Forbidden Fusion

by killalao

explicit multiversal adventure with lots of cute girls.

73. Winter Wonderland

-Winter wonderland-

In the first few hours after we left the invincible city area, we made quite a bit of progress, as the land was wide open with only gentle hills and literally nothing to avoid, then it started getting a little hilly, then it was about sunset so we stopped, and Phoebe and I had some fun on the bus while everyone else slept outside. The temperature was still decent so nobody complained.

The next day came, a day that was spent almost entirely traveling, so there wasn't much to say about it, Before the end we found the southern edge of yet another forest, which was a lot like the one to the south at first, but as we continued forward at a reduced pace in order to avoid all the trees, eventually the temperature began to decrease, the trees became a lot more sparse, and normal oak, ash, and birch looking trees gave way to various pine trees. Snow began to appear on the ground despite there being no weather. The snow was also anomalous, in the manner that it would regenerate if left alone for a while, footprints, tire tracks and other disturbances would disappear in favor of a flat, untouched look, even though it wasn't actively snowing. We would camp at some spot, make a bunch of footprints and other impressions all over the place, and by the next morning there would be no sign of most of them, except where everybody put their sleeping bags and around the fire pit. It started out as a light frost and when it was time to quit that night it was only about an inch or so deep. The sky also transitioned from a clear blue to a medium gray. It felt like it could start snowing at any time, but it never did, though there was always snow on the ground. Another oddity existed underneath the snow, where not only was there still grass, but the grass was kind of a bluish green and also really short. Finally it didn't seem to melt when exposed to heat, it just kind of disappeared. It was more like a cold, dry, powder than regular snow.

Chally started sleeping outside while the newbies took turns sleeping in the bus in her place, where it was a bit warmer as we left the heater running, Thankfully there was plenty of wood around to light a fire, which had now become a necessity so the others could sleep somewhat comfortably. Chally and Iceleomon's wives ditched their icepack-laden coats and started wearing something more than a bikini, while the rest of us were dusting off our normal coats. I spent that night with Kitty as Phoebe had promised, and we had a pretty good time. As we continued the next day, the snow got deep enough to the point where it was starting to hinder our progress, though it only got a little bit colder, negative 13.5 degrees centigrade, according to one of the mechanorimon. Thankfully the snow stopped getting deeper at about 6 inches, at about the same time it stopped getting colder. It was a complete winter wonderland now and progress was slow as both our vehicles began to struggle through the snow.

Four days in, we found a small, unimpressive village with a few dozen wooden huts and a centralized fire pit. By the look of things darkdramon had already raided it, as there were bullet holes all over everything, and no signs of life. A sight we would see all too often over the next several days. We let Zari and the newbies take turns sleeping on the bus. As it turned out both Kitty and Saphy did not like the snow.

Digiroots were hard to find up here, though we had plenty to spare. What ones did grow were a lot shorter than normal and hidden by the snow, so it took quite a bit of digging around just to find one. Instead of cabbages, the Digimon seemed to farm some weird type of mushroom up here instead, in underground caves where it was warmer. As growing cabbages and digiroots was nearly impossible as there was no way to keep the snow off of the ground for long. Nearly every village we came across in this snowy world seemed to have one, ranging from the size of just a basement to labyrinthian proportions. The mushrooms had similar flavor properties to the cabbages, but couldn't emulate sugars as well and when they emulated various meats they always seemed to have a leaner taste than the flavors the cabbages would create, though the flavors weren't any less convincing. They could range in size from bite sized to being over a foot in diameter and weighing well over twenty pounds, while the cabbages were pretty much always the same size.

-about a week later-

Blacklillymon was riding upfront, still unconscious.

"Chally you lost, that means you gotta show us your boobs." Phoebe said as they showed their cards to each other. After traveling for several days, strip poker seemed like fun.

"Fine." Challana replied as she started to remove her top.

"Don't get too carried away guys, I think there's another village up ahead." Zari said as Challana showed off her jet black nipples and overall very well proportioned breasts.

"You just wait until we switch drivers, we'll get your boobs out too." Phoebe said.

"Just don't play, if you start winning she'll cheat." Saphy said.

"Well why would you think that Saphy?" Phoebe asked.

"Probably because it's true, you might as well just come over here Chally, she's not going to let you win." I said, staring at her boobs as Kitty quietly snuggled with me in the bed.

"No no no she's not allowed to lay a finger on you until she beats me." Phoebe said.

Yes, we were that bored.

"Oh, I thought she would have to if you beat her." I said.

"No, that's dumb, she wants you, why would she play for something she doesn't want?" Phoebe replied.

"What about me?" Kitty asked.

"You already won that's why you're snuggling with him now." Phoebe said.

I was kind of suspicious that Phoebe just let her win, which I guess was pretty nice of her.

"Oh, you're awake." I said.

"Mhm." Kitty replied before we kissed.

"I thought you fell asleep on me." I said.

"No." Kitty replied.

"Anyway, show me your cards Pheebles." I said.

"What? She has a pair of eights and I have three squires. So I should be winning." Phoebe said.

"Ok, that checks out." I said.

"But how do we know she's not using her powers to see her cards ahead of time?" Saphy asked.

"Exactly, we don't." I said.

"You're just going to have to trust me." Phoebe said.

"But we don't ." Saphy said.

"Eh, I don't know, you never know with her." I said.

"You're both so wrong." Phoebe said.

"Well let's see you've won 5 rounds now, and so far the only ones you didn't win you folded at the last possible moment." I said.

"So?" Phoebe asked.

"I think that's pretty lucky don't you think Saphy?" I asked.

"Yep." Saphy agreed.

"If this were a casino you'd be kicked out by now." I said.

"No, because I'm the dealer." Phoebe pointed out.

"Well I guess that's true." I said. "And that would work great for a little while but eventually all the regulars will figure out they can't win against you, nobody will play at your table except for all the tourists that can't take a hint, and you'll get fired as soon as the off season hits."

"Well the tourists have the most money anyway." Phoebe said.

"True, but, if nobody is playing at your table you can't make any money for the house, bottom line is you gotta let the players win every once in a while." I said.

"How does this have anything to do with what we're doing right now?" Phoebe asked.

"Just get you cute little butt over here." I said.

"Not until later, I can't have you until Chally is naked." Phoebe said.

"Just a reminder there's a village up ahead, don't start anything yet." Zari said.

"And yeah, that too." Phoebe said.

"Well then Chally you might as well redress yourself if we're going to be getting off the bus soon." I said.

"Yeah, you're right." Chally agreed.

"Cj, you big buzzkill." Phoebe said.

"You're the buzzkill, you won't come over here." Kitty said.

"There's no point! We don't have time to start anything." Phoebe replied.

"We should get dressed too Kitty Kat." I said.

"Oh, ok." She replied with a yawn.

"Phoebe make sure BlackLillymon stays unconscious." I said.

"Well duh." Phoebe replied.

A few minutes later we arrived at the village and stopped to check it out, as we had done with every other village we had come across, looking for supplies, signs of life, anything and everything. It was also a good opportunity to get some exercise, and break up the monotony of riding around in a vehicle all day.

Phoebe was wearing her puffy white coat again, which, along with keeping her warm, also made her more fun to hug as it was way oversized, it was even more fun just to playfully tease her. Kitty had her coat on too, it was really more of a jacket, kind of a medium red and about the right size for her, though it didn't do much to protect her legs, she didn't seem to mind. Saphy had a much more normal looking blue coat and some snow boots even, one of the few times either of them ever wore anything other than their usual clothes. Saphy decided she hated the cold more than wearing shoes.

As usual for the towns here, the buildings adopted a primitive colonial style construction that could be built quickly, but solidly out of pinewood, as opposed to the hardwood trees that were more common further south. Most of the structures were the size of a typical playhouse for children, which indicated it was predominantly occupied by rookies, though some buildings, like hotels and townhalls tend to be more normal sized, so larger travelers can make use of them, though if you were to look inside you'd see they have accommodations for much smaller digimon. Also as usual there were many signs of an attack. Including numerous bullet holes, burned out structures, but no remains of course, as digimon turn into data on death. I guess that's one thing that was nice, how clean everything was even after it had all gone to hell. There was never a corpse nor even a single drop of blood anywhere to be found. And everything smelled of burning pinewood, which, actually wasn't that bad. What was sad though, was knowing at one point there were actually many innocent digimon here, living normal, peaceful lives. The bullet holes indicated that darkdramon's forces were responsible, which was also normal for up here though we had yet to actually come across his forces so far. Sadly, finding survivors was extremely rare.

We were about to head for the cave system when one of the mechanorimon, specifically Illustria's, started to wander off.

"Wait, where are you going?" Illustria asked as she barely even had time to step away from it after climbing out.

"WE HAVE DETECTED ANOTHER DIGITAL LIFEFORM TO THE NORTHEAST." One of the other mechanorimon replied as the first continued to wander off.

"PHOEBE!" Illustria yelled.

"What? " Phoebe asked.

"Cj stop hugging on me!" Phoebe said seconds later as she tried to figure out what was going on.

"Awe, but your coat is so soft and puffy." I said.

"My robot is running away!" Illustria yelled to us.

"Weird." Kiera said, looking confused.

"Did she say something to make it mad?" Selenia asked.

"They don't seem to get mad, or feel other emotions, you can shake your boobs in front of them they

won't flinch." Kiera said.

"How do you know that?" Selenia asked.

"Don't ask." Kiera replied.

"What did you do?" Phoebe asked as we stopped fooling around and approached them with the digibabes, Zari and Chally trailing behind.

"I said don't ask." Kiera said.

"I wasn't asking you." Phoebe replied.

"Nothing, it just walked away and then Celly's said something about finding a digital lifeform." Illustria replied.

"WE HAVE DETECTED ANOTHER DIGITAL LIFEFORM TO THE NORTHEAST." The other mechanorimon repeated.

"What is it?" Phoebe asked.

"THERE IS AN 85% CHANCE IT IS ANOTHER MACHINE TYPE." It said.

"Yeah, they're probably picking up its radio signal." I said.

"THAT IS CORRECT WE PICKED IT UP FOR APPROXIMATELY .0034 MILLISECONDS, IT HAS NOT SAID ANYTHING MORE SINCE INITIAL CONTACT." The mechanorimon clarified.

"What did it say?" I asked

"TRANSLATED TO HUMAN ANGLISH AND SLOWED DOWN TO HUMAN PERCEPTION LEVELS" It said, before making an annoyingly loud, indecipherable electrical buzzing for about a second that I for the life of me could not figure out how to put into legible words.

"You shouldn't have asked." Phoebe said.

"Yep." I agreed.

"Some translation." Zari laughed.

"What you know what it means?" I asked.

"Not a clue." Zari replied.

"Ok well, we'll go see what this is about everyone else just stay here, Kitty, Saphy, come on let's go." Phoebe said.

"I will go too." Darkvioletmon said, somewhat unexpectedly.

"Ok fine." Phoebe said.

"Everyone else, keep Cj busy." Phoebe said.

"Too tired." Illustria said.

"Yeah right Pheebles, you know I'm going too." I replied.

"Just don't get hurt." Phoebe said.

"Every single time." I said.

"Yeah, you do get hurt almost every single time." Phoebe said.

"Knock it off Pheebles. Let's get over there before we're down a mechanorimon." I said.

"Well are the goddesses coming?" Phoebe asked.

"We'll stay here unless things get out of hand, now get moving, if there's one there might be some more out here, we'll go looking for them." Mervamon said.

"NO ADDITIONAL SIGNALS DETECTED." The mechanorimon chimed in.

"Well they might not be machine types." Mervamon replied.

"True, allright then let's go." Phoebe replied.

At this point Iceleomon and his wives, Henry and Claire and Ninjamon were already checking out the village.

So Phoebe and I, along with the digibabes, began to follow the lone mechanorimon as it seemed to be heading to nowhere in particular, halfway expecting a fight. Not expecting them to uncover a kenkimon randomly buried in the ground, hidden by the snow. It was as big as the mechanorimon, but had a much friendlier appearance, looking like a robot made from pieces of various construction equipment with an almost-toy-like face.

Anyway it seemed to be asleep, but after we made a pretty much futile effort to dig it out, it woke up.

"Go away, leave me alone!" It said in a robotic voice that sounded less annoying and more human-like than the mechanormon's for reasons unknown. At this point only its head was visible.

"We don't mean any harm." Phoebe said. "It's just, it's been a long time since we've seen another digimon."

