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Chapter 3 - We See Purple

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"Stop clawing me," I said flatly. I needed a hand free and didn't want to accidentally hurt the girl. "Don't be the reason your partner gets hurt," I told the cat.

"You won't hurt Mia! I won't let you!" The yellow-and-white cat-mon said.

"If you would just shut up and stop trying to claw at me, I would appreciate it. I just saved you both, you reali—"

They weren't listening to me. Holding them both like this, with only three fingers made everything much harder than it should have. So, while the cat was struggling, I shook it a little bit, then I did what you do when you have a baby in one arm and something you need to grab with the other, but it would really take both arms.

Depending on what it is, of course, you grab the thing with the free hand, but since it's either too big or too awkward or you need to hold other things in that hand, you fling the thing into your chest or under your armpit. You keep the baby (or in this case, kid) out of the way of course. Then you hug the flung thing under either your armpit or your elbow, using raw pressure to hold it in place.

I didn't have the same compunctions about hurting the Digimon, so long as I didn't kill it. It was a cute cat, but them's the breaks for being stupid.

Cat suitably restricted between my upper arm and my generous upper-body-fluff, I could now focus on the kid, who's head was beet-red from the blood rushing. Unfortunately for the cat-thing, it was wheezing. I accidentally used too much force on the swing, and now it was struggling to breathe.

"Don't hurt Meikitmon!" she cried. I maybe could have just set it under my armpit in a far less traumatic way.

"I'm not trying to," I said brusquely.

Finally, second hand mostly free, I got the girl turned right side up. Only a few red impressions from not not knowing how hard I was holding her. She had long, blonde hair, cute light blue jeans and a dark green top, with a lighter complexion, and as the blood left her face, with a good number of freckles that would probably disappear by the time she got older.

She paused her crying. Then, she started hiccupping, alternating between the occasional single ugly-sob.

Conspicuously missing: shoes.

"What are you… " sob "gonna" hiccup "do to us?" sob.

"Nothing," I said, neglecting the flash of sadism-slash-intrusive thought to have fun with the clearly-already incredibly-traumatized girl.

Like inspiration from heaven, I dropped the cat, which was too out of breath to do anything stupid right away, and pulled the little digidestined warrior in for a hug. She didn't try to resist at all, instead soaking my fur with her tears.

I pulled her up and sat her on my lap, basically cradling her.

Note to self: Eight is still an incredibly tender age.

Letting the minutes pass was pretty difficult, but this was a girl who had no support structure, stuck alone in a castle that probably would have been straight out of her nightmares. If I had to guess, we were at the part of The Plot where they had made some critical mistake that got the littlest member taken hostage.

As kids grow up, they can hold conversations in surprising detail with you. They miss a few details here or have an awkward moment there, but for the most part, it gets really tempting to start thinking of them as fully-fledged adults.

It's natural, really— they're growing up and it's something every sane adult wants to see. The worst parents constantly treat their kids like they're babies for eternity.

In this case, an eight year old, probably the baby of the group, had managed to figure out just enough to escape the imprisoning clutches of insane ghosts and cackling demon-things, but that was about where her faculties ended. What didn't make sense, was why she was still alive, if she had been getting hunted.

Chalk it up to incompetence on the Evil ghost's part.

"My name is Kaylee."

"That's not…" wheeze "...a" wheeze "digimon name!" Meikitmon objected.

On second thought, maybe I hadn't squeezed hard enough, my eyes narrowing even as "Mia" kept hiccup-sobbing into my fur. Jesus, they really were going to do that every time I started without my digimon character name.

Ugh. Fine.

"I'm a Renanullmon. But my name is Kaylee," I said, nearly rolling my eyes at having to do this whole bit twice.

"I'm not going to do anything to you, you're—" I stopped.

Were the duo safe with me? Because that was what I was going to tell them. Without my kit or items, I wasn't supposed to be super strong, but power levels in Digimon were always just whatever the writers needed them to be, usually based on the number of episodes left in the season.

Or whether or not they wanted to introduce a new villain. With that in mind, the duo here were probably not super-duper safe with me, but I wasn't about to agitate Mia and the cat's fears. " —not going to be hurt by anyone while I'm around."

