seconds ago was completely obliterated.
"The hell was that?" I asked.
"I don't know!" Phoebe replied. "Stay here I'm going to get a better look."
She teleported away, leaving me alone on a rooftop.
She came back seconds later.
"It's some robotic tentacool thing." She said as she held up her digivice.
"Um, ok." I replied as I read the screen.
"Ebemon, mega level, height 4.8, weight 230lbs." It read, followed by a really long description nobody ever had any time to read.
"It's a mega." I said. "A mega that just leveled an entire building. Let's play it safe and get out of here."
"Right." Phoebe replied.
She took my hand and teleported us a fair distance away, from there we simply walked back to the bus, as the ebemon proceeded to go on a rampage.
We basically picked up our digimon and headed straight back. We didn't put it together yet that this was vademon we were dealing with, but we had a feeling he was after us specifically.
He had destroyed several more buildings while we were gone.
"Don't make me tear this entire place down, you know what I want, and I want it NOW!" The ebemon said in vain, we were several buildings down the street from him at his point. The civilians fled in terror, even the champions when they saw what he was capable of.
Phoebe started to attack with her shurikens, but they simply clanged off of his armor. I started to fire on him with the obelisk assault rifle. Saphira did that weird thing with her arms that confused the crap out of him. His laser was of the chargeable type, so it could charge up for awhile and take out entire buildings, or he could use it more like an assault rifle with lower power, but a higher rate of fire. The projectiles were extremely fast like bullets and within minutes Phoebe retreated due to exhaustion.
"He's too fast, he'll hit me if I keep going." She said.
"Ok then just lay low for a bit." I replied as I peered around the corner, waiting for an opportunity to shoot at him. As he kept destroying Saphira's disembodied arms. Kitty eventually saw an opportunity and charged at him, but her claws were useless against his armor. She did manage to restrain his tentacle like arms however, as he was not very muscular at all.
"There we go keep him still Kitty I got him." I said as I carefully fired at him.
"Cj I got hit." Phoebe said as she lifted up her dress to show she was wounded just slightly above her hip. Lasers self-cauterize so she wasn't bleeding much, didn't mean it didn't hurt though.
"It's starting to burn." Phoebe moaned.
"Well Zari is going to be pissed." I said, as ebemon wrapped several of his legs around Kitty.
"He's squishing me!" Kitty yelped as she tried to retain control of his weapon wielding arms.
"Hang on." I replied as I tried to close the distance to make it easier to aim and also hopefully do more damage.
It took a while, but the bullets from the obelisk eventually chewed through his armor. He started firing like crazy as green blood oozed from the newly created holes and the highly destructive alien digimon collapsed moments later, releasing Kitty from its grasp as it violently exploded into a massive blanket of data that quickly covered the entire street.
I fired at him for a solid minute and it didn't do jack, he was seemingly indestructible. The recoil surprisingly wasn't that bad, but the gun weighed at least 20lbs. No idea what the caliber was exactly, the spent shells were completely unmarked and I basically never had to bother with reloading, though it would mysteriously stop firing for a few seconds every 30 rounds or so.
"Get to some cover, I'm going to get Kitty out of there before she suffocates." Phoebe said telepathically.
"Just be careful." I thought.
I got behind the nearest building, Phoebe teleported in behind him, clumsily put her arm on Kitty's back, and teleported her out of his grasp, behind the same building I was hiding behind.
Kitty collapsed to the ground and gasped for breath. I worried about her for a moment, but stopped when I saw her get back on her knees.
"His individual arms are weak but he's really resistant to damage." I said. "I probably fired like an armory's worth of bullets at him and nothing."
"Saphira try where are you? Try weakening him." Phoebe said between strained breaths.
"Ok, draining rain commencing." She replied as ebemon began to charge up his laser.
"Crap he's going to blow up this building too, let's get moving come on!" I said as I gently pushed Kitty and Phoebe further into the alley.
Phoebe teleported over to Saphira who was somewhere on the other side of the street as Kitty and I took cover in the next closest alleyway.
"We're both going to restrain him, you and kitty go in for the kill." Phoebe said to me telepathically.