"They already killed everyone else haven't they?" The depressed digimon said.

"Well, um. . . . . " I began to say.

"Cj, no, just no." Phoebe interrupted me.

"I was the only Kenkimon in the whole village, when they attacked I buried myself in order to hide, I must have fallen asleep since then." The digimon explained.

"That's a long time to sleep." I said.

"Yeah even for me that had to have been several days atleast right Cj?" Kitty said, understanding the situation for once.

"Right." I replied.

"Yeah, maybe." The robotic digimon replied.

"Do you know how long ago that was?" Phoebe asked.

"No, but since they're all gone now it must have been pretty long." The digimon said.

"Who are all of you anyway? You not here to kill me and take my data are you?" The digimon asked.

"No, nothing like that." Phoebe said.

"Then why are you here?" The digimon asked.

"We're heading north to go after the digimon responsible for all of this." Phoebe explained.

"And you're not the only one left, we found a whole group of others that survived by hiding underground. Ninjamon was one of them, you should come with us and talk to him. We just haven't seen any recently and it's not like we search every single village, just ones we happen to come across, like this one." Phoebe said.

"What happened to the others?" Kenkimon asked.

"They're fine, they just didn't want to come along." Phoebe explained.

"Yeah but Pheebles how are we going to get him out of the ground? We don't even have a shovel." I said.

"Oh that's easy, if everyone could just stand back." Kenkimon replied.

Everyone stood back and watched in amazement as the machine digimon proceeded to dig itself out of the hole it had buried itself in. Slowly, but powerfully.

"I dug all the mushroom caves for almost every village around here." It proudly claimed.

"So then you would know if there's any villages further north?" Phoebe asked.

"Oh sure there's a bunch, don't worry. Where are we going?" Kenkimon said.

"Just follow us, we'll take you back to the rest of our group." Phoebe said.

A few minutes later.

"Guys, we found, another digimon!" Kitty said somewhat excitedly. The goddesses were talking with Zari and the newbies instead of looking for other digimon like they said they would do, though we were only gone for a few minutes.

"I see." Zari replied.

"Where is ninjamon?" Kenkimon asked.

"Oh great, it knows ninjamon." Mervamon said.

"What are the chances?" Dianamon asked unenthusiastically.

"No, I told him Ninjamon knows of this group of survivors, he doesn't know him." Phoebe explained.

"What's not to know?" Kenkimon asked.

"Well you'll probably be fine." Saphy said.

"Yeah, probably." Selenia agreed.

"I think my brother had a toy like that as a kid, but it wasn't that big." Kiera said.

"You have a brother?" Illustria asked what everyone else wanted to before anyone else could.

"Haven't seen him for years." Kiera said.

"Pheebles did you know?" I asked.

"I was going to let her say it when she felt it was right." Phoebe explained.

"Fair enough." I replied.

"So is he coming with us or?" Zari asked as there were more pressing issues at hand.

"I want to talk to ninjamon." Kenkimon repeated.

"Well he's checking out the rest of the village with the others so, you might have to wait a bit." Phoebe said.

"Wow you have a big group." Kenkimon said.

"Yeah, you should see what we have to fight against." I said.

"Yeah, usually an even bigger group." Phoebe said.

"So let's go check out the rest of the village then, maybe we'll run into ninjamon along the way." I said.

"Right." Phoebe agreed.

"Wait you mean you want to run into ninjamon?" Saphy asked.

"No, that might hurt him. I just want to talk to him." Kenkimon replied.

"Cj, he might be a mess." Kitty said, playfully.

"Eh, we'll just have to see." I replied.

"We'll go to the far corners of this place and keep an eye out for anything suspicious." Mervamon said.

"Are you actually going to go this time or just stand around?" Phoebe asked.

"Watch your tone." Mervamon said.

"Well we did get a bit distracted." Venusmon said.

"Maybe just a little." Mervamon replied.

We headed into the village and quickly realized that Henry and Claire had gone into the mushroom caves, Ninjamon was apparently inside one of the houses, so we were still trying to find him, while IceLeomon was just wandering around, talking with his wives. Kenkimon was going through some things, it wasn't easy for him to see the village this way, since he knew what it was like when digimon were actually living here. The goddesses went on ahead to the other side of town, not wanting to look lazy.

"Cj I don't see how that guy is going to be able to come with us, he's way too big to fit on the bus, and he doesn't seem to be able to move very fast." Phoebe said.

"Yeah I was starting to realize that too." I said.

"Yeah, but we can't just leave him alone out here either." Phoebe said.

"I know." I replied.

"And I don't want to wait on the goddesses or whoever decides to go to take him somewhere else." Phoebe said.

"Yeah I know." I said.

"Hey Kitty Kat?" I asked seconds later.

"Yeah?" She replied.

"Is it possible to fit other digimon in the digivice besides just you and Saphy?" I asked.

"I don't know." She replied.

"Saphy?" Phoebe asked.

"I don't know either, but hey, we can test it on ninjamon." Saphy replied with a hint of mischief.

"If we can find him." Phoebe said with an equal amount of mischief.

"Hey Ninjamon where are you?" Saphy cutely asked, hoping he was within hearing, distance.

A few seconds of silence later.

"I guess he didn't hear you. Hear take my hand, keep calling him, we'll move around a bit." Phoebe said.

"Don't get hurt." I said half-jokingly before Saphy took her hand and the two of them teleported away.

"Where did they go?" Kenkimon asked, confused by their sudden disappearance.

"She can teleport, you're just gonna need to get used to it." Zari explained.

"Yeah, we still don't understand how she does that." Illustria said.

"I don't remember if I've asked this before, but can we learn how?" Selenia asked.

"Sadly no." I said. "Trust me I tried."

"If I remember right, since it has been quite a while, some units of the space police have developed a technological solution, but not all of them use it and even the best trained personnel can't do it as fast as she does." Zari said.

"What's the space police? You mean those Zelusian patrols?" Illustria asked.

"No, no, this is completely different, as far I know they don't even exist in your universe, yet." Zari said.

"Yet?" Illustria asked.

"The space police is an organization that seeks to establish their definition of justice in every multiverse in existence." Zari said.

"They're a bunch of buzzkills that like to arrest people for no reason." I said.

"Hey take it easy." Zari said.

"What? You're not with them anymore, you're with us. Right?" I asked.

"Yeah, but I still have friends in there." Zari said.

"That you haven't seen in over 100 years." I said.

"So? It's only been a few months from their perspective." Zari said.

"True." I replied.

"And you and Phoebe are still very much a couple." Zari said.

"Yeaaaaah." I replied. "I guess you win this one."

"Obviously." Zari said as she rolled her eyes, which was hard to notice because they were almost solid black.

"But yeah, some areas have a strict policy about interuniversal traveling. " Zari said.

"Some?" I asked.

"Well it's a big organization and stuff gets disjointed sometimes, in some areas traveling to them with an inter universal device will instantly take you to a specialized immigration center where you'll get free housing for a while and even a job, and that's the way they want it to be, as opposed to just arresting them, but as you can imagine it takes time to get the technology and systems in place to make it standard across the whole system. And there's some systems where we have more control and security is a lot stricter. You came across us by accident, but there are a lot of bad actors out there, monsters and things not unlike what we're fighting now actually." Zari continued to explain.

"And if they changed their tone and stopped treating everyone like a damned criminal to be arrested people wouldn't fight back as often." I said.

"Yeah, but, like I said, it's a huge operation, possibly the largest in the known multiverse, changes take time." Zari replied.

"I don't know Zari, I just don't know." I said.

"Well look, I'm on your side now ok? If we ever come across them again." Zari said.

"Odds are we will, if we ever beat deusmon and Ophanimon isn't lying about being able to get us out of here." I said.

"So where are we going next if we beat deusmon?" Kiera asked.

"Could be anywhere." I said. "We could end up in Spencer the Space Sparrow's universe for all we know."

It was a kid's show with what was basically a 4 eyed pink and blue cartoon sparrow, based on ones native to the animation studio's home planet, with the magical ability to fly through space. Most episodes focused on said sparrow going on various adventures and teaching kids about iconic places and cultures in U.S.C space.

"Could we like, meet him?" Kiera asked.

"Yeah it's entirely possible. In my home universe both digimon and pokémon are just media franchises." I said.

"We could just as easily end up in Zombified Space Pirates 3." Zari said, referencing a horror movie whose title pretty much explains the entire thing, zombified space pirates cause havoc, attack stations, and kill a lot of people in violent and gory manners."

"Fuck you're right." Kiera said.

"Yeah, but, you know how most horror movies are right? The characters are total idiots, so, we might be allright." I said.

"What about Kitty?" Illustria asked.

"Hey!" Kitty objected.

"She's probably immune." Selenia said.

"What does that even mean?" Kitty asked.

"You can't be a zombie because you're a digimon, you don't get sick." I said.

"Oh, well why would I want to get sick?" She replied.

"You don't, that wasn't an insult." I said.

"And you're my Kitty Kat and I love you even if you aren't the brightest so don't worry." I said as I hugged her to try to help her feel better.

"You're fun to hug." I said.

"I know, you say that all the time." She replied.

"Is your coat keeping you warm?" I asked.

"It's not as cold here as it was on Chally's so it's fine." She replied.

"Does it really matter if she can't get sick?" Illustria asked.

"Well she can get shot in the heart too and it won't kill her, doesn't mean she enjoys it." I said.

"It still hurts, really bad actually." Kitty added.

"Oh, yeah, sorry." Illustria apologized.

"You're not the one that shot me." Kitty said, confused.

"That's not what I meant." Illustria replied.

Phoebe came back with Saphy and Ninjamon.

"Look who we found."

"Do I have to?" Illustria asked.

"Yeah yeah, very funny, you know you love me." Ninjamon said.

"And what are you two doing?" Phoebe asked.

"Looks like they're hugging." Saphy said.

"It's so cute." Phoebe said.

"It'd be cuter if you got in this." I said.

"I think I will." Phoebe said as she joined us.

"There we go, there's my ladies." I said with a sigh.

"So this is the big yellow guy you were telling me about?" Ninjamon asked.

"Yep that's him." Phoebe said.

"Hello, I'm Kenkimon." Kenkimon politely introduced himself.

"And what did you want me to say exactly?" Ninjamon asked.

"I don't know, you're both survivors, make nice. He's feeling all kinds of sad because he used to live here, and now, well just look at it." Phoebe said.

"Allright just um . . . listen here buddy, everything is going to be ok, as far as I've seen they're not going to come back so you can just stay here and everything will be a-ok."

"I don't know what I was hoping for really." Phoebe said, disappointed.

"Eh me neither." I agreed.

"Can I get that date with Saphy now?" Ninjamon asked.

"Yeah just one more thing." Phoebe said as she held up her digivice and pressed the button that normally draws nearby digital objects in.

"Was something supposed to happen?" Ninjamon asked, confused.

"Are you sure you pressed the right button?" Saphy asked.

"Yeah, it's not working." Phoebe said.

"Great that means that, oh, boil-eyes. Pheebles how could you do this to me?" Saphy asked.

"Well don't get too excited, where are you gonna go for a date around here? You might as well wait until we're at a better spot." Phoebe said.

" She's right, we should wait, besides it's cold." Ninjamon said.

"Right, we should wait." Saphy nervously agreed.

He didn't have a coat since he wasn't with us before we got back, could he even get that cold? What even was he exactly?

More pressing matters were at hand though, as this meant it wasn't practical to bring Kenkimon along with us. He'd slow us down so much we'd go insane before we ever got far enough north to face deusmon. Or we'd be sitting ducks if they decided to attack us first. That said, it wouldn't be right to leave him here all alone either.

"So what are we going to do now Pheebles?" I asked.

"I don't know. How far away is the next closest village?" Phoebe replied.

"Oh it's not very far, just about a day away for me." Kenkimon said.

"So we could probably get there in a few hours." I said.

"Yeah, and maybe there will be other survivors there." Phoebe said.

"We haven't had much luck with that so far though Pheebles." I said.

"Well we just have to hope." Phoebe said.

"Pheebles the chances are next to nothing and besides that just because we find more digimon doesn't mean they'll get along with him." I said.

"Well why wouldn't they Cj? They all have a common experience of the dark kings ruining their lives." Phoebe said.

"Ok if we find anyone we'll send them back here I guess." I said.

"Yeah, but then how are they going to know where to go exactly?" Phoebe asked.

"I don't know, does this place have a name?" I asked.

"It was White Tree village." Kenkimon said. "Snowtree village is about a day over that way, and Treesnow village about another day away from there." Kenkimon said as he pointed in their respective directions.

"Really Snowtree and Treesnow?" I asked.

"There's not a lot of landmarks around here." Kenkimon explained.

"Well, we'll try to send somebody back for you, we'd hate to leave you all alone." Phoebe said.

"I don't think I want to stay here. " Kenkimon replied ." If it's all the same, I'll probably head to Snowtree ."

"Ok well if we find anyone else we'll send them there then." I said.

"Wait I have another idea." Phoebe said.

"What?" I asked.

" Remember that one hideout?, We could make arrows in the sno- oh wait they fade away after a while." Phoebe said. "Well maybe we can make signs of sticks instead to point in the direction we headed, those might stick around a little longer. So you can follow us if you want."

"Ok." Kenkimon said.

"And then every time you see a village while you're following those signs, you go there, and we'll leave you another sign near the center." Phoebe said.

"That might work, if we can keep it up." I said.

Of course we can I'll make sure of it." Phoebe said.

"Where are we going to get all the sticks?" Kitty asked.

"Kitty Kat, there's trees all over the place, that's not going to be a problem." Phoebe said.

"Ohhhh." Kitty replied.

"Ok so now we just have to wait for the others and we can leave." I said.

"Right." Phoebe said.

After leaving Kenkimon behind, we eventually made it to Snowtree village, which hadn't faired much better and it wasn't long before we set off again. We never went to Treesnow, as it just wasn't in the right direction.

Anyway, later that day.

"See Zari I told you we'd get to see your boobs." Phoebe said after revealing her cards.

"I told you playing her was a bad idea." I said as I snuggled between Kitty and Chally who she finally decided to let win.

"What are you talking about it's just the first round. I still have a shirt." Zari said.

"Yeah but that's not fair because Chally wasn't wearing a shirt when she started." Phoebe said.

"That's true." Chally agreed.

"And Saphy won't be either, Saphy isn't even wearing shoes right now." Phoebe said.

"I never said I was playing." Saphy said as she drove.

"And I can't wear a bra." Phoebe said.

"Who are you going to play against?" I asked.

"I don't know, maybe I'll play Kitty again for her place next to you." Phoebe replied.

"I refuse." Kitty replied.

"Oh come on you're our virara you can't refuse." Phoebe said.

"I can and I did." Kitty replied.

"Well then no more nights alone with Cj." Phoebe said

"Ok fine I'll play again." Kitty said.

"Pheebles you know if you never started this game we could have just layed here together for most of the day." I said.

"I know, but that got boring a week ago." Phoebe said. "And besides you're having a good time, I know you are."

"Yeah that's true." I said.

"So Zari, if you would please, show us your boobs." Phoebe said.

"Ok, but only cause we're all friends here." Zari said as she started to lift up her shirt.

"Of course. You think I'd just share any pretty girl with my husband?" Phoebe asked.

"I've never seen you say no." I said.

"Well we've had good luck so far." Phoebe said.

"Pheebles you've already talked to me about trying to set something up with Darkvioletmon."

"You even wanted my help with it." Kitty said.

"Wait you wanted her to use her powers on her so she would sleep with you and Cj?" Zari asked.

"No, that's not what I wanted her for, Darkvioletmon thinks she's this dark goddess, because of her other form. I was thinking that would give us an angle, but Kitty didn't want to do it, because CJ didn't want to do it so we didn't do it." Phoebe said.

"And then there was BlackLillymon, who is literally the enemy." I said. " I mean Pheebles if they're trying to kill us, and you still think you want to sleep with them, where do you draw the line?"

"Maybe I get a little carried away sometimes." Phoebe said.

"Well maybe you could try not to?" I asked.

"Maybe." Phoebe said as she stared at the floor.

"And Pheebles, baby girl, you know I love you." I said.

"I know." Phoebe replied.

"Everyone else in agreement?" I asked.

Everyone agreed except Saphy who was focusing on driving.

"Ok now is everyone going to shut up and look at my boobs or not?" Zari asked.

"Yeah, ok." Phoebe said.

"Take it off take it off." I started to chant with Kitty and Chally joining in later.

Zari lifted up her shirt and bra and showed off her luscious red melons. Everyone but Saphy cheered and then things quieted down for a moment as Phoebe supposedly reshuffled all the cards.

You want to play again or you want to just call it quits and drive Cj crazy?" Phoebe said.

"What you're not just going to let her win like Kitty and Chally?" I asked.

"Eh what's the point, this is starting to get boring too." Phoebe said.

"Why don't you just get that cute little gardevoir butt over here?" I asked.

"Because then I'd never want to get back up again." Phoebe said.

"You know what this means?" I asked.

"What?" Phoebe asked.

"It means you three are going to have to do whatever you can to make her extremely jealous." I said.

"Oh so I'm allowed to make her jealous now?" Kitty asked.

"Yes, you are, my sweet Kitty kat." I said before pulling her into a kiss.

"Cj you naughty little." Phoebe said.

"Zari bring those tits over here babe." I said.

"Of course." She playfully replied.

"Guys there's a really weird tree up ahead." Saphy said.

"Gonna have a tree under the blankets in a bit." I said as Zari crawled on top of me and Kitty and Chally started kissing me..

Phoebe was about to stop resisting and remove her dress when the bus slowly started to slump forward before the front axle seemed to bump against something, then the rear came down as well and the whole thing slowed to a stop.

"Oof, why'd we stop?" Phoebe asked as she regained her footing.

"Um…. I think we sunk into the snow." Saphy said.

"What? How?" Phoebe asked.

She looked out the front windows and saw nothing but snow outside.

"You guys better get dressed I think we're really stuck." Phoebe said.

"Awww man." I said.

"Well Henry and Claire might come to see if we're ok and they don't need to see any of you naked." Phoebe said.

"She's right." I said before quickly kissing the three of them, kissing Kitty just a bit more sensually.

"Come on Chally, we'll get back to this later." I said.

"Yeaaaah." Zari said with a sigh.

"I guess I should mention, I'm almost out of condoms anyway." Phoebe said.

"Well crap." I replied.

"Yeah I know I should have bought more." Phoebe said.

A few minutes later we were all up and dressed. From what we could see the bus was completely buried in snow atleast up to the windows.

"Well this is new." I said.

"You think it's some sort of trap? " Zari asked.

"By who? None of the Dark rulers should know where we are, and the Bubblemen shouldn't either." I said.

Actually the dark rulers had a vague idea and had several scouting forces out looking for us, we just had the fortune of not running into one yet. Because BlackLillymon was unconscious they couldn't figure out exactly where she was, but they knew she was still alive and they wanted her back, as with all of the dark kings, part of deusmon's code was buried deep within her. The best way to explain it would be that if they were to continue the ritual without her, it would be like cutting off a few of his own fingers, in addition to whatever parts he already lost when we destroyed the others. But since all the surviving dark kings were in one place now, if we simply destroyed her they'd have no reason not to perform the ritual. And the Bubblemen were pretty far to the east of us and just a bit further north, following a trailmon line.

"Well maybe it has something to do with that weird tree I saw before this happened." Saphy said.

."Can you teleport us out?" Zari asked.

"I don't know how far we've fallen down. I can't see the surface and I don't know where the others are." Phoebe said.

"There's the emergency exit on the roof." I said.

"You think Iceleomon is ok?" Phoebe asked.

He started pounding on the roof a few seconds later.

"Is everyone all right in there?" He yelled.

"We're fine, don't dent the roof please. Just get away from the door we're going to climb out that way." I yelled back.

I opened the emergency door, a buzzer went off as it sprang open, revealing the now perpetually grey sky above.

The snow was very loose and powdery and didn't compress together at all, behaving more like a powder than actual snow, though it was still cold to the touch, if you held it in your hands long enough it would just disappear without a trace.

"Allright Pheebles, I think that's the sky right there now can you teleport us out?" I asked.

"Everybody ready? Everyone have shoes? Including you Saphy?" Phoebe asked.

"Mhm." Saphy replied.

"Ok you know the drill by now, everyone join hands." Phoebe said.

We did so and she teleported us into the sky for a brief moment, then to the roof of the bus another moment later.

"Atleast you're all ok." IceLeomon said.

"Yeah Cj had plenty of cushioning." Phoebe said.

"Ah crap how are we going to get it out?" I asked as it was buried up to the roof in snow, just a little bit of the back end was sticking out.

"Maybe the mechanorimon can pull it out or we could wait for Kenkimon to catch up." Phoebe asked.

"That could take hours." I said.

"Well it's better than walking out in the cold." Phoebe said.

"Hey Pheebles, there's that strange tree." Saphy said as she pointed it out.

"That looks more like a pole than a tree." Phoebe said as she saw it had no branches, leaves, pine needles, or bark whatsoever. It looked a lot less natural than the more normal trees, which weren't perfectly natural looking themselves, but still.

"I wonder what it's for." I said.

"Maybe it means the snow is really deep here?" Phoebe asked.

"I don't know, I don't think I've been over this way before." IceLeomon said.

"I don't know, let's check it out." I said as we made our way towards it, struggling to walk in the snow, thankfully it supported us better than the bus, while Phoebe just used her powers to hover over the surface of it. Up close we could see that there was nothing else on the pole to indicate its purpose, no signs or anything, it was just a wooden pole.

"We should get the mechanorimon to dig down and see if there's anything here. " Phoebe said.

"Eh, it might be worthwhile." I replied.

"What could be down there?" Kitty asked.

"I don't know, but don't you think it's weird somebody would go to the effort to put this big pole out in the middle of nowhere?" Phoebe asked.

"I don't know." Kitty replied.

"Maybe it's like the city, nobody built it, it just appeared here for some quantum mechanical reason and maybe the pit just came with it and it's causing whatever background code that keeps regenerating the snow to glitch out just a bit." I suggested.

"Wow you really screwed up this time." Henry said as he came up behind us.

"Yeah, well, if you would've gone ahead of us you would've made the same mistake." I said.

"Actually Saphy was driving." Zari said.

"How was I supposed to know it was deeper here?" Saphy asked.

"Tell the newbies to try to get the mechanorimon to get it out." I said.

"And then they can get them to dig down and see what's at the base of this pole." Phoebe added.

"Right." Henry agreed.

"I'll go tell them that right now." Claire said as she walked back towards the newbies, who were currently investigating the bus.

"So Blacklilymon is still on the bus?" Henry asked.

"Yeah, still asleep. Don't worry, she should sleep through this." Phoebe replied.

"This snow it just doesn't pack at all does it?" Henry asked.

"Yeah it's more like it's just a dry powder almost. Probably why the bus sank so far." I said.

" I guess there must be some kind of pit here." Phoebe said.

"Yeah, but why is the snow so much higher here than everywhere else, everywhere else it's been pretty consistent." I said.

"I don't know." Phoebe replied.

"How far do you think it goes?" Zari asked.

"How deep?" Phoebe asked.

"No, how wide and long?" Zari clarified.

"I don't know, but we're going to have to find out so we can go around it. I'm going to go find some sticks so we can mark out the perimeter. Why don't the rest of you try to figure out where the edges are while the others get the bus out?" Phoebe said.

"I'll be back in a bit Cj, don't worry." Phoebe said before kissing me on the cheek and teleporting away before I could jokingly tell her to not get hurt again.

"OK then I guess Kitty and I will go this way, the rest of you can either follow us or go the other way for a little bit, dig down and see if the snow is deeper than normal." I said. "We'll get this pit marked out and then we hopefully won't make this mistake again."

Saphy and Zari went with us, everyone else went the other way, along with Claire, who came back right after we dispersed.

"So what are we doing?" Kitty asked.

"Pheebles left to go get some sticks so we can mark this area out so we don't drive into it again." I said.

"Why do we have to mark it out?" Kitty asked.

"Because we don't know how big it is and if we happen to hit it on the edge then we could roll the bus onto its side and who knows what else. We got lucky enough to hit it straight on this time." I said.

"Then we're going to figure out what the pole is for?" Kitty asked.

"Yeah when the newbies and the goddesses get the bus out so we can use the mechanorimon to do some digging." I said.

"Ok." She replied.

"Ok so we just have to keep following along the edge, we don't have to dig down too far, just like 6 inches or so. If we don't hit ground after that we're still in the pit I think." I said.

While we set about with that, the newbies and the goddesses used the mechanorimon to carefully lift the bus out and set it back down. While it was too heavy for one of them to move alone, with all 6 of them together moving it was pretty trivial, though very slow to the point where it wasn't practical to just do that all the time. Not to mention what could happen if we got attacked while they were carrying it.

Since the snow was consistently loose and powdery it was pretty easy to dig through, and once Phoebe returned with a bunch of sticks we had it marked out. It was roughly rectangular from what we could see and went on for nearly a quarter mile. It was basically a sudden drop, the edges were a bit jagged, as one would expect, but it still seemed surreal.

Eventually it was time to dig to the base of the pole and see what, if anything was at the bottom. "You know, I wonder if Kenkimon did this." I said.

"I don't know, even if he did it doesn't explain why the snow is deeper." Phoebe replied.

"Yeah that's true." I replied.

"But why would he do this?" Kitty asked.

"I don't know, that's actually a good question." I replied.

"Hey guys there's like a tunnel." Illustria said as her mechanorimon uncovered the entrance to a cave.

"All this and it's just another mushroom cave." Selenia said.

"Out in the middle of nowhere?" Kiera asked.

"Iceball bomb!" Something said from within as a huge chunk of ice flew through the opening and struck Illustria's mechanorimon.

"What the?" Illustria said out of surprise.

"Go away! I'm warning you, there's thousands of us in here." The as of yet unknown digimon said.

"Hey more digimon." Phoebe said.

"Yeah, paranoid digimon." I said.

"We're not here to hurt you we're just seeing what this huge pit is for." Selenia said.

"Is it really over?" The digimon asked. "Is Darkdramon gone?"

"Well no, but he's not here right now." Selenia said.

"Where is he then?" The digimon asked.

"Somewhere further north we're not really sure." Selenia said.

"They're all up north, you can use this opportunity to move further south, and get further away from them if that's what you want." I said as I made my way over there with Phoebe cautiously gluing herself to my side and Kitty sort of trailing behind.

"That would be the best move if you wanna be safe from all this." Zari said.

"How many of you are there?" The digimon asked.

"Quite a few." Saphy said.

"Let them in Cube head, if they wanted to harm us they would by now." Another digimon said.

"Oh fine, but if we all die it's your fault." "Cube head" replied before pushing some snow out of the way and opening up the cave a bit more. Phoebe didn't waste anytime looking him up in her digivice.

"It's an Icemon." She said as she read the screen.

"And the other one is apparently a gazimon." She added moments later.

"Hello." The gazimon said in a friendly manner.

"Hi." Phoebe replied.

"So what are you doing here?" Phoebe asked several seconds later.

"Isn't it obvious?" A harpymon asked as it stepped out of the shadows.

"Wait a minute I've seen you before." Kitty said.

"Yes, yes you have, sadly things haven't gone well since then." Harpymon said.

"Yeah see, but I can't remember where." Kitty said.

"Don't look at me." I said as she did so, not being able to remember.

"Cj hold still." Phoebe said as she touched my head.

"Pheebles what are you? Oh…."

"Well show me too!" Kitty begged.

"Yeah I remember you now." I said.

"It wasn't that long ago was it?" Harpymon asked.

"Longer than you would think." I replied.

"I don't know if it will work as well on you, but I can try." Phoebe replied as she went over to her and touched her head.

"Woah, ok this is weird this is weird this is weird make it stop make it stop." Kitty said.

"Ehehehe." I laughed at how cute she was being as Phoebe pulled her hand away.

"Cj my head hurts!" Kitty said as she squeezed me.

"I told you I wasn't sure if it would work." Phoebe said.

"Do you remember her?" I asked.

"Yeah, but ow." Kitty said.

"Long story short, from our perspective its been almost over 100 years since we last saw you so please forgive us." Phoebe said.

"Is she like important or something?" Henry asked.

"I was starting to wonder the same." Zari added.

"Can you help me remember too?" IceLeomon asked.

"No I'm just going to tell you, she used to run a shop but because of the dark kings she was forced to abandon it and move." Phoebe said.

"You had a ring shop!" Kitty said as soon as she remembered.

"Yeah, and no I can't give you any rings." Harpymon said.

"Oh, well, that's fine I have a whole bunch on the bus." Kitty said.

"Really?" Harpymon asked.

"Mhm." Kitty replied.

"So is it just you three in here or?" I asked.

"Oh no there's a bunch of us, but most of the others are asleep." Gazimon said.

"So you just buried yourselves down here?" Saphy asked.

"We had to, to survive, Harpymon saw what was happening and warned us in time, so we leveled our village and moved into the mushroom cave before darkdramon attacked.

"How did you get the snow to be so deep?" Zari asked.

"We have a datamon among us, he found a way to crack the system. I don't really understand it myself, bur he changed something to make the snow deeper here. Anyway it looks like we fooled them. " Gazimon said.

"And the pole?" Phoebe asked.

"We put it there so that whenever we would decide to send someone out to make sure the coast is clear, they would have a way of finding us again, but still subtle enough that darkdramon's forces never thought anything of it. " Gazimon said.

"I see." Phoebe said.

"You might as well all come in, the others will want to see you for sure." Gazimon said.

"Follow us." Icemon added as they both retreated into the cave.

"OK I guess we're going inside." Phoebe said.

"We'll stay on guard out here." Mervamon said. "In case any enemy forces come along."

"Ok you do that." Phoebe said. "The mechanorimon too."

"Right." Mervamon replied.

So we all followed them in except the goddesses who decided to stay outside. Once inside, we were quickly reminded of sorcerymon's underground base, but the layout was different and the walls weren't as neatly formed, and there were occasionally mushrooms growing out of them. It was also a bit overfilled with supplies and assorted objects taken from what was their village, there was even a full set of maker machines, all kind of haphazardly stacked in a hoarder-like fashion.

"It's kind of cramped in here." IceLeomon said.

"Speak for yourself." Ninjamon said, feeling more at home here.

"I am, and I say, it's cramped." IceLeomon replied.

"You know if you want to stay outside, we probably won't be in here for long." Henry said.

Meanwhile, further up the line. -

"It's like they tried to stuff all their belongings in here." Phoebe said.

"We tried to fit in as much as we could." Icemon said.

"We can see." Phoebe said.

"Nobody wanted to lose any of their things." Gazimon said.

"That's understandable." Illustria said.

"This does not look safe." Zari said.

"It must have been safe so far if they've been down here this long." Phoebe pointed out.

"Eh I guess so." Zari replied.

"It's still a mess though." Phoebe said.

"Definitely." Zari agreed.

"Like me!" Kitty said.

"Maybe even worse than you." Phoebe said mischievously.

"Ehhhhhhhhh." I said.

"You don't think so?" Phoebe asked.

"How big of a mess do you think I am?" Kitty asked.

"Well right now, you're pretty manageable." I said.

"What's that supposed to mean Cj?" Phoebe asked.

"Yeah what's that supposed to mean?" Kitty asked.

"It means it's easy to love you right now and every time I see you I just wanna hug you." I said.

"But then there is days like when we're outside and it starts to rain and then you refuse to get wet so we have to stay in a gazebo for two hours and you can be a major pain in the ass and I just get this close to leaving you there."

"Yeah I can see that. You probably bought her all her rings didn't you?" Harpymon chimed in.

"Eh, maybe half." I said.

"But you don't feel like that today right?" Kitty asked.

"No not today." I said.

"Yet." Phoebe said.

"And as you can see with Pheebles, it doesn't go by days it goes in like ten minute intervals." I said.

" Oh really?" Phoebe asked.

"Atleast until I point it out then she gets all cute and pissed off." I continued.

"You!" Phoebe said as she stared daggers at me.

"She is cute." Kitty said.

"I know." I said.

"Pheebles, you know you love me." I said as she continued to stare at me completely speechless

"Rrrrrrr." She growled after I kissed her on the cheek.

"You're gonna get it." Zari said.

"Ohh, she can't stay mad at me. Can you baby girl?" I said as I started hugging on her.

"No, no I can't." She said with a sigh before kissing me.

"You two, are weird." Zari said.

"Nobody ever said that about you and your ex?" I asked.

"No, no they didn't." Zari said.

"Are you sure?" Phoebe asked.

"Eh who knows? But you two, are weird." Zari said.

-towards the center of the line-

"So much junk." Kiera said.

"I don't know, some of it might be kind of valuable." Selenia said.

"I'll tell snow agumon you said that." Icemon said mischievously.

"Who?" Kiera asked.

"Most of that stuff is his." Icemon explained.

"Well I just meant all of it together not just that pile." Kiera replied.

""Sorry, they're kind of new. We haven't taught them manners yet." Phoebe explained.

"I see." Icemon said.

"Good going now they think we're stupid." Illustria whispered to Kiera.

"Why would any of it be valuable Selly? Most of it just comes out of the maker machines anyway." Kiera said.

"That doesn't mean it's not worth anything to the digimon. It still takes resources to make that stuff." Selenia replied.

"If it gets any warmer I'm going to have to lose my shirt again." Chally said.

"Yeah it was way colder outside." One of Iceleomon's wives agreed.

"We might have to go back outside then." Iceleomon said. "I don't like it in here anyway."

" Is our king afraid of small spaces?" One of his wives asked. It was tight enough I couldn't see who through everyone else.

"I think so." His other wife said.

"If you had to walk like this for extended periods of time to avoid smacking your heads on the ceiling you would want to leave too." IceLeomon said.

"Then leave." Henry said. "It's no big deal."

"Mhm. We don't all need to be in here." Claire agreed.

"Hey Pheebles if they go I'm going back out with them too." Chally said.

"Ok." Phoebe replied.

"Then come on we're going, before our king hits his head on something." One of Iceleomon's wives said.

"Ok." Chally said.

"If you leave now you might not get to meet the others." Icemon said.

"It's ok, they'll be fine." Phoebe said.

"What is he the king of?" Icemon asked.

"It's a long story." I replied.

"Yep, really long." Phoebe said.

"He's not even really king anymore is he?" Zari asked.

"No they picked a new king remember? Before he left, that had a big tournament and everything." I said.

"They did. We didn't go to see it, it was too cold." Phoebe backed me up.

"What?" Icemon asked, confused.

"Like we said, it's a long story." I replied.

"Ok well everyone sleeps in the back, so it's going to be a pretty long walk too." Icemon said.

"Ok fine I guess I'll start." Phoebe said.

"Greeaaaat." I replied, wondering what embarrassing details she was going to include just to tease me.

"Or do you want to start?" Phoebe asked.

"No you go ahead you're better at this than me anyway." I said.

"Oh Cj, I'll keep everything that's supposed to be a secret a secret so don't worry." Phoebe said.

"What secrets?" Kitty asked, suddenly alarmed.

"I'll tell you later." Phoebe said, just to put her at ease even though there were no secrets.

"Or maybe Saphy can quietly explain it to you." Phoebe said.

"What?" Saphy asked.

"She wants to know what we don't want to tell them." Phoebe explained.

"Why don't you want to tell us?" Gazimon asked.

"Because it can be embarrassing, especially to Cj." Phoebe said.

"Oh yeah like you don't get embarrassed." I said.

"Do you know what they're talking about?" Kitty asked.

Saphy figured it out on her own and whispered it to her.

'Oh. Ok yeah I guess that makes sense." Kitty said.

"You know I could tell them about the." I said, half expecting her to see it before I could say it.

"No you will not or I will tell them every excruciating detail and there's nothing you can do to stop me." Phoebe said.

"What if I do that though? Huh? I could show them and shut you up." I said.

"Please don't." She asked sweetly.

"I won't I'm just teasing you baby girl." I said.

"Ok well, can I start?" Phoebe asked.

"Yeah, go ahead." I replied.

"Ok so anyway indramon had this portal, and we blew it up and then we all got split up, except for the newbies back there, they weren't with us yet." Phoebe said.

-10 minutes of walking and exposition later-

"And then we went through this other portal and we made it back here all together." Phoebe said.

"Wait who is indramon again?" Icemon asked.

"Nevermind that we're here." Gazimon said as we approached the entrance to a large chamber.

"HEY EVERYBODY WAKE UP! WE HAVE SOME VISITORS AND SOME GOOD NEWS!" Icemon announced to all the sleeping digimon in the room.

"Did you have to be so loud?" Gazimon asked.

"Yeah, we're in a cave, it echoes." Harpymon added.

A few seconds passed as the occupants of the room slowly began to wake up. It was pretty dark as there were no lights in the room, and we were too far in for "natural" light to penetrate. There were some metal lanterns illuminating the corridor however that provided a very faint view into the room and the shapes stirring within that began to rise and approach the nearest source of light, revealing a cadre of digimon, mostly ice types, like snowagumon, snowgoblimon, gabumon, as well as more icemon, some gazimon, and a few other oddballs like salamon, kokuwamon, and elecmon, and a single datamon, perhaps the oddest of the bunch. An experienced, ultimate level machine digimon, dangerous as hell because it has some ability to change the background code of the digital world, though not on the level of a god class digimon as it takes them a lot of energy and time to do so. It also isn't very useful in combat because they have to sit still for so long.

"What's the news?" It asked before anyone else, needless to say it sounded a lot more intelligent than the mechanorimon seemed to be most of the time.

"Darkdramon's forces aren't in the area anymore, we have a chance to escape and head further south." Icemon said.

"And we know there's not anymore dark kings operating down there?" Datamon asked.

"There shouldn't be." Phoebe spoke up. "They're all gathered up north now."

"And we're supposed to believe this human girl?" Datamon asked.

"What is it with you digimon, I am clearly not human! Look at Cj, Cj is human. I am a gardevoir, there are huge, huge differences!" Phoebe said.

"And I'm a digimon!" Kitty chimed in, pointlessly.

"Atleast you got that right." Saphy sighed.

"If you're not human and clearly not a digimon as far as I can see, then what are you?" Datamon asked.

"A pokémon." Phoebe replied.

"What is that?" Datamon asked.

"It's a long story." Phoebe replied.

"Yeah Ophanimon sent us to destroy all the dark kings, and we can tell you that there's none down there, anymore, we destroyed them." I said following Phoebe's lead on keeping Blacklilymon a secret as it was probably best for them not to know we had an unconscious one on our bus.

"Yeah." Phoebe agreed.

"If they were working for the dark kings wouldn't they have attacked and destroyed us already?" Gazimon asked.

"Maybe they were just waiting for you to show them where we were." Datamon asked.

"And they know now and they're still not attacking." Gazimon pointed out.

"Ok, so we know they aren't our enemies, but that doesn't mean they know for sure whether we still aren't in further danger if we head down south." Datamon said.

"Look if the dark kings are going to attack, it's more likely to be up here, not down there, they're all up north now." Phoebe said.

"So you say." Datamon said.

"Guys we're under attack!" Chally yelled as she came running in from behind.

"What?" I asked.

"We're under attack." Chally said.

"No way man that's horrible timing." Henry said.

"Really?" Claire asked.

"No, it's about time." Zari said.

"I guess we should go check it out." Phoebe said.

"There's like some dragons or something out there I don't know but IceLeomon and everyone else out there is fighting them now." Chally continued.

'Yeah, let's go, we'll continue this later." I said.

"Right." Phoebe agreed.

And so we headed back out, with Gazimon, Icemon, and now Datamon following us more out of curiosity than anything the other followed slowly but didn't leave the cave when we got to the entrance.

Sure enough there were a lot of what the digivice said were icedevidramon flying around in the sky. They were basically devidramon but a bluish-white in color. Their primary attack was freezer beam, which was basically a sort of ice beam. The mechanorimon were already trying to fly up to fight them. Leaving the newbies stranded on the ground. Two of them were carrying IceLeomon, which looked like it could end very badly, as his wives looked on from the safety of the ground. The goddesses were in 3 of the others. And the last one was just by itself.

"Man, they're way up there.' I said.

"What am I supposed to do?" Kitty asked.

"I don't know, Pheebles can you even get that high?" I asked.

"Not if I want to stay conscious." Phoebe replied.

"Shadowballs maybe?" I asked.

"Not that far." Phoebe replied.

"If you get some guns out we can shoot at them." Henry said.

"Right I guess we'll just start with that, maybe we can lure them down here." I said as I prepared to do so.

"Ok everyone take a weapon, try not to hit the mechanorimon." I said as I ejected several from the digivice.

"Do we get one too?" Illustria asked on behalf of the newbies.

"Yeah, just try not to hit the mechanorimon, take your time, aim, don't be dumb about it and to reload you just pop the clip out and stick it back in, if it has a clip, if it doesn't like with one of the crossbows, just wait for it to reload itself. If you get the abduction beam, I don't think it runs out." I said. Everybody armed themselves then I put the rest of the weapons back in the digivice.

Henry, Zari, and I had laser pistols from the space travel universe, but their battery capacity was limited and we had yet to devise a way to recharge them, we had the chargers, there was just nowhere to plug them in and finding another universe with the same plug standard was unlikely. They also couldn't be stored in the digivice.

"Which one is the abduction beam?" Illustria asked.

"I got it." Claire said.

"Oh." Illustria replied.

"Yeah we only got the one, sorry." I said.

A stray ice beam grazed the ground nearby.

"Just take one and don't get turned into a popsicle." Zari said

"Cj?" Kitty asked.

"You might as well go ahead and digivolve." I said.

"Right." Kitty agreed.

"You too Saphy." Phoebe said.

"Ok." Saphy agreed.

For the first few minutes there wasn't much we could do as they were all really high in the air, and the mechanorimon were already on their way up.

Could've sent magnum and Cloudela out, but, they would've been really hard to see that high up and I didn't want to accidently shoot my own pokémon, and whether it would've been more effective to send him up or keep shooting at them from the ground was highly debatable. And what they could've done to our pokémon was an unknown factor as well. I figured, atleast with us shooting at them, they might turn their attention towards us and we might have been able to lure them in a bit closer. But for the first few minutes despite what we were doing they focused mostly on the mechanorimon, especially the ones carrying IceLeomon. I don't know how the big guy pulled it off but he somehow managed to land a punch on one of them and ride it all the way down as it struggled to fly with him latching onto its back, until it eventually hit the ground and slid to a halt, where upon one more punch was enough to finish it, but now he was just as stuck on the ground as the rest of us.

"That's one down." He said triumphantly as his wives cheered.

"Not gonna lie, that was pretty badass." Henry said.

"That's a start." I added.

Another saw what happened and began to dive towards the ground, unleashing a hellish ice beam that caused everyone to scatter. Thankfully nobody was hurt, but this thing was much more dangerous now that it was closer. As usual, bullets, even of a digital nature didn't seem to phase it very much. It was definitely feeling them but not enough to slow it down by a significant amount. It started strafing us with its icebeams to the point where it seemed like some sort of one trick pony. Though every time it did so, more chunks and lines of ice accumulated on the ground, creating somewhat of a tripping hazard that grew worse every time it attacked. Until Phoebe took Kittie's hand and got her high enough to sink the nazzar nail into it, causing it to crash, where it proceeded to buck her off and continued to fight on the ground with its razor sharp claws in addition to its beams, but between IceLeomon and Kitty it was quickly beaten to a pulp and destroyed. Others started to come down after that as the goddesses started to direct the battle towards the ground and things only got more chaotic from there as eventually there were about half a dozen of the damned things on the ground and another half dozen flying low overhead. The goddesses ditched the mechanorimon and started fighting on the ground with their own abilities. Illustria and Kiera managed to climb into their mechanorimon. Selenia stayed back to cover them only for the window to close as hers got tackled by one of the enemy digimon. Phoebe got her shurikens out, all the digimon were picking targets and gradually picking them off, even Ninjamon was doing pretty good. Icemon. Gazimon, and Datamon retreated further into the cave and everyone else started to back towards the entrance while taking pot shots at them so we could have somewhat of a bottleneck in case things went south. Thankfully there wasn't that many of them, and the fighting only went on for about another five minutes before what was left started to retreat, nobody got hurt, and all in all things went pretty well for the first combat we had seen in a while.

"Is that all of them?" I asked once I ran of things to attack.

"Some are running away." Phoebe replied.

"I don't think we can keep up with them." I said.

"No we can't." Kitty said.

"Well they know where we are now." Zari said as she came up behind us.

"I guess so." I replied.

"That means we need to get out of here." Phoebe said.

"Yep." I said.

"And those guys in there really need to get out of here." Phoebe continued.

"Mhm." I said.

"We can tell them to go back the way we came, hopefully they'll find kenkimon and then, he can dig them a new cave, maybe?" Zari said.

"Where did they even go anyway?" I asked as I looked around for them.

"They ran back into the cave." Zari said.

"We need to get out of here, they're going to report our location and then they'll come back with friends." Mervamon said.

"We know." Phoebe, Zari, and I replied simultaneously.

"What do you know?" Kitty asked.

"Kitty Kat not right now." I said.

"Cj we'll go talk to them while you get all the weapons gathered up." Phoebe said.

"Allright, you go do that." I said as I looked around to make sure all 6 mechanorimon were present.

"Allright start piling up the weapons. Anybody get hurt?" I asked loud enough so everyone could hear as Phoebe, Saphy, and Zari headed into the cave. Kitty decided to stick with me.

"I tripped and fell in the snow." Illustria said.

"I was thinking a bit more serious than that." I replied.

"We're all ok over here." Henry said as he and Claire approached to return their weapons so I could stash them in the digivice.

"Ninjamon?" I asked.

"I think I'll be allright." Ninjamon replied.

"Iceleomon?" I asked.

"Great." He replied.

"ALL SYSTEMS FUNCTIONAL" The mechanorimon began to say one after the other even though I didn't even ask because I knew their response would be ear murder.

" ALL SYSTEMS ERROR SELF DIAGNOSIS ERROR ALL SYSTEMS FUNCTIONAL." One out of the six said, I had no idea if it was trying to be funny or actually just bugging out, it looked fine.

"Why did you ask them?" Kitty asked, as annoyed as I was.

"I didn't." I said.

Nobody was hurt and everyone was accounted for. We got all the weapons, Henry and Claire headed back to their car, the newbies boarded their mechanorimon along with the goddesses, IceLeomon was playing around in the snow with his wives and everyone else was hanging around in the cave as Kitty and I stood by the entrance.

"Hey." I said to Kitty.

"What?" Kitty replied.

"Is my Kitty Kat ok?" I asked playfully.

"Yeah, I'll be fine." Kitty said.

"What about Phoebe?" Kitty asked.

"Oh she never gets hurt." I said with heavy sarcasm. "Also she went into the cave to talk to the others remember?" I asked.

"Yeah, but is she ok?" Kitty asked.

"She's fine Kitty Kat." I said.

"Good." She replied.

"You wanna snuggle when we get back on the bus?" I asked.

"Will Phoebe let us?" Kitty asked.

"We'll bring her along too." I said.

"What if she doesn't want to?" Kitty asked.

"She's not going to have a choice." I replied.

"Really?" Kitty asked.

"Mhm." I replied.

"Why can't we go back to what we were doing before the bus fell into the snow?" Kitty asked.

"Because they know where we are now, we could get attacked at any moment, we gotta stay on alert Kitty Kat, because we gotta get out of the bus as quickly as possible if we get attacked and if everyone's naked that means we gotta waste a lot of time getting dressed.

"Or you could just leave the bus naked." Kitty said.

"No, one it's cold out here, two, just no, we don't need everyone else seeing us naked or having any idea what goes on in that bus." I replied. "Come on let's go get Pheebles, and the others so we can get back on the bus." I said as I headed for the cave.

"We could get back on the bus without them." Kitty suggested.

"Yeah, but I need my Pheebles to be happy too." I said.2

"Yeah that would make her mad wouldn't it?" Kitty asked.

"I don't even know the way she is anymore, but I don't want to hurt her so let's just head inside and see if she and the others are ready to go." I said.

"Ok." She agreed as we headed into the cave.

"Everything ok Pheebles?" I said as we approached her and the others that were usually on the bus with us interrupting the conversation they were having with Icemon, Datamon and Gazimon.

"Everything is fine. We're just trying to convince them that they need to leave." Phoebe said.

"They don't see that they need to?" I asked.

"They don't want to leave all their things behind." Phoebe said.

"Well they can come back for them later like in a few weeks or so, the enemy will probably leave them alone." I said.

"Yeah, we said that already." Phoebe replied.

"But they will come back, and they'll destroy anyone they find and take their data." I said.

"We said that too." Zari said.

"So they just want to stay here and die then?" I asked.

"The snow will regenerate in a couple hours, we'll be hidden again." Icemon said.

"That won't matter if the ones that escaped noticed this cave." I said.

"Look you gotta get out of here now, we don't know how long it will take for them to regroup and come back, but they will come back, and there will be more of them than there was this time, and we're not going to be here, because we're not stupid." I said.

"Cj, you could say that a little nicer." Phoebe said.

"Then they won't get the urgency baby girl, I mean their lives are at stake so yeah." I replied.

"So you could be a little nicer." Phoebe replied.

"No, we both know they need to move." I said.

"And if you come across a kenkimon, he's friendly, but tell him not to follow us anymore because it's too dangerous. He's good at digging, so maybe he can make you a new cave to hide in." I said.

"I guess I can keep an eye out for him with the other flyers." Harpymon said.

"Unless we want to stay here and fight we should go." Datamon said.

"But we'd be abandoning all our stuff." Icemon said.

"We can come back for it later like they said." Datamon replied.

"Well you re the strongest one here so if you say we should go." Gazimon said.

"Then we'll just have to try to convince everyone else." Datamon said.

"Allright then let's go girls." I said.

"No we're going to help them convince everyone else." Phoebe said.

"Really?" Zari asked.

"Yeah, so they will all be safe. We have time." Phoebe said.

"Cj?" Zari asked.

"Well we either help convince them or leave her ass here because I know that look and she's not going to budge. And I'm not leaving her." I said.

"Awwe Cj." Phoebe said gratefully.

"Then I won't either." Kitty said.

"Mhm." Saphy said.

"I guess I'm in too." Challana said.

"We'll just have to hope the others will wait then, I guess." Zari said.

"Of course they will we're a team. This won't take long come on let's go. " Phoebe said as we embarked on another epic walk to the back of the cave. Thankfully since we already won Datamon over, convincing the others wasn't too hard so we were out of there pretty quickly. We told them to follow the signs we originally left for kenkimon so they would have a decent chance of running into him. That way he wouldn't be alone anymore and he could help them set up a new shelter.

Allright, back on the road again." I said as we climbed on board the bus.

"What road?" Phoebe asked as she took a moment to ensure BlackLillymon stayed asleep.

"Well we're about to get moving again atleast." I said.

"So are we going back to what we were doing before all this?" Challana asked.

"No." I said.

"Not unless you want to risk getting attacked while naked." Phoebe replied.

"Maybe tonight though." Phoebe said.

"Eh, we'll see, right now, I'm going to snuggle with my Pheebles." I said as I affectionately wrapped my arms around her.

"Cj! Stop, please." Phoebe exclaimed as she giggled cutely out of embarrassment as I started kissng her on the cheek.

"What about me?" Kitty asked.

"You can come too." Phoebe said.

"Good Pheebles." I said as I brushed her hair.

"Am I driving again or?" Saphy asked.

"I think I'll take over, in case we get attacked. Until you learn some more." Zari said.

"Ok." Saphy replied.

"You and Chally keep an eye out for anything suspicious." Zari said.

"Ok." Saphy replied.

"What are we looking for exactly?" Challana asked.

"Like a bunch of big, identical digimon traveling in a group. Or ones like the ones we just fought." Zari said.

:Or semi-camouflaged lizards with assault rifles." I said.

"Yeah, hopefully we won't have to deal with those just yet." Zari said.

"We're going to have to eventually." I replied.

Despite just being a rookie, Commandramon were pretty damned lethal to all humanoids thanks purely to that weapon, against other digimon however, they were a bit less lethal and if one were to close the gap they are only as physically strong as the average rookie, so even a normal human could have a fair chance of overpowering them if they managed to get that close. Some more bullet-resistant pokémon could be effective against them as well.

Anyway Darkvioletmon came up and knocked on the door just before we were about to leave.

"Who's that?" Phoebe asked.

"You wouldn't believe me if told you." Zari sad.

"No way. Where has she been all this time?" Phoebe said.

" I don't know, I don't remember seeing her during the battle." I said.

"Well she says so little it's kind of easy to forget she's there I guess." Phoebe said.

"Yeah, that's probably part of it." I replied.

"It is cold, can I get on?" Darkvioletmon asked.

"Oh of course sweety, but you'll have to pay for your ticket later tonight." Phoebe said.

"No she doesn't." Kitty said.

"Bad Pheebles." I said as I rubbed her head, knowing exactly what she was trying to do.

"Oh fine, let her on Zari. Phoebe said.

She climbed onboard and took what basically the last available empty seat up front and said nothing more. She seemed to just stare at the floor most of the time, or occasionally at Blacklilymon who slept across the aisle.

-a few minutes later after we started moving-

"This is the life." I said with both my ladies in my arms.

"Yeah." Kitty said.

"Atleast until we get attacked again." Phoebe said.

"I can't believe she's on the bus with us." Phoebe said.

"She's a plant type, they don't really like the cold." Saphy said.

"I see." Phoebe replied.

"I wouldn't like it either in those clothes." Zari said. "You need a coat girl."

"Well this is going to be a boring trip now that we can't do anything anymore." Phoebe said.

"Not if the action picks up outside." I said.

"Yeah, but that could take a while." Phoebe said.

"Ah well atleast we had some fun while we could." Phoebe said.

"Yeah atleast." I said.

"See Cj because now we can't and we're going to be very very bored." Phoebe said.

"Yeah, I see, what are you trying to talk me into now?" I asked.

"Nothing, I'm just saying." Phoebe replied.

"It's time for you to exercise that self-control you keep saying you have." I said.

"I know I know." Phoebe replied.

"But we'll still have all the nights." I said.

"Yeah I guess so." Phoebe replied.

"And then we can get Chally and Zari in on it like earlier." Phoebe said.

"Sure if that's what you want for tonight." I said.

"You about made me jealous enough to join you but then the bus fell into the hole." Phoebe said.

"Am I allowed to be in this?" Kitty asked.

"Yes, you were earlier weren't you sister?" Phoebe asked.

"Or maybe I'll just have both of you tonight." I said.

"Maybe tomorrow night." Phoebe said.

"Every night." Kitty said.

"No you're our virara that's not supposed to be how this works." Phoebe said.

"Anyway, I told you before I'm almost out of condoms so, that means you'll be stuck with me Kitty or Saphy anyway. Atleast until we can get some more." Phoebe said.

"I mean you did get Ronnie pregnant, so who knows about any of the newbies." Phoebe said.

"Yeah, I guess so. Maybe we should be more selective about those nights then." I said.

"Maybe, after tonight." Phoebe said.

"Are you sure she was your baby?" Kitty asked.

"What did she tell you otherwise?" I asked as they were always sort of friends.

"No." Kitty replied.

"I know she was mine, it's simple really." I said.

"How?" Kitty asked.

"Her eyes, literally everybody on her planet has greenish-gray eyes, hers were blue." I said.

"Like Charley's" Phoebe said.

"Yeah, exactly." I said.

"Aliases, were brown." Kitty said.

"Alias had who the hell knows how many people's dna spliced into him. I'm not really sure if any of me was even in him at all." I said.

"Yeah he was, I saw the charts, and the scientists memories while we were raiding Phanon. He had other people's DNA spliced in, but primarily he was 80 percent yours and Kaylas." Phoebe said.

"Also 5 percent Delbert Xellers, and the other 15 was split between like 5 people I never heard of before." Phoebe said.

"How'd they get his?" I asked.

"Probably the same way they got yours." Phoebe said.

"Yeah but remember what Zari said? He died years ago, the Zelusians executed him. Hell that was 60-70 years ago Pheebles." I said.

"I know what I saw Cj." Phoebe replied.

"Zari didn't they execute that Dellbert Zeller guy?" I asked.

"If I remember it right, yeah." Zari said. " You're talking about him again?"

"Guess who's the secondary father of Alias." Phoebe said.

"Wait what?" Zari asked.

"You mean the guy that took Kayla in was . . . ." Zari asked.

"No, Phanon put Zellers Dna in Alias, with their, sciency machines I guess. I didn't really have a lot of time to read how they did it." Phoebe said.

"And you're just saying this now?" Zari asked.

"I didn't make this connection until now. And you know Cj usually doesn't like to talk about him. And it just kind of never came up I guess." Phoebe said.

"-sighs-, well that's just Phanon for you, nothing we can do about it now. They must have known someone high up in the Zellusian command." Zari said.

"Like you?" I asked.

"Higher" Zari said. "High enough to get access to his corpse 60 years ago."

"I don't think we're ever going back there, but I'll lay money it was General Jadego Sr." Zari continued. "He got caught selling weapons, I think he died in prison like um, what 40 years ago? The only reason he wasn't executed was because he was the emperor's wife's cousin of all things."

"Well it's of little consequence now." I said.

"Yeah, still interesting though." Zari replied.

"That kid is going to struggle." Zari laughed.

"What are you saying Zari?" Phoebe asked.

"Well it's just, if you combine Cj's personality, with Zellers, that kid is going to have a half dozen lawsuits by the time he's fourteen." Zari replied.

"Well he's only 5% Zeller's, so he'll probably be ok right?" Phoebe asked.

"Eh, what five percent though?" Zari asked.

"I don't know, I didn't see." Phoebe said.

"What am I that dangerous?" I asked.

"You're allright for a human." Phoebe said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.

"I think she's more referring to how good you are in bed." Phoebe said.

"Am I really that good?" I asked.

"A little bit of both really." Zari embarrassingly clarified.

"Awe see Cj, and she's been married before so, it's not just me." Phoebe said as I pulled Kitty a bit closer for comfort.

"Oh and Kitty, don't forget Kitty Kat is still with you and she's had who knows how many partners?" Phoebe said.

"I don't remember, but stop it you're embarrassing him." Kitty said.

"Ok fine, just a little payback for earlier." Phoebe said before kissing me on the cheek.

Yeah, now it was payback that she called out on it.

"I love you Cj." She playfully said a moment later.

"Love you too you strange gardevoir." I said as Kitty felt compelled to kiss me too.

"And you too Kitty." I said.

"Wait so Alias was that baby right?" Saphy asked.

"Yes. You remember?" Phoebe asked.

"How could I possibly forget something so loud?" Saphy asked.

"Hehehe, I'm right with you!" Kitty said.

"Oh you have no idea." Phoebe said. "This one time Charley got upset because I couldn't make a tv for him out of nothing."

"Really?" Kitty asked.

"Yeah he was like Mawa ma teephee fo Cawey?, that just how he talks and I'm like um no, no I cannot make a tv for you. And then he got all upset. But that's just how babies are they don't understand why you can't do somethings. And yeah he's only half human, so he's smarter than a human baby would be for his age, but he's still a baby. But no matter how much he cries he's still my son and we love him no matter what."

"Mhm." I agreed.

"But he doesn't cry like that one did does he?" Kitty asked.

"He cries sometimes, but he's pretty easy to calm down." Phoebe said.

"You remember him like it was only yesterday." I said.

"Of course." Phoebe replied.

"You miss him too don't you?" Phoebe asked.

"Yeah, but, it's been so long Pheebles." I said.

"It doesn't matter." Phoebe replied.

"True." I said.

"Kitty what was his daughter like as a baby?" Phoebe asked.

"I don't even remember that was a long long time ago." Kitty said.

" About the same as any other baby why? We were going through training when she was a baby and Kitty and I only saw each other on occasion." I explained.

"Ok, but she had your eyes like Charley." Phoebe said.

"Yeah." I replied.

"Ah fuck you're gonna make me cry aren't you? " I said.

"I don't mean too." Phoebe replied.

"Well, I guess we'll just make the most of it." I said." She was four when I made lieutenant. She'd been with her mother most of the time until then. A couple years later she started driving Ronnie crazy cause she'd take off after classes and start wandering all over the ship without even telling her most of the time."

"They have classes on the ship?" Phoebe asked.

"If there's enough kids on board yeah. There was probably a few dozen at the time, more than enough to justify it, they tend to come and go a lot though as most don't stay onboard full time, so she didn't have many friends her age." I replied.

"What happens if there's not enough, she just doesn't go to school?" Phoebe asked.

"No she'd just have meetings with the instructor. It's like its entirely own career field, just being an officer in charge of educating the children of officers, it's weird because they're teachers but also space marines trained in combat." I said.

"Anyway so there were a lot of times, where, Ronnie would call and ask me if she was with me and most of the time my answer was I have no idea where she is. Or sometimes I would just be walking to the cafeteria or some other place for some job-related reason and I'd catch her in the hallway. And then she'd get to follow me around until my shift was up so I could take her back to our quarters."

"I'm pretty sure there were also times she waited for me in the cafeteria because she knew if I brought her home Ronnie wouldn't be as mad at her." I said. "Basically she wouldn't stay home, ever, there's not child locks on the doors or anything so there was not much we could do about that, but aside from that, she never got into trouble for the same thing more than once. Sometimes she'd be exploring places on the ship she really shouldn't be and then whoever was in charge of security there would take her back to the quarters, but it was never the same security person and never the same place."