Better, but the wording was less reassuring than I'd intended. Winning awards for playing surrogate fictional mother wasn't in my list of goals, anyway. Mia and her kitmon … god, adding *mon to the end of every name was so stupid.

Actually…"Where is your digivice?" I asked. Unless Meikitmon never evolved, and it was being saved for a final showdown, she should have one.

The girl tried her best to respond. She took deep breaths, tears in her eyes.

"My …" hic "sister" hic. She managed to get out. Her upper lip was quivering, the dam holding back more tears and sobs threatening to break all over again.

Unfortunate.

"Your sister has it?"

My gut turned over. Please do not be stupid plot drama.

"She took it."

Please be for a good reason. Like "I lost it and then my sister found it and just hasn't given it back yet."

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Meikitmon spoke up "Yeah! Mia's older sister, Madelyn took it!"

"Why did your sister, Madelyn, take it?" I immediately realized I probably didn't actually want to know, because it was probably tied to some—

"Because she's mean! She's always mean to Mia!"

Not exactly an explanation, per se… But anger doesn't always just come from nowhere, at least for kids not in puberty. "Well… That's just not okay. What if I helped you get it back?"

"Do you mean it?" Mia asked, finally calming down enough to finish her sentences, eyes still puffy, shoving them back into my fur.

"Yeah! Why should we trust you?" The cat interjected, also having regained their breath. Their ears flopping around in a disarmingly cute way.

"Look, I'm not going to stick around. I have no reason to lie. If I was going to hurt you, I could have done it multiple times already." No, that wasn't the kind of logic a terrorized eight year old and her digimon wanted. "I just want to go home. Don't you?"

Mia was silent. I looked at the kit for support. She just shrugged. Alrighty then.

"You heard that the other kids are coming here, and they were—" probably "—coming to save you, right?"

She nodded.

"And I can't take you back to my home," I said, assuming I wasn't going to wake up at any moment. She just hugged tighter. By this point, I had let her go but she was still holding on. For all the not-trusting-me bluffing of her partner, Mia certainly… Attached to the first fluffy thing she could.

Kids. So full of emotion, so terrible with words. The exact confluence of factors caused her to latch onto me, despite the initial trauma, I didn't want to know.

It was cold, but I didn't want to be her villain.

"Don't want to go back." Mia managed to scratch out, muffled, just shoving her face into my fuzz, jostling the grey digivice tied around my neck for another solid minute as we sat on the bed in silence.

If they thought the older sister was mean, there were decent chances she had lost the digivice at some point, and the sister decided to hold onto it, I tried to reassure myself, as if repeating it in my head would make it more true.

The problem was, I knew myself. A thought, a problem that had been slotted right into the freezer just minutes ago. The kind of self-immolating questions that would cause imminent self-destruction.

Digivices were the physical symbol of the link between a digimon and their human partner, and without it, meikit…mon wouldn't be able to evolve.

"Mine" was glitched, due to the permanent human-digimon fusion. My character sheet, absorbed into my head thanks to the bastard, indicated that I had full access to the power of a human-digimon bond.

I wasn't about to give anyone my digivice. I didn't write it at the time, but while I had access to the full power of the bond+data absorption of the first anime I watched, being locked to this evolution likely meant my actual power was static. Of course, I don't remember any cat like Meikitmon, and the rules changed each iteration, so who knew how my character sheet interacted with the world-rules.

If I found the items, (which had to exist, considering how integral they were to my sheet) most of my power would be world-rules invariant, if sitting on the awkward multi-way precipice between derivative, silly, edgy, and stupid.

Still, with my base powerset, I could be a right nuisance to all but the most absurdly high-powered evolution. I pushed myself back onto the bed a bit further, just enough that my legs barely touched the ground.

Prying Mia off was a delicate affair, but I managed it.

"The other kids are going to be here soon, and you need sleep. I can't be your friend, you know that right? I need to go back home. I have to. I'm serious."

Causing a little trouble would be a good way of keeping the freezer from overflowing, A quiet little voice whispered.

"...please." Meikitmon hopped up onto the bed.

"Please what?" I asked. A little bit of trouble might not be the worst thing. And if I lost? Well, I'd just die and hopefully awaken in a hospital bed, back in the human world. I had been on the freeway when my car and phone and everything went on the fritz, after all.

"Isn't it obvious? She wants you to take her with you!" Meikitmon declared.