"Ok Kitty we gotta go on the offensive again. Phoebe and Saphira will pin him down." I said.
"Ok." Kitty replied.
I peeked around the corner, ebemon soon found himself surrounded by a faint purple glow, both girls made it extremely difficult for him to move. Kitty went to attack him first. He started to charge his laser up even though he wasn't able to actually aim it at anyone.
Kitty went up to slash at him, a sudden burst of speed and ebemon wrapped his tentacles around her once again.
I started firing at him once I got a clear shot as Kitty struggled to break free. Kitty was starting to choke, Phoebe got tired, I had yet to make even a dent in his armor. I ducked behind another building, narrowly avoiding his laser as Phoebe quickly rescued Kitty once again. We had to wait behind cover another ten minutes for Phoebe to get her strength back up. Then we went at it again, in vain hopes that we would eventually hurt this guy. From a nearby rooftop, overlooking the battle was IceLeomon, who was having some sort of crisis, trying to figure out whether he should intervene or not and when. He wasn't used to being a pandamon and had no idea what would happen if he were to enter the fight. For the first time in a long time, he doubted his own abilities. He didn't even want to come out here, but HCZ wouldn't stop yelling at him to go.
Eventually, the bullets finally broke through Ebemon's armor, green blood spilled out, as the extremely destructive alien digimon collapsed, a huge cloud of data burst forth from his corpse covering the entire street. Kitty was released and fell to the ground, gasping for breath.
Phoebe came out from behind a building, holding her side in pain, trying not to cry, she was in so much pain, Saphira followed her, slowly, but confidently, the only one walking away from this unscathed.
"How much data did this guy have? Holy crap." I exclaimed.
"We need to get back, I'm really hurting." Phoebe struggled to say as she staggered towards me.
"Right, ok." I said as I realized she was struggling just to walk.
"We'll deal with the shower later, maybe." She said as I let her prop herself up against me.
"Kitty you allright?" I asked as she was still on her knees.
"I'll be fine." She replied. "He just, squeezed me really hard."
"Well you are fun to squeeze." I said, jokingly.
"Really Cj?" Phoebe asked in disbelief.
"Right let's get you back to the bus." I said.
"This is a lot of data, this could be enough for both of us to digivolve." Saphira pointed out.
"You will do no such thing." Phoebe said in a combination of agony and anger. "This data belongs to the digimon he stole it from."
"Allright come on, let's get you back." I said.
"Don't let them take it Cj." She replied.
"Pheebles do you want to get patched up or not?" I asked.
"Yes please." She replied.
"Ok then let's go." I said as I carried her further down the street.
"I guess we should just go then." Saphira said.
"But Saphy." Kitty objected.
"You heard her, this isn't ours." Saphira replied.
"Ohhh you're no fun." Kitty replied.
I walked my injured baby girl back to base where once again Zari had to look her over. She was hurt pretty bad this time, so a lot of cream was needed and Zari wasn't too happy about it.
Eventually the civilians came out of hiding, saw the massive data cloud and starting taking some for themselves, they took so much that when vademon finally came too, he found he was now a tiny little furball known as a pagumon.
Once Phoebe was good to go, we set about finishing our little shower project. Making the last few bits we needed for it to work. And then, once we had everything moved, we could finally start assembling this thing. I started by bolting a large steel platform to the back of the bus. I needed everybody's help to hold it up because it was heavy as hell. I then removed the back door and cut the wire to the emergency buzzer or it would go off constantly and annoy everyone. Then I built a crude metal enclosure around the platform, and then I finally started putting pieces of the shower together inside the enclosure. Once the shower was completed, it turned out that it did defy physics thus the water tank wasn't even necessary, but if it was, you know, you'd put it on top, you'd get a valve, then a hose that goes down and attaches to whatever you're using as a shower head. If you wanted more pressure you could attach a pump, but we did not have access to such things. Its physics defying magic even extended to allowing it to produce both hot and cold water, a miracle. Of course as soon as it was finished. Phoebe and I locked everyone out of the bus and got busy in it. Which wasn't really that great as we were both tired, it was a miracle we even finished. Then we got clean, then we went to bed because pretty much everyone else was asleep at that point.