"Like what places?" Phoebe asked.

"Around the reactor room, around containers of really big explodey things. The medical ward, hell she tailgated somebody onto the bridge once. That was, not a fun night Pheebles. imagine the captain, the guy that has the authority to discharge you for the slightest indiscretion, calls you to the bridge personally to come get your kid. "I said.

"Oh Charley would never do anything that bad. Nina, I can't see her talking to strangers like that." Phoebe said.

"I'm pretty sure every parent says that at some point, and then it happens." I said.

"No it will not because you have experience now." Phoebe said.

"Captain RItheno?" Kitty asked.

"Yeah, only captain we had at the time." I said.

Rest in peace.

"Awwee fuck, you were, you were still a private." I said.

"Yeah." Kitty said.

"I don't remember where you were at that time." I said.

"Storage, cleaning containers." Kitty replied.

"That's where I thought I was going to be. When I heard that call." I said.

"So what happened then?" Phoebe asked.

"Nothing, he was strangely cool about it as long as it didn't happen again." I said.

"Did it happen again?" Phoebe asked.

"I think at that point she figured out she could cost me my job or she just ran out of restricted places on the ship to explore. By the time she was ten she knew that ship better than half the crew. She knew everyone on board." I said.

"She lived for that life, I lived it out of convenience, but she lived for it itself. And at the end, she was probably a better captain than I ever was." I said with tears.

"The beauty of it all Pheebles, that's what makes it worthwhile." I said after regaining my composure.

"I know." She said.

"No, not yet, if you've been honest with me, but you will and I will again, once we get back." I said.

"Well duh I've been honest with you why would I lie about that?" Phoebe asked.

"Because you lie a lot. Or you just don't tell me things." I said.

"Not as much as you think." Phoebe said.

"There is nothing outside whatsoever just more trees." Challana said.

"Well keep an eye out, atleast until it gets dark." Zari said.

A couple hours passed, the sun set, we stopped for the night.

"Do any of them look weird?" Saphy asked.

"No, they all look the same." Challana replied.

"Are we still heading north?" Saphy asked.

"As far as I can tell, the sun is still on the left." Zari said.

Eventually it got dark and stopped for the night. The light of the possibly fake moon reflected off the snow and made everything brighter than normal, though it was still too dark to proceed safely. Soon we had a fire set up so everyone could stay comfortably warm, and we all gathered around it for a few minutes before retiring to the bus for the night. The mechanorimon took up their old duty of standing guard around the camp, and DarkVioletmon joined the circle even, but as usual she said nothing the whole time.

"So anyone have any stories to tell?" Zari asked once everyone was settled in.

"It was a dark and stormy night." I began.

"No, I meant real stories." Zari interrupted.

"Well somebody else can go then I've been telling stories all afternoon."

"Yeah, you don't need to cry again." Kitty said.

"He was crying?" Henry asked.

"He was remembering his daughter." Phoebe said.

"Oh." Henry said.

"Maybe Zari can tell us about her son now that she's not driving?" Phoebe suggested.

"Um, no, you do not want to see me cry." Zari said.

"I have a story, Zari, Cj, you've both probably heard it before, the rest of you, I have no idea. It comes from that last world we were in, so Ninjamon definitely hasn't heard it." Henry said.

"Wa?" Ninjamon asked, half asleep.

"You know the story of the ASAMC RedRock?"

"Isn't that mineral ship that got caught in the crossfire during the battle of Saskana prime?" I asked.

"Yeah you know the stories." Henry said.

"I heard the rumors." I said.

"I never heard of it." Phoebe said.

"Well just listen then this is pretty good." I said as I decided to go ahead and fill everyone in.

"Allright then go ahead." Henry insisted.

" I think it was like 50s before we ended up there, Saskana Prime was a mostly uninhabited desert planet surrounded by an asteroid field, it was a famously abundant source of valuable minerals, so it wasn't long after its discovery that both the U.S.C and the Zelusians would fight over it. The Asteroid survey and mining corporation was a U.S.C affiliated private enterprise, that along with many others, operated a fleet of unarmed mining ships that frequently surveyed and mined the various asteroids around the planet, carting minerals off to refineries further behind the lines where they would be split into their composite elements and turned into manufacturing materials for completely ludicrous profits.

At the time, there were about a dozen corporations of various sizes on either side of the conflict operating in the area. When military capital ships would approach, however, most would simply jump away. For whatever reason the Red Rock ignored the various warnings from other ships in its fleet, and even other fleets, and continued mining until it couldn't carry anymore. All the while a Zelusian task group arrived and started to take defensive positions, followed by a U.S.C task group minutes later to respond to the distress signal sent out by a nearby radar relay, a small radar station with the sole purpose of reporting Zelusian activity to a remote outpost further away, as well as alerting all friendly ships in the area.

This had been going on an almost weekly basis for quite a while, they'd jump in, take position, fight until one side would inevitably jump away and retreat and then the winning side's corporations would operate in relative safety until the other side regrouped, restocked, and resupplied itself for another attack. And situations like this would happen all over the known universe for various reasons, and could go on for years without a decisive outcome, meanwhile the planet itself remains uninhabited because nobody is that stupid to build a house in the middle of a warzone. Conflicts like these usually end when one side decides the objective is suddenly very important and sends in way more ships than the other and starts setting up defenses and other deterrents, but so far both sides had sent what they felt was the bare minimum of ships and ordinance to take it back for a while.

Anyway, like many days before, neither side was going to back down at first, and everyone onboard was anxious and ready for the moment that would inevitably start that day's battle.

It depends on what side you ask, but that day's moment was the Red Rock itself, belly full of mineral dust, nonchalantly trundling out from behind an asteroid freaking out what was definitely a Zelusian gunner on one of their ships." I elaborated.

"Oh yeah right. It was U.S.C lieutenant Harold Farknussen on the destroyer U.S.C Ianomo. He shot frst" Zari said, teasingly.

"Nah, that's just what they told you." I said.

"Bullcrap." Zari teased.

"Were you there?" Phoebe asked.

"No, that was way before we were even in that universe." Zari replied.

"Then how do you know?" Phoebe asked.

"Because that's what we were taught in training." Zari said.

"Well we were taught it was the Zelusians, so that means nothing. Not that it even matters now." I said.

"True." Zari replied.

"Anyway, not even a second later after the first shot there were lasers flying everywhere, fighters and bombers taking off, and missiles closing in on targets only to be intercepted.

The Red Rock was completely and utterly annihilated, it's not clear how many times it was hit, but it is known that not even five seconds in its reactor core went up, turning its cargo of ultra-fine mineral dust into a huge cloud that temporarily blinded both sides. The crew didn't have a chance, but nobody cared at the moment because a battle was raging even through the dust. Time went on, shields started getting low, capital ships started taking damage, eventually the Zelusians jumped out, meaning the U.S.C retained control of the planet for another day, but it was days later when the fate of the Red Rock and its crew was fully realized.

There wasn't much left, as typical of a core explosion, no bodies, no survivors, everything around the reactor room was completely vaporized, the rest of the hull split into 3 pieces and melted beyond all recognition, parts of it fusing with its cargo. ASAMC took what was left, melted it down and made a memorial for the crew, and set it outside their main HQ since the place was still an active warzone, as soon as the conflict was over though, it, along with the refineries, were moved planetside as people started to colonize there.

That's as far as the facts go, but of course, such a strange occurrence along with the civilian nature of the ship and it's violent end, has led to myths and rumors of the ship being cursed, of it having a ghost and occasionally appearing in space around the planet's asteroid belt and even around the area where the refineries it used to travel to used to be, as they had since been moved to the planet's surface itself, leaving that area as empty space." I said, finishing the elaboration.

"Yeah, well, what is it? I think 40 years after we all ended up in that place, there was a bounty on Saskana prime, hiding out in the no-man's land there, but this was way after the battle, they already had several cities established it couldn't really be considered uninhabited anymore. Ships going in and out all the time with travelers and supplies. They were even working on building an orbital station. Anyway of course the dude is hiding out in a little frontier town in the middle of nowhere, so we're deep in the asteroid ring, far away from the station that's being constructed and way far away from the main traffic flow, just getting ready to send the shuttles down. So there's no other ships on radar, but one of my guys radios the bridge says he sees a huge ship trundling by outside the window, And I said that's impossible there's nothing on radar. Then another radios in and says he sees it too. And that's when I see it through the front windshield. And it's a mining ship, an old one, a class that they just don't put in service anymore. I can't make out any name or id number on the side, which you know, is completely illegal, and it's still not showing up on radar." Henry said.

"Hologram projector and Stealth field generator?" I suggested.

"Yeah definitely." Kiera said.

"Why would they pretend to be a ship that's been out of common use for well over 100 years though?" Henry asked. "The Zelusians know better than that. And a ship that old shouldn't have the reactor capacity to produce any kind of stealth field whatsoever."

"To make the rumors seem true and attract tourists." Zari said.

"There you go. It's like a Scooby doo episode." I replied.

"What's that?" Illustria asked.

"It's a cartoon show with a talking dog. They solve mysteries." Phoebe said, repeating what I had said to her an extremely long time ago.

"What's a dog?" Illustria asked.

"Domesticated Four-legged quadruped predator. " I said.

"Is it a cute one?" Illustria asked.

"Depends." I replied.

"Ok so they're going to be able to get their hands on military technology, just to attract tourists?" Henry asked.

"Zelusians will sell you anything for the right price." I said.

"Yeah, that one is kind of true." Zari agreed.

"Ok well then after trying to contact it, it just up a disappeared." Henry said.

"Jumpdrive." I replied.

"Without the flash that a jump drive would give, like it just faded from existence." Henry said.

"Stealth fields can do that." I said.

"The U.S.C wouldn't even sell me one of those how would some random tour company get one?" Henry asked.

"They bought it from the Zelusians." I said.

"How did they get the cash?" Henry asked.

"I don't know, but that's how they can get one." I said.

"And if it was doing that, why would it be so far away from the main traffic lane where nobody could see it?" Henry asked.

"Maybe they just saw you and wanted to freak you out." I replied.

"But what were they doing over there?" Henry asked.

"No idea." I said.

"Nah, I know what I saw, it was the ghost." Henry said.

"We've seen ghosts before Cj, it's not impossible." Phoebe said.

"You have?" Henry asked.

"Yeah, a long long time ago." Phoebe said.

"Yeah, but those were just ghost pokémon, not a whole space ship." I said.

"Wait when did you see this?" Zari asked.

"It was a good 60 years ago." Henry said.

"Cj." Zari said.

"What?" I asked.

"Stealth field generators weren't even in operational status 60 years ago, the U.S.C was still testing them." Zari said.

"Awwe fuck you're right." I replied.

"Yeah, see, I know what I saw." Henry said.

"I don't know man, but you saw something, secret test ship maybe." I said.

"Is that even a thing?" Phoebe asked.

"You wanna know a secret? They gotta test new technology somehow, but only the top top brass knows how many of those ships there are, where they are, and what exactly they're doing. I've seen them on occasion, testing new weapons and hull designs. Delivered a few containers containing things they wouldn't tell me, to places that didn't make any tactical sense. Hell sometimes I swear we'd be docked somewhere and they'd show up in the cargo hold overnight along with an accompanying line in the manifest that would tell me absolutely nothing about it aside from it being top secret and the destination I was supposed to take it too. Without any of the crew responsible for loading and unloading knowing how it got there. As they would typically appear way after they left the ship to go partying after unloading and loading everything else. Or if they didn't leave sometimes we'd even find them unconscious, lined up against one of the walls without any explanation. And then there was usually some sort of anonymous message that would arrive at about the same time saying the policy for top secret deliveries, that if the situation became desperate it was better to set the ship to self-destruct rather than let anyone get ahold of whatever was in the containers. Sometimes it'd be explosive, sometimes it'd be a biohazard, sometimes it'd be fragile, but it'd always be in a specialized container with a bio-metric lock nobody on board can open, they were usually always marked top priority so it was usually the very next thing we delivered, and they always had a really weird destination out in the middle of nowhere, nowhere near a warzone or even a station, sometimes not even a planet. But every time we'd go there'd undoubtedly be a larger capital ship waiting in plane sight, for god knows what. Sometimes they would be recognizable, other times they would be types that there had been literally no news about whatsoever, and sometimes they would be of designs so bizarre they would be difficult to describe. They would send a shuttle out, usually nothing special, and the moment they would dock we'd lose all visuals of the cargo hold for several minutes and anybody that went down there would later be found lined up against the wall unconscious, so, as this was a somewhat routine occurrence, usually everybody cleared the room beforehand, but occasionally somebody would still get caught there, and then they would be the source of jokes for the week. Anyway, when the cameras started working again, the container would be gone, its manifest entry wiped from the registry like it was never there. And then there would usually be some sort of anonymous message instructing me or whoever was at the helm at the time to broadcast a message across the entire ship not to tell anybody what we saw and then the weird ship would jump away to hell knows where. Of course now we're in a completely different universe and they can't do jack about it now." I said.

"They can't?" Kitty asked.

"What are they going to do? Come over here and arrest us? How are they even going to know? We don't even work for them anymore! We haven't for forty years! " I said, laughing at her naivety.

"Oh, yeah, they can't." Kitty said.

"What did you see?" Zari asked.

"What? You going to tell all your Zelusian buddies?" I teasingly asked as she seemed surprised.

"Fuck no, fuck those guys." Zari said.

"I'm pretty sure one was a prototype obsidian class carrier, there was a bunch of vectre class heavy destroyers, usually equipped with some sort of oversized bizarre looking weapon. Railguns, plasma cannons, some stuff I honestly can't say what it was." I said.

"We saw this one ship that looked like its hull was mostly made of living flesh, throbbing and everything." I replied.

"Sounds like they were testing some sort of organic self-repairing hull system." Zari asked.

"I guess so, it was kind of gross. I guess that one must not have been up to snuff because when we left they still had nothing that even remotely resembled that. You think that ghost ship is scary you should've seen this thing. It was like a giant floating rectangular blob of flesh trying to swallow a bunch of windows and engines. It throbbed, you could see giant blue veins underneath it. It was like the ugliest cyborg ever." I said.

"That does sound pretty gross." Henry said.

"Do you think it bleeds? Like how did they attach all the metal parts to it?" Claire asked.

"Probably, and I honestly have no idea. A couple years later we saw one that was bright green and looked like it was made of plants. I think that one might have replaced the other one, it was definitely a lot less ugly." I said.

"Remember when we saw that one that looked like a wiener?" Kitty asked.

"What?" Phoebe asked.

"Oh, yeeeeeaaaaah, I remember, everyone that saw it wouldn't stop laughing about it for a week and everyone that didn't wouldn't believe them." I said.

"Like how much did it look like one?" Henry asked.

"Enough that it was pretty hard to deny that it didn't look like one. Atleast from the side. They don't tell us anything more about them so, for lack of actually knowing what the hell it was everyone that saw it just referred to it as the weiner ship, or the penetrator class prototype, or a variety of other names. I guess it was some kind of high powered laser artillery, but fuck knows, we got a crate, we went to the destination, saw what could best be described as a giant metal wiener with engines and windows, it sent a little white shuttle out from one of its balls to pick up the crate. The shuttle returned with the crate, it splooshed away and then we never saw it again. I highly doubt the whole crew kept it a secret, but then again who the hell would believe them? Oh and as you can imagine there were kids on the ship so, yeah, and believe it or not several moms complained to me and I'm like, I had no idea it was going to look like a wiener and I have literally no ability to do anything about that, nor do I have the slightest inkling of who I'm supposed to contact to complain about a ship looking like a weiner, not that they would do anything but laugh in my face about it. I mean fuck if nothing else it kept morale up for a while." I said.

"What about your daughter?" Phoebe asked.

"She didn't see it, she and Ronnie were asleep." I said.

"Ok." Phoebe said.

"But you were with Kitty?" Phoebe asked.

"Yeah, and her boyfriend at the time, and Xylars, and Onikki." I said.

"Who were they?" Phoebe asked.

"My other lieutenants at the time, Xylars really knew his stuff and Onikki, that girl had no sense of fear whatsoever and could hold her own against Kitty even, so yeah." I said.

"Remember their wedding?" Kitty asked.

"Yeah, I remember they almost kicked you out." I said.

"Well my stupid boyfriend dumped me." Kitty said.

"That's not an excuse to get smashed and ruin their wedding. She was, she was a few bad words from kicking your ass Kitty Kat." I said.

"And you were going to let her?" Phoebe asked.

"We weren't together at the time, hell Ronnie was there even and the way she was acting she about deserved it." I said.

"but yeah we kind of helped diffuse the situation, brought her back to the hotel. Weren't we talking about a ghost ship at some point?" I asked.

"Yeah, things just got way off track." Henry said.

"Aw well, I'm tired, I'm going, come on Pheebles." I said.

"Goodnight." Kitty said somewhat disappointed.

"Night everyone." I said.

"Night." Phoebe said.

"Can I go with you?" Kitty asked.

"I guess, come along then." Phoebe replied.

We returned to the bus for the night.

"What about Zari and Chally?" Kitty asked.

"You know how this works, they give us a couple hours alone and then we let them come onto the bus later so they can sleep where it's warm, or if we want to play with them we'll go get them later after everyone else is asleep." Phoebe said.

"Oh, right." Kitty said.

"That said what do you think Cj?" Phoebe asked.

"I don't know, I might just fall asleep before you even get your clothes off." I said.

"Well I can get my clothes off pretty fast." Phoebe said.

"Faster than Kitty Kat?" I asked.

"Hmm?" Kitty asked.

"No because Kitty gets the first round." Phoebe said.

"Oh she does?" I asked.

"Yeah, you know I always take the last round." Phoebe said.

"Oh so now we're doing two rounds." I playfully asked.

"Two girls, two rounds Cj." Phoebe said.

"Remember how well that worked with 5?" I asked.

"Yeah, but it's just us you big baby, You can do it, I know you can." Phoebe said.

"I'm just playing with you, you know it." I said.

"I know. You're eyeing Kitty up right now." Phoebe said.

"Oh yes he is I know that look." Kitty said.

"Yeah even she knows it." Phoebe said.

"Both of you are just so cute you know that?" I asked.

"Not cute, sexy." Phoebe said.

"That too." I replied.

"Both of you come here." I said as I held out my arms.

"Pheebles you keep fascinating me even to this day and I fucking love you more than anything. Kitty Kat, you drive me crazy sometimes but you're the best concubine ever and you were there for me when I needed someone, and I love you." I said as I hugged both of them.

"Virara, she's our virara, way better than a concubine." Phoebe said without explaining exactly how.

"Yeah, she definitely is." I agreed before kissing them both on the cheek.

"Why don't you play with her for a bit while I take a shower, and then I can play with her while you take a shower, and then we'll all play together." Phoebe suggested.

It was a tiny shower so it was a bit difficult to actually get clean while we were both in there.

"Ok, sounds fine." I replied as she undressed herself and headed to the shower.

"Awe, but when she comes out she's going to be all wet." Kitty said.

"Nah, not with that shower. Remember how it works?" I asked.

"Oh yeah, it's weird like that isn't it?" Kitty said.

"Mhm, so why don't you lay down with me on the bed and we'll see where that leads come on." I said.

"Ok." She replied as Phoebe started showering. We made out for a little bit, but I didn't let things escalate very far yet because Pheebles insisted on me taking a shower, and I didn't think she'd be in there much longer than necessary, Which turned out to be correct.

"You're both still dressed? Geez you're really slow Cj." Phoebe said as she walked out naked without any shame whatsoever, then again Kitty and I were the only ones that could see her. All the windows were blacked out near the back of the bus with trashbags, , and there were some curtains in place to obscure the front.

"Well come here Pheebles, let me rub those nipples." I said.

"No, you take a shower really quick and then we'll both be out here waiting for you." Phoebe said.

"Oh, Ok, fine." I said before getting up and kissing her on the cheek as I squeezed by.

"Now we get to play sister." Phoebe said.

"How do you wanna play?" Kitty asked.

"Well why don't you get your boobs out first, then you can help me with mine. So we can be ready when he gets out." Phoebe said.

"Ok." Kitty replied.

"Did he even do anything or did you just snuggle the whole time?" Phoebe asked.

"We made out a lot." Kitty said as she started to remove her top.

"Oh ok." Phoebe replied as she got in bed next to her

"Well we're going to step it up a bit, and we'll start with those pretty little titties"

"My pretty little kitty titties." Kitty replied.

"Mhm." Phoebe said.

"Your hands are smaller than his." Kitty said as Phoebe started to gently fondle her breasts.

"Yeah that means they can fit down here better." Phoebe said as she slipped

"nnnn, I wasn't ready for that." Kitty trembled as Phoebe began to finger her pussy.

"shh, just relax he does this to me all the time." Phoebe said.

"Me too, but I wasn't expecting you to do it, and your hands are cold." Kitty said.

"Just relax we're going to get you nice and ready for him." Phoebe said before tenderly kissing her on the cheek.

"What about you?" Kitty asked.

"Well you're going first, so don't worry about that right now, just relax. Give into the pleasure." Phoebe said.

"Do you love me too?" Kitty asked as she pulled away.

"Let's not talk about that right now." Phoebe said as she stopped for a moment.

"Why not?" Kitty asked.

"Don't think about me, think about Cj and all the fun we're going to have when he gets out of the shower." Phoebe said, as she really didn't want to answer that.

"Ok." Kitty said.

"Now relax and let me play with you I promise I'll be gentle. You're my virara too, you know? You can't just be Cj's, that's not how it works." Phoebe said.

"Ok." Kitty said reluctantly.

"Good girl, now let's get you ready." Phoebe said as she pulled her top down, exposing her breasts.

"But you don't love me?" Kitty asked.

"I'm not in love with any of the newbies either, but they're fun to play around with, same with Chally and Zari, although, if you haven't noticed Cj might have a thing for Zari." Phoebe said.

"He does?" Kitty asked.

"We're going to have to make him forget about her." Phoebe said quietly.

"I thought you hated it when I did that." Kitty replied.

"Well I didn't mean like that. I meant with our bodies, not our powers." Phoebe said.

"Huh?" Kitty asked, confused.

"Just get your clothes off." Phoebe said, annoyed.

"Ok ok." Kitty replied before standing up to strip naked.

" Now what?" She asked after she sat back down on the bed.

"Well, you kind of ruined the mood so now we just pretend that everything is going well and wait for Cj." Phoebe said.

"You know I didn't mean too." Kitty said.

"I know." Phoebe replied.

"Do you want to love me?" Kitty asked.

"I hope I can learn, because making him choose between us is just going to hurt everybody." Phoebe said.

"He'd choose you, he's said that before." Kitty said.

"I know, it doesn't make it easier." Phoebe replied.

"You wouldn't have to live without him." Kitty said.

"Well, yeah, but . . . ." Phoebe began to say.

"You might know what it's like to go a really long time without love, but you don't know what it's like to be betrayed and let down more times than you can even count. To be thrown away like trash by somebody you thought loved you." Kitty interupted.

"Where'd all that naivety go?" Phoebe asked.

"It hurts, that it might happen again, especially with him." Kitty said.

"Then we both need to try to make this work." Phoebe said.

"Yeah." Kitty agreed.

"So come here then, let's try to bring the mood back." Phoebe said.

"Yeah, for Cj." Kitty said.

"For Cj." Phoebe replied with a smile as they embraced.

I came out of the shower to see them playing around with each other on the bed.

"Awe, look at you two getting along so well." I said.

"Cj come over here, don't even bother getting dressed." Phoebe said.

"Yeah, how do you want to start this baby girl?" I asked.

"Well we have to get you ready, obviously." Phoebe replied as she got up and approached me.

"Looks like you're ready. Look at those boobs." I said as it was impossible not to notice they were at their full size.

"Mhm, Kitty helped me, so come here." She said as she pulled me into a hug.

"Fuck I love you Pheebles. Let me squeeze those tits." I said.

"We'll get to that just wait." She replied before she kissed me and we started to make out.

"Kitty get over here if you want to be part of this too." Phoebe said as she started to caress my manhood.

"Oh, right." Kitty replied before making her way towards us.

"You can play with my boobs while she sucks you off, how's that sound?" Phoebe asked.

"Like fun." I replied as she continued to stroke me while Kitty slowly got into position.

Things only escalated from there, until at some point we were all in bed, satisfied, and asleep.

Zari, Saphy, Kiera, and Selenia came onto the bus to sleep at some point later, Chally liked to sleep outside so the other newbies took turns on the bus on most nights. A weird arrangement, but it worked.