No.

Nope.

"It's okay Mia!" Meikitmon said. "We're strong! You're stronger than you think! You don't need this meanie head OR your sister OR the boys to protect you! We'll show them all! You'll see!" Meikitmon said.

Not happening.

Not taking ANYONE from this … place to the real world.

"You ARE strong, I can tell," I said, lying. "But it's okay to depend on your friends a bi—"

"No, you DON'T GET IT," Meikitmon said, hopping up and into Mia's lap. I set them off my lap, back on the bed, letting Mia hold Meikitmon.

It was not lost on me that they went from being chased by a probably insane ghost Digimon, to ugly crying, to begging me to take them with me..

"Mia works the hardest! We fight the hardest! We get there first! We fight the bad guys, and THEN, her sister comes in at the last second, when we're about to WIN, and beats them! And THEN she says she SAVED us. Maddie is a big meanie!"

Uh. Well, that sure was a story. Like I said. Kids. Still, I could feel my original plans go up in flames. It would be nice to stretch a bit. Learn how much power I actually had. Yeah I'd be doing Mia a favor. Knock her older sister down a peg. Maybe return her digivice back to her and Meikitmon?

"How did you get here?" I asked.

"We told them we were leaving the team because Maddie was being mean." Meikitmon continued to speak for her human. "Then her sister TOOK her digivice right when we teleported away, but by the time Mia realized it was gone, we were in the big field, where Skyler found us."

Both Mia and Meikitmon immediately turned visibly sad at the mention of Skyler's name.

Another one for the fridge, wonderful.

"So you were caught and taken to the castle."

"Yeah, but then we ESCAPED Fantomon's guard, and were just ABOUT to escape the castle when YOU got here and caught us!" Meikitmon declared.

A rumble across the floor, dust from the stones of the castle shook free.

"That's them," I said.

Mia had bags under her eyes. They had clearly not gotten any sleep.

"And we STILL don't want to go back with them," Meikitmon declared. I eyed them, and they shrank under my glare.

Call it a hunch, but Meikitmon didn't strike me as a reliable narrator. That said, it was an appealing endeavor..

"Let's let Mia decide," I said, turning to look Mia in the eyes.

"I want to be very clear here, Mia. You can't come with me to my home."

"That's… okay." She eked out.

Telling her that I was a walking parasite on their digi-reality? Not needed. I would be in and out of this whole shindig before it all collapsed, whether due to something I did, on purpose or by existing.

God, why did I have to write my character sheet like that?

"Now, I need to know. Are you really that upset at your sister?"

I was good at particular kinds of improv. If the battle had just gotten started, I had a whole script I could play. The only trick was making sure it was actually worth having a little fun.

Mia gave a sheepish nod.

"Even after all you've been through, here and in the castle? You still don't want to go back to the others?"

Another rumble shook, the frame of the bed wiggled a bit.

"I need my digivice" she practically whispered.

"Even if you end up accidentally siding with someone that's Not Good? Even if I leave you and Meikitmon on your own when this is all over?"

It was a bad idea, to goad an eight year old into making her own decision, but she had run away from them for some reason. Eight year olds were dumb, not malicious.

"Yes." Mia said, more sure this time, finding her confidence, but still barely a whisper.

"Louder." I said, the purple practically overflowing. "I need to hear it!"

"I. Don't. Like. Them!" She nearly shouted. I'd have been smiling my largest grin. I trusted that my face-obscuring bandanna reflected my real feelings.

"Let's do this" I said, plan hatched, a small tremor of giddiness emanated through me. It was like I was back in highschool again, sitting in the theatre and watching Sweeney Todd over and over without leaving the theatre with our friends, laughing at everything and nothing all at once.

"Mia's digivice is Purple, and glows purple! Like you!" Meikitmon said.

"Haha. That's my favorite color."

"Stay here."

A loud, booming "he he… he" echoed through the hallway as I opened the door. Every mouth on my bandanna had to be smiling viciously.

It was time to Cause Problems.

Be a problem-causer.

Whatever, I was never that great at one-liners anyway. The feeling of joy hit hard as I ran down the halls, knocking over the suits of armor as I plowed my way to the arena, and erupted into cackles.

Ha

Ha

Ha

HaHaHAhA HA

HaH!